Design & Marketing Agency | Grey Matter Group

About

Close What makes a brand really fly? A great product combined with a snifter of marketing courage. In fact, if your agency does work that looks like exactly what most work looks like, then you may have already wasted your money. Great creative should surprise, delight, entertain, inform, and make you notice. Be brave. Be strong. Flip that bug shield down over your eyes. And let us help launch your brand up and over the other guys.

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Grey Matter Group Interactive Back in the day, there was ink on paper. How cute. These days, we're denizens of the internet age, techno gurus with our heads in the digital cloud. GMG works comfortably in video, apps, banners, websites, social media, and whatever the next big thing is. No matter the medium, it all boils down to telling brand stories in an engaging, relevant way. Here are some examples of how we've done just that.

Close Website design & development for Point West.

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Close Website design & development for Michigan State University.

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Close Website design & development for Robinson Beverages.

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Close Website design & development for The Libman Company.

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Close Website design & development for GrapeSEED.

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Close Website design & development for University Research Corridor.

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Close Website design & development for Riverpoint of Ada.

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Legrand

Legrand Legrand is one of the world's largest players in all things lighting and electrical. Through our Gravity Alliance, Grey Matter has helped Legrand find its brand voice for a sexy new line of residential switches, outlets, wireless controls and more called adorne^™. So far, we've helped roll out this new line to the US market with consumer print, digital banners, collateral, and video.

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Celadon

Celadon When a local developer wanted to create an art-infused, green-built, new urban village, Grey Matter Group fashioned a fun, colorful, casual brand personality based on well-thought, strategic positioning. Then GMG did naming, identity design, website design, view book design, and more. The developer enjoyed an enthusiastic response and enviable occupancy rates despite a depressed housing market.

The Brix

The Brix When a developer chose Grand Rapids as the home for their new luxury apartment community, the apartments — and the brand — needed to be built from the ground up. Grey Matter Group was chosen as an agency partner to help establish a go-to-market strategy and to help define and build the new brand’s personality and look. While researching the history of the neighborhood, it was discovered that the area was once home to a turn-of-the-century brickyard. So The Brix at Midtown was born. Grey Matter Group was a key creative and strategic partner with the developer leading up to and throughout project launch.

DASH Bus

City of Grand Rapids - DASH Since just under 4% of Grand Rapids, MI commuters use public transit, city leaders saw much room for growth. They asked Grey Matter Group to hit the streets and get a pulse of the community's understanding of the DASH (Downtown Area Shuttle) bus system. Our on-the-street and on-the-bus polling revealed that the DASH name had great recognition (nearly 90%) but there was very little understanding of who the system is for, where it goes, or how it works. We had work to do: 1) Build brand awareness. 2) Demystify and increase understanding. 3) Re-energize the brand with a long overdue redesign. The creative campaign (affectionately called “four letter words”) built buzz, while the new logo and color scheme clearly differentiated the DASH from other city transit services. The final appraisal? Ridership and awareness is up, and the new DASH identity and branding has been deemed a grand S-L-A-M!

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Riverpoint

Riverpoint of Ada When a client came to Grey Matter Group with development plans for quaint downtown Ada, MI, the new brand was a blank slate. After executing a naming exercise, “RiverPoint of Ada” emerged as a favorite. With target audience personas in mind, a logo, color palette, and brand personality were developed, which informed the website look and voice. The resulting website is visually rich and engaging, tapping into the audience’s felt desire for community and neighborhood. RiverPoint’s website won a Gold Addy Award, and the developer enjoyed a very quick sell-through of much of their available inventory.

MLive

MLive Media Group The brand that owns Vogue, Wired, and Parade magazines also owns Michigan's largest media group, MLive. MLive needed help getting their newspaper subscribers to transition over to their spiffy new website and mobile offerings. Via our Gravity partnership, Grey Matter Group created a strategic brand campaign that zeroed in on easy accessibility and premium content. MLive enjoyed a 64% uptick in site traffic after the campaign went live.

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MRI

MRI For over 35 years, Natrol has been a leading manufacturer of Vitamins, Minerals & Supplements. Natrol's MRI-Performance brand is a line of supplements engineered to help athletes optimize their workout and results. Grey Matter Group was brought in at the moment the brand was making a pivot: from extreme body builders to everyday athletes. GMG developed a strategic marketing plan and new user personas — all with the goal of building awareness, driving traffic, and increasing sales. GMG's fresh new packaging rippled out into print advertising, web design, social media, and a brand video.

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Old Orchard

Old Orchard Old Orchard is a privately held juice company based in West Michigan with 62 varieties of bottled juice and 30 varieties of frozen concentrate available throughout the U.S. Grey Matter Group has helped Old Orchard with their low-sugar, Healthy Balance brand by developing creative print ad campaigns.

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KCAD

KCAD Kendall College of Art and Design lives in a highly competitive, highly creative marketplace. GMG repositioned the college and redesigned the most public face of their brand, their student look book. The look and feel established by GMG rippled out into all of KCAD's brand touch points, including their website, signage, and advertising. The fresh approach resonated with KCAD's audience, contributing to double digit enrollment growth.

CSB

CSB Our publishing client decided it was time rebrand their flagship Bible translation. What was previously know as the Holman Christian Standard Bible underwent both a translation revision and a name simplification — to the "Christian Standard Bible." Grey Matter Group was tasked with developing a new brand identity and marketing campaign. Our simple solution centered on the idea of the Bible as a compass for life. The translation has since moved from a consistent sixth bestselling Bible translation to a now third and still growing in popularity.

Union Square

Union Square Condominiums Union Square is a 175-unit condo in a rehabbed high school. Grey Matter Group was tasked with naming, identity, sales brochures, print ads, website, and guerilla marketing. In the wake of GMG's help with this and a similar project, developer Parkland Properties became the best-selling developer in Michigan, with over $80 million in annual sales.

Contact Us. Since 1991, we've been helping good clients and good causes tell their stories with dramatic results. We love the magic that happens when the chemistry is right, the strategy is dialed in, and irresistible creative splashes into community consciousness. It's rewarding, and if done right, fun too. Give us a call to see if we're a good fit for each other — we'd love to talk with you about your brand.

131 Division Ave. S. Suite 300
Grand Rapids, MI 49503

616.458.8750
hello@greymattergroup.com

Creative
Strategic

About Us. Grey Matter Group is a multidisciplinary design and marketing firm that starts with strategy, then focuses on highly creative solutions for print, collateral, packaging, naming, identity, outdoor, broadcast, web, digital, social media, and viral media. Our goal is to achieve greatness for the brands we work on, and we've got a long list of success stories (and heaps of awards) to show for it. Bonus points? We're friendly too. We'd love to chat with you about your brand.

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