BIA/Kelsey launched Future Stars several years ago, with the idea of highlighting startup companies in the local space that needed a little boost to hit the big time. Future Stars get to participate in Future Stars Alley at our events; receive reviews from expert judges; and qualify for some stage time.

A great group of Future Stars is set for our SMB Digital Marketing event, which is Sept. 22-24 in New Orleans. The panel takes the stage at the end of Day 2. Come and cheer them on.

When one of the Future Stars breaks through with funding, major alliances or other success metrics, of course, it is very welcome news for us. We take a lot of pride in it. Today, our friends at Seva Call — a Washington D.C.-based service leads company founded in 2012 — announced that it raised a new round of $2.6 million. This is on top of $1.3 Million previously raised.

It has also recently celebrated its one millionth call to local businesses in 46 categories; and rebranded as TalkLocal. It is also expected to launch nationally in the near future, and roll out a mobile app. Co-founder Manpreet Singh tells us that BIA/Kelsey “has certainly been a big part of our progress.” (thanks Manpreet).

Future Star Manpreet Singh, Co-Founder,Talk Local (on right) with Albert Bitton of the Canadian Deals and Coupon Association

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At this week’s Leading in Local conference we continued to make our Future Stars program a new tradition and staple. From now on, we’ll be holding startup competitions in order to invite “new blood” into the atmosphere. This builds from the Future Stars program we launched last year.

This week we had 7 strong companies compete throughout the first few days of the show for audience votes. The “Future Stars Alley” that served as their home at the conference was a perfect arena to congregate and sniff out what’s happening in early-stage innovation. We would like to thank a previous winner of our future stars programs, PunchCard, for allowing us to use their application as the future stars alley “passport”.

The voting was extremely tight but four companies emerged as finalists. The actual session featured 7 four minute pitch-style presentations, commentary from industry expert, Rick Blair, and free beer for the guests and attendees.

It was a great time and CIAmedia emerged as the winner, based on audience votes. They get bragging rights, a nice trophy, free registration to an upcoming BIA/Kelsey preference and one hour of BIA/Kelsey analyst time for strategy development and positioning.

Special thanks to all competitors (listed below), our special guest judge, Rick Blair and voters. It was a lot of fun and we’ll continue to do it at each conference. Your feedback is also encouraged for how we improve it. We hope to see you in the audience (or on stage) for future competitions.

Winner
CIAmedia

Runners up
Place Full

SpinGo

Sharetown

Field of competitors

Moment Social

Perfect Audience

WhoDoYou

The post At Leading in Local: ILM 2013: CIAmedia Prevails at The Future Stars Program appeared first on BIA/Kelsey - Local Media Watch.