Save the Children partner, TripAdvisor®, the world's most popular and largest travel community, has won a gold Halo Award, American cause marketing's highest honor. 

TripAdvisor won the "Best Use of Social Media" category for their fall 2008 "More than Footprints" campaign which distributed $1 million dollars between five travel-related non-profit organizations, including: Save the Children as well as Conservation International; Doctors without Borders; National Geographic Society; and The Nature Conservancy. 

Run by the Cause Marketing Forum, Halos recognize work that advances the interests of both nonprofit partners and a business, and are judged on conceptual strength, execution, business results, and cause results.  The honors were announced in a May 28 ceremony at the Cause Marketing Forum's annual conference in Chicago. 

In their winning campaign, TripAdvisor harnessed the power of the collective voice and asked travelers to democratically determine the amount of money each nonprofit would receive.  TripAdvisor members voted online and the initiative was also promoted through Facebook applications and through all Facebook communication channels, including email, newsfeeds, groups, and Facebook Connect. Members could also earn extra votes for their preferred organization for viral promotion via send-to-a-friend and tell-a-friend features. TripAdvisor tapped into YouTube, as well, and created several campaign videos, including one that went viral with more than 1.4 million views.  

The More than Footprints initiative generated more than one million votes in total, with nearly a quarter of them coming from social media outreach.  Based on the percentage of votes each organization received, the final results were:

·  Conservation International – $70,000 based on 7 percent of the vote

·  Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) – $392,000 based on 39.2 percent of the vote

·  National Geographic Society – $54,000 based on 5.4 percent of the vote

·  The Nature Conservancy – $137,000 based on 13.7 percent of the vote

·  Save the Children – $347,000 based on 34.7 percent of the vote

For more information visit www.tripadvisor.com