Marketing yourself is sometimes one of the most difficult tasks for an agency. In 2019 we made a concerted effort to try and better leverage our social platforms for promoting our work, the creativity of our staff, and our clients’ successes.

What had previously been an afterthought of “oh yeah, this could go on social!”, became more deliberate. We convened a committee of staff across disciplines to touch base bi-weekly to discuss a variety of topics related to social media; what was new on our platforms, how can we make better use of our platforms and how can we offer a diversity of content that resonates with our wide audience.

After establishing a strong cadence of diverse content that appeals to our wide audience, VIA Studio’s social media team was looking for a better way to flex our creative muscles and gain experience with an organic social media engagement campaign.

A breakfast food tournament could be fun...

The ideation process began around mid-February. We were looking for an opportunity in Spring to try and experiment with an organic social media engagement campaign. Looking ahead at the springtime calendar offered a number of events we could draft off of; including the Kentucky Derby, local events and naturally being a Kentucky-based agency we gravitated towards basketball!

A tournament based on fan voting was an intriguing idea. But what could we do a tournament of? Not everyone in our agency is a basketball or sports fan. One thing to know about VIA Studio that was mentioned in my pre-hire interviews and multiple times since I have joined the team, we are 

motivated by food and drink. Whether it's stepping out to 

 on a nice afternoon, making our Friday walks to the 

, or our Thursday morning staff breakfast meetings, we believe food makes everything more enjoyable.

We ultimately decided to create a breakfast food tournament. After multiple discussions about the scale of the initiative and what internal resources we could dedicate to it, we decided to go big! A 64 entry bracket was ultimately decided on populated entirely by breakfast food and drink. The bracket was broken down into four regions like the NCAA Tournament; Cereals, Savory, Sweet, and Wildcard – each made up of 16 entries. Starch Madness was born!

So, how do we efficiently manage a 63 matchup tournament?

While the idea was certainly exciting, the execution was another issue to address. A 64 team tournament ultimately involves 63 individual matchups. How do we execute this without it becoming a significant time investment for our creative teams and social media managers?

Ultimately the solutions were simple, leverage native tools within the desired platforms of Facebook and Instagram, particularly stories and polls within the stories. A template would be used for the background of the story poll posts, and the individual polls were the only items that needed to be updated.

From a creative standpoint, the template needed to be flexible enough to use for any given matchup, but engaging enough to keep our audience from swiping left. 63 matchups is a lot … So we decided to keep things pretty simple until we got to the Elite 8.

An additional efficiency was gained by linking our Instagram and Facebook stories so we only needed to publish each matchup once but have it be distributed to both platforms. As far as vote tabulation was concerned, the polls data was captured within each platform and could easily be combined within a spreadsheet. After being recorded in the spreadsheet, it was handed off to design which would update the creative and save out new bracket assets.

Ultimately the management of the tournament was a breeze and required no more than an hour or so for the larger early rounds. Later rounds were managed and updated within a matter of minutes!

Creating a successful, organic social media engagement campaign was the #1 goal, but of course, wanted things to look good. This pet project allowed design to have a little fun, stretch beyond our normal realm of work, and create something engaging and memorable. This included a custom sports-themed logo, social story templates, a full 64-team tournament bracket, custom illustrations galore, and a final, champion animation as the cherry on top.

Starch Madness was first teased on March 13th, with the first round of matches taking place on March 17th. Unfortunately, this coincided with the effects of the Coronavirus pandemic and ultimately the cancellation of the 2020 NCAA Men’s and Women’s Tournaments. While we lost the event we were trying to emulate, we decided to go forward with Starch Madness nonetheless in the hopes of offering our audience at least a temporary distraction.

Over the duration of Starch Madness, first-round matchups began on March, 17th and our ultimate champion was crowned on April 6th, VIA Studio’s social channels experienced great growth in impressions, audience growth, and story engagements.

Overall, Starch Madness matchup polls recorded over 6,000 votes and nearly 16,000 story impressions. Overall, the Starch Madness story posts had a 

 compared to the period before Starch Madness, resulting in a net follower gain of 34 users.

The visibility of our Instagram profile increased as well, with impressions recording a 

 for the period. Story impressions recorded explosive growth, recording a 

+693% growth compared to the previous period

While Instagram was our primary platform for Starch Madness, our Facebook profile experienced encouraging growth as well over the course of the campaign. The VIA Studio Facebook page recorded a 

+23% increase in impressions compared to the previous period and a +60% increase in engagements.

As for the tournament… The individual regions were whittled down to one champion each; Cinnamon Toast Crunch representing Cereals, Breakfast Burritos representing Savory, Donuts representing Sweet, and Coffee emerging from the Wild Card region. The Championship pitted Breakfast Burritos against Donuts, with Breakfast Burritos winning the ultimate vote by a margin of 52% to Donuts’ 48% vote share.

Breakfast Burritos were crowned on April 6th, the intended day of the Men’s NCAA Tournament Championship, as the winner of Starch Madness 2020!

Social Media & Audience Development

Marketing Campaigns

Art Direction

Culture

Animation

VIA Studio Social: Starch Madness

Since the first resident made Treyton Oak Towers their home in 1984, TOT’s (as they call themselves) mission has always been to provide a “complete continuum of care” for a diverse community of seniors and to do so with excellence that is second to none. And that’s exactly what they have done. This hidden gem in the heart of Old Louisville has provided seniors a community in which to live an independent lifestyle as long as possible, and continues to provide a warm and comfortable home as their needs change.

What TOT needed assistance with was communicating their unique values and authentic community to their audience, in an increasingly competitive marketplace. Their messaging and marketing efforts did not reflect the welcoming and personable reality that lies just beyond their front doors.

Together, we helped reimagine and reposition their brand to reflect their true selves and arm them with the refreshed marketing tools they needed to reach prospective residents.

In late 2018, we began the process of re-imagining the Treyton Oak Towers brand. As we do with any client, we start at the foundations of the organization and attempt to understand them deeply. In doing so with TOT, we collaboratively identified the values they are most passionate about, that their community members value the most, and the unique aspects that differentiate them in a crowded market. These were their Unique Value Propositions (UVPs):

A rich, supportive community of residents and staff

When we are dealing with critical subjects such as aging, security, and housing – these values must be real and not aspirational. They are the truth of the brand.

We then detailed “personas” for their prospective audiences. A persona is demographic and psychographic sketches of a prospective resident, the audience they are wishing to attract. This led us to some critical insights that refocused their marketing efforts on seniors who year by year are becoming more and more independent and technically savvy.

With their unique values and our prospective audience in hand, we defined a new brand concept for Treyton Oak Towers:

Treyton Oak Towers and the seniors who reside there are unique and special, and their branding needed to communicate that. They needed lively and original visuals to support their focus on the arts and commitment to cultivating a rich, diverse culture.

Centered around their iconic logo, we elevated their brand by breathing new life into the supporting brand component. We expanded their color palette, assigned them new fonts and typography treatments, crafted custom patterns, and produced unique, memorable, TOT-owned photography. Treyton Oak Towers’ culture is not “stock”, and neither should their photography be.

By channeling the energy that radiates throughout their building, we enlivened their brand with vibrancy, excitement, and a hint of luxury.

Not only did Treyton Oak Towers’ website need a makeover to match their elevated brand, but the overall user experience needed improvement. Websites are one of the greatest sales tools, and theirs had been lacking. We approached the website build with the following goals in mind:

Mobile-first approach – initial research showed that the majority of our demographic was visiting the website from a mobile device

Design must align with the new brand positioning – Vibrant & Luxurious

Visit The Website

While the Treyton Oak Towers website was jam-packed with information, it did not directly support their number one goal: selling apartments to independent seniors. They were not adequately showcasing the amazing apartment homes, amenities, and the rich community that TOT provides, all under one roof. Through our collaborative design and development process, we helped our friends at Treyton Oak Towers redefine the priorities that their website must achieve, and we built them a website that allows them to help prospective residents “see themselves living at TOT." Included in this is a robust apartment listing system, floor plan visualizations, virtual tours using the latest panoramic technology, and a tour scheduling system, all built upon an easy-to-maintain content management with WordPress.

What was once just an informational website is now an accurate representation of the community, luxury, and vibrancy that they provide – and is a living and breathing sales tool that their internal team is able to use and update on their own terms. And to top it off, it’s 100% responsive for all devices and meets the WCAG accessibility standards.

By focusing on the deep, unique truths and the aspirational promise that vibrant, supportive, continuing care provides – we’ve elevated Treyton Oak Towers’ brand to something that is both authentic and incredibly motivating for residents, staff, and the wider community.

Branding

Photography

Web Design

Websites

Accessibility

Treyton Oak Towers

Southeastern Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies (SEAFWA)

Non-profit Marketing

Copywriting

Marketing Strategy

Advertising

Reporting & Analysis

Dare to Care

Design turns strategy and research into tantalizing visuals and impactful content. Our design team handles all creative design: branding, messaging, art direction, design, photography, illustration, or video.

Illustration

Graphic Design

Auditing & Roadmapping

Revelry Boutique + Gallery

WordPress

Hubspot

Collateral

GoodMaps

Research

Ben Sollee

See More of Jessie's Work

Content Strategy

Mr. Boston

With this bold new vision pointing the way, we worked step by step with Bernheim to craft a new brand that equipped them for this new journey.

A new brand for the next century of Bernheim Forest.

Bernheim Forest Rebrand

User Experience

UX / UI

Bernheim Forest Website

Learn more about headless architecture, migrating a WordPress site and our tools for building modern websites in our retrospective on the development of this very site.

From WordPress to Next.js and Sanity

Developing the New via.studio

We delivered a fresh, performant website built using a state-of-the-art, modern framework on the front end. We emphasized high-quality design and incorporated things like animation, video, and interactivity to engage users.

Design

Design: Case Studies

01

Southeastern Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies (SEAFWA)

02

Dare to Care

Design: Blog Posts

VIA Studio Social: Starch Madness

Treyton Oak Towers