Any marketing professional will tell you that, in most cases, people don’t just buy products, goods, and services—they buy a brand. And a brand is so much more than the sum of its parts; it’s your company culture, your employees and their attitude, your promises to your consumers, your “personality” as a company. Oftentimes your brand can be summed up in one or two words; Volvo is “safe”, Apple is “cool and simple”, Nike is “athletic” and so forth. Much of what goes into your company’s “brand” is rather intangible, so designing a custom corporate award that is an accurate reflection of that brand is often harder than you might think.
For instance, Lucky Brand, the iconic clothing company best known for their Lucky Brand jeans, asked Bennett Awards to create a custom award for a new employee recognition program. These achievement awards are called the “Rivet Award”, and employees can nominate their peers for a job well done. For these recognition awards, Bennett Awards worked with Lucky Brand to create a custom design that supported the Lucky Brand brand image. The final design was a unique, custom-designed medallion that featured a raised image of a rivet – just like those found on Lucky Brand jeans. The name of the award – “THE RIVET AWARD” – is featured in raised letters surrounding the rivet. These custom corporate awards are cast in pewter and have a copper-plated finish with antique accents designed to highlight the raised images. Each piece has a well-worn and burnished feel, much like your favorite pair of Lucky Brand Jeans. Lucky Brand Jeans set themselves apart with their ripped, frayed, and sanded jeans and our goal was to capture this attitude and style in the Rivet Award.
Sometimes the custom corporate award also needs to be an accurate reflection of the winners, in addition to the brand itself. For instance, when Facebook, Inc. commissioned Bennett Awards to design and produce a custom award for their worldwide programming contest, the “Facebook Hacker Cup”, our goal was to create a design that celebrated both the brand Facebook and the winners of the coding competition. The final custom award design was based on the Hacker Cup logo, and featured a raised fist (often the symbol of success) with the word “HACK” embedded in it. The fist was created in brushed pewter, and its surface featured a grid-like texture combining patina inlays and brushed pewter edges to create an almost computer-code like appearance. The trophy was mounted on a concrete base, as that gave it a grittier and more urban feel, as hackers are often pride themselves on “lack of polish”.
If your company creates a custom designed corporate award that is an accurate representation of your brand, you are not only creating an award, you are creating a unique piece of art communicating your brand image for your employees and customers as well. Custom corporate awards are instantly recognizable because they capture the essence and personality of your brand in a way that an off-the-shelf award cannot. Although pre-designed awards are great for companies on a tighter budget or time schedule, nothing shows off your brand more than a custom corporate award.