CalStar

CalStar Products

With only 15% of the embodied energy of conventional alternatives, CalStar’s revolutionary brick and paver products save an impressive 85% of the energy – and emit 85% less CO2 – than traditional masonry products.

CalStar was still in stealth mode and had absolutely no public exposure to date when they came to us to help them quickly establish their brand and communicate their product offering. We targeted a highly sophisticated audience of green building early adopters, those progressive practitioners who will readily incorporate an innovative new product from a new company provided it meets with their research criteria and advances their sustainability goals.

CalStar went with our recommendation for a top of the line video to carry their key messages via the web. Video enabled us to engage the viewer on a personal level while delivering multiple complex messages, scientific concepts and the new technology behind these products and their impact on the sustainable built environment. It was a tall order and, with the help of our expert collaborators, we pulled it off. You can view the 60-second video to your left. In the video features, Julie Rapoport, Ph.D., CalStar’s VP of Engineering. Having a bright, accomplished and exceptionally articulate young woman as the “face” of CalStar reinforced CalStar’s positioning as an innovative new brand in a traditional male-dominated industry. This video was chosen for a Silver “Marketing Effectiveness Award” by Summit International from over 500 entries in the Green Marketing category. It is still driving sales today.

Having no actual built projects to showcase at that point, our concept for product photography was “beauty shots of bricks.” The press loved our aesthetic which was a catalyst for CalStar getting plenty of cover and feature exposure in the building trade press.

We worked closely with CalStar’s VP of Marketing, functioning as a full-service off-site marketing department from the time CalStar was still in stealth mode until they were a known entity in the industry and hired staff for their own internal marketing department. Our work included establishing CalStar’s first online presence, designing their first sample boards, a show booth for their product introduction at Greenbuild, providing Art Direction and studio photography of prototype and early production products, executive portraits, large display boards for various meetings, and firt print materials.

We are proud to have been able to make strategic introductions on the show floor at Greenbuild that led to CalStar being named as a Top-Ten New Green Building Product of 2010 by McGraw-Hill Construction.

CalStar’s green brick is now available in 130+ Home Depot stores, thru 35 national distributors, and has emerged as a mainstream building product.