For nearly 15 years, Great River Educational Arts Theatre (GREAT) has created meaningful theatrical experiences for performers and audiences of all ages. With roots as a children’s theatre, they give more than 1,000 youngsters the opportunity to perform in productions and theatre camps each year. Additionally, nearly 20,000 students a year from the region attend a GREAT school matinee or are impacted by their artist-in-residence programs. GREAT is the second largest children’s theatre program in Minnesota, rivaled only by the Children’s Theatre Company in Minneapolis.

As GREAT Theatre evolved through the years, and came to introduce grown-up theatre as well, their logo and identity began to lack the sophistication the organization had achieved. So Adventure Advertising volunteered to help them refresh their brand with logo updates and a complete brand standards guide.

With the refresh, we maintained the recognizable star icon in GREAT Children’s Theatre’s new look. Adventure also introduced a second logo specific to GREAT Theatre Company for performances geared toward teens and grown ups. Both unified logos were unveiled when GREAT Theatre announced their 2012-2013 season – and the response has been phenomenal. The look will be fully rolled out on their website and in all of their other materials once the current season wraps.

As proud supporters of art and culture in central Minnesota and beyond, Adventure was honored to donate our talents to GREAT Theatre’s noble cause.

Any job for Cascade Mountain Tech is an interesting journey. It begins with the client briefing us on a new product prototype they are selling into retail. In the case of this project, the product was Carbon Fiber Trekking Poles for Costco stores.

Adventure Advertising got the specs on the prototype, then created 3-D renderings of the poles with custom graphics for the carbon-fiber shafts. We then designed packaging for individual pole sets as well as a “master pack” retail case (with careful considerations made for both selling sizzle and structural integrity).

At this stage, all the work was created visually as 3-D renderings which Cascade Mountain Tech took into their sales pitch at Costco. The presentation was a rousing success! Which brought Adventure into the final phase of the project. This involved creation of die-lines, final package file preparation and production management (working closely with the client’s printing vendor overseas).

Completed packaged product was then shipped to Costco locations and the Trekking Poles are selling extremely well. So well in fact that Costco has requested additional products through Cascade Mountain Tech.

It’s incredibly rewarding to be so closely involved in a successful sell-in for our client. We’re looking forward to tackling similar Cascade Mountain Tech projects that are on the horizon.

Adventure™ Advertising would like to welcome Kayla Nesvold to our expanding staff as Assistant Account Executive. Nesvold will oversee a wide array of account-service tasks for the agency’s growing client roster. She will operate primarily from the St. Cloud office.

Prior to joining Adventure™, Nesvold worked in global product development and marketing at Creative Memories, the leading direct sales brand in the scrapbooking industry. She brings a wealth of retail, direct sales, promotional and media relations experience to the Adventure team. Kayla Nesvold is a 2010 graduate of St. Cloud State University where she majored in mass communications/public relations and competed on SCSU’s women’s golf team.

At the 8th District ADDY® Awards Show last week, Adventure Advertising & Adventure Studios took home three ADDYs (one Gold and two Silvers).

The Gold ADDY went to Adventure Studios for “Red Bull Skate Athletes,” a photo series of professional skateboarders on Red Bull’s team. Adventure Studios also earned a Silver award for “Red Bull Skate Action” photography. Another Silver ADDY went to Adventure Advertising for a “Fall/Winter Photo Solutions” catalog done for Creative Memories.

Winning in the 8th District means going up against the best work produced in 2011 from top agencies in Minnesota, North & South Dakota and Wisconsin. It’s a very competitive market, so we’re thrilled about capturing three pieces of hardware.

Winning ADDYs at the District level is the second step in competing for National ADDYs against more than 1,500 national finalists. An illustrious judging panel will choose winners from across the country on May 4-5. The National ADDY Awards Show will be held in Austin, TX on June 5, 2012 in conjunction with the AAF National Conference.

According to producers of Relogo, their new book aims to tell stories behind brands, offering designers a valuable resource on how to create something new from something old. Adventure’s revitalized logo for Creative Memories was one of the case studies featured in the book.

Relogo highlighted the new Creative Memories logo with the description, “fun and friendly, with an icon that is a stylized version of a camera’s aperture where the scrapbooking process begins.” This is exactly what we hoped to achieve when we tackled the project.

Adventure currently has three Minnesota offices in Brainerd, St. Cloud and Minneapolis. In the table of contents, Relogo has our location wrongly listed as Singapore. Funny. But who knows? Maybe that will be our next expansion.

At the 2012 ATA archery trade show, industry leader Rage Outdoors had a lot to talk about. For starters, they unveiled three new broadhead designs and an innovative arrow quiver – all destined to take the archery world by storm.

To support the product launch, Rage turned to Adventure Advertising to produce a wide range of display and collateral pieces. This included the tradeshow booth design, eye-catching point of sale displays, new packaging for their X-TREME model broadhead and a bold 2012 product catalog. Given the high traffic and incremental business generated at ATA, everything seemed to hit its mark with impact.

For the fifth straight year, Adventure earned top honors at the central Minnesota ADDY competition. In addition to winning Best of Show, Adventure also claimed two Judge’s Choice Awards, Best Copywriting (Greg Skoog, copywriter), ten Gold ADDYs and four Silver ADDYs for work produced during 2011.

Best-of-Show Award – Red Bull skate athlete photography
Judge’s Choice Award – Bayliner Boats photo book
Judge’s Choice Award – Park Tool ad campaign
Best Copywriting Award – Creative Memories catalog; copy by Greg Skoog of Creative Memories
Gold ADDY Awards – Creative Memories catalog, FIT packaging, Bayliner photobook, Park Tool campaign, Initiative Quarterly photography, Crestliner Boats photography, Bayliner photography, Nautic Global Group photography, Red Bull action photography, Red Bull skate athlete photography
Silver ADDY Awards – Rage Broadhead ad, 2011 AAFCM ADDY Award materials, Creative Memories design, Polaris RZR photography

All of the award-winning photography was by John Linn and the Adventure Studios team. Winning Best of Show and the other awards confirms that we’re doing a great job for our wonderful clients, and that’s the best thing of all.

When: Friday, February 10th, 4 pm  to 1 am
Where: 4850 35th Street West, Minneapolis
Visit adventureadvertising.com for directions.

If you can picture it, we can make it reality. Case in point: with Adventure Studios on the road and a brewing editor’s photo deadline looming, one of our designers virtually took matters into his own hands.

He created these Brainerd Lakes Beer images digitally without any existing photography assets. You’d swear a camera took these shots. We met the deadline and secured some good press on OhBeautifulBeer.com.

We can do the same kind of digital renderings for your new product designs, packaging, graphics or anything you can think of. No sweat – unless of course you want sweat.