While the Academy is getting ready to announce Oscar nominations, we have some news of our own to toast: Two International MarCom Awards, in fashionable Gold and Platinum, for our work with Lakewood Cemetery and The Disruptive Element. Here’s the scoop…

Lakewood Cemetery – Event Strategy 

Lakewood Cemetery in Minneapolis, has remained an iconic and respected institution for nearly 150 years — yet faces an urgent business challenge: More people are choosing cremation over burial and perceiving places like Lakewood as increasingly less relevant.

Spyglass helped Lakewood reaffirm the value of their role in modern life by strategically bringing new awareness to the organization through a variety of events, initiatives and media channels. A major focus was to develop and promote new events designed to make Lakewood more relevant, visible and accessible, and spark new conversations connected to death and dying.

We developed two new event approaches:  The Learn @ Lakewood Series which consists of educational events, including a Companions for the Transition panel featuring a variety of end-of-life professionals such as palliative care workers and death doulas; and the Lakewood Experience Series,  a collection of more personal and immersive offerings, including a Midsummer Memory Mandala event, a Meditation on death and dying; and a Winter Solstice Tea Ceremony & Grief Circle. Check the Lakewood website to learn more — and see what’s coming up!

“The degree to which you care about our success is palpable and inspiring.”
John Brooks, Chair, Board of Trustees 

The Disruptive Element – Strategic Rebrand

This project was incredibly gratifying because it provided the client massive momentum and impact that could be both seen and felt.

The Disruptive Element is a leadership performance company that specializes in helping mid-sized companies and business units in large companies bring out the best in their people.

Their model revolves around a nucleus of neuroscience — because change is an inside job. Their whole-person approach creates new connections between thoughts and actions and new alignment between personal and professional growth.

TDE launched as a 2-person company in 2014 and has grown exponentially since then, so they came to Spyglass looking for ways to show up in the market differently, unify how they describe and sell the offering, and ultimately grow the business to become a national change-agent in the leadership performance space.

Spyglass helped TDE crystallize their vision, properly position themselves in the market, and brought the brand to life in a way that was uniquely TDE. They recently celebrated their 5 year anniversary, and feel ready to propel their business through the next 5 – we can’t wait to see what they can achieve!

“You helped us see who we are and the value we bring to the world.”
Paula Winkler, Partner and COO

The shift into fall marks the beginning of all those televised awards shows some of us love to watch – and happily, we just got some recognition of our own! Team Spyglass is pleased to announce that we received two International dotCOMM Awards.  We are grateful for the recognition—and for the opportunity to help bring these exceptional brands to life.

Post Consumer Brands – Platinum for Website Ecosystem

Post Consumer Brands is the umbrella company for the Post cereal family, which makes Fruity Pebbles, Grape Nuts, Malt-O-Meal, Honey Bunches of Oats and 32 other family favorites.  After a merger brought together a variety of different products and brands, Post needed to holistically evaluate their digital presence. Spyglass did an audit and identified nine opportunities to create a better user experience and position the Post brand in a more cohesive and differentiated way.  One of our key recommendations was to reconfigure the online ecosystem and create a “hub” site for Post with “spokes” to 10 cereal websites. Spyglass developed a modular system that gave individual cereals the flexibility they desired, while creating consistency and synergy between cereal brands. Since the initial rollout, Post continues to use this model to more successfully and efficiently launch new cereals. So head to one of the websites if you are looking to try a new recipe next time you sign up to bring dessert, to find out how Grape Nuts got its start, or are looking to have Great Grains delivered right to your door.

Minnetronix Medical  – Gold for Website

Minnetronix Medical came to Spyglass when they wanted to solidify their position as a best-in-class contract manufacturer AND a medical technology and solutions provider for under-served patient populations.  We helped them rename and reposition the company, articulate their business strategy and revitalize their look, tone and feel to reflect where they were headed and energize the internal team.  The new site makes it easy for visitors to find the specific technologies they are looking for (moving from 100s of disparate pages to a streamlined, intuitive user flow), while showcasing the full breadth of the company’s expertise. It also introduces their new Neuro category to the market in a way that is more relevant to both current customers and emerging new businesses in the space. And the internal team now has a sales and messaging tool they can rally and build around—making the site a win for all.  Check out how they are saving lives with their solutions that prevent secondary injury and enhance healing in neurocritical care patients.

Does your current site truly reflect who you are and what you do? Is it performing to its full potential?  Call us – we’d love to dig in and provide direction!

dotCOMM Awards is an international competition honoring excellence in web creativity and digital communication. The competition spotlights the role of creatives in the dynamic, constantly evolving web and offers third-party recognition from one of the most-recognized and highly-regarded evaluators of creative work in the world. Winning a dotCOMM award signifies to employers, clients, prospects and competitors that the winner’s web and digital work is among the best in the industry.

We’d like to single out two of our special clients who have brought much joy—and hardware—to our office this year. We are proud to announce three International MarCom Awards.

Lakewood Cemetery
Gold for Strategic Rebrand & Market Differentiation Campaign, AND for Brand Refresh.

Post Consumer Brands
Platinum for Website Ecosystem Revitalization.

We are grateful for the recognition—and for the opportunity to do such cool work with such great partners.

The MarCom Awards recognize outstanding achievements in marketing and communication, and is one of the oldest, largest, and most prestigious creative competitions in the world. MarCom is sponsored and judged by the Association of Marketing and Communication Professionals (AMCP), a 23-year-old international organization consisting of several thousand creative professionals. In 2018, the awards received more than 6,000 international entries.

Spyglass was hired by the CWT FedRooms team to redesign the FedRooms website and make it more user and mobile friendly — and the result was a winner. Literally! The redesigned site recently received a prestigious Gold Award in the “Government Website” division of the dotCOMM Awards, an international competition honoring excellence in web creativity and digital communication. The competition spotlights the role of creatives in the dynamic, constantly evolving web.

We’re proud of the new site, and invite you to check it out if you are a federal traveler on official business. Not a federal traveler? Spyglass can certainly bring the award-winning features and functionality of a crowd-pleasing site like this to you.

When a company specializes in fecal transplants, it pays to have a sense of humor. Spyglass developed the “We’re #2” rally cry for the internal launch of the new brand.

Congrats to Lee Jones, Spyglass client and founder of a pioneering biotech startup that was recently acquired by a Swiss pharmaceuticals company. Lee came to us in 2012 with a company called MikrobEX and a vision of using microbes extracted from human stool to treat serious infections. We helped her define a new category called “Rebiotics,” renamed the company Rebiotix and positioned the company as the market leader in this emergent space.

“Spyglass gave us an aspirational vision and told us that the brand needed to stand for something,” explained Lee. “That was really important and the investment we made in brand positioning more than paid off.” We’ll share more about this exciting story in the next SpyTimes edition, but in the meantime we send our best wishes and congratulations to this inspiring woman and the Rebiotix team.

Booking travel for work can be a bear … or a breeze. For federal employees, the experience just got a whole lot better. FedRooms is the official U.S. government hotel program, administered by global corporate travel leader and longtime Spyglass client Carlson Wagonlit Travel.

The FedRooms program is a winner, giving government travelers more choice, better value and guaranteed amenities, AND it saved federal agencies (and taxpayers!) nearly $21.8 million in 2017 alone. But the online experience didn’t live up to the program’s promise. The website wasn’t mobile friendly or ADA compliant, and it hadn’t been updated in 6 years — an eon in technology time.

Enter Spyglass.

We updated the logo, developed a new messaging hierarchy and website structure, and brought a whole new FedRooms look/tone/feel to life on the new site. Now, travelers have simple, intuitive access to the planning and booking tools they need, and “employee-grade” perks and benefits that we civilians can’t get.

See the new site

Before we leap ahead to 2018, we’d like to take a moment to acknowledge our clients and the great work we had the pleasure of doing over the past year. These collaborations resulted in five top honors in a variety of marketing, communication and digital categories, including two Platinum and three Gold.

Here are a few highlights:

Carlson Wagonlit Travel
Internal Magazine: CWT Insider

Capella Education Company
InsightPath Company Overview Video

Edina Education Fund
Socktoberfest Identity

The MarCom Awards recognize outstanding achievements in marketing and communication, and is one of the oldest, largest, and most prestigious creative competitions in the world. MarCom is sponsored and judged by the Association of Marketing and Communication Professionals (AMCP), a 22-year-old international organization consisting of several thousand creative professionals. In 2017, the awards received more than 6,000 international entries.

Spyglass is proud to announce we are now working with Minnetronix – one of the nation’s pioneering med tech companies – on their brand positioning and go-to-market story.  Minnetronix is on a mission to solve challenging problems for the benefit of patients and humanity. It’s aspirational – and, more importantly, given their track record as a valued design and manufacturing partner with OEMs and their own proprietary technologies and treatments – it’s doable!

Thank you to Carolyn Baldus, Sr. Communications Manager, for sending us this note last week —

“The work you presented was spot on and we were all truly impressed. You get us. You captured our passion, our intention and our why. Thank you all for your work and your guidance.”

Spyglass brings home gold for Capella Learning Solution’s InsightPath video

Have you ever tried to condense your company’s story into 90 seconds, in a way that creates clarity and drives demand? The Spyglass Team did exactly that for InsightPath—a program designed to help companies convert their analytics into action.

InsightPath was developed by Capella Learning Solutions in collaboration with the International Institute for Analytics to teach business teams how to think strategically and tactically to make data-driven decisions. CLS and Spyglass worked together to develop a name, identity, website, sales presentation and then a video that could communicate InsightPath’s message succinctly.

Last week, the video was recognized when dotCOMM Awards announced Spyglass as a Gold Winner for the 2017 International Award Competition in the category of Company Overview Video. dotCOMM Awards is an international competition honoring excellence in web creativity and digital communication.

Chris Giacomazzo, Sr Business Director at Capella Learning Solutions said, “Getting to the heart of what we do quickly, while still showing the entire InsightPath process was not easy. Spyglass helped us bring the InsightPath brand and key messages to life in a way that made the InsightPath process approachable and easy to understand. We couldn’t be happier with the end product.”

See for yourself! Watch the video here

Summer may still be in full force, but fall is just around the corner – and with the change of season comes the crisp air, pumpkin spiced treats, leaves changing colors and most importantly, the first annual Socktoberfest!

This October, join Edina Education Fund for their inaugural event and a night of great food, fun games and the chance to be a part of history as they attempt to break the world record for the most people in one space wearing matching socks – all while raising funds to support the educational needs and opportunities for Edina Public School students.

As a long time sponsor of the Edina Ed Fund, Spyglass had the opportunity to create the logo for the event. All of us here are excited to break out our new socks in a few months! It is sure to be a fun filled event that will get you into the fall spirit. Buy your tickets and socks here.