Our client’s challenge:

Zahm Gems wanted to reach a larger audience while setting itself apart in the extremely competitive luxury jewelry industry. The company sought rebranding and marketing that would reflect its dedication to acquiring the highest-quality colored gemstones in an industry often over-focused on diamonds.

Philip Zahm had attracted considerable attention by recounting his travels around the world in pursuit of exotic gems. Our creative professionals helped Zahm Gems devise a campaign that would bring Philip Zahm’s true tales of foreign gem-buying intrigue to resellers and individual customers.

The Scott Design Solution:

Focused on portraying an adventurer who would stop at nothing to acquire the best, most exotic colored gems, Scott Design created a logo and overall advertising look highlighting Philip Zahm’s danger-tinged travels to acquire stunning gems in exotic places.

Scott Design’s solutions include an updated corporate identity system,  a series of ads, and a high-level “romance” brochure, designed to appeal to jewelry stores as well as high-end customers.

Inside Adobe InDesign featured Scott Design and our real-world example of business collateral as an example that they felt represented the epitome of our profession.

Scott Design won Silver and Bronze Summit International Creative Awards for two recent website redesigns. Sometimes a redesign is done to make a website look better, fresher, and more appealing. But in the case of CTW and Braemar Energy Ventures, their website redesigns involved creating a new site look and feel,  re-examining the content, and improving the navigation through the site.

Scott Design received a Silver Award for the website redesign for the CTW website. The website is the online resource center for books, DVDs, CDs, webcasts, information on speaking engagements, and a travel blog for Dr. Daniel Brown, church leadership mentor. Scott Design’s redesign of the site featured a bolder look and feel, cleaner site organization, and improved access to the wealth of resources available on the site.

Scott Design was awarded a Bronze Award for the website redesign for venture capital firm Braemar Energy Ventures. Braemar sought a new look and feel to reflect its standing as a bold, well-established backer of innovative ventures. Scott Design created an uncluttered website with an energetic, upbeat feel of a modern company in a conservative industry. New features include an interactive history of Braemar’s investments, interactive portfolio, and interactive industry diagram.

The Summit Creative Awards were created to recognize and celebrate the creative accomplishments of small- and medium-size advertising agencies and other creative companies throughout the world with annual billings of less than $30 million. Over the past 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.

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

Well, American voters stated loud and clear yesterday that they wanted change. Most likely, that desire for change was a call for changes in economic policies – in just about every election, the incumbent party loses if economic indicators are down – but I’m sure a lot of voters were looking for changes in foreign policy, military, and social policies as well.

Change is something that all of us should consider for our organizations. With uncertain economic conditions ahead, it’s a good time for companies to evaluate their own strategies and policies and see if a change is in order in order to succeed, or even survive, hard times. Here are some questions that may generate discussion about whether you need to change:

Do you need to evolve the way you engage with customers?

• Do you allow two-way communication with your customer?
• Can customers easily ask you questions and post their thoughts about your solutions?
• Do you allow customers to communicate with each other?
• Are your customers receiving targeted, useful information from you?
• Do you get regular feedback from sales and channel reps about customer concerns?

Changes you can make now:

• Add Web 2.0 technologies (blogs, Wikis, RSS feeds, videos, etc.) to your websites so different types of online visitors can interact with you
• Create an online forum where customers can interact with your company, and each other.
• Evaluate how potential customers hear about your webinars, demos, and white papers. Make the lead generation path from awareness to registration clear and simple.
• Segment your e-mail lists by collecting reader preferences to ensure that customers receive targeted, useful information from you.
• Set up company pages on LinkedIn, Facebook, MySpace, and other appropriate social networking sites.

Do you need to change the way you position your company?

• Have your products and solutions evolved?
• Has your target audience changed?
• Is your brand still fresh, modern, and on target?

Changes you can make now:

• Set up your website so you can update it easily and often.
• Organize your site to allow visitors to quickly and easily find the information that they need.
• Update your positioning to reflect product, solution, and target audience changes.
• Incorporate feedback from sales reps, your channel, and customers.

If everything is working right now, and you have as much business as you can handle, you might need to make only minor adjustments to your marketing to grow your company. But, during the current economic challenges, changes in your marketing may be essential to not only growth, but survival.