The Power of an Idea
ADDYs season allows for all of the brilliant minds, artistic executives, and strategic creatives who make up the advertising community in Western New York to put forth some of their past year’s best work. It affords us, as an agency, the opportunity to behold the power of an idea – how one person’s lightbulb moment can be hoisted up by another’s talent and someone else’s capabilities.
Though there are dozens of lightbulb moments we’d deem worthy, here is a summation of those we chose to put forth for eternal judgment at the 2019 ADDYs:
Bank of Akron, MedHome Loans — Integrated Brand Content/Campaign
Bank of Akron’s MedHome loan offering was created in anticipation of the common barriers to homeownership that young medical professionals often face, such as debt-to-income ratio, outstanding student loans, and large down payments required. Having a client that is enthusiastic about the implications that working with us will have on their business model gave us the chance to humanize this campaign — we conveyed the personality behind these loans, with the understanding that investing in young medical professionals is an investment into the health and wellness of our community.
Seeking to invoke a “you, too” sentiment by opening doors that may have seemed out of reach before, our team executed an integrated campaign across a variety of mediums: stop-motion video, a soft-touch folder, digital ads, and social posts. The paper design for the video was created and cut in-house, making this project a labor of love as we began to speak to all the different ways that these emerging doctors, dentists, and residents go about making a home.
To illustrate the benefits of having space to yourself, we employed a method we believed to be both straightforward and artistic for an audience of young medical professionals that favors directness, while still appreciating creativity. The end result? The type of satisfaction that is reminiscent of coming home after a long day.
University at Albany, University at Albany School of Public Health – B2B Campaign
Sometimes timing is everything: Getting the right items in front of the right audience is beyond crucial. Such was the case for our promotional campaign completed for the University of Albany School of Public Health, which was ultimately intended for ranking and review by other regional leaders in public health education. The 19 IDEAS team decided that the best way to proceed was to employ a variety of different visuals – a “Look Book” that housed original photography, a Letter from the Dean, as well as a print infographic created to showcase the SPH’s achievements.
When it then came time to capture the perfect cover shot, again we found this campaign to be reliant on just the right timing. On the day our team members scheduled to shoot in Albany, it was an exceptionally unremarkable, cloudy day. As the story goes, when they arrived on campus, the clouds parted over the School of Public Health, making for the perfect shot of this architecturally significant campus.
The cover photo afforded us the opportunity to let our work do the talking and speak about our in-house photography capabilities. From the artistically inclined to the data analysts, the diverse elements we implemented into the Look Book ultimately told a story about the University of Albany to a number of different audiences.
Walsh Duffield, Nutrition Shirt – Art Direction
The Buffalo Chapter of the annual J.P. Morgan Corporate Challenge fosters unity and wellness amongst its participants — promoting values not unlike those of Walsh Duffield. As a company, Walsh Duffield is a near-perfect fit for the spirit of the Corporate Challenge, with its mission of providing insurance that keeps individuals and businesses alike safe and well.
For the Walsh Duffield Corporate Challenge team, we designed a branded t-shirt that put the company’s commitment to safety and wellness into practice with a play on nutrition facts. Using their trademark green and easily recognizable logo, we illustrated the percent daily value of several staple traits that speak to the hardworking Walsh Duffield team, with dedication being the characteristic most heavily accounted for. And to tie it all together, a cheeky nod to Ted Walsh: What would the man be without his bow tie?
Final Judgement
A recent public dialogue articulated what some know to be the creative struggle in how we come to play in an opinion-based sport, not a factually-based one. This raises the stakes in our line of work, at times making it more difficult, but here’s the thing – we wouldn’t have it any other way.
Though we are putting these three campaigns at the mercy of the ADDY judges, we remain humble servants to ourselves and our clients. Appreciative of how each project effectively encapsulated our creative prowess, we are proud of the synergy between our accounts and creative teams that translates a client’s wants and asks into a tangible thing. It’s what we show up for every day – work with purpose.
And if you’re uncertain as to what that looks like, we invite you to take a look and explore the possibilities with us.