We craft effective messages for corporations, nonprofits, and design agencies. Helping C-suites to name and launch new companies and products. Manufacturers to express what a product is and why it matters. Social innovators to create space for the public to engage. We also help designers, videographers and brand managers to get started, writing generation briefs that spark creativity. Because words have power to shape ideas worth sharing. SCROLL RIGHT>>
We help clients find their voice and create the right messaging. For Rock/Creek Outfitters, we began with the fact that their brand strength rests not in equipment, but in the very human experiences surrounding their products. And ended up with a messaging strategy that makes retail personal – including a tagline engine, 15 second “Statement of Good”, guidelines for signage, packaging, web and more. Read the case study…
A Google co-founder wanted to bring the Hong-Kong based app generation platform MotherApp to publishers. Working on a tight timeline with Widgets & Stone, we created messaging options for the Frankfurt Book Fair, as MotherApp developed their business strategy for custom apps, branded children’s books, and the beta of FamLoop, a private sharing network. Bringing people together in new ways, around the magic of reading. See the site….
The Blue Plate – a Chattanooga landmark restaurant and pioneer of the local local food movement – opened a companion bar in 2011. We led naming and creating launch messaging and a launch campaign for a new brand that plays nice with an established, family favorite. Think kissing cousins. Then think the art of the metropolitan bar, on the 21st Century Waterfront.
Sometimes, the hardest part of a design project is the blank page. So we are often asked to dig deep into clients and markets – writing generation briefs that spark creative concepts, helping visual articulation teams to design with authority. As when words helped shape great ideas for Scripps Networks to attract new advertisers and investors in 2011.
For Tricycle, Inc., we curated an “anthology of the moment” written by 11 eco-deisgners – on where sustainability stood in the interiors industry, and where it should be going. Then we edited the whole book, wrote introductions and two articles while Tricycle’s design team created graphics – over the course of a 5 day creative blitz. The resulting book is included in the permanent collection of the Smithsonian Institute’s Cooper Hewitt National Design Museum.
70 independent retail stores across the US make up the Grassroots Outdoor Association. To promote local experience of the backcountry – and gain greater buying power with vendors from Arc’teryx to Yakima – they needed to speak with a strong, united voice. We were asked to help them find and articulate that voice. See the collateral, designed by Widgets & Stone…
When Chattanooga was hit by the largest recorded tornadic storm in US history, EPB rose to the occasion. While our community worked to clear the rubble, EPB began rebuilding infrastructure, hour after hour, restoring power in record time. In the same year, they grew their Fiber Optics business to $45 million, launched America’s fastest Internet and continued to build America’s first true Smart Grid. We were proud to write the annual report of this year in EPB’s history.
When a city asks its citizens to share their hopes for home – it should be as inclusive as possible. We were asked to name history’s largest visioning survey, draft the questions, and build a communications strategy encouraging any-and-everyone to speak up, stand up.
A foundation-funded sustainability initiative wanted to change the way that a community thinks about green building – for good. We were asked to name the project, develop launch communications and work closely with its directors on advertising, guerrilla campaigns, media messaging and more. Go green|spaces go.
When the Product Design group of global architecture leader HOK launched a breakthrough flooring with our long-time client Mannington, we created and implemented a nontraditional, integrated, cross-platform PR plan. Media coverage, online presence, award competitions and real-world events that led to awards at the NeoCon World’s Trade Fair and Healthcare Design Expo, and IIDA panel events in Chicago and Nashville….
In ’10 and ’11, we were asked to help the Urban League raise awareness about the many ways they serve Chattanoogans. This year, we articulated a new platform about the business benefits of inclusion, wrote the annual report, and created “Count Me In”, a participation campaign to engage locals. Implemented by Chicago/Chattanooga agency Two x Four.
A chain of Euro-comfort shoe stores wanted to connect with the right customers. We developed audience archetypes to guide marketing, then created verbal brand guidelines for the stores, packaging, management tools, web presence and even private label products. Information informs; copy sells. Read the case study…
Clients often ask us to help them find the right design agencies. And we love bringing visual and verbal articulation together – not just before a launch, but throughout the whole lifecycle of a project. As when we connected flooring giant Mannington with their new creative agency, their new web company, and even amazing new product design talent.
Start-up LifeKraze was launching a new concept in connectivity: tracking points for lifestyle choices. We created a strategy of, “Facebook is who you are. Twitter is what you say. LifeKraze is what you do.” Articulating the focus around connecting digital interactions with the real world helped raise $1.2MM in capital and earn a slot on Entrepreneur’s top 100.
Once an old-school manufacturing town of the New South. Now, with a great Gig. We were asked by a collaborative team of city leaders and utility innovators to help shape research and strategy from a a NY firm into a story. Chattanooga is the first city in America to offer a gig of bandwidth to businesses and homes plus the country’s most advanced, truest Smart Grid. Giganooga.
For nearly fifteen years, we’ve been privileged to help start-ups find their voices in crowded markets. Leading brand development, verbal articulation, strategy and campaigns – so small brands build trust and become part of their customers’ lives, part of their customers’ own stories.
In today’s marketing, building awareness isn’t enough. Writing can help drive sales. The Blue Plate is downtown’s metropolitan diner, serving comfort food in a mod space that overlooks the waterfront. In the restaurant, on the sidewalk, online, through real-world-word-of-mouth and through classic advertising we help promote TBP’s wonders to foodies and newbies alike (even during a recession).