RESTON, VA--(Marketwire - June 29, 2010) - Approva® Corporation (www.approva.net), the leader in continuous controls monitoring (CCM) and audit automation software, today announced that it has won the Stevie Award for Marketing Campaign of the Year for a Product for its "I Love a Good Audit" campaign in the 2010 American Business Awards.
"We're honored to have been recognized in the company of so many other innovative businesses," said Michael Evans, VP of Marketing for Approva. "When we designed the campaign, we wanted to bring some fun and playfulness into a field that has a reputation for being somewhat sleepy. This award validates our efforts to engage our audience on their level and talk to them honestly, without the jargon, about their business needs."
Auditors and accountants are not often recognized for being one of the liveliest of professions, and traditional efforts at reaching them tend to consist of hard to digest appeals about "best of breed, flexible, scalable solutions" deployed enterprise-wide and serving highly technical "mission-critical" goals. Approva works to speak to compliance, risk, governance and finance professionals as -- sometimes quirky -- people who happen to love auditing, accounting and risk management.
Approva created its "I Love a Good Audit" marketing campaign and theme to appeal to audit, compliance, governance and risk professionals where they live: at their jobs. The company kicked off its campaign with custom "I Love a Good Audit" campaign buttons, which soon struck a nerve with an audience unusually interested in all things audit. Almost immediately, they became a collector's item and a (literal) badge of honor at tradeshows and among those in the know in the audit world.
Approva built on its "I Love a Good Audit" campaign -- and, more generally, the theme of "love" -- with a microsite inviting visitors to "audit and tell" stories of "the first time they fell in love with their audit" by sending e-cards and virtual fridge magnet poetry to friends and colleagues. Approva's popular blog, Audit Trail, which houses timely, thoughtful commentary on industry happenings in a distinct voice, supported product-marketing efforts with specialized content reinforcing just how lovable audits can be.
Approva's core software solutions, as well as its recent comprehensive product suite launch, Approva One, were all supported under the "love" umbrella. As such, both Approva as a company and its suite of software solutions have carved out a highly unique niche and easily recognizable voice in its marketplace, particularly versus larger, more traditionally marketed competitors.
In addition to receiving critical shout-outs by marketing gurus like David Meerman Scott, who featured the campaign in his recent bestseller, "World Wide Rave," Approva's "I Love a Good Audit" campaign contributed to a 50% increase in annual inquiries and was a significant contributor to delivering on the company's ambitious growth objectives.
Stevie Awards were presented in over 40 categories including Best Overall Company of the Year, Executive of the Year, and Corporate Social Responsibility Program of the Year. More than 2,700 entries from organizations of all sizes and in virtually every industry were submitted for consideration. More than 200 executives across the country participated in the judging process to determine the Finalists and Stevie Award winners.
The awards were presented during ceremonies at the Marriott Marquis Hotel in New York City. The ceremonies were hosted by Cheryl Casone of Fox Business Network and broadcast nationwide on radio by the Business TalkRadio Network.
Details about The American Business Awards and the lists of honorees in all categories are available at www.stevieawards.com/aba.
About Approva
Approva® Corporation is the industry-leading provider of continuous controls monitoring software and is the industry standard at Big-4 audit firms. We enable business, finance, IT and audit professionals to identify, manage and prevent business exceptions in order to reduce risk, increase operational efficiency and prevent inappropriate payments. Global companies such as Bayer, DirecTV, Discovery Communications, Honeywell, Pratt & Whitney and T-Mobile rely on Approva to deliver actionable and auditable intelligence of control breakdowns across their business systems, processes and transactions. Approva has certified integrations with Microsoft, IBM and SAP to provide a holistic Governance, Risk & Compliance (GRC) solution.
For more information, visit http://www.approva.net, follow us on Twitter, subscribe to our blog, Audit Trail, or call +1-703-956-8300.
About The Stevie Awards
Stevie Awards are conferred in four programs: The American Business Awards, The International Business Awards, the Stevie Awards for Women in Business, and the Stevie Awards for Sales & Customer Service. Honoring companies of all types and sizes and the people behind them, the Stevies recognize outstanding performances in the workplace worldwide. Learn more about The Stevie Awards at www.stevieawards.com.
Sponsors and partners of The 2010 American Business Awards include Infogroup, Netezza, CIGNA, Citrix Online, Epic Advertising, High Performance Technologies Inc., imagistic, John Hancock, LifeLock, Lionbridge, Optimum Lightpath, PetRays, RCN, and SoftPro.
Contact Information:
For More Information Contact:
Erin Hawkinson
DBC PR+New Media for Approva
+1.202.292.4574
approva@dbcpr.com