For the second year in a row, General Mills and its Big G brands were selected as “Best in Class” for Kroger’s Daytona event.  Kroger is the official grocer of the Daytona 500®.  As a valued partner to General Mills, Curb Crowser designed a collectable series of images, across 4 brands, to create a panoramic view of the Daytona with the #33 Cheerios Racing team and Clint Bowyer.  The panoramic image was a huge success at Kroger that it lead to multiple billboards of the design around the greater Cincinnati area.

GMI was also honored as Kroger’s “Best in Class” CPG partner

After 17 years of seeing business continuously evolve, we decided to create a new look in order to move with it.

Our new mark is a visual representation of our vision and service to you. It’s contemporary, without being pretentious. It represents a culture focused on listening, collaborating and dialogue, rather than just talking. In short, we’re The Visual Voice of Powerful Brands.

The phone itself has been changed to include a front-facing camera, high resolution screen, and a gyroscope. With each iteration, the phone is becoming more and more aware of the world around it. Alongside the release of the phone was the new iPhone SDK— the newest version of the package of coding tools that developers use to create iPhone and iPad applications. It will be interesting to see what new things we can do with these new sensors and the drastic improvement in Developer Tools.

Perhaps the most interesting announcement was the iAd Platform. iAd is Apple’s new mobile advertising standard that allows existing Apps from the App Store to include banner-like advertisements. As it stands now, in-App advertising has not been successful. When triggering an advertisement, the user is intrusively pulled from the App they’re using; and the lack of a standard “look” also makes it difficult for users to identify and know how to interact with ads.

The iAd Platform aims to solve this by standardizing the appearance of mobile advertisements and allowing rich, interactive content – all the while staying in the user’s application. Once these advertisements are triggered, they are very app-like in their appearance and behavior. Companies are already scrambling to take advantage of the platform, with big names like Unilever, Best Buy, Nissan, Sears, Direct TV, GE and Target already committing more than $60 million.

Curb-Crowser will be in San Francisco the remainder of the week collaborating and learning how to use these new features to help implement your next application idea.

Graphic designers have long been taught that form, structure, and style are indispensable, but the demands placed on today’s visual communication designer are very different from those asked of yesterday’s commercial artist. As the design profession evolves, an increasingly competitive global marketplace expects measurable results for its creative dollars. Clients want assurance that designers understand their business issues, and that commissioned work will deliver a return on their investment.

Incorporating research methods and insights into the design process can aid in meeting this demand for a variety of reasons. Simply put, this approach redefines the designer and client’s relationship — and multiplies the creative and financial dividends for both.

Another key takeaway is how to measure creative ideas through the lens of in-store. One of the parameters discussed was good in-store ideas must transform benefits. A brand promise may be crafted using functional language; it is necessary to take this one step further and transform the language to something inspiring – mind/heart opening for the shopper. Differentiation from competitors is another key measure. With the continual rise of private label, differentiation has taken on a whole new level of importance. While an idea may seem promising when evaluated across several parameters, it will not be successful unless it connects to the brand equity.

Throughout the presentation, Ann Mooney stressed how we have to start thinking about in-store earlier in the process in order to most effectively exercise our power to convert shoppers to purchase. It seems obvious – purchase decisions are ultimately made IN-STORE – but this is a concept that can easily be taken for granted.

Gravhex is a color matching game that lets you control the growing number of Hexes and master the screen play. Users can slide or move the falling Hexes to eliminate combinations before they build up and max out the board. The more the user plays the more challenging and addictive the game becomes.

Mobile apps are becoming more and more popular each day, with a reported 50 million iPhone and iTouch users. Curb-Crowser wanted to get in on the ground floor and develop apps that are truly interactive and would appeal to a broad audience.

Curb-Crowser believes that every strong brand needs a relevant app included in their 360° branding strategy. Curb-Crowser can partner with you to determine what app would work the best for your brand.

itms://itunes.apple.com/us/app/gravhex/id343402518?mt=8

This holiday season, Curb-Crowser will be giving the gift of hope.  On behalf of you, we have donated a cow, a water buffalo, a goat, a flock of chickens and a pig to Heifer.org.

Heifer International helps to bring dignity and independence to those in need by providing livestock and training to impoverished families.