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Let’s start by getting to know you a little better. Tell us about yourself.

I was born and raised in Fort Worth, and the only time I’ve left here for an extended period of time was when I went to Austin for school for four years. I’ve always loved living here, and I really enjoyed visiting Fort Worth when I was in school because it seems like every few months Fort Worth is growing and changing. 

I have one sibling, a younger brother, and he goes to UT as well – we come from a big Longhorn family. Both of my parents went to UT, some of my grandparents, tons of my cousins, aunts and uncles went there, too.

I love Texas sports – I grew up playing softball and field hockey, which I played from seventh grade into high school. My current dog is named Dak – after Dak Prescott – and my last dog’s name was Romo – after the other Cowboys’ quarterback.

What’s something you love to do?

I love to travel, but it’s obviously been a tough year for the travel industry. My goal pre-covid was to visit a new place every single year. I’ve been to a chunk of cool places out of the country, but I’d like to explore more US cities. 

What’s your favorite place?

I really like the beach, but I don’t love the ocean. I like the sand, and I don’t mind boats, but I’d rather enjoy the ocean from a comfortable distance. I also really like the mountains – I love Colorado for how diverse it is; a lot of hiking, biking and skiing in Colorado.

 What do you love about the job?

I just love the spontaneity and the constant changes that advertising has. There’s always new projects and the space is constantly evolving. I don’t think we’ll ever reach a stage where advertising is mundane or boring.

If you could do anything besides what you are doing now, what would you do professionally?

I would own a restaurant and/or write a cookbook. 

What is the last thing you binge-watched?

Greys Anatomy, hands-down. There are rumors that it’s the last season, and I would be crushed. Although, they’ve gone on for a while, so they’re running out of storylines. I just hope that they end it on a high note.

What’s your favorite book?

Favorite book is American Royals, and it’s about what it would be like to have a royal family in America. It’s fiction, but it’s interesting and entertaining. I’ve always been fascinated with the royal family; there’s so much legacy there.

If you could live in any sitcom, which would it be?

I would probably say The Office because it’s such a classic. When you don’t know what to watch, just put it on. It’s a feel-good, funny show and the characters just can’t be beaten.

If you had to eat one thing for the rest of your life, what would it be?

Sushi. I can go into a sushi restaurant and enjoy anything on the menu. 

What’s your favorite children’s story?

The Olivia books by Ian Falconer. Olivia is a pig, and her professions and adventures change every book – in one book she’s a pilot, another book she’s a scientist, and in another she’s helping with Christmas. I just love those books. My middle name is also Olivia, so I really connected with that series early on.

If you had an extra hour of free time every day, what would you spend it doing?

I would put an extra hour into the morning and spend it having coffee. I’m so much more productive in the morning; I’d add an hour and just spend it working and drinking coffee. 

Any words of advice?

Wake up every day and choose to be happy. I think it’s definitely a choice, and it can be easy to let things get to you and stray away from that. But, choosing to be happy is such a key to being successful and enjoying your life, which is why we’re all here. 

Why Schaefer?

As a person who has grown up in Fort Worth, working at Schaefer has always been a goal of mine. It was a familiar place when I was in high school and people from Schaefer came into our school to speak about advertising and the industry, and it was always attractive to me that they were invested in the people of Fort Worth. I also love that Schaefer invests in the people that work here: we’re invested in the numerical growth of the agency, but we’re also really focused on growing the individual and improving their strengths and making them a more capable person. I love that the people here genuinely care about each other.

When the pandemic began, the UNT Health Science Center embraced its position as a leader in our community by providing a singular source of uplifting and empowering content. This culminated in coviddayxday.com serving as the center of the UNT Health Science Center’s covid-19 campaign. We knew that we had to engage a wide audience and convince them to adopt new, healthy behavior practices to meet the campaign’s goals and keep our community safe. Sounds hard, right? It is – but reaching the right audience with the right message can be done through thoughtful strategy and nimble responsiveness. 

Goals

  • Generate community awareness of the coviddayxday.com website in Fort Worth, North Texas and beyond
  • Drive meaningful traffic to the new coviddayxday.com website
  • Encourage optimism and empowerment through reliable information

Meeting Audiences During the New Normal

Reaching audiences during a pandemic is tricky for numerous reasons, the largest of which is that people’s normal day-to-day routines have been overhauled, which makes reaching them difficult with traditional targeting strategies. So, when we began laying out a paid media campaign for DAYxDAY, we had to be creative and think about how to capture the attention of our audience in their new normal. Furthermore, we needed to communicate our message to English – and Spanish – speaking audiences that make up the bulk of North Texas’ demographic composition.

For general targeting, our strategy was adjusted for the lack of commute time where we would normally distribute content and re-tooled to focus on reaching audiences in-home. That meant leveraging Pandora and smart speakers to get media in front of people working from home. We also partnered with reputable news sources in North Texas for paid media, which elevates the trustworthiness of our content. To reach Spanish-speaking audiences, we used the same tactics and leaned into Spanish-speaking news partners as platforms to run paid media. 

Reliable Information

When we began the DAYxDAY campaign, one of the primary goals was to cut through the noise and provide consistent, reliable information that was rooted in science and verified to be a best practice for community health. While framing the content pillars, we asked ourselves “what kind of information would be most helpful to our target audiences?” After ample deliberation, we chose five pillars under which we’d publish and contextualize our website content: News, Tips, Community, Well-Being, and Health Experts. Each of these pillars represented a different scope of information that could help inform and uplift our community in the face of disinformation and the harsh reality of life-altering quarantine protocols.

To fill up our content buckets, we reached out to community health and news partners to provide a steady stream of topical, up-to-date information. In addition to partner content, we created organic articles that were based on thoroughly researched subjects that were reinforced with trending search traffic.

Adjusting in Real-Time

Navigating the ever-changing world of covid-19 – from evolving health protocols, to shifting rules on social media and search engines, and understanding new clinical study updates – made this campaign particularly challenging. However, there was nothing more difficult than adjusting to the shifting regulations on social media to boost our campaign messaging. Shifting social regulations meant that we had to be nimble and responsive to the latest updates and incorporate the ambiguity of the restrictions into our paid and social media strategies. Throughout campaign implementation, we had to adjust our boosted messages so they adhered to the latest regulations on that specific platform, but still communicated the points we needed to convey.

Results

  • Over 12.4 million media impressions served
  • Over 1.4 million people reached through social channels
  • Over 166,800 pageviews registered
  • Over 118,400 unique website visitors
  • Email, display advertising and paid social media performance each greatly exceeded industry benchmarks

Audience Engagement isn’t Rocket Science

Providing useful content to a receptive audience will almost always return quantifiable gains. Through careful market research and detailed audience targeting, we were able to exceed the healthcare industry benchmarks for each of our analytical KPIs. Through it all, we not only exceeded expectations, but we also held true to the goal of empowering an informed, optimistic response among the North Texas region. When your mission is to Make Life Better, these results make us all humbled to play a role in changing minds. 

Building a brand from the ground up is an exciting opportunity and challenge for our team. In this case, the branding needed to reflect the ground, the air, and the ether. The Medical Innovation District (MID) in Fort Worth started out as a disconnected/amorphous physical footprint, an energetic entrepreneurial community, a rich density of medical professionals and patients, and a vision for the future. Altogether, Medical Innovation District was a vision of possibility, so, when they called Schaefer to help name and brand the organization, we entered into an intense discovery process to help clearly communicate the purpose of this local innovation hub. But, can you build a brand from a vision and a mindset? 

Goals

  • Generate awareness for Fort Worth’s Medical Innovation District by highlighting differentiation and a cohesive identity and opportunity in Fort Worth
  • Name, brand and launch district to cultivate direct conversations with key targets and attract them to Fort Worth

Strategy

From the outset, we wanted to find a path that spoke to entrepreneurs and innovative brands, striking the right balance to attract established healthcare companies and industry disruptors alike. We began strategizing the branding and positioning for MID by holding in-depth interviews with the internal stakeholders of the organization and community. We also wanted to incorporate the proximity to a dense healthcare employment cluster as a benefit of the location, which helps nurture local collaboration. Establishing the MID as a place where people collaborate and innovate solutions was critical to the final branding and positioning.

Refining the Brand Name to Reflect Purpose

When approaching any brand identity, it’s important to carefully listen to the client so that their industry-specific knowledge is pulled through to the final product. For the Medical Innovation District, that meant refining their purpose and clearly communicating it with a unique name. Specifically, the client wanted to get away from the term “Innovation,” which is oversaturated in the marketplace and does not illustrate the process behind innovation, which is the result of constant iteration. So, we looked at the core of innovation and saw a path to an answer: iteration, which is the process of constant improvement and at the heart of innovation. 

We chose iter8 as the new brand name for MID. iter8 directly reflects the process by which ground-breaking ideas are created: through constant testing, fine-tuning and evolution. Furthermore, the name more accurately communicates the purpose of iter8’s position in the market and community.

Marrying Entrepreneurship and Healthcare

When we began branding the MID, we wanted to focus on bringing to the foreground the opportunity for entrepreneurial development to attract healthcare anchors, which are at the center of medical innovation. Positioning iter8 in Fort Worth as a place to pioneer new ideas in healthcare is a natural fit because Fort Worth is a place that pushes the boundaries of what is possible and creates new doors to open. At the heart of Fort Worth and iter8 is a maverick’s spirit, so we positioned iter8 as a brand that creates new frontiers in the healthcare landscape by fostering innovative ideas powered by community and collaboration. 

Results

  • Unique and ownable name and identity
  • New launch advertising materials and website to centralize contact with key targets

Make Life Better

You can build a brand from a clear vision of the future and an innovative mindset. For iter8, that mindset will enrich the community of Fort Worth for generations to come. Fort Worth is our home, and it is rewarding to work for a client that helps position the city as a leader in local innovation and drive creative and scientific thought leaders to our great city.

Union Park by Hillwood Communities wanted to differentiate themselves on the market to stand out with their target audience to attract more homebuyers. To do this, we dove into their existing creative suite and focused on the key elements that separated Union Park from its competitors.

Goals:

  • Evolve the creative campaign by leveraging the approved positioning and key messages
  • Update Union Park’s visual identity to reflect the vibrancy of the brand
  • Craft messaging that would stand out against competitors and stand the test of time

Differentiated Positioning

Union Park is an extraordinary place, created to celebrate the vibrancy of life in Little Elm, Texas. The community itself is dynamic, energetic, and designed for people that pour themselves into an active lifestyle. When we were discovering the market differentiators for Union Park, we wanted to focus on the active lifestyle that the community offers its homeowners. We did that by highlighting the vibrancy of the neighborhood and showcasing the vast array of activities that are available to Union Park residents. Whether it’s scavenger-hunting at Central Park or cooling off at the Cove, there are plenty of opportunities for Union Park homeowners to enjoy community and camaraderie outdoors.

Updated Messaging

When creating the campaign messaging, it was important that we capture the essence and differentiators that separate Union Park from other communities. We also needed to communicate that the variety of home prices make it an incredibly accessible neighborhood for nearly any budget and every phase of life. Furthermore, we needed to highlight that Union Park is a Live Smart™ community, developed around Hillwood’s five enduring principles: connection, well-being, enrichment, stewardship, and convenience. Each of these principles was considered when the spaces at Union Park were designed, so communicating them was crucial to accurately market the community. We created new messaging and positioning to communicate the vibrant lifestyle that Union Park offers. 

Some of our updated messaging featured copy-points: “Live Vibrantly Every Day; Here, Is The Most Vibrant Way to Live; Inspired Living for Every Phase.” Each line touches on the inspired living that helps define Union Park and resonates with new homebuyers.

Building A Comprehensive Creative Suite

When expanding and updating a brand platform, it’s important to reinforce the positioning while improving brand engagement. For Union Park, we worked within the brand platform to update the look and feel of the brand identity but ensured that each iteration still comfortably fit within the brand standards.

The updated creative suite encapsulates the essence of Union Park and evokes the same excitement for vibrant living as a walk through any of the community’s parks. It’s light and green and active and incorporates some of the natural elements that surround Union Park. The result is a fluid identity system and brand mark that accurately communicates the brand’s purpose and place, and is usable on anything from signage to web banners.

Results

  • Developed a comprehensive creative suite that is flexible across mediums
  • Updated campaign messaging to better connect with target audiences
  • Won Best Overall Advertising Program at 2020 McSam Awards
  • Created a new website focused on engagement and conversion
  • Created award-winning signage used at Union Park
  • Greatly exceeded YTD home sales goals
November 19, 2020

Community without compromise

Connecting with the right target audience is crucial to marketing success. Bluewood is a Hillwood community filled with possibilities. Known for its unique ability to balance comfort and adventure, Bluewood wanted to attract a new wave of home buyers entering the market by crafting a campaign message that rang true to its target buyer and its inspiration. So, we evolved their existing messaging to create a new campaign that attracted young, vibrant shoppers, and cemented the Bluewood brand as a community without compromise. When we set out to create updated messaging, we aimed for something that reinforced the brand’s positioning and communicated the energy of Celina and the personality and vision of the community. Celina is a city that is rapidly growing and offers new residents fantastic potential as an up-and-coming community.

We landed on “Meet the Community as Bright and Bold as You Are,” intentionally focusing our position around the experience, to better paint a picture of the lifestyle Bluewood promises. The message immediately identifies with the younger homebuyer looking to buy a home in an up-and-coming community that just happens to be situated in one of Texas’ fastest-growing cities. It nods to a growing community emboldened by the people who live there. The updated message reflects the optimism of the area, the community and our target audience to position itself right alongside this exciting stage of life – bright and bold.

November 13, 2020

River & Blues

River & Blues Fest is a new kind of music festival, featuring a uniquely American lineup of longtime favorites and soulful up-and-comers in country and blues. Launching its inaugural year right here in the heart of Fort Worth, the River & Blues Festival needed a dynamic identity system to engage and attract music lovers and artists alike across a primarily digital landscape.  

Launching a New Identity System

Drawing inspiration from the rhythm and the river, we turned up the volume on the ethos and the experience to allow the vision of the festival to come through. The result was a scalable brand identity that represented the heart and soul of the music itself—a perfect balance of grit and a good time. With so many moving pieces, it was important to create a system that easily blended photography, motion and print elements, but most importantly position this instantly legendary weekend as one that can’t be missed.

Connecting with Our Target Audience

Launching any new brand can be a challenge and making noise about a music festival can be especially challenging in Texas. But, a clearly defined vision and a true one-of-a-kind blend of country and blues music is a fantastic experience to position. To connect with a wide audience, we needed to communicate that the River & Blues Festival is not just a blues festival, but also a country music festival, which appeals to a wide range of local music fans spanning demographics. Furthermore, we wanted to bring the river through in our messaging and identity to illustrate that the festival takes place on the Trinity River at Panther Island Pavilion in the heart of Fort Worth. 

Concert Going amid Covid-19

“The best-laid plans of mice and men often go awry.” If 2020 has taught us anything, it’s that anything can happen. But, what no one accounted for, or could have foreseen, was the covid-19 pandemic. River & Blues Fest was meant to make its first-ever debut during the summer festival season. As it turns out, that fell right during the height of the coronavirus lockdowns. Like other big-name events, we had to shift from a traditionally communal live music experience to a socially-distant, socially-conscious festival. Which meant more than a new date to ensure the people attending, playing and working not only felt safe but participated responsibly. In addition to new precautions we needed to communicate that, while the experience might look different, the music still sounds the same. And after all this time apart, maybe sweeter. 

Results:

  • Total digital campaign resulted in more than 3.2 million impressions and an above-average CTR
  • New website generated 82.5K pageviews, 50.2K sessions and 42.4K new users
  • Brought a new brand to market and established their brand foundation
  • Created a flexible brand identity system
  • Partnered with artists to cross-promote on social and traditional radio
  • Built an email database from no subscribers to just over 1,500

Make Life Better

Artists and the people who support them rely on gigs and performances to make a living. River & Blues Fest is, without a doubt, going to be a good time. But it’s also going to prop up an art form, a nearly forgotten genre that survives with every chord. More so, it supports the artists, especially the grassroots, independent and often local musicians still waiting to be discovered. We are so proud to work with a client that uplifts the local creative community and is flexible enough to adjust their brand-new music festival to be safe and socially distant. Bringing people together safely is important now more than ever.

November 10, 2020

Shift your perspective

How do you get an entire community to see things differently? Our challenge was to celebrate the Near Southside’s milestone moments at an annual event that invites business leaders, artists, entrepreneurs and friends to gather and give to the organization and district at the single biggest fundraising event of the year. 

Inspired by the very optimism that shaped the Near Southside and continues to move it forward, the event focused on the possibility of perspective. A key part of this community’s identity and a driving force behind its transition from forgotten frontier to one of the city’s most vibrant places to live, work and be. 

 

Perspective is more than a way of seeing things; it’s a pursuit. And one we wanted to challenge everyone to actively engage in from the moment they opened the invitation. So we applied a visual trick using red and blue ink and an overlay that allowed us to reveal each message by shifting each guest’s perspective, literally. 

October 28, 2020

A decade of boo

Boo at the Zoo has long been the unmissable Halloween experience for many families in Fort Worth. Since 2011, Schaefer has been tasked with keeping Boo at the Zoo top-of-mind for old fans and the next generation of families looking to establish a Halloween tradition.

Working on Boo at the Zoo is a rewarding creative problem for our team to solve each year, and it illustrates the variety and volume of strategy and thought that goes into marketing an event year after year – and staying relevant and top-of-mind in the local market. 

Boo at the Zoo is a big deal in Fort Worth. It gives children a chance to celebrate Halloween alongside some of their favorite wildlife animals. This well-loved local tradition has cemented itself as one of the best family-friendly events in North Texas, and it’s our job to not just create awareness but inspire action and encourage the decision-makers in the family to purchase tickets before they sell out.

We’ve had the opportunity to work on this campaign since 2010. Each year we face the unique challenge of reinventing and refreshing the event to excite the attention and interest of children and parents in North Texas. The creative hurdle remains the same each year, but this year, the global pandemic created an entirely new set of logistic and messaging challenges.

This challenge requires us to the table each year with a set of new ideas that each communicates the value and excitement that this event provides for families across North Texas.

For 2020, the Zoo decided to alter the usual format from on-foot trick-or-treating to a drive-through event that ensured safer social distancing measures were addressed. Covid-19 health protocols presented another ripple in planning the creative assets and messaging that we pitched to the client. During the pandemic, normal protocols are out the window, and we had to illustrate that this year’s Boo at the Zoo was going to take place in the family car rather than on foot. It was imperative that we clearly communicated that this event still packed the same fun-filled adventure of years past, while offering a safe way to enjoy Halloween during the pandemic.

Boo at the Zoo is a rite of passage for many young Fort Worth families, and we’re so proud to work with the Zoo and play a part in this enchanting local tradition. 

October 15, 2020

We get by together

The Near Southside is made up of a diverse kaleidoscope of local professionals working in the culinary, arts, entertainment, retail, and service industries. These people and the establishments where they worked were hit particularly hard when the pandemic hit. So, the Near Southside created the Southside C.A.R.E.S Fund, which directly benefits these Near Southside community members. 

Goals

  • Awareness campaign to raise $10,000, which will be matched dollar for dollar by a benefactor
  • Concert stream to raise $50,000 during contribution push

The Campaign

We were tasked with generating awareness and excitement for the Fund to encourage more donations to the artist and service industry members that make up the fabric of the Near Southside community. We created the tagline “We Get By Together,” which illustrates the central message of the campaign and nods to the primary goal of the Fund – caring for our neighbors living and working in the Near Southside.

The Southside C.A.R.E.S Fund serves two important purposes: to generate awareness of the fund, and encourage donations from a wider audience of people who live, work or play in the area. We began raising awareness for the C.A.R.E.S Fund with a social media campaign. It had to be colorful, easy to read, and hyper-share-worthy to encourage community participation, which was central to the campaign’s overall success. 

We built a landing page that acted as an informational hub and a place where people could contribute to the fund and find out more about how to apply for aid. The landing page lives at wegetbytogether.com – another nod to the reality that everyone is facing the pandemic, and we’re each in this fight together.

The Concert – Leon Bridges Live from the Southside

As the campaign unfolded the focus shifted from the website, to a free, live-streaming concert put on at Kent & Co. Wines by Near Southside residents Leon Bridges and Abraham Alexander. Both artists graciously donated their time and work to continue to raise money for the Southside C.A.R.E.S Fund. The concert directed people back to the website and encouraged more community support.

Concert Results

  • More than 7,000 unique viewers on the live stream from all over the world, including Russia, the Netherlands, and Egypt
  • Exceeded concert fundraising goal of $50,000

A Success for Our Community

The Southside C.A.R.E.S Fund was a rousing success and smashed the initial contribution goals. Thanks to the generous support of Marilyn and Marty Englander, every contribution to the Southside C.A.R.E.S. Fund was matched dollar-for-dollar up to 10K. This means donations doubled in impact. But the Fund would not have been as successful without tremendous community support.

Campaign Results to Date

  • More than $143,588 raised
  • 1,980 individual donors
  • 569 grants awarded

Looking Forward

As we continue to cope with the effects of the coronavirus pandemic, Southside C.A.R.E.S. is committed to supporting the district and the people who make it up. As a member of the community, it is our honor to help the Near Southside raise awareness and support for people in our community.

To contribute to the Southside C.A.R.E.S Fund, visit https://wegetbytogether.com/

Made Possible by Neighbors & Friends

This campaign and community concert would not have been possible without the incredible support and contributions from some of our local partners. Their generous donations and dedication of time and energy brought this fund to life and has helped improve the lives of people living in the Near Southside.

Kent & Co.

Near Southside Inc.

Marilyn and Marty Englander

Leon Bridges 

Abraham Alexander

 

October 13, 2020

We create community

Legacy. Capability. Values. Intention. These are big ideas that drive everything Hillwood Communities builds for the communities they create. So, when Hillwood needed a brand refresh and updated messaging, we leaned hard into these core tenets to accurately summarize the massive impact Hillwood has on the communities they build and the people who live there every single day. We needed to communicate these central beliefs in a cohesive and convincing brand brochure that would attract home buyers and investors.

Updated Messaging

When creating updated messaging for Hillwood, we expanded on the word “community” to accurately define the effect that Hillwood has on each of its developments. “We Create Community,” is the direction that we decided upon for the updated brand messaging. From Live Smart amenities to featuring a community garden, Hillwood takes extra steps to make each development a unique place to call home. More than that, Hillwood’s offering of communities, each with their own natural aesthetic and intrinsic values, ensures that there’s a Hillwood Community for every new homebuyer.

A Refreshed Brand Brochure

The Hillwood corporate brochure is where homebuyers and investors can interact with the Hillwood brand on a more extensive level. It needs to convince investors that Hillwood is an excellent investment opportunity and communicate to homebuyers that there is a community waiting for them underneath the Hillwood brand.

Evolved Brand Identity

Hillwood is a pioneer within the community development space. Each community they build focuses on elevating the quality, innovation and sense of community for their homeowner, offering unparalleled conveniences, all while taking subtle and grandiose steps to harbor a real sense of community among the neighborhood. Beyond the amenities that they create for their homeowners, Hillwood emphasizes the natural beauty of the land that they build on and rely on its inherent attraction as a central selling point. Every single step is taken with incredible intention aimed at improving the life of each resident.

The brochure connects all of these points by giving a detailed overview of each Hillwood Community and featuring evocative imagery of the natural aesthetics that define each community. Beyond the physical characteristics that define each community, we used imagery that captured the shared experiences and everyday interactions the amenities and walkways create. Each of these visual stories creates a compelling argument for why new home buyers should call a Hillwood community “home.” 

For potential investors, the legacy of pioneering big ideas and sparking engagement are enticing selling points that illustrate the long term and historical health of Hillwood Communities, which makes it a desirable investment. Sharing the story of Hillwood’s success and legacy right up front, aided by the visuals illustrating where Hillwood operates communicates the strength of the brand and implicitly tells investors that this is a worthy investment.

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