Kingspan, an Irish manufacturer of architectural insulated mental panels for buildings, wished to make it clear to its marketplace just how serious it is about sustainability, sourcing-to-disposal .
Kingspan commissioned my client Jib to create this website, pathtonetzero.com. I was asked to write it up.
It speaks volumes for itself, so I need not.
SOFA — that’s Source of Furniture and Accessories — is a brilliant Toronto invention. It’s 200,000 square-foot section of the International Centre is devoted to the furnishings & interior design industries of Canada, the US and beyond.
SOFA leases fully customizable private showroom spaces to manufacturers who use them to market products to the design and architectural trades.
I’ve worked with SOFA for a couple of years, writing the website, print ads and collateral for their team of very hardworking women. It’s a fairly new destination and not in the most glamorous of locations — Airport Rd — so it’s not the easiest of sells. But these girls hustle and are getting it done.
Jib has been jamming its proprietary SEO skillz with creative advertising techniques. This job, for which I wrote the print, online and direct response copy, was a exceptional example.
Jib created an papercraft architecture competition for Irish construction materials company Kingspan to pump up SEO and draw prospects’ eyes to their insulated metal panels. These are high-end panels used as cladding on prestigious architectural projects.
We launched with print ads in architectural trade publications, DR and eblasts announcing the competition and directing people to an intriguing microsite created for it, legaciesarebuilt.com.
Woven into the program was a story about the ‘Unknown Architect’, a fictional visionary from today times whose works are unearthed by future archeologists long after a rather nasty apocalypse. The key idea was that legacies are built of strong stuff like Kingspan. The winner got a university architecture bursary created and named in his honour.
The campaign won Platinum at the Marcom Awards. My hat goes off to senior designer Ben Allison of Jib for coming up with the idea and handing it to me, which made the writing pretty much self-execute.
Earth Inc., the ideally named, intensely creative landscape architecture firm that makes gardens so serene people never want to go inside and then wins every award there is, asked me back in 2011.
I’d done their first website about seven years ago, and was honoured to be re-engaged.
In the end, most of my wordage wound up in the bio section where, other than accolades and degrees, I made almost everything up based on interviews.
Though I am partial to words, I can’t fault the Earth people for going minimal — not when their product looks like this.
Remember Direct Mail? When I first got into this business it was huge, till digital came along and…
But, DM ain’t dead yet.
I’ve written several fine pieces with Messenger‘s Laura Wills for TTI Travel.
Some pages…
Little video wall concept I co-did with art director Ryan Fox, then of Yield now of OgilvyOne, for Deloitte Learning Academy alerting accounting professionals to update their skills.
We harnessed the monitors’ shuffle puzzle factor to maximum effect. Ryan wrote the copy before I even could, so I came up with the art direction idea before he could.
Digital artistry was masterfully executed by designer Doug Groves of Valis Inc.
Just got my hands on the full set from Colin McRae, CD at Mo-Des Design (I believe client only ran first one).
The brief: Drive hard the notions that Merc’s four-stroke outboards neither burn oil, pump out skanky blue smoke nor bleed toxic rainbows all over the lake — unlike old school mixed-fuel two-strokes. And also that these bad boys are well known for their high quality of manufacturing, reliability, ludicrous power and civilized exhaust notes. (Except, as remarked, when corporal punishment occurs.)
Since I developed the tagline, several blend names, package copy and the website for Social Coffee Co. in collusion with Meta’s George Argyropoulos, they’ve done well. George’s brief was: “It’s called Social… client wants it to be about friendly-social shit, but that’s boring. I want it to be about Socialism, Commies and all that. The owner’s Laotian and I believe that is a Communist country. Bye.”
I struggled for cliches about Communism (it’s been a while, no?) and, locating several, filtered them in. (That’s no intentional coffee pun by the way, it was organic. I shun the pun. My crime is rhyme.)
Since launching in March ’10, Social’s proprietor, Steve, has shoved his sudden brand into the knives-out-competitive coffee markets, and is already selling it in quantity online, and pulling big awards at coffee shows.
The piece of news that moved me post this, and attempt to take some credit, came Friday last when I was sitting in front of Manic Coffee on College St. chatting with one of the barmen, on his break. I asked if he knew of Social. “Yes. Social’s big now,” he replied. I asked if this was because of their amazing fun-poking leftward branding. “Don’t know about that,” said he, adding, “but their coffee’s excellent.”
As founder of The Autists brand and event (a fundraiser benefiting Geneva Centre for Autism), I’d succeeded in getting a big network ad agency — MacLaren McCann Toronto — to do our ad campaign last year. This was in part because I wanted their logo on our sponsor list, and also because I figured, given a good long leash, they’d knock it out of the park creatively. For 2011, we also had a large American agency network’s head office lined up for just that, but then they got busy and we got close to deadlines on a load of free media space (the Globe, Star and Post). So I called on Laura Wills of Messenger, who was already helping us with invites and collateral, and asked her to art direct the ads. I did the writing and developed the concept of selling the art on auction, rather than focusing entirely on the charity. We used our biggest names — such as William S. Burroughs — to draw the gaze of art collectors. Here’s the campaign. (Note: The first ad did not run — we did not receive the painting due to various snafus.)
My client Jib has established a new search engine optimization service called the PAGEONE Program. The offer: Give us a reasonable sum of money (it’s generally under $5k) and we’ll get your website onto page one of a Google search for the keywords you want associated with your site and business — all within 60 days. They guarantee it and they’re getting it done large scale.
I was brought in to write the DM and website for the service, and also to edit a 60-page DIY book on maximizing SEO by Rob Campbell (aka Smojoe), who runs PAGEONE, a book they have decided not to publish. Why give away the golden goose?
