THE NEED:
While working as Creative Project Manager for Slifer Smith & Frampton Real Estate a large portion of my time was spent creating print ads that ran in local publications like the Vail, Summit, and Aspen Daily’s as well as more national publications like Home Magazine and Architectural Digest. When I arrived on the job the team was using a mixed suite of designs that had been developed over the years by designers both in-house and external. What’s more, when I started with the company we were just finishing up a rebranding effort with Forbes Global Properties, a partnership that leadership hoped would give our brand clout in our growing number of core markets from Aspen to Denver. The print advertising needed to be reworked in a big way that brought brand consistency across all ad placements and foregrounded the value of our partnership with Forbes.
THE REMEDY:
Company-level advertising —
I began with our company branded placements. These high-value spots appeared in long shelf-life local publications like Vail Valley Magazine, integrated with our strategic local sponsorships such as with Bravo! Vail, and appeared in select national publications as well. I began by applying our newly established brand standards that subtly worked in colors and typefaces from Forbes into these placements. As Creative Project Manager my role was fairly wide ranging, from establishing/maintaining brand standards to doing design and copywriting.
Our company-owned section in Vail Valley Magazine was always a key placement.
Then moved into internal spreads highlighting the neighborhoods we worked in.
It began with a branded introductory spread like this one.
And the brokers who specialized there.
Property-specific pieces —
With our company-level pieces polished and humming, I then applied these same standards and frameworks to the more day-to-day grind of my role, creating pieces for specific properties that gained our brokers crucial exposure. These designs were a mix of single-property highlight pages for our flagship properties, and multi-property gallery type designs. With every design I would balance the requests from the brokers with requirements from the publication and external factors like quality of photography and seasonal considerations.
I developed a new look and feel for our property ads.
At times requests for advertorial content would come through,
That was deployed across many publications with subtle tweaks.
which gave me more opportunities for creativity.
Broker branding ads —
The final, and possibly most critical, stage of my design work came from our community of real estate brokers. Slifer Smith & Frampton is home to over 300 independent brokers who all ned their own level of support. While a good portion of my time was spent building out systems that would allow brokers and their teams the ability to make their own collateral within our brand standards, usually via Lucidpress, at times I dug in and created some fresh collateral that put their personal brand in the spotlight.
As the leading brokerage in the Vail Valley, I frequently saw requests to highlight a brokers past production.
Other times a more experiential touch was needed.
THE RESULT:
“Slifer set a new sales record in 2020 and then proceeded to blow it out of the water in 2021”
During my first two financial years with the company they set a new sales record in 2020 and then proceeded to blow it out of the water in 2021. The markets were red hot, but our competitors were hot on our heels, these designs allowed the company to leverage favorable market conditions and our new partnership into record-setting growth. More importantly though, now the brand is well equipped to produce beautiful, consistent collateral for years to come which will always but the value of SSF first even as markets cool and competitors continue to nip at our heels.
