Could we get any more metal? Apparently so. Our ambitious crew scored eight 2011 W3 Awards, which honor outstanding websites, digital marketing and mobile sites/apps created by the best of the best worldwide. There were 3,000 entries from all corners of the globe this year, so we’re excited to have our work selected. Nice nice people, those W3 judges.

Here’s a map of the U.S. winners (we’re the little dot on the Gulf Coast). A big congratulations and thank you to the hungriest, hardest working kids in advertising.

Recently we announced Red Square Agency had been named finalists in the OMMA Awards for Online Advertising Creativity, specifically in the “creative use of Facebook advertising” category. The awards show was in New York last night, and we’re excited to share that we won. It’s humbling recognition on (quite literally) a national stage.

Other brands recognized for digital and social media innovation at the show were: Google, Major League Baseball, HBO, 20th Century Fox, Gatorade, Disney, Volkswagen, Coca-Cola, JetBlue, Fox Home Entertainment, Paramount, Levi’s, AMC, adidas and Jay-Z.

And us. Wow. Thanks to everyone at the agency who works tirelessly to make great work happen. Here’s to leveling the playing field.

Willingness to experiment is a key to success with digital and social media. Sure, there are emerging fundamentals, which (surprise!) mirror closely those of all media. Chief among these is the principle that people respond when something breaks from the center of the bell curve and delivers the unexpected.

Our own Facebook ads—a nice collection of them reside here—have been thusly treated as an experiment. We’ve been lucky enough to receive a good deal of press for our efforts, and now we’ve been named a finalist in the OMMA Awards for Online Advertising Creativity. Specifically, in the “creative use of facebook” category. Other OMMA finalists include the likes of Google, Disney, Coca-Cola, Starbucks, DreamWorks, Volkswagen, HBO, JetBlue and several other big companies my mother has heard of.

Our agency is humbled and honored to be mentioned in the same show as these brands. Winners will be announced in September in New York. Thanks to everyone for playing along with us.

Marketing and Nerdom collide in glorious fashion this week in Austin, Texas, site of the annual South by Southwest (SXSW) conference. And because Red Square lives at the center of both worlds, we’re there.

Digital wunderkinds, Karen Sullivan and Jeff Whitlock, are on hand to absorb as much knowledge as humanly possible. They’ll be tweeting, facebooking, blogging and flickr’ing the whole deal, so stay tuned. If you want to catch up with them in Austin, hit ‘em up.

Also, a small aside: We are quite humbled and excited to be on the list of finalists in the interactive awards show for our BCBS work. So we’ve got that going for us, which is nice.

Our digital work for Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Alabama has been selected as a finalist for the South by Southwest (SXSW) Interactive Awards. Please excuse the serious tone with which that intro sentence was written, but this is some seriously awesome recognition. SXSW is the digital/media/tech equivalent of the Super Bowl. The awards “uncover the best new digital work, from websites to web applications and beyond, while celebrating those who are building tomorrow’s online trends.” Just to be considered a part of this movement is pretty amazing.

Our “Be You” social sharing site was selected as one of five finalists in the business category. Awards are given in an assortment of categories, and notable nominees include (watch your feet—we’re droppin’ names) Groupon, The Social Network, US Census, Unilever, Jay-Z, the Pepsi Refresh Project and Conan O’Brien.

We’ll be deploying to Austin in March to absorb as much knowledge and inspiration as our brains can handle, and hopefully we’ll bring back some well-deserved hardware for our great clients at BCBS.

The kids at the Square just picked up more hardware for the Van Kampen campaign. This installment of metal comes courtesy of the 2010 Telly Awards. We won in categories like financial services, humor, B-to-C campaign and sound design. And we’re betting if there had been categories like “best use of the phrase ‘horse hockey’” or “best use of tear gas,” we’d have pulled those down too.

Our Van Kampen TV spots won gold at the District 7 ADDYs. This means we’re finalists for three national ADDYs, which would go a long way in stroking our fragile egos. Come on, no whammies!!

Hey Mom, look! We won some more trophies for our advertisements. Yesterday, the American Advertising Federation—Mobile Bay held their 2009 ADDY Awards.

The kids from the Square needed two trips to get the awards back to the office. We took home:

-Best of Print for our Senior Bowl posters

-Best of Broadcast for “Nuclear” for Van Kampen Investments

-8 of 9 Golds awarded

Good stuff. But perhaps the nicest recognition was that our man Stephean Grimes was named Art Director of the Year. Well deserved for a guy who works like a maniac and has a great attitude. (FUN FACT: Stephean can also grow a beard on command.)

Archive Magazine is widely held as a collection of the most outstanding advertising in the world. So for ad nerds like us, being featured in this magazine alongside the best in the industry is mom-calling-worthy. Even if our moms still don’t exactly get what we do for a living.

Our campaign for Van Kampen Investments and the Alabama State Treasury Department is in the latest volume (vol. 6-2009). Pick up a copy. Or five.

We are excited to share with everyone that we’ve been awarded five 2009 W3 Awards. It appears we are huge in France and huge on the Internets. Crazy.

Matt was so excited that he made some pretty amazing art out of the trophies. Creativity cannot be stopped people. It just is.

Congratulations to everyone who worked so hard to earn this recognition. Let’s win more in 2010. Imagine what Matt could do with twelve or so of these things.