Like a kid dumbfounded by the sight of his first real candy store—at the threshold of heaven and stuck with an inexplicably small allowance—a festivalgoer must have a way to sort through the bounty. Will it be Willy Wonka or Milton Hershey? Andy Wachowski or Zhang Yang? The possibilities are paralyzing…

Thankfully, Cultivate Studios and Chicago International Film Festival have partnered to provided the solution…

The Official 2012 Chicago International Film Festival iPhone App.

Our new app does what a festival guide should—it gets out of the way, allowing each film to speak for itself. Once a film has won your affections, you can quickly and easily find when and where it’s playing, purchase tickets and add the film to your personal agenda. If you’re in a pinch, you can even see what’s playing right now. We’ve got you covered soup to nuts, er…circus peanuts to malt balls. It’s a pocket guide to paradise.

With Cultivate’s app, CIFF could be your candy store.

For those of you who aren’t fans of context, please enjoy the illustrations below.

For those of you who prefer to know where your meat comes from, as the culturivores at ThinkChristian undoubtedly do, please enjoy Schuyler’s illustrations in their original habitat.

Brand Loyalty vs. Brand Idolatry by Blake Howard and Craig Johnson

Should Christians Back the Buffett Rule? by Timothy Hendrickson

What Would Jesus Like? by Kristy Quist

Advent All Around: Gabrielle Giffords and Hope by Jeff Munroe

Baby Names as Blessings by Caryn Rivadeneira

And that’s not all! We were also awarded a Bronze Telly, their second highest honor, for our video entitled Our Story Is Just Beginning, created for Youth Outreach Services. Our Story has been a veritable award’s workhorse. Our Story went 3 for 3 at the 2010 International AVA Awards, garnering honors for “Non-Profit Video,” “Cinematography” and “Graphics/Design.” At Telly, we went for one and got one, winning in the “Non-Profit Video” category.

The Telly Awards exist to honor the very best local, regional and cable television commercials and programs, as well as the finest video and film productions, and work created for the web. Let’s be clear, we pay for these awards—all payments on the surface of the table. The Telly Awards is a business, just like any other awards program. However, the Telly Awards play a vital role in our industry through discernment and prevalence, evidenced by the fact that so many prestigious firms compete for their awards. Telly received approximately 13,000 entries last year. Historically, Silver Telly Award winners have represented about 7% to 10% of entrants, while Bronze Telly Award winners have represented about 18% to 25% of entrants. This puts us in good company.

We think our work speaks for itself, but if there is ever any doubt, a Telly Award isn’t a bad thing to have gathering dust on the shelf. It instantly legitimizes a resume and garners respect from industry peers. But what about potential clients? Say you’re a businessperson, and a good one at that, but you’ve been found artistically wanting. If you’re lucky, you know it. Of course you know it, you’re a good businessperson. A Telly Award is one way for you to know with certainty that you are dealing with artistic professionals. And let’s be clear, there are a fair amount of hacks in our field—your nephew has a lot of talents, but representing your business on video isn’t one of them. To me, Telly is the closest thing our industry has to Consumer Reports.

In summation, if I need financial advice I go to my brother, a financial planner. If I need advice on home improvement, I go to my other brother, an architect. If I need advice on how not to procrastinate, I go to my mother, a dynamo of timeliness. They are my industry insiders. The Telly Awards are judged by our fellow creative professionals. They know marketing, and specifically promotional video, inside and out, and have every reason to keep Telly standards rigorous. So there you have it, our Telly Awards are like tiny little silver and bronze industry insiders assuring clients and potential clients that they’ve come to the right place in Cultivate Studios.

“Hammy hammock from Plywood Office steals the show at Model Citizens NYC exhibition”

We couldn’t agree more, and we weren’t even there. It’s hard to circumvent the stunningly simple and elegant design of Jamison’s Hammy. It’s design that immediately makes you think, “How come the hammock wasn’t always made this way?” It’s something wholly new, but already classic. An elusive quality the L.A. Times has recognized. Here’s the full story.

Plywood Office chose Cultivate Studios to create their logo and business cards (Chris Pierik), website (Schuyler Roozeboom) and photography (Mark Wierda). It gives us great satisfaction that Chris’s work is getting the recognition it deserves. The accolades have only just begun to arrive. Ogle the evidence at plywoodoffice.us.

The L.A. Times also says, “Now here’s a hammock we can really get into.” We want to congratulate Chris on the fact that the L.A. Times says…

The good people of The Cary Company in Addison, IL understand this, and with the help of Cultivate Studios are lifting their curtain with gusto…The Cary Company

The Cary Company provides raw materials (chemicals), packaging, absorbents and filtration products for both industry and consumer. It’s not the kind of company that John Q. Public lauds; it’s the kind of business you might find tucked away in an industrial park. For most of us, industrial parks are just a collection of mildly mysterious monstrosities we pass on our way to somewhere else. But every monstrosity is feeding an industry that produces a product that we are in one way or another consuming. So, yeah, it would be nice to know what’s going on back there. The Cary Company is one company that’s not bricking in the windows; they are opening up their warehouse for everyone to see.

Over the last several years, The Cary Company has grown substantially. They are very aware that as they grow they must manage that growth or their ability to provide excellent customer service will decline. Recently, they have been implementing several measures, including increased internal training, audits, and attention to safety and the environment, to ensure that as their company grows, they don’t lose track of the virtues that made them a success in the first place—relationships, family-orientation, product knowledge and logistics. The Cary Company chose Cultivate Studios to create a promotional video to take care of the rest—finding a dynamic way to share these continued commitments with existing customers, while at the same time giving new customers immediate assurance that they are choosing the right company to do business with.

“Cultivate has created an incredible marketing tool for us, capturing an honest and engaging video portrait of our people, facility and approach to business. We knew from their portfolio that they would deliver for us, and we were very impressed with the first class results. We look forward to working with Cultivate again in the future.”

–TJ Tyrrell, Inside Sales & Marketing Manager for The Cary Company

It’s safe to assume that people looking for the kinds of products The Cary Company provides want a few key things—a good price, quality and dependability. So the video finds its backbone there, and not everyone will ask for more. However, some will, and that’s where the video finds its real value, setting Cary far apart from the pack. Cary does the vast majority of their business over the phone, and this video is an invaluable way for them to further customer loyalty with a good long look behind that curtain. They are proud of their people, so we not only show them working; we let them speak their minds about where they work. They are proud of their facility, so we show off every corner. They are proud of their safety and environmental record, so we make that a key component of the conversation. In fact, as our video unfolds, and you see more and more of the warehouse, you might even begin to assume they’ve got safety and the environment on their minds.

For The Cary Company, the end result of making a video with Cultivate Studios is that their mildly mysterious monstrosity just came vividly to life. Cary becomes a business you can partner with for the long haul. A real place teaming with great employees and quality products. A company that sees taking care of all the little things behind the scenes as key to everything. Now, every time a Cary salesperson picks up the phone, it just might be a little easier to get down to business.

For more curtain-lifting and proof of the value of great corporate video, see our blog entry, Fresh Video: When Corporate Gets Personal.

AppAdvice.com just dubbed our iOS app, RingFinder, as the “Essential App” for diamond ring shopping. Developed for Southern African Diamonds, RingFinder was stacked against gobs of other ring shopping apps, so we’re extremely honored to be singled out as the best.

“RingFinder is the app to have for those buying a new diamond ring.”
–AppAdvice.com

AppAdvice.com is just that—app advice. They’ve been around since the advent of the App Store, and lucky for all of us, they exist to usefully aggregate the 350,000+ apps found there.

Read their full review of RingFinder, check out our previous post detailing how RingFinder came to be, or just get on your good foot and download it already. RingFinder has now been downloaded over 17,000 times, and thanks to AppAdvice.com we’ve gathered even more evidence that we’ve given the precious stones of Southern African Diamonds a precious home.

We are pleased to announce that Cultivate Studios has performed well at the 2010 International AVA Awards. In fact we didn’t miss once, skipping away with two Platinum awards and three Gold awards. Platinum is AVA’s highest award and Gold is their second highest honor. Just in case you don’t follow video industry organizations, the International AVA Awards recognize outstanding work by creative professionals involved in the concept, writing, direction, shooting and editing of audio-visual materials and programs. It is administered and judged by the Association of Marketing and Commmunications Professionals (AMCP).

Our biggest winner was Youth Outreach Services’ Our Story is Just Beginning, taking home three awards including two Platinum. Our Story is Just Beginning, produced for YOS’s 50^th anniversary is the result of great teamwork between Cultivate and YOS. YOS gave us great latitude with the concept, and then helped us get to know three of their youth well enough to share their stories. The task was to celebrate and share the organization’s history without getting lost in it. The opening monologue, dressed with Chris Pierik’s beautiful animation, was designed to do just that. As I’ve said before, we love the chance to start from scratch on a concept and we couldn’t be happier that AVA recognized the results.

Client: Youth Outreach Services
Entry: Our Story is Just Beginning
Awards:
PLATINUM–VIDEO PRODUCED FOR A NON-PROFIT
PLATINUM–CINEMATOGRAPHY
GOLD–GRAPHICS/DESIGN

Also winning Gold in the “Non-Profit” category was Elim’s Supply Hope Commercial. The goal for this commercial was simple—promote Elim’s Hope Packs program and do it featuring the talents of the developmentally disabled adults they serve. Elim is proud of their clients and that is absolutely central to their mission. We felt that pride and developed a commercial to highlight this obvious organizational asset. Elim adult’ John Wrenn makes a stunning debut in Supply Hope, and we think you’ll like his work.

Client: Elim Christian Services
Entry: Supply Hope
Award: GOLD–VIDEO PRODUCED FOR A NON-PROFIT

And finally, Cultivate is especially proud of taking home Gold in the category of “Corporate Image”. We’ve known all along that our style could work in the for-profit world as well as it does in the non-profit world. The Remarkable Experience is the proof. The Remarkable Experience blew up on YouTube, giving Quality Color, the printing company that commissioned it, one incredible reason to reach out and make contact with each and every one of their customers.

Client: Quality Color & Chicago Packaging
Entry: The Remarkable Experience
Award: GOLD–CORPORATE IMAGE

We would like to thank Youth Outreach Services, Elim Christian Services and Quality Color for putting their confidence in Cultivate Studios.