Schaefer Advertising Co.

Strategy

Challenge:

M. Kangerga & Bro Management (MKB) is a commercial real estate investment company that focuses on self-storage opportunities. The family-owned business has been around for more than 100 years—historic, yet brandless in their industry. To strike the right note, Schaefer partnered with MKB to develop their brand identity and expand brand visibility and credibility as the company sought investment partners.

Working Forward

The purpose of the MKB rebrand was to modernize the brand tone and visual aesthetics to not just live on, but inspire confidence and empower decisions among investors and new business leads. As the company expanded relationships with third-party investors, they needed a brand identity that leveraged their heritage into an authentic look with a very updated, polished feeling. 

Goals:

  • Capture history and legacy in new brand identity
  • Create a presence online to establish credibility and appeal to new investors
  • Create new marketing materials for investor pitches 

A Nod to the Past, Present and Future

Stylistically, we wanted the new creative platform to pull through the heritage of the brand, but not feel old. We created a mark that nods to MKB’s roots, but also reflects where they are right now and where their company is heading. The primary logo has a quiet confidence, and the typeface’s nuanced letterforms illustrates the imperfections – but staying power – of carving into stone, which is a nod to the company’s impressive history.

The typography we chose is based on Jandus, which leverages strong architectural characters, friendly rounded corners and classic simplicity that can stand the test of time, just like MKB.

We selected a minimal color palette of dark charcoal and muted gold and cream, which represent the history and tradition that serve as the very foundation for MKB’s success, while also indicating their steadfastness and lasting nature. These colors work together to communicate that MKB is a trusted leader in commercial property investment and that their long history is full of decades of success.

Results

  • Cohesive brand development       
  • Logo recommendations and
  • Color palette, font solutions
  • Complementary stylistic assets
  • Brand standards
  • Web design
  • Narrative + messaging

When branding a company, it’s important to thoroughly understand the company’s principles and how they want to be known in the hearts and minds of their prospects. For MKB, we created a comprehensive brand identity that captures the history of over 100 years of successful business ventures and indicates that the brand will be around for many more fruitful years to come. 

January 20, 2021

Blazing the trail

Challenge

The Fort Worth Chamber of Commerce has served the business community within the Fort Worth area since the late 1800s, playing a pivotal role in nearly every major milestone that has occurred in the city. Moving into 2020, the Chamber’s CEO of over 30 years retired, opening the door for a new, visionary leadership team to continue the Chamber’s momentum in driving forward the success and growth of Fort Worth business.

Opportunity

The emerging Chamber team developed a specific vision and strategic plan to capture and sustain growth for the City of Fort Worth, serving as both the champion for existing businesses while executing aggressive economic development efforts. Critical to the success of this plan was to reintroduce the Chamber to our business community, influencers, and new prospects in a manner that would enlighten them to the value of the city and engage them with the Chamber. To accomplish this successfully, the Chamber team partnered with Schaefer Advertising to refine the communications platform and brand identity.

Approach

Each of our brand initiatives begins with a critical analysis of an organization’s strengths, weaknesses, and differentiators. We immerse ourselves in the vision of the company, including all marketing and business objectives. With the FW Chamber, we identified the opportunity to capitalize on the legacy of the organization while creating a more defined and contemporary position that was current with today’s business climate. Through the development of a Brand Archetype, coupled with a defined brand position and targeted key messages, we created a communications platform that the Chamber can use in their marketing efforts moving forward. This platform also fully informed the creative development of a new brand identity.

A Heroic New Mark

Our exploration process revealed that the Chamber was defined as a Hero archetype, a persona defined by strength, courage, commitment, and a drive to move things forward. Taking direction from that archetype, our creative team explored a multitude of solutions for the new Chamber brand. In keeping with our process of immersion, the team explored other related and competitive organizational brands, the history of Fort Worth, and the Chamber to inspire the recommended design solutions.

The resulting mark is simple, bold, and includes a star as a subtle nod to a boot spur and a connection to the prior iteration of their logo. The new identity evolves their brand to better represent the community it serves and the institutions it champions.

When it comes to oncology, medicine has advanced in big ways. But the business side of running an oncology practice hasn’t kept up. In the age of automation, back-office operations are often tedious, siloed and completed manually. Factors that contribute to misused resources and the growing cost of cancer care. That’s where AC3 comes in. 

AC3 is a practice intelligence platform that harnesses the power of data to improve the quality and speed of back-office work. Allowing doctors and staff to trade paperwork and process for a more meaningful purpose—caring for patients. With care being core to their business, the real obstacle was creating an identity that lived up to AC3’s cutting-edge capabilities as well as their impact on patient care.

Bringing Care Into Focus

Cancer is humbling and, most importantly, human. So the branding had to communicate the function of a tech-driven product in a very human way. In addition to a visual identity, AC3 needed a way to talk about themselves to a more public audience. We developed positioning that helped define who they are. And rooted it in the real-world, analog benefits doctors and patients experience. Productivity, revenue, quality of care, this platform gives doctors the ability to do more. A lot more. 

For the mark, we took a nod from the company’s namesake—Advanced Cancer Care Centers—and aligned it with the platform’s ability to improve operations within a practice exponentially. We let positioning guide design and the result was meaningful. 

With any tech-based product, there’s a concern around sharing proprietary imagery—a challenge we faced when representing the product in a tangible way. Rather than showing the software itself, we focused on the moments AC3 makes possible.

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.

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. 

OMNI Go For Three campaign - Landing Page-Animation

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

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. 

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.

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.