Rainier Communications' campaign supporting client Adapteva's Kickstarter drive to produce a $99 supercomputer took the top award at the Publicity Club of New England's annual Bell Ringer Awards June 10 in Boston.

Bell Ringers
L-R: Kristin Allaben, VP awards, Publicity Club of New England; Helene Solomon, Michal Regunberg, and Ashley McCown, Solomon McCown & Co.
The Westborough, Mass.-based tech PR firm earned the Platinum Bell Ringer Award for promoting a Kickstarter campaign by Adaptevathat raised nearly $900K in 30 days to fund development of the Parallella supercomputer. The work included 21 press and analyst pre-briefings with nearly 100 articles resulting from the campaign.

The funding from 4,965 backers exceeded the push's goal of $750K and is the highest-funded Kickstarter campaign for a hardware project.

Boston-based Cone Communications took home the most honors at the event, 11, including Gold, Silver, Bronze and Merit awards for work on behalf of clients like Green Mountain Coffee (fair trade coffee), Ben & Jerry's launch of Greek frozen yogurt, and Jiffy Lube.

Fellow Beantown shops Schneider Associates (10) and PAN Communications (9) were among the top winners.

Michal Regunberg, senior VP at Solomon McCown, was given the John J. Malloy Crystal Bell Award for lifetime achievement in PR, while Alex Parks, an A/E at Fresh Ground, was honored with the club's Striker Award for a promising newcomer in the profession.

Meredith D'Agostino, senior A/E at 451 Marketing, was honored with the Ringer Award for "steady and significant progress" to her agency or company.

Kennedy Elsey of 104.1 FM morning show "Karson & Kennedy" was emcee. Complete list of winners is at pubclub.org.