Q: What is the submission process?

A: It starts out with a call to entry from the AAF by email or mailer. We have about a month to get ready. We log into their entry forms online and input information for each entry. You can go back and edit if you need to, so it is really a good system. We also have to have a mounted set for the local show and a set of each entry read to be forwarded to regional and national shows if they do well on the local level.

Q: How do you decide what work to send?

A: We look at the very best work that we’ve done over the past year. Sometimes we go through a list of our clients to remind ourselves of some of our work. We also use the categories listed within the AAF system. These categories can play to our advantage if we have good work that crosses categories because we can submit it multiple times.

Q: How much of the work is electronic?

A: About 30 percent of our submissions are digital or broadcast (either web or video) in nature and the rest is print.

Q: How much work are we sending this year?

A: We have 42 entries, which is triple what we usually send.

Q: How long does it take to complete a submission?

A: It takes a couple weeks to organize the work, upload the information on entry forms, then print out and mount everything, especially when we are just working on it as a side note to our normal jobs.

Q: What is the hardest part?

A: The physical labor. The trimming, mounting and positioning things to  create a visual interest so judges can get the most out of a first impression.

Q: What is the outcome that you hope to achieve?

A: The judges are not obliged to give an award for every category if they don’t think anything is good enough. Through this process we really want to achieve two things. First, we want to get our work and clients recognized for achieving high standards within our industry. And we also want to get the opportunity to go outside of our local market and watch our work advance regionally and even nationally.

Brunet-García’s Top 10

1. We made it through the wilderness of the economic downturn with all team members in tow. No raises, but we all kept our jobs!
2. We were selected as one of Jacksonville Magazine’s Top Companies that Care.
3. Flexing our creative muscle, we won the cover design contest for Jacksonville Magazine’s Best of Jacksonville issue.
4. The Jacksonville Business Journal touted us as one of the Best Places to Work in Jacksonville.
5. Tim Kinney became the agency’s first Vice President.
6. We developed two new service lines that will be unveiled in 2010. (Check back for updates as we get closer to their launch dates.)
7. We launched phase one of a radical website redesign for our friends at WorkSource.
8. At publication, we are negotiating a significant new agency contract that will positively shape billings for 2010!
9. We welcomed Kedgar and Aliera to the B|G Team, filling out our creative, video production and social media roster.
10. Jenny, our beloved traffic manager, got engaged!

THE IDEA: We didn’t feel like any one image could sufficiently sum up all the divergent neighborhoods, activities and hot spots in our sprawling city, so we took parts and pieces of some of Jacksonville’s most distinct landmarks and combined them to make a whole, integrated image. It works because that’s what really makes the Best of Jacksonville – all those different elements combined.

Better yet, JaxMag turned it into a contest! Pick up a copy on the newsstands this month and see if you can guess the Jacksonville landmarks featured on the cover. The first person to correctly identify all 10 places will win free tickets to the Best of Jacksonville Party at MOCA Jax on January 28.