In June we launched our first-ever Widen Portals Contest, to gather outstanding, real-life examples of how Widen customers are using the Portals application to support business goals.
And the response was fantastic! We received over two dozen, top-notch submissions across industries and use cases.
Our panel of judges included Widen’s Creative Manager, Senior Manager of Support and Community, and VP of Marketing and Sales. They selected the winners based on three criteria:
- Clear organization
- Cohesive branding and style
- Strong purpose/use case
They were tasked with identifying five finalists, but ultimately selected six because one customer was represented twice. Although they had to make some tough decisions, here are their selections — in no particular order:
- Treasury Wine Estates: Wine Pairing Perfected
- Pega: Brand Hub
- McCormick & Company: Brand Hub
- Red Wing Shoe Company: Media Hub
- NVIDIA: Corporate Portal
- Treasury Wine Estates: The Tasting Room
All six of these portals were featured in our Widen Portals Showcase webinar. If you missed it, you can download the slide deck and listen to the recording, here.
While all of the finalists were outstanding, there was a grand prize up for grabs: a scholarship to attend a course in the Rutgers Digital Asset Management (DAM) certificate program. This top prize was awarded to Treasury Wine Estates for their Wine Pairing Perfected portal. The judges were impressed by its clear organization and beautiful design — as well as its unique use case. Congratulations!
Below is a snapshot of each of our winning submissions and an overview of how each is used in their organization. And all of our contest submissions have been assembled in this slide deck, for you to download and enjoy.
Pega: Brand Hub
All Pega employees use this portal to get the assets, tools, templates, and guides that they need to put the brand into action every day. It is their most popular portal, with 7,544 page views in 2021 — a 57% increase from 2020. The portal continues to expand and helps Pega employees stay on brand.
Treasury Wine Estates: The Tasting Room
This portal supports Treasury Wine Estates’ sales enablement strategy. It gives bar and restaurant managers access to tools to learn more about their wines, browse food pairings, download tasting placemats, and more. In short, it empowers these stakeholders to sell their wines with confidence.
McCormick & Company: Brand Hub
This portal was created as a one-stop shop for global, company-wide users from all divisions to access brand-related content easily and efficiently. Their goal is to expand this portal (and related sub-portals) to provide solutions for any and all requests related to digital content. This is their most used portal with over 60,000 downloads since its launch in March of 2020.
Red Wing Shoe Company: Media Hub
Red Wing created this Media Hub to share with all of their retail locations and partner agencies. It includes links to sub-portals for each of their brands — which are updated with new information and assets every six months to introduce new products. And there is a unified content structure across all of these sub-portals, to create a cohesive and friction-free user experience.
NVIDIA: Corporate Portal
NVIDIA’s Corporate Portal is a one-stop location for their employees to find brand guidelines, color palettes, logo files, letterhead templates for over 50 of their worldwide offices, PowerPoint templates, digital banners, event assets, and video conference backgrounds. It also links to their icon libraries in a sub-portal, which includes over 1,400 NVIDIA-made icons. Users can search for a certain type of icon to use with three different color options.
Grand prize winner...Treasury Wine Estates: Wine Pairing Perfected
This portal from Treasury Wine Estates is a customer-facing portal that is accessed via a QR code. It provides resources for wine and cheese pairings, along with a way to contact their sommelier, Gillian, with questions. The goal is to provide value-added advice and education that motivates customers to purchase their brands.
Introducing Channel Portals
As part of our contest, we wanted to make sure our winners got the spotlight they deserved so we hosted a webinar featuring these amazing examples. In addition, we announced the launch of our new Channel Portals, available with every Entries subscription.
Channel Portals make it easy to create and share digital product catalogs for dealers, distributors, and sales teams. You can see Channel Portals in action and get more details on our portals contest winners in our Portals Showcase webinar.
Thank you
We want to thank all of our contest participants for sharing their best work with the Widen DAM community. All of the submissions will inspire other customers to expand their use of Portals and advance their DAM strategy.
If you have questions about using Portals or want to learn more about the new Channel Portals, don’t hesitate to contact your Widen representative. And if you are new to Widen and Portals, and are interested in learning more, 
today!
