Boys and Girls Clubs Gives 3 a Pat on the Back

Every so often we get a letter like this for our pro bono efforts in the community. This is one of them. We recently helped the Boys and Girls Clubs of Portland Metropolitan Area create a print ad for the opening of a new club in the region. 3 worked with designer, Tim Silvis of Systom to create the ad.

3 continues to support the Boys and Girls Clubs through the hosting of their email newsletter and through ad hoc marketing efforts. It is our pleasure to support children and those who work to make their lives better. We all benefit from the results.

Videos take one-day events and make lifelong memories... and content

Challenge: In early 2007, Dave's Killer Bread was attempting to raise awareness about availability of their product in Eugene stores. 3 had recommended using Eugene as a pure test market as the company had never done any promotions in the city. 3 organized a number of promotional efforts to test which efforts would work best in other cities. One of the efforts was a three-day presence at the University of Oregon Street Faire. To get extended benefit from the event, we planned to create a video to capture the infectious energy that is present at these live samplings.



Solution: We filmed all three days at the Street Faire, focusing on getting shots of people tasting the bread. Still, we walked away with almost six hours of footage. By combing through the tapes and selecting only the best moments, we pared it down to a tight five minutes. The background music was composed and performed by Dave himself, and has become a recognizable tune on his radio commercials and other video efforts.

Result: The video was broadcast via the Dave's Killer Bread web site and blog and has been viewed over 100 times in less than a few weeks by viewers in Eugene. Many thanks to 3 associate, Mason West, for his work here.

Fonts as the basis for design

Challenge:
Produce a two color brochure that people will want to read. Well, that was the ideal goal. We'd like to note that Charles de Montesquieu said, "An author is a fool who, not content with boring those he lives with, insists on boring future generations." Here at 3 we have a rule: do your best not to bore people. And so it was with our assignment for Social Venture Partners. We needed to strike the all-too-familiar balance between cost and effectiveness for the organizations primary membership prospecting collateral.

Our recommendation:
Use different fonts from the same general "family" in a way that would increase the readability of the content. We decided not to use images other than the logo of the organization to encourage people to read, not just glace, the content.

The writing needed to be quirky, but not over-the-top. Social Venture Partners mission is a serious and important one. More plainly, we wanted the writing to be approachable, fun and as non-corporate as possible.

Result:
A 5 X 7 staple bound two-color booklet that could be slipped in to a coat pocket, purse or briefcase. An unusual approach to the typical "We need a brochure" problem.