An Award Winning Creative SEO Agency in Edmonton

Standing on the ACE Awards stage on Saturday, April 7, 2018 marked an important milestone in Top Draw’s 25-year history. As we enter into our 25th year in business, the digital marketing agency (finally) won several creative awards, including a prestigious ACE Award. In all fairness to past members of the creative team here, we haven’t ever actually entered creative award competitions before this year. That deliberate absence from award shows had a lot to do with the way we perceived our agency’s identity and positioning in the market.

Two and a half years ago that strategic direction began to change. Ken and Adriel, Top Draw’s leadership team, had an employee recommend me for my current position as Creative Director (thanks!) and I was given the clear mandate to build a proper creative team, establish a sustainable creative practice, and win industry recognition awards – in that specific order. All of those strategic objectives have already been achieved or are beginning to materialize in our organization.

Our Agency’s Strategic Creative Evolution Is Gaining Momentum

Building a Foundation of Organizational Humility and Strategic Planning

I’ve been in the creative industry long enough to know that even when there is a structured plan, unpredictability remains constant. So the fact that we have been able to successfully implement our transformation strategy, in the planned sequential order, is pleasantly surprising to me. I suppose much of that success stems from our organizational humility that allows us to be genuinely self-critical about what is and what isn’t working, about Top Draw’s core competencies, and to set realistic goals that leverage our existing strengths while addressing our identified weaknesses. We also prioritized building the right foundation with the proper methodology. Step one was assembling a creative team that demonstrates both high functionality and professional ambition. We now have successfully established that essential team structure.

Challenges in Transforming Our Design Services Approach

Creating a sustainable creative practice has proven to be a more challenging objective to achieve. Even though Top Draw was originally founded as a graphic design shop in the early 1990’s, our historical approach to selling design services had always positioned them as a product to sell to businesses rather than presenting design as the strategic output of business-focused creative thinking. “Do you need a website? We make affordable websites that are Lead Generation Machines™.”

The Limitations of ROI-Focused Positioning for Creative Reputation

Of course that value proposition worked effectively for a certain segment of business clients, and still does because it directly addressed the metric that most businesses prioritize above all others – ROI. But if delivering measurable ROI becomes the singular way you position and brand a creative agency, it becomes an inevitable certainty that creativity (as defined by professional Designers and Art Directors) will eventually diminish in importance, and the agency’s creative reputation never fully develops or matures. No established creative reputation = no attraction of top-flight creative talent, and no interest generated from potential clients that specifically seek the kind of creative agency that wins prestigious awards and industry attention.

Building Trust Through Complex Brand Challenges and Client Relationships

But, because client work is not something we typically lack at Top Draw, the past eighteen months has brought a small but growing group of customers with broader strategic needs to our agency. This client segment then discovers that we have developed a high functioning creative team that is worthy of being trusted with complex, nuanced brand challenges. Because of that established trust relationship, we have been able to start building a portfolio of work that is winning significant industry recognition and awards.

Award Recognition Across Multiple Prestigious Industry Competitions

To date, the 2017/18 award season has seen Top Draw win 14 creative awards across multiple competitions: 7 Muse Awards recognizing creative excellence, 6 Hermes Awards for outstanding creative work, and an ACE award for exceptional creative achievement.

The Significance of Our ACE Award for Logo and Word-mark Design

Of those accolades, I’m especially proud of our ACE award for best logo and Word-mark design. This recognition is particularly meaningful because it’s not just any ACE award category, but a highly competitive division that typically attracts numerous submissions and showcases exceptional high-level creative work. I’m also proud of that specific award because of the caliber of the judging panel (including respected industry leaders like Gail Mak from ZAK). I have followed their professional careers passively for over a decade, and their recognition of our work carries significant weight in the industry.

The Next Phase in Our Creative Agency’s Strategic Evolution

So we have successfully established a great creative team, and have won several prestigious industry awards, but my vision extends further. I want more opportunities for work that presents challenging and complex creative problems, more exceptional talent looking to join our growing team, and more industry recognition (hopefully). But we still haven’t reached the point where clients actively seek us out directly because of the reputation for quality creative work that we have demonstrated we’re capable of producing.

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