We did several marketing programs for Edward Jones Financial.
One of my most enjoyable and rewarding victories was winning
their greeting card program "creative" from the incumbent most consider
to be the top-name in the greeting card business.
A funny/interesting thing about this card's beginning is, we were wrapping a pitch in St. Louis for that year's card design options. Everyone was happy, selections had been made and there were a few minutes at the end while everyone was packing up.
I made the comment, "you know what I think would be cool for a card sometime?", literally meaning next year or "someday". With curiousity quickly raised, I went on to explain a card that had a snowglobe with a small-town, Mayberry kind of feel, and it would be evening depicted where some buildings would have illuminated windows and one of the buildings in the fore would be an Edward Jones Advisor's office.
The response was resounding. That would be awesome! It's too bad we already have next year's picked, that would be cool to do! Do you mean an illustration?... (because we did many of those already for them).
My answer was "no, a real snowglobe."
How would you do it? Is it even possible? Could you look into it for next year? My answers to those were "I don't know" and "definitely".
I thought about it on the whole trip home. Research had to be done, calls to be made, brainstorming and sketches...
Due to space (and your time) I'll summarize, but after calling all snowglobe manufacturers I was to be dismayed. Though some would sell you blank bases, they only had 4-inch, 6-inch and one may have had a 9-inch version. They all said it wasn't possible.
We needed a globe between 20 and 30 inches to house full-size "H-Scale" train model buildings. I'll save some of the really fun and crazy details for when we meet, but we selected each "building" model kit, created adjoining storefronts and meticulously painted each brick by brick. And yes, I did create a way to have illuminated windows in a water filled globe,
and a flowing water system to distribute the floating flakes.
And I'm not even getting into the rest of the "scale" props
and set-building for the shoot! But, I selected two industrious and willing members of our design group, who admittedly had doubts, but were up for the challenge to help me pull-off this caper.
Even crazier, by request, we took on the challenge to use this design idea
in the current year's campaign after all designs had already been approved.
The Snow Globe was the "best seller" by far with Edward Jones'
corporate team and the Financial Advisors alike.
