Winning at O2 Creative!

With over 4,000 entries from all over the world, we are excited to announce that we have been awarded not one, but TWO Silver Davey Awards by the International Academy of the Visual Arts (IAVA)!

What are the Davey Awards?

The annual International Davey Awards honors the achievements of the “Creative Davids” who derive their strength from big ideas, rather than big budgets.

We were awarded a Davey Award for the trail signage we produced for the Town of Winter Park and Headwaters Trails Alliance and another for the digital and print marketing we did for Winter Park Lodging Co.

Project: Trail Signs

Client(s): Town of Winter Park and Headwaters Trails Alliance

Fun Facts: 

• These projects combined took over a year to complete.
• 100+ signs were designed and printed.
• O2 Creative is now an expert in ‘wayfinding,’ (the organization and communication of our dynamic relationship to space and the environment).
• We took these very complex and detailed projects extremely seriously because what good is a system of signs if they don’t get travelers to the desired destination?

Design:

• We identified and used materials that would survive the test of time in this climate for years.
• Created designs that would be relatively simple to replace and add sections to cut down on future costs for Winter Park and Headwaters Trails Alliance.
• Used similar fonts and styles for the signs in Winter Park and the Headwaters Trails Alliance to create consistency and a unified feel throughout all trails in the area.

Favorite Parts:

• We truly enjoyed collaborating with Headwaters Trails Alliance and the Town of Winter Park on this project.
• Seeing the trails in use by locals and guests alike has been the biggest payoff.
• It’s cool to know that the trails will be enjoyed by thousands of people for years to come!

Project: Digital and Print Marketing

Client: Winter Park Lodging Co.

Fun Facts:

• We’ve been working with Winter Park Lodging Co. for 5+ years.
• Winter Park Lodging Co. has a lot of different clients they work with.
• We helped create content that would effectively communicate with all of those clients.

Design:

• We spent a long-time developing and tweaking the brand.
• Focused on keeping all pieces developed consistent with brand.
• Updated their website to display the luxury accommodations.
• E-newsletter template that reflects the overall brand.

Favorite Parts: 

• Seeing how the collateral we created has had a positive return on investment for Winter Park Lodging Co.
• Visually seeing the collateral working together.

We at O2 Creative hold all our work to our highest standards, and it is nice to know that our work meets the standards of the International Academy of the Visual Arts too!

So What Makes us Successful?

• High standards – We strive to ensure that all of our work exceeds our client’s wildest dreams!
• Inspiration – Look around us! The natural beauty in the Rockies never ceases to inspire!
• Collaboration – FACT: Teamwork makes the dream-work!
• Good Karma – You get what you put out there…
• Green Walls – There is never a dull moment when you’re surrounded by neon green and art!
• Pug-sulations – Consults with the pugs! You’d be surprised how opinionated (and right) they can be!
• Knowing our clients and their consumers – This is key!  

Hiring a marketing agency vs. marketing in-house

Hiring a marketing agency vs. marketing in-house – which is better for your business? We at O2 believe that hiring a professional marketing agency can benefit your business in a number of ways. Here are just a few:

Time: Ah, precious time. This can be a premium for many businesses. Marketing takes time too, from devising strategies to coordinating campaigns to creating ads and promotions to…you get the idea. Hiring an agency means the agency will worry about marketing for you, which saves your business precious time.

Expenses. Hiring an in-house marketer can expend a lot of money (salary, benefits) and expend time too (recruiting, interviewing, hiring, training). Hiring an agency can often be less expensive than marketing in-house, especially when you consider that O2 specializes in working with small businesses – we’re a small business too! We can create marketing packages that will fit your needs as well as your budget.

Experience. At O2, we have over 30 combined years of marketing experience, and we’re undertaking new marketing endeavors every day. We can provide you with expert direction if you aren’t sure how to market your business. Our experience also contributes to our next point…

Efficiency. Since we’re extensively experienced, we can quickly and efficiently identify the best marketing initiatives for you. We do this stuff every day! We’ll help you create the right message for the right business at the right time.

Perspective. Small business owners must often keep a narrow focus on their business. While this can be necessary for the sake of the business, it can also make it difficult to step back and think about your business in the big picture of marketing. Hiring an agency can provide a much broader perspective on marketing and other matters. Let us handle your marketing so you can focus on the operations of your business.

Resources. We’re a comprehensive professional agency with a large variety of services to offer. In addition to marketing and advertising services, we can also provide graphic design, web design, promotional products, printing services, and more.

Fun. Okay, why does this matter? Well, we really think you’ll enjoy working with us at O2. In addition to being experienced professionals, we’re actually friendly fun folks too. For instance, even though we’re in the office working hard on Halloween, we still took the time to have a little holiday fun. To prove it, here’s Brad dressed up like Joe Dirt, and Sophie dressed up like a ladybug:

Happy Halloween!

To contact us at O2 Creative, call 970-726-8021 or email [email protected]

Click here for our last blog: Dolls for Daughters

Top 5 print products from O2

We at O2 are your printing specialists in Grand County, Colorado. We’re always designing new print products and using those products in all sorts of different marketing initiatives. We can create a virtually endless variety of print media for all sorts of businesses and campaigns. Here’s a quick list of some of our top 5 print products that we can create for your business.

Business Cards. We can create the coolest business cards for you, from clean and simple designs, to glossy finishes and materials, to even unique shapes and sizes.

Stickers. These print products really make you “stick” in the minds of your audience. They’re a great way to build brand awareness and establish an identity in your market.

Posters. Putting up posters around town is a good way to make your presence known. Whether you’re advertising for your business, campaigning for a specific cause, or promoting your event, posters can really communicate with your community. Speaking of which…

Banners. Like posters, banners really catch the eye of your audience. They’re especially effective at establishing your presence at a specific event, and can also direct traffic to your business within your physical area.

Stationery. This one’s sort of a catch-all, since stationery includes LOTS of different print products. Whether you want office supplies, greeting cards, postcards (direct mailers work!), envelopes, letterhead, brochures, invitations, gift certificates, or any other sorts of stationery, we can create it for you!

This is just a quick list of five of our most popular print products. Of course, the list really does go on and on, from business signage to vehicle wraps to promotional products to…you get the idea. So for all your printing needs in Colorado and beyond, contact us at O2 Creative today!

To contact O2 Creative, call 970-726-8021 or email [email protected].

Click here for our last blog: O2 on the set of a shoot

Winter marketing

Summer is gone, September is here, and the seasons are changing yet again in the Colorado Rockies. (Labor Day really just came and went?? How’d that already happen!) We even had a dusting of snow along the Continental Divide this morning.

With the summer tourist traffic winding down and shoulder season just around the corner, now is the time to think ahead to winter in Grand County. The snowy months mean skiing, snowboarding, and lots of other cold weather fun. They also mean some of the heaviest traffic of the year, which means the busiest time of the year for many local companies.

To be prepared for the winter season’s business boom, your business needs to begin planning its winter marketing today! Getting your marketing and advertising initiatives in place means you can be fully prepared to capitalize on the snowy season’s tourist traffic.

Good marketing takes time. There’s plenty of planning, research, and coordination that can go into a campaign, not to mention graphic design, production and printing that may be involved. Starting early also means you’ll have time to fine-tune your campaign; to get your marketing message just right. This will not only help you attract more customers once they start arriving this winter, it can also make your customers aware of your business before they even get here.

Want to attract new customers with some posters and flyers, or a social media campaign? Want to increase your brand awareness with promotional products? Want to improve your online presence with blogging and search engine optimization? To have these and other marketing initiatives ready for the winter season, start preparing today.

We at O2 are about to launch a little marketing campaign of our own: we’ll be sending out direct mailer postcards to our clients and leads.

These postcards are a friendly reminder to get your marketing lined up in time to make the most of the upcoming ski season. When you see them, remember to contact us so we can get started soon!

Whether you have something specific in mind, or you just need help creating some effecting marketing initiatives, we can help. Contact us at O2 to start planning your winter marketing today!

To contact O2 Creative, call 970-726-8021 or email [email protected].

Click here for our last blog: a year in the new office!

D&M’s promotional products mix

O2 recently had the pleasure of working with Grand County’s own D&M Roofing Company on some design work. Specifically, we created a comprehensive collection of promotional products for D&M – shirts, hats, water bottles, magnets, even a big banner. To ensure consistency in branding, we kept the logo design consistent across D&M’s promotional products mix – same font, same blue letters, same recognizable red roofing hammer.

Once the designs were determined, it was time to get creative with the promotional products themselves. First up were the hats: we selected a high-quality New Era trucker-style cap, custom embroidered with D&M’s logo. Here’s Sophie the O2 office pug proudly modeling a D&M roofing hat for us:

Next up, shirts. We created cool V-neck t-shirts complete with D&M’s logo on both the front and the back. The shirts, as well as the hats, can be used as uniforms for D&M’s employees or as promotional items for their clients.

We also created branded water bottles for D&M Roofing. Promotional products such as water bottles are great items to give to potential leads. These branded items help your leads remember your business, which can ultimately turn leads into customers.

Branded magnets were also in the mix. We created white oval magnets complete with D&M’s logo (a logo that you probably recognize by now – see, all this promotional products marketing really is working!). The magnets also feature D&M’s contact information, including their phone number and website. Here’s the O2 office refrigerator with D&M’s magnets on display:

Finally, a banner. We created a durable outdoor vinyl banner for D&M to display, again with the same familiar logo; again communicating the company’s contact information. Here’s O2’s Jaryd displaying the D&M banner while pensively gazing off into the distance:

The shirts, hats, magnets, banner, and bottles are all part of a consistent mix of promotional products we created for D&M Roofing. From retaining existing customers; to converting new ones; to increasing brand awareness at job sites, trade shows, and even around town; these promotional products are tangible items that D&M can now use to make the most of their marketing efforts.

Promotional products can work as marketing tools for just about any sort of business as well. To discuss the benefits of promotional products for your business, or to learn about all the different kinds of promotional products we can create for you, contact us at O2 or visit www.o2promo.com today!

To contact O2 Creative, call 970-726-8021 or email [email protected].

Click here for our last blog: the O2 dogs!

Blogging about blogs

At O2 Creative we offer many different services to businesses both large and small – graphic design, web design, marketing and advertising, even promotional products. But did you know we also offer blog writing service as well?

That’s right. At O2 we can create relevant professional blogs that will benefit your business in a number of ways. From a marketing perspective, blogs are a great way to communicate with your market. They create a personal side to your business to which your customers can relate.

Blogs really build your business’s online presence as well. When we write blogs for clients, we include key terms that help to improve search engine optimization (SEO). This means your blog is optimized to make it easier for Google and other search engines to find you, which in turn helps customers find you. Blogs bring a bump to your website traffic too.

What if your business just doesn’t have the time to blog? That’s where our blog writing service comes into play. As an agency, we can research your blog, draft your blog, revise your blog, publish your blog, even take photographs for your blog. We can be your creative agents both in the field and online. We can write just about any sort of blog you’d like as well, from technical and informative to adventuresome and fun.

So if you think your business can benefit from a blog, contact us at O2 today. Trust us – a blog really can help to attract customers and generate attention for your business. After all, you’re reading our blog right now, right?

To contact O2 Creative, call us at 970-726-8021 or email us at [email protected].

Click here to read our other blogs!

Print brokering from O2

O2 is pleased to announce that we’re now offering print brokering services! In fact, we’ve actually offered print brokering services for years. We just thought it might be time for a friendly reminder.

So what exactly is print brokering? Well, it means we serve as an agent between our clients and the wholesale printers with whom we have close working relationships. You could even call us print managers. We can design, coordinate, and source the best print work for your business, and since we’re experienced print brokers, we can source printing as efficiently and as cost-effectively as possible for you.

Working with a print broker offers several advantages. Print brokering allows us to keep our costs lower for you, the client, since we don’t have the overhead of owning our own printing presses. We’re often less expensive than working with a retail printer, and in fact, many “retail” printers are actually just print brokers themselves. Our working relationships with a variety of wholesale printers also allow us to quickly source a variety of the highest quality print products: business cards, stationery, stickers, banners, posters, signage, billboards, even pizza boxes!

And as a full-service agency, we also offer full-service marketing and design work in addition to our print brokering services. We can serve your business through every step of the service, from the time it takes to design the graphics for your print work, to coordinating your print work as part of a marketing campaign, to actually delivering your print work in a timely and efficient manner.

O2 Creative is proud to offer print brokering services, in addition to our graphic design, web design, and marketing services. We can even create promotional products for your business! It’s all part of our greater effort as an agency to serve your business as best we can.

For fast, affordable, eye-catching, high-quality print work, contact O2 Creative about our print brokering services!

To contact O2 Creative, call 970-726-8021 or email [email protected].

Click here for our next blog: O2 goin’ guerrilla!

O2 goin’ guerrilla

O2’s Jaryd and Brad recently headed down to the Front Range for what we like to call a “guerrilla marketing” campaign. Our client Granby Ranch wanted to gain a little more exposure among Colorado’s mountain biking community, so we organized a promotional day at the awesomely huge Wheat Ridge Cyclery in Wheat Ridge, CO.

After promoting the event on social media, we set up shop for an afternoon at the Cyclery. Customers were invited to spin Granby Ranch’s promo wheel, giving them the chance to win passes, coupons, cozies, and other promotional items too.

We also offered cool new Bike Granby Ranch stickers, and even brought along a few Save The Fraser River stickers as well.

Everyone who stopped by to see us was excited to learn about Bike Granby Ranch and to get the opportunity to check out Granby Ranch’s lift-served downhill and cross-country bike trails. Though many people knew Granby Ranch as a winter ski resort, not as many folks were familiar with the resort’s summer bike park.

The promotional efforts really went a long way in increasing Granby Ranch’s brand awareness of its summer bike (and golf, and fish, and grill) offerings. Selecting a large bike shop like Wheat Ridge Cyclery was especially valuable to the campaign, since we were able to increase Bike Granby Ranch’s brand awareness among its most important demographic: bikers!

In addition to effectively increasing Granby Ranch’s brand awareness, the promotional day was actually a lot of fun. At O2 we always enjoy working with our clients, and we’re always happy to undertake all sorts of creative marketing efforts, even if it’s a guerrilla campaign in a whole new community.

Thanks so much to Granby Ranch for being the fun clients they are, and to Wheat Ridge Cyclery for kindly hosting us!

If O2 can help your business with anything from marketing campaigns to promotional products, contact us today!

To contact O2 Creative, call us at 970-726-8021 or email [email protected].

Click here for our last blog: the misadventures of Thumbelina

The Misadventures of Thumbelina

Anyone who knows us at O2 knows we’re all dog lovers. Anyone who’s ever been to the O2 office knows that the pups pretty much run the place. Wylie, Sophie, and Thumbelina are always by our side, putting in whatever hard work and long hours it takes…or just taking naps on the couch.

However, one of the dogs has had quite the mischievous streak. As soon as the O2 humans leave the office, it turns out the lovable little Thumb likes to start trouble.

We go out for lunch, and what happens? We get back to find our latest copy of AdAge Magazine, completely torn to bits by yours truly.

Nor does it end there – step out of the office for a quick meeting? Just enough time for Thumb to pull Brad’s headphones off his desk and maul them beyond recognition.

Oh, and Eric’s business notepad, with all his important notes? Guess which little monster decided to give the Godzilla treatment to the notebook too.

Sometimes she’s so naughty, she’ll start trouble right before our very eyes. In the couple minutes it took Eric to get up and walk across the office, Thumb decided it was just enough time to make a run at Eric’s breakfast sitting on the edge of his desk. Don’t worry, though, her mischief was thwarted this time; caught with the proverbial paw in the cookie jar, if you will.

Don’t get us wrong – we love the office dogs. But that doesn’t mean sometimes Thumb can be quite the troublemaker!

To meet Thumbelina the darling devil dog, or the other pugs, (or even the O2 humans!), feel free to stop by the O2 office in downtown Fraser, Colorado. Or, you’re welcome to contact us any time – give us a call at 970-726-8021 or email us at [email protected].

Oh, and BAD DOG!

Click here for our last blog post – promotional products from O2!