Scientific American Gets Curious with Help from Sales Graphics

Scientific American is curious about how things began. So curious, in fact, that they're dedicating an entire issue to the origins of things. And to help launch this First Annual Origins Issue, Scientific American teamed up with Sales Graphics' DesignStudio to ask some experts on curiosity how to make this issue as interesting and exciting as possible.

This was one of the most enjoyable video projects we've worked on. The editors and the kids were great to work with and everyone had a good time. The result was this promotional video:

Sales Graphics a Finalist for the 2009 American Business Awards

Sales Graphics was honored today as a Finalist for the 2009 American Business Awards for Interactive/Multimedia Sales Presentations and Sales Videos. The projects nominated as finalists were the NBC News Upfront Presentation, the Glamour.TV Sales Video and the Glamour Reel Moments Video.

While we are always honored to receive awards that recognize the great work our designers, developers and clients do, The American Business Awards are particularly satisfying because they recognize not just the design excellence but the business effectiveness of our projects. As presentation specialists, we understand that design is only good if it's effective. Presentations are meant to inform, persuade and activate an audience and if great design can further that goal, great.

Sales Graphics' DesignStudio focuses on effective design that enhances our clients messages and helps them achieve their goals, and successful clients are the best recognition of that. Awards are good too, though.

Golf Digest Gets Ready for 2008's Hot List

Every year Golf Digest published its Hot List of the best golf equipment available. To get advertisers excited about this year's great-looking Hot List issue and to remind them to get in it while they can, Golf Digest came to Sales Graphics' DesignStudio to produce an exciting online video with a strong call to action.  Even though we doesn't make golf equipment, by getting advertisers excited about advertising in Golf Digest's Hot List 2008 issue, we think our DesignStudio should be on this year's Hot List!

MSNBC Gains Momentum with Sales Graphics

MSNBC has been gaining momentum and closing the gap with it's competitors, and they turned to Sales Graphics' DesignStudio to help get the message out. Our DesignStudio created an exciting email blast video that MSNBC sent first to its own salespeople and then encouraged them to forward it on to clients and advertisers to let everyone know the good news!

PC America Launches Cash Register Express Online Demo

PC America, creator of that software for restaurants and stores, released an online demo for their newest product, Cash Register Express. Working for the second time with Sales Graphics' DesignStudio, PC America created an online demo that walks store owners through all the benefits and features of their great new computerized management system. With great graphics, music and footage of the system in use, the online demo really gets the point across that Point-of-Sales systems can make all the difference for retail. And it even gets the point across in three languages - English, Spanish and French. Built in Flash and fully interactive, PC America's online demo for Cash Register Express makes their website a real point of sale for PC America!

MTVN Entertainment Group Launches Online Ad Sales Calendar

MTVN Entertainment Group launched their new Online Ad Sales Calendar system to help their marketing and sales teams work together across all four networks in the new Entertainment Group. Combining Comedy Central, Spike TV, TV Land and CMT together created a whole new level of complexity and set of issues that needed to be addressed. Working with Sales Graphics' Technology team to develop an online solution, MTVN Entertainment Group created an Online Ad Sales Calendar that allows marketing departments to update their opportunities available and have the sales teams see the new information in real-time. Eliminating the slow, manual process of updating and distributing weekly marketing and sales calendars across all four networks, the new Online Ad Sales Calendar consolidates all that information and makes accessing it faster, easier and more accurate than ever.

Glamour.TV Unveils 2009 Lineup

Glamour.TV announced their 2009 lineup with a great new video produced by Sales Graphics' DesignStudio. With such a compelling, video-based product to sell, Glamour's sales team needed much more than a PowerPoint presentation to get advertisers excited about this great sponsorship opportunity. So, in order to take full advantage of their great content and strong brand, Glamour called upon Sales Graphics to put together a video that showcased the engaging and unique content that will shown on Glamour.TV in 2009. The video was a huge hit, firing up the sales team to go sell and demonstrating to advertisers the power of the content and brand of Glamour.TV.

The Best of the Web Use CustomShow!

min announced the winners of its 2008 Best of the Web Awards and we were thrilled to see our clients well represented.  The same sales and marketing tech savvy that made them the Best of the Web also made them see the benefits of using the best sales presentation platform available. Specifically designed for media ad sales teams, CustomShow empowers media sales professionals both online and offline. 

We'd like to give a special congratulations to our clients who were named min's Best of the Web 2008:

• Portfolio.com (Design, Uses of Interactivity)
• InStyle.com (Email Newsletters, Mobile Application)
• Newsweek (Integration with Print)

A&E Integrates Sales Efforts with New Unit

To better integrate sales efforts across all of the company's platforms and brands, A&E has announced the creation of a new cross-media sales unit that will focus on offering advertisers a complete package of marketing insights, research, strategy and solutions. Heading the new team will be long-time Sales Graphics' favorite, Melinda McLaughlin, who was promoted to Senior Vice President, Insights and Marketing Solutions. Debby Tarnok, another of our favorite partners, was also promoted to Senior Director, Ad Sales Marketing, to help run the new team and provide the tools, insights and solutions needed to keep A&E on the cutting edge. 

Sales Graphics has been providing A&E with design and technology solutions to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of their sales efforts for more than four years. For the last six years A&E has worked closely with Sales Graphics' DesignStudio on their annual presentation designs and implemented CustomShow for both Ad Sales and Affiliate Sales. CustomShow Presentation Software is specially built to enable sales teams to effectively and efficiently incorporate a wide range of elements into their presentations, allowing integrated sales teams to present multi-platform content in a single, engaging presentation. From programming clips to micro-sites, CustomShow software lets A&E's sales team present the entire range of platforms and offerings that their networks have to offer.

A&E has been a marketing innovator for years and this is just another example of their forward-thinking. Congratulations to Melinda and Debby, and the entire AETN marketing and sales teams, and we're excited to continue working with them in 2008.

TV Is Back!

TV IS BACK! Just in case anyone didn't hear, Entertainment Weekly wanted to make sure that everyone knew that the writers' strike is finally over. And that means that good TV is back. And no one is happier than Entertainment Weekly! Except maybe their readers.

MPA Digital Awards Finalists

Congratulations to Entertainment Weekly, New York Magazine, Newsweek and Epicurious.com for being named finalists in the MPA Digital Awards. EW.com was nominated for "Entertainment/Celebrity" (not surprisingly), nymag.com was nominated for both "Service and Lifestyle" and "Magazine Blog of the Year", Newsweek.com was nominated for "Best Online Video - Series"  and "Best Podcast Series" and Epicurious.com was nominated for "Best Online Community". We're always excited to see our clients recognized for the outstanding work that we get to see throughout the year working with them.

Newsweek.com Gets Video Kudos

Adage.com gave some nice kudos today to Sales Graphics client Newsweek.com for their use of video on their website ("Magazine Sites Add Video, but Not Much Expertise"). The article talks about the challenge that magazines have in translating their print image and brand into compelling video content that online viewers will watch. I'm sure Newsweek's expert handling of their video content has nothing to do with the fact that they've been using video content in their CustomShow presentations for several years now and Sales Graphics' DesignStudio has successfully created many video pieces for them to convey and explain their brand. But it probably didn't hurt, either.

Magazine Clients Making Digital Deals

As more and more media goes digital, many of Sales Graphics' clients are making digital deals to bring their content to a broader audience online. Hearst, Conde Nast, Time Inc., Bonnier and Hachette Filipacchi have all announced online partnerships  ("Mags Dizzy With Digital Deals") and Sales Graphics is already working with many of them to incorporate this new digital content into their CustomShow presentations and other marketing materials. With CustomShow's ability to seamlessly and reliably incorporate digital assets into our clients' presentations, magazine sales teams that create, manage and distribute their presentations using CustomShow have a significant competitive advantage in today's publishing marketplace.

PlanetOut Goes Out With CustomShow

PlanetOut launched their CustomShow presentation to their Ad Sales Team this week. Incorporating both print and digital into their presentations and being able to effectively present the entire breadth of their media portfolio, PlanetOut saw that CustomShow was the only tool available that allowed them to manage all of their presentation needs.

MOCHILA Launches CustomShow Presentation

Mochila today launched a new Business Development presentation using CustomShow presentation software and a new design by Sales Graphics' DesignStudio. Faced with the challenge of presenting a completely new product, an online content marketplace, Mochila turned to Sales Graphics for the design and software needed to successfully execute their Biz Dev presentation. Working with out DesignStudio, Mochila was able to create a clear and compelling visual presentation to explain their product and CustomShow software let them manage and present all of their online and offline presentation materials.