An alumnus and a current graduate student of the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point won two international awards for a rebranding campaign they created for a local business.
Kit Kiefer, a master’s in communication graduate from Plover, and Brad Rutta, a master’s in communication student from Stevens Point, helped develop a microsite for Delta Dental that was honored with two Silver Awards from the International Academy of the Visual Arts as part of the 2011 Communicator Awards. The awards were in the Branded Content—Business-to-Business and Interactive Multimedia—Corporate Image categories.
The microsite showcases Delta Dental’s staff and new slogan, “Experience. The Delta Dental Difference.” Rutta, the company’s creative manager, conceptualized the site and its links to LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter. He also created a unified look for the site and collateral materials. Keifer, the company’s corporate-communications manager, created the slogan, scripted and paper-edited the videos and wrote much of the supporting copy. They worked with outside vendors on photography and videography and helped screen campaign participants.
“We had a strong story to tell, we had a clear vision of how we wanted to communicate it, and we had the freedom and resources to tell it our way,” Rutta says. “We now have a hub for our brand messaging, and more ways to reach out to current customers and new customers.”
“The first story is our people,” Kiefer adds. “Our people make us different, and we now have a way to get you closer than ever to our people. The second story is that we took our people, took on the world and won.”
Both managers credited their UW-Stevens Point education with enhancing their skills and giving them new ways of addressing creative challenges.
“I had researched social media so extensively for my grad classes that when it came time to implement it in a marketing campaign I had a strong idea of what it could and couldn’t do,” Rutta says.
“I take my UWSP education to work with me every day,” Kiefer adds.
The Communicator Awards are judged and overseen by the International Academy of the Visual Arts, whose members include Condè Nast, Coach, Walt Disney, “The Ellen DeGeneres Show,” Estee Lauder, HBO, MTV, Polo Ralph Lauren, Victoria’s Secret, Wired, Yahoo! and many others.
Delta Dental of Wisconsin, headquartered in Stevens Point, is a not-for-profit dental service corporation offering benefit services, claims processing and plan administration to employers throughout Wisconsin since 1962.
