World’s Largest Talent Agency for Creative Professionals Wins New England Direct Marketing Awards

Boston (April 2, 2001) — Aquent, the premier talent agency for creative professionals, both print and Web, received high honors for direct mail and print production from the New England Direct Marketing Association (NEDMA). Winners of the NEDMA Awards for Creative Excellence were announced at the Association’s annual banquet at Boston’s Roxy Club.

Aquent received the Gold award in the “Best Print Production” category for a poster depicting the 216 Web-safe colors in the HTML color palette. Developed to reinforce Aquent’s position as a Web creative staffing leader, the poster was distributed to current and prospective Web design hiring customers, as well as to the talent the agency represents. The poster also received recent accolades from harrumph.com. According to an article which ran on the site (http://www.harrumph.com/010317.html), “the winner of the SXSW conference floor schwag, was, hands down, Aquent, with their web safe colours palette.” The SXSW (South By Southwest) conference, which was held recently in Austin, is a unique global event focused on the creative side of the entertainment business.

“Placing Web designers is a key growth area for us, so we wanted to produce a piece with a long shelf life that would be truly useful to our target audiences,” explained Mark Saperstein, Aquent’s Vice President of Creative Services. “The poster, which is an accurate representation of the Web color palette - no small printing feat - is easily displayed as a reference guide.” The response to the poster was so positive that Aquent printed additional quantities for tradeshow give-aways and leave-behinds at new-business meetings.

Aquent received a second Gold Award for its innovative “furry postcard” in the “Business-to-Business Mail” category. This faux leopard-fur card, featuring the headline “Are Your Design Projects Getting a Little Hairy?” on the reverse side, was designed to jump-start the company’s summer sales drive last year.
“It’s not hard to come up with attention-getting creative. The trick is to make sure that it’s strategic,” Saperstein said. “We needed a simple, impactful direct-mail piece that would catch people’s attention when they returned from summer vacation. It had to be more than just a fun idea - we wanted to generate immediate business for our local offices.”Besides inducing a record-breaking response from customers, the piece also created a public relations buzz for the company, prompting articles in Direct Marketing News and other trade publications. In addition, dozens of customers who received the postcard called Aquent to find out how it was created.

Appealing to our audiences’ “cool creative sensibilities” is one of the joys and challenges of my job, Saperstein notes. “We’re targeting people who head up leading design departments, so that really raises the bar for us. We’ve got to be as good or better than they are if we expect them to take us seriously as a creative resource.”

The award-winning teams for each piece were:

Web-Safe Colors Poster: Mark Saperstein, creative director/copywriter; Sophia Lee, art director; Fife Design, designers; John Midgely, photographer; Kathy Fox Alfano, production manager; United Lithograph, printer.

Furry Postcard: Mark Saperstein, creative director/copywriter; Sophia Lee, art director/designer; Kathy Fox Alfano, production manager; Alliance Print Group, printer.

About Aquent
Aquent (www.aquent.com) is the world’s largest talent agency for creative professionals. In its 15-year history, Aquent has made more than 200,000 matches of independent professionals with client companies worldwide, with revenues topping $200 million last year. Headquartered in Boston, Aquent leverages both the Internet and a network of 60 offices in 12 countries to provide independent professionals access to work, training - and the same insurance, retirement, and cash-flow management benefits enjoyed by traditional W-2 workers.