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And the winner is…

March 12th, 2013

MarCom awards 2012 gold winner - honoring excellence in marketing and communicationsThe 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 CALL's customizable display

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 CALL brochure

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 CALL's fact sheet

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.

The CALL story cards

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.

The CALL T-shirtWhile 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.

Writing a grant

September 29th, 2012

Another day, another phone call. Could Film & Company help out with some media related activities for a non-profit that was in the process of writing a major grant? We would help polish the non-profit’s media presence and provide design for the grant itself.

grant proposal close-upWe 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.

The supplied documents turned out to correspond to an old set of grant requirements. New ones were tracked down. Our team went to work doing research, writing, and designing. We visited the key locations. We plowed through reams of scientific studies and collected financial data for health care institutions.

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.

We are not sitting still though and continue to work with the non-profit to help them be ready for when the grant is funded. The experience has also provided other opportunities for our team in the area of grant writing and non-profit development…

An indie documentary

September 21st, 2012

The call came in through the Little Rock Film Commission. An independent film producer was trying to set up a day of shoots at 2 hospitals in Little Rock for a documentary about Arteriovenous Malformation (AVM).

Great. I know my way around the medical community, but this one I’d never heard of. A few phone calls and emails later, I met with the producer Jaz Gray one early winter morning at Arkansas Children’s Hospital and then at UAMS, following patients around, and interviewing doctors.

Jaz is a young woman who herself has AVM and has been through over 30 corrective surgeries. Now she wants to use the medium of film to bring awareness to the disorder and how it affects the lives of those who have AVM.

Eventually there were two more days of shooting for this documentary, one back at the hospitals and one in rural Arkansas spending a day with a now retired teacher who has dealt with AVM most of her life.


Jaz created a trailer and a website (morethanskindeepmovie.webs.com) and is now planning out the rest of the production, along with finding her way around the Los Angeles production scene, where she moved right after we wrapped the last shoot in Little Rock. It will be exciting to see where this documentary ends up.

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