It’s always a good day when your work is honored by your peers.  And recently The Edge had a very good day!  The 32nd Annual Telly Awards recognized three of our recent projects with

Silver Telly awards, their highest recognition for video and film productions. Since 1978, the Telly Awards have worked to strengthen the visual arts community by inspiring, promoting, and supporting creativity; we are honored to be among the winners.

In Your Face Guy

To promote Microsoft’s Media Center Extender product, we created a variety of 15-second spots which ran on Microsoft’s Media Center channels, and were integrated into Microsoft’s Extender web campaign.  The campaign achieved a 46% click-through rate. Not bad when 15% is considered a success!
In Your Face Guy won the Silver Telly in the Internet/Online Commercial – Campaign – Business-to-Consumer category.

Veronica’s Story

The Telly Award for this video is particularly rewarding because we wanted the emotion and power of the story we told to inspire everyone who saw it. This was a pro-bono, fund raising video for a shelter and transitional house for women and children in crisis. Our aim was to find a story with emotional impact and that’s when we were introduced to Veronica.  This amazing woman held nothing back in describing her spiral into some very dark places… and her journey back.  If you ever doubt that people possess the ability to change, Veronica will assure you that anything is possible.

Veronica’s Story won the Silver Telly in the Non-Broadcast Productions – Fund Raising category.

Nieuw Amsterdam Heritage Video

Last summer in Venice, Holland America Line launched their newest ship, the ms Nieuw Amsterdam. The 4th ship in the line’s illustrious 137-year history to bear the name, The Edge produced a Heritage video capturing the history and enchantment of the ship’s legacy. The video played a prominent role in launch activities and is now featured on the Holland America Line Website.

Nieuw Amsterdam Heritage won the Silver Telly for Non-Broadcast Productions – Corporate Image.

Enterprise Partner Group

EPG Show Open Video

Everything about the EPG MGX keynote this year was different.  The creative theme, DIFFERENT? explored the power of asking “What IF?” This allowed our executive to challenge his audience about their perceptions on many levels. And it fueled our creative energy! What IF we use rotating projection panels? What IF we change the palette and use no words on screen? What IF we transform the way we recognize last year’s accomplishments – awards don’t have to be boring, do they? What IF we invite a dynamic, young speaker with a great story to inspire our audience that nothing is impossible.

The Difference: An engaged, excited executive speaker, a gorgeous, unique show, and numerous unsolicited emails like, “Great session this morning, thank you! Love the theme, great delivery and if people don’t feel the momentum, have confidence and get inspired after that I’d stick a heart monitor on them!”

Microsoft North America

For senior executive Robert Youngjohns and his team, we produced a Main Stage Keynote for 15,000 attendees.

Being our second year working with Robert, our mutual comfort and familiarity allowed us to do what we love best: develop a personal creative metaphor for the speaker and his message. Tapping into Robert’s passion for sailing, we developed creative to draw parallels between sailing in shifting weather conditions and managing shifting business environments. An eye-popping 4 screen opening video immersed our audience in the theme. Video bumpers coupled with fantastic music laid the foundation for a ‘Live Documentary’ feel, accentuating key messages in a very unique way.

Our racing crew on the video shoot in San Francisco Bay: two-time Olympic sailor, Charlie McKee, and Kristen Lane, the first woman to win the World Cup! How awesome was that?!? (Thanks Joe Bersch for setting us up in record time!).

A Mighty Wind: Immediately following the keynote, Microsoft Chief Operating Officer, Kevin Turner, came into Robert’s dressing room and said, “Great theme and you nailed the content.”  Sa-weet!

Services

Leveraging the Denver Opera House and our clients’ love of humor and theatrics – our Services Keynote team created an Oscar Night-esque event complete with red carpet interviews, musical numbers, videos, and enough gowns, tuxedos, costumes, hair and make-up to rival the Academy Awards! Much to the delight of the audience, the event not only featured Corporate Vice President Kathleen Hogan, but also included the Senior Leadership Team and regional volunteers from around the world.  We even scored a video with Microsoft’s top tier executives singing (or trying to sing…damn that was fun!) the new Services Anthem – written and recorded by The Edge’s ace muso-maestros!

Sing It Out Loud:  The audience ate it up and rewarded the team with one of the highest scores at this year’s MGX event!

Following 7 successful new ship launches for Holland America Line (HAL), producer extraordinaire Julie Hunt and her Edge Creative team recently helped launch the Seabourn Quest – the newest ship in Carnival’s ultra-luxury Seabourn brand.

Earlier this year Carnival Corporation relocated Seabourn headquarters to Seattle to join its sister company Holland America Line. Carnival also named Rick Meadows, our long-time HAL client, as the new President of Seabourn. With the launch of the Seabourn Quest just 6 months away, and given Julie’s track record, it’s no wonder Rick wanted her on the team.

The Seabourn Quest launch video

Inaugural events started with a series of introductory Mediterranean cruises for media and travel professionals. The Edge produced supporting media and provided executive speech writing for the onboard press, sales, and crew recognition events. Meanwhile, Julie and her crew also conducted executive interviews and captured b-roll of the gorgeous new ship. In a testament to The Edge’s ability to multi-task across 9 time zones and with a producer literally at sea, we had a highlights video of the new ship up on Seabourn’s website before Quest even launched.

The marketing events were capped off in Barcelona, with an elegant Dedication Ceremony featuring Rick Meadows and the ship’s Godmother, Blythe Danner. Julie’s team produced the dedication speeches, all the pre-produced video and show graphics, and filmed the day’s events. Footage from the Godmother Tour and Dedication Ceremony was used to create a new ending on the highlights video, which was once again completed and on the Seabourn site in record time.

Kudos to Julie, Brendan, Doug, Steve, Virginia, and Bob for a job incredibly well done.

We just staged the COOLEST WALK-IN EVER for a Microsoft event! OK, maybe we’re a little biased, but the Tech Ed audience of hard core techno geeks set Twitter ablaze with the excitement generated by the hip LA band playing on laptops and lemurs.

When our clients called looking for a fun, energetic, “wake ‘em up” walk-in and opening video, they were thinking maybe a DJ. But we were thinking something more unique, something to write home about. And The Glitch Mob delivered – thanks Ed and Justin, you guys were awesome!

The whole thing was a blast and we look forward to jammin’ with the Tech Ed folks again!d

Stay tuned: Our next post will be the Tech Ed opening video that caused our client to gush about the energy of the piece and ‘the awesome motion graphics’. We love making clients gush!

The Edge Creative was awarded a Silver Telly Award for our production of the video “Nieuw Amsterdam Heritage.” The video was produced in celebration of Holland America Line’s 4th ship by that name, which launched last summer.

Shout out to Producer Julie Hunt, Writer/Director Bob Zenk, Director of Photography Chris Towey, and Editor Doug Loviska.

Holland America Line Nieuw Amsterdam Launch, Venice, Italy

Add dashing sea captains and this project reads more like a romance novel than a corporate event! But what a spectacular event it was!

Combining seafaring traditions, royalty, and state-of-the-art technology, The Edge Creative helped Holland America Line launch its nieuw-est ship, the Nieuw Amsterdam in Venice, Italy on July 4. This was the 8th HAL ship launch for our crackerjack producer, Julie Hunt.

The 4th ship in the line’s illustrious 137-year history to bear the name Nieuw Amsterdam, The Edge produced a Heritage video capturing the history and enchantment of the ship’s legacy. The video played a prominent role in launch activities and is now featured on the Holland America Line Website.

The Nieuw Amsterdam IV officially joined the Holland America Line fleet in a dazzling Dedication Day celebration. Following a press conference, Captains representing each ship in the HAL fleet arrived by water taxi and assembled to greet Her Royal Highness Princess Máxima of the Netherlands. A “red carpet” highlights video was edited by our team on the spot (mama mia!!) and delivered just in time to open the gala Dedication Ceremony. Scripted by The Edge team, HAL President & CEO Stein Kruse and Nieuw Amsterdam Captain Edward van Zaane addressed the VIP audience, and then escorted HRH Princess Máxima to officially name the ship and trigger the traditional champagne bottle breaking on the hull.

A Webcast carried the dedication ceremony live. And by week’s end we had produced an Inaugural Highlights video with footage of the new ship, interviews with HAL executives, and Dedication Day highlights. The video is showcased on HAL’s website and is being shared with Travel Agents and key stakeholders around the world.

Score: One of HAL’s VP’s said, “This Dedication Day will be an event that people will talk about for years to come as a performance extraordinaire.”

Grazie!!

For our first in a series of “coffee chats” with industry experts, Cindy Krueger sat down with Bryan Rutberg, Executive Communications Director, Microsoft Worldwide Services. Among the topics: making corporate messaging personal, the advantages and disadvantages of working with creative agencies, and a new job title: Communications Therapist.

The Edge: You manage communications for a Corporate Vice President who leads a global team of more than 17,000 people in over 80 countries. What are the biggest challenges you face in developing and executing ongoing communications to such a large and diverse group?

Bryan: In our case, we’re communicating themes to five distinct business areas, multiple geographies, and also to numerous roles within each area. So we have to strike a balance between being high level enough to get everybody rowing in the same direction, but personal enough to engage someone who isn’t as concerned about the big picture. Making the message personal for everyone from Corporate Vice Presidents to field reps, that’s a real trick.

The Edge: We certainly agree with the importance of making corporate messaging personal. How do you accomplish that when you have diverse messages, diverse groups and business-focused content?

Bryan: We tell our people stories – highlighting stories of someone fulfilling the mission. Who put a customer first? Who helped beat a competitor? Who enlarged the size of the software sale through giving great service? Who saved something that was on the precipice of going bad by helping a partner learn something critical? By using those stories to stand for what the leadership team thinks is important and worthy of recognition, we want people to see themselves and then act in an appropriate way.

The Edge: So telling personal stories is a way to validate the themes and goals being communicated. They lend credibility to the overall messaging.

Bryan: Yes, credibility is essential for keeping people engaged. A great example of that is the Alignment video you guys did for us at last year’s MGX keynote. Our senior management team said, ‘Okay, we’re always talking about alignment, but the truth is, there isn’t alignment. And if we get up there and talk about this mythical alignment thing as something that exists, we’ve lost credibility.’ You guys heard that and came up with a hilarious way to address the issue. Every bit in that video was absurd and funny, but it acknowledged the reality and gave our executive a way to address it with integrity.

It’s also an example of how a creative agency can bring ideas to the table that either we wouldn’t have thought of or if we had they might have been batted down. Frankly, because they came from an agency, they got an extra level of credibility given to them; it’s just the outsider/insider thing.

The Edge: Are there other advantages that you find in having outside creative vendors as part of your communications team?

Bryan: There’s an objectivity and perspective that an outside agency brings to the process that can be really valuable. It’s looking at us from the outside and saying, ‘I get what you’re trying to do, let’s break some barriers here.’ That objectivity allows you to speak truth to power in a way that can be very beneficial.

And of course an agency brings a particular expertise. No one on our internal team has ever produced a show or done top-level speech coaching or been a Master of Ceremonies for anything bigger than a surprise party. I’m sure I’m not thinking of a tenth of the things you all actually did for us. I mean, who had ever even produced a video?

The Edge:: One thing that seems undeniable about working at Microsoft: you all have a lot on your plate.

Bryan: Yeah. Anybody who’s trying to do their day job at Microsoft isn’t going to have time to do what you do. Plus you listen and help problem solve. There’s a better way to describe it than this, but, you’re like the shrink. You’re the, ‘well, tell me how you feel about that?’

The Edge:: Communication therapist?

Bryan: Actually that’s a great phrase. I should lie down on the couch! It’s great when you say, ‘I hear what you’re saying, let me take that away and think about it and I’ll come back and we’ll talk about it.’ That’s liberating for the person who has 47 things on his or her plate.

The Edge:: Any disadvantages that you’ve found in working with either a creative agency or an outside vendor?

Bryan: On a micro level, there’s a chance of hiring an agency that’s just a bad fit. Yes, you put them through their paces and you have responses to RFPs, but you need the right personal connection and it doesn’t always happen. At a macro level, an agency working on a specific project might not understand how their single event or communication needs to either culminate something or kick something off or how it needs to carry through to other communication efforts.

The Edge:: It’s thrilling when an idea for an individual project resonates for a larger purpose.

Bryan: Absolutely! It becomes a branding exercise. The smart third party, or the smart creative person on the FTE team, is going to say, ‘well, don’t worry about what we want to say here and now, what do we want to say overall? And what role does this event or communication play in that whole strategy?’

The Edge:: When we worked with Microsoft’s Worldwide Public Sector, we developed a tagline and visual theme for their MGX keynote that became the foundation for all messaging for that fiscal year.

Bryan: MGX is a great time to introduce a visual brand or tagline because there you’ve crossed the border into a new fiscal year and there is something magical about that, at least in my mind.

The Edge:: It’s your New Year’s resolutions.

Bryan: Exactly. Fresh starts.

Many thanks Bryan for taking the time to come talk with us, and for being our first Coffee Chat participant!

We met the CMO of Virgin Racing while in London, and couldn’t help but get excited by the Formula 1 partnership that Marussia and Virgin have just forged.

Rather then TELL them what we were all about, we decided to MAKE them a video ‘calling card’ or sorts.

Virgin racing hit the Formula 1 grid this past year utilizing an exclusive digital modeling process known as Computational Fluid Dynamics (think wind-tunnel testing for racing cars on computers ONLY). Couple that with the sexy branding that has always been the Virgin trademark, add a subtle nod to the new Marussia brand, and we were off.

Producing multiple keynotes in the same space means more bang-for-the-buck for our clients. “Owning” the hall from load-in to load-out, we leverage and maximize creative, budgets, schedules and crew.

An excellent example is Microsoft’s 2010 international sales meeting, MGX. We produced seven events, three of which were back-to-back keynotes staged in Hall B5 at the Georgia World Congress Center. We designed the room with one enormous sexy curved screen. Each keynote had its own Creative Director and Project Manager, but shared Executive Producer Kristin Zavorska. “When we can produce all of the events happening in one hall, it allows us to do more for each client,” explains Kristin. “By combining budgets we’re able to have more lighting, better audio and video, additional scenic elements – everything that enhances the overall audience experience.”

Each team also used the same Lighting Designer, Motion Graphics Designer and running crew. Having a consistent team meant there was no competition for space, resources or schedules. “We could strategize onsite schedules, coordinate executive rehearsals, and the designers could flow between shows as they finalized their designs,” says Kristin. Working with the respective Creative Directors, the designers developed a distinct look and feel for each show; this was particularly important because two of the events had the same audience.

The benefits of “owning” the hall are also evident in pre-production. Meetings with the other staging vendors are much more efficient, the budgeting process is more straight-forward, and communication and problem solving is much easier. Specific to Microsoft, we also have the benefit of long standing relationships with the other MSFT Preferred staging vendors. “There is a trust and a shorthand that we all have with each other,” Kristin says. “Everything is easier because we walk in the door with those relationships.”

In just 72 hours The Edge Creative produced seven distinct events at Microsoft’s annual Sales and Marketing meeting. We engaged an international audience of 30,000 people with creative content and media playing across a total of 860′ of screens, lit by 1,550 lights and held up by more truss than a kid in love with his erector set could ever dream of!

Individual audiences ranged from 1,400 to 15,000 people, and budgets from $60K to $530K for creative development and production.

Our Core Team of creative directors, project managers, and media and event producers, gave us the talent bench to provide each client group with a dedicated team.

And a unique solution.

There was a mind-boggling amount of media produced, both in pre-production and onsite. To move our audiences to action, we tugged at their emotions with heartfelt stories and dazzled them with stunning visuals, inclusive of 3D motion graphics, in-depth interviews and actor-based humor videos. For one event, the opening and closing motion graphics modules played out across 300’ of screens and cyc panels.

Score: Four months of creative development, media and event production, budget management, staging logistics and attention to every last detail culminated in audience engagement and flawless onsite execution. Or as our client Simon Witts, Corporate Vice President EPG, told us at his rehearsal, “This is why I like to work with the professionals.”

We like working with you, too, Simon!

While cleaning out an old buffet at my late Grandfather’s house I found a treasure. A journal he had written recording his World War II memories. During the war, he had packed parachutes for a squadron of P-51 Mustangs and landed on Omaha Beach at Normandy on D-Day plus 10. His only child- my Father- was 2 months old when my Grandfather was drafted; he was 3 when my Grandfather came home.

My Dad had never seen the journal, so I wanted to do something special with it for him. I captured it into a Word document and then started looking at ways to get it printed and bound.

That’s when I came across something very cool. It’s called Blurb.

Here’s how their website describes them:

“Blurb is a company and a community that believes passionately in the joy of books – reading them, making them, sharing them, and selling them. Holding a finished book with your name on the cover is a truly amazing feeling; it’s one of those experiences everyone should have.”

And it’s true. I now have a book of my Grandfather’s journal, a memoir from a historic time in his life. Blurb’s software is free to download and pretty easy to use. It guides you through page layouts, adding photos, trying out different fonts, colors and borders. So cool!

Once I had the book designed, I ordered one on-line and in just a few days it showed up on my doorstep. Just in time for Dad’s birthday.

Check it out: www.blurb.com

~ Julie