People often call and ask, “Do you guys do PR?” We’ve always said no because we are really focused on building brands by other means and we let people who are great at PR and media relations do PR.

But more recently we have offered PR to some clients through doing the kind of work that get talked about and written about. Our work for America’s First Credit Union and Mannington Commerical has proved that our focus on creating great advertising and branding generates its own PR.

In February of this year, we launched the TV campaign for America’s First Federal Credit Union. Each of the five spots featured bankers going into sort of a confession booth on a downtown street to talk about the bad deeds they had done to their customers. Whether they were talking high rates and fees, cut services or bad car loans, the message is the same- that banks stick it to their customers, so it’s smarter to do business with America’s First Credit Union. To illustrate the contrast, we positioned America’s First as “Refreshingly unbank-like.”

These spots garnered lots of attention around the Birmingham area and credit unions all over the country. In June, they were featured in The New York Times, both in print and online. The article was soon picked up by The Huffington Post, The New York Post, FinancialBrand.com and other credit union trade publications and websites. It was also rewarding to be the cover story of the business section in our own Birmingham News.

Our belief that good advertising leads to PR also rang true with commercial flooring client, Mannington Commerical.

We were charged with designing their showroom for the NeoCon World’s Trade Fair. This tradeshow, hosted at the Merchandise Mart in Chicago, is the largest commercial interiors tradeshow in the world. After completing several other projects to enhance their brand, we knew this was the biggest of all. Our hard work paid off, as Mannington’s showroom was named Best Small Showroom of NeoCon 2010 by the International Interior Design Association and Contract Magazine . This is a huge honor being up against so many showrooms and being in the good company of Herman Miller who earned Best Large Showroom at NeoCon.

The press from IIDA and Contract did not end there. The showroom design was spotted on several design blogs and trade publications, such as DecorGirl, Interior Design Magazine, even Mexico Design Magazine. And we are pleased that the final result caught the eye of Mannington’s other side of the business, Mannington Residential. We look forward to the exciting projects we will be doing for them.

So what’s our new answer those who ask if we “do PR:”  Sort of. We just do it by setting out to create work that is both strategic and newsworthy.

(The Birmingham News /photo by Linda Stelter)

We were recently featured in The Birmingham News.

By Roy L. Williams, business writer

Birmingham-based America’s First Federal Credit Union, created to serve steelworkers in the 1930s, took its rivalry with banks to a humorous level this year with a series of television commercials created by advertising veteran Paul Crawford.

Crawford, president and creative director of Scout Branding at 216 29th St. South, came up with a campaign for America’s First that pokes fun at bank fees, which critics say are too high. The five 30-second spots, mostly filmed in Los Angeles using unknown actors, have aired several times on Alabama television stations where the credit union has a presence.

The commercials gained national exposure last month when the New York Times featured them in an article about how some credit unions have shaken off dull advertising strategies and grown bolder in promoting themselves.

The America’s First ads are centered around a common theme: Actors posing as bankers who enter a booth that says, “Banker Confessions Taken Here,” and confess their guilt about hidden fees and charges.

In one commercial, a woman says it was her idea “to jack up fees and lower services,” then boasts about the perks she received. In another, a man admits that his bank charges “a lot of fees for nothing.”

Then he says, “How do I sleep at night? Did I mention that my bonus check had two commas in it?”

Each ad ends with the tag line, “America’s First Federal Credit Union — refreshingly unbank like.”

Crawford and America’s First officials say the attention gave an immediate boost to traffic on both Scout Branding and the credit union’s websites, and generated calls nationally. “We had told America’s First that this might get national attention because it is in your face compared to typical credit union ads,” Crawford said.

It’s not the first time that Scout Branding, a five-person firm Crawford founded in 2006 after spending nearly a decade at major advertising firms in Boston, Atlanta and Nashville, has made waves. In 2007, Crawford created a television, print and online anti-scam campaign for the U.S. Postal Service that aired in major publications and television stations across the country. Those humorous spots played off familiar scams, including a foreign lottery scam featuring a man speaking in broken English.

Right actors are key

Crawford, whose client base includes Alagasco, Children’s Hospital and Baptist Health System, said finding the right actors is critical for a successful commercial.

“We looked at probably 200 actors before deciding on the five we used in the America’s First campaign,” he said. “It took a lot of work. We put in six weeks of production before showing it to them.”

Crawford said America’s First’s marketing chief, Phil Boozer, and Chief Executive David Adcock knew the campaign “was out of the norm from what they had done,” but were willing to take a chance.

Boozer said the commercials paid off and accomplished their goals.

“These commercial let people know what we do as a credit union by showing them what we don’t do in a fun and humorous way,” he said.

Crawford said Scout Branding has benefited from a good team that allows it to accomplish many of the things that a bigger firm can.

“We don’t have a lot of layers of management that the bigger firms do and it allows us to get things done quicker and smarter,” he said.

Still, Crawford acknowledges that his firm, like many others, has been affected by the economic downturn.

“We weren’t hit as hard as most others are because we have always operated on a lean staff,” he said. “We could probably be twice in size but choose to remain small. The firms who can deliver good ideas on budget and on time will be OK.”

Scout with the IIDA Creative Excellence Award in Showroom Design

Scout Branding was just honored by the International Interior Design Association with a Creative Excellence Award for Small Showroom Design at NeoCon, the largest design exposition and conference for commercial interiors in North America. Considering that designers from all over the world compete to create the most inspiring design experience in over 700 showrooms, being singled out for this recognition is a huge achievement.

I thought it would be interesting to show our original presentation to Mannington compared to photography of the finished project. There are so many factors that can intervene with the initial concept and vision for a large project like this- budget, technical limitations, and building team consensus just to name a few. But with careful planning, attention to detail, and teamwork with the client, you will see that the transformation from concept to reality was seamless.

Starting with the overall view you will notice the drama of gunmetal walls and rich hardwood floors (Mannington Commercial’s new offering called Earthly Elements) contrasted with gleaming white lacquer displays and the brightly colored large scale patterns of the Sylvan and Monarch collections in front. The technique we employed was simple-create a visual focus on the flooring products and elegant displays by framing everything with dark tones. This allowed a unified and cohesive look to the space while drawing in the viewer with high-contrast lighting.

You will see here the concept vs. execution of several of the specific product displays. With the help of some amazing vendors we were able to make these displays come to life. The branches were transformed from our drawings into high density foam sculptures covered in white lacquer. The nest was woven here at Scout from samples of Mannington’s Sylvan Collection, and real ostrich eggs proved to be the right scale for it’s interior.

In the environmental display, arrows fabricated from different post-consumer materials products create a simple explanation of Mannington’s commitment to redirecting landfill-bound products into new flooring.

Thanks to Mannington and our whole team of vendors for working together to steal the show! You will see the showroom featured in Interior Design’s Show Daily, the IIDA website, and an upcoming feature in Contract Magazine.

We’ve recently been pleased to complete an advanced web feature phase for the Mannington Commercial website. This phase included many upgrades to increase the user experience and usability of the current site and also implement some new advanced searching features. We believe it makes the site function better overall as well as more fun to use.

The two notable front end features we implemented for them are an Advanced Search as well as a Choices That Work Search.

The Choices That Work Search feature searches by usage in different market segments.

The Advanced Search pulls in all the products within the selected criteria using javascript. The URL changes depending on the search so you can email or save your search criteria

If you select and criteria "By Color" - the results pulls in the Colorways giving you a visual representation of the different color selections.

We implemented these changes along with other user experience updates and fixed a lot of CMS issues for them. We’re very pleased with the speed and detail that the search feature has, as well as finally giving them the ability to browse products in a logical and advanced way.

BIRMINGHAM, April 13, 2010 –Scout Branding won 2 Gold and 6 Silver Awards in the District Seven ADDY Awards Competition. Gold Awards were for Scout’s work for Westervelt Communities and Silver Awards were for Mannington Commercial, Alagasco and Westervelt Communities. The Gold ADDYs will be entered and judged in the National ADDY Awards Competition.

Prior to the district level, Scout took home 18 ADDYs at the Birmingham ADDY Awards Show, 14 Gold and 4 Silver. Scout’s president/creative director, Paul Crawford, won Creative Director of the Year and Copywriter of the Year. Scout’s associate creative director, Ryan Gernenz, won Designer of the Year.

The ADDY Awards is the largest creative competition in the country with about 55,000 local entries competing in 200 cities coast to coast. Winning an ADDY at the district level is the second step in competing for a National ADDY Award.

We’ve just launched a new website! Presenting: VerandaOnHighland.com. Veranda on Highland is a wonderful fine dining establishment. We’re so thrilled to give them a website that reflects their quality, taste, and style. Most of the photography was shot by the talented Miller Mobley.
Here are some technical aspects of the site:

• It is built using WordPress as its content management system.
• WordPress has amazing built in Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
• The restaurant menus are not PDF’s! We built the menus using CSS and a plug-in called “Flutter” so that Veranda can easily update their menus without touching markup or worrying about formatting. We found this to be particularly important because their menu can change daily due to serving such fresh ingredients. Tech geeks: To read a post I wrote about how to use flutter for a restaurant menu go here.
• Flash-Free. With the prevalent use of mobile devices and the new iPad coming out, we made a decision to program the site without flash. We programmed the sideshow and floor-plan rollovers using jQuery.

Check it out and tell us what you think! Also, if you have any technical questions feel free to ask Sara Cannon at sara@scoutbrand.com

Scout’s Creative Director, Paul Crawford was featured in Advertising Age’s Small Agency Diary. Click here to check it out.

Scout Branding Company

BIRMINGHAM, February 8, 2010 – The American Advertising Federation Birmingham held its annual ADDY Gala at Old Car Heaven. Scout Branding won 18 ADDYs — 4 silver and 14 gold. Scout’s president/creative director, Paul Crawford, won Creative Director of the Year and Copywriter of the Year. Scout’s associate creative director, Ryan Gernenz, won Designer of the Year. The five-person shop had the highest total of gold ADDYs won Saturday night.

“The awards are nice,” says Paul Crawford, president/creative director at Scout. “But, we don’t let awards shape how we work. The main focus at Scout is to find ideas that help our clients grab market share and grow their revenue.”

Scout Branding was also recently named Agency of the Year at the 2009 Birmingham Peak Awards also held at Old Car Heaven.

BIRMINGHAM, January 27, 2010— Scout Branding Company has been hired by the Universal Postal Union to craft an awareness campaign about the risks of buying counterfeited or pirated medications, electronics and other items through the mail.

Scout will refer to their experience in creating the national campaign for the United States Postal Service to alert consumers of e-mail scams.

The Universal Postal Union is headquartered in Berne, Switzerland and is the primary forum for cooperation between postal-sector players to help ensure a truly universal network of up-to-date products and services. With 191 member countries, it sets the rules for international mail exchanges and makes recommendations to stimulate growth in mail volumes and to improve the quality of service for customers.

Scout Branding Scout Branding is an award-winning advertising, branding and interactive company that adds real value to a select group of companies through ideas. www.scoutbrand.com.

Birmingham, AL—Scout Branding was awarded Advertising Agency of the Year at the American Advertising Federation of Birmingham Peak Awards. The Peak Awards is an awards competition to honor top advertising professionals for their work and dedication in the advertising and marketing fields in the Birmingham area. The event is judged by experts from outside Alabama who have no prior knowledge of the nominees in making their final decisions.