OfficeMax BTS 2011
The Best School Year Ever?
Back to School is a huge event in the office supply retail space. Every year at OfficeMax, we tried to outdo ourselves and our competitors. The theme we chose for 2011 was Best School Year Ever, celebrating the idea of returning to school, and OfficeMax was going to cheer you on, so you could start the year out right. And what better way to do that, than with cheerleaders? It was going to be a great campaign, and we went all out!
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—team—
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vp brand strategy •
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Mark Andeer
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senior director •
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Rock Fraire
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creative director •
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Durriya Gunja
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senior designer •
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Marc Ludena
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photographer •
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Brian Kuhlmann
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We held a casting call and auditioned kids of all ages, and chose the three kids who would be our official OfficeMax cheerleaders. We outfitted them in OfficeMax cheer uniforms, brought a trampoline into Brian Kuhlman’s photo studio and had the most fun shoot for a couple days. We coupled those photos with trendy 8-bit graphics and patterns and an oversaturated color palette, and created a style guide and sample graphics for the production teams to build out in-store signage, emails, web graphics, mailings and catalogs.
We were reviewing what we thought were final graphics…
so what happened?
Everyone up and down the ladder had approved this direction. All the stakeholders were on board, and we were just about to release the first assets to press. And then our CEO weighed in.
It would NOT be the best school year ever, after all.
Cheerleaders? Gone. Most of the other design elements? Gone. We kept the font treatment and the color scheme and the background patterns, and quickly pivoted to redesign everything.
It was heartbreaking, but it’s part of the business. The in-store photos show the results of what ended up in stores.
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