Interest was sparked – again! STILL GmbH, a leading supplier of customized intralogistics solutions worldwide, received the prestigious German Prize for Business Communications for the second time in succession on Wednesday. Matthias Klug, Director of International Corporate Communications at STILL, accepted the “Golden Spark” as the prize in the category “Best Online and Mobile Communication” at a gala ceremony in front of more than 500 guests in Berlin’s “TIPI at the Chancellery” – Europe’s biggest permanent marquee theatre. STILL came out on top against competitors including the Provinzial Insurance Group and the Berlin Sanitation Service. Last year’s winner was the OTTO Group.

STILL received the coveted distinction for the iPad application “STILL EASY”, which is unique in the industry and is both an innovative marketing tool for international sales and at the same time a digital product experience for existing and prospective customers. The heart of the app is the so-called “ProductSelector”, an interactive virtual showroom oriented towards the individual requirements of the particular user. When the type of use, operation and drive, the required lifting capacity and lift height, and the available aisle width are entered on the left of the screen, all the STILL vehicles exactly matching the chosen requirements appear on the right of the screen in a fraction of a second. Describing the digital product showcase, Klug says “As a result of fully swivelable 360° interior views of the driver’s cab, the user can even climb into the vehicle himself and is free to look around there. In combination with rotatable all-round views, it achieves almost the experience of a presentation in a ‘real’ showroom.” In addition there are slide-shows and videos graphically explaining the product’s highlights.

According to Julia Schmidt, who gave the laudatory speech when presenting the prize: “By creating STILL EASY, the STILL GmbH has achieved a marketing tool that is unique in the industry. In addition to the novel opportunities to conduct sales discussions, the app enables existing and potential customers to dive into STILL’s world in an extremely innovative way at any time and from anywhere in the world, and not only to find quickly the products that match their own requirements, but also to experience them playfully and interactively. After trying out the app, I would have liked to buy my own forklift truck immediately.”

STILL EASY exists in a public version that can be downloaded free of charge from Apple’s Appstore, and in an expanded internal version run by STILL on their sales iPads. Whereas, in addition to the showroom, both versions also provide a multimedia company presentation, an interactive overview of the entire range of products and services, and current news and exclusive background information from the world of STILL, the internal version of the application also provides messages from the Intranet, for example. Up to now STILL EASY is available almost worldwide in German and English. Other language versions are planned to follow soon.

Klug says: “As far as our products and services are concerned, we are proud to have been one of the sector’s drivers of innovation for many years. This award confirms our belief that we are able to communicate our own range of products and services to our customers in an equally innovative way.”

The German Prize for Business Communication has been awarded annually since 2001 by an independent student jury to business enterprises whose characteristic feature is targeted, effective, innovative business communications. This year, from more than 1,200 entrants, the students at Berlin’s University of Applied Sciences led by Prof. Dr. Reinhold Roski nominated 50 finalists in a total of eight prize categories. The academics are supported in this task by the Society for the Promotion of Business Communication e.V. The patrons of this year’s event were again Philipp Rösler, Vice-Chancellor and Federal Minister of Economics, and Klaus Wowereit, Governing Mayor of Berlin.