Corporate awards can capture excitement, nostalgia and company spirit

This past week was David’s 35th reunion for engineering at Queen’s University. We had a wonderful time catching up and reconnecting with classmates and friends. “Science ’79” was a year to reckon with; they had great spirit, camaraderie, and cohesiveness that new students and alumni still recognize today. Their tagline is Science ’79 Forever!

After 35 years, “Science ‘79” still attracts a large group of classmates who travel from around the world to sing old songs, march in the parade around a football field and tell “do you remember” stories as if they had only seen each other last week.

You are probably wondering how this relates to corporate awards. The way I see it, a strong corporate awards should create the same feelings as “Science ’79”: excitement, nostalgia, and pride.

Off-the-shelf awards can feel cheap and trivial

Corporate award programs can be based around many different objectives: sales awards, health & safety awards, employee recognition awards, etc. Unfortunately, sometimes the awards themselves are just plain boring!

Corporate recognition awards or corporate sales awards do not have to be boring or give the off-the-shelf impression. When an organization creates awards with no thought put into them, they miss the opportunity to give meaningful recognition awards that inspire, celebrate and recognize the recipient.

When companies take the time and effort to create customized awards to celebrate corporate or individual successes, they take advantage of a great opportunity to showcase their company and brand in a favourable light. Corporate sales awards, in particular, can be a crowning achievement to the recipient and when they walk away with the award in hand, you want them to feel pride in belonging to a company that celebrates their achievements in a memorable way.

Awards recipient should feel “Wow!” not “Meh.”

Lucite awards are a way to be different; they offer a chance to recognize the recipient with a creative personalized award which makes it all the more meaningful. As an organization, you want to create a customized award that highlights your brand in a way that creates pride in the recipient.

Organizations should be creating a corporate award that makes the recipient feel like an individual winner while also feeling proud that they play a significant part of the corporate team. The last thing you want is for your recipient to walk away feeling: “MEH, they had to give me something so threw together the easiest and cheapest thing they could.”

Thoughtful and creative, instead of boring

Don’t be unimaginative or stuck in the past and think an award is just an award. Just because you don’t want boring, doesn’t mean that corporate awards have to be elaborate and complicated. They should be thoughtful and creative. Clearmount’ s awards production team assists clients in designing a Lucite award that can incorporate a company’s brand and embedding a product (coal, oil, microchips, etc.) as part of the award.

Another creative idea is to recreate your product through custom designed shapes. Customized and personalized SIGG water bottles are a great option to display your brand and allow for personalization and can work well for larger groups on employees. FSC Eco Frames and awards plaques are a great option for sustainability initiative awards.

Make corporate awards special, not boring

Sure, the easy route to creating a “customized” award is to take an inexpensive off-the-shelf award, engrave it, and call it a day. But, consider the impression you are leaving with the recipient and anyone who sees that award.

The goal of a corporate recognition program should be to make the recipient feel good about themselves and the company/brand. So, instead of leaving the impression that you don’t really care; why not create a corporate awards program that impresses?

The feeling you want to leave your recipients with is that they are a winner. You want them to embrace the spirit, camaraderie and cohesiveness needed to build a great organization. Very much like Science ’79 Forever!