Downtown Calgary
The Big Taste 2011
Back to Style Style in September 2010
Fashion shows (on catwalks and crosswalks), street theatre, impromptu gourmet lunch upgrades, posters, elevator videos, web, web banners, Facebook, blogging, contesting, marching billboards, a “style van” providing instant makeovers, mobile billboards, radio, good taste rewards, and various Random Acts of Style… Our campaign for Downtown Calgary’s “Back to Style in September” employed as many tactics as Coco Chanel wore pearls. The results? Facebook likes up by 1/3. 11,000 site visits. Lots of great feedback from the public, merchants and other stakeholders. And a very happy client.
New Brand Identity
In 2010 the Calgary Downtown Association tasked Rare Method with creating a new brand identity for their organization, which represents retailers, theatres, restaurants and bars in downtown Calgary.
The CDA’s brand position is that the dining, shopping, and entertainment experiences you’ll find downtown are special and unique (i.e. what you WON’T find at a suburban mall). Our visual identity conveys this with design that is bold, vivid and modern - but with a nod to the classic and iconic style of the legendary designer Saul Bass. Working with the client we determined that the primary medium, posters, shouldn’t feel like ads, but rather (in the vein of classic travel posters) something you would want to hang in your home or business.
The tagline “The Original Destination for Dining, Shopping and Entertainment,” leverages two meanings of Original: Downtown is the place in Calgary for unique and authentic experiences; and downtown is where it all began – tapping into Calgarians’ memories of lifelong downtown experiences.
The reviews for the new branding have been overwhelmingly positive. In fact, the media company handling the initial poster campaign liked the creative so much, and thought it showed-off their sites so well, they gave the client free placements.
