The Chicago Innovation Awards was created by Kucmarski & Associates and the Chicago Sun Times in 2002 to recognize 10 Chicago area businesses and organizations in the private, public and non-profit sector. While awarding the best in area innovation, the CIA also serves as a valuable networking and development opportunity for its more than 300 annual nominees and winners through seasonal events, mentorships and scholarship opportunities.
As an entrepreneurial leader celebrating Chicago’s creative spirit—from burgeoning startups like 37Signals, Threadless, and Groupon to established brands like Abbot Laboratories and Molex—the CIA needed to represent *itself* as a symbol of innovation and cutting edge ideas. So, CIA’s founder Tom Kuczmarski came to Doejo in the spring of 2009 to refresh their brand image and revolutionize the way nominations and votes were taken.Doejo redesigned the CIA’s website from the ground up, reinforcing their expertise and long-term support of Chicago-based companies.
Over a grueling three months Doejo’s developers reformed the CIA’s process, building a rich online nomination platform with an integrated diligence and judging system. Through this reinvention, Doejo also introduced a new category of award, the “People’s Choice Award” and raised CIA awareness through enhanced marketing and social media. This ultimately upgraded the way CIA runs the award program and helped save them time and funding. In 2009, then-startups Groupon and Everyblock were among the winners with Abbott Laboratories wining “People’s Choice.” The Doejo staff was invited to join CIA on stage for this iconic award year.
Through a custom CMS and voting platform we gave CIA voting participants, organizers, judges and directors the ability to easily navigate through data on hundreds of companies. Our goal was to provide the awards program with a compelling and modern platform to last into the next decade.
2009 was a record year for the CIA too. More than 11,000 votes were cast for the first “People’s Choice” award with about 40,000 visitors and 250,000 page views garnered to the award site.
Tom Kuczmarski also tasked Doejo with redesigning his management consulting firm site, Kuczmarski & Associates. For this site, we wanted to highlight Kuczmarski’s achievements and expertise in his field, as well as his firm’s innovation in a wide range of industries.
Doejo was helpful in creating the Peoples Choice Award voting platform for the Chicago Innovation Awards. It has enabled thousands of Chicagoans to connect and vote on their top choice innovations.
- Tom Kuczmarski, founder
http://doejo.com/project/platforms-applications/chicago-innovation-awards
