Earlier this year, we had the opportunity to do some pro-bono work for the Claremont Educational Foundation, designing their 2010 fundraising brochure.

The foundation supports the Claremont Unified School district, providing funding for technology, music & arts programs and general funding to Claremont’s public schools.  We were honored to be able to work with them.

A few days ago we heard from the foundation.  Their efforts have been overwhelmingly successful.  They raised more than $350,000 this year that went directly to Claremont schools.  The funding purchased new technology, restored 16 class sections in grades 7-12 and helped preserve smaller class sizes.  And perhaps most remarkably, in a time or rampant cuts in education, no Claremont School District teachers were laid off this year. 

So, to the board members and sponsors of the Claremont Educational Foundation, congratulations!  Thanks for letting us be a small part of your success. 

We’ve never thought of ourselves as a Madison Avenue style ad agency - but we are apparently getting close to Boardwalk.  A while back, Mike took some photos for a MagLite law enforcement campaign, and just a couple weeks ago one of the photos was used on the gameboard of the soon to be released Monopoly:  Law Enforcement Edition. 

I can’t say we ever expected to see our original photo peering down into the corner of a Monopoly board. 

Should you want to friend Monopoly: Law Enforcement Edition you can do so on its Facebook page, or pre-order your copy today for November delivery. 

We’re happy to announce that Echo-Factory has become the agency of record for Allied Anesthesia, an Orange County group of 42 highly respected anesthesiologists.  We pitched the medical group in July, and were selected through a competitive agency review.  The pitch was against other Southern California advertising agencies and Echo-Factory was chosen to be Allied’s new agency of record.

We’ve already started on several projects for Allied, including an initial rebranding.  You can expect to see some of that here in the future.  In the meantime, if you’d like to learn more, check out our press release on our newest client. 

Echo-Factory is happy to call NALMCO, interNational Association of Lighting Management Companies, our newest client. We got to know NALMCO through our involvement with PEERS and our relationships with [P2] and other lighting industry clients. In June, NALMCO put out a RFP for a PR campaign and some advertising materials.  We put together our pitch, and when the dust settled, we were their new agency. 

Our work started out with a rebranding project.  NALMCO has a reputation for offering the most respected certifications in the lighting industry, so we created a logo that compliments that reputation.

NALMCO launched its new logo in July, and we’re currently in the middle of a three part PR campaign, so keep your eyes peeled for more from our new lighting buddies.

The association’s president, Jim Frank, was nice enough to give Echo a shout out in its monthly magazine, LM&M: 

“One of NALMCO’s initiatives is to increase awareness of our association in the energy market.  [...] For this reason, we are in the early stages of image branding and media campaigns.  We contracted with Echo-Factory of Rancho Cucamonga, California, to consult with NALMCO on matters of image and media.  [...]  Some might ask, ‘What was wrong with the old NALMCO logo?’ Or, ‘Why do we need to hire an outside consultant to handle NALMCO media campaigns?’ The answer is that we need to elevate and maintain a stronger and more visible presence in today’s market.  And today’s market needs NALMCO.”

Thanks Jim, we couldn’t have said it better ourselves. 

We’ve always thought of ourselves as a green agency.  We like the environment, and we try to do things in a sustainable way.  But, beyond making sure our RedBull cans end up in the recycling and trying to convince our clients to use sustainable printing practices - there’s not too much of an environmental impact we can have in our normal in-house operations. 

If we - as an agency - are going to have a significant environmental impact, it’s going to be through our clients.  Lucky for us, we’ve been able to carve a niche for ourselves in advertising for the energy efficiency industry. 

Precision-Paragon [P2]
Precision-Paragon [P2] was one of our first clients.  Headquartered in Yorba Linda, [P2] makes energy efficient lighting for commercial and industrial buildings.  They estimate that their products have saved more than 12-Billion Kilowatt Hours of electricity.  And, using the energy-savings calculator we built in to their website, you can see that savings translates in to the CO2 emissions reduction equivalent of preserving more than 64,000 acres of forest. 

American Lighting
Through our early work with [P2] we were introduced to American Lighting, a San Diego company that performs energy-efficient lighting retrofits.  In 2009 they were awarded for creating more than 27.7 Million Kilowatt Hours of electricity savings in the San Diego area alone. 

The PEERS Alliance
In mid-2009 we worked with NALMCO and [P2] to create the website and branding materials for the PEERS Alliance - a nonprofit industry association that is going after federal funding for energy-saving commercial and industrial retrofits.  The proposed program has the potential to hugely reduce our country’s energy consumption. 

In January we did a bit of lobbying work and set up meetings between PEERS Alliance board-members and some receptive congressmen in DC.

Every Watt Matters
A few months ago we began to work with Every Watt Matters, a company that provides home energy audits and energy efficient retrofits.  Since their launch in March Every Watt Matters has already moved into three California markets (Yucaipa, Claremont and Sonoma) , and they’re poised to go national. 

According to a recent study, retrofitting a single 1960’s era California home with the type of energy saving upgrades that Every Watt Matters performs could save 8.5 Tons of CO2 emissions.  Applying that figure nationally gives some staggering results.

A Sustainable Place
Greenwashing is an all too popular trend.  But our energy efficiency clients are doing real, significant things that directly reduce energy consumption.

No advertising agency wants to be typecast in one industry, and we do have a wide-range of clients in other industries.  But, if Echo-Factory is going to gain a reputation for working in a niche - one that has such a positive impact on the planet isn’t such a bad role to be cast in.