In our increasingly digital world, it is nice to find some peace and solace in the wonder of nature, and our friends at Whispering Winds helped us do just that for their new website.
Whispering Winds is a Catholic camp and conference center located in the heart of the beautiful Cuyamaca Mountains about an hour outside of San Diego. Their mission is to bring people together to strengthen bonds through faith, and form them with nature.
With stomachs growling and hearts filled with excitement, Comrade took its annual social extravaganza to Paulding & Company in Emeryville to learn a few new tricks in the kitchen.
Chef Terry Paulding and her team were tasked with teaching us how to prepare a full-course meal consisting of items and ingredients some of us have never heard of, and they nailed it. While some of our Comrades took right to cooking, others were more interested in enjoying the various aromas and sampling a few of the wine pairings.
Who knew managing your money could be so rewarding?
The Interactive Media Association did. They recently honored Comrade and Bank of the West with an Outstanding Achievement Award for our work on the Manage Your Money site – a resource center that helps people find better ways to take care of their finances.
After a busy Spring that included hiring three fulltime Comrades, producing a music video, and bringing the company coffee maker back from the dead, Comrade celebrated its fifth year in business by moving into a new office space, and of course, throwing a party.
Our new office is located downstairs from our previous office, in the first floor of the Arlington Building. With the move, we were able to bring on more Comrades, add more spacious conference rooms and give Gerard more room for his spontaneous break dancing.
Curse the Controls, a local band based in San Francisco, did their best Godfather impression and made us an offer we couldn’t refuse.
They asked us to develop a new website for the band AND shoot their first music video. Obviously, we wanted in.
We partnered with director Sean Smith and Stingray Pictures to produce the video for the track, “Hollywood,” a dark, yet poignant journey through the inner struggles and fantasies of a young woman’s mind. We shot the video in San Francisco’s famous Musée Mécanique, an antique penny arcade whose ominous, carnivalesque appearance helped create a unique visual tone for the video.
How do you create a website that combines the warmth and personal service of Bank of the West with the global reach and resources of parent company BNP Paribas? That was the challenge for Bank of the West’s Wealth Management team, and that’s why they brought us in to help.
Because of our previous branding experience, we knew that we needed to review both brands in depth to find the right mixture of elements, without confusing customers and creating a site that was off strategy.
We’ve never thought of ourselves as carpenters, but when Bank of the West asked us to develop a flexible yet natural framework for their Facebook page, we put on our construction hats and got to work.
We created a foundation for the bank’s Facebook presence that focuses on the fun side of banking, while emphasizing Bank of the West’s core values of community, relationships and service. The bank does a lot of charitable work and sponsors various events in the communities they serve, which they can now share with the Facebook community. They also sponsor the Pac-10 Conference, and we’re pleased to say that they now have a venue for sharing relevant promotions and unique Pac-10 content with fans.
How do you create a website that makes you feel like you’re chatting with an insurance agent?
That was the challenge for BW Insurance Agency, the insurance arm of Bank of the West. Because BW Insurance Agency is a part of the bank, yet still a separate entity, they wanted us to help them develop a unique web presence to showcase their unique image without completely separating from Bank of the West.
Our friends at InvestLab are very excited about global investing.
So when they asked us to build their corporate website to help them tell their story, of course we wanted in on this international venture.
With offices in Hong Kong, Connecticut and San Francisco, InvestLab’s mission is to provide a platform for retail brokerages and everyday investors to explore and trade in global markets that have typically been difficult to access. The corporate site is designed to help potential backers get to know InvestLab and the scope of their vision.
As if Fridays aren’t great enough already, we just got word that Comrade and our client, CashEdge have won the Interactive Media Association’s Outstanding Achievement award in financial services, for our work on the Popmoney site.
We worked to ensure that the Popmoney site communicated a clear direction for users looking to send and receive money, while communicating high-level benefits in a friendly, human voice and maintaining the security and trustworthiness important to this new financial brand.
You can see the site at popmoney.com
A special congrats goes to our friends at CashEdge and all Comrades involved on the project.
Armed with boarding passes to L.A., a craving for cash and prizes, and a suitcase full of candy heart costumes, we took our annual Comrade social function down to the City of Angels to participate in the Valentine’s Day episode of Let’s Make a Deal, a dream come true for a few Comrades.
We rushed down Sunset Boulevard, debating who should drive home the new Comrade SUV, when we passed our competition: the love machine, a troll and an assortment of love doctors. We even saw a couple dressed in 80s style wedding garb. Oh wait, they were with us. Check out all of our costumes.
Excitement filled our hearts (pun intended) as we entered the studio, ready to play. Unfortunately, no Comrades were chosen to make a deal, but our very own Christine managed to make Wayne Brady blush on her way to dance contest glory.
Be sure to check out Let’s Make a Deal on Valentine’s Day to see Kinda Awesome, Salty, and all of your other favorite Comrades on TV.
Or you can take what’s behind door number 3.
So the project we’ve been calling “September launch” actually launched in September. Nice job everyone!
Popmoney.com is an innovative service from our CashEdge client that lets people send and receive money with just an email or text. The service typically lives within the online banking pages of Popmoney’s partner banks. However, people whose bank does not offer the service will use it at Popmoney.com.
Check out the redesign at www.popmoney.com
There’s never a dull moment with Bank of the West. The last few months have marked some key milestones for the bank. The launch of Mobile Banking is bringing a whole new level of convenience for Online Banking customers. Meanwhile, back at the branches, the bank has begun rolling out its new ATM design. Read more about the role we played in these groundbreaking Bank of the West efforts.
We kicked off summer with an office warming party to break in our new space in Old Oakland. We had a great turnout and it was fantastic to see familiar faces and meet some new ones. Yes, a 5-year-old won the iPad we raffled off, but what better investment in our future, right?
In other news, we've got some new comrades in the house.
Normally Monday's inbox is a bleary eyed buffet of to-dos, leftovers and meeting requests. So imagine our surprise when we could ignore those things for a while and instead read the email with the subject line: CONGRATULATIONS (yep, all caps).
The kudos were the result of our Bank of the West redesign work winning the Interactive Media Association's Outstanding Achievement award in the Banking category.
The Comrades are pretty excited about this news, and a few of us will be using the win to justify a longer than normal lunch later this week. We'd also like to thank our friends at Bank of the West, who played a major role in this successful redesign.
To learn more about the Bank of the West redesign read the Case Study, or visit the site at www.bankofthewest.com
© Comrade 2006–2012