The theme for this year’s Zoo Preschool is animal markings and habitats. And because the whole point of the preschool is to teach young kids about animals, we decided to make the direct mail piece interactive and educational. The piece featured a soft, natural color palate and a fun illustrated style, which was carried out across all media including the campers’ t-shirts. Any day we get to to create cartoon animals is a good day. And from the photos, it would appear these preschoolers found their favorite spot at the Fort Worth Zoo.
Another local advertising awards season has come and gone, and it was one of the best ADDYs yet for Schaefer. This year’s haul came to 25 total awards, including 9 golds, a Special Judges’ Award and Best of Show. The latter comes with the chore honor of putting on next year’s ADDY event. We should probably get on that now.
In the meantime, here’s a look at some of the big winners: Best of Show: Word Crops – Cassco Development Company
Special Judges’ Award: Small Change, Big Impact videos – JPS Foundation
Gold Addy: Ryan Family Showdown TV – Nolan Ryan Beef
Gold Addy: Respiratory Etiquette Posters – JPS Health Network
Recently, photographer Victoria Will took a bunch of tintype photos of celebrities at this year’s Sundance Film Festival. In case you didn’t see them, here’s the link.
As the de facto in-house photographer for Schaefer, I thought it’d be fun to see if I could fake the tintype look in Photoshop. The internet being what it is, there are probably some good tutorials out there. But I’m a guy, and I don’t like asking for directions, so I just went for it.
-Scott
This year, the Hurst Conference Center came to us with a problem. As always, we came back with a solution. Problem: How can we increase our wedding and reception bookings and overcome the negative perceptions that engaged couples have of a conference center as a wedding venue? Solution: Develop a unique brand and identity for the Hurst Conference Center’s bridal market that sets it apart from competitors.
Our first step was to evaluate the local bridal market, the competitors and the unique attributes of the conference center. We then crafted the venue’s unique positioning, which guided us through the naming and identity development process. Our strategy was to develop an identity that conveyed simple elegance while highlighting the unique attributes of the grand ballroom while giving it a name that would sound good on wedding invitations. We developed several different names and designs and, in partnership with the client, landed on a name that highlighted the iconic fiber optic star-field chandelier located in the grand ballroom – Lumiere Ballroom at the Hurst Conference Center.
With the bridal identity developed, we executed the new brand in several collateral pieces to introduce it into the marketplace. Our goal was to differentiate the bridal marketing elements from the rest of the Hurst corporate/meeting planner marketing pieces. This meant pulling away from the traditional red and orange colors.
The bridal identity is set apart from the corporate HCC brand through the photography style and limited use of colors. De-saturated photography added an element of refined elegance to the space, while the use of black allowed the chandelier to stand out as a focal point within the venue. However, the corporate/meeting HCC brand and the bridal identity are tied together through the use of photography and the type family (Helvetica).
This year, every single Schaefer employee had a hand in creating our Christmas card. 400-plus hand-stamped cards later, and this didn’t seem like such a great idea anymore. Take a look at how it all came together, and don’t be surprised if next year’s card is store-bought.
Merry Christmas from all of us at Schaefer!
An opthamology practice with five physicians, Nethery Eye Associates tasked the Schaefer team to develop an integrated marketing plan to increase patient traffic in light of a more competitive marketplace. We evaluated and refreshed their current branding to support these marketing efforts and executed the refreshed brand in a website, collateral and other patient education tools, and an online media campaign.
Educational Video Series
for Nethery Eye Associates
When the Fort Worth Opera asked Schaefer to help them create fundraising collateral for a new opera they were commissioning based on the life of JFK, we were interested. When they needed it in a week, we started sweating. But c’est la vie in the ad world.
Fortuitously, the Amon Carter Museum in Fort Worth was running an exhibit of the artwork that had been put in his hotel room the night before he died. The new opera was to be set during the course of that one day in Fort Worth in 1963, so it proved an invaluable field trip for the creative team.
One of the pieces in the exhibit that caught our attention wasn’t a piece of fine art, per se, but a paper sign with welcoming the president and first lady in red letters and red glitter. This ultimately became the front cover of our collateral piece.
Not only did it harken back to that period of time, it was the perfect symbol of what the Fort Worth Opera’s new production—and those donating to it—were doing: welcoming Jack and Jackie back to Fort Worth.
We were able to produce the materials in time for a kickoff event held on the anniversary of his death. Previously named the Hotel Texas, what’s now the Fort Worth Hilton is where JFK spent his last night. It was the perfect time and place to announce the new opera, which is set to open in the 2016 opera season.
When the Fort Worth Zoo decided to update their brand messaging for 2013, Schaefer decided to pick up where our last campaign left off – clean, uncluttered imagery that kept the animals as the stars of the show.
We saw this new campaign as an opportunity to communicate the experiential and entertainment value the Zoo offers by reminding the people of Fort Worth and surrounding areas of their wilder neighbors. We did this by trying to keep animals as close to actual size as possible throughout the varying media.
We kept backgrounds simple to further call attention to the animals as they cropped up around their “natural habitat” of Fort Worth.
Our approach led us to the headline: Real. Fun. On the one hand, it’s self explanatory, but it’s also a subtle comparison to movies, video games and other virtual forms of entertainment.
Flu season is once again upon us. And without knowing it, a lot of extra germs could be as well.
The CDC requires healthcare providers to post visual alerts instructing patients to practice respiratory hygiene or cough etiquette. Most of the time, this manifests itself as cheesy cartoon illustrations, which are printed and laminated in-house. In other words, another flyer in a hospital or clinic that you don’t care to read. When JPS brought this challenge to Schaefer, we found a way to get the message noticed.
Photography by Robie Capps
