The Need

In early 2022, Slifer Smith & Frampton Real Estate, long standing leaders in central Colorado real estate found themselves at a crossroads. While they were the #1 brokerage in both their core communities of the Vail Valley, and Summit County recent expansions had drastically changed the company. Within two years they had expanded to Aspen and Roaring Fork Valley along with Denver, Boulder and the Front Range, with that expansion came a dramatic growth in size nearly doubling their agent count in the same period. These expansions were done via acquisition so for many of the agents and staff the company story and position as “the Vail real estate company” didn’t ring true to their experience. Still it was clear that there was a story worth telling there that would help the company take a strong step into the future.

The Solution(s)

Brand Foundation

On this project I worked beneath VP of Marketing, Sara Roberts, who had long hoped to engage with the leading real estate creative agency, 1000watt, this project would turn out to be a perfect fit for their story-telling talents, we got on their calendars and in March of 2022 the work began in earnest. The engagement with 1000watt would eventually last over a year during which I, in my role as Creative Project Manager, would serve as the primary laision between 1000watt and the Slifer team, helping the two sides understand each other and ensuring Slifer got maximum value out of this profound investment.

From the outset I knew that I wanted this campaign to go right “down to the studs” to find the foundation that made Slifer such an important company for it’s brokers, employees and communities. This ultimately went right down to the mission statement which previously had been a veritable word salad of corporate jargon. This foundational exercise proved to be some of the most involved, and necessary, of the entire campaign. Over six months I facilitated, organized, translated (real estate brokerese into agencyish) for a whirlwind of discovery sessions that included three trips to Colorado from the 1000watt team, interviews with all of our founding partners, focus groups with agents, surveys, and countless email threads all chasing the core of Slifer’s true foundations.

In the end here I can’t take credit for more than insisting it happen and facilitating, because the creative team at 1000watt knocked this out of the park, succinctly putting into words what made Slifer, and the companies it had acquired, so different in a wildly competitive landscape. With this in hand I put together a series of localized presentations and went on a roadshow to get this in front of our agents across the state as soon as possible and to act as the primary evangelist within the company for the campaign. Folks were thrilled, and it set us up to move with confidence into campaign production.

The 6 core beliefs that would in time become a central part of our “Colorado Calling” campaign, but are intended to last well beyond any individual campaign.

Campaign Guidelines + Website

With the company bought in on the campaign it was time to head into production. Again much of the creative lift at this point came from the 1000watt team as they prepared a contracted set of campaign guidelines and an accompanying website that would help tell our story in a new way. As the primary agency liaison I facilitated by organizing interviews, providing creative direction for a series of photoshoots that would serve as the focus point for the campaign, and helping to distill company feedback on early rounds of creative (as well as providing plenty of input myself to help steer the team in the right direction). This was to be the bulk of the delivered materials that I was then passed to me and the rest of the Slifer team to turn into an actual campaign.

Brochure + Listing Presentation

With our remaining time with the 1000watt team I turned their creative muscles towards a piece that had been missing since I’d been with Slifer, a company brochure, in my vision a touchy-feely piece that would capture the soul of Slifer on paper. They produced a great concept that I then tweaked, edited, and managed production of to hit offices in time for our busy season. With this creative ball rolling I turned my sights on another critical piece of print collateral, our listing presentation, The Gold Standard. I’d previously done a redesign on this high-impact presentation, but the brief had changed and so did the product. We had all the touchy-feely bits of the company contained in the brochure, so this design was very focused on being a sales presentation that put the company’s best foot forward while still being adaptable for the 250+ different agents who would use it as they won business.

Print Advertising

Now if you read the campaign guidelines above you’ll have noted that they’re just that, guidelines. Turning this concept into a living, breathing campaign was very much an in-house job that I was thrilled to helm. We received the guidelines in March of 2023 and I knew that for this campaign to be a success we had to come out with a bang, primarily to our broker community, before the busy summer season. March to May of 2023 may have been some of the most creatively intense and productive of my career. Things started with print advertising that needed to be placed well ahead of the summer season. I took the guidelines and designed a suite of new ads both for the company and for our agents that reflected this new campaign while remaining hyper-local to reemphasize our position as “Colorado’s real estate company”.

Digital Advertising

Now I can’t say all the design work came off my desk, as the Creative Project Manager it was also my job to enable some of the budding design talent we had on the Slifer team. Our phase 1 digital ads are a good example of this where I worked with one of our regional marketing managers as she created a suite of new digital ads that announced this campaign to the world. I provided the creative vision and turned her loose to great effect.

Offices, Events + Fun

We knew going into this campaign launch that reaching our community of brokers would be priority number one, if we could get them to champion the campaign to their clients, competitors, and friends it would be more successful than anything conventional marketing could accomplish. So I placed a huge priority in terms of both time and budget to getting these elements in our offices. This is really where I had a lot of fun, creating posters, stand ups, postcards, stickers, swag, and even custom candles. With all this in hand, I headed on the road again doing a set of presentations across Colorado evangelizing the campaign and helping our agents from Aspen to Boulder understand what this all meant, and importantly how it could help their business.

The REsults

With nearly a year and a half, along with hundreds of thousands of dollars, invested in this campaign our release would prove to be the largest of my career thus far. Frankly, it went off better than I could have hoped, our community of agents was more than just receptive, they were thrilled with this bold, authentic, and fun new vision of the company they loved. By June of 2023 we successfully came out in all of our markets with dedicated print, digital, and event collateral along with a suite of new materials that our agents could use to grow their business. Within weeks our offices, events, and presentations had been completely scrubbed of old collateral as people at all levels eagerly jumped in to our Colorado Calling campaign. Most importantly though was the feedback from our agents, about how true this all felt to the company they had dedicated decades of their working lives to, and how excited it made them about the future.