Just yesterday, Heather Sinclair, who was my first hire at Richard Newman Associates when I served as their art director, stopped by and handed me these pieces that she had in her file. Wow, talk about taking a walk back memory lane!
The year… 1985… these pieces were part of a three-part marketing campaign for the Springfield Convention & Visitors Bureau (SCVB) of Illinois. They were sent to meeting planners within several bordering states and were designed to draw attention to the many meeting and convention venues that Springfield had to offer. The promotion was built around a golf theme. For the first mailing, we sent a card with imprinted golf tees attached to it. A couple of weeks later, we mailed an imprinted golf towel with the “Meet Springfield” logo on it. Finally, we mailed them three imprinted golf balls (shown below).
We wanted the mailings to get noticed so we found a supplier that made clear plastic tubes with rubber caps. We had the tubes cut to the size we wanted and ordered hundreds of green caps and golf balls. The tube was labeled with the recipient’s name and mailed. The other piece shown in the main image is the Meeting Planner Guide. Meeting planners would receive this upon request for more information and it was chock full of technical specifications, a listing of area attractions, and other information planners would want to know for setting up a meeting.
Was the promotion successful? You bet! The SCVB had meeting planners calling and (jokingly) asking when the golf clubs were arriving. And, many of these planners seriously looked at the city for holding their next meeting or convention.
As I shared this with my ‘young’ staff, many of whom were not even born when this campaign was created, I remarked that everything was hand done. From the illustration of the rolling golf balls to the hand-drawn logo type for ‘Meet Springfield’. Indeed, it took a whole lot more time to get a finished product back in those days then it does in today’s digital world.
Still, I look at these samples today and I still carry a sense of pride and accomplishment for the work we did for the Springfield Convention & Visitors Bureau. It’s nice to look back from time-to-time… it helps me put today’s happenings in perspective.