Charles Stilwell catered my wedding two years ago, so I already knew his creativity, impeccable taste and ability to remain a beacon of calm in the storm from personal experience. (Let’s save that last story for another time, shall we?) Charles and I have stayed in touch since then, so when I heard he was looking to create a new site, I jumped to put in a bid.

Charles has turned out to be a great “first client” for the newly re-branded Winborn & Company practice. He’s patient, understanding, laid back and open to new ideas. Pretty much an ideal client. He’s run his own company for the past seven years, so he gets small business. He knows what distinguishes his catering company from others in town, which is a huge help in solidifying a rebrand. Did I mention that Charles has a spectacular eye for beautiful design as well? It’s true, he does.

When we took him through our Branding Questionnaire, he knew most of his answers right off. He understands the importance of bringing creativity into every aspect of his job; of hiring the right people to fulfill his vision; of keeping his clients happy through delivering the most delicious food at its peak of freshness; the importance of fulfilling his stewardship to the land by sourcing food locally; of serving everything beautifully arranged. Charles’ true gift —the heart of his business and what keeps him motivated every day, as we learned— is menu planning. He takes comfort food like Mac & Cheese, Hoppin’ Jon, Deviled Eggs, and adds his own creative twist to make them feel fresh and new. He brings a sense of mischievous fun into everything he does, and his clients sense it. It’s the source of every successful party he throws.

PREVIOUS SITE

Charles already had a retro-inspired look and feel going on with his marketing materials, but his previous website’s functionality was out of date. He needed a way to let his creativity show through dynamically on his new site. He wanted a way to put up new menus regularly and easily, to circulate his ideas, as well as a way to keep things organized and save himself time in the planning process. He knew he needed to establish Devil’s Food on Twitter and Facebook but didn’t quite understand what it entailed. Besides, he needed his time for planning, creating, and expediting, not consolidating his message into 140 characters or less!

This job gave us an opportunity to collaborate with someone who already had a creative vision – making our job so much easier! After Annie and I took Charles through the branding questionnaire, we walked him through how the creative process would work to build the site. We delivered the Creative Brief and proposed to build his site as well as planning and create all his outgoing marketing – email, blog updates, social media, print ads. He loved our ideas and signed on.

NEW SITE

Homepage features rotating photos with quippy captions:

We brought in Glenn Goodfellow as Art Director to create the look and feel for the site. Glenn’s great sense of color and line, font and placement showcased Charles’ love of modern design in a fun, approachable way. Glenn’s experience with WordPress proved invaluable in understanding how the piece would/should operate. He recommended we work with Rebecca Hickey of RLH Creative to build the backend of the site and we’re so happy he did! Rebecca is organized, thorough, and a clear, concise communicator. She chose the perfect starting point and then entertained all our functionality ideas, making suggestions on how to create what we needed in the easiest way possible.

Charles decided he wanted a photoshoot to bring all the elements of his new brand into one, coherent look and feel. We dug around and found some beautiful inspiration from some 1950s cookbooks. Charles added several photos he’d found, including a killer snap of Brooke Astor poolside, and asked his friend Amy Nowatski to pull everything together. Amy did a fabulous job sourcing the set pieces, location, fantastic clothes, models and hair and makeup person. We hired Aaron Hewitt of Aaron Hewitt Photography and Hello Artists. You can read more about it all came together on the Devil’s Food site.

Cocktail Parties page features fun photo and several menus below:

Now Charles can easily update the site with new menus oriented by the seasons, holidays, special events or whatever else he fancies. He can upload video (as he’s done to showcase his amazing array of wedding dishes and set-ups). Winborn & Company creates outgoing email campaigns that tie back to his blog for more information, helping drive traffic to his site where people can see more of his delicious food and entertaining ideas. His clients can keep up with all his goings on about town through outgoing Facebook and Twitter pieces, we can run mini campaigns to promote different aspects of his brand, including his new level of delivery service. We can publicize all his charitable activities and how he’s involved with so many different aspects of this city that we all love to call home.

Delivery photo from the homepage:

Inaugural Delivery blog and menu for the Oscars, easily updatable, then promoted through Facebook and Twitter:

Print ad we produced for Oregon Bride Magazine.

“Big Idea” Concept
Big Idea was the National Geographic, environmental-effect concept. It’s about the idea of conscientiousness, leading people to consider what effects their actions have on their surroundings. This concept is, at its core, very rational and was the client’s choice for the brand.

“Lifestyle” Concept
Lifestyle was about the people who are living the green life. It showed what it feels like to be concerned with the environment. It’s the more maternal, caring, protective concept, focusing on home, family, our health.

“Evocative” Concept
This iconic messaging system felt very modern and cutting edge for the millennium of fast speak and sophisticated imagery. It’s simple. Powerful. We thought this could have been a very cool “system” that was immediately recognizable as the Green Living brand in magazines, on labels, on the web. Uniquely theirs.

Chicken Interview

In recalling this, I remembered as a kid when I was learning to spell, I told myself that “weird is weird” because it doesn’t follow the normal “i before e, except after c” rule.

Both these stories came to mind the other day when I passed what used to be The Egyptian Room, the only bar in Portland for ladies who like ladies. I was shocked first by the bright highlighter colors, in great contrast to the subdued black of the previous tenant. Then I moaned when I saw the name: “The Weird Bar”. “What a weird name for a bar,” I thought, “especially if you want people to come to it.”

Unfortunately, this name looks like a classic case of bad branding. If we go back to another basic tenet of childhood learning and sound it out, we’ll see why. “Meet me at Weird Bar” doesn’t sound like an enticing invitation. “I met him at Weird Bar” isn’t really flattering for either party.

I found out later Weird Bar is billed as a place for people of all genders and sexual preferences to mix and mingle. That’s a good thing, gender queer folks need a place to feel safe and welcomed. It still misses the basic linguistic and cultural fact, though, that people aren’t generally self-declared as “weird” or “weirdos”. People are called weird by someone else, and it’s usually not flattering.

You might counter by asking, what about the old bumper sticker you see on the back of Gremlins and old Dodge Darts, “Keep Portland Weird”? My instinct tells me it has a different feel to it than Weird Bar. First, it’s about an entire city, not a single hangout. There’s a surreal, self-referential weirdness in Portland. It comes from creativity, of being off the beaten path, of iconoclasm that runs through the culture here. It makes sense to say that Portland is weird. But Weird Bar feels forced. Self conscious. Like it’s trying to take over the term the way “gay” or “queen” or other terms were reclaimed by the LGBTQ community. It rings false, though, somehow.

I wish them well and hope they find an audience. Perhaps next time, before they invest in a new name and sign, they’ll ask their patrons what they should be called. Or hire a small branding firm to help them out. It could potentially save the Fates from having their way with their business because of a bad name.

Change is in the air, it seems. I hear clients talking about needing new strategies, facing unforeseen challenges. Pain, I’ve learned, is a sure sign that it’s time to grow. Right now, it’s time to transform. Shed old habits, leave old jobs that no longer fit, outgrow old organizational structures that no longer show the breadth and depth of our talents and interests.

At their core, all such changes center on identity. This is a time of identity crisis, both personally and globally; it’s time for all of us to grow into our new selves. Resist the urge to retreat and hope for the best, it’s time to dig down, break through the barriers of fear and reveal the truths that make your company leaders and staff tick.

Say you put out a product or provide a service. All’s going well, you’re learning your market, creating connections, making sales and having a positive effect in people’s lives. Then one day you hit a glitch. The phone stops ringing. It could be that time has passed and a new product or service is changing the market. It could be that you’ve put out one too many new products and suddenly your brand identity no longer coheres. You could have been doing the same thing for so long that, truthfully, you and your staff are bored.

Whatever the case, you need to shake things up! Spend some time — now — to sit down and ask yourself some basic questions that you rarely take the time to answer because you’re too busy running your company. Questions like, “What do I really want to do?” “What are we really trying to accomplish with X product or Y service?” Challenge yourself to see a new frontier in the life of your business. Then make sure your marketing and branding reflects this new frontier and outlook.

The world doesn’t have time or money for false notions. Our communities can no longer sustain organizations that only take and never give back. People are tired of hearing about “corporate responsibility” but then seeing those same corporations foist their harmful externalities—like pollutants—onto the public’s back.

It’s time to set a new paradigm in place. It’s time for organizations that run on their own truths and ethos to serve the people who work for them, their clients and their surrounding communities in the best ways possible.

How will you heed the call? We’d love to hear your plans for the future!

The Dallas/Fort Worth metropolitan area has more restaurants per capita than any other metropolitan area in the United States. Yet the average new restaurant lasts only a year, closing down to make room for the next big idea.

So it’s tough for newcomers to survive — unless you have amazing drive to put behind a great idea. Then Dallasites can be loyal customers.

Fortunately, Greenz Restaurants, has what it takes to stick around.

Founded in 2004 by Casie Caldwell and Jennifer Huval, former marketing and finance executives, the first Greenz location boasts no more than 1,000 square feet. It’s a wonder such a small space can contain the enormous flavor punch of their salads, sandwiches and soups.  Their strategy of focusing on great taste combinations and offering fine dining service in a fast casual atmosphere is working. Greenz Restaurants has been named #43 out of the Top 100 “Brands to Follow” by the national restaurant magazine, Fast Casual. Potential franchise investors tell Greenz their marketing makes them “look bigger than they are.”

George helped Casie and Jen create their first brand, and has since helped them through a mini re-branding with designer Kelly Luckett, more than one location change, and too many marketing offers to count from the past six years. Every month, Winborn & Company writes and creative-directs the restaurant’s email marketing and in-store marketing materials, brainstorms with Casie Caldwell (now the restaurant’s sole-owner) on direction and tactics — including a new wellness program that launched this spring, helping Greenz win Best Promotion in a recent “ABC’s Good Morning Texas” contest and launching Greenz into the franchising world.

Hammer + Hand, Inc.

Construction

Portland, Oregon

BEFORE – Print Execution and Website

We believe a brand is an extension of the people who run the company, not a representation of the product or service they provide. This is especially true for the owners and staff of Hammer + Hand, Inc. When we met Sam Hagerman and Daniel Thomas, the co-founders and co-owners of Hammer + Hand, Inc., their brand didn’t reflect their erudite knowledge of building and design, or the texture and amazing details of their work. Nor did it reveal any of the spark and wit that they and their craftspeople possess. We helped them communicate all of this, and we helped them articulate the core tenets and beliefs they knew they’d always operated on but had never put down on paper. Our work with them now helps Sam, Daniel, and their employees steer the Hammer + Hand ship in the right direction day-to-day and, hopefully, for the next 15 years and beyond.

What was the situation?

Over the past 15 years, Hammer + Hand has established a reputation as Portland’s leading contractor for historic renovation, fine home-building and remodeling, and as a trailblazer in environmentally responsible construction. Their craftspeople are master executors of complex design; they’re renowned for their exacting attention to detail. Yet their gorgeous, tactile work was buried in a website designed around their print ads: boxes within boxes that created a kaleidoscopic effect. In print, it was beautiful, emotive even. But on the website their portfolio felt hidden. The navigation was restrictive and constrained. The copy didn’t properly tell the story of who they are.

This situation left Sam and Daniel feeling stuck. Whenever they wanted to move forward with designing something new — like a lawn sign, or even a simple print ad — they felt constrained by the limited design language of their present brand. Our initial efforts to solve the problem added some resonance to their voice, but their beautiful portfolio of work needed to be brought to the forefront. The interim solution, shown below, reflects our initial efforts to open up the design to focus on their work.

INTERIM – Print Execution – New strategy implemented, but before new logo created
Creative Strategy: Winborn & Company; Design: Servo Graphics

During the Brand Discovery Process, we asked Sam and Daniel a simple set of questions. Their answers yielded insights that revealed the essence of what they do and why they do it. Collaboratively, we clarified their vision and articulated their goals.

Although Hammer + Hand produces some of the most beautiful construction work in Portland, the company is not producing a product; it’s providing a service. When people work with Hammer + Hand, they remember which person on the team helped them. Every day, their clients see the care and consideration of the craftspeople in the very fiber of their homes and businesses. Not all contractors operate with this kind of conscientiousness or appreciation for a client’s private spaces. We called it the “Hammer + Hand Way,” and we knew it needed to become a distinguishing part of the marketing message.

Sam and Daniel spoke of how they’ve followed environmentally responsible building policies since they started in business 15 years ago. They wanted to solidify their environmentally responsible building activities by attaining LEED and Passive Housing certifications. They discussed a recently formed Handyman program and wanted to know how they could build that book of business. They wanted to broaden their budding interests in Accessory Dwelling Units (or “mother-in-law’s houses”) based on the recent change in the Portland Building Code. They spoke of designing and building upcycled furniture and of doing more commercial work. The list goes on and on, because these guys have plenty of vision—they just needed a prioritized plan they could follow to make their vision a reality.

Hammer + Hand had recently renovated an old building into a stunning new headquarters that reflected their current design and construction interests. While assembling their portfolio, Sam and Daniel were able to assess their accomplishments. We saw the broad array of beautiful, architecturally significant and cutting-edge homes they’d built and remodeled in Portland. It was critical that their website—and all their marketing—reflect the breadth and depth of their design and execution standards as epitomized in their portfolio and executed in their new office space.

The Brand Discovery Process produced a set of living documents written by Winborn & Company that articulated Sam and Daniel’s shared outlook for the company. It described how they wanted to diversify their practice and outlined long-term goals for what was to be achieved. The documents also provided much of the copy for their new site. They continue to help Sam, Daniel and their employees focus day-to-day on the core of what they do and why they do it. It aligns their practices, outlooks, views, goals, ethos, and standards into a singular vision that points them in the right direction. With these documents in hand, Hammer + Hand moves forward, executing marketing that reflects who the company is and that can adapt with it over time.

Execution
From a design standpoint, Hammer + Hand’s homepage now displays its splendid work. It’s executed as a Flash movie, so instead of a visitor having to search for their work, the work comes to the visitor. The viewer is enticed to dig deeper into the site by clicking on the moving image that takes them immediately to the portfolio page.

From the homepage, you can access any of the company’s new niches — Accessory Dwelling Units, Handyman Services, Energy Efficiency — as well as its new Hammer + Hand “Field Notes” blog. Sam and Daniel’s voices shine through because they write the copy for the blog. Now they have an understated way to demonstrate their deep industry expertise while creating original content that search engines love to see. We convinced them to build a site that could support video, as that’s where the web is growing.

We introduced Sam and Daniel to Kevin Peoples of WeClik Media. Kevin partnered with Hammer + Hand’s graphic designer, Steve Birch of Servo Graphics (who had designed Hammer + Hand’s original identity 15 years ago) to create a pliable web presence that showcases their work. Steve collaborated with Sam and Daniel to create a new look and feel that pairs Hammer + Hand’s unique groundedness in the preservation of historical building practices with its forward trajectory as one of the foremost leaders in energy conservation and environmentally responsible building techniques. Using Kevin’s SEO expertise, the site now drives search traffic based on keywords that Hammer + Hand can use for the rest of its marketing efforts. Traffic to the site doubled in the first quarter after launching.

AFTER

Homepage:

Handyman:

Field Notes:

Philosophy: