Urban is pleased to announce that it received the “People’s Choice” award for the firm’s 2018 holiday video at the SMPS Philadelphia Philly’s Phinest Marketing Communication Awards. The award is selected by gala attendees, who vote among all of the award submissions.

“We appreciate being recognized by our peers in the industry and we are grateful that our video was honored with the People’s Choice Award,” said Andrew Chakmakjian, an Urban vice president and director of corporate development. “Our video production team works hard to develop an innovative holiday video each year, and our video from 2018 is the best yet.”

“This video showcases a more playful aspect of our visual storytelling capabilities,” said David D’Alba, Urban’s supervisor of video production. “We owe a debt of thanks to Barbara Mundie for allowing us use of her Lemax Christmas set to create a little village spreading the holiday cheer.”

At the end of each year, clients and colleagues are inundated with holiday messages. Many end up overlooked. For the 2018 holiday season, Urban Engineers was determined to cut through the clutter and deliver an engaging holiday video that would improve on retention rates – meaning the percent of viewers who finish the video – from previous years, which were in the 70% range.

Planning began October 1. The concept was inspired by Vimeo's “Staff Pick - Best of the Month” from July 2018 called "one minute of miniatures." A staffer’s relative had a collection of miniatures that could be used for free, but had to be returned by Halloween. This meant shooting had to be completed before October 31, providing a limited timeframe to create scenes, movement, and to film each shot before editing in November, all while maintaining regularly scheduled work. The firm utilized their studio and equipment to stage small intimate winter scenes, as well as a larger town scene, to give the audience a sense of scale of the “world.” Mechanical elements animated the pieces, like a lazy Susan to give motion to the figure skaters. The music was composed in-house, and the only digital animation was the snow and wagging dog tail.

With so many holiday messages sent out in the weeks before Christmas, an earlier release provided a way to get ahead of the competition. The campaign well exceeded the goal of improving on previous years, with a video retention rate of 86%. Watch the video below: