Marvel’s Create Your Own Comic microsite recently picked up a Best in Class Award in the Entertainment category at the Interactive Media Awards (IMA) competition. The IMAs honor excellence in web design and development.

The Best in Class Award is the highest honor granted by the IMAs, with winners representing “the very best in planning, execution and overall professionalism.” The Create Your Own Comic microsite earned 492 points out of a possible 500, making it eligible for inclusion in the IMA’s Top 10 Websites of the Year list.

Marvel Entertainment partnered with 360i’s Creative & Technology group to create a fully interactive destination within the Marvel.com family, fostering creativity and imagination among kids and parents. The action-packed microsite allows visitors to fully customize their own comic strip or book from start to finish, empowering them to create their own layout/design, choose backgrounds and settings – and even add fully editable characters from Marvel’s Superhero Squad.

As Wired magazine put it: Create Your Own Comic “is a great tool for beginning artists to practice storytelling techniques and panel layouts. But for someone with fond memories and a real lack of artistic skills, well, it can be a real source of hope.”

The Create Your Own Comic site won two Hive Awards (Best Gaming Entertainment Site & Best Web App) earlier this year. A similar microsite created by Marvel and 360i, Create Your Own Superhero, also received widespread praise – picking up a WebAward (Best Children’s Website) and a Webby nomination in 2009.

We’re proud to announce that 360i and Universal Studios Home Entertainment have been honored with two Awards of Distinction at the 16th Annual Communicator Awards.

In the Public Relations category, 360i and Universal Studios Home Entertainment won an award for a Digital Word of Mouth campaign to drive awareness of its “Curious George: A Very Monkey Christmas” DVD among a new generation of children – and inspire parents to relive their own childhood memories with the classic character.

To cut through the noise of the busy holiday season, Universal Studies Home Entertainment partnered with 360i’s digital publicity team on a high-impact DWOM effort that provided busy moms with digital assets (like exclusive trailers) and Curious George “Monkey Madness” packs that allowed them to host special viewing parties for their children and their friends.

The month-long campaign drove substantial earned media impressions among its target audience through overwhelmingly positive coverage garnered on some of the Web’s most highly-read mom and parenting blogs.

• 75% of posts included embedded video (outperforming typical benchmarks of 40%)
• 58% of all posts linked back to the official site; 1/3 linked to the Facebook Page
• 5,000 views of the trailer on YouTube as a direct result of DWOM efforts

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360i and Universal Studios Home Entertainment also won an award in the Social Media category for the brand’s ability to use Facebook as a platform to grow a flourishing community of movie-lovers. Universal wanted to support film fans, provide them with a common social point of reference within Facebook and build a community around the broad range of film properties that make up the Universal Studios Home Entertainment brand.

To start, Universal gave away 2,010 Blu-ray movies to promote the launch of its new Facebook Page. Then the brand used a combination of paid media via 360i to spread the word via paid search, the Google Content Network and Facebook advertising. Relevant fan sites and blogs were made aware of the promotion via a 360i-led DWOM outreach strategy. The comprehensive campaign also included a strategic Community Management program to ensure that fans were getting value from the Universal relationship.

Universal exceeded expectations for the promotion and created an opportunity for film evangelists to connect to the studio and for Universal, an extraordinary opportunity to speak directly to fans about their films that will continue to grow and live well beyond a point solution promotion.

• 66K fans/1 month – Exceeded goal by 32 percent
• ~150K fans to date
• Paid media efforts drove ~35K fans

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Universal’s initial hook to build a base of movie lovers has evolved into a flourishing community of brand advocates eager to engage with Universal via the world’s largest social network. You can join the community here.

Awards of Distinction are presented to projects that “exceed industry standards in quality and achievement.” The Communicator Awards is an international awards program honoring creative excellence for Communications Professionals. The awards are sanctioned and judged by the International Academy of the Visual Arts (IAVA).

by David Levin, President of 360i’s Design & Development Group

360i and Marvel Entertainment’s Create Your Own Superhero site has just been nominated for a Webby Award. The highly interactive site enables visitors to fully customize a superhero from start to finish using countless hand-drawn comic assets (headgear, facial features, outfits and accessories). The tool also includes Hero Packs, which allow visitors to use assets from their favorite Marvel characters, such as Iron Man and The Hulk. The site was designed with a backend interface where Marvel staff members can easily upload new character assets and manipulate existing images.

Over 24,000 heroes have already been saved and added to the Marvel.com hero gallery – and new assets are being added regularly. Check out the Create Your Own Superhero site and then cast your vote for the People’s Voice Webby Award.

Here’s how to vote:

1. Visit http://pv.webbyawards.com
2. Please note that you will have to register before you can vote.
3. When you get to the voting page, navigate to “Living” > then “Youth” to find 360i/Marvel.

360i has won two WebAwards for “Outstanding Achievement in Website Development” from the Web Marketing Association. The WebAwards is an annual website competition that honors the best sites in 96 industries while setting the standard of excellence for all web development. Each WebAward entry is judged on design, innovation, content, technology, interactivity, navigation and ease of use.

360i won for its work on both the adidas baseball website and for the design of Marvel’s “Create Your Own Superhero” site.

The objective of the adidas campaign – centered on the theme “Know the Code” – was designed to engage young ballplayers by educating them about how to play the game, while driving retail sales online. The Code is what defines the game of baseball. It’s the unwritten rules that guide each player to be their best.

360i developed the adidas baseball Web site using on-field photography and video, as well as a subtle baseball-card-like design. This allowed the site’s visitors to explore the baseball ‘Codes’ and associated adidas products throughout the site while enjoying a highly visual experience.

Every “baseball card” on the Web site showcases professional athletes and gives their on-field perspectives of how best to play the game. Product highlights and “buy now” links drive sales to shopadidas.com, adidas’ online store, and Dick’s Sporting Goods, adidas’ strategic retail partner.

The result is an engaging, interactive website that immerses young ballplayers in the Code and associates adidas products with key player attributes: Speed, Power and Hustle.

For Marvel’s Create Your Own Superhero site, 360i built a highly interactive tool enabling consumers to build and fully customize a Superhero from start to finish using countless hand-drawn comic “assets” (such as headgear, facial features, outfits, logos, accessories). The tool also includes “Hero Packs” allowing consumers to use assets from their favorite Marvel characters such as Iron Man and The Hulk.

In addition, users can use a color picker to further style their Hero. After they’ve created their Hero, users can save, send to a friend, print or post to the Marvel.com Hero Gallery. The tool also allows Marvel representative to easily upload and manipulate new character assets, and create new asset categories.

We’re honored to be recognized for our work on behalf of adidas and Marvel – and thanks to WMA for making these awards possible.