Client:
Current Energy provides energy-efficiency solutions to both residential and commercial customers designed to maximize energy cost savings while minimizing capital investment. Current Energy has a consumer-facing retail presence with two Current Energy Stores – one located in the fashionable Knox-Henderson shopping district of Dallas, Texas, and the other in Dallas's upscale Northpark Center mall.

Situation:
Current Energy wanted to create a small, 5" x 7" holiday product catalog for placement in a localized edition of People Newspaper that would drive foot traffic to its online and retail stores during the 2008 holiday season.

Objectives:
To make Current Energy the area's green gift headquarters by 1) making the public aware that Current Energy is a unique source of fun, functional, earth-friendly holiday gifts; and 2) ultimately driving holiday shopping traffic to both the online store and retail locations.

Strategies & Tactics:
As part of our overall holiday strategy for Current Energy, Farstar had created a theme for their billboards, in-store signage, print ads and website. We continued that theme within the catalog. Structurally speaking, we wanted the catalog to mirror those of other high-end retailers like Pottery Barn and Frontgate. The catalog needed to be well-organized, even elegant. The fact that we had to use existing product photography only heightened this challenge.

However, the writing may have been the toughest task. We chose to write all new product descriptions for each item in order to keep the tone and style consistent from product to product. Even the grouping of products into different categories took some effort, particularly given the vast product options we had available to us.

Results:
At the time of this post (November 28, 2008), the catalog has only just been distributed – as in yesterday. Already, a reporter from the local NBC affiliate has called Current Energy saying she had received the catalog and wanted to do a story about Current Energy. We think this speaks volumes about the impending success of the project.

As for the way the catalog reads and looks, you can judge for yourself below. The client had never created a catalog before; fortunately, a couple of people on our team had helped produce similar pieces in their past lives and we were able to guide the client through the process. They were pleasantly surprised with the final piece and its relative ease to produce. We'll update this post with actual, numerical results as soon as said numbers come in. And the eggnog haze wears off.

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