Urban is pleased to announce that it has won three National Marketing Communications Awards from the Society for Marketing Professional Services (SMPS). The firm was recognized in third place in the advertising category, third place in the holiday video category, and first place in the digital magazine category, meaning the firm’s publication Excellence was recognized as best in the country. The awards were presented at the 38th annual SMPS Awards Gala held during the organization’s national conference in Los Angeles.

“It is exciting to be recognized by our peers in the AEC marketing community,” said Urban Executive Vice President Kenneth Fulmer. “Our corporate development team is dedicated to championing the quality work that makes Urban successful. It is an honor to see our efforts recognized by SMPS as being among the best in the country.”

Excellence is Urban’s digital quarterly magazine. Urban’s in-house team researches, plans, and develops the magazine, including determining theme and message, composing articles, interviews, photography and video production, graphic design, and editing. The team is also responsible for distribution, webpage setup, email delivery, and engagement analysis. Significant effort is given to researching the projects, clients, and people, and focusing on those that are both timely and relevant to Urban’s strategic business operations.

Urban’s advertisements are unique among its engineering peers because they are putting a “Face” on engineering. In general, industry advertising tends to focus on projects. Urban believes that clients hire people and what ultimately makes a project special is the people behind it, so the firm’s advertisements focused on employees as the main subject. All ads are created in-house by Urban’s corporate development team and tailored individually to the specific readership of the periodical in which the ad will appear.

For the most recent holiday season, Urban created a fun, inviting, and instantly engaging video with children of one the firm’s employees. Each view of the video raised $1 for the Kevin Brown Scholarship for the ACE Mentor Program. An active Urban employee, Kevin volunteers his weeknights as a mentor and was once a participant in the program himself. The plays of the video helped reach the firm’s fundraising goal of $5,000 for the scholarship. To view the video, click here.

SMPS is a community of marketing and business development professionals working to secure profitable business relationships for their AEC companies. The SMPS National Marketing Communications Awards Program is the longest-standing, most prestigious awards competition that recognizes excellence in marketing communications by professional services firms in the design and building industry.