For over 20 years the IMEA Star Awards have honored the best of the best communications in the investment managing industry. The Star Awards were presented last month in 30 separate categories across three major classes of communications: investor, advisor and retirement.
We spoke with three winners in the investor category for an inside look at what goes into an investor campaign to make it special and bright enough to catch a Star.
As a longtime sponsor of the IMEA Star Awards, Imprint congratulates all of the talented, hard-working winners.
“I’ve seen so many fantastic examples of investor communications over the years—meaningful campaigns, thoughtful insights—and the winners really focus on their customers and what those customers need,” said Imprint Managing Partner Andy Seibert in the run-up to the awards celebration. “This year, when there’s so many things going on in the world and here at home, marketers have really stepped it up and sharpened their skills.”
“There’s one aspect of the Stars which I really love, and that’s that the judges are your peers,” Seibert added. “So when you win a Star Award it’s getting the applause of your contemporaries, which is really special.”
Here’s what three winners in the investor category had to say:
CRISIS COMMUNICATIONS WINNER:
M&T Bank — COVID-19 Webinars Communications Support
Project goal: Our goal was to arm M&T’s clients across all our business lines with information to help them navigate business and life decisions during such a mutable time.
Biggest challenge, and how it was solved: We have multiple audiences with complex needs across a range of businesses—and we had a very compressed timeline. But part of the solution was internal; We began working in command centers so we could address issues from a central location. And part of the solution was external; We worked with partners like Imprint who innovated their processes, developing an enhanced service model to create and deploy original content in a radically reduced timeframe.
Winning ingredient: I like to think our clients will be the judge of our winning ingredients, but our commitment through this entire pandemic has been to remain focused on our core mission as a community bank. Hopefully the agility we showed in providing essential, relevant information when timing was key demonstrated that commitment to our customers, who are always our most important audience.
Check out the work: https://library.mtb.com/
NEWSLETTER WINNER:
T. Rowe Price — Investor Magazine
Project goal: Highlighting the innovators reshaping the world in ever-changing times and telling the stories of leaders across the life cycle of entrepreneurship. From a teenager who developed his own clothing line, to a group sending wine into space to help study the impacts of climate change, to a basketball app developer that found itself serving a greater need when the pandemic struck, our Innovation Journeys celebrate those who move us forward every day and prove that, as with Invesco QQQ, it’s best to always be on the side of innovation.
Biggest challenge, and how it was solved: How can we properly document an ever-changing world, as it’s changing even throughout our ideation and production process? Finding intriguing stories to tell was no problem, but making sure we were telling stories with an eye on what the world would be like in the near future was a constant challenge. We tackled the challenge by trying to project current news into future scenarios as much as possible, and focus on stories that that were fresh and yet had staying power.
Winning ingredient: The innovators! From a storytelling standpoint, they made our jobs ridiculously easy, because these are people making a real impact in our world at a time when it was/is critically needed. The source material we got to work with was just so rich, and we’re proud we got to bring these stories forward to a wider audience.
Check out the work: https://www.invesco.com/us/qqq-etf/stories
So, what’s next?
We’d love to hear from you! Did you face similar challenges in 2020? What strategies did your team develop to tackle them? What lessons from 2020 are you keeping front of mind in 2021? Email us at imprint@imprintcontent.com, mention us on Twitter @imprintcontent or ping us on LinkedIn.
To read Part II: Advisor Star Awards Winners Speak! , click here.
To read Part III: Retirement Star Awards Winners Speak! , click here.
