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The list of the 2019 MarCom Award winners includes national brands like Nationwide, AARP, Cisco, Dell, Fender and Morgan Stanley. And once again, MadAveGroup is on that list, too.

Our Caller Experience agency BusinessVoice earned four awards for their Humor On Hold.

Platinum Award: Lakeland Auto & Marine - “Previously”
Platinum Award: Binkelman - “Time Stands Still”
Gold Award: Binkelman - “All Roads”
Honorable Mention: Med-Line - HIPPA-tastic”

On its website, the MarCom Awards is described as “an international creative competition that recognizes outstanding achievement by marketing and communication professionals. Entries come from corporate marketing and communication departments, advertising agencies, public relations firms, design shops, production companies and freelancers.”

Entrants range from individual communicators to media conglomerates and Fortune 500 companies, and come from throughout the United States, Canada and dozens of other countries.

MarCom Award judges reward those entries that “exceed a high standard of excellence and serve as a benchmark for the industry.”

BusinessVoice is the world’s most-awarded provider of On Hold Marketing. Listen to the winning work in the videos below. 

In August 2018, BBC.com published an article called "The Art and Science of Being On Hold." Written by Damian Fowler, the piece featured input from members of our BusinessVoice team - Jerry Brown, Steve Evert and Scott Greggory. BusinessVoice is our Caller Experience Marketing agency. 

Here is an abridged version of the article.

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Hold Music as a Branding Tool

Nowadays, hold music isn’t left to chance. There are companies like BusinessVoice, which specializes in On Hold Marketing for mid-to large-size companies. They see the On Hold experience as an expression of brand identity, mixing music with a verbal message - which sounds closer to a radio advertisement than, say, an easy-listening jazz number.

When creating an On Hold Marketing plan for a new client, BusinessVoice initiates a “caller experience” audit. They will determine things like how frequently the same person calls and the longest time a person will be put on hold. If the average hold time is five minutes, for example, a caller doesn’t want to hear a three-minute loop. The company also determines the caller demographic and from there creates its plan to make the call experience better. “You really want to use the time that people wait on hold to make them feel good about your company,” says Jerry Brown, the founder and CEO of BusinessVoice.

What this means is that on hold music and messaging is necessarily curated according to the needs of the client and the customer. The music and the message are tailored to ensure a positive On Hold experience.

According to Brown, it gets quite scientific. For a company that has a queue for sales and a queue for services, BusinessVoice would create two completely different messages and formats [for] those separate call experiences. “A lot of time we pick out music based on beats per minute of a song. So, if you’re a customer service line where people are holding for 10 minutes, we don’t want to have high beats per minute. If it’s a sales queue and you’re trying to move people to action, we want to increase their heart rate a little bit,” explains Brown.

The company also pays attention to whether hold music should be in a major or a minor key, offering subtle emotional cues to the caller on hold.

The Grammys of Hold Music

The world of on hold music and messaging even has its own awards. The MARCE Awards is an annual competition held by the Experience Marketing Association. This year, the “Most Effective On Hold Marketing” prize went to Behler-Young, a distributor of heating and cooling products based in the U.S. Midwest, for its hold message tagged “I’m Sworn to Secrecy.” Created by BusinessVoice - which has scooped up many MARCE awards over the years - it’s a highly produced sequence featuring spoof spy music, and a humourous voiceover that channels Mission Impossible.

Humor On Hold is another important concept for engaging callers. “If somebody can make me laugh in that space where there’s usually an ad, I feel more of an affection for that company,” says Scott Greggory, the Chief Creative Officer of BusinessVoice. With a background in radio, Greggory pioneered the idea of making On Hold Marketing palatable with what he calls the “spoonful of sugar” approach.

During the 2018 ADDY Awards ceremony, our BusinessVoice team was recognized once again for their humorous approach to marketing.

We earned a Silver ADDY for the On Hold Marketing we produced for Lakeland Auto and Marine. We also received a Bronze award for the radio campaign we created for Ray’s Trash in Indianapolis.

Take a listen to the winning work in the videos below. 

Our branding and design team, d2i, earned a Silver award at the 2017 ADDY Awards ceremony.

Designers Terry Lesniewicz and Greg Stawicki teamed up to create a winning poster series for The Mad Ave Collective (above left).

“The Collective’s logo inspired the posters,” said Stawicki. “We used elements from the logo to create strong, simple graphic messages that would engage viewers.”

“We took a contemporary minimalist approach with this project; very simple, very little copy,” said Lesniewicz. “It’s an attitude, and the response so far has been ‘WOW!’ especially from a lot of younger people who have responded to the work. It was fun to be the first agency in this area to adopt this style.”

Lesniewicz is a nationally known designer who’s been elevating brands for more than five decades. His work has been featured in magazines, award shows, even a museum, and has been seen by countless millions of people.

The d2i crew also designed the collateral for the ADDY Awards, including the call-for-entries poster, invitation and winners' booklet (above right).

BusinessVoice, our caller experience agency, received a Bronze ADDY for a humorous On Hold Marketing production they created for Arrowwood Lodge in Baxter, Minnesota.

BusinessVoice has won more awards for its work than any other OHM provider in the industry. The creative team specializes in developing Humor On Hold™. Listen to their winning entry in the video below. 

In the world of marketing and advertising, there aren't many agencies that have served a client for a quarter of a century or more.

But we're a bit different. Ten of our clients have been with us for 25 years or longer.

Yes, TEN.

And they represent a wide variety of industries, from automotive sales, HVAC, building materials and contractors, to non-profits, healthcare, senior care and rehabilitation.

So, to thank our longest-term clients, we went on a little tour. We visited each company to present the management with a personalized, locally made, hand-blown glass memento like the one on the right.

The inscription acknowledges “our 25-year relationship and [our client's] dedication to delivering exceptional customer experiences.”

What a privilege to have the loyalty and trust of so many people. We never take our responsibilities to them or any of our clients lightly. And we are truly thankful for their support throughout these many years.

By the way, the numbers are even nicer for our 20-year clients: We've been serving 83 businesses for two decades or longer.

We're looking forward to giving out many more of these beautiful thank you gifts in the coming years.

On Hold Marketing - Notre Dame Academy

When we heard the student testimonials on a new NDA video, we knew right away that we wanted to incorporate them into the school's next On Hold Marketing production. Thankfully, our friends at cross-town agency Hanson Inc. allowed us to use their audio for our piece. We were moved by the young women's expressions of pride in and gratitude for NDA. We hope you will be, too.  

The MadAveGroup creative team took away a nice haul from this year’s MarCom Awards: four awards total, including two platinum trophies and a gold. Take a look at the work and a few details below.

Platinum Award - SensoryMax Website
Designer: Greg Stawicki
Copywriter: Scott Greggory
Developer: Charley Hobbs

Platinum Award - Binkelman On Hold Marketing / “That’s Pretty Hot”
Writer: Scott Greggory
Voices: Scott Greggory and Amy Scott
Recording Engineer: Don Binkley

 
Gold Award - International Translating Company On Hold Marketing / “Talented Tongues”
Writers: Cody McCloskey and Scott Greggory
Voices: Scott Greggory and Bob Seybold
Recording Engineers: Don Binkley 

Honorable Mention - Arrowwood Lodge On Hold Marketing / “Flippin’ TV”
Writers: Andrea Poteet, Cody McCloskey and Scott Greggory
Main Voices: Scott Greggory, Bob Seybold, Amy Scott, Ed Hunter and Steve Lovvorn
Recording Engineer: Chris Zaharias 

The MarCom Awards honor “outstanding achievement by creative professionals involved in the concept, direction, design and production of marketing and communication materials and programs.”

MarCom judges review about 6,000 entries from 34 countries and 300 categories related to print, web, video and strategic communications.

MadAveGroup has been recognized once again for "outstanding achievement" in the field of marketing and communications by the 2013 MarCom Awards, an international creative competition that includes entries by media conglomerates and Fortune 500 companies.

BusinessVoice, our On Hold Marketing agency, received the highest honor - a Platinum MarCom Award - for "Binkelmania," a humorous On Hold Marketing production we created for Binkelman Corporation. (Listen in the video below.)    

We also earned a Gold MarCom Award for a series of three radio spots we created for Spirit Services. (Listen to them in the video below.)

"The radio spots we produce for Spirit are not only designed to encourage a specific response," said VP of Creative Services Scott Greggory, "they support the company's brand identity. We want that audio to sound like what their website and social media channels look like. That way, there's a stronger connection with the brand as people move from the radio to Spirit's online world."

"That's one of the advantages of working with an agency like ours. Radio and TV stations are in the business of production and distribution, not necessarily great content creation. We focus on each client's message, supporting their brand identity, and strengthening the audience's perception of their company in a creative way," said Greggory. "Ours is a consistent and long-term approach."