How to Make a Fan Happy.

Design > Promotional Merchandise

I love music. Always have. I’m a big power pop fan, and I like going to shows. It’s kind of hard living in Mooresville because not a lot of bands get near here (it’s getting better, thank God, but still). So when a band I like DOES find its way to Charlotte, I’m there. And the first place I go when I get there is the merch counter because I’m looking for a t-shirt or something to support the band (even the big acts). It’s always so disappointing. It all just sucks so bad. Same with bars I like (except my favorite in SF). Or breweries. Look, a logo on a shirt is fine (if the logo is half decent), but what about something that captures the spirit of the place? You know, a little extra credit for the fans?

FINAL: I made the first round of Downtown Mooresville t-shirts do more than early adopter fans, but to clothe volunteers at events and hand out to Downtown supporters in Town Hall.

Every time I have to work on promo merch I think about that. The first shirts we designed for Downtown Mooresville were ads. They had to be, because we didn’t have fans yet and most of these shirts were going to be worn by volunteers handing out our Downtownie Passports or directing folks to the bathroom at events. Merchants would get them for free to wear around Lake Norman during their off hours. So we made them in Downtown’s bright-ish orange so that they’d be SUPER visible. Even the sushi place, which still kept pushing their rogue name (DoMo) after the branding began (grrrrr) framed our first T-shirt and hung it in a prominent place. (How could we be mad at them?). I wrote a post about taking advantage of every opportunity and, please, if you ever get a project like this, give it the full force of your thinking. Because this little T-shirt will not only represent your brand, but will also project it to LOTS of people who don’t know it. And just know that a person bothering to wear it LOVES your brand! So why not do them a solid?

FINAL: The second round of Downtown Mooresville shirts featured cooler (not a bright orange!) colors and our nifty logo that was, by this time, pretty well known.

The second go around at the Downtown merch was a little different. We finally had fans! Hahaha. So we finally printed on hipper colors and showcased the logo (it looked sharp). They sold! Then we started making pint glasses and wine glasses. All the best Downtown bars and restaurants had ‘em for sale, and the Downtown Commission raised a tent at every event which was fully stocked with glasses, brochures and the T-shirts. It’d be super easy to just pop a logo on a glass, so of course we didn’t do that. We made them fun little ads. At one point, and I think this idea came from one of our merchants, we made bar coasters for Downtown. Of course we stocked up all the Downtown restaurants, but cunningly, someone got them passed out to bars on the Lake Norman side of town - and they used them! THEY WERE ADVERTISING DOWNTOWN IN THEIR COMPETITIVE BARS AND RESTAURANTS. I can’t believe I don’t remember who did that, because THEY are the true marketing geniuses.

DAVE SOPP – Creative

Yep, that’s me. I’ve got over 20 years of marketing strategy, graphic design, advertising art direction, and illustration experience. Want to use some of it? Email me at dave@davesopp.com

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How to Get Personal.

Advertising > Video

Downtown Mooresville is full of remarkable people running remarkable businesses. We’d started, years ago, by convincing people that there actually WAS an historic Downtown in Mooresville. Then we told them about all the special events happening on the steady there. Then we told them about all the shopping, dining, and services that were available Downtown. Then we gave them access to private membership Downtown, and a fun way to engage with those businesses. And then we introduced folks to the people who made those businesses possible. It was personal, it was heartfelt, and it was really special. Despite there being no budget for a real crew or production, I loved this project.

Kelly and I made tiny documentaries that gave you a glimpse of each business owner’s personality, their passion, and their dream. We called the series “Discover Downtown”. And each video was promoted via Downtown’s social media, Downtownie newsletters, and the Downtown website. Each video was accompanied by a full length article on how these makers made their way to Downtown Mooresville. We did 10 of these before we ended it.

I wish we had better sound on a lot of these, but we did the best we could under the circumstances. It really was just a crew of two – me behind the camera and my copywriter wife running the interviews. I also edited. :-P But, hey. I still love these for the people who were kind enough to participate.

DAVE SOPP – Creative

Yep, that’s me. I’ve got over 20 years of marketing strategy, graphic design, advertising art direction, and illustration experience. Want to use some of it? Email me at dave@davesopp.com

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How to Succeed by Being a Pain in the Ass.

Advertising > Print

Downtown Mooresville had an aggressive line-up of events planned to lure foot traffic. There was something for every season. While we set up an events page on the newly branded website and drove eyeball traffic there with online ads and social media, we also had to cover the bases in print. Which, by the way, was way more fun than the online stuff because we got to write cute little seasonal headlines that intro’d that month’s event schedule.

FINAL: What I send the pubs and what the pubs eventually print. It looks deceivingly simple, was actually a colossal pain for everyone, and was totally worth it for the way it tied all the dispirit ads together so they worked under Downtown’s brand.

At the same time, Mooresville’s newspapers (the Mooresville Tribune and the Charlotte Observer) had had sales reps stomping around town collecting Downtown business to place small space ads at a reduced price which would run in a special dedicated full page. You know the menagerie I’m talking about. So not only did they need a quarter page template for events, but also a template that said “All these terrible ads are from businesses in Downtown Mooresville”. Well, not exactly that, but you know what I mean.

I worked on a lot of templatized ads in my early creative career in San Francisco (Parc 55 Hotels, Scandinavian Designs (an early IKEA), KPIX Channel 5, etc.) but none of it was as convoluted as what we did for Downtown.

BEFORE: This is what the pubs were doing for Downtown before. All over the map, right? From Easter to Christmas, every ad was wildly different.

See, here’s how it worked before – The pubs had been doing these full page gangups forever. There’s a full-page ad that measured X by X, and the sales reps would try to fill it with as many small space ads as they could muster up from the small businesses Downtown. Then the pub’s art department would write, design and produce all those small ads to standard sizing that would fill the page. The Downtown Commission (AKA neighborhood, mall or whatever) usually gets a quarter page’s worth of branding space. Unless of course, the reps come up short on sales. Then they add whatever they couldn’t sell to the branding space, free of charge. Usually it doesn’t make that much of a difference because the paper is also designing the branding bit, too. You could just hand over your branding assets (which everyone did), but good luck getting anything consistent from month to month beyond getting your logo somewhere on the page next to a giant headline in a random font yelling “EASTER TIME DOWNTOWN” or “MERRY CHRISTMAS”, along with a shit ton of clip art. I wanted to change that.

FINAL: On the left is what I’d get from a newspaper rep. An phone snap of their hand-drawn schematic. Then I’d lay that all out and fill the spot they left for Downtown with seasonal goodies. This one was pushing gifts Downtown for Mother’s Day.

Only by working REALLY closely with the sales reps, was I able to get what I wanted. It was time-consuming, but also fun, because I knew no one else (like neighboring downtown Statesville or downtown Davidson) would ever think of doing it. I wouldn’t design all the small space ads, but I designed a template to lay behind them. I also designed a solution for the standard size we were given for our branded space, but it hardly ever worked out that way. Sometimes we had a little more space, and sometimes a LOT more space. For the underlying template to be visible and tie everything up in a tidy package, the small space ads had to be a teeny bit smaller than their standard sizes. And that’s what wrecked all kinds of havoc from the production department to their billing system. It was super inconvenient for the bean counters, but they still let me do it.

FINAL: Sometimes we’d get a lot of space, and sometimes very little. So we had to be flexible with whatever we were promoting that month. We also had a lot of fun with the attention-getting headlines.

Each publication would send me a list of the total ad space and individual ad sizes they were able to sell. Whatever was left over, I’d get to use for the branding. Then I’d build a full page template with white boxes representing where their production artists should place the small space ads. Then, I’d go to town filling out the space that was left with what Downtown wanted to promote: a specific event; the complete event schedule for the month; or maybe just an ad about the charms of Downtown Mooresville. It was a pain, but I was totally right. No other competitor to Downtown Mooresville did it. And our stuff most always ran simultaneously during the big shopping months. The bigger, “more sophisticated” city’s ad looked like shit compared to ours. It was not only hilarious, but it really went a long way toward making Downtown look special. Oh, and as a super-double bonus, I eventually managed to get all the local magazines to do the same thing with me. Hahahaha.

DAVE SOPP – Creative

Yep, that’s me. I’ve got over 20 years of marketing strategy, graphic design, advertising art direction, and illustration experience. Want to use some of it? Email me at dave@davesopp.com

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How to Say Everything in a Small Space.

Design > Street Banners

Every piece I do has got to work its ass off, and the street banners for Downtown Mooresville were no exception. With street banners, you don’t have a lot of room. And it’s outdoor, so your copy’s gotta be super brief. Which made this an excellent challenge to support our Downtown message: It’s Happening Downtown. I’ve told you about all the events the Downtown Commission created to pull in traffic, but we also had to prove this wasn’t all about events. Downtown looked empty when I started working on it. There were BIG gaps between open businesses. Lot’s of newspaper covered windows, know what I mean? We really needed to promote the events, but also the business that were already there. And there were quite a few of them (you just couldn’t really tell). And that’s why I did what I did on these banners. I listed all the types of shops and services that were ready and available right this second. It didn’t hurt that Main Street is also Highway 152. So a lot of traffic is coming from somewhere else, going somewhere else. But what a great message for passers by, either on foot or in cars. Downtown actually has a lot to offer.

FINAL: The first round of street banner I did for Downtown Mooresville told a story up and down the street – Downtown is full of business!

COMPS: This is an idea we presented for the second round of banners, when occupancy was WAY up and people knew there was fan to be had in Downtown Mooresville. In fact, we even had a joke campaign that mostly complained how there wasn’t any parking available Downtown.

FINAL: In the end we went with more festive, shorter messaging to reinforce the things you could do (and probably are already doing) while you’re Downtown.

After a while it was time for a refresher. Downtown had blossomed. In fact, things were booming everywhere in Mooresville. And that meant competition. Now, I’ve told you about the situation with Lake Norman. Well all those Mooresville shopping mall / apartment complex combos butting up against all those Best Buys and Applebees were vying to become the lake-side’s version of Downtown Mooresville. And, I kid you not, one giant development, just one exit down the I77, had plans to rename their micro-city from Langtree at the Lake to...wait for it...Downtown Mooresville. Ehem, but fuck them. Needless to say, that didn’t go far. But we did see the need to claim our rightful ownership of being the Heart of Downtown Mooresville. And so we did. :-)

DAVE SOPP – Creative

Yep, that’s me. I’ve got over 20 years of marketing strategy, graphic design, advertising art direction, and illustration experience. Want to use some of it? Email me at dave@davesopp.com

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How to Make Everything Come from One Place.

Design > Posters

Before we started working on the branding, Downtown Mooresville had just scheduled an exhausting number of events to draw traffic. Cruise-ins, Art Walks, Food Trucks, Farmer’s Markets, so many events. At some point the Executive Director of the Downtown Commission and I likened the Downtown Commission to a corporation that runs a mall. All the vendors can be themselves in the mall, with their own advertising and signage and what not. But if they did any advertising, they’d do well to include the Downtown logo. Because that’s where people could find their shop. Look, tell me the actual address of your local mall. Right? Or neighborhood even!? The same thing goes for the events. They were all wildly different, but at least now, they could identify as being held in this “mall”.

Anyhoo, I’ll shut up and throw a bunch of Downtown posters at you now. Enjoy!

DAVE SOPP – Creative

Yep, that’s me. I’ve got over 20 years of marketing strategy, graphic design, advertising art direction, and illustration experience. Want to use some of it? Email me at dave@davesopp.com

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How to Be Reeeeeaaaalllly Selective.

Advertising > Photography

Shooting Downtown Mooresville was tricky. First of all, while there are a lot of beautiful historic buildings, not all of them are. As I explain in other posts, Downtown has enough interesting architecture to be hecka charming, but not enough to be wall-to-wall amazing. Time and development chipped away at the charm. So the first thing I did was to shoot Downtown’s architecture and capture the character in a little “best-of” collage. I actually created this for the first rendition of the website, but it worked out so well, I ended up using it all over the place and mostly as a footnote to things like the email newsletter. 

The really tricky part was making Downtown look populated because it wasn’t yet (as I explain in my breakdown of the brochure work). I’ve alway been in love with the reportage style of run and gun. I blame this all on Doug Menuez, who I worked with on Mizuno in San Francisco. He’s so good. My NC source (every time) for the candid eye is local photographer, Jeremy Deal. During the brochure shoot, he made the most of some impromptu staged situations so it’d look totally natch. I just want to share some of his work here so you can see how we framed Downtown as a place that was busy, proud, historic, successful, and fun.

DAVE SOPP – Creative

Yep, that’s me. I’ve got over 20 years of marketing strategy, graphic design, advertising art direction, and illustration experience. Want to use some of it? Email me at dave@davesopp.com

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How and When to Use Restraint.

Design > Logos

Sometimes the solution to a problem is right in front of your face. Downtown Mooresville is the birthplace of Mooresville, NC. You can honestly say the train delivered it. Incorporated in 1891, the town began with a railroad depot where farmers would load their cotton. Many of the buildings that sprang up soon after are still here in a little 2 x 3 block area that straddles the rails which still see a freight engine once a day. Only now, it loads grain from the mill on North Main Street. One block down from the depot (not the original, due to a fire, but still charming) are the ruins of Mill #1 where cotton was spun. Further south is the massive mill complex that would replace it - Burlington Mill. I’m telling you all this because that’s the kind of charm Downtown has. It’s not fancy, but it’s not dull. It’s historic as gangbusters, but not famous. It seeps potential. Heck, it’s why I moved from SF to live a couple of blocks from it.

FINAL: Here’s where Mooresville started – at the train depot. It was a simple farming town and Downtown Mooresville still reflects it’s historic railroad heritage.

While Downtown had been here for over a century, about 85% of new residents (those living among all the Super Targets, Red Robin’s, and Chipotle’s near the lake) had no idea Downtown existed. Seriously. They just never thought about turning right when they got off the freeway on their way home from Charlotte. On the Downtown side, people knew it was there, but there was an identity vacuum. Downtown was at about 40% business occupancy where we started. The merchants who were slugging it out were desperate to increase traffic as they saw a boom beginning to happen down in Charlotte. NoDa (for North Davidson), Dillworth, Plaza Midwood – these were old neighborhoods that were becoming hipster hot spots. A smattering of coffee shops and breakfast dives moved into the 50’s and 60’s era gas stations and whatnot in these mainly residential neighborhoods – and they were getting buzz. It was where the cool people hung out. Mooresville merchants thought...“Downtown needs cool people. So we need a cool name.”

“The Dirty Mo’” and “DoMo” (see what they did with that one?) were big favorites among them. In fact, the sushi place made shirts and stickers and was running full steam with their “DoMo” idea, whether anyone agreed with it or not. Look, having a cool name is great. I’m a big fan. But when people don’t even know you exist, it can work against you. Take DoMo. What the fuck is that? Run with that and you’ll 100% have to explain it in the tag line. “DoMo. In Downtown Mooresville!” Two wasted opportunities to identify yourself. No, if you have to start from chapter 0, then do the work and call yourself what you are – Downtown Mooresville. Oh, and no one had ever used a capital D when writing the word Downtown in copy before. We told them to start. It’s a destination, so treat it like one. Always. Anyway, even though we’d name Downtown what it already was, we’d do something important with the logo – we’d lead with the tagline and use the name as support.

FINAL: See? Same hardware store as 100 years ago, but now we have people who run for fun. I think they call it “exercise”. The logo still suits the atmosphere, no?

The logo itself was inspired by old railroad signage from historic photos of Downtown. If you’re thinking, “oooh, big idea using railroad graphics for a railroad town”, think again. The big money Lake Norman side has a freeway, a lake and Five Guys Burgers and Fries. We’ve got the railroad and the 104 year old hardware store. Work with what works best for your message. This is how you build an historic rail district. And if you’re still miffed about the railroad imagery, get ready to be more miffed. The font I used was called Railroad Gothic. You know, sometimes the best idea is the obvious one.

FINAL: I used these images when I presented the final logo to the Downtown Commission. Even though it’s simple and historic, the logo had to be able to live in a variety of modern situations that’ll likely come Downtown. Clothing stores, restaurants, nightlife, events of all kinds…the logo had to be able to support all that and keep it’s sense of place.

I used black and white for the logo, and as an accent, the red-orange that was predominant in the bricks of our historic buildings (it stood out like gangbusters in advertising). Then I locked it all up nice and neat with the tag line, and tweaked the perspective on the whole thing to give it a little motion. Sort of like you’re passing through town and seeing it from the train window, painted on a brick building (yep, Downtown’s got a lot of old advertising murals, too).

Oh, I almost forgot. The tag line itself is the best part. It was one of the biggest lies I’ve ever told (professionally). There was certainly nothing going on Downtown. But there’s would be. The Downtown Commission was gearing up for their first big flight of non-stop events and we were cranking out supporting materials like crazy to get people to go to them. We had no idea that it would take less than a year for our big lie to become the absolute truth.

DAVE SOPP – Creative

Yep, that’s me. I’ve got over 20 years of marketing strategy, graphic design, advertising art direction, and illustration experience. Want to use some of it? Email me at dave@davesopp.com

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How to Create a Private, Free Club That People Will Cheat to Join.

Strategy > Special Programs

We’d branded Downtown Mooresville and things were working pretty well. Their event schedule (Art Walks, Live Music, etc.) was bonkers (so many) and they kept people streaming Downtown, but shop traffic was still lagging. People liked the events, but didn’t really feel like exploring. We had to figure out a way to pull them into the shops, if not to buy, to at least bookmark Downtown for the next time they needed something. We also needed a way to figure out how many people were using Downtown on the steady already. Are the people at these events from across town? Are they from nearer by?

If you’ve heard me say this in another post, sorry (not sorry). It’s how I tackle assignments and I don’t think I can say it enough - When you try and solve a marketing problem, consider all the other problems around it. Focus, but stay open minded. Solve the problem at hand and then step back and ask, “Can this solution also help solve any of these other problems over here?”. If it can’t, well, maybe that ain’t the solution. I find more often than not, it can. People called the Downtownie Program a loyalty program, but it was much more than that.

FINAL: You’re entry point to become an official, card-carrying member of Downtown Mooresville – a Downtownie!

The best way to describe it is by how you’d experience it as a consumer. Say you’re at the Festival of Food Trucks. You’re waiting for your artisan grilled cheese sandwich when a nice lady in a bright orange Downtown t-shirt gives you a Downtown Passport. She tells you that when you fill in all 20 sticker spots in the Passport and mail it in, you’ll become a card-carrying, lifetime member of Downtown Mooresville – a Downtownie! You’ll get unique, special discounts whenever you show your Downtownie Card in participating businesses Downtown. It’s all free. Next time you’re in a business Downtown, just ask for a sticker. The nice lady then gives you a sticker to start you off. It’s got a little flag on it, signifying an event.

FINAL: Inside your Downtown Passport.

You finish your grilled cheese sammy and notice you’re in front of a big frame shop/art gallery. You see the Downtownie sticker on the door and walk in. You’re looking around when someone asks if they can help you. You say you’re fine, but can you get a Downtownie sticker for your Passport? The sticker they give you has a little shopping bag on it.

Before you leave that event you have 5 stickers - a flag, three shopping bags, and the fork and knife sticker you got in that little craft beer place (Restaurant). It was fun and you’re halfway done. Next time you’re Downtown you notice that virtually all the shops have Downtownie stickers in their window. You stop for lunch and see that there are other people getting stickers and the waitresses are handing out Passports with each bill. Before you know it, all your sticker spots are filled so you write in your info and mail it off to the Downtown Commission.

A week later you get a letter from Downtown Mooresville. There’s a personal letter from the Executive Director of the Mooresville Downtown Commission and a hot tip - the steakhouse is treating Downtownie diners with a free bag of their house coffee this week. Oh, and they gave you a window sticker for your car so you can flout your love of Downtown and identify your fellow Downtownies all over town.

FINAL: Your Downtownie card finally arrives!

You start using your Downtownie card, and find it’s sort of like a treasure hunt. The breakfast spot is giving Downtownie’s 15% off their famous Eggs Benedict. The sushi place is giving Downtownies a free Edamame appetizer. Even the insurance place is offering something special, even if it’s just a lollipop. All the merchants are in charge of their own Downtownie specials so some keep their offers the same all the time and some switch it up every season, month or week. You know who’s doing what each month when you get the Downtownie email newsletters that spotlight events and specials going on. Every Downtownie card was numbered too, and you read in the email that the shoe store picks a random number every week to win a free pair of socks. You ask yourself why it took you so long to discover Downtown Mooresville.

FINAL: Window clings Downtown tell you who’s celebrating Downtownies, while car decals help visitors show their love of Downtown Mooresville.

Easy, right? Wrong. Any Downtown director will tell you (with a small tear welling up in their eye) – getting merchants on the same page is akin to herding bi-polar tigers on crystal meth. It took a LOT of presentations, to both groups and one-on-one, in order to get everyone on board. And then it took even more hands-on education to get them all (and their staff) to use the system in their shops. But once it was going, it got going fast. My favorite part was when a restaurant owner came to me, really upset, and said he saw some people cheating by asking for extra stickers. He was so mad. But I laughed and told him, look, if people are willing to cheat at this free game by getting free stickers to join your free secret club, stop worrying. It means it’s working!

So what were all the problems this program solved?

• we found a way to get people to sample different shops when they were Downtown

• when the sticker books came back, we knew how many people really enjoyed being Downtown, who they were, where they lived, and what their email address was

• by the type of stickers in the completed Passports, we could see what they liked doing most Downtown - shopping, dining, events, services

• we knew what their favorite thing was Downtown, and what they wished was Downtown

• by keeping track when restocking merchants with stickers, we knew who was pushing the program the hardest and who wasn’t

• merchants felt like a cohesive unit for once because they all had something they could rally behind that didn’t take much effort

• for all you Downtown Directors out there, this is the best part. The Downtown Commission finally had visitor data they could use to get more funding from the town

You might say, jeez, why didn’t you just make an app? It’s a good point, but it wasn’t realistic for this client’s budget or the tech sophistication an app requires. And I guess that’s another good point to make. If a client cant afford a smart idea because it’s too fancy, complicated, or expensive, then give them the smart idea in a way they can use it. People forget, that’s a good chunk of what being a good creative is.

DAVE SOPP – Creative

Yep, that’s me. I’ve got over 20 years of marketing strategy, graphic design, advertising art direction, and illustration experience. Want to use some of it? Email me at dave@davesopp.com

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How to Make a Brochure About Something That Doesn't Exist Yet.

Design > Brochures

Downtown had a brochure before I started working with them. In fact, they had too many brochures! Hahaha. There was one they had made, the Mooresville Historic Preservation Commission (HPC) made one also (without asking, even), and I think the local newspaper made their own for some reason. So when we finished all the strategy and identity stuff, I sat down to straighten all that out. Gotta say, it wasn’t like the HPC didn’t have any business in promoting Downtown. There was plenty of history to talk about Downtown. In fact, I even ended up using some of their stuff (I’d later become the Chairman of the HPC). It’s just that everyone (and everything) had to work together.

FINAL: The first brochure I did was so simple in the end. But it took a lot of work to define and visualize a Downtown Mooresville that didn’t quite exist in the way we were describing it.

BEFORE: A look at the existing situation before I got started on rebranding Downtown Mooresville. Clockwise from top left: 1. The many co-existing brochures of Downtown Mooresville. 2.-4. This is literally 90% of photography that existed of Downtown. People’s backs and empty streets. 5.-10. The real Downtown Mooresville. Lots of empty storefronts.

I mentioned before that “It’s Happening Downtown” was a big fat fib-a-roo. At least in the short term. Lots of events were planned for Downtown, but for the brochure, I couldn’t wait for them to roll into existence. I had to prove the lie immediately, while occupancy in Downtown Mooresville was at an major low. Also there were no photos in their photo bank to use. Just a few random shots of people’s backs. Man, thinking back on it, I was pretty screwed. Hahaha.

First I found myself a local photographer (the talented Jeremy Deal) via the frame shop owner on Main Street and off we went to try and hustle up some visual happenings. It was hilarious. Downtown was so D-E-A-D. And it’s not like we could go hire a bunch of models or crowds. The little girl on the cover is Jeremy’s daughter. The guy walking by the hardware store is my neighbor and eventual Mayor of Mooresville and his daughter. They happened to be passing by so we pressed them into service. The couple walking by the train depot? Friends of mine. In the end we did a pretty decent job of faking a lively (or at least sparsely populated Downtown). Take a look at that list of events. SO MANY! We really tried to segment the information as much as possible so at a skim, you got what we were gettin’ at.

FINAL: We pulled our new street banners through to the inside of the brochure, proving there were plenty of interesting businesses open for business in Downtown Mooresville. I was glad when we finally dropped the individual listings in favor of supporting Downtown as a richer, more engaging destination.

One cool thing we did was a simple map insert for the brochure. We’d heard this story from the old hardware store: when people were done shopping there, they’d ask, “Is there someplace I can grab a bite?”. They’d tell ‘em where to go, but who knows if they ever found the place. Turned out this was a common occurrence at most all the businesses. So we gave these maps to every shop Downtown and they’d circle where they were on the map, and the location of what the customer was looking for. Just like at a resort. And then those folks would leave with a helpful list of everything they could see and do and buy Downtown. Cool, right?

FINAL: We cobbled together enough for the first brochure, and eventually built our photobank up enough for a major revise. This time featuring way more images of what makes Downtown so amazing. Pictured above is the inside of the second brochure and below are some festival snaps we were able to get throughout the year.

FINAL: When I designed Downtown’s logo I designed it to live in a lot of different situations. But I hadn’t planned on it promoting weddings. I was happy that Downtown’s aggressive bold brand didn’t drown out the sweetness of this brochure’s messaging.

Eventually some of the merchants got together to form a sort of wedding conglomerate. It was such a neat idea. Each merchant had their own offerings for the newly betrothed (hair, makeup, fashion, tailoring, tuxedos, flowers, etc.) and they needed a brochure they could hand out at events they’d host. I mentioned this somewhere else, but getting merchants to work together is next to impossible, so I was super excited for them. I was also excited that they thought to even ask the Executive Director for help! Which was what anyone could do at any time (that’s why the Commission exists), but in the past everyone just went rouge and did whatever. So this was a sign they were not only listening, they were learning. Whew! It was interesting to try and soften our pretty hard-edged, railroad inspired brand to live in such a delicate wedding environment, but I think it turned out pretty well.

DAVE SOPP – Creative

Yep, that’s me. I’ve got over 20 years of marketing strategy, graphic design, advertising art direction, and illustration experience. Want to use some of it? Email me at dave@davesopp.com

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How to Design Way More Than a Loyalty Program.

Design > Logos

This little program we developed solved a whole bunch of problems for Downtown Mooresville. If you want to know the strategic nitty gritty, you can get it here, but I wanted to run though some detail on the actual pieces real quick. Downtown never had any money to spend. So aside from being strategically versatile, the production of the materials had to be super cheap.

FINAL: Logos designed for the Downtownie program. One for each of the three stages of participation.

I knew all this going into Downtown’s logo design and that’s part of why I kept it black and white to begin with. But that came in super handy for the Passport part of this program. I developed a special little passport stamp with a mark featuring the Downtown logo socked into it, and we were off. The Passport had to be cheap to print and durable enough to be carried around in someone’s purse or pocket for a while (while the user collected stickers) and to eventually survive being mailed. So, heavy chip board and one-color printing fit perfectly with the brand and gave it a throw-weight that made it hipster high-design. The stickers?  Avery label sheets (no special die cutting) and an identifying icon for each type of business you’d visit Downtown {event, shopping, food, drink, services}. Oh, and every Passport came with a half-page flyer (economical!) which explained the program to each target audience – Live It (people who lived within walking distance), and Love It (people who loved driving across town to visit).

FINAL: Our award-winning Downtownie program starts here, with a special passport that you’d fill with stickers from businesses and events in Downtown Mooresville.

FINAL: Collect all the stickers and mail your Passport in. You’ll get this fun little package from Mooresville’s Downtown Commission making you an official, card-carrying Downtownie! Complete with a nifty decal for your car.

FINAL: Teamwork makes the dream work. Literally. The back of the Downtownie card told members to look for participating shops via window signs Downtown. Getting a HUGE chunk of Downtown businesses to participate was instrumental to the Downtownie program’s success. The icing on the cake was winning an innovation award from the North Carolina Main Street Center.

The card itself was a very simple thing and I used the Downtown photo collage I built for the website to try and make it look exciting. The back was a hoot to write though. I developed separate logos for both the Downtownie car decal (which you’d receive when you got your card in the mail), and for the merchant window stickers. I wanted the systems logos to look like the kind of logos you’d see attached to a City or State welcome sign. You know what I mean, all the Kiwanis shields and stuff. Sort of official looking. The merchant window clings we did were big, too. As in LARGE. You couldn’t miss ‘em, even from the street. Hahaha. We also made some little register signs in case store employees forgot to tell customers about the program. I really do think we thought of everything.

Downtown Mooresville’s Executive Director still has every Passport that was ever mailed in to her. They’re in a big box in her terrible office (she’ll laugh when she reads that) and she always loved looking through them. There was so much to learn by how people placed their stickers and what they wrote in their passports. Even how they mailed them in was fascinating. One Passport was all but laminated with layered strips of Scotch tape. It was so personal. People really invested time in becoming Downtownies.

DAVE SOPP – Creative

Yep, that’s me. I’ve got over 20 years of marketing strategy, graphic design, advertising art direction, and illustration experience. Want to use some of it? Email me at dave@davesopp.com

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How to Fake It 'Till You Make It.

Strategy > Branding

Downtown Mooresville is a special place. Its charm (and untapped potential) lured us away from San Francisco when we were looking for better schools and a less hectic lifestyle. We took a look at Downtown, found an old home a block and a half away, moved, set up shop in the old telegraph office along Broad Street across from the old train depot, and quietly kept doing what we were doing back in The City. Only this time, with a freight train passing by and blowing its whistle every day at 1pm. It was so loud you couldn’t plan any phone calls around that time slot. It was awesome (not sarcasm). The old Downtown was only a few blocks long on Main Street, and wore charming but warehousy treasures over its shoulder along Broad Street, too. 

FINAL: The first thing we did was define Downtown Mooresville as, well, Downtown Mooresville. The final logo could easily represent Downtown’s railroad past, but also make sense with shops you’d find there (fashion, restaurants, bars, hairstylists, hardware, etc.), and event that would be held there. It had to play nice with everything you threw at it.

It’s hard to not meet people Downtown. Heck, most of them were neighbors as it turned out. One of those neighbors turned out to be Kim Atkins. She’d had successful career in the printing business and became a shop owner on Main Street. It didn’t work out. Rather than do what anyone would have done (curse Downtown and never return), she did the opposite and was elected the Executive Director of the Downtown Commission. Our boys went to the same elementary school and had become inseparable pals.

Downtown Mooresville was founded in 1873 along a rail line (yep, trains still use it!). In the 1960’s, Duke Power created the man-made Lake Norman while at the same time, the I77 was created to offer a faster way to motor to Charlotte down south, and Statesville up north. The lake was to the west of Downtown and offered about a jillion miles of lakefront property opportunity. The I77 freeway divided the town in more ways than one. Downtown was considered the poor side of Mooresville. Lake Norman (LKN) was where the money was. Hot-Cha!

BEFORE: Oh, there was clearly nothing happening Downtown when we started this project. Open shops had huge gaps of vacant, papered-over storefronts between them. That’s real bad for encouraging foot traffic and look at the mess. By code, closed businesses had to have their windows papered. So we had the idea to paper them with interesting facts about Downtown. It would pull people through to all the open shops, entertain and educate visitors, clean up the overall look of Downtown Mooresville, and cover up it’s vacancy problem. And, being black and white, it’d be affordable. So many problems solved with one easy solution!

BEFORE: The many brochures (and identities) of Downtown Mooresville, all in circulation at the same time when we started working with them.

Cut to modern times and it’s still the same. One side of Lake Norman has all the Red Robins, Super Targets, and Olive Gardens they can handle. While our side (I live in this part, remember) is a little weathered, but has all the heart and soul of what this town used to be. It didn’t help that Downtown was all but empty, lacking both shops and people. The most going concern though, was really going. Soirée was situated in a beautifully restored building in the center of Downtown and was a destination on any night of the week. The problem was, the few shops and business Downtown were never open when Soirée was pulling in the public. Worse yet, the town was so divided that (and I’m not exaggerating here), 85% of the fancy people on the Lake side didn’t even know Downtown existed!

FINAL: The first step – getting our house in order. With some selective photography we presented the Downtown we wanted people to see. All beautiful old buildings and historic charm. We dressed up Main Street with some handsome, attention-getting, hard-working street banners, nailed down our identity and made ONE exciting brochure.

Sorry. Lots of backstory, but it’s super important (especially if you’re a small town in a similar situation). Downtown was quiet, but not dead. They launched a VERY aggressive event schedule to get folks over the I77 to our side, but they didn’t really have a brand to hang it all upon. Some merchants were calling Downtown “the Dirty Mo” on their social media. Some called it “DoMo” (Downtown Mooresville). Messaging was all over the place and none of it was cohesive or sticking. So Kim asked us for ideas on what to do.

The first thing I recommended was nixing the idea of a clever name altogether. People didn’t even know there WAS an old Downtown in Mooresville. Calling it fancy things would just confuse the issue. It was Downtown Mooresville, so just let it be Downtown Mooresville. You can always make a fun nickname later. They brought us on for branding Downtown and the  next thing I did was lie through my teefs.

FINAL: Next it was time to promote Downtown as a destination. Clockwise from the left: 1. By working closely with the pubs we advertised in, we were able to create uniquely branded templates. 2. Our award-winning program to celebrate fans of Downtown Mooresville. 3. Our first piece of Downtown merch. 4. We created a photobank of amazing images that we could use to show folks what we saw in Downtown Mooresville.

Downtown was tired and mostly empty, but not dead. And with a roster of new events, we had to make it seem like there was a secret party going on over here that the Lake people weren’t privy to. In a nod to our railroad history, I designed a vintage/modern logo lockup with the tag line, It’s Happening Downtown. And that was the big lie. Sort of. It was GOING to happen, it just hadn’t actually happened yet. Operation “Fake It ‘Till You Make It” was in full effect. We started running monthly event ads in the local papers. We installed street banners, made bar coasters, put up signage at our local ballpark. We started doing spreads with an event calendar in the local magazines. We rebuilt the website. We got on social media. All the stuff you need to do before we got really creative.

FINAL: From 2009 to 2017 we’d spread the word about Downtown Mooresville. Clockwise from top left: 1. The website we designed for Downtown. 2, One of many posters we did to promote their crazy amount of fun events. 3. A magazine ad designed to introduce newcomers to Downtown. 4. One of many little quarter page newspaper ads promoting monthly events Downtown.

For example, we made calling cards for Downtown merchants and employees to hand out to other shop and restaurant owners whenever they happened to find themselves in a business they wished was Downtown. A bakery, a great Indian restaurant, that kind of thing. It said, “If you’re reading this, your business should be Downtown.” One the back was an invitation to call Kim Atkins to discuss retail opportunities. OMG, even if you weren’t looking to relocate, it sure made it look like shit was going down in Downtown Mooresville. Super buzz worthy, and it worked. Despite our launching during a recession (always fun), within a year, Charlotte was airing a live prime time news segment about Downtown’s revitalization. Finally, it really was happening Downtown. Lie turned truth.

We’d go on to make fun event posters, TV spots, and even more special little programs. Our custom-made Downtownie™ loyalty program would win an Innovation award from the State of North Carolina. Best of all, Main Street filled up. At its zenith, it reached 95% occupancy. Morning, noon, or night, people were coming to see what was Happening Downtown.

DAVE SOPP – Creative

Yep, that’s me. I’ve got over 20 years of marketing strategy, graphic design, advertising art direction, and illustration experience. Want to use some of it? Email me at dave@davesopp.com

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