"Internet Promotion of the Year." Sizzle Award

Exhibitor Magazine, the premiere trade magazine for trade show and event marketing management, recently honored us with a "Sizzle" Award for a Custom Calendar ScreenSaver that we created for the AICPA (American Institute of Certified Public Accountants).

The AICPA handed out their ScreenSavers at various tradeshows that they exhibited at; and the Reminder Features within these ScreenSavers actually promoted their own seminars, conferences and other events association, not to mention their website! Here is what they had to say:

"Most screensavers are nothing more than a pretty face...The American Institute of Certified Public Accountants took the pretty pictures and added something useful - an interactive desktop calendar. By including something everybody can use, the screensaver infiltrates the desktop, becomes a useful Web marketing tool, and makes a powerful trade show giveaway..."

"Screen savers are the wave of the future, but conventional savers don't really do anything," says Maughan [trade show manager]. "When the association wanted a vehicle to promote the Web site, screen savers seemed like the right medium to meet our goals."

The promotion was to generate traffic for the Web site and its special interest pages, encourage purchasing of association publications, educate users about AICPA events, and promote membership...

The calendar gives automatic reminders of where AICPA will be exhibiting and lets users add their own important dates...

Once the screen saver finds a permanent place on a user's desktop, it will also promote the association's Web site. By clicking on a button that says AICPA, users are taken directly to the Web site.

Sizzle judges called the Web promotion "A good use of technology and functional for a target market."

Best of all, Maughan turned the screensaver into a cost-effective, long-term promotion... available on the association's Web site for free downloads."If all of our 330,000 members download the file, the added exposure helps justify the cost of the disks," says Maughan. Giving users the option of downloading the screen saver dramatically reduces the promotion's cost.

The technology also allows Maughan the option of adding new information and pictures. "When I'm ready to update the calendar next year, I can entice attendees with new pictures and be on their computers for another year," says Maughan. "If you have vision, you can do so much with Web promos."

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