When I first saw the shortlist for the 2008 Sabre Award silver finalists in Technology Software, I had to look twice. A&R Edelman for Adobe Systems, Access Communications for Intuit, Waggener Edstrom Worldwide for Microsoft and, what? PAGE ONE PR for a small open source start up? Could this be right?

Upon second look, I saw it was true! According to the Sabre Awards, Page One is standing among some global giants, and we are neck and neck. But although we’d like to take credit for coming up with the creative idea behind it all, I also have to admit we couldn’t have done it without social media.

Our nomination comes for a campaign that we cooked up last summer at LinuxWorld Conference and Expo called “Who’s the Next Open Source Idol?” We created a contest to determine which of four popular open source mascots Linux junkies love most and threw in Tux the Penguin, Beastie the BSD Devil, “Foxie” the FireFox and the GNU (also know as Bessie). Even better, we asked people to sing or dance on behalf of their vote.

After stirring up some trouble at the show, FireFox fans rallied and ousted Tux. In the meantime, our client saw a 43% increase in traffic to their corporate website in three days and 1,133 people visited their community portal to vote. We also generated buzz in the IT media community, and people are still talking about it.

The Sabre Awards recognize public relations firms that focus on delivering out-sized results and improving a client’s bottom line through out-of-the-box campaigns. For “Open Source Idol,” we tapped a variety of social media channels to generate buzz, which ended up being incredibly cost-effective to leverage. In fact, one reason social media is so effective is that it puts everyone on a level playing field. Through a mix of social media and traditional PR tactics, we were able to reach the Linux and open source enthusiasts we needed to participate and were able to engage with them directly.

So, I guess the big takeaway is it no longer matters how big your marketing or PR budget is – even a small technology startup can stand out against giants. It just takes some guts, smarts and social media.

We took a recent Stanford University graduate, convinced her to wear a cow suit and increased web site traffic by 43% for a Silicon Valley startup in three days. Well, to be fair, we also had a fox, a demon, and penguin to help us.

At LinuxWorld in San Francisco last week, we walked around the show floor in costumes, recorded video, danced, sang, and convinced attendees to participate in choosing the Next Open Source idol. The results were hilarious and great for business. GroundWork Open Source saw a 43% increase in traffic to their corporate web site in three days. They also had 1,133 people go to the community portal on their main web site and interactively vote on their favorite idol. The videos generated 5,000 views from a targeted open source audience in one week.

The PR campaign also generated buzz in the IT media community, including this short blurb in NetworkWorld.

The project was viewed as a success, helping to increase the visibility of GroundWork Open Source in the technical community and driving relevant traffic to their web site. We also got to dress up in funny costumes in public a full two months ahead of Halloween.