The Summit EMA competition is based on the foundation that advertising is consistently at the forefront of the technological evolution of communication. It was created to identify the world’s marketing communication pioneers – those pushing the bounds of the communication badlands.

The Adobe/Amazon.com Product Selector is an online application on Amazon.com that removes the guesswork for Adobe customers selecting products to buy. Instead of a static banner ad, the selector is an interactive application powered by Adobe ColdFusion and AJAX technology with a back-end database that recommends products and brings the user right to the Amazon.com purchasing page to shorten the sales cycle.

“Those involved in today’s emerging media technologies are the leaders who are establishing tomorrow’s avenues of advertising communications.” Said Jocelyn Luciano, Executive Director for the Summit International Awards (SIA). “Most communication professionals recognize that established avenues of communication can be reliable and safe. However, audiences are becoming increasingly fragmented and difficult to engage, inform, and affect.  Developing, applying, and combining emerging media with creative messaging and market awareness is challenging.  Achieving this synthesis is what makes earning a Summit EMA a significant achievement.”

Since 1994, the Summit International Awards (SIA) organization has been dedicated to furthering excellence in the communications industry. It administers three distinguished award competitions throughout the year with the goal of raising the awareness of companies and individuals who have the creative and marketing talent to go beyond the ordinary.

This SIA organization stands apart by offering a true competitive environment where entries are judged alongside those of their peers, and makes its competitions affordable and accessible to the industry by offering multiple entry discounts, streamlined internet submissions, and a friendly, knowledgeable customer service staff. Companies and individuals from more than 50 countries and across five continents participate in its awards programs and choose to invest their promotional dollars for the opportunity to be recognized as an SIA winner. The SIA organization conducts three awards competitions each year: Summit Creative Awards, Summit Emerging Media Awards, and Summit Marketing Effectiveness Awards.

For the latest information on recent awards, visit the Design Awards page.

Scott Design received a Silver Award in the 2011 W3 Awards competition. The W3 Awards honor outstanding websites, web marketing, web video, and mobile apps created by some of the best interactive agencies, designers, and creators worldwide. Website entries were judged on creativity, usability, navigation, functionality, visual design, and ease of use.

Scott Design was honored in the Innovative/Experimental Media category for its work on the Adobe/Amazon.com Product Selector app.

The 2011 W3 Awards generated more than 3,000 entries from ad agencies, public relations firms, interactive agencies, in-house creative professionals, web designers, graphic designers, and web enthusiasts.  The W3 Awards are sanctioned and judged by the International Academy of the Visual Arts, an invitation-only body consisting of top-tier professionals from media, interactive, advertising, and marketing firms.

For the latest information about Scott Design’s recent awards, visit our Design Awards page.

When looking for local business information today, the majority of consumers start online. Printed directory use, such as phone books, is declining, but is still a strong secondary source. Mobile search and social networking sites are even smaller than yellow pages, but are growing as secondary sources of local business information. Making sure your marketing dollars are spent in the right place is more important than ever.

Online marketing has surpassed print marketing

70% of survey respondents listed “online” as their primary starting place when looking for local business information in a recent local search survey by comScore and 15 miles. According to a recent survey of small businesses conducted by Vistaprint, spending on direct marketing and social media is increasing while spending in more traditional channels such as yellow pages, TV, radio, and newspapers is declining.

Printed phone book use declining

Internet directories have led to a dramatic decrease in the number of business owners and consumers who use phone books. Last month, Yelp presented a survey to gauge how business owners feel about yellow page phone books in the digital age. Only 24% of the 3,500+ respondents said “Yes” to the question, “Are yellow page phone books still relevant?” Very few business owners believe customers find them using a yellow page phone book.

Estimated percentage of customers who find me using a yellow page phone book:

Online directories can be very effective

As we continue to move away from printed phone books, online and mobile directories continue to grow as the customer’s choice for local business information. The big yellow pages companies have embraced this trend, with online directories optimized for search as part of their offerings. Joining a niche, association, or local directory is still a good approach for gaining traffic, as these directories target a specific audience and bring targeted traffic to your site along with a boost in page rank, especially if the site is highly rated.

Know your audience first

The results of the comScore survey differ widely based on the age of respondents, so it also pays to know your audience before selecting one marketing tactic over another.

Age: 18 to 34

Age: 35 to 54

Age: 55 and older

“I just placed my first ever yellow page ad with Yellowbook last week,” said Adele Talmadge of Talmadge Construction in Aptos, CA. “We are reaching out for the aging market who may need accessibility remodeling and I figured they might be more likely to go to the yellow pages than on line looking for a remodeler. Savvy business owners can still target specific markets through print media.”

Fine tuning your strategy

Only 14% of people who start at a search engine when looking for local businesses don’t also look for info elsewhere, too, so you need to make sure there is information about your company wherever your customers might look for you. They may search for your website online, look in the phone book, or search for your in an online directory. A great way to fine tune your strategy is to ask customers how they found you, and to test how effective each strategy is for your business by varying your tactics.

Your optimal marketing mix might be a combination of both print and online advertising and marketing.

Our clients’ challenge:

Creative software leader Adobe Systems and online retail giant Amazon.com sought a way to help customers quickly determine the Adobe products that best suit their interests and needs. With myriad user options and a rapidly expanding multitude of products on the Adobe store on Amazon.com, both companies wanted to create an online product selector that would be user-friendly, intuitive, and speedy.

The Scott Design solution:

Working closely with representatives of Adobe and Amazon.com, Scott Design created the Adobe Product Selector, an online application powered by Adobe ColdFusion and AJAX technology, that removes the guesswork for customers. The Scott Design team designed an appealing, functional template and wrote simple questions that customers answer by choosing from pull-down options. Next, Scott Design developed a back-end database that—depending on a customer’s answers to the four questions—prompts a display and description of a recommended product, as well as a couple additional products to consider. Clicking on the link under a recommended product brings the user right to the Amazon.com purchasing page.

Winner:

• Gold Davey Award  — Landing Page
• Silver W3 Award  — Innovative/Experimental Media

Scott Design received a Silver Award for the Camp Adobe NECC Tradeshow Event Materials in the B2B Media Campaign category and a Bronze Award in the B2B Media Campaign category for the Adobe Digital School Collection Online Campaign.

The Summit Creative Award was created to recognize and celebrate the creative accomplishments of small and medium sized advertising agencies and other creative companies throughout the world with annual billings of under $30 million. Over the last decade, the competition has established itself as the premier arbiter of creative excellence for firms of this size.Using rigorous evaluative criteria, it is the only competition rewarding those firms truly deserving of top recognition for creativity. Submissions are evaluated based on the strength of their big idea, the quality of execution and their ability to communicate and persuade.

The Camp Adobe campaign also won a Silver ADDY Award and a Silver Davey Award.

The Adobe Digital School Collection online campaign also won a Bronze ADDY Award.

For the latest information on recent awards, visit the Design Awards page.

In order for your organization to be successful, the 4 most important priorities should be the following:

1. Increase your revenue: Your strategy should include marketing tactics that contribute directly to sales, including direct mail, advertising, e-commerce applications, tools for your sales force, animated demos, and other marketing pieces that can be used to get your message out to potential and existing customers.

2. Reduce your costs: Make a move to less-expensive forms of marketing, for example, relying more on e-mail than direct mail, buying online banner advertising instead of print advertising, developing online sales demos instead of sending salespeople to make pitches, improving your website content instead of relying on customer support call centers, and working on SEO instead of using pay-per-click advertising to get found by online searchers.

3. Increase your market share: A well-implemented marketing strategy includes ways to make it easier for customers to find your solutions and be converted into customers. Loyalty, referral, and recommendation programs, along with awareness marketing tactics can bring more people into contact with your solutions, and help existing customers find more solutions of value to them. Additionally, making the sales process easier for the customer by storing information and pre-filling online forms and landing pages removes the barriers to repeat purchases.

4. Increase shareholder value: Knowing your target market, what their “pain points” are, and what solutions they are seeking can help you with product development. Keep an eye on user forums, make sure your marketing and development teams get up-to-date feedback from customer support and sales teams, and look for opportunities to capture new markets within your industry. There may be another problem that you can help your customers solve with a new product or solution that you can develop.

Although there are countless pressures during difficult economic times, marketers who keep their eye on their priorities will emerge even stronger from the downturn than their competition.

GM is making the right move, but it needs to go even further in revising its advertisements during these tough economic times. GM, along with Ford and Chrysler, must create ads that more clearly explain to American consumers why they should stick with the Big 3. Executives flying to Washington D.C. in private jets to ask for $25 billion in loans did not do the trick!

For television, print, and online ads…lose the glitz and stop trying to appeal to consumers’ innermost desires (for a fast, cool, and powerful car). The usual “car zipping along a mountain road” ad won’t cut it. Those days are over. Every ad needs to directly address consumers’ pain points: What they want is better gas mileage, improved safety, better-built cars (with less maintenance costs)…all at a value that rivals foreign imports.

Anything that veers from these pain points needs to be de-emphasized or removed completely. And give us a hint of the future…maybe have an ad showing a factory being re-tooled to build next-generation, fuel-efficient cars. No more celebrities, no more style over substance – inform and persuade. It’s time for the Big 3 and their ad agencies to get back to basics.

And our marketing here in Silicon Valley should focus on the basics as well: Clearly and concisely explain in all your materials – website, social media pages, e-mails, landing pages, solutions demos, eNewsletters, and banner ads – how your solutions solve the business challenges that most concern your customers. Focus on your customers’ pain points and educate them about your role in dealing with that pain – and cut anything that veers from that main focus.