Vermont Matters wins 2 FCS Portfolio Awards

On May 13 in New York, Vermont Matters won 2 awards at the FCS Portfolio Awards event. The Financial Communications Society (FCS) recognized 28 financial services providers for excellence in their advertising, collateral, and digital media. The Merchants Bank's Vermont Matters won Gold in the Corporate Image Web Sites category. The site also took home the Best-In-Show award for Interactive.

You can view the list of winners here. Quite a coup for a local Vermont Bank, especially since it was up against the big financial guns and winners, including Merrill Lynch, U.S. Trust, Ameritrade, e-Trade and Barclays, to name a few.

The VermontMatters.com site tells the stories of Merchants Bank's customers through video stories and interviews. It profiles Merchants employees and allows people to connect with them through social media. We've also used the site to crowdsource decisions about our promotional events.

Huge kudos to Bill Drew and his Cottage 10, the brand and advertising agency that runs the Merchants account and led the Vermont Matters work. My firm Digalicious led the interactive work on strategy, design and development. I worked with Corey Machanic, who led the Art Direction, and Kolody, who led the development work. Bruce Gibbs worked with Bill to create the videos.

Of course, none of this would've been possible without a forward thinking client, Merchants Bank, and the people who oversaw the project, EVP Tom Leavitt and Marketing Manager Betsy Kapner.