Berndt Group Wins W³ Award for National Aquarium Trip Planner

October 23, 2007

BALTIMORE, MD—The Berndt Group, www.berndtgroup.net, a Baltimore, Maryland-based full service interactive agency, announced that it has received a W³ award for its work on a Trip Planner for the National Aquarium in Baltimore (NAIB). The W³ Awards honor the best in web sites, Web marketing programs, and Web video - the best in interactive marketing.

The Berndt Group received a silver award in the non profit/charitable origination category for the NAIB Trip Planner.

"We are pleased to be recognized by the W³ Awards for the outstanding quality of our creative and technical work," said John Berndt, President and CEO of The Berndt Group. "We tremendously enjoy working with the Aquarium and look forward to future collaborations."

The Berndt Group worked with the National Aquarium in Baltimore to create a content managed, Flash-based Trip Planner application with a high level of graphic design, interactivity and usability. We worked under an accelerated four month timeline to meet a Memorial Day launch (one of the Aquarium’s busiest times). Since its launch, the application has seen over 60,000+ uses.

Goals for the site included establishing an online interactive experience for visitors of all ages and a marketing tool for Aquarium staff. Key audiences included families with school-aged children, children with Web browsing ability, educators, and members.

• Uses Reddot CMS, taking advantage of its in-context editing environment to manage data inside Flash as well as the Flash files and ajax form content.
• This data is dynamic, meaning its information changes depending on inputs inside the Flash. This data is all presented to the Flash via dynamically generated xml.
• The data flow is complex and interesting (and invisible to the user).
• Nested Structures inside Reddot CMS: dynamically assembled into asp files by the CMS when data is changed; asp files live on server and expose a small data set to Flash (dates and times); users select options inside Flash; Flash accesses an asp file, passing the user selected options; the asp file takes those options and builds a dataset from a flat set of data (non database driven) and exposes it to the Flash; the users interact with the data inside Flash and save their trip; trip data gets posted from Flash to another asp page that records it in a database for future retrieval; saved data is displayed to the visitor; visitor can use an ajax form to send an email that contains a link back to the page to retrieve the data from the database.
• Meets Aquarium’s high security standards.
• Provides a rich interactive experience on top of relatively complex schedule data.
• Also designed HTML email templates (as well as test-only versions) for the sent itineraries.
• Flash itself includes a high level of Action scripting and interesting sound effects.

The Berndt Group has a long standing history of completing successful and award-winning projects with the Aquarium, including a Webby award winning web site, Flash games, interactive kiosks, micro sites and CD-Roms. Learn more about The Berndt Group's collaborations with the Aquarium by visiting our portfolio.

About the W³ Awards

The W³ Awards honors creative excellence on the Web, and recognizes the creative and marketing professionals behind award winning sites, videos and marketing programs. The W³ is the first major Web competition to be accessible to the biggest agencies, the smallest firms, and everyone in between. The W³ is sanctioned and judged by the International Academy of the Visual Arts, an invitation-only body consisting of top-tier professionals from a “Who’s Who” of acclaimed media, interactive, advertising, and marketing firms. IAVA members include executives from organizations such as Alloy, BRANDWEEK, Coach, The Ellen Degeneres Show, Estee Lauder, HBO, iNDELIBLE, Monster.com, MTV, Omnicom, Polo Ralph Lauren, Refinery, Sotheby’s Institute of Art, Victoria’s Secret, Wired, Yahoo!, and many others. www.w3award.com.

About The Berndt Group

The Berndt Group has been a leading Web design, development and brand communications firm since 1991. The firm provides an integrated set of creative services, including strategic consulting, brand and application development, software implementation, web site design, and internet marketing. Based in Baltimore, MD, the firm services a diverse international and regional base of over fifty active clients, including: The National Aquarium, Johns Hopkins Institutions, SafeNet, Inc., Raytheon, U.S. Immigration, The Federal Aviation Administration, The U.S. Forest Service, The Abell Foundation, and many others. For more information, visit www.berndtgroup.net.

Media Contact

Inquiries? Please contact:

Michelle Géczy
Vice President

phone: 410.889.5854 x 12
email: michelle.geczy@berndtgroup.net