The month of May has been a busy one. This month, we marked the end of a phenomenal project by launching a brand new website for KVC Health Systems—a locally-based nonprofit organization that does really great work for kids and families throughout the country.
After closely working with them for more than a year, KVC now has a family of six websites all newly branded with a handmade look and a message that “People Matter.”
As people who love downtown Kansas City, we believe there’s no more important project for the future of the city than the construction of the streetcar starter line. So when we were selected to design the new kcstreetcar.org, we were both tremendously excited and extremely proud.
One of the most important questions we answer for our clients is how creative services can be leveraged to achieve their objectives. They know what an agency does, but they want to know what an agency can do for them. Since a lot of creative is subjective, we often find ourselves talking about intangible benefits — customer loyalty, emotional connection, and trust. Intangible benefits aren’t the whole story, however. Creative services, especially web and application development, can also provide a business with functional tools that make life easier.
In 2010, we were at a poolside event and met an MBA student from a Kansas City college. Since Johnny Lightning Strikes Again is in the business of growing businesses, the conversation naturally turned to a concept for a bar & restaurant that he and a few of his fellow students were considering pursuing. Philosophies were shared, business cards were exchanged, and plans to discuss it over coffee were made. These conversations are always exciting, but they also highlight that there are a lot of hurdles to jump over to go from a concept to opening day.
In this case, there was one thing that made us believe that they had the right stuff to do it, however. They wanted to start with the brand.
Branding is a word that is used a lot – not just in our industry, but in the business world as a whole. But what is branding? It’s a slightly difficult question, because branding is often defined not by what it is, but by the most common applications of it. Branding is when you design a logo. Branding is when you design a website with a look-and-feel specific to that company. Branding is when you mark an animal with a branding iron. While all of these statements are true, none of them can really serve as a proper definition of branding.
Branding is the promotion of a particular product or company by means of advertising and distinctive design. It is a communication tool, used to capture the message of a company and deliver it through visuals. It is not something that a company does once and then checks off their list; it is an on-going process that enables businesses to increase their visibility and achieve their goals.
If you are from our hometown of Kansas City, MO and keep up with what’s happening in local fine dining, you’ve almost certainly heard about the recent opening of The Rieger Hotel Grill & Exchange. If not, The Rieger Hotel Grill & Exchange is a phenomenal new restaurant in the Crossroads Art District with a very rich history (guys – if you visit, be sure to use the restroom and see the plaque describing what Al Capone has done in there). What does this have to do with branding, design, or marketing? Well, we had the privilege of producing the website for The Rieger, which you can check out here: http://theriegerkc.com/. While you’re there, be sure to look for the key and unlock some information about one of The Rieger’s (and Kansas City’s) best little secrets.
Thank you to Ryan Maybee and Howard Hanna for bringing this restaurant to life and allowing us to be a part of it. We’re confident that you’ll be a Kansas City landmark for a long time to come!
UPDATE: The business for Team Cocktail kept growing, so they came to us for a website design reboot! Check out our latest work for them in our Team Cocktail case study and portfolio.
When a company engages us to solve a problem facing their business, one of the questions we have to answer is, “Does this company LOOK like who they are and what they’re doing?” Team Cocktail, a clothing and accessory company, asks a similar question to people who are out to have fun: “Do you LOOK like it?” If not, they offer a full line of products, designed by Johnny Lightning Strikes Again, for sale on their e-commerce website, also designed and developed by Johnny Lightning Strikes Again.
Scotwood Industries is the largest supplier of ice-melt in the nation. If you live in a part of the country where snow and ice regularly assault your winter months, you’ve almost certainly used their products.
One of our favorite non-creative related activities is running. At some point or another, all of us have been bitten by the running bug – the undeniable call to take to the pavement and push yourself to the limit. The experience of traveling miles and miles under your own power, listening to nothing but the sound of your thoughts and your feet on the road is all very romantic, actually. Until, that is, you wake up the next morning and realize that your body isn’t what it used to be and you’re in quite a lot of pain. For that reason, when we were contacted by Dr. Jesse Walden of Quest Chiropractic Center to design and develop a new website for his practice, we felt that the road to understanding his target audience wouldn’t be a long one.
Can you guess the purpose of today’s post? Yes! We’re here to announce the launch of the new Quest Chiropractic Center website, lovingly created by Johnny Lightning Strikes Again.
If you are a physician whose goal is to revolutionize the medical office, you could do worse than partner with a creative agency whose goal has always been to design a website that will help revolutionize the medical office. OK, we’ll admit that hasn’t ALWAYS been our goal, but it got added to the list soon after we were contacted by exclusiveMD, Kansas City’s first concierge medical practice.
What is a concierge medical practice, you ask? That was our question also. Imagine for a moment that instead of showing up at a cold, sterile, uncomfortable office to see a doctor that barely had time to see you, you arrived for your appointment at a beautiful, comfortable facility to see a doctor that had become a trusted friend. Imagine that this doctor was available not just at the office, but also for house calls, by telephone, video chat, email, and IM. Sounds pretty good, right? That was our thought also.
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