Campfire Concepts was established to serve those who serve. Our sole mission is to help you, the local parks-and-recreation providers of Illinois, meet the needs of your residents; both now and into the future. In keeping with this mission, we offer a variety of marketing and consultation services that will help your agency identify opportunities for improvement and strengthen its engagement with the people it serves.
Marketing and Design
A big piece of any community-engagement effort is the marketing mix. What that mix looks like may vary from agency to agency but how it’s built is always the same. You start by establishing clear marketing and visual standards that function as the guard rails for whatever type of communication you use. Our marketing and design services help you do exactly that.
Visual Brand Audit
This is an extensive, in-depth analysis of every visual-brand element your agency uses. No stone is left unturned. We’ll look at logos, color choices, typography, and more. We’ll also examine how well these visual elements complement the brand voice you use in your taglines, web content, and promotional copy. We’ll then make recommendations on how you can improve the clarity and consistency of these various brand elements, as well as help you identify the unique value proposition your agency brings to the community. At the end of the audit, we’ll provide you with a creative-brief template you can use to help maintain brand consistency going forward.
Brand Style Guide
Once we’ve conducted a brand audit, and made any design-updates to your brand identity, we’ll deliver a brand style guide that includes detailed instructions on the proper use of elements such as:
- logos
- color palettes
- typography
- photography
- illustrations
- copy style-guides
Logo Creation
Having a logo that is consistent, distinctive, and scalable is an essential part of any agency’s brand identity. Campfire Concepts can create a new logo for you, or update the one you already have. Whichever option you choose, we strongly recommend you complete a Visual Brand Audit, first. It’s the best way to ensure whatever logo we create is consistent with the rest of your brand’s visual elements.
On-Demand Graphic Design
Our on-demand, graphic-design service is a flexible, hourly-rate option that you can engage whenever you need a pinch-hitter on your marketing team (see also our Day of Design option). Whether it’s event promotion, a new program launch, or simply a presentation to prospective partners, letting us help with the graphic design can save you time and money.
Day of Design
For a flat fee, Campfire Concepts will provide your agency with one day of focused, graphic design service.* It’s a great way to knock out little jobs like creating social-media graphics or touching up the photos in your image library. You could also use a Day of Design to jumpstart bigger creative projects. The availability of these sessions is limited, so email us right away if you’re interested.
*Travel expenses for in-person DoD sessions will be added to the flat fee.
Publication Design
There are many, many ways Campfire Concepts can help you keep your agency’s publications looking sharp and up-to-date. Everything from full-service design work to the creation of templates your in-house people can update as needed. Maybe all you need is a little art direction. Whatever the publication-design need, let’s talk about it.
Website Art Direction
In addition to helping you develop a brand style guide, Campfire Concepts can assist you in applying that style guide to your online presence. Working with your agency’s web team or one of our development partners, we will provide the necessary art direction to realign the look and feel of your website with existing standards and guidelines.
Marketing & Communication Plans
Using workshop outcomes and field research, Campfire Concepts can craft a comprehensive, marketing-and-communications plan that will not only help your agency better connect with the community but with partners and internal clients as well. Included with the plan will be a range of PR strategies and tactics that are tailored to overcome the specific challenges your agency faces.
Strategic Planning
Parks-and-rec programs have a lasting impact on the physical, social, and mental well-being of the communities they serve. Having a strategic plan for developing these programs and services is essential. Think of it as the North Star that keeps everyone in your agency headed in the same direction. We can walk you through the process of creating a comprehensive plan that details your agency’s strategic goals as well as the actions people need to take, and the measurable outcomes they must achieve, in order to make those goals a reality.
Did you know?
Strategic planning is essential to achieving and maintaining accreditation standards set forth by organizations such as CAPRA.
Gathering Public Input
The best way to improve any relationship is to listen. Strengthening your agency’s engagement with the community is no different. At Campfire Concepts, we use a variety of methods to gather qualitative information from as many residents, participants, and stakeholders as possible. We then identify any salient themes that emerge.
We start by working with your staff to determine which methods of gathering input are most appropriate for each constituency. Some of the approaches we use include, but are not limited to:
- Personalized interviews with board members, agency staff, and other key stakeholders
- Focus-group sessions that let you observe how a diverse audience responds to test-ideas or new proposals
- Customized, community surveys that gauge everything from overall satisfaction levels to how well your agency is communicating its mission, vision, and values
“The way your team showed excitement and care to help us reach our true potential was impactful to my staff, thank you for picking such quality people. We are truly excited to continue to work with you all.”
– Rachel Lenz, Executive Director, Macomb Park District: Strategic Plan: Parks Report Card Day