WOOT: LISTS.

With Winterval over and the in-laws hopefully gone back home, we can all start making - or being bored silly by - LISTS. Woot.

Nearly 1 of you voted in the Quail's 2009 List-tacular pre-New Year Winter solstice super Awards for the achievement of piffling dribble in the name of media & political commentary so without further ado, here are the results.

Best bloke who says things about topics he doesn't really understand but does so anyway despite looking quite silly because of fundamental mistakes in logic and/or research before getting roundly factchecked only to call them losers for bothering to factcheck and stop taking it all so seriously anyway I didn't say that it was just a quote from someone else:

1. Iain Dale.
2. Hitchens, P.
3. DBlaney.
4. Nick Cohen.

Most eye-buggering use of video:

Stains, P & Tuberculosis Bear.

Worst front page in the history of everything:

The Express.

Nastiest campaign motivated by a petty squabble on Twitter that made bloggers look like a witless rabble of snide misogynistic schoolboys (again):

#kerryout (courtesy Dale, Bear, Quiff)

Best viral marketing campaign:

Trafigura.

Lifetime achievement award for disservices to journalism, tolerance and the human race:

Jan Moir.

* Update *

I missed out the most prestigious award. Cheesedick of the year 2009 is...............

That Hannan man.

The Carter-Ruck school of viral marketing

How to ensure maximum publicity for your new gagging order

Marketing experts were stunned today at the success of media law firm Carter-Ruck's high profile 'gagging order' campaign, designed to generate buzz around their client Trafigura's latest toxic waste product.

Brand awareness for the British oil company, described as 'absurdly evil' by insiders, rocketed after a cryptic viral 'seed' appeared in yesterday's The Guardian. The mysterious message simply read:

Today's published Commons order papers contain a question to be answered by a minister later this week. The Guardian is prevented from identifying the MP who has asked the question, what the question is, which minister might answer it, or where the question is to be found.

The Guardian is also forbidden from telling its readers why the paper is prevented – for the first time in memory – from reporting parliament. Legal obstacles, which cannot be identified, involve proceedings, which cannot be mentioned, on behalf of a client who must remain secret.

Within nanoseconds, bloggers, Twitterers and possibly even Bebo users were speculating on the exciting true identity of the shadowy litigator responsible for the gag. Less than a minute later, 187,000 Twitter users simultaneously discovered that oil giant Trafigura was the subject of a Parliamentary question and flooded the interwebs with 'Gotcha!' messages.

Public awareness of the brand name 'Trafigura' leaped by around 700%, up from 0.1% market penetration the day before. A spokesman said: 'This is a great result. Nobody had heard of us or our toxic waste dumping practices until Carter-Ruck got involved. This kind of publicity is priceless!'

An industry analyst said: 'It's been a clever job, making great use of viral and self-facilitating media nodes. Brands are starting to realise that to really make a splash you need to go the extra mile, do something big and zany - Carter-Ruck's strategy of assaulting British democracy and raping the very concept of free speech delivered an incredible awareness boost.

However, they couldn't have done it without the Guardian. I think this demonstrates the growing importance of tightly integrated cross-platform actionplanned thoughtleader bacterial germination multi-maven campaigns.'

The campaign ended at 13:08 today, but it is hoped that awareness of Trafigura's toxic waste products will endure. 'It was a shock-and-awe approach', said a man, 'but we're hoping that doesn't necessarily mean a short-tail. Hopefully people will still recognise the name Trafigura and remember Carter-Ruck in the run up to Christmas.'

See also: Chicken Yoghurt and The Graun: Probo Koala
And from Layscience: Trafigura: A Carter-Ruck Fuck-Up