Reputation Ink Earns Two National Honors in 2026 SMPS Marketing Communications Awards

Agency recognized for return-to-office thought leadership for S. Tipton Studio and bilingual employee communications for Superior Construction 

Reputation Ink, a marketing and public relations agency serving B2B professional services firms, earned two honors in the 2026 Society for Marketing Professional Services (SMPS) Marketing Communications Awards (MCA). The results were announced July 28 at SMPS’s annual conference, Amplify A|E|C, in Las Vegas.

Reputation Ink earned the “M” Award of Excellence for its return-to-office brochure for S. Tipton Studio and the Merit Award for its bilingual evolution of Superior Construction’s FamilyFirst employee newsletter.

The two recognized projects addressed very different business challenges but shared a common goal: helping clients communicate more effectively with the audiences that matter most.

“These honors reflect what we aim to do for every client: find the story inside a complex business challenge and turn it into communication that connects with the people who matter,” said Steven Gallo, Reputation Ink’s vice president of client services. “Both projects grew out of focusing closely on the audiences our clients needed to reach, then creating useful, authentic tools that moved those relationships forward.”

Turning return-to-office questions into a business-development asset

As return-to-office policies continued to evolve in 2025, interior design firm S. Tipton Studio was fielding recurring questions from clients and developer partners about workplace strategy and employee experience. Reputation Ink led the creative strategy, messaging framework and narrative development for a digital insights brochure that reframed return-to-office as a human-centered design challenge: creating workplaces that earn the commute through community, collaboration, trust and employee experience.

Designed as a reusable leave-behind for prospect meetings and partner outreach, the brochure reached 553 targeted contacts. Its initial distribution generated a 53% open rate, a 9% click rate and a 17% click-through rate. The brochure also drove 70 page views, 50 active users and 245 interaction events on the firm’s website, and it continues to support conversations about workplace experience.

Expanding access to Superior Construction’s family-first culture

Superior Construction is a fourth-generation, family-owned and -operated infrastructure contractor with more than 1,200 employees across the Southeast and Midwest. Reputation Ink had previously transformed the company’s quarterly FamilyFirst newsletter into a central source for employee stories, project news, safety achievements and leadership communications. Yet many Spanish-speaking employees across Superior’s field and operations teams did not have equal access to that content.

In Q3 2025, Reputation Ink launched a fully translated Spanish edition with complete content and visual parity. The agency built a repeatable process to gather, write, translate and produce both editions while preserving Superior’s authentic voice. From the first Spanish issue in Q3 to the second in Q4, views increased 102%, and readers increased 115%.

About the SMPS Marketing Communications Awards

The SMPS MCA program is the longest-running and most prestigious competition recognizing excellence in marketing communications for professional services firms in the design and building industries. The competition is open to SMPS members and nonmembers employed by professional services firms in the U.S. and internationally. The 2026 finalists are featured in the MCA Gallery.