the visual mercenary group is proud to announce the launch of the 2009 MPA Kelly Awards Gallery.  for those of you who voted on MPA’s America’s Favorite Ad at mag-ads.com, the people choice winner has also been announced. at the kelly site you can view all the winners, inspiration videos from the creative teams behind the work, judges’ insights, and case studies from the winning ads. the winning team took home $25,000. there’s some pretty good stuff to check out there.

this is the third year that we’ve helped MPA develop the kelly awards site and the first that we designed and built the polling site at mag-ads.com. additionally we created print and banner ads based on the look and feel of mag-ads. this was truly a multimedia assignment spanning LAMP application design and development, print, video, audio, and flash animation & programming. we love working on this kind of integrated media stuff.

so how did your picks fare with the industry judges at kellyawards.org?

macnrg

this post actually has a dual serving purpose. the first is let you all know about the new look and microsite we developed for nyc based apple consulting firm macnrg and the second is to give them a shameless plug because they’re our friends and we like them and the work they do, anyway.

apple logo over the years

although macnrg is all things mac, they specialize in final cut pro server and video systems. because of that,  while we were thinking about their logo design - we thought we’d have a bit of fun and play off the apple brand. if you like, you can read a quick little history of the apple logo. we decided to turn the apple into a tv monitor. the leaf fells like an aerial antenna in our design (how analog lol). then we gave it a late 20th century glow effect to match the ‘nrg’ name. we think it’s a good blend of old and new.

macnrg has installed and set up our file server and is now in the process of running the voip line for our other friends, cult360. rob (the director at mcnrg) would like us to use the logo in an animation for the site, but we’ll see… it all depends on how good he sets up our fcp server ;P

http://www.comcastlessonslearned.com/

Comcast, in association with Business Week has put together a micro site that is focused on providing quick stand-alone lessons for small business owners. the site was designed by Segal Savad and was built by the visual mercenary group. this is the second year of the site. there are six lessons from 2008 and we just recently uploaded lesson #2 for 2009. it’s a collection of interviews from business owners across the country by writer Marcia Layton Turner. Marcia offers some keen insight to the problems presented. look for the commentary on the right sidebar. there are also resource links to help out if needed.

the site breaks the content down into the problem areas that small business owners run into. like me, probably most s.b. owners never took any business and/or marketing courses; it’s been more of a trial by fire. they might have had a passion about something, opened a shop or store and left a lot of the course to fate. although it may work for some businesses, overall that’s not a good strategy to have - especially in these economic times.

some of the current lessons online are:
1. Focus on generating revenue vs reducing expenses
2. Allowing one client to dominate your bottom line
3. Overlooking the easy sale
4. Business Plan Basics
5. Managing Your Finances

they’re great to read if you’re looking to open a small business and good reminders for those that are already running. the site contains a summary article of the business lesson and all complete interviews are available in mp3 format, if users would like to download and listen. let us know what you think and if there is anything you’d like featured for future lessons.