GB also stands for “Giving Back”

When a child learns to read, the path of his or her life is forever altered in ways big and small. You just never know how one person’s ability to read will affect the course of many, many lives. Readers, it seems, have the ability to change history.

That powerful promise fueled the concept GB created for S.M.A.R.T.’s volunteer recruitment campaign, the first ever GB grant winner in 2008. GB created a compelling future “story” that hinges on the fact that a child learned to read. Is he or she the child you, as a volunteer, will help? There’s only one way to find out. The tag line, “Readers Change History” underscores the lasting difference you can make. Potent. Thought-provoking. Full of possibility. These messages were brought to life in identity work, print ads, a website redesign template, and radio ads.

The Dougy Center needed GB’s help in 2009 to re-energize their brand and donations, so the center could continue to provide peer counseling helping children and teens to heal after the loss of a loved one.

GB created a new logo option, designed a brochure, and gave the Dougy Center website a refreshed design and updated messaging to better communicate the center’s internationally renowned model for peer supported grief counseling.

Oregon Partnership's Military Helpline was the recipient of the Grady Britton grant in 2010. Oregon Partnership (now known as Lines for Life) is an organization with a big mission: drug abuse prevention and suicide prevention. The Military Helpline is their suicide hotline that is dedicated to military personnel and veterans in crisis - a 24-hour suicide hotline. The Military Helpline was in need of building its awareness so it could be of most help to those in need - veterans of all wars and ages suffering from PTSD or other forms of depression.

After working with the staff it was determined that the Military Helpline needed to develop it's own identity and some concise and eloquent communications pieces that could be used and repurposed in a variety of ways. The goal was challenging - reach people who have been trained to not ask for help. And reach them before it becomes a crisis. Grady Britton developed a new logo that helps identify the organization and a series of posters whose concepts can be repurposed for direct mail, website, etc. The materials were developed over three years ago, but the imagery still resonates and has become iconic for the organization because of it's emotional connection to the audience.

Community Warehouse wowed the GB grant committee in 2011. The organization was meeting a great need in Portland by providing struggling families with the things they need to turn an empty shell of a house or apartment into a real home: mattresses, dishes, chairs, couches and much more. Overall, the organization was giving struggling families the security and dignity that comes from having the things so many of us take for granted.

The furniture bank relies on donations, and needed GB’s help to encourage Portlanders to donate their gently used goods to Community Warehouse. GB determined that CW would benefit most from an awareness campaign that informed Portlanders of CW’s mission and positioned them as the ideal place to donate used goods for the direct benefit of the needy in our community.

GB designed a concentrated direct mail campaign targeting neighborhoods around both of CW’s donation centers in SE Portland and Beaverton. GB designed postcards utilizing key story-telling elements to build awareness, starting with CW’s underused tagline of “Used Goods to Good Use:”

• Imagery of beautiful-yet-gently-used furniture and storytelling elements to drive home the often forgotten importance of having a chair to sit on and a bed to sleep on: “The most overlooked ingredient of any great dinner, the table.” “Every good bedtime story deserves a bedtime lamp.”
• The back of the postcard provided facts on how many families the organization has helped each year, and how easy it is to donate to the warehouse.

The campaign inspired Community Warehouse to begin using the Used Goods to Good Use tagline in more places, and expand on the direct mail campaign with new imagery and story telling to continue to grow the campaign into mailers to donors, posters, and more