Ant Hill Marketing

Saturday was what I would call a Win-Win-Win day. From 8:00 a.m. to midnight, Siobhan and I were at the Art Institute of Portland for their annual web raising event. For those of you who don’t know what the web raising event is — it is basically a barn raising for websites.  Each year, AI schools around the country select a local non-profit organization, gathers a team of volunteer students, and develops a website in a day.

This was the first time an agency has been involved and it elevated the event to a new level, allowing students to see the brand we developed for the client and what they have to work with for the site development. Ant Hill guided AI students to build a website for our client Virginia Garcia Memorial Health Centers.

The day was long. I’m talking really long. But it was a really exciting day. The students worked so hard and developed an amazing site that will help Virginia Garcia communicate their core mission and brand. At midnight, the site was about 95 percent completed but wasn’t quite ready to go live, so we will be picking the development back up next Saturday to finish the site.

If you want to see a play-by-play of the event, just check out the twitter stream.

Here are a few photos from the day.

The schedule. (Crazy)

Morning food spread.

Teamwork in action.

Reviewing first set of designs.

Shiv chowing down on some Webraising food.

We look forward to seeing the final results next weekend!

-Erin

Companies spend a considerable amount of time and energy differentiating their products and services from their competition. But often times they fail to follow through with the imagery they choose to represent themselves.

Take these images from two successful brands:

iMac product shot. Photo courtesy of Apple.

Apple: The style is modern. The tone is cutting edge and clean. Obviously a computer for the rest of us.

adidas Soccer Ad

adidas: Style and tone combine to show the passion, individuality and action of sport.

Picture perfect.

We’ve all heard the adage “A picture is worth 1000 words.” Its true. The style, tone and subject of imagery all say something about a brand. And if you want the most out of an image – that “something” needs to support what your brand stands for. Not to mention that there is nothing more embarrassing for a brand manager (or a designer) than having your ad show up with the same stock photo as your competitor.

Granted that original art doesn’t come cheap, even for large companies, especially when measured as just one line item when developing one piece of collateral. But, when you consider its value to the overall image of a brand, its an investment for the long run. Original artwork also gives you the ultimate control over the message behind the image and adds to the uniqueness of a brand. The right image and visual language of a photo will communicate, engage and identify with your audience in ways that words can’t.

So I ask you dear reader, how have you made the case for original art? And what do you do when you can’t?

Before + After

When we set out to update the Virgina Garcia Memorial Health Center logo, we knew we had to represent the undying passion, hope and inspiration the story of Virginia Garcia holds.

Starting with a mood board and brand position established through an Ant Hill-guided discovery session, we set off exploring. We had no shortage of starting points: a rich history, multi-cultural and diversity themes, medicine and compassion. In the thumbnail sketches, you start to see the seeds of these ideas.

Thumbnail Sketches

After several thumbnails and refinements, we arrived at 3 potential options to review with the team.

Initial Concept Review

During our presentation to the Virginia Garcia team, the themes of freedom, passion, joy, inspiration and Virginia Garcia herself were all discussed and weighed against our initial concepts. We all agreed the third concept – derived from and abstracted VG and a butterfly – was not only inline with the Brand position, but everyone’s expectations, as well.

After further refinement and an extensive color study, we arrived at a final mark that truly represents the Virginia Garcia Health Care Center’s passion and inspirational work. I feel we have not only created a mark to help them stand out among other NGO’s, but one that serves as a beacon of hope and health for the folks who need their services.

Final Logo

After the logo was approved, we unveiled it at an organization-wide meeting. We alluded to a big change in an all staff invitation, then made the unveiling central to the overarching message of change at the meeting. Attendees were given t-shirts with the new logo made of all the words associated with Virginia Garcia’s mission, as well as small buttons employees could wear until a wide-spread external launch.

Internal Launch Buttons + T-Shirts

We’re jazzed to be working with Special Olympics Oregon to help promote the inaugural Polar Plunge Columbia as well as its sister event, Polar Plunge Deschutes (to be held Feb 21st and Feb 27th respectively). These wacky events will have individuals and teams jumping into the Columbia and Deschutes  rivers in crazy costumes – all with the goal of raising funds to support Special Olympics Oregon programs year round.   When all is said and done, Special Olympics Oregon hopes to have raised as much as $200,000.

Ant Hill Marketing is providing public relations strategy and execution, including helping the Special Olympics venture into social media (Facebook, Twitter) to create buzz in the online community. In the first week, the Twitter account has attracted more than 400 followers. Combining all this with traditional tactics like media advisories, press releases and media relations will help the organization reach the participation goals for both events. Plus, it will help build awareness for the organization statewide and get more people involved in this great cause, which is to help folks with intellectual disabilities.

You can follow/friend them on these social networks:

Twitter: polarplunge

Facebook:  Polar Plunge for Special Olympics Oregon

I am very excited that I can now blog about our non-profit client, Virginia Garcia Memorial Health Center. Kim (one of our partners) met the CEO, Gil Muñoz, through one of the medical employees. After talking with Gil, our team realized Virginia Garcia Memorial Health Center would truly benefit from our brand development process.

What’s great about their organization is that they already have a really powerful mission and an amazing staff that are 100% behind it. The organization just needed help defining their distinction in the market and then visually expressing that distinction.

For those who don’t know, Virginia Garcia fills a critical healthcare need to those with barriers to access in Multnomah and Western Washington Counties. They opened with one clinic out of a two-car garage in 1975 and have now serve over 40,000 patients each year, with multiple clinic locations. And they are growing every day.

We have completed our brand development process with Virigina Garcia and are now in the midst of executing on the developed strategies. We are working on many exciting projects for them including identity development, collateral and a website. Can’t wait to share more soon!

-Erin