Awards’ Success Opens Doors for Buyers

Pride In Print media release (June 21, 2011)

Awards’ Success Opens Doors for Buyers

Success in Pride In Print is opening doors for more work with current and future clients, for the companies that enter and triumph in the Awards.

Winning entrants are saying that the competition provides an invaluable benchmarking opportunity, showing their quality to be higher than the competition and providing unequivocal downstream benefits in the marketplace — and customers are backing up these claims.

As a print-buyer Team Factors director Ron Pol says he was “delighted” to learn the “excellent work” of Martini Design and GEON Auckland had seen his Legal Department Benchmarking Report earn a Gold Medal in the Awards’ Book Category.

“This is especially significant as we are a tiny company without any of the resources available to big corporates and Government departments, and is all credit to their design excellence, commitment to their profession and teamwork,” he says.

“Like the judges, readers commented that although the last edition two years ago was excellent -- also receiving a Gold Medal -- this one was another step up on content, design and production values. The team led by Martini managing director Greg Cockerill really worked together brilliantly at the highest level of excellence.

“We understand there were over 600 entries to this year’s Awards, with the calibre of work said to have raised the overall bar and our job in particular having triumphed in a fiercely-contested category.”

Mr Pol says previous Awards achievements proved pivotal in the decision to assemble this particular production team.

“We first selected Martini after having worked with a number of designers on smaller projects. Martini recommended GEON on the basis of the design brief and that together they had been an Award-winning team in 2009 — collecting the first Pride In Print Gold Award for the inaugural Trans-Tasman Legal Department Benchmarking Report.”

Print companies are also seeing the commercial benefits of Awards success, through enhanced ties with customers.

Kinetic 121 production manager Lisa Thompson says her digital firm’s impressive seven Gold Medals and Supreme Finalist Nomination this year is generating widespread recognition.

“We contact all of the people involved in our Medal-winning entries and sometimes that means that information goes quite far afield,” says Ms Thompson.

“For instance, a couple of the jobs we won Awards for this year were generated from other parts of our overall organisation, so that information filtered back out through all of those different channels.

“Our clients will often publicise their award winning entries on their Websites. This year in particular we’ve received a lot of congratulatory calls or ‘well dones’ when we’ve bumped into people in the street.”

In addition to boosting staff morale, Ms Thompson says the Awards validation definitely increases her firm’s profile and chances of winning and retaining business -- a key reason for which being the quality-assurance opportunity the competition itself provides.

“We know what we’re printing and to what standard, but we don’t really have any idea of the kinds of jobs that other companies are producing all around the country. Pride In Print provides us with a comparative assessment and a measure of our work against our peers.

“It is always good to have your efforts recognised. So often in the print business you only hear when things go wrong. This is one of the few occasions you find out what you are doing right!”

ENDS

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