2024 Topaz Awards Recap: Marketing Communication Award (MCA) Winners (Part 1)
The SMPS San Francisco Bay Area and Sacramento Chapters are thrilled to recognize the Marketing Communication Award (MCA) Winners from the 2024 Topaz Awards. For more than two decades now, this program has provided the forum to recognize some of the extraordinary achievements of the companies that set the standards of excellence for A/E/C marketing.
Please note this recap has been split into two parts. This week, we’re featuring winners from the following categories: Brand Awareness/Corporate Identity, Promotional Campaign Holiday/Special Event, Recruitment/Retention Marketing, Project Pursuit Marketing. Tune in again next week when we’ll be featuring these categories: External Communications, Internal Communications, Digital Media, Website (Internal/External, Best in Show, People’s Choice Award.
Brand Awareness/Corporate Identity
This category recognizes a comprehensive, multi-tactic campaign intended to promote brand awareness of a firm, such as a new brand, rebrand, or brand refresh.
Award of Excellence: Delve Underground
This campaign involved the complete rebranding of an engineering firm with 70 years of history. Beginning with market research, the team sought to establish a clear identity around the new name, implementing a multi-channel campaign that emphasized the brand’s transformation and modernization while preserving its legacy of engineering excellence. Not only did the team complete this rebranding in only five months, they achieved high Google search rankings, maintained proposal hit rates, and acquired new clients, showcasing the strategy’s success in driving business growth and expanding market presence.
Judges’ remarks: “The new name, messaging, and materials developed are cohesive, impactful, and graphically pleasing.”
Award of Merit: DES
DES pursued a rebrand as a springboard to amplify their culture, advance innovation, and position as a progressive design firm. The scope of the campaign included development of a new, holistic visual identity and brand platform as well as a new corporate website. Completed in May 2023, the new brand and website launched as a celebration of the firm’s 50th Anniversary.
Judges’ remarks: “What a visual transformation! The graphics and imagery are striking, conveying a fresh and multi-faceted look and feel…The colors, logo, and [typeface] of the new brand are bold and distinctly give a new outlook to the firm.”
Award of Merit: William Duff Architects
William Duff Architects recently celebrated its 25th anniversary and launched a new five-year plan with a bold vision for the firm’s path forward. The team sought a new logo and visual identity that represented the key principles of its design ethos, while communicating the inventive and playful qualities of design work. The experience working with their creative partner helped the team crystallize their understanding of the firm’s identity, guiding ethos, and vision for the future, ultimately reinforcing the value of a design process.
Judges’ remarks: “The new logo and collateral feels fresh and clean--decidedly unstuffy.” Others appreciated WDA’s detailed and many-phased launch plan, as well as measurable ROI showing a significant increase in lead flow.”
Promotional Campaign
This category recognizes a comprehensive, multi-tactic campaign to promote awareness of a firm, often targeting a specific market or theme.
Award of Excellence: The Collective
The Collective’s “Collective Effervescence: The Science of Being Together” campaign was created in response to the tumultuous changes in the commercial workplace environment brought on by the pandemic. The marketing team’s goals were to educate real estate professionals on bringing people together, increasing brand awareness for the firm while also inspiring the internal team to come into the office. Building around a research-based whitepaper as the core asset, the team created a new landing page, campaign swag, social media posts, and in-person event experiences that brought clients into the showrooms. The campaign resulted in spikes in website traffic and social media engagement, drew crowds to the showroom, and provided a wealth of opportunities for salespeople to connect and build relationships.
Judge’s remarks: Our judges congratulated the team for smartly leveraging the “the state of the world and trending topics in a way that feels authentic to their work.” They praised the interactive format of the deliverables for creating a dialogue between the user and the content.
Award of Merit: DAHLIN
DAHLIN’s marketing team hosted a Pride-themed art show featuring an employee-created art installation in recognition of the LGBTQ+ community. Titled “Prism of Perspectives,” this interactive art installation was designed to foster empathy, understanding, and acceptance through the transformative power of art. To promote the work, the team published an article featuring an insightful conversation with one of the artists, as well as a time-lapse video of the creation process. The video collected nearly 1,800 views and the article earned 100 engagements on social media.
Judge’s remarks: “…a great DEI-focused project, engaging the staff to be involved. The time-lapse video was fun to watch. Simple yet striking.”
Award of Merit: Swinerton
Swinerton created a national campaign to advocate for mass timber construction. These “Timber Talks” events offered a platform to raise awareness of the mass timber system and address its benefits, challenges, and opportunities for the industry. Participants included architects, engineers, builders, academics, and environmental advocates who shared their experiences and lessons learned on mass timber projects.To boost visibility of the events in Northern California, the local marketing team focused on strategic signage placement and multi-channel communications, especially email campaigns and social media outreach. They also created custom videos showcasing their clients and successful mass timber projects. The events gathered an average of 80 attendees and generated positive feedback on social media, including an endorsement from a key client.
Judge’s remarks: Our judges praised this entry as an overall well-executed campaign with clear objectives and measured results. They especially appreciated how the campaign combined different deliverable formats and event strategies ranging from thought leadership discussions to project site tours.
Holiday/Special Event
This category recognizes a print or electronic piece produced for one-time use to promote a holiday or special event such as an anniversary, new name, office opening, dedication, party, or groundbreaking ceremony.
Award of Excellence (Tie): Capital Engineering
Capital Engineering developed an innovative campaign using food as the universal language of love. The marketing team conducted firmwide outreach to collect over 120 of their team members’ favorite recipes and the stories that went with them. These recipes from varied cultures melded together like a great sauce, turning this “Cookin’ with Capital” book into a beautiful expression of the firm’s people. The team designed and printed the books and delivered them to clients and staff along with custom holiday cards.
Judge’s remarks: “A delightful submission that breaks the mold…you can feel the passion of Capital’s employees shining through as they share their personal lives and culture through food. [Shows] the human side of engineers…proudly [reflects] the diversity of the staff.”
Award of Excellence (Tie): Kier + Wright
Kier + Wright completed a yearlong campaign to celebrate their firm’s 50th anniversary. The effort included an elegant black-tie 50th Anniversary Gala, open house celebrations across four regional offices, an 11-part video series exploring the rich tapestry of the firm’s history, a feature article and full-page ad in Engineering News Record, and an extensive social media campaign.Through the year of the campaign, the firm witnessed its most significant growth, with an 18% increase in revenue and 10% increase in employee count. Additional metrics of success included video views, social media engagement, and testimonials from clients who received the special 50th anniversary gift box.
Judge’s remarks: “Breakdowns of deliverables and multi-step processes display an exceptional standard in marketing production…It is evident that the marketing team’s individual talents seamlessly converged to form the result.”
Award of Merit: DAHLIN
DAHLIN’s all-hands company meeting aimed to unite 183 employees (a quarter of whom were new hires) across all organizational levels and geographic regions. Through a collaborative effort with the firm’s People + Culture and Administration Teams, Marketing orchestrated a diverse array of activities designed to immerse employees in the company's ethos and vision. Through activities, handouts, and presentations, the firm’s core values, strategic vision, and future leadership were spotlighted, reinforcing the holistic brand experience for employees, clients, and users alike. With an 88% post-event survey response rate, participation surpassed expectations, and insights gleaned from visioning exercises informed the organization's strategic planning efforts.
Judge’s remarks: “The submission package exudes sophistication, presenting crisp objectives, measurable metrics, and discernible impact…[an] excellent way to get brand buy-in from team members.”
Recruitment/Retention Marketing
This category recognizes a program designed to recruit and retain employees through any combination of print and/or electronic communications, including advertisements, collateral, email campaigns, and social media promotions.
Award of Excellence: Arup
Arup’s winning campaign was a first of its kind for this global design firm, stretching across the United States, Canada, and Colombia. With the goal of filling 13 openings in the firm’s Climate Services and Sustainability practice, the recruitment marketing team developed social media posts, a promotional video, staff member testimonials, a customized landing page and jobs portal, and a feedback survey for new hires. This 12-month campaign resulted in more than 1,300 applications for open jobs, with all of the high-priority openings filled within an average of 70 days — almost three weeks faster than the average hire rate across the firm.
Judge’s remarks: The judges loved the approachability, tone, and diversity of the people featured in the video. To save almost three weeks in the hiring process — in an industry facing a huge talent shortage — while earning positive feedback from new hires is nothing short of incredible.
Project Pursuit Marketing
This category recognizes an item or series of items developed in support of winning a project. Materials may be print and/or digital and include qualification packages, proposals, presentations, interview tools, leave-behinds, or other pieces that contributed to the total effort.
Award of Excellence: WSP
WSP’s pursuit team meticulously prepositioned, proposed, and presented to a regional transportation commission, showcasing their deep understanding of the client’s needs and ability to deliver impactful solutions. Thorough research, comprehensive market analysis, and seamless integration of project details into the proposal resonated with key decision-makers, setting their firm apart from the competition. This included profiling the client’s executive team, analyzing project opportunities, and mapping internal relationships between the firm and the client organization. Winning the contract strengthened the firm’s bond with the client and also its strategic position as the go-to partner for complex transportation initiatives.
Judge’s remarks: Our judges loved the overall document layout and use of imagery in the headers. The submittal featured powerful, locally relevant examples of WSP’s success with similar clients and similar scopes, demonstrating a deep understanding of the client’s needs.
Award of Merit: KPFF
In this pursuit of collaborative design-build services for university housing, KPFF aimed to impress the university selection committee and design-build team leads with their proven track record and innovative approach. The team embraced the A3 format, opting to lean into compelling visuals and concise messaging instead of “wordiness”. The document ultimately provided not only a successful bid, but also a blueprint for future success and process improvement. Meticulous planning was the key to success, with research and pre-positioning beginning a full three months prior to release of the RFP. A comprehensive work plan mapped each submission requirement to the A3 and helped identify opportunities where infographics could substitute for large blocks of text. Using pull planning, the team ensured ample time for review and input as the submission progressed.
Judge’s remarks: “[We] enjoyed the creative and succinct way that the information was presented, with scannable sections and important elements highlighted for easy reading.”
