I completed this brand back in 2008 when I was living in Miami Beach. I recently went through an old external HD and decided to put some of it online. One of the most-fun clients,I’ve ever had, Palace was one of the oldest bar/restaurants on Ocean Drive whose all-out performances stopped passers by by the hundreds. Here are some of the pieces that went into recreating this iconic Miami Beach brand.
Created branding package for the entire citywide signage. Skills used: branding, graphic design, production, direction.
Designed this cover for Art Basel and Street Weekly, which was a newspaper/magazine in Miami distributed for free every Thursday with a circulation of more than 80,000.
I had the unique opportunity to work for Oscar de la Renta for a week leading up to Mercedes Benz Fashion Week. In addition to the privilege of working directly with Oscar and his team, I had the opportunity to meet Anna Wintour and André Leon Talley from Vogue and Alex White from W. The long days and nights were worth it, and the final product was amazing. I was back stage during the show, so the below video was taken by an audience member. Check it out.
I had a Facebook page when it was only for college students. Today, looking back, it’s hard to believe that making an event for a party for friends has morphed into making an event for 150,000 people. Here are some of the social media project’s I’ve worked on.
1. Sleepless Night: This bi-annual event was produced by a collaboration of dozens of people and businesses. From sponsorships to product placement and even government grants, the event was a major undertaking, costing over a million dollars and requiring a year of prep work to fly-in hundreds of international cultural sensations. As head of the marketing team, I decided the best way to reach an international market on a limited budget (and to target specifically millennials) was focusing on web. Clearly the web site needed to be detailed. !00+ events in 12 nighttime hours would contain lots of contact. To see the site live, click here. To see the post-event site, click here. And for those without a printed guide book for the night, we created the mobile site (Blackberry, iPhone and Simbian-friendly). Click here to check it out from your web-enabled device. On the day of the event, we had 120,000 unique visitors to the site.
In addition to the web site, we purchased banners on websites for the LA Times, NY Times, Village Voice, Miami Herald, Chicago Tribune, OK! Magazine, People Magazine, and various international news agencies travel sections. We also spent special e-press releases to travel and cultural bloggers throughout the US and Europe, and held a contest to give away free airfare, lodging and a VIP pass to the event, which was promoted via e-blasts.
MBInsomniac was created on Twitter, and gave hints and tips to followers leading up to the event. MBInsomniac also sent twitpics and tweets all night. The social media push ended at 4AM when a flash mob (lots of strategy goes into a flash mob) erupted at a waterfront concert with a 20,000-member audience.
Another social media push was the pajama run. It began at 6PM and was a few-thousand runners in their boxers jogging down Ocean Drive. This was the start of the 12-hour event. It was a wild success thanks to Chipotle, who we teamed up with to send e-blasts and give product samples throughout the event. Red Bull’s “Art of Can” installation was also a social media partnership -- they updated their social medias in conjunction with out strategy, and over 10,000 people showed up to watch art students recreate the Heisman trophy using recycled Red Bull cans -- which onlookers drank before handing them to an art student to cut, pin, bend and melt.
2. City of Miami Beach: What makes government communication so dull? The people running it. When I was hired to rebrand and increase the brand equity worldwide, I used all means necessary to accomplish the job and save money. How many cities advertise commission meetings on Facebook? Just one. Road construction on Collins Avenue tomorrow? Follow us on Twitter and get live updates. I pioneered the social media at the City, and they now have more than 6,100 followers and 10,000 fans. For a city with only 78,000 residents, eight percent of them get their government-related information from Twitter. To put it into perspective -- if the same thing was successfully recreated in New York, it would be 640,000 people getting information from Twitter.
Additionally, I directed any one with a communications role to stop sending post cards, and start sending e-blasts. With more than 25 people sending communications, we created mailing lists based on target group. The e-mail database now has more than 100,000 unique e-mail addresses.
3. Poltrona Frau: This is a work in progress. Working freelance, I was contracted through Forbes PR to create a landing page and, in their words, “Get these people into social media.” I researched and presented to the client, who flew in from Italy. The moment the presentation was finished, we shook hands and I was hired. I created their Twitter and Facebook and am currently working on gathering their team of professional designers throughout the world. Each of them will, at some point, create a blog post detailing how they created the piece. From concept to production, the blog post will give a story to each handcrafted piece. No piece of Ikea furniture has a signature of all the hands that crafted it in Italy, then detailed their story online.
Another pillar of the project is gathering all online press and re-tweeting, posting, etc. Kanye West’s latest video, for example, featured a chair from a Poltrona Frau brand. The moment the video was available on YouTube, it was tweeted and posted.
4. American Express Latin America: This one is pretty straight forward. I was contracted to create invitations and e-blasts for the Centurion division -- the most exclusive American Express brand. Considering the strict brand that American Express uses, it was more production and following style than anything else. There were a few events -- the most exclusive was a partnership with Maybach for a brunch test-ride (chauffeurs were provided because the cars are meant to be ridden, not driven by the consumer).
5. Various Clients: From Art Basel to Spanish theater group Sarruga, I have been designing and directing e-blasts for a very long time and for a wide range of brands.
Social media is more than a YouTube video or facebook page. It’s “social” because you share it. It’s a video that you show someone, who will show someone else, etc. It’s so different or so new or so intense that the viewer is not only engaged to it and liking it – they like it so much they want others to like it, too. There have been things consumers have wanted to share previously – a good meal, their opinion of how nice it is to drive a Bentley – but they haven’t been able to instantly share that opinion. With the invention of sites like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, consumers can now share something with one or two clicks. So what are the social media platforms available, and why do they matter to a brand?
1. Twitter – Twitter is primarily viewed through smart phones and quick internet browsing. No one will sit and read twitter messages in the morning, for example. It’s more a quick snippet of info. This targets people on the go and people on their cell phone.
2. Facebook – Facebook is a little more in depth. The average user spends 15-30 minutes per day on FaceBook and will actually read entire posts and click to links to get more information. These messages are a bit longer and can be spread very quickly to user’s friends.
3. Blogs – Blogs are read by other bloggers, news organizations, magazine, press, etc. The average person will hear about one blog from another blog. Many small articles in New Times, for example, are bits from a blog. These are really good at informing people, and therefore are much more in depth. Blogs are written from first-person perspective, so the information is informal yet informational.
4. E-blast – E-blasts are a call to action. “Do something,” is basically what they say. Tell people to “Like us on FaceBook” or “Click here to RSVP for an event.” Some of the e-blasts I’ve included in there are like “Come to our website to see the cool blog” or “Come to our store to buy our furniture.” They are the least-read yet have the best ability to turn a looker into a customer, or a customer into a repeat customer.
5. YouTube, Scribd, etc. – These are social content sites. They provide videos, articles, books, press releases, family photo slideshows, etc. They operate as both one-time user sites and sharing sites. One-time viewing is, for example, a mom filming her son’s baseball game, uploading it and sending a link to family members across the country. It will never be a sensation. On the other hand, if he gets smacked in the face, the video will likely be spread fast. “Look at this kid get smacked,” will likely be the subject line of many e-mails, and the video can take off and become viral.
Social media is important to brands because it’s an impression. There are many ways this can be done, and the flexibility of this format (plus it’s really, really cheap) make it a popular new medium for advertising and marketing.
While art director of Street Weekly, I directed the photography, styling, typography and layout of this fashion supplement for our annual fashion designer spotlight.
From massive pull-out sections in the Herald to 24+ page annual reports for Miami Beach with charts and graphs and data, I have become an expert on taking dull information in Excel and turning it into visually rich, interesting art.
Maybach Night was an event held during Art Basel 2010. For the event, I created the invitation and e-vite to the highly-successful and publicized event.
Luxury Italian furniture maker Cappellini contracted me to create an e-vite for their event launching four exclusive chairs in conjunction with Walt Disney and the launch of TRON.
Miami Beach is the beat of the world. For this campaign, the Film, Music and Print recruiters needed a campaign to support their message in bringing in millions of dolalrs of additional revenue. Events like Art Basel and Winter Music Conference, and fils like Bad Boys II all taking place in the city are the work of these guys, so their work is really important.
The Nicky Hilton Hotel “Nicky O” is a boutique property located on Ocean Drive in Miami Beach, FL. A collaboration with international furniture and clothing designers, the hotel is a masterpiece property. I created the brand and identity, collateral materials, printed materials and coordinated many meetings with top designers such as Cavalli and Hilfiger.
An upscale restaurant in an upscale community, the branding and advertising for this project needed to be simple, clean and not over-the-top.
Back in the day, I art directed a team of designers and photographers at Street Weekly. Here are two of the covers from oh, so long ago.
More Sleepless Night materials. For the event, I created the logo, branding, marketing plan, social media sites, web site, ads, etc. and managed a team of designers, PR people and videographers.
Billboards for the USNG.
With sponsors like Macy’s, Fontainebleau, Miami Beach and the symphony, the Miami Beach July 4 is the largest and best in Florida. I created taxi tops, billboards, flyers, e-blasts and ads for publications.
CANDO, The Cultural Arts Neighborhood District Overlay, had me create pole banners to distinguish the neighborhood, then presentation boards and marketing materials. Arts in the Parks was a program that I branded with the park bench and typography. I created outdoor signs, billboards, backdrops and many other things related to the program.
The Cultural Arts Council divides millions of dollars to up-and-coming artists, performers, dancers, etc. They also provide marketing to events of those sponsored artists. I worked two campaigns for them, one with the Art is Everywhere campaign, and the other with Arts. Here. Now., which is still being used on busses, billboards and ad placements.
Created invitations to high-profile events, ads for program book, and as-needed collateral materials for the largest art fair in the US with more than $1 billion in art sales in one weekend.
M Group Realty was a brand new real estate company, founded by Mercedes Saewitz, one of the highest-grossing realtors in the country. I created their brand from scratch, and it included details as intricate as the color ink used at closings. I also art directed the web design, which can be seen here.
In its 10th year, the MGLFF needed to be cutting edge and integrate more web than ever before. I implemented a ticket purchasing system to the web site, designed and programmed the site (PHP) and created e-vites for the entire program, including daily updates with links to purchase tickets to the next days’ showings.
Luxe World with Anolan is a program aired on E! Latin America and Russia, with viewership reach worldwide in the hundreds of millions of viewers. I created the on-air logo and press materials including media kits and one-pagers.
Kahuna Hana Lounge is a Polynesian-themed restaurant located on the East Coast. Created logo, brand, ads and collateral pieces.
These various items are a small example of the many thousands of pieces and campaigns I created in my five years as director or visuals communication for the City of Miami Beach. Every genre and every audience was at some point a target group for a message.
Hurricane Grill & Wings ended up becoming a great client with tons of fun projects to work on. Contracted through Mosaic Group, I created calendars, table tents, customer appreciation e-blasts, frequent customer cards, and everything else restaurant/sports bar-related you can think of.
Hurricane Grill and Wings has over 140 locations throughout the US. Catering is one of their biggest income producers, so their catering menu is a vital piece of marketing.
The Bass Museum of Art, located in the heart of Collins Park, occupies a unique category of Museum. Funded both privately and publicly, and with a large collection of works in rotation, budgets for the Bass are usually scaled back to save for other aspects. This challenge lead to many interesting new ways to advertise, including using public poles to place banners, and using interior space to market current and upcoming exhibits. Web also was a large component, and recreating e-blasts with a greater impact was priority number one. Advertising ranged from Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s Central Park exhibit to an egyptian gallery with an actual mummy which is the only one on permanent collection at a museum.
Palace is Miami’s oldest performer-inspired restaurant/bar. No tourist walking on Ocean Drive can pass their hilarious, always-filmed performances. I created their new logo, web site, apparel, menus, posters, ads, etc.
Contracted by a partnership of American Express Centurion and Maybach to create an invitation to a brunch test drive. Held at a multi-million dollar estate, potential customers of both products were driven around in the $500,000 cars and given a chef-prepared brunch to give the essence of what the American Express “Black Card” is all about.
PGA Village is located in Port St. Lucie and caters to a high-end golf clientele. I created e-blasts promoting the play and stay package.
Marty Markowitz
Brooklyn’s Beep for 12 Years
by Matthew Tumbleson
New York is a loud city. There’s a constant roar of police sirens. Cabs have created a language similar to morse code with their obnoxiously loud horns. Throngs of people talk so loudly and with such emphasis, it seems like every sentence ends with an exclamation. But over the noise, there is one clearly distinguishable voice. Hailing from the streets of Brooklyn, a quiet conversation with Marty Markowitz can be heard, word for word, from as far as the East Village.
Brooklyn’s Beep, as a borough president is colloquially referred to, has been a loud voice in a loud city since he was a youngster, growing up in the neighborhood where he’s left his indelible mark. In this city, to get anything done, you’ve got to be loud. Marty, with his many accomplishments, clearly realized this long ago.
Film Florida is an organization that promotes filming in Florida. They lobby blockbusters and television shows to come to the sunshine state, and get incentives for said productions. For them I worked on a rebrand and these pieces are part of the transition in the new direction.
Art directed photo shoot and color corrected (about 8 hours) the cover.
This cover I art directed the photo shoots as well as color corrected and photoshopped blatant imperfections from the final product.
For this cover, I had massive retouching and color correcting.
I was the photographer, photo retoucher and graphic designer for this cover.
Wire covers were previously blocky and boring. I removed a header bar at the top for a cleaner look. On this cover, I photoshopped and color corrected as well as designed the typography.
Mova Lounge is an upscale martini bar in South Beach and Washington, D.C. Weekly, weekly ads were created to follow their brand standards of bold, edgy creative. Business cards, web design, e-blasts, and a range of projects were produced on a consistent basis for MOVA.
Work for Poltrona Frau Miami included setting up social media outlets Twitter and Facebook, as well as designing a streamlined web portal and designing various print material for events with Maybach and Walt Disney.
Zilbert Realty, one of Miami’s premier realty groups, has been my longest-running client. Since 2005, Zilbert Realty and I have worked on over 100 ads, business cards, mailers and special projects. A small slice of the work is above.
When MJL Select approached me, they were using a designer who pushed them to go towards a total CMS for their site. I asked them, “How often do you make edits to your site?” and they replied, “Once a year max.” With that knowledge, I knew the idea of being stuffed into a CMS template wasn’t worth it for them. I rebranded them and presented some ideas. The final is above, also viewable by clicking here.
Night Owl is a fun shuttle to/from Miami and Lauderdale that some of my friends started. While I was in Brazil, I had some extra time so I did some work for them, including e-blasts, business cards and a wordpress web site they could update. Click here for the site.
Insectos is a performance coming to Miami Beach by the Spanish creative group Sarruga. Sarruga brings with them larger-than-life insects made out of everyday materials and transported around the Convention Center with modified bicycle-style machines. This was one of those fun, creative pieces I enjoyed making. For the project, I did ads in The Miami Herald, e-blasts to tens of thousands of people and 10,000 flyers. Click here to see the e-blast live on the Internet.
This is an ad I designed more or less spur-of-the-moment for the Brazilian Film Festival book representing the Miami Beach Cultural Arts Council. I tried to make an ad that would pop, and uses a pattern that utilized some of the definitive cultural objects of Miami Beach – dance, music, theater and architecture.
The Beach Villa was one of my first branding projects. This million dollar estate was a luxury rental space for wealthy visitors to Miami Beach. The piece I made was a 4 x 6 with a nut and washer in the upper left hand corner to keep it together and make browsing easy. A clear plastic piece has the logo printed on it and covered the house description. 15 individual cards then came after, all with photos I took and staged myself.
This project is a blast from the past (2005) back when I was working at the Miami Herald and freelancing just a little. It’s a simple media kit. The magazine’s still around and expanded all over the place (although it’s been bought by delivery.com).
This simple piece was used during Art Basel, a $1,000,000,000USD art fair held yearly in December.
Issue 20 • May 20, 2010
This issue featured famous the famous dance troupe Alvin Ailey as well as a photo album from Aqua Girl – the largest women’s event in the world.
The Sleepless Night web site was integral in the 2009 event. With over 25,000 visitors daily near the time of the event, it was a way for “insomniacs” to get information, choose their events, and make plans. The listings, map, twitter feed, press and sponsorship information was updated on an almost daily basis. Twitter, FaceBook, e-blasts and all other social media were linked to this site. More then 500 other web sites linked directly back here, making it the most visited site in Miami Beach history. To visit the live site, go here.
Parking in Miami Beach is worse than having teeth pulled. Or so residents thought. In actuality, there’s plenty of spots if you know where to look. To help alleviate this issue, I designed ads highlighting the features of the parking system. I also made mailers to the new iPark device, which makes paying the meter a thing of the past. The project also included minor web work as well as the complete rebranding of all parking garages in the city to distinguish our garages from the private ones. This monumental task included better façade signage, directional signage and branding recognition. Every garage is now lime green on the first floor so when drivers pass by, they they can park in a garage that’s safe, video-monitored, inexpensive and staffed by helpful ambassadors.
This issue was about the aging Miami Beach Convention Center as well as code compliance in the city. This bilingual publication is mailed for free to every resident in Miami Beach.
This was a text and graph-heavy issue. The main feature was about budgets, and translating that to the general public was a lot of work, but ultimately became a great piece and I learned a lot about how budget decisions are made. This magazine is mailed for free to every resident in Miami Beach.
This was a great issue. I took the photo for the cover and designed the entire thing cover to cover. Skills used include illustration, photoshopping, type layout, typography, color selection and a ton of other things you can see came together pretty well. This magazine is distributed by mail for free to every resident in Miami Beach.
South Floridians love their fireworks. And they love their symphony (well, a select few). But they REALLY, REALLY love their Miami Dolphins cheerleaders. Put them all together on the nation’s day of independence, and it’s what we call Fire on the Fourth. E-blasts, ads in newspapers, magazines, and online all circulated a month before the event. Creative, logo, ads, designs, and all other visuals for Fire on the Fourth were designed by me from scratch. Boom!
SUPPORTING MATERIALS:
BIG headline. Little project. I made a map/brochure for the locations of Romero Britto designed homeless donation meters throughout Miami Beach.
Green is a big movement in South Florida. For 2010 Earth Day, we decided to unify the branding of multiple departments into one cohesive brand. The final identity: Blue Skies, White Sands, Green City.
9th sphere web design
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