The 13th Annual Webby Awards

June 2009. New York City, NY, Cipriani Wall Street

In June 2009 Empire Entertainment produced the 13th Annual Webby Awards, marking the 5th consecutive year Recognition Media LLC chose to partner with Empire on the project which has been referred to as "the only award show for Internet sites that matters" by The Los Angeles Times. The myth of the number 13 bringing bad luck was quickly put to rest, as the event was the best Webby Awards yet. The Webby Awards is the leading international award honoring excellence in web design, creativity, usability and functionality, and the coveted awards have been called "the Internet's" Highest Honor" by the New York Times. On the night of the event, more than 850 of the best and the brightest minds on the net came to Cipriani Wall Street to honor and be honored for their contributions to the World Wide Web.

This evening kicked off with a cocktail reception, during which over 100 Webby winners were invited to film their five-word speeches (a distinguishing characteristic of the event), which would be uploaded to the Webby Awards YouTube channel later that same evening - - check them out at www.youtube.com/webby Empire secured Seth Meyers from Saturday Night Live to host the event for the second straight year. In his opening remarks, Meyers proved why he is head writer for SNL, quipping that "on the internet you can see any type of bizarre sex act anytime you want, you can get prescription drugs without seeing a doctor, and you can lose yourself in role-playing games. So in a lot of ways the internet is the future, but in a lot of ways, it's the '70's." Meyers' charisma and razor-sharp ad libs throughout the night kept the ceremony light and entertaining, as did some hilarious videos created especially for the event by The Onion and some of the cast from the VH1 hit show, "Best Week Ever".

Meyers introduced many winners to deliver their brief speeches from the stage, including supermodels Alessandra Abrosio and Doetzen Kroes from Victoria's Secret, actress/model Molly Sims, Arianna Huffington, Beaker from the famed "Muppet Show", and a winner from the Netherlands who used his five words to deliver a marriage proposal to his girlfriend, which she promptly accepted. The biggest winners of the evening were Lisa Kudrow, Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails, Sarah Silverman, Biz Stone (the founder of Twitter, who was introduced by the iconic Martha Stewart), and Tim Berners-Lee, who has been credited with inventing the World Wide Web. But the best 5-word speech of the night was arguably by Jimmy Fallon, who after being announced by Cameron Diaz, said simply, "Thank God Conan got promoted", a reference to having recently taken over the "Late Night" talk show from Conan O'Brien.

Empire Entertainment again provided oversight of nearly every element of this complex event, including signage, catering, décor, registration, staffing, audio, video, & lighting designs, stage management, and more.

Empire is a leading producer and/or partner on many Awards events each year, including the The Gotham Awards, The PR Week Awards, and The Executive Council Ten Awards. We take pride in clients such as Recognition Media who choose to work with us annually on their most important projects.