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. 

For the last few years, Echo-Factory has been doing the photography for Troy Lee Designs’ annual product catalog.  Normally, we leave it to either professional models or the professional Troy Lee sponsored athletes to model the gear.  Lucky for Carl, one afternoon this year one of those models was a no show. 

Carl jumped into action - and more importantly into some Troy Lee gear - and made his sexiest pouty model-face. 

Just last week the new catalog showed up on our doorstep. Lo and behold our very own Carl, looking every bit the badass motocross rider, is prominently featured on page 53.

Carl took the news in stride - immediately scheduling a catalog signing and press conference at our Rancho Cucamonga agency offices.  Sadly, for an Advertising Agency, we seemed to do a rather bad job of getting the word out about the momentous event.

Nevertheless, Carl would like his throngs of adoring fans to know that he’s available for both speaking engagements and birthday parties.  His 7 city catalog tour is scheduled for the fall. 

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. 

We made it into the newspaper!  The Business Press — the business unit of the Press Enterprise — was kind enough to profile our agency.  They talked about our growth, the fact that we’re an agency run by creatives and discussed our focus on new media and the web. 

In fact, they were so nice that Mike’s completely forgiven them for misspelling his name twice, two different ways, in the article’s first two paragraphs.  Of course — to be fair — they published the article back in February and we’re just now giving it a mention on our blog.  We all make mistakes. 

Our personal shortcomings aside, you can check out the entire article on the newly rebranded BizPress (nice logo by the way) site.