TWO SISTERS CREATIVE

Author Archive

When Anne Loehr, Generational Expert, was asked to pitch a large financial services firm about how she could help them, she reached out to us to help develop the presentation. The key objective of the presentation was to demonstrate a major crossroads they’re approaching—the retirement of most of their FAs as well as their high-net-worth clients. To address this, they need to revamp their hiring and training processes, but need some help in attracting Gen X and Gen Y employees.

The DC Chapter of the International Association of Exhibits and Expositions is very active…and fun. One of the member benefits is a bi-monthly newsletter that highlights chapter activities, recognizes member accomplishments, and provides useful articles about industry trends. The one challenge they faced was inconsistency in content: some issues contain several long, content rich articles while some issues mostly contain photos of events. The chapter tasked TSC with designing a newsletter that was flexible enough to work with either extreme. In addition, the newsletter needed to convey the spirit of the membership—serious professionals who are seriously fun.

The Reston Association had a challenge: there was a ton of information that needed to get out to RA’s 20,000+ members and no consistent medium for doing so. RA tasked Two Sisters Creative to design a quarterly newsletter that would, primarily, be a way to inform members of the upcoming calendar, issues surrounding the by-laws, and provide general information about programs and activities. The newsletter needed to be 2 color, and needed to be flexible in design to handle changing information. RA also wanted it to be visually appealing since so much of the content was, well, not very exciting. The newsletter was to be distributed bundled inside the local newspaper. We were tasked with producing the first two issues, and then the newspaper would take over production.

The TA Health Education Foundation was tasked with delivering a Prescription Drug Abuse program throughout the State of Wyoming. This 4-day conference was being conducted via teleconference, with viewing sites set up in hospitals throughout the state. Participants would be able to pick and choose which sessions they wanted to attend, and as a result would not need to take time off of work for this valuable training. In addition, most of the sessions provided Continuing Education Credits, which the participants need to complete each year. TSC was tasked with helping the TA HEF organize the session materials in a way that was logical, appealed to participants working in a diverse range of practices, and conveyed the ease of participation.

This was the first time the state had delivered training in this manner, and all the stakeholders were very anxious to see how it would work. Despite an unseasonably early blizzard that knocked out the power at the host site the day before the event, everything went better than expected. The state was thrilled with the response and with the tele-conference delivery method.

The National Association of Home Builders has more than 200,000 members. The association needed a brochure to describe the myriad advertising and sponsorship opportunities offered to vendors to help reach their target buyers. Their challenge was that they had hundreds of variations on what they offered, and wanted the ability to customize the information based on who the sales rep was meeting.

Since NAHB offers a range of sponsorship opportunities, we developed a portfolio piece where they can provide inserts with information targeted to specific vendors. The brochure copy (the flip book below) concentrates on the benefits of advertising and sponsorship with NAHB. NAHB staff reported that they saw an immediate increase in sales activity with this piece.

I want to thank you for the remarkable job you have done putting together our Sponsorship & Advertising Sales Kit and Inserts. This was no easy task, nevertheless, you have helped us create an extraordinary sales and marketing tool that can be modified and enhanced for future use.”

Dennis Harrison, Staff Vice President, Business Development, NAHB

What Other People Think:

Association Trends 2005 All-Media Contest, Trade Show/Exhibit Sales Package, Gold Medal.

Communicator Awards 2004, Brochure/Business to Business, Crystal Award of Excellence.

Meade Paper Certificate of Excellence in the Graphic Arts, 2004.

The Education and Marketing Group of the National Association of Home Builders offers dozens of courses to NAHB members each year. They bundle the course catalog into the BuilderBooks.com catalog and release it at the annual International Builder’s Show, which draws approximately 90,000 attendees. The catalog needs to be distinctive from the BuilderBooks publication, fit inside of it, and house all of the course information—a tall order for a small publication!

Project Type

Product Catalog

Project Specs

• 48-pages
• 4-color
• 200+products
• concepting on how to organize catalog

BuilderBooks.com is the content management division of NAHB. Through BuilderBooks.com, NAHB’s 212,000 members can order resources from books on specific technical issues to videos, conference materials, and anything else that will help members professionally. Every year, BuilderBooks.com publishes a catalog highlighting the more than 200 books, videos, CDs, and other resources. The needed a designer that could provide a more sophisticated look and feel than in previous years while also adhering to their strict page counts and trim-size requirements.

We worked with the BuilderBooks.com staff to identify an image that conveyed the spirit of NAHB—a beautiful interior shot of a custom home. We designed an inside that was flexible, allowing sections to begin or end wherever necessary. This flexibility allowed us to fit 200 book images, plus order forms and other information, into a 48-page catalog.

Two Sisters Creative transformed the BuilderBooks.com catalog into a sophisticated, attractive, and functional marketing piece. The catalog resonates well with our customers. In addition to their superb design capabilities, Two Sisters Creative was very responsive to our needs and delivered an on-time product.”

Patricia Potts, Managing Director of Marketing, BuilderBooks.com

What Other People Think:

The Communicator Awards 2005 Print Media Contest, Brochure/Catalog, Crystal Award of Excellence

Do you want to know where the bailout money is going and how it’s being spent? Every quarter, The Special Inspector General for the Troubled Asset Relief Program (SIGTARP) tells Congress and the public what is happening with the program. Working with a team of publications professional under subcontract to Deloitte and Touche, Two Sisters helps put this staggering amount of financial data into a format that people can understand. The team has just a few short weeks to develop the graphs, figures, tables, and other visual information. In fact, the data is often changing up until the last minute as the Department of the Treasury checks and triple checks the numbers. As lead designer, it is Karen’s responsibility to ensure that the publication is delivered to GPO on time—and that there are no issues with the book during production.

How do you get a Gen Y person to choose your graduate program over any other? Wait…the first question is really how do you capture their attention? Those are questions many graduate schools are facing. Competition is tight, and the school needs to capture the potential student’s fancy immediately in order to even be considered. For many universities, that means completely changing how they reach out to students.

The George Washington University School of Political Management (GSPM) came to us to redesign their recruitment materials. Together, we helped them rethink what students need to know to make a decision to apply. We conducted focus groups with current and potential students, interviewed faculty, and researched competitive programs. The result was a the development of a new tagline: Politics from a New Perspective. We then developed an 8-page brochure that captured the energy of the students and the expertise of the faculty, using photos of actual GSPM students. We created separate brochures for each program, which are inserted in a pocket folder. A die cut window on the overview brochure allows the folder to “change” depending on which program brochure is included.

The result is a versatile piece that prospects can identify with. A bonus is a tremendous savings on mail costs (since the brochure drives prospects to the web site for complete course descriptions and degree requirements).

Feedback from the GSPM Marketing Director: “Two Sisters Creative really partnered with us from start to finish on each concept and project. They have taken the time to understand our audience and create materials that reflect our organization and speak to our audience. They have shown infinite patience and true professionalism through all the ups and downs of developing an identity and implementing creative solutions.”

Project Type:

• Conference Collateral/Attendee Registration Brochure

Project Specs:

• 38-pages, 4-color
• 3-panel show guide
• Self mailer

InfoComm is the audio/visual industry’s largest trade show, drawing more than 20,000 attendees and offering hundreds of educational tracks. The registration brochure has traditionally been the key marketing piece for the show because the detailed descriptions of the education sessions and the conference schedule are what make people determine whether they are going to attend. Due to the number of sessions, the brochure information hierarchy is extremely complicated. The 3-panel show guide was critical in organizing the information.