So when we were commissioned by CreateHere to create a marketing strategy that would promote their big party celebrating all that Chattanooga is - has become - and will be, we jumped at the challenge, and led with "design" in its broadest sense of strategic thinking: identity, articulation and communication.

The project team was Paul Rustand, Matt Greenwell, Joseph Shipp and Caleb Ludwick; with Joseph serving as design lead and Caleb as marketing strategist. Implementation was handled on the client side, with talent and verve by Elana Gulas and Jessica Martin of CreateHere, who took the many small strategic steps and used them to create a grassroots groundswell.

We chose a name that could be used first to create buzz and soon afterward to heighten the richness of the promotion with meaning. We settled on 35 85 (sorry our blog freaks out when we add the proper degree symbols, somebody at Movable Type work on that), a play on Chattanooga's latitude and longitude (technically 35 -85, clarified in the supporting copy lest someone think that they were being asked to travel to mainland China).

Stage one of the approach used design-heavy digital promotion, to hold down costs and appeal in particular to buzz-hungry young professionals. Maps, gathered from tourist information points around the city, were overprinted with a logo developed by Joseph, then delivered to the CreateHere Fellows and artists who participated in the event, for "word of hand" distribution. An email blast soon followed, without any explanation other than that more information would be coming soon, and a direct to a website with the logo and clock countdown to the event date.

Stage two was one of Chattanooga's first true attempts at guerilla marketing: a stencil and biodegradable chalk, laid down at key traffic areas around the city like Main Street and the Walnut Street bridge. Again, the URL was included but at this point the website revealed that the coming event was going to be a party and included some of the participating artists, sponsors and musicians.

At this point, buzz was in full effect. One of Chattanooga's superfriends - a 30something urbanminded PR professional - asked Caleb if he knew anything about the party, and how to get on the invite list. Eventually telling her that the party would be open to the public, she asked, "Why all the mystery, then?" Caleb replied that we were building interest, to which she said, "Oh, that never works in Chattanooga... although wait, I guess it just did."

Stage three was integrated print and web: a press release, Facebook and MySpace invitations sent to hundreds of local users, business-card size flyers created by Joseph, which Elana and other fellows passed out around town.

The fourth and final stage were oversized banners hung outside of the retail spaces of sponsoring businesses and a second, modified "guerilla" campaign where the stencil was used to paint windows of favorite restaurants and stores around town, in conjunction with a full reveal email blast and peel-up vinyl stickers that were placed in a second round of high traffic areas downtown. Last but not least, paper hand fans were passed out at the downtown concert series Nightfall, three days before the big night.

The party was picked up by the Chattanoogan, popular blogs including Chattarati, Irresponsible Journalism and guerilla communication blog, as well as international design site adrants. By the day of the party, a Google search of the numbers 35 and 85 (without quotes other words) returned the party as search result #5 out of 607 million.

Translating promotion and buzz to participation was a great success: Elana and the CreateHere Fellows, along with lead strategists Josh McManus and Helen Davis Johnson, pulled off the party with great success. More than 1,000 people attended the event, making this particular Monday night anything but ordinary. Check out the post-party iteration of the website for photos: 35-85.us.

Kudos to CreateHere for another great party and thanks for the fun of helping call Chattanooga out to play.

Thanks, Widgets!

You are wonderful, indeed.