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Thomson Wins DBA Industrial Design Award (18/11/2008)

Thomson (Euronext Paris: 18453; NYSE: TMS), a worldwide leader in video solutions, together with TheAlloy, a leading UK-based industrial design firm has been awarded bronze in the "Design Management" category of the prestigious Design Business Association (DBA) awards. Thomson and TheAlloy were presented with the award at the 2008 DBA awards ceremony, which took place in London on Nov. 4.

This win reflects Thomson and TheAlloy's collaborative and intensive work to drive a consistent design language and brand recognition across a broad range of broadcast, professional video, and networking (video headend) products offered by the Thomson Grass Valley Business Group. This on-going effort combines Grass Valley's superior engineering and technology with TheAlloy's powerful and engaging industrial designs across Thomson and Grass Valley(tm) branded hardware and software as well as integrated systems. This effort emphasizes customer-defined preferences for product engagement and interaction while simultaneously minimizing engineering change for maximum impact.

"When you see and hear the reaction of our customers to these new products, it's clear that we - as well as our products and solutions - are truly empathetic to what our customers need and desire. In fact, some of the new industrial designs have been so compelling that customers are ordering products without even test driving them!" said Jeff Rosica, Senior Vice President of the Grass Valley business unit within Thomson. "Consistent user interfaces across product lines and easy-to-learn and operate products release the full creativity of the user and build a loyal customer base."

The fusion of Grass Valley technology and product engineering with TheAlloy's intensive customer research, interview and prototyping approach has resulted in a number of award-winning products - such as the new Grass Valley EDIUS(r) 5.0 nonlinear editing software, MediaFUSE(tm) system for making repurposing content for Web and mobile distribution more efficient and profitable, and Indigo(tm) AV mixer for highly efficient live presentation applications.

"This is about products designed for the user. By the user," said Laura Barber-Miller, Vice President of marketing and communications for the Grass Valley business unit within Thomson. "It's about delivering a superior user experience to our customers, and value engineering for maximum growth to our shareholders."

"It has been an honor to support Grass Valley's terrific broadcast and professional video solutions as well as its networking engineering and product development teams - and our collaborative success is richly rewarding," said Gus Desbarats, Chairman, TheAlloy.

The internationally recognized DBA design awards honor the role of effective industrial design in stimulating business growth. Winners of a DBA award are those that provide professionally executed design strategy which leads to significant marketing and customer service value, as well as fast return on investment. When executed successfully, this ultimately results in increased business and market awareness of products and services.

www.dba.org.uk
www.thomsongrassvalley.com

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