The CALL Recruitment Display won Gold in the 2012 MarCom Awards. MarCom entries come from corporate marketing and communication departments, advertising agencies, PR firms, design shops, production companies and freelancers. The competition is one of the largest of its kind in the world. Winners range from individual communicators to media conglomerates and Fortune 500 companies. There were over 6,000 entries from the US and internationally.
The CALL Recruitment Display is a set of materials for a foster and adoptive parent recruitment campaign, made up of display, brochure, fact sheet and story cards, designed to present The CALL and elicit action.
Each item fills a specific function and while all of them are designed to be used together, they can also be used individually to give The CALL maximum flexibility. Because The CALL (thecallinarkansas.org) is a statewide organization with offices in counties around Arkansas, each item in the collection is designed to be customized to reflect the needs in a particular county and to provide local contact information.
The display comes in 3 different sizes to suit different venues. In each size, the hardware is carefully selected to be portable and easy to handle.
The brochure presents The CALL and works well in conjunction with the display or as a standalone takeaway piece. There is a statewide version, as well as county specific versions that focus on local needs.
The fact sheet presents a list of 10 ways to get involved with The CALL on one side and on the other 10 misconceptions about foster care. It has turned out to be a great conversation starter wherever it’s handed out.
Finally there are the story cards. This is a set of 7 cards. Each contains the fictionalized story of a child in foster care (based on real data) on the front and a summary of what The CALL is about on the back, with room to write down the time and place of the next Information meeting. So the cards double as a way to connect people with the lives of children in foster care and as a reminder to bring interested people back for the next info meeting.
These materials were all designed together to provide a consistent look and feel and are now becoming a cornerstone in The CALL’s ongoing re-branding process.
I am thrilled that the judges at MarCom rewarded this set of materials with Gold honors and equally thrilled that the materials fly off the shelves and help people connect with The CALL.
While they were at it, the MarCom judges also reviewed a T-shirt I created for The CALL’s Annual Staff and Volunteer Summit and gave it an honorable mention. I am pleased, especially considering that the design was created literally minutes before it had to go to print for the T-shirts to be ready in time for the Summit. Everyone receiving a T-shirt has been excited about it and we haven’t been able to keep them in stock since the event.
We agreed and went to work. Then things happened quickly and after a few twists and turns, we found ourselves in charge of the whole grant writing process. 
Several revisions later and with literally minutes to spare, we submitted the finished 60-page grant proposal. The grant is still being evaluated and hasn’t been funded yet, so we can only disclose that it is for a multi-million groundbreaking health care initiative in a large US metropolitan area.
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