Patelco, one of the country’s largest credit unions and a long time client of ours, celebrated their SF branch grand re-opening last Wednesday and an early morning line of 100+ people eagerly waited to get a look at the brand new interior. Or maybe they were there to collect the $75 being awarded to the first 75 people through the doors. This was just one of the offers we cooked up this summer to promote the branch and its move.

At the end of July, Patelco closed their current SF main branch doors and moved on up the street to 124 Second. With this new branch location opening just 75 yards away from the old, the goal was to make existing members aware of the move, so daily banking routines weren’t disrupted, as well as bring in potential members.

In July, we targeted existing members with a direct mail flyer notifying them of the branch move and promoting the “First 75 in, take $75 out” offer with a QR code. Upon scanning the code, members were taken to the sitelet we developed earlier in the year for the Patelco Pays Your Way campaign. And a pop up prompted visitors to enter their information to receive a voucher and chance to win the $75. Additionally, visitors had the opportunity to take a look around and learn how Patelco celebrated their anniversary by giving back to the community.

We also created a series of bold, eye-catching posters for the new branch windows directing anyone passing by to visit the site. All patelcopays.org visitors during the promotional period, not just current members, were eligible to redeem the voucher.

For international brands it can be a challenge to introduce themselves to new and unfamiliar markets. A new market often demands a new perspective on the brand – a new take on what is being offered or how it is being presented, based on what people respond to in that particular region.

Take Bticino – an extremely large Italian manufacturer of high-end light switches, wall plates and other electrical device peripherals – as an example. They contacted Iron in 2009, as they began the process of introducing their products to the US market. Given the brand’s prominence in Europe, the company had plenty of experience framing its message of sophistication in different languages – but where the company was struggling was translating their VISUAL language. While European countries can often share an aesthetic sensibility, the US is isolated from that cultural network. In short, to customers in the US, Bticino’s marketing materials seemed strange rather than sophisticated.

Over the course of a year, we set about translating Bticino’s message of sophistication both literally and visually, redesigning the company’s website, brochure, catalog, print ads and every other consumer touch point (see a small sample of our work below). With a cohesive marketing arsenal, the company has been able to expand target market saturation from San Francisco to Los Angeles and is in the planning stages of opening an office in New York. We’re excited about how the work turned out and are looking forward to our next international challenge!

This week, while at the San Francisco Convention & Visitors Bureau 99th annual luncheon, we found out that our Art SF 08 campaign won the CTTC’s Tourism Marketing Excellence Award.

The campaign, which showcased the city’s incredible summer of art, featured national print ads, online banner ads, a microsite (above), rack cards and posters throughout SFO. We’re always thrilled when industry insiders recognize and reward great work. A huge thanks to Lynn Bruni and the rest of the marketing team at the SFCVB for bringing us on and making this happen!

Find out more about our advertising work.

The campaign, which showcased the city’s incredible summer of art, featured national print ads, online banner ads, a micro site, rack cards and posters throughout SFO. Our fingers are crossed!

Read more about our advertising work

Straight after its launch, Astia CEO Sharon Vosmek emailed us to express her delight with the video’s reception, “Let me start with how amazing the response has been to the piece you created. People LOVE it. Thank you so very much! We are thrilled!”

• Read more abut the Astia it Conference branding project

So why did we choose to shift to radio this month, when we know the spots will be heard in Marin, Sonoma and other areas where we can’t possibly expect listeners to make the trip to San Jose? Well, it’s frequently a close race between cable and radio, for the simple reason that radio is so inexpensive. With radio, we may be reaching people all over the Bay Area, but we’ll be reaching the same number of San Jose consumers (if not more), as we would with a cable buy.

Of course, the switch to radio at this stage begs the question of why we launched on cable. And the answer is: visual impact and brand awareness. The cable spots allowed us to connect with our consumers in a more visual, visceral way – they provided an interaction that goes further than a radio spot can, in terms of message retention. But now that some brand awareness has been built, we’re able to leverage that awareness and gain the cost efficiencies afforded by radio, by running continuity-minded spots that feature the same tone and voice as the cable spots. Take a listen:

We recently completed the second television spot in our campaign for Capitol Volkswagen/Hyundai/Suzuki. Now, while it moves in a new direction graphically, it maintains the overall aesthetic of the first spot. And in fact our reason for recommending this direction (which we call “White World”) to the client was that it allows us to maintain a consistent look and feel as we go, while playing with visual elements of a fundamentally different nature.

We believe it’s this “changeable same-ness” that allows a campaign to develop instant recognizability, while at the same time staying fresh over months and even years.

Last night, Iron’s campaign for the de Young Museum was awarded the 2008 Excellence in Marketing Award by the American Marketing Association. After a blockbuster opening in 2005, the de Young had experienced a decline in attendance of nearly 10% every four months, continuing through the spring of 2007, as the Vivienne Westwood exhibition wound down. With no exhibitions of note upcoming, the summer looked bleak. Iron was hired to create some new “brand buzz,” and more importantly, reverse the declining trend in attendance.

During the four-month period after the launch of the new campaign, average monthly attendance rose by 12% – a turn-around of more than 20%. As such, the campaign is a great example of the value of an integrated campaign that takes full advantage of print, outdoor and collateral.

Iron has also produced stunning campaigns for the Marie Antoinette exhibition at the Legion of Honor (completed November 2007), and this summer’s blockbuster Chihuly show (June 2008).

For more details on the de Young Campaign, click here.

This dream pairing of a ground breaking contemporary artist with one of the most forward thinking museums in the world provided us with an envious opportunity: to produce a cutting edge, effective campaign with local and national reach.

Beginning in June, the campaign print ads will run in such high profile magazines as Vanity Fair, The New Yorker, Architectural Digest and Sunset Magazine. Online we are hoping to reach the younger art enthusiast with banner placements (check out the chosen design) on Yahoo! and SFGate.com. To reach the core local audience we also developed newspaper ads, rack cards, street banners and cable cars ads.