The Finalists for BIA/Kelsey’s GOLOCAL Awards have been announced. The winner of the final stage will be announced at LEADING IN LOCAL: The National Impact during a special session on May 8 highlighting finalists.(The conference runs May 7-9 and takes place in Atlanta).

The Awards were the result of a brainstorm with our friends at Balihoo, who agreed to sponsor them. We wanted to showcase the Best in Local online and mobile campaigns by national and regional players in the U.S. and Canada. The results are totally objective — we recruited an ace group of independent “national local” experts. The judges include Dave Walker, Rhonda Hills, Kerry Hatch, Brian Costello, Matt Booth and Tom Bates.

In the end, we had 36 finalists. The quality was phenomenal from everyone. It ended up being quite a learning experience.

The Finalists (in alpha):

1. Eventful/Fox Broadcasting: Fox worked with Eventful to run an integrated digital marketing campaign for Sleepy Hollow fans. It got 30,000+ fans in 2,972 cities to participate (and 1.04 million trailer views).
2. Eyeview/Lowe’s : Lowe’s developed a campaign to target local consumers via Big Data and geotargeted videos that customized pricing and product information from its closest stores.
3. Placeable/AAA Carolinas: AAA Carolinas launched a flexible, scaleable solution to manage and normalize location data and deploy it across its own website, search engines and social nets.
4. Tribune Broadcasting/Walmart. To promote Walmart’s last-minute holiday gift alerts, Tribune replicated the look and feel of a a TV “live shot” news report, customizing it for specific DMAs.
5. Vicinity: One of Canada’s fastest growing loyalty networks ran a digital and print campaign across a variety of targeted channels products over 136 businesses and 25,000+ new cardholders.
6. YP/Quiznos: Quiznos used mobile ads in three markets to target their competitors’ customers, boosting sales 6 percent over national average.
7. YP: YP created a bundled package for advertisers consisting of search, online listings management and mobile display. The program drove $1.2 million YP revenues and reduced lead costs for its advertisers.
8. xAd/Situation Interactive/MAMMA MIA: MAMMA MIA targeted New York tourists and area residents at key points of interest. The effort matched place-based targeting with real-world mobile behavioral data.