While many a press release gets drafted by Grapevine Communications, the team got to send accolades for one of their own last week. Angela Massaro-Fain was awarded the American Advertising Federation’s Silver Medal Award, making her only the fifth recipient of the honor in more than 20 years and only the second woman ever to wear the medal around her neck. After picking up the award at the ADDY Awards Gala, Massaro-Fain spoke with SRQ about the recognition.

What do you think earned the attention of the American Advertising Federation to give you the award?  It’s not just creative excellence, but our responsibility for social concerns and what we do to improve the advertising community and to help our own community as a whole. Grapevine Communications believes we have a responsibility to help the rest of the community, and that however we can do that, we should. That is by offering free advertising opportunities or creating whatever is needed to further the cause of a nonprofit by donating services for public relations, social media web work, copyrighting—whatever it is that might help. 

How do you feel about the award itself?  It is an honor, but I feel it’s a responsibility, too. We set standards and have high standards. We have the best integrity, which is just how I was raised. If you do great work to the highest standards, your word has to be gold. We are always transparent and provide the best we can provide. We never want someone to come to Grapevine and leave and say, 'Ugh.' We want them to work with Grapevine  and want to say, 'Wow, I worked with Grapevine and it was fantastic.'

So few have received this award. What does it mean to be in this company? Previous recipients include Jimmy Dean from Harbor Style, Linda Gross from Advice Solutions and Nairn’ Gillet, a past governor of the American Advertising Federation, who were all at the event. To have those three on the stage with me meant a lot. It’s pretty awesome.