(The not so coveted Golden Poo)

The "Golden Poo" will be given to either Comcast or Countrywide Home Loans on Monday when Consumerist readers cast their final vote of the Worst Company in America season.

Using an NCAA-style bracket system, Comcast and Countrywide have knocked out top seeds such as Exxon and DeBeers as well as upstarts such as Monster Cable and the Video Professor, all through heavy reader voting.

Seriously though, Consumerist is a force to be reckoned with in terms of outing bad customer service policies and shoddy products, prompting the sometimes overcooked responses by internal PR people.

Maybe without Consumerist as well as the efforts of NPR's Bob Garfield and his Comcast Must Die site, we wouldn't have ComcastCares Twitter feed. Countrywide however, is in much deeper poo.

You've got some time, but PR News has just released info on their 2008 Platinum PR Awards. The deadline for submitting is May 16, with a late entry deadline (read: extra $) of May 23.

You can find the entry form and awards categories here.

We were going to submit PRNewser to the blog category, but then realized the $290 entry fee. Maybe next time?

(rbb PR's offices after the makeover)

PRWeek's Agency of the Year award given at Tavern on the Green was a bit of a surprise last night. The finalists for best overall are pulled from the small/medium/large winners. Coral Gables Florida-based boutique rbb PR beat out mega-shop Edelman for the top prize.

Rather than re-report the client wins, client/employee retention and revenue information, I took the opportunity to call rbb CEO Christine Barney and President Lisa Ross to find out more about their big differentiator: the quality of life of their staffers.

According to Barney and Ross, addressing the happiness of employees is key to retaining and attracting talent, and ensuring clients get top service. First and foremost is they allow execs to design their own schedule and choose where to work.

As suspected, they confirmed there is a lot of competition in the market for a smaller pool of talent, than the revolving door of New York agencies. However, lately more PR people are looking to the market as a place to move for the sun, atmosphere, and hipness of the Miami metro area.

Clients and friends of the agency will look forward to a open house now that they took the price, to celebrate their open-sourcey renovation (the agency let the world look at the plans, and vote on design themes on their site).

We understand there are several jocks on staff including a spinning instructor, and a yoga instructor who make use of the workout room. rbb also pays a Pilates instructor to give classes after work, and is letting staff vote for either a nifty new elliptical trainer or spin bike to grace the office.

No word on the addition of a tanning bed, yet.

There are definitely some grumpy and happy PR execs coming into the office a bit late this morning. Grumpy because they lost a big award, happy because they won an award, and late because they hit the bar a little to hard last night.

We'll have more to come from last night's PRWeek Awards, including an interview with Agency of the Year rbb Public Relations CEO Christine Barney, who beat out heavyweights including Edelman for the top prize. GolinHarris won campaign of the year for the Nintendo Wii launch. Hello, no brainer there.

After the jump, is a recap of some of the winners. A full list can be found here. The official PRWeek press release is found here.

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(image cred)

We've been talking about PR Week's black-tie bash at Tavern on the Green tomorrow night (ok guys, you don't really have to wear a tux), and yesterday caught up with new Editor-in-Chief, Keith O'Brien to get some more info on this year's awards.

PRN: What lengths does the PR Week team go to in order to keep the winners secret?

KO: "The judges are aware of the finalists for the categories they view on judging day, but they also know that is something they are expected to keep to themselves - our judges take their jobs very seriously (finalists are announced in January)."

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It's almost that time of year again, when the PR world gathers together for a black-tie event at Tavern on the Green. The PR Week Awards are coming up on March 6th.

Reserve your spot here. A complete list of finalists can be found here.

The above video from last year's awards, courtesy of Beet.TV features Edelman CEO Richard Edelman, Mary Stutts of Genentech and Aedhmar Hynes, CEO of Text 100.

(Dan Klores (right) with Crazy Lover-ers Burt & Linda Pugash [via Intelligencer])

While armies of publicists basked or stewed in the glory or frustration of the results of the Oscars this weekend, one PR guy enjoyed praise for actually making a film. Agency head-turned-filmmaker Dan Klores won the documentary category at the Independent Spirit Awards for "Crazy Love," the story of the insanely volatile relationship of Burt & Linda Pugash.

For you sports and history buffs, keep an eye out this Spring for "Black Magic," Klores's next documentary about civil rights era basketball.