Category: Awards Ideas

Most organizations appreciate the importance of recognizing individual achievement and accomplishment. However, many organizations fail to appreciate the necessity of recognizing that same effort and accomplishment when it comes to teams and groups, especially in the successful completion of significant projects.

In this article, we discuss project completion awards and some end-of-project gift ideas.

End of Project Gift Ideas for Recognizable Achievements

There are any number of team efforts worthy of recognition. They can include: bringing a new product to market, or introducing a new software iteration, surmounting a hurdle in the FDA approval process for a new drug, successfully concluding litigation for a plaintiff or defendant, qualifying for an organization-wide certification, reaching a fundraising or revenue goal, attaining an end-user threshold—among many, many other occasions.

We obviously can’t lay out ideas for team awards and gifts for every possible project or occasion. What we’ve done here instead is provide seven broad categories for team and project completion awards.

Some of these end-of-project gift ideas and categories are industry-based, and others aren’t. Obviously, these categories can’t capture the full spectrum of possible occasions for team or project completion gifts.  However, they do highlight examples of how some organizations approach, and effectively recognize, the contribution of successful teams.

1. Pharmaceutical Industry Team Awards

The pharmaceutical industry warrants a separate category here for the important reason that it’s one uniquely driven by collaborative efforts and innovation.

There are many opportunities for recognition of significant team efforts in the pharmaceutical industry. They include research collaborations, clinical studies, and development and commercialization agreements, to name just a few.

The designs in the gallery below, for instance, represent a range of team efforts. These include FDA approvals, New Drug Applications (NDA’s), First Patient Dosed in clinical trials, Investigational New Drug (IND) clearances, and first product shipments.

The gallery also includes several Lucite embedment designs incorporating a vial of the actual drug.

2. Construction/Facility Projects

Over the years, we’ve designed countless pieces for facility dedications, groundbreakings, and other construction milestones. A fresh take on these commemoratives came in a recent modular deign which commemorated individual construction stages over time (see below).

3. IT Integration Team Gift Ideas

The need to integrate systems can arise under a variety of circumstances. It may follow a merger. Or integration may be necessary to facilitate closer collaboration between joint venture partners or, for instance, suppliers and retailers.  Whatever their immediate or long-term goals, system integrations can require a substantial amount of time and expertise.

4. Litigation Team Recognition

Successful judgments provide law firms with an opportunity to recognize internal staff (and, importantly, clients as well) with litigation team awards.

As with many organizational teams, litigation groups are, again, frequently required to put in long hours over a protracted period of time. This is precisely the kind of collective effort that team awards are intended to showcase and recognize.

The Lucite design below is a great example of a team award that goes beyond a simple generic recognition piece. The design isn’t elaborate but it does offer some highly customized touches, especially in the form of photos of team members.

5. Disaster Recovery Team Recognition

This category probably doesn’t come immediately to mind as one worthy of recognition.

But it’s arguably a category that might provide contributions most worthy of team recognition.

After all, almost by definition, crises and disasters demand extraordinary contributions. And they are most often accomplished under unusually adverse and stressful circumstances.

One dramatic example is the power restoration effort mounted in the wake of Hurricane Michael, a Category 4 storm that hit the Florida Panhandle in 2018.

Two things stand out about the commemorative below, which recognized the efforts of PowerSouth employees in repairing in just nine days an astounding 448 miles of damaged transmission lines.

First, the piece is relatively simple. That said, without being extravagant it still has a great deal of cachet and value because it incorporates an actual conductor strand.

6. Project-Specific Team Awards

There’s an almost infinite array of project teams that could potentially be worthy of recognition.

These range from groups successfully involved in tasks ranging from office openings to software upgrades, product launches, internal compliance initiatives, and RFP bids.

The design below, for examples, recognizes the dedication and expertise of a team in the development of a new surgical implant. Here again, the unique aspect of this recognition piece is that it incorporates the actual implant itself.

Creative Project Names and Award Designs

Project names can add an extra dimension of cachet and perceived value to team awards. Often, these names become legendary within an organization—even if they remain somewhat cryptic to outsiders. Incorporating the official project name (even those quirky code names) directly into the award wording can both personalize and memorialize the accomplishment.

Don’t be afraid to be creativity here. Some teams use names inspired by celestial bodies (“Mission Saturn”), movie universes (“Operation Millennium Falcon”), or a favorite city, colleague, or mythological figure. Over the years, we’ve seen everything from “Project Athena” to “The Big Apple Initiative” as a basis for designs.

Whether it’s a nod to a pop culture phenomenon, an inside joke, or a term known only to the team, referencing a code name in either the award design or inscription can transform a recognition piece into a treasured memento of that distinct journey. And, every time someone glances at the shelf and sees “Project Hoth,” the story behind the achievement lives on.

7. Awards Recognizing Organizational Achievement

This final category refers to instances where recognition is for the achievement of a broader, organizational goal.

Once again, this may take any number of forms. These could include reaching predetermined targets for fundraising or revenues or sales, end-users, clients, subscribers, or setting new records in these and hundreds of other possible metrics.

The number of gifts distributed for such an organization-wide accomplishment may vary widely. All organization members and stakeholders may be included as recipients. Alternatively, it may be decided to provide recognition gifts only to an especially deserving subgroup.

However widely these gifts are to be distributed, there is an opportunity to tailor the gifts in a way that will especially resonate with recipients.

One example, shown here, celebrates the NCAA National Championship of LSU’s women’s basketball team. It incorporates a special-edition bottle created by Coca-Cola to celebrate the victory.

Handling Special Requests for Award Orders

Organizations often have unique needs when it comes to ordering recognition pieces for teams and projects. Whether you need to ship awards to multiple locations, expedite delivery for a tight timeline, customize colors, opt for special packaging, or arrange pricing for large orders, these requirements can typically be accommodated.

When you connect with us, simply share your specific requests—such as international shipping, bulk quantities, or tailored packaging solutions—and we’ll work closely with you to ensure a seamless process from start to finish. Our experience includes supporting clients with everything from coordinating deliveries across global offices to meeting accelerated project deadlines.

If you need guidance or have a complex order in mind, our team is ready to provide recommendations and options that best align with your goals, timeframes, and budget. Just let us know how we can help bring your recognition vision to life.

Recognizing Your Organization’s Project Teams 

The categories above hopefully provided you with some inspiration for more successful recognition of projects and teams in your organization.

One takeaway should be that designs don’t have to be extravagant to have perceived value among recipients. A related takeaway is that awards and gifts incorporating some design touch unique to the team or project can provide a great deal of cachet. They can also considerably boost that perception of thoughtfulness and value.

At The Corporate Presence, we’ve been helping clients for over 40 years recognize the efforts of teams engaged in projects covering a full range of industries, regions, and functional areas. Reach out to us about recognizing your organization’s achievements.

If you’re looking for groundbreaking commemorative gifts, you shouldn’t have much of a problem. 

After all, without much effort, you can find a variety of groundbreaking gift ideas, including miniature shovels, life-sized shovels, plastic shovels, chocolate shovels, shovel letter openers, shovel-themed business card holders, and shovel paperweights, to name just a few.

If you’re looking for more imaginative alternatives, why not consider a hardhat-inspired gift? Among others, you can choose from miniature hard hats, gold-plated hard hats, silver hard hats, hard hat desk magnets, hardhat keychains, and many, many more.

The great thing about these hardhat and shovel gifts is that they represent a broad range in price points; some are only a couple of dollars; some, on the other hand, are offered for almost $200 per piece.

The not-so-great thing about these hard hat and shovel ideas is just how repetitious they’ve become and how uninspired they can seem. Just how many times exactly do you think the intended recipient of your groundbreaking gift has already received a shovel or hard hat item?

Will your shovel or hard hat gift have true perceived value in the weeks, months, maybe even minutes after the groundbreaking ceremony is over?

And, more importantly, what does a cliched, unimaginative gift say about your opinion of the efforts of the stakeholders being recognized: all the hard work, persistence, imagination, and expertise that led up to the groundbreaking ceremony in the first place?

Before you opt for some standard, off-the-shelf, uninspired groundbreaking gift, consider one of these five ideas. They may not work for all occasions, but they can offer a refreshing break from the predictable medley of groundbreaking gift items.

1. A Groundbreaking Commemorative Gift That Plays off the Project’s Actual Purpose

Perhaps the clearest departure from a generic hardhat or shovel piece is a commemorative that plays off the actual specifics of your actual project. A design that is fully customized for a single project tends to have considerably higher perceived value than one that could be handed out for virtually any and all groundbreaking. The custom crystal piece is shown here, marking the breaking of ground on a levee project in Foster City, California, cleverly combines two elements unique to this specific project.

An image depicts the project, and that depiction appears on a crystal piece in the shape of a map of Foster City. Again, this kind of distinctive design tends to resonate with stakeholders and recipients precisely because it’s not one that will be lost in a group of lookalike mementos in an office or display case shelf.

2. Groundbreaking Commemorative Gifts Incorporating Building Replicas

Custom three-dimensional replicas of the planned building or facility are an obvious source of gifts, and may even be something you’ve either given out or received in the past.

But what may surprise you, on the other hand, is the variety and sophistication of some of these designs.

Over the years at The Corporate Presence, we have designed and produced a number of building replica commemoratives, including ones made of Lucite, crystal, pewter, resin, and even wood.

Here is an example of a replica, giving you an idea of the detail that can be reproduced.

3. Crystal Commemoratives Incorporating 3-D Etching

One technique that can be used to dramatic effect in groundbreaking commemoratives involves internal, three-dimensional laser etching in crystal.

This technique is far more effectively shown rather than described, and the example below will provide you with a feel for the degree of detail that can be captured in a rendering of a building or facility design.

This technique, which again can be utilized only with crystal, offers a styling alternative to a more traditional three-dimensional rendering of a building.

4. Groundbreaking Mementos Incorporating Photos

You’ve undoubtedly seen a wall plaque commemorating a groundbreaking that incorporates an image or photo—usually one of the planned projects or of the groundbreaking ceremony itself.

Here again, this is also something your intended recipient probably already has on his or her wall; adding yet another plaque is not the surest way to keep your organization—or project—top of mind.

That’s unfortunate because an image of the finished project or a photograph of the key stakeholders participating in a groundbreaking ceremony is quintessentially unique.

Crystal and Lucite provide a number of creative of furthering those unique elements. Both materials provide a range of design possibilities and price points: commemoratives can relatively simple and understated, or they can more elaborate and eye-catching. 

5. Lucite Embedments Incorporating Something Unique to The Site

Over the years we have again helped celebrate many either initiated or completed projects with Lucite commemoratives incorporating some tangible item unique to the site.

These commemoratives commonly make use of soil or sand from the actual site, but they can also incorporate many other items, such as remnants of the facility or building being replaced or renovated.

Bring a New Dimension to Groundbreaking Commemorative Gifts

Yes, the standard, default gifts typically provided to commemorate groundbreakings have become that way for a reason: hardhats and shovels are two things that people tend to associate with groundbreakings.

But the more pressing issue for you should be whether they’re really the only gifts you should consider—let alone whether they’re the only ones your stakeholders want to receive.

The Corporate Presence can help you explore some alternatives that will be both distinctive and memorable.

Celebrating company milestones is a great way to maintain morale at your organization. After all, who doesn’t love taking a moment to acknowledge their success?

Interestingly, many people are unaware of some of the most important corporate milestones, and they also may not know how to celebrate them.

The crucial point here is also that these milestones don’t just provide a chance to observe the immediate occasion.

They also provide an opportunity—one that’s often overlooked— for any organization, whatever its size, to celebrate and reassert its goals, achievements, history, and its very identity and purpose.

We’ve created a short guide that details everything you need to know to make the most of these events. Let’s get started.

1. Company Anniversary

This is one of the most obvious and commonly celebrated milestones for many organizations.

It also presents an ideal opportunity to do more than mark a “birthday”; it’s a chance to acknowledge a shared history, and can also be a time to celebrate a collective mission (or embrace a new, or slightly different one).

But anniversaries aren’t–and shouldn’t– just be significant for large organizations, or ones with long and storied histories.

For many people, starting a business is a completely life-changing experience. So it’s only natural that any and every anniversary for a startup is potentially a significant one.

And whatever their size, all organizations currently find themselves dealing with the pandemic-related challenges of an increasingly decentralized and remote workforce.

Celebrating both an organization’s heritage, as well as its future, is a great way to keep employees connected—wherever they’re working from.

2. Company Growth

Although company growth can be less objective than a company anniversary, but they’re still worth celebrating.

It’s also worth noting that growth benchmarks can take many forms. Significant benchmarks might include internal measures, for instance, like the number of employees or offices.

Or they make take the form of various external metrics, such as ones involving subscriber base or users.

As with company anniversaries, company growth celebrations can often substantial. While they offer an opportunity to recognize a collective achievement (see the discussion of team recognition below), they also provide a chance to single out key players that helped drive the overall growth of the business.

Attaining a particular benchmark or growth threshold might, for instance, be largely due to the work of a particular product development team, or line of business.

3. Work Anniversary

Celebrating the anniversaries of the people who work at your organization is also important. After all, making employees feel valued and recognized is one of the most efficient ways to maintain peak performance.

On average, work anniversaries are typically much smaller than other forms of celebration. This is particularly true for lower-level employees. Executive work anniversaries, however, tend to be more substantial due the impact of greater longevity and contribution.

Work anniversaries are often acknowledged through small gifts or privileges. For example, the company may pay to take the employee out to lunch that day in appreciation of another year of their continued performance.

This will, of course, depend on the size of the organization. For a company with thousands of employees, large celebrations are impractical. Still, going out of your way to reward workers can have notable benefits. This is true even if all you do is send out a congratulatory email.

Many organizations provide tiered custom awards for employee anniversaries. These pieces tend to have a more enduring impact and perceived value over time. They also provide these organizations with a unique branding opportunity.

4. Team Recognition

Many projects are only possible through the combined work of a team. In fact, the success of an organization overall often relies on its core teams to deliver results. Recognizing the success and dedication of a team, especially one that has been focused on a project for a considerable time, is not only beneficial to employees but also in the organization’s best interest.

In scenarios where a team went above and beyond, executives may hand-deliver a thank you note. Or, they may have a special meeting with them in order to discuss their performance and the impact they had on the organization.

It also shouldn’t be a surprise that team recognition awards are one of the core ways in which organizations acknowledge team performance. Again, noteworthy team performances can take a wide variety of forms. They could be found in the efforts of a successful litigation group, or of those who’ve developed a drug from its inception to FDA approval.  More traditionally, these  commemoratives can express gratitude for the outstanding performance of key individuals, like sales recognition awards, for example.

5. Revenue Goals

Regarding celebrations, revenue goals are often prioritized. This is especially true if the previous revenue goal was exceeded by a large amount.

How involved the celebration is will be dictated by overall performance. For example, let’s assume your company needed to generate $50,000 in revenue during the previous quarter. If your employees managed to generate $100,000 in revenue, this calls for a large commemoration.

In cases like these, the company may even choose to publicize its milestone. This is achieved through various strategies, including:

• Promoting posts on social media
• Getting in touch with local news outlets
• Creating a celebration video and then sharing
• Emailing customers and clients

Under ideal conditions, this could greatly increase the notoriety of your brand. You may even attract investors who are looking to place money into promising organizations. Be sure to take this into consideration when moving forward. In many cases, celebrating financial achievements can benefit your business in the future.

Here again, custom awards provide both an opportunity to reward and recognize efforts and commemorate the organization’s growth and vitality.

Acknowledging Company Milestones Is Essential

Keep the above information about company milestones in mind so that you take full advantage of these opportunities when the time comes. This will allow you to create a much more positive atmosphere within your organization.

Want to learn more about what we have to offer our customers? Feel free to get in touch with us today and see how we can help.

As the gallery below illustrates, product replicas, almost by definition, can provide unique deal toy ideas—as well as those for valued custom corporate awards and gifts.

Mention “product replica” and most people start to wince.

After all, the term can bring to mind the forced hoopla of your last street fair or trade show—with human arms protruding from a 10-foot can of some obscure energy drink, positioned next to, say, a flapping, Yeti-sized inflatable French fry.

But at The Corporate Presence we’ve come to view product replicas somewhat differently. In fact, they’ve long formed the basis for some inspired deal toy ideas—as well as those for highly successful custom corporate awards and gifts.

Deal Toy Ideas That Resonate—and Not Just for Packaged Goods

A quick look at the gallery will show that there’s a range of replica types represented here: some replicate the product packaging, some the product itself—and even here you’ll notice that this can furnish deal toy ideas not only for packaged goods but for everything from mobile devices (for instance, the Prodata piece below) to power drills (the Stanley Black & Decker Lucite).

One clever variation of this deal toy idea involves the incorporation of the actual product in the design—something that has been done seamlessly with, for instance, the inclusion of a windshield wiper in the Trico piece designed for Sawaya Segalas.

Choosing the Right Material

The obvious requirement in these designs is the duplication of the details of the particular product, or its packaging etc. The scale may vary slightly, but the details have to be recognizable—and most certainly if the gift is expected to pass muster with the recipients at the relevant company (who undoubtedly are the very ones most familiar with those details).

And knowing which medium might be most appropriate for the precise execution of your particular deal toy idea—whether it’s Lucite, resin, wood, crystal, or some combination of these—is essential. Our unrivaled experience in these media, and the fact that we have unfettered access to the expertise and experience of personnel at our wholly-owned factory, give us a considerable edge in keeping these replicas faithful to the originals.

We hope you enjoyed this gallery, and look forward to working with you on your next project—whatever the occasion or design. Give us a call today.

• Awards Ideas

Zippers, shrapnel, moose manure, regurgitated coins, cookies, umbilical cords, teeth—these are just a few of the things that have found their way into our Lucite embedments over the years.

“Commemorating Success Globally”.

That’s our stated mission here at The Corporate Presence.

And success, as we’ve all heard repeatedly, has many definitions, and can take many forms. Sometimes it may involve pulling off the most profitable deal in history; or hitting a 5-year work anniversary; or surviving a trainee program; or just ….surviving.

…and not just surviving in the figurative sense, but in the more elemental, near-death-experience, can’t-believe-I’m-still-intact kind of sense.

Like the soldier who’d had shrapnel surgically removed from the wound he’d narrowly survived—and now wanted us to embed the fragments in Lucite. Or the client who wanted to embed a corroded bolt—the one that had failed to support the metal plate that had then nearly impaled him.

Embedding the shrapnel worked; as shown here, the bolt came out pretty well too.

And then there’s the guy who wanted us to embed some moose manure…..

That was a slightly different story. That worked too—or, at least, the client seemed pleased.

The Weird Physics of Lucite Embedments: What Works, What Doesn’t

After 40 years of experience we could recite a seemingly random, stream-of-consciousness medley of objects, along with their various Lucite embedment prospects: teeth (work), bone (works), regurgitated coins (works) , glitter (works), lottery tickets (don’t work), umbilical cords (work), peanuts (works), almonds (don’t work),syringes (usually doesn’t work), rocks (usually don’t work), cookies (usually doesn’t work) etc.

The baking stage necessary to Lucite production is an exothermic process, in which objects not only take on heat but emit it as well. This explains how a cookie might conceivably survive the baking process unscathed while a rock doesn’t (a rock can absorb so much heat that it causes the Lucite itself to crack). The intensity of the heat also explains why the rubber wheels of that Hot Wheels car you’d intended to have embedded are sure to melt—and leave the paint job fried.

The Fascination with Lucite Embedments: It’s Not Weird if It’s Your Product

Why does any of this matter? After all, you may not have some oddment (strange or otherwise) that you’re looking to memorialize in Lucite. So why should you care?

Because the item in question—the one you might be considering embedding—might be your—or, more importantly, your client’s product—meaning your client’s cherished product. So knowing whether a piece of coal, or an aircraft engine component, or even a cookie, can successfully embed, and how it’s likely to look, can become very important. Two good examples are shown here— of a embedded spice pod, and of an embedded padlock, a product so closely associated with the client’s service that it was pivotal to the Lucite design.

When it comes to embedding objects, the only generalization that holds is that you frequently need to conduct a test. Because we own a Lucite factory this is something we can do quickly—and, by virtue of our unique access to factory personnel—with a considerable amount of experience and insight into whether, and how, a given embedment might work.

Regardless of what kind of success you’re commemorating, give us a call.

Click Here To Check Out More Lucite Embedments

David Parry is the Director of Digital Strategy at The Corporate Presence, which designs and manufactures deal toys, custom awards, and Lucite embedments.