Schaefer Advertising Co.

Creative

January 7, 2021

Rising above the crowded real estate market to sell more homes

When we took ownership of Lilyana marketing, the community needed a brand that better connected homebuyers to the true joys of living in this community.

Honing in on Key Differentiators

This community is far from cookie-cutter, so it only made sense to highlight the factors that make it stand out in a cluttered and crowded market. For Lilyana, it’s the conveniences and lifestyle that make it a truly special place to call home. With more than 50-acres of green space, the community is packed with natural amenities, numerous parks and things for homeowners to do outdoors. All of which keep the community and people connected.

A Refocused Brand Position

Lilyana is located in Celina, a peaceful, up-and-coming town remote enough to harbor tranquility and close enough to Frisco to take advantage of its entertainment, energy and everything it has to offer. When we began to evolve the brand position, we pulled the thread of accessible tranquility to show prospective homebuyers that it is possible to have it all when you live at Lilyana.

Communicating Joy and Tranquility

We needed a way to portray the very real, and often intangible, qualities that make this community so special. By incorporating bubbles as a visual element, we were able to communicate the true value of a Hillwood community—connection, comfort and an ethos rooted in community. All while positioning Lilyana as a place to pause and enjoy the moment.

In addition to visually refreshing the brand, we also revitalized the brand language to communicate joy in the Lilyana lifestyle. “A place to embrace life’s moments” communicates that Lilyana is a community for people to slow down and enjoy their lives – right here, right now.

Building a comprehensive brand story gives real estate brands more space to have meaningful conversations with home buyers. Developing Lilyana’s position in a cluttered and competitive space helped the brand stand out, and ultimately led to more home sales.

December 21, 2020

Branding and launching a new glaucoma treatment

Surgeons have many procedural options when caring for patients, and treating glaucoma is no different. Despite the numerous procedures and tools available for ophthalmologists, they each have the same goal: to treat their patients most effectively.

So, when OMNI® launched their new 2.0 device, which has functional advantages over other similar products on the market, we had to communicate the benefits this new device had over its competition.

An Evolved Device Needs an Evolved Campaign

Efficacy is what uniquely sets OMNI apart from other glaucoma treatment options available to surgeons. Beyond efficacy, the new OMNI device provides patients with a more acceptable risk level, addressing all three points of the conventional outflow pathway. While other procedures and devices focus treatment on a single point of resistance. The OMNI Surgical System allows surgeons to treat all severities of open-angle glaucoma, empowers them to intervene in combination and standalone procedures, and provides surgeons with the ability to treat glaucoma with versatility. All of these product advancements ultimately empower surgeons to treat their patients with a more efficacious approach with confidence and provide patients with a higher level of ocular treatment.

It’s All About Efficacy

OMNI’s brand awareness is strong and based on a functional message that resonates with ophthalmologists, cataract surgeons and glaucoma specialists. But we needed to evolve their position from function, that was established during the first generation of the device, and move into a more benefit-driven message that emotionally connects surgeons to their patients. To achieve that, efficacy had to be brought to the front and center of the campaign messaging. Additionally, we had to communicate that no other device addresses all three points of resistance in the conventional outflow pathway.

The concept, “Go for Three,” alludes to taking a three-point shot in basketball. It puts the ball in the hand of the surgeon and empowers them to make the choice. This tagline nods to the new OMNI device being the highest-scoring option available on the market, and encourages surgeons to choose the option that is better than the rest. Why settle for a 2-point layup when you have a wide-open shot at a 3-pointer? This active metaphor was a way to invigorate and engage the target audience with something unique in a crowded device market and simply position OMNI as a shot worth taking.

Results

Reached an all-time high in sales
Accelerated the brand in a very successful direction
Made a huge splash in the industry, even amid the Covid-19 pandemic
Evolved campaign expanded into a sales aid, educational materials, website, and into more multi-media placements

December 14, 2020

A new look at an old, familiar friend

Places are defined by people, and the Near Southside is among the most vibrant and diverse communities in Fort Worth. So, when they approached Schaefer to help them rebrand their identity, we focused on the neighborhood they create and the people and ideas the Near Southside attracts.

We wanted to present that the Near Southside is first and foremost a community where people and business can thrive in an inclusive and supportive environment. The result is a design balanced in minimalism and boldness that allows the artistic soul of the Near Southside to come through, but also be functional enough to carry the brand across everything from way-finding signage to social. The new color pallet represents the diverse voices that stand up for and continue to create opportunities that cultivate community. The updated identity is malleable enough to work across mediums but enduring enough to be used over decades to come.

It is a pleasure to partner with local organizations that build up our community and help them identify their message and purpose, and carry that through to representing their brand. By creating a flexible mark that more accurately represents the community and culture of the Near Southside, we’re hopeful that their message will resonate more deeply with future community members and contributors. The Near Southside is an excellent ambassador and cultivator of the arts and culture that permeate our neighborhood and creating something that elicits that same level of passion is why we come to work every single day.

November 23, 2020

Can you build a brand from a mindset? We can.

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.

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 2, 2020

Riff Ram Bah Zoom – breaking the grid to connect

Covid-19 has changed everything and college football has not been immune to the impact of the pandemic. We partnered with TCU Athletics to expand on the tradition of the Riff Ram Video and create a hype video during the first-ever, socially-distant TCU football season. During normal circumstances, this hype video would run in the stadium to invigorate the audience, but under quarantine protocols, fans cannot attend the games and cheer their Frogs to victory. So, how can you inspire fans at home to leave their seats and chant along to “Riff, Ram, Bah, Zoo?” By connecting them.

The video begins by nodding to the new reality of the fan experience. Football is part of the fabric of American life, Zoom is too now. Showing fans in the Zoom space and having them breaking the grid is a fun way to show that no matter where you Riff Ram, you’re cheering with s fans across ages, places and even a pandemic. Despite the virtual barriers (and real ones presented by pandemic quarantine protocols), we’re always connected as a part of the TCU fandom family.

The video illustrates to fans that we aren’t really that far from each other. From the athletes and students, to the family watching at home, we’re all living under a new normal. And while we can’t gather in person, we can find solidarity and spirit in the fact that we’re all in this together.

Director’s Note:

Creating this video during the Covid-19 pandemic was a challenge that required our team to solve problems that we’d never confronted before. The big question was, “how can we keep everyone safe while producing an effective video that serves campaign goals?”

The entire spot was shot on a green screen with all but two shots featuring one person at a time. Every background was added in post and every action and camera move had to be planned out prior to filming. Each crew member wore masks while we were working, and the only unmasked people in the studio were the on-screen talent. We booked each of the actors with their own timeslot to minimize their exposure to others. However, this made each studio session incredibly valuable as we could not invite the actors back for re-shoots later.

The game plan for this shoot was nearly as planned, practiced and choreographed as Gary Patterson’s defense (almost).

The shoot was difficult, but the team at Red Productions made collaborating on such a meticulous production much easier, more enjoyable and pretty impactful!

Go Frogs!