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Martin Luther King once said: "The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy."

I know all of us have been challenged to some degree in the past, but particularly during the recent global financial crisis. At Art of Multimedia we responded with intensified focus, purposeful activity and a refusal to buy into the fear.

We re-examined and reaffirmed our purpose, which is to add value to our clients and their audiences, to our staff and suppliers, and thus to our community, through creative, effective and quality communication solutions.

We considered the needs of our clients during such rapidly changing times and introduced new offerings to further enhance our relevance. These include Third Eye, Media Flow, Touch Zone and Drupal CMS, with others planned for rollout in the near future.

We reminded ourselves that the quality of our service largely determines our relationships with our clients and took measures to improve this. We started with a new customer relationship management system that enables us to build a better understanding of each client's history, needs and preferences, and to have this information at our fingertips. Other new systems and procedures were introduced to streamline our production processes, which include using our own products to save time, increase productivity and enhance our communication.

We further invested in a new brand for AOM that encapsulates all of the above and satisfied our creative, technical and strategic aspirations.

Those of you who have undergone brand development or a re-branding exercise will know how much time and how many resources are consumed by such projects. We aimed for all our brand collateral to be reflective of our standards, effective in communicating how we may be of service, multi-channelled and environmentally conscious.

This entire process was squeezed into a busy and challenging year. We all emerged more energised and passionate about our role in the larger scheme of things, more appreciative of our opportunity to add beauty, happiness and value to the world each day. We also emerged grateful for being able to express our individual creativity and to share that experience with others.