Flooring America’s “Where Friends Send Friends” television campaign created by Weintraub Advertising was named a Bronze winner in the Best Overall Campaign category at the 34th Annual Telly Awards, honoring the very best film and video productions, groundbreaking online video content, and outstanding local, regional, and cable TV commercials and programs. The company’s television series was selected from a field of nearly 11,000 entries from all 50 states and numerous countries.

Weintraub Advertising, an agency based in St. Louis, MO, created the campaign for its client, Flooring America, a co-op of more than 500 independently owned floor covering stores in North America. Weintraub worked with Lunchpail Productions out of Boston, MA, to produce the successful series which was unveiled to members of Flooring America at their Summer Convention in 2012 and began airing in the fall. Members have use of all television spots produced by the national Marketing Team of Flooring America to run in their local markets.

“We’re thrilled to receive recognition for the Where Friends Send Friends television campaign,” said Frank Chiera, Vice President of Marketing at Flooring America. “Our collaboration with Weintraub and Lunchpail worked beautifully. We listened to our members and delivered award-winning TV that will bring them traffic and sales, as well as help to better position them in their local markets.”

Flooring America’s “Where Friends Send Friends” fully integrated marketing campaign was created to highlight recommendations and referrals from customers to their friends and neighbors through a variety of mediums, including broadcast, traditional print, instore, direct mail, digital applications and social media channels. This strategy allowed individual retailers to leverage the voice of their community to build stronger relationships with shoppers on a local level, while also creating increased awareness of the Flooring America brand nationally. Extensions of the full campaign included digital, print, direct mail, in-store, as well as radio and television.

“We’re really proud of our work on this campaign,” said Rob Weintraub, President of Weintraub Advertising. “It required months of hard work and preparation to create something special that would be effective across all media platforms. We took a fresh approach to the testimonial format, and our staff aced it.”

The Telly Award winners were chosen by a judging panel of more than 500 accomplished industry professionals, each a past winner of the Silver Telly and a member of The Silver Telly Council, which is dedicated to upholding the historical standard for excellence that was established when the organization was founded in 1978. The Silver Council evaluates a wide range of entries to recognize distinction in creative work. Each one is judged according to a high standard of merit, rather than competitively against other entries. Less than 10% of those submitted are selected for the highest honor of the Silver Telly, and those finishing in approximately the top 25% are chosen for the Bronze Telly. To find out more about the Telly Awards visit, www.tellyawards.com.