Crowley Webb Blog

crowleywebb.com 3.0

We’ve always been known for our provocative work. Recently, we sat down and put our minds together to develop a new brand position that would capture, in as few words as possible, the essence of what we do everyday. The result: never boring.

We then decided we needed to build a new Crowley Webb website that would show exactly what we meant. We looked at lots of industry websites, determined what the rules were, and then made sure we broke them. At our brainstorming sessions, every time one of us came up with a new idea they would look around the table and ask the critical question: “Is this boring?”

We invite you to see what we came up with by visiting www.crowleywebb.com. We believe our new site showcases our agency and our work in ways that are anything but boring. So dig around. You never know what you might find.

Discovering Cascadia.

Our own Jeff Pappalardo and Allison Polizzi stood in the middle of an empty clearing surrounded by trees near Seattle, Washington, and tried to envision a retirement community nestled there. Our client plans to open the new community in 2011, however, to do so they have to secure 70% capacity of the community by the end of 2008. Our challenge was to come up with a branding campaign that would inspire seniors to commit to living in a community they’d never seen before.

We branded the community Cascadia, which serves as a nod to the Pacific Northwest locale. The campaign, which has the theme, Discover Cascadia. The natural place to be., incorporates elements of nature, a soothing color palette of deep greens and other earth tones, and images of seniors enjoying a vibrant, purposeful lifestyle.

We voted for Neil.

Our agency participated in a unique family project this past spring and summer. Neil Haskell – the younger brother of our media planner/buyer Erin Haskell – made it into the Top-20 lineup of dancers who competed in the Fox reality show, So You Think You Can Dance. When Erin heard the news, her intuitive marketing sense kicked into high gear. She immediately contacted a photographer friend, Scott Southerland, to set up a photo shoot of Neil. She called and emailed everyone she knew to make the announcement and solicit support. Then each Wednesday she reminded everyone via email, and at the coffee pot in the CWA kitchen, to tune in to the show that night and vote for Neil. Her sister, parents, and two other brothers did the same.

Then each of those people told two friends.

There’s no way to quantitatively measure the demographic reach of the Neil Haskell Media Plan. But we’d like to think that Erin and company’s efforts – including our frenzied, cell-phone-speed-dial voting each week – contributed to the resulting ROI, as Neil danced his way through round after round.

In fact, Neil stayed in the running all the way to the season finale, and now he’s going on tour with the Top 10.

Say hi to Mike.

There’s a new face at Crowley Webb. On August 6, local legend Mike Story became the agency’s new director of business development.

Mike became familiar with the Crowley Webb name throughout his 20-year career as a sales professional for Buffalo printers, Miken and Boncraft, and he did some independent consulting for the agency this past spring. So when he was offered the newly created position of director of business development, he notes, “It felt right in my gut.” He hasn’t looked back.

“When I was in printing, Crowley Webb was highly regarded as the most creative agency around,” he says. “Now that I’m here, I can see how true that statement is.”

CWA President Dave Buck jokes that, “We hired Mike to play golf, have drinks, and go out to dinner.” Mike brings to the table a PDA filled with hundreds of contacts, and the relationships he’s spent time building with those contacts through the years helped him to take Miken’s annual sales from zero to more than $20 million in just 7 years, and to double Boncraft’s sales in half that time.

“Crowley Webb is one of Buffalo’s best-kept secrets,” he says as he heads out of the office for a round of golf. “I’m ready to change all that.”