September 2009: Gateway Green's Green Tie Ball

Market Outlook

With specialty organizations being the taste du jour, many corporations end up hiring numerous companies to take care of project deliverables. For instance, X Corporation is launching a new product and wants to initiate a symmetric promotional campaign alongside the product launch. This example company could have one provider working on Website architecture, another working on the design for said Website, another working on the print campaign, etc... In short, the project will somehow gestate in a tangled web of multiple companies, with multiple objectives and directions. It certainly is not the most efficient way to go about the completion of a project.

Opportunity

Gateway Green, a non-profit organization dedicated to the beautification of the Chicagoland area, reiterated this sentiment when they were searching for partners to promote their largest social event of the year, The Green Tie Ball. They were looking for one company who could provide solutions for all their media needs. After unsuccessfully scouring many of Chicago's agencies, Gateway Green came upon TribeAgency. We held numerous brainstorming sessions, both with Gateway Green as well as internally, to generate thematic and engaging ideas for their promotional campaign. The ideas that emerged from these meetings confirmed that they had found the right match.

Solutions

TribeAgency proposed to be Gateway Green's full media partner for the promotional aspect of the campaign, which meant that we would be handling all of their digital and traditional media initiatives. This perfectly suited Gateway Green, having met their desire for an all-encompassing solution.

With negotiations settled, we turned our attention toward the theme of this year's Green Tie Ball. Gateway Green had secured the B-52's to play at the gala celebration and requested to use them as the hub for the event, capitalizing their retro, campy cool-factor for the sake of the marketing campaign. With this in mind, the theme was crowned "Love Shack," after the B-52's definitive song, and our creatives began laying out design concepts, starting with the invitation. After a few meetings and slight revisions to the design, our designers hit the mark yet again with an eye-catching concept. The invitation took the shape of a bright orange shack with die-cut windows showing four white silhouettes inside. When opened, the invite revealed that the silhouettes were the B-52's, and palm-sized Gerber daisy cutouts fell from the card like confetti. The daisies featured information about the event and Gateway Green. They also provided a way for the invited to RSVP. Gateway Green considered this piece, combined with an extensive mailing list, to be the clincher, which they believed would convince the vast majority of recipients to attend. Following on from that, we decided that the invitation would be the masthead for the event, all subsequent promotional items would be based on the design set forth by the invite.

This design concept left its mark on many event-related items, such as the program book, event decorations including tables and accessories, numerous magazine advertisements, promo cards handed out at clubs and bars, three HTML email newsletters and the auction information cards. In keeping with our all-encompassing solution provider status, we also constructed a Green Tie Ball Website utilizing the "Love Shack" theme developed for the invitation. The Website included information presented in the invite mailer, in addition to the innate conveniences of an online solution. Information could be updated regularly and rapidly, depending on changes in the event. People who were interested in the event but did not receive an invitation could learn more about the Green Tie Ball and anyone could order tickets online. Combine these conveniences with killer layout and design, and a very popular hit was scored with the online community.

Results

When the event took place on September 8, 2001, more than 4,000 Chicagoans attended the celebration, one of the largest turnouts in the Green Tie Ball's ten-year history, thanks in part to our marketing efforts. For an event of this magnitude, it was especially important that all marketing avenues remained focused and contiguous. Our ability to provide full-media coverage for the event played a tremendous role in the fluidity, timeliness and consistency of Gateway Green's marketing campaign and in the event's ultimate success.