The Greater Waterbury YMCA has been a cornerstone of the community since 1858. Since its inception, it has expanded its services to meet the needs of greater Waterbury citizens – adding a cafeteria, bowling allies, a barber shop, classrooms for the University of Connecticut, and single residency apartments over the years. Nationally, the YMCA has been the forerunner of organized fitness, camping and childcare, as well as the inventor of both basketball and volleyball.
To commemorate its 150th year anniversary, the Greater Waterbury YMCA engaged with The Worx Group to distill down its most important milestones and interesting stories into one keepsake for patrons and the community.
The Worx Group team sifted through hundreds of archived photos, artifacts and historical information to create a timeline-based piece that showcased the rich history of the organization and its continued importance in the greater Waterbury community.
The 48-page, perfect-bound book generated enormous interest as both a coffee table keepsake of days past, and a driver of corporate and community sponsorship. The piece also won a 2008 American Graphic Design Award.
Brioni's is a premium coffee available at fine retailers and discriminating coffee shops everywhere. The specialty grade arabica coffee beans are purchased from international estates and slow roasted with a proprietary process called droasting (dry roasting). Brioni's is the official coffee of the Italian Culinary Institute.
As part of an integrated marketing campaign developed by The Worx Group, an ad series was developed for trade/consumer magazines like Italian Food & Wine to give the exclusive brand more awareness. The idea was to tell America that the best of Italian fine coffee was now available locally, and convince consumers to start their own taste tests.
As a means of putting the product in consumers' hands – and building the client's contact database – the ads featured a unique promotional code to get a free coffee sample.
In the first two weeks since its inclusion in Italian Food & Wine, the ad generated over 1,700 requests from consumers and restauranteurs. Two weeks later, the entire stock of free samples was gone.
Special Olympics Connecticut provides year-round sports training and athletic competition in a variety of Olympic-type sports for children and adults with intellectual disabilities. The Worx Group has been a long-time supporter of the organization, giving significant time and resources in support of the mission.
Each year, the goal is to breed awareness of the organization's special mission and show how the athletes touch so many lives in the community – and vice versa.
The 2007, 2008 and 2009 Special Olympics Connecticut annual reports have won three straight American Graphic Design awards in the national juried competition by Graphic Design USA magazine.
The Worx Group was the recipient of the Special Olympics President's Award at an evening with James Taylor concert in their honor at the Chevrolet Theater in Wallingford, CT.
The Worx Group handles a large portion of creative responsibilities for FedEx sponsorship marketing of the NFL, NBA, PGA TOUR and NASCAR through a partnership with Velocity Sports & Entertainment. Since 2000, we have developed thousands of online and offline communications pieces.
In 2006, rookie driver Denny Hamlin drove the #11 FedEx Chevrolet to a third place finish in the NASCAR NEXTEL Cup points standings – the greatest rookie season in NASCAR's modern era. To commemorate the achievement at the 2007 season-opening festivities at the Daytona 500, Velocity tasked The Worx Group with developing a piece that would interest casual and diehard race fans, as well as FedEx VIPs and partners.
The Worx Group developed a 32-page commemorative book with photos culled from the never-before-seen archives of the FedEx Racing team photographer. In addition to the book (which was signed by Hamlin and team members at a VIP hospitality event in Daytona), The Worx Group helped design the event space and supporting collateral. Some photos were turned into one-of-a-kind digital paintings by The Worx Group and auctioned off for charity or donated to local children's hospitals.
In post-event surveys, the event scored all-time high marks. And Denny Hamlin's mother was so taken by the commemorative book that she requested extra copies of the piece and a disc of all the images used.
Van Staal, owned by fishing reel giant Zebco, is a manufacturer of high-end spinning reels, fly reels and pliers. Van Staal products have been referred to as "the Rolls Royce of the industry" for their durability, innovative design and sophisticated appearance.
For nearly a decade, The Worx Group headed the majority of Van Staal's marketing communications efforts, shaping and creating a brand position and market presence reflective of the products' elite status (with the acquisition of Van Staal, Zebco has since taken over the majority of marketing work).
A challenge presented itself immediately in the strategic phase – outside of the physical products and a handful of fisherman photos, there were no other assets available for the piece. So we got creative, restoring the fisherman photo and taking new photos of each product to digitally superimposing them into environments like crashing surf or the salt flats. The result was a unique aesthetic that in many ways showcased the "No Limitations" brand philosophy.
To show the durability of the reel and the technology inside, our creative team asked to have samples made of the reel templates at different stages of being created out of solid-stock airplane-grade titanium. Next, we asked to have a reel cut in half to photograph the inner workings.
The Arena at Harbor Yard is one of Connecticut's most spectacular sports and entertainment destinations, presenting the finest family entertainment along with the action of AHL Bridgeport Sound Tigers hockey and Fairfield University NCAA basketball.
Simple in theory but extremely difficult in practice – how to overcome the misperception amongst artist booking agents that Boston, New York, Hartford and the casinos are the only venues in the Northeast that can deliver major acts sold-out crowds and revenue generation. And how to deliver the message with limited media in trade publications such as Pollstar magazine.
Let the Arena's lineage of success do the talking. The solution featured images of recent acts who had sold out the Arena – a broad range of artists from Fall Out Boy to Elton John – and an honest dialogue between the Arena and its audience.
