Winning for Banking

by Sara Rider

Sometimes email or snail mail is full of things you don’t want to know about.  But last week, a large package showed up at our office with some things we very much did want to know about—four awards from the national Service Industry Advertising Awards (SIAA) for our work for EVB, a community bank in Virginia.  One gold, one silver, and two bronze awards.  That’s a nice surprise when you open the mail!

What was particularly rewarding about the ads was that they were for some projects that were very near and dear to our hearts.  (Yes, the truth is out—we do like some of the things we do better than some of the others!)  The Gold Award, one of only 152 awarded in the competition, was for a branding spot called “Main Street” that had taken a lot of time and effort.

We also received two awards for a campaign we did for a new branch that the bank was opening.  One, a Silver, was for a radio spot that featured customers of the new branch.

 

The other, a Bronze, was for a direct mail invitation to an event we created for the bank.  The event was a big hit—so it’s nice that the invite that helped get people to the event was also a hit with the judges.  The final bronze was for a single radio spot for one of the bread-and-butter products of banking, IRAs.

 

And that was also a nice recognition, because as any of you who work in mar/com know, it can be a challenge to come up with a fresh approach for a recurring promotion.

All in all, it was a good day for us.  SIAA had over 1,700 entries from around the country this year, so we were very pleased that the work stood out.  And many thanks to all our customers who let us try something new when we’re looking for results!