Category: Tips & Tricks

Settling on an appropriate budget for commemorating a financial transaction isn’t always so straightforward. Budgets for finance awards or tombstones are typically a function of the size of the deal. For the most part, the larger the deal, the larger the budget.

But there are other factors that might complicate this formula.

The importance of transaction awards also tends to closely track the importance of the deal to the participants. And this isn’t always just strictly a function of the deal size. The deal might, for example, celebrate a firm’s first transaction in a given economic sector, or in a geographic region. Or it might be the kind of transaction that sets it apart for participants (and, therefore, potential recipients of the tombstones.)

But What’s an Appropriate Budget for Your Awards?

So why is all this important to a discussion of ways to save money on financial tombstones?

Because how you approach or modify your tombstone budget should take these factors into account. A finance award celebrating, for example, a firm’s first foray into life sciences could be great for recognizing internal participants.

But the deal’s significance in that regard also makes that commemorative a highly effective marketing tool for the firm (or group) as well going forward.

This potential return on an award should be kept in mind as you consider if, and where, budgets might be trimmed on a specific deal. That said, you’ll still always want to spend money wisely, as well as strategically.

This post will offer some ideas on saving money on tombstones—on a general basis. As you review the tips below, keep in mind the goal of not only saving money, but also getting the most out of the overall spend on your specific transaction.

5 Money-Saving Tips for Finance Awards

1) Consider Aggregating Transactions

There are several recurring situations in which budget concerns can become especially daunting. One is when a firm (or group) is considering starting (or resuming) a tombstone award program. One common hurdle is that there’s a backlog of accumulated deals, or there are a number of relatively small deals in that backlog.

One solution is to combine deals in a single design.

As shown below, this format can not only combine deals in a single piece, it can also bring focus and coherence to a deal backlog. You might combine in a single design, for instance, deals from the same year, or the same region.

The marketing impact of graveyard pieces like this can be considerable. They can also be used to showcase transactions done on behalf of a certain client, or in an area/sector in which your firm is looking to establish (or showcase) its experience and expertise.

2) Choose Appropriate Materials

If you’re trying to stay within a well-defined budget, certain award materials aren’t likely to be a good choice. Almost all awards and tombstones involve some degree of set-up (fixed) costs. But for certain materials, namely pewter and resin, those set-up costs can be especially steep.

Both pewter and resin undoubtedly have their virtues, but they should be avoided if your budget is tight. Consider materials such as crystal or Lucite instead.

3) Keep Designs Simple (Though Not Necessarily Boring)

It may seem almost self-evident that simpler designs tend to be less expensive. (The only additional consideration here is size: larger pieces tend to be more expensive than smaller ones.)

But that doesn’t mean your simpler, “standard” design has to look meager or lackluster.

The gallery shown below, for instance, includes just a few essentially “basic” shapes. For other examples of standard-shaped designs with some cachet, check out our post on variations of basic designs, especially for some more expensive possible alternatives.

4) Consider a Signature Finance Award Design

If you have a slightly longer time horizon in mind in terms of cutting costs, you may want to consider a signature award or tombstone design. A standard, recurring design like this can have several advantages for your firm or group.

First, a signature award can save you money–particularly in the form of reduced set-up costs on future projects. Secondly, the design’s recognizability can have considerable marketing value (especially if that design plays off, or incorporates, a logo or some other aspect of your firm’s branding.)

Finally, a signature award can save you considerable time, a commodity that should always be taken into account when calculating “costs”.

5) Recognize Incremental Costs (and Value)

As noted above, even a small order can incur some set-up costs. So if you’re going to incur those costs, be sure you’re minimizing them. Obviously, even with a small quantity, each additional piece further amortizes those set-up costs (and reduces the price per piece). Therefore, if you expect to need extra pieces at some future time, for instance, to display in a conference room, reception area, or other offices, you should add those to your initial order.

Why not just order those additonal pieces sometime in the future as needed? You could. The only drawback is that the award firms tend to have different set-up policies. Most firms will keep your artwork in their system for years, but after a certain period after your order, you may be required to incur some set-up costs again. Make sure you’re aware of your options here early on.

Save Money on Finance Awards at The Corporate Presence

Over the course of 40+ year The Corporate Presence has accumulated a good deal of insight into how clients can contain costs on awards. In fact, over the years we’ve devoted a number of posts over the years to specific tops such as saving money on rush orders, and reducing costs (and anxiety) for those orders involving closing dinners and other deadlines.

See how we can help you implement some of the cost-cutting strategies above, as well as some others not mentioned here. Get the ordering process started. Reach out to us today.

David Parry is the Director of Digital Strategy for The Corporate Presence, and for Prestige Custom Awards, a designer and provider of custom awards, ranging from creative employee and client recognition pieces to the N.F.L. Commissioner’s Awards, and ESPN’s ESPY awards.

If may be new to deal tombstones or, as they’re also more commonly known, “deal toys“. To the extent you do know them, they might seem like a waste of time, money, and effort. The word “toy”, after all, usually tends to denote something that, however amusing, is still basically pretty frivolous and insubstantial.

Deal tombstones Have Several Significant Functions

One is to recognize and reward the efforts of those employees, usually at an investment bank, who put together a transaction.

The other, even more significant rationale involves the bank’s clients. Unlike the countless, interchangeable pens, letter openers, and clocks that banks once gave clients as celebratory gifts following a transaction, deal toys are distinctive, bespoke items—ones that tend to have considerable value and cachet with the clients receiving them.

That cachet leads them not only to keep but proudly display them for years to come.

And that’s precisely where the marketing value comes in.

For almost 60 years now, banks have appreciated the impact of deal tombstones. Whether they’re made of Lucite, crystal, wood, etc., or displayed in a reception area, conference room, or office, they succeeded in silently keeping that bank’s name (and brand) in front of the clients for years—even decades.

Amplifying Your Deal Tombstone’s Marketing Value

So deal tombstones have marketing value—and something that’s been proven over a number of decades. But what about special situations in which you may want to enhance that value and impact? There are a number of reasons for this.

You may be looking to celebrate a landmark transaction of some sort. Or the transaction might involve a new, or particularly prized client. Or the deal might mark the first foray of your bank (or group or office) into a particular sector, type of transaction, or geographic region.

Obviously, a memorably creative tombstone offers one route to increased impact on a client. (And rest assured: a memorable piece doesn’t necessarily involve a flamboyant design or a huge budget). But are there other, additional ways of heightening a deal toy’s impact?

We’ve outlined a few ideas below.

1) Custom Packaging

Custom presentation boxes provide a cost-effective way of increasing the perceived value of a deal toy. They also provide another way of showcasing your logo (especially effective when coupled with that of your client).

2) Multi-Transaction Pieces

A “graveyard” design is an assemblage of “tombstones”, each representing a separate transaction, in a single piece.

These are a cost-effective way to commemorate a number of deals at once (which makes them an ideal solution if you have a backlog of deals you need to commemorate.)

These designs also offer a number of marketing possibilities. You might, for instance, want to provide a client with a piece commemorating not only one transaction but a number of transactions you’ve performed on their behalf.

Or you could use a multiple-transaction design to serve a more general marketing goal.  Displayed in a reception area or conference room could, for example, show transactions involving a variety of clients that highlight your expertise and experience in m&a, Latin America, or the tech sector.

3) Modular Deal Tombstone Designs

Modular designs commemorate a series of related transactions for a given client over a period of time. They can be a very compelling, tangible expression of your sustained commitment (and dedication) to that client over time. One example is the puzzle piece shown at the top of this post. Another is the modular design shown above, in which successive deals are slotted into a base.

4) Signature Designs

One ongoing strategy for elevating the impact of your deal toys involves a signature design. A recognizable signature tombstone design is yet another way to maintain visibility and further advance your brand with clients.

5) Deal Tombstones Incorporating Custom Touches

One surefire way of ensuring that both a deal toy—and your brand—continue to resonate with a client involves customization. More specifically, it involves an element of customization particularly significant to your client.

That might mean, for instance, a tombstone with a Lucite embedment of your client’s actual product. Or the design could be based on a 3-D facsimile of that product. Or it could creatively play off the client’s brand mascot or logo.

The key here is to incorporate something that has meaning unique to the recipient.

Maximizing the Marketing Impact of Your Tombstone

To fully appreciate the marketing value of a deal tombstone, you have to approach it from several levels. Yes, deal toys have a demonstrated ability to advance an institution’s brand, such as that of an investment bank. That also holds, as mentioned before, on a secondary level. They can further the brand (and reputation) of a group of offices within that bank.

But even beyond that, deal toys serve another, more subtle marketing goal. Importantly, they can also help advance your personal brand. They provide tangible evidence of your own expertise and experience, ones that you will probably want to take with you as you change jobs (or simply move to successive jobs at the same firm.)

At The Corporate Presence, we’ve been creating and enhancing the value of deal toys for clients for over 40 years. Whatever the size or type of transaction you’d like to commemorate, we can make sure your deal toy recognizes its full marketing potential. Reach out to us and get your project started.

David Parry is the Director of Digital Strategy for The Corporate Presence, and for Prestige Custom Awards, a designer and provider of custom corporate awards ranging from creative employee and client recognition pieces to the N.F.L. Commissioner’s Awards, and ESPN’s ESPY awards.

Investment banking deal toys seldom reflect the complexity of their underlying transactions. Take, for instance, the deal toy commemorating Dell’s landmark acquisition of EMC. The $67 billion transaction, the largest tech deal in history at the time, required almost a year of intricate financial, legal, and regulatory maneuverings before its final close in September of 2016.

The tombstone, by contrast, was a model of forthright simplicity: a basic (though effective) Lucite rectangle design.

But this post will focus on a different kind of complexity.

The Challenges of Commemorating Complex Investment Banking Deals

This post will consider instead the challenges of commemorating transactions in which one or more elements of the deal seem daunting or unmanageable.

There are any number of reasons for this, including:

• The “deal” being recognized actually encompasses, or necessarily involves, multiple related deals.
• The transaction involves a large number of assets.
• The assets involved are diverse and far-flung.
• There are a large number of parties to the transaction.
• Those parties (or assets) represent a number of geographic areas.

And there might be both practicalities and sensitivities that make these kinds of considerations significant—even potentially hazardous. The issue for you might be representing in the design all parties, and on relatively equal terms. Or in approaching a deal toy design, you might want to represent fully a client’s multiple lines of business–if only for fear of neglecting or slighting some individual or group.

At the same time, you don’t want these elements to come together haphazardly.

As always, your goal is a design that integrates (or harmonizes) these elements in a seamless, coherent, and creative way.

Below we’ll look at examples of design solutions in common situations in which some aspect of a deal might seem particularly awkward or unwieldy.

The Deals Involving Multiple Transactions

There are any number of logical or practical reasons for combining more than one transaction in a single tombstone design.

You’ve undoubtedly seen relatively conventional pieces that incorporate multiple deals. They might be similar to the Williams and Kongsberg designs shown below.

But you may not have seen multiple deals incorporated in a more elaborate, creative way. Also shown below are tombstones, such as the Williams and Kongsberg pieces, that combine the deals in a single, unifying creative design.

The Williams piece shown here, for instance, incorporates four separate transactions. Importantly, the planetary design ties together all four deals under the transaction code name: Project Big Bang.

Also, you may not be aware of just how many deals could potentially be combined in a single design. You may not need to recognize as many as six separate transactions (as in the Deutsche Bank deal toy below) but it should be reassuring to know that it can be done.

Modular Designs

You may also recognize now, or reasonably expect, that the transaction(s) you’re currently recognizing will be part of a series. Here again, you should be aware that there are any number of modular designs that allow for this possibility. You’ll find two examples in this gallery.

Deals Involving Numerous (or Varied) Assets

Certain sectors are particularly prone to deals with an array of assets. Real estate transactions, for instance, can frequently involve a portfolio of properties. In the consumer goods space as well, there can be a portfolio or products and/or brands that need to be represented in the deal tombstone.

Photographs (along with flags and maps) offer great ways to represent assets in various portfolios. The first two designs below efficiently show an array of assets: in one case Japanese commercial properties, and in the other, an entire beverage product line.

You may have a more challenging set of assets to work with. Or you may simply want to render them in a more involved, creative way.

The two other designs in this gallery provide great examples. The KKR signpost piece is especially effective since it not only represents the names of various theme park properties but also conveys their locations.

On a larger scale, you might look to the spinning hexagonal design below. Altogether, the six sides include the logos of 12 brand and product categories.

Deals Involving Numerous Parties

Initial public offerings are transactions most likely to involve an unusually large group of participating institutions. The Facebook IPO, for instance, famously involved not only the three lead investment banks but also 30 additional “correspondent” banks that needed to be represented in the deal toy.

And yes, there’s nothing stopping you from simply listing all the parties to a transaction on the written transaction terms or even adding a base to accommodate all of them. But you may be looking for a more elegant solution.

The piece below, for instance, marks the sale by a consortium of its stake in European telecom GTS. The design’s use of plexi tiles not only manages to feature seven of those private equity firms but also to give them considerable prominence and visibility.

The Transaction Requires a Back Story

Sometimes the complexity involved in designing a deal toy is self-imposed. In spite of the always-available path of least resistance, you may feel strongly about conveying the particulars of your deal—what truly made in distinctive to participants.

It’s almost a cliché that “every deal toy tells a story”. Technically, and to varying degrees, they all do. But your ambition might be to relate that narrative with a little more flair—and color.

Take, for example, the Blackstone piece below which commemorated a transaction involving senior living facilities. The bankers, however, wanted to capture a key aspect of this particular dealmaking process: its excruciatingly slow pace.

The eventual deal toy design managed to memorialize all these elements. Both the transaction assets and this particular quirk of the deal making process are represented by the cane, spectacles, and the turtle.

What’s Your Ultimate Role in The Design Process?

It’s important to recognize that the burden of finding solutions or workarounds in the situations outlined above shouldn’t fall to you. You may want to participate in the design process, but ultimately it’s your vendor’s job to provide you with options.

That’s a consideration that probably can’t be overstated.

As much as you might recognize potential pitfalls and challenges in approaching a deal toy, its design can’t become the focus of your life. You obviously have any number of competing demands on your time and mental energy.

That said, you should still be aware that whatever design issue you’re anticipating, it’s undoubtedly one that, at some other time, some other firm has finessed in commemorating some other transaction.

David Parry is the Director of Digital Strategy for The Corporate Presence, and for Prestige Custom Awards, a designer and provider of custom awards, ranging from creative employee and client recognition pieces to the N.F.L. Commissioner’s Awards, and ESPN’s ESPY awards.

Most corporate award ideas are anything but inspired. Which isn’t surprising. A quick online search will show that corporate awards tend to cluster around two very different and distinct categories.

On one hand, you’re likely to see ready-made, mass-produced awards that might seem all too familiar. These include the same menu of generic, formulaic designs that you tend to see on any number of vendor sites. After sifting through the 173rd image of the exact same crystal eagle or star or Lucite #1 numeral, you may understandably be asking a simple question.

Aren’t there any other options for recognizing achievement within your company or organization?

There are. But you may find the alternatives just as frustrating and unappealing.

Because the same search will also turn up an entirely different genre, these pieces consist mainly of weirdly contorted crystal and metal creations with equally pretentious names. These designs might very well be appropriate as decorative additions to your living or dining room, but what exactly do they have to do with your company—and, more significantly, the employees you’re hoping to honor? As many people loathe these kinds of pieces as like them. Do you really want to honor someone with something so potentially polarizing?

Isn’t there some sort of middle ground here?

Is it possible, for instance, to have corporate awards that are customized in ways that would actually be meaningful? Perhaps something tailored after your company or organization’s logo or its mission? Or the specific occasion or accomplishment being honored? Or something else that would potentially resonate with your recipients and contribute to the award’s perceived value?

Corporate Award Ideas That Aren’t Simply Recycled

The shortcoming of most corporate awards is that they convey (or reflect) absolutely nothing about the organizations bestowing them. They’re completely interchangeable.

Most of these awards are so lacking in identity that they could be from virtually any company—in any industry.

Corporate awards are obviously intended to honor the dedication, commitment, and achievements of your employees. However, they also provide another opportunity, one that is directly connected to this primary purpose.

Corporate awards also provide an opportunity to showcase what sets your company apart. It’s an opportunity to define your organization’s identity: to assert your organization’s core values and brand, and make clear their connection to the individuals and accomplishments that are being honored.

Awards that do this also tend to have far greater cachet and resonance among recipients.

5 Standout Corporate Award Ideas

The Golden Saw Award

For Georgia-based Swift Straw, this distinctive crystal award visually represents its corporate mission (providing pine straw and mulch for use by landscapers nationwide). But it also echoes another aspect of the company’s mission. The saw blade design with sharpened teeth plays off the concept of honing and refining skills, a theme that is central to the company’s culture of innovation. It also reflects Swift Straw’s commitment to disrupt and modernize a once-staid industry.

KFC Bucket Award

Granted, not every company is lucky enough to be able to leverage as a design feature something as instantly recognizable as the KFC bucket. On the other hand, your award design might be able to play off something that already has that level of familiarity among your employees—the potential group of recipients. Also keep in mind that effective corporate award ideas should raise awareness of your brand going forward, something the Golden Saw award above has made clear.

The Fist Bump Award

There are innumerable ready-made, off-the-shelf pieces potentially available for this custom award. (Just think, for instance, of the countless “thumbs-up” awards you may have seen online). What makes this such a successful signature award is that it playfully brings into focus the mission of the organization: the North American Blueberry Council.

Immunogen Product Development Award

This Lucite award, recognizing team members instrumental in gaining FDA approval for an ovarian cancer drug, goes beyond a mere visual reference to a product. It incorporates the actual product. Embedded within the Lucite is a vial containing Elahere.

Learning Resources Years-of-Service Award

This award obviously isn’t the first to take inspiration from an organizational logo. What is appealing about this particular crystal design is just how simply and seamlessly that logo is integrated into the design, dovetailing unobtrusively with the shape of the piece. As a category, years-of-service awards tend to be dominated by cookie-cutter, off-the-shelf pieces.

By contrast, this design demonstrates that corporate award ideas don’t have to spring from some involved, “artsy” vision. Like this piece, a truly custom award can be understated, and yet still further a company or organization’s brand.

Corporate Award Ideas from the Corporate Presence

The awards above represent different companies and industries and also vary in the underlying achievements they honor. They also differ in size and in the materials they’re made from.

The one common denominator, however, is that they all depart from the mainstream, default, cookie-cutter awards readily available online. And they all make statements, whether subtly or forcefully, about the organizations they represent–and the members of those organizations they have been chosen to be honored.

At The Corporate Presence, we’ve learned over the course of 40+ years that there will be times when you need to source an off-the-shelf award. That may be because you only need one of two pieces, or you need them in a matter of days.

But beyond those special circumstances, consider reaching out to us when your next award opportunity looms. We can help you take full advantage in designing and producing a truly signature award design that will not only reflect your culture but also resonate with those being honored.

Get the design process started. Reach out to us today.

David Parry is the Director of Digital Strategy for The Corporate Presence, and for Prestige Custom Awards, a designer and provider of custom awards, ranging from creative employee and client recognition pieces to the N.F.L. Commissioner’s Awards, and ESPN’s ESPY awards.

3D crystal etching: it’s an effect that you may not be familiar with—at least by name. And to the extent you might already be familiar with the technique, you may not have liked what you’ve seen.

Most people associate this type of internal laser etching with two very different applications. You may have seen it used to render within crystal highly detailed photographs of family members, and especially, beloved pets.

These designs tend to be polarizing. Some people find these pieces captivating. Others consider them garish, and even slightly creepy.

On the other hand, something very different might also come to mind when you see this kind of 3d crystal etching. You might instead associate it with other standard trinkets on display at souvenir shops internationally. Depending on the given location, the particular offering might be a laser-etched rendering in a crystal deal toy of the Empire State Building, the Eiffel Tower, or the Parthenon. As a result, you might regard the pieces showcasing this effect as you would, say, a souvenir snowglobe: mass-produced, interchangeable, or just plain cheap.

All of this is unfortunate since 3D crystal etching is a technique that can add considerable cachet and perceived value to a custom award or deal toy.

This post will provide more detail on this effect. It will also consider whether it might be an appropriate design option for your particular project.

What is 3D Etching in Crystal?

Internal laser engraving, also known as subsurface laser etching, involves rendering text or artwork under the surface of a piece of crystal, rather than on its exterior. Unlike traditional engraving methods that cut directly into the outer surface, this technique creates intricate, three-dimensional designs inside the crystal without disturbing its smooth, glossy surface.

Key Benefits of 3D Etching Crystal

• Premium Aesthetic: The internal depth and floating effect give the design a sophisticated, 3D look
• Durability: Since the engraving is within the crystal, it’s protected from wear and tear, making it ideal for items that are likely to be prominently displayed, like deal toys or corporate awards.
• Precision: Laser technology ensures ultra-fine details, enabling complex and intricate designs that are visually compelling.
• Customization: You can engrave a wide variety of artwork to create designs for an array of occasions.

What Kinds of Designs are Best Suited for 3D Etching?

Posts on design techniques tend to come with a lot of breezy, all-purpose prescriptions. You’re likely to hear that there the particular effect under discussion offers “infinite design possibilities”, and that you’re “limited only by your imagination”.

That may be the case. That said, there are still sectors and design elements that seem especially suited for 3D etching crystal.

Real Estate

Because of its ability to render details so precisely, 3D etching is ideally suited to commemorating events in the real estate sector. These might include crystal designs celebrating groundbreakings or building dedications. They might also include deal toys marking transactions such as construction financings or property acquisitions.

Whatever the occasion, a precise 3D rendering of the completed building project or plan can have tremendous perceived value. This kind of highly customized design stands in stark contrast to generic, all-purpose commemoratives.

Product-Themed Designs

For any number of reasons, a product may be the centerpiece of the design you have in mind. You may be celebrating the launch of that product. Or the product may simply be central to the brand of whatever company is the subject of your deal toy.

Here again, 3D crystal etching has the capacity to replicate precise details that are crucial. It can capture the design features that make the product distinctive and identifiable.

In the deal toy shown above, for instance, the transaction involves a manufacturer of fabrics for the auto industry, particularly for use in car seats and door panels. The lasered artwork is detailed enough to capture the stitching patterns on the seats.

Brand Mascots

For similar reasons, lasering is also ideal for tombstones and awards showcasing brand mascots. The Lancer piece shown at the top of this post is a great example. The lasered rendering of the knight and his horse captures an extraordinary degree of detail. It does justice to a valued corporate symbol.

Subtle Touches

Finally, you might want to keep lasering in mind when you want to add a design feature in a more understated, subdued way. One example involves the size of the Blackstone fund whose launch is celebrated in the crystal piece above. Rather than being billboarded, the amount appears as a background element that’s not immediately noticeable.

What Will I Need to Provide for a 3D Etching Project?

The detailed nature of the lasering process will require more from you than the typical deal toy or award project. Your vendor can discuss the specific requirements for your project. You should be prepared, though, to provide either a high-resolution digital image or a 3D model of the design you have in mind. There might be other workarounds for rendering your artwork three-dimensionally, but here again, this will depend on the specifics of your project.

You should also recognize the meticulous attention that rendering the 3D artwork that will require. Depending again on your particular project, this will add to your timeline. Also, keep in mind that you will most likely want to see a sample before proceeding with a final order. All of this should suggest that 3D crystal etching is not a process suited to rush orders or extremely tight time frames.

3D Crystal Etching at The Corporate Presence

At The Corporate Presence, we’ve been handling deal toy and award designs involving 3D crystal etching for over 40 years. We have the expertise to ensure that these orders proceed smoothly. As always, we also have the insight to let you know when lasering may not be an appropriate option for your project. That might be for aesthetic reasons, or simply because your deadline would make this kind of process too time-consuming or impractical. Whatever the circumstances, you can rely on us to provide you with the benefit of our design and production experience. Get your project started. Reach out to us today.

Currency-themed deal toys can play off a variety of creative options, including national symbols, maps, and flags. Currency nicknames have also been a rich source of ideas for commemorating currency-themed transactions.  Over the years, we’ve based creative deal toy designs, for instance, on such colorful issue names as “Samurai” bonds, “Rembrandt”, and “Dragon” bonds.

And also, “Kimchi”, “Bulldog”, “Kangaroo”, “Maple”, and “Yankee” bonds.

But international bonds represent only some of the financial transactions in which currency and money-based themes offer great design options. Currency themes can come into play in any number of cross-border transactions, international corporate issues, “green” bonds, cryptocurrency deals, as well as swaps.

The gallery below provides a small sampling of currency-related tombstone designs.

Beyond these, we’ve provided below five potential ideas and springboards for any deal toy project in which currency, or currencies, provide potential design inspirations.

Deal Toys Based on Currency Symbols

Including a dollar, yen, euro etc. symbol in a design doesn’t seem especially imaginative or inspired. That said, there are still any number of innovative ways of incorporating symbols in designs.

The tombstone design shown below, for example, cleverly manages to celebrate three separate bond issues denominated in two different currencies.

Flag-Inspired Tombstone Designs

Flags are yet another obvious source of design ideas for these transactions. That said, flag motifs can appear in any number of creative and unexpected ways.

For instance, the Jaguar XKB shown below, a quintessentially British car and brand, was customized with a Union Jack in two “Austin Powers” movies. It provides the perfect accompaniment to the pound issue commemorated here.

Deal Toys Inspired by Maps

As with flags, maps themes are a predictable source of design elements for recognizing currency-based transactions. Here again, there are countless ways they can be incorporated into a design.

Nickname-Inspired Deal Toys

The nicknames of individual currencies, either singly or when paired with another monetary unit, can unleash a number of creative possibilities. We listed a number of currency nicknames already. Add to that, to name just a few, Kiwi, Loonie, Ninja, Chief, and Gopher.

The sword-themed design shown above commemorates a Samurai Bond issue. The deal toy below, on the other hand, recognizes a so-called Din Sum Bond issue.

Using Actual Currency in Designs

Using actual currency in a deal toy also seems like a fairly obvious design option. There are several ways to make currency the centerpiece of a design.

Lucite embedments of coins are one option. You should be aware, though, that this option poses occasional practical and logistical problems. Assembling a sufficient number of coins in presentable condition can be time-consuming, and shipping those coins could be further complicated by customs restrictions. Depending on the currencies and countries involved, customs restrictions might also disrupt the shipment of the finished design incorporating a real coin.

A safer and less stressful route typically involves incorporating images of actual currency notes. Again, this might seem like a fairly obvious starting point. But here again, there are a number of qualitative factors involved.  There are a number of both straightforward and complex designs incorporating currency notes.

The design below isn’t especially elaborate; on the other hand, the modified wedge shape is unusual enough to make the Paraguayan note its centerpiece in a compelling and eye-catching way.

The design shown at the very top of this post also plays off a currency image but is captivating for an entirely different reason.

The Lucite piece celebrates euro-denominated bonds issued by American consumer goods company Kellogg’s. The design creatively combines these two deal elements through the artwork of the company’s popular brand mascot for its Keebler cookies line (Ernie the Elf), fanning a wad of euro notes.

Getting Your Deal Toy Project Started

At The Corporate Presence, we pride ourselves on our experience and expertise in handling a range of deal toy projects. Over the past 30+ years, our talented design staff has put a creative spin on a range of currency-related projects internationally.

If you’re looking for more tombstone ideas along the line so national themes, be sure to check out our Cross-Border and International Deal Toys galleries.

And at any time, feel free to contact us to get started on your currency-based deal toy—or any tombstone or award project—and bring your vision to life.

It’s no wonder that there are abundant opportunities for corporate gifting for pharma companies. The very nature of the industry tends to lend itself to seemingly endless milestones and achievements that could potentially be commemorated. 

The global pandemic only heightened our awareness of these unique characteristics of the pharmaceutical industry. These industry hallmarks contribute to a culture that must continually nurture and recognize extraordinary achievement.

More specifically, those factors include the industry’s extensive and time-sensitive product pipelines and portfolios. They also include disproportionate investments in research and reliance on public-private collaborations.

And perhaps most of all, they include another constant: regulatory hurdles and thresholds.

Corporate Gifting for Pharma Companies

This post provides more specific examples of the types of gifting opportunities that regularly prompt clients in the pharmaceutical and biopharmaceutical industries to reach out to us and help them recognize and reward innovation and achievement.

1. FDA Approvals

FDA approvals mark the culmination of a rigorous process, and, accordingly, are among the most common reasons for recognition gifts and awards among pharma companies. 

There are a number of ways firms have chosen to celebrate these milestones. Some firms prefer to distribute more classic, traditional crystal designs. 

Gifts incorporating vials, on the other hand, also have considerable appeal.

These gifts tend to have tremendous cachet among recipients and stakeholders because they are such a departure from the standard, generic fare so often seen in corporate gifting. They incorporate something truly unique: an actual vial of the actual drug.

The Lucite piece below, for example, marks FDA approval of a treatment for chemotherapy-induced bone marrow suppression.

Drug vial embedments in Lucite is a technique for which we’ve developed particular expertise over 40+ years.

The process may be relatively straightforward, but it can actually involve a number of unanticipated challenges. One particular challenge, for instance, involves something as seemingly basic as the proper rendering and positioning of the drug label on the vial prior to embedment.

2. Preclinical and Clinical Trials

Here again, there are several stages at which teams can be acknowledged. The crystal piece below, for instance, recognizes team members at the first-patient-dosed (FIH) stage of trials of LunAIRo.

3. Research Collaborations

Research collaborations occur commonly between pharmaceutical firms, between private and public entities, and in conjunction with various academic institutions. Joint research projects of this sort provide an opportunity to recognize members of each participating team.

Among the many research partnerships, we have helped to commemorate have been a pharmaceutical-biotech collaboration focused on cancer metabolism, and another aimed at advances in stem cell research.

4. Joint Ventures

As with research collaborations, joint ventures can vary widely both in terms of subject matter and the parties involved. One joint venture we helped commemorate, for instance, involved teams from a pharmaceutical company and a technology company. The teams had united to develop a mobile app for use by patients with schizophrenia. 

5. Product Introductions

Gifts and recognition pieces can be used to commemorate a number of separate milestones, such as the submission of a New Drug Application (NDA) or the actual commercialization of the drug or product.

The crystal piece below celebrates the NDA of a migraine treatment.

6. Licensing, Royalty, & Commercialization Agreements

Licensing, commercialization, and royalty agreements are obviously more squarely on the business side of the pharmaceutical industry. But just as obviously, they’re crucial to industry players. 

Licensing and commercialization agreements can be critical to all pharmaceutical companies. But they can be especially indispensable to smaller biotech and biopharmaceutical firms attempting to bring more novel and financially speculative treatments to market.

Among the many agreements we’ve have provided gifts for recently was one involving global rights for gout treatment and another for a blood cancer drug.

Because of the cross-border nature of many of these agreements, these gifts, significantly, had to have appeal to recipients in different countries, representing different cultures and aesthetics.

The gallery below highlights some of the many gifts and commemoratives we’ve designed to celebrate these agreements.

7. Financings and Capital Raises

These opportunities tend to arise among the industry’s smaller players, as in its biotech and biopharmaceutical segments.

One example is the gift shown here to mark Series B funding for Texas-based OncoNano. The funds were applied to clinical trials of the company’s imaging agent in detecting cancerous tissue. (As you can see, the imaging effect became the centerpiece of the highly customized gift designed to mark the occasion).

Corporate Gifting for Pharma Companies and The Corporate Presence

The Corporate Presence has been providing custom recognition awards and gifts to a number of industries, including pharmaceuticals, for over 40 years.

One of the advantages of beginning your search with us is that we not only offer you extensive experience and expertise in the industry. 

We also, importantly, can provide you the benefit of a huge archive of pharma-related custom awards and gifts via our website. Seeing the kinds of designs your peer companies and organizations have already done might provide inspiration for your project. Reach out to us and get your gift or award project started.

David Parry is the Director of Digital Strategy for The Corporate Presence, and for Prestige Custom Awards, a designer and provider of custom corporate awards ranging from creative employee and client recognition pieces to the N.F.L. Commissioner’s Awards, and ESPN’s ESPY awards.

This year marks the 5th anniversary of the frenzied finale of HBO’s “Game of Thrones”. But more significantly, this week also marks the 5th anniversary of Project “Iron Fleet”, one of seven deal toys profiled below that memorably drew inspiration from a code name.

Code names unleash all sorts of creative possibilities for finance tombstones. A code name explains, for instance, how a pagoda-themed deal toy design came to commemorate an investment in a portfolio of non-performing mortgages—-based in Spain (see below).

Or how a tropical drink invented and popularized in Cuba could provide the inspiration for a tombstone commemorating a private equity deal—-in not-so-tropical Denmark.

Project Mojito, shown here, took its name from the dominant color of the white rum and lime juice cocktail typically festooned with mint.  More significantly here, it also pays tribute to the green policies and practices of the company acquired in the deal:  Copenhagen-based electrical supplier, Modstrøm Danmark.

We’ve previously written about code names as a rich source of creative ideas for financial tombstones.

And yes, having a fun, evocative code name to work with does help.

But if Project Mojito had instead been dubbed Project Anchovies or Project Kale, memorable tombstones probably still could’ve been designed for each.

That also holds true even when a particular code name is not only unoriginal but maybe even a little well-worn.

And this does happen: code names can tend to cluster around certain themes.

One 2020 article found that in the previous decade, Eagle ranked first among the ten most frequently chosen deal code names. (Rounding out the top ten, were Blue, Green, Falcon, Alpha, Diamond, Tiger, Titan, Apollo, and Panther.)

Whether your particular code name is totally unique and specific to your deal or is taken from a selection of past favorites, you’ll undoubtedly find some inspiration in the finance tombstones we’ve showcased here.

Code Names, Deals, and Finance Tombstones

So where do code names typically come from?

The purpose of code names is pretty self-evident: maintaining secrecy with respect to the parties and details of a deal, most often an M&A transaction.

That said, there are considerations that come into play in selecting an appropriate code name. Names have to be cryptic, but not impractical.

Approaching the topic from the unique perspective of a investment banker-turned-academic Scott Moeller once stressed a few initial considerations. In addition to being non-obvious, code names should also not risk offending the client.

They should also avoid being “too cute” or difficult to spell. So when it comes, for example, to composers—a frequently mined source of project names—he advises sticking to ones like Bach and Beethoven over Tchaikovsky or Rachmaninov.

In 2019, EthosData brought some real analytics to the naming process. Based on a selection of 1,000 deals that had made use of its virtual data rooms, it found a far-flung range of selections, “from nearby buildings or mountains, to flowers, precious stones, and planets”.

The study also found a preference for “animals, colours, mythology and—for perhaps the less-concerned dealmakers amongst the group—any word starting with the letter ‘A’ .”

Taking all those parameters into account, EthosData found that the most commonly used code names in its sample were: Apollo, Blue, Sun, Victory, Galaxy, Sunflower, Omega, Jasmine, Emerald, Sunrise, Sapphire, Aurora, and Falcon.

And if all of this seems too time-consuming or daunting, you can always automate the process. Intralinks, for instance, offers a code name generator.

Code Name-Inspired Finance Tombstones

“Big Bang”

It’s hard to take issue with the use of the word “big” here.

The deal centered on the Tulsa-based energy company’s acquisition of all outstanding shares of a subsidiary, which was worth $11.7 billion. Add to that the three related, orbiting transactions commemorated here, and the total value of the deal reaches nearly $20 billion.

“Iron Fleet”

Pop culture provides especially fertile ground for code name ideas. Games of Thrones fans will recognize the nod to the Greyjoy’s star-crossed armada.

“Valkyrie”

Code names also tend to draw heavily from mythology, especially of the Greek and Roman variety. Valkyries, celebrated in everything from opera to epic verse to comic books and countless tatoos, derive from Old Norse legend.

“Barracuda”

Puzzle-piece Lucite designs are an effective way of celebrating a series of transactions, such as the acquisitions shown here (see top). What’s distinctive about this tombstone is that here is the puzzle pieces themselves form a unique shape.

(Just a note of clarification: ING U.S. is now Voya.)

“Symphony”

In contrast to the interlocking Barracuda design, this tombstone is crystal piece is relatively understated and straightforward—in keeping with the understated and straightforward code name that inspired it.

“Macchiato”

Another Lucite tombstone design. What gave this design its cachet was the use of actual macchiato beans—something that required some experience and expertise with the sometimes strange laws and properties of Lucite embedment.

This tombstone also illustrates how far from the actual subject matter of the deal a code name theme can take a design. Project Macchiato involved not coffee growers or retailers, but real estate.

But this kind of inside recognition is precisely the type of bond among deal participants that a tombstone seeks to commemorate (and, importantly, that outsiders examining that tombstone in an office, reception area, or conference room, tend to find most intriguing).

Project…..?

Dealmakers on the 2013 Berkshire Hathaway-Heinz deal, one of a number of Warren Buffett deals we have commemorated over the years, actually took things a step further. They employed multiple code names for the $23 billion transaction.

The chosen names reportedly included Hawk, Penguin, Goose, and Owl.

Were these names just arbitrary?

In its account of the deal, the New York Times shed some light on at least some of these selections. Penguin, the code name preferred by Heinz executives, was intended to recognize the local N.H.L franchise; Hawk, on the other hand, was favored by advisers on the acquisition side.

Get Creative with Your Finance Tombstone

Code names tend to be associated with M&A transactions, but whatever kind of deal you’re commemorating, you’ll probably want to explore a range of creative options. As the examples above illustrate, “creative” finance tombstones don’t have to be complex or extravagant.

At The Corporate Presence, we have over 40 years of experience in drawing on code names, or other specifics of your deal, to provide you—and your client–with the most effective, and memorable tombstone. Reach out to us today!

David Parry is the Director of Digital Strategy for The Corporate Presence, and for Prestige Custom Awards, a designer and provider of custom corporate awards ranging from creative employee and client recognition pieces to the N.F.L. Commissioner’s Awards, and ESPN’s ESPY awards.