Like the NCAA tournament returning to CBS and our homes, we returned with another food beverage knockout tournament of our own! After crowning breakfast burritos as the champions of breakfast food last year, we wanted to settle once and for all which beverage was our social media audience’s champagnion!

 breakfast food tournament, VIA Studio wanted to celebrate March Madness’s return this year with an updated take on the tournament. After internal discussions surrounding a new tournament theme, we ultimately decided on doing a beverage theme for 2021. Sixty-four beverages were selected to represent four different regions; Soda, Beer, Cocktails, and Wild Card.

Internal polling was conducted to determine the seeding of the beverages and new branding was created for this year’s edition of the tournament.

With a theme selected and assets developed it was time to promote the event. For our existing social media audience, teaser story posts were published on our 

 profiles soliciting guesses about this year’s theme.

Finally, a week before the tournament sipped off, this year’s theme was announced on social. Immediately afterward, an announcement email was deployed to our eNewsletter audience, directing users to follow us on social to participate and to read the case study for the 2020 Parched Madness tournament.

For the actual execution of Parched Madness, we generally followed the same format we had created with Starch Madness. When the tournament kicked off, Facebook and Instagram stories with polls were published to allow the VIA Studio social audience to vote on the winner for each matchup. The winner of each round moved on to the next round, while the losers were poured out.

One wrinkle in the campaign that was not experienced last year was the event of a tie. In the round of 32, two matchups resulted in a tie; Dr. Pepper v. Ale 8 and Saison v. Belgian Tripel. The design team quickly whipped up tiebreaker graphics, an announcement was made via Facebook and Instagram stories, and a tiebreak round was conducted, with Dr. Pepper and Belgian Tripel emerging from the tiebreak victorious.

Ultimately after four rounds of voting and the elimination of 60 beverages, just four remained; Coke, Pale Ale, Margarita, and Water.

After Coke spilled the Pale Ale and Margarita chugged Water, we were left with our finals matchup. Coke versus Margarita. With the ultimate Champagnion, Margarita, being announced the morning of the Men’s NCAA Tournament Championship.

Over the course of Parched Madness, 5,056 story poll votes were recorded, 423 of which went to the ultimate Champagnion Margarita. Impressions for VIA Studio Facebook and Instagram profiles increased +9% compared to the previous period. Meanwhile, the overall audience for the two profiles increased by +1%.

The overwhelming majority of Parched Madness engagement happened on Instagram. With Facebook story polls receiving less than 2% of the overall vote.

On Instagram, impressions for the VIA Studio profile increased +19%, engagements increased +48%, and engagement rate for the channel increased +24% for the duration of the Parched Madness campaign.

However, total votes for Parched Madness fell short of the benchmark set by Starch Madness last year. Parched Madness’s total votes were just 83% of the total set last year. However, the dropoff in engagement could be due to Starch Madness running during the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic lockdown when many users had more time to spend on their phones.

 exercise that allows VIA Studio to offer an engaging event for our audience. In the meantime, let’s all lift our Margaritas in celebration!

Content Strategy

Social Media & Audience Development

Graphic Design

Parched Madness 2021 Recap

VIA Studio was founded in 1996 by Kelly McKnight, chasing the promise of the then-nascent Internet. In that moment, VIA Studio were prospectors, explorers of an uncharted territory. Enthusiasm and opportunity abounded, and the work and the partnerships followed. That entrepreneurial spirit sustained the adventure for many years, even outlasting the popped “tech bubble” of the early 2000s.

When Jason Clark joined VIA Studio as a partner in 2003, the business and the industry as a whole were just beyond “the bubble”, and both were on the cusp of failure - or success. Jason saw it as an opportunity, and the way forward was hard work, listening, and learning.

In the years that followed, it wasn’t always easy. VIA had its share of ups and downs as the industry, the technology, and the people who interact with them adapted and changed, while being hurtled along with the pace of progress.

What kept us on an upward trajectory was our commitment to learning and adjusting by asking the tough questions of ourselves and taking feedback from our clients.

The new brand you see before you today is a direct product of that mindset, coupled with years of experience and introspection.

Not having a “traditional” agency background has suited VIA Studio well - we’ve never accepted tradition without some sort of real and recent rationale. The end result is that, through constant iteration, we’ve created novel approaches to nearly every aspect of our business.

Beginning in the early 2010s, we began building and adapting processes that focus on the humans doing the work and those interacting with the end result - instead of focusing on the work itself. With that end-to-end, human-centered approach, we’ve developed a methodology that leads to exceptional work and fosters strong partnerships.

“The VIA team has been consistently exceptional on both sides of the LPM coin: first, a deep understanding of our brands and what makes them work, and second, the ability to translate those attributes into assets and plans that reach our audiences in a compelling way. Also, they're a fine collection of humans.”

- Gray Smith
Louisville Public Media
Director of Corporate Support & Advancement

The net result was easier, more productive partnerships - with organizations of all shapes and sizes. In this past decade, we’ve forged bonds with Fortune 500 companies and nonprofits alike. All with the same result - respectful, mutually beneficial relationships that turn over great work year in and year out.

The brand we re-launched around that time -  “Digital Craftsmen & Communicators” -  was solidly based on that working, crafting, honing attitude. We knew that if we continued with the work, one day we’d be different.

 - in both meanings of that term. In the last decade, we could see the work we were doing having more impact, the partnerships expanding, and our skillset becoming more sophisticated. We realized something big had changed. And now we had to reflect that in our branding.

To create our new brand, we turned the branding process we’ve built for our clients inward. We had in-depth, searching conversations about who we are and what are our values. These values underpin our brand, and we hope you can see them in every aspect of what we do, both publicly and internally.

As our confidence has grown, we’ve moved from a brand that celebrates our culture to one that 

 of both client and community, and the work that is created from those partnerships.

"One of the things that impressed me when you were getting me up to speed, was that there was a full pitch deck. It was really well thought out, not thrown together in the corners and I grabbed a couple of images and said let's use this for our color pallette. It was super well thought out."
- Carl Smith, Bureau of Digital


Weaving our user-focused strategies with our new brand understanding, we seek to use our platforms more deliberately. We hope you see this in both big and small ways - from how we thoughtfully use each of the many media platforms at our disposal, to the subtle shifts in voice and tone, to how we’ve tuned and prioritized our website to each individual audience.

The root of this confidence is not bravado, but rather in our commitment to having open, transparent conversations. We hope you can see this transparency

in not only what we choose to publish in this journal (hi!) but also in the straightforward agreements and communications we have with you as client or employee.

If you are interested in hearing more about our rebranding and website development process, you can watch our hour-long panel discussion 

“Why Rebrand?”, hosted by the Bureau of Digital’s Carl Smith.

But what drives us? Our introspective nature and processes have always served one thing: creating new, interesting, exciting, valuable, and true work for our clients. The future is why we exist, and its intriguing possibilities drive us to create. You can see this in the dark, mysterious, sometimes impossible backdrop that forms the basis of our brand.

The new VIA Studio brand is perhaps the truest reflection of ourselves and the partnerships we represent. We hope you are as excited and intrigued by it as we are. After all, it’s you - our partners and friends who have driven us and challenged us. And we thank you.

Branding

Art Direction

Looking Inward to Move Forward: The VIA Rebrand

Illustration

Websites

Web Design

UX / UI

Intellimodus

Marketing Campaigns

Photography

Forge Clear Ice

Content strategy is the delicate art of deciding what to say, when to say it and where to say it. Contemporary audiences interact with your brand on many different platforms at different points in their journey to becoming a customer. Through our user-focused content processes, we can help you make informed decisions on what to say, when to say it and where to say it.

Content Strategy

Content Strategy: Case Studies

01

Intellimodus

02

Forge Clear Ice

Content Strategy: Blog Posts

Parched Madness 2021 Recap

Looking Inward to Move Forward: The VIA Rebrand