Posture Interactive – Portfolio Reel 2019
We’re pleased as pie to present to you our 2019 Portfolio Reel – Thanks and much love ?? to all of our clients, friends and family for the continued support you show us. Turn the volume up and enjoy! ?
Category: Team
Intern Spotlight: Carla Henry
Posture is extra #blessed this summer to have not one, but TWO crazy talented interns! We’d like to introduce you to our super-talented design intern coming to us from her school in State College, Carla Henry:
Who are ya?
My name is Carla-Ann Henry, but I’ve always
Where do you hail from?
I’m from a few different areas. I’m originally from Northeast Pennsylvania but then moved to Northern Kentucky for 7 years. I then moved to Central Pennsylvania for school, and now I’m in Scranton!
What inspired you to study design?
I was always slightly interested in design work and art in general, but what really inspired me is my older sister, Kara. She always knew she wanted to study design and has been professionally working at a design firm in Kentucky for two years now. Her journey really pushed me to pursue design as a career.
Who inspires you lately?
Personally, I always think my sister inspires me. I constantly see her work and talk to her about different projects and it really inspires me to continue and grow in what I’m doing.
What’s the best thing about going to school in State College?
The best thing was probably how close everything is to each other. There isn’t much outside of State College, but when you’re in it there’s a good number of shops and different places to eat. Downtown State College is always super busy, but when the Penn State students leave it’s always nice to take a trip Downtown.
Why did you choose to come to Posture Interactive in Scranton, PA for your internship?
As I mentioned before, my sister has always been my inspiration and who I look up to. During my internship
What is the most interesting project/client you’ve worked on at Posture Interactive?
The most interesting is definitely a visual food menu in multiple languages for a local hospital. I didn’t even know that they were a thing, but I’ve become very familiar with the one I’ve been working on.
What would you tell fellow students who haven’t had an internship yet?
I would tell them to look for an internship with the intention of really getting to know what kind of environment you want to be in when you’re working. There are so many people out there with your exact level of skill, but what will really set you apart from the others is how well you fit into that environment, and that’s what you want to look for.
What is your ideal project?
My ideal project is one where there’s a healthy amount of communication and flexibility between you and your client. Incorporating illustrations is also a plus!
What’s your favorite computer program?
As far as Adobe Creative Cloud goes, I always gravitate towards Illustrator. Making vector illustrations has always been so much fun for me to work with. Other than that, I would definitely go with Sims 4 (if that counts as a computer program).
Do you have a favorite location in Scranton?
I haven’t been able to explore too much of Scranton yet, but if I had to pick a favorite so far it would be the parking lot of this one building downtown that I couldn’t even tell you the name of.
This year for St. Patty’s day (when I wasn’t living here yet) I was invited to a work get-together in a parking lot downtown and I was immediately immersed in the spirit of Scranton. It was the closest thing resembling city-wide parties in Cincinnati, and it felt like home.
True or false: Dogs really run the show around here at Posture.
TRUE! The whole office makes sure to greet every dog that comes through, and every dog gets all of the pets they want!
Intern Spotlight: Gabby Santos
At Posture, we’re delighted to have so many talented interns come through our doors. This week, we’d like to introduce you to our intern and communications student at Marywood
What’s your name?
Gabby Santos (AKA “Good At Being Bad Yo”)
Also, you can follow my weenie dog on Instagram: @texas_weiner
Where are you from?
I am from Del Rio, Texas
What inspired you to study communications?
I took a dual credit class in high school called Principles of Marketing and Finance and my teacher at the time, Ms. G, influenced and inspired me to pursue a degree in marketing.
Who inspires you lately?
A lot of people have inspired me lately. My family always inspires me to work hard and to dream big. My former volleyball coach, Carissa, inspires me to be confident in myself and to thrive in every situation. Lastly, my best friends from home and college inspire me every day to try new things and go on spontaneous adventures.
What’s the best thing about going to school in Scranton?
The best thing about going to school in Scranton is experiencing the diverse culture, meeting amazing people, and making lifelong friends.
What is the most interesting project/client you’ve worked on at Posture Interactive?
An interesting project I’m working on is the Scranton Parking Campaign because I get to see a marketing campaign from start to finish. The most interesting client I’ve worked on is Avanti because I got to go to an event and talk about the product that we’ve created marketing around.
What is the biggest piece of advice or working skill you’ll take with you from your intern experience here?
The biggest piece of advice that I would take away from this internship is to be myself and express my opinion. When you first start an internship sometimes it can be slightly intimidating just because you want to make a good impression but the purpose of an internship is for you to be yourself and to ask questions and test your knowledge.
What would you tell fellow students who haven’t had an internship yet?
For students who haven’t done an internship yet, I highly recommend that they try and land an internship within their field of study. I have done a few internships within my field and it has helped me figure out what I want to do.
What is your ideal project?
My ideal project is one I am actually working on currently which is the parking campaign and developing it from scratch. I get to be a part of crucial market research, data collection, and data analysis.
What’s your favorite digital tool or program?
I don’t have a favorite program specifically but if I had to pick it would be Chrome.
Which Coney Island is better?
I would have to say the Coney Island underneath the bridge is my favorite one.
Ketchup, Mustard, or other?
Ketchup for sure.
True of false: Doug knows more bands than anyone else in the office.
I feel like this is true. He gives me a band connoisseur vibe.
Hot Diggity Dog!
This past week tensions were high. A common Scranton debate had become the center topic of discussion and we needed to end it once and for all. Many locals know about the two Coney Islands located near the 500 block on Lackawanna. They’re both very similar. Small, quaint hot dog shops that serve greasy, heartburn-inducing disco fries and hot dogs piled on with chili, cheese, and onions. In fact, rumor has it that the owners are actually brothers, and after a dispute, they opened two separate shops: one with the original recipe, and one the original location. We knew that to settle our office’s debate we had to do a taste test.
We ordered hot dogs and fries from both locations and sorted them into hot dog A and B, without revealing where they were from. Then we indulged. As the hot dogs dwindled in number and groans of pleasure and regret filled the office we cast our votes.
We scored each hot dog out of five, then added them up to get our overall average results. Here were our results:
Hot Dog A: 3/5
Hot Dog B: 4/5
Overall, we thought Coney Island Lunch on Lackawanna had better hot dogs. However, we did agree afterward that the disco fries were better at The Coney Island of Scranton.
After a tried and true measure of testing, the office is still just as divided, but at least this time we have proof which is better.
The Greatest ADDY’s
The American Advertising Awards (or AAA…or Addy’s) is our favorite annual event for local advertising and marketing companies to come together and share in their year of accomplishments. Hosted by our friends at the American Advertising Federation of NEPA, the awards are the culmination of a judged advertising competition that starts on a local and advances to a regional then then national level. For us, it also showcases the amazing growing pool of talent we have right here in NEPA and provides a wealth of inspiration.
To say we had a blast would be an understatement – this year’s Addy’s was the GREATEST Addy’s! The whole event was inspired by the recent musical: “The Greatest Showman,” having the matching theme and triumphant theatrics we all appreciate here at Posture.
We were recognized for the House Party campaign and Seed to
Congratulations to all winners and contestants, it was
React Training
This past week we put the development in professional development! Our dev team completed an intense week-long training that sharpened their coding skills
Dip your toes into Our Pocono Waters with Posture’s House Party
Our Pocono Waters is dedicated to protecting the exceptional value streams of the Pocono area. What’s an exceptional value stream? I’m glad you asked. An exceptional value stream is a classification given to streams that have the cleanest and highest quality of water. In the Pocono’s region, we have over 80% of the state’s exceptional value streams, and a lot of the streams are threatened by bad environmental practices. Our Pocono Waters wants to help protect these streams.
Our Pocono Waters is also important to me personally too. I grew up out in the woods messing around, falling in streams, building forts. Now, I spend a lot of my free time outside fishing or hiking around these same beautiful streams and outdoor spaces.
They’re a source of endless inspiration and relief when nothing else suffices. You really can’t beat standing in the middle of a stream with a fly rod in your hand. It’s a magical feeling hearing and feeling the stream flow around you. When you’re out there like that, you start to get a sense of how important a small stream can be to the local environment and the people around it. Pristine beauty like the streams of the Poconos need to be protected for generations ahead of us to experience. I’d hate to think of a future where kids couldn’t spend their time alongside a babbling brook. If you want to learn more about their organization visit ourpoconowaters.org
Support the protection of a local resource by
building a house for Our Pocono Waters
Join the Posture House Party now through December 31st and share your house on social media
using #posturehouseparty to vote for Our Pocono Waters
as the winner of our grand prize — a cash donation plus design and digital support totaling $5,000!
Start building here.
Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of the Internet
Well, Google, net neutrality affects everyone.
As we celebrate our independence, we couldn’t help but think a bit on this summer’s changes in rules regarding a “free” internet. On June 11, when net neutrality officially expired, and we were trying to find the latest updates , Google suggested: “How does that affect you?” Well, Google, net neutrality affects everyone. it’s just that the internet is so populated with news sources reporting different aspects, that the “how” gets drowned out. It seems no one knows what to make of it.
Here at Posture, we are most interested in what it means for us as a team and the clients we serve. Will it slow traffic to the web applications we create? How will we know? Will it limit people’s access? How will clients need to evolve in order to stay current with any trends or consequences that result from the Net Neutrality expiration? For the most part we don’t have definitive answers. We do however, have a hell of a lot of ideas.
The internet was created as a government program during the Cold War to bypass wired communication, in the event of an attack. Essentially, the government set up what we would call servers in order to send and receive very limited amounts of information. These bits of information would later be used to transmit scientific data, and later the servers would expand and grow to become the “World Wide Web.”
Essentially, the government set up what we would call servers in order to send and receive very limited amounts of information.
At the time of its creation, the World Wide Web was the epitome of human communication, and obviously in many ways it still is. The expiration of net neutrality marks an end of the World Wide Era in the context of information freely flowing without limit.
Now,companies and profits can be prioritized for certain levels or access to services instead of the users being free to experience any service they wish. Many companies made statements assuring customers of their loyalty to customers. It’s a hard place to be, the crux of two impasses: customer loyalty and making money.
At Posture, we want our clients to be happy, which means we provide the best possible products and services in order to fulfill their goals. We expect no less of our internet providers. We’ll keep our information on this topic free flowing as we learn more.
At Posture, we want our clients to be happy, which means we provide the best possible products and services in order to fulfill their goals.
Validation is Nice. Recognition is Humbling. Let’s Push Further. Posture Interactive at the Addys.
TL;DR : Posture won some awards at the Addys, enlightenment ensues.
This past weekend our agency had a stunning experience at this year’s American Advertising Awards, the annual ceremony where creativity’s effectiveness, judged by folks we respect & recognize, is acknowledged and ultimately rewarded for excellence at the Addys 2018.
Now that it’s been a few days, I’ve had a bit of time to try and understand what that night signifies for our team, processing how we got here, and looking forward to where we’re headed. I apologize in advance for the windy road below and appreciate the time your eyeballs are on loan to these words….
This year’s Addy awards yielded us the type of acknowledgement that gravity sort of pushes down onto you like humid air…a blissful, nervous, overwhelming, ultimately self-conscious state of being where you aren’t sure what to do or say, how to feel or what to make of it.
We ultimately won eight awards (listed below in order of category – client – award):
- Sales Kit – Marzio – Silver Addy Award
- Collateral Materials – Metz Culinary “Our Recipe” Employee Guide – Silver Addy Award
- Packaging Campaign – Electric City Roasting Co. Cold Label Packaging – Gold Addy Award
- Branded Content Entertainment Campaign – Breaking Benjamin Social Teaser Video Campaign – Gold Addy Award
- Digital Self Promotion – Posture Interactive Company Website – Gold Addy Award
- Judge’s Choice – Electric City Roasting Co. Cold Label Packaging
- People’s Choice – Electric City Roasting Co. Cold Label Packaging
- Best in Show – Breaking Benjamin Social Teaser Video Campaign
Addys 2018 Takeaway #1 – Validation is Nice.
To a certain extent, falling into the category of recognition for anything that we put out the door makes me do a double take. Years and years ago when we formed this little strange-brew human triad of a designer, a programmer + and a business director, we had no idea how we were going to *do* anything.
We didn’t have much, but we had what we needed.
We had a strong, rapidly evolving knowledge base of core design and development beliefs and best “practices” with the chops to back it up. We had a deep, neural understanding of the need to execute the client’s vision in their best interest no matter what, and ultimately how to build the foundation of long-term, healthy business relationships.
Posture was built culture-first. I don’t care how freakishly talented some rock star developer is. If they are an asshole, I don’t want to be around them a bazillion hours a day (and I certainly don’t want to make cool shit with them). If we can we have a conversation that produces something meaningful, and the skillset is chasing close behind, we’ll gladly cultivate that mindset and grow *with* you. The rest is cake: Just don’t be a dick.
This many years later, I never dreamed I would be so fortunate to have had the opportunity to hire and surround myself with such talented people that are just…*better* than me in every sense of the word: I’m made aware & encouraged every day to be a better artist & builder & thinker, to develop more tasteful business acumen, and to strive to actually become the person I’m prone to convince myself I think I am.
I get to work and grow with these incredibly talented people every day to produce some of the most creative, challenging, and engaging solutions our clients have come to know and depend on us for.
It was only after I ran this dialogue back in my head (quite a few times) that I was able to get a grip on why people put so much weight on being validated and why it matters.
When I wrap a project, if I’m cool with it and it has met or exceeded the client’s business objectives, that’s as far as I can let myself define a “success” for our team. Taking some time the past few days to dig into how I reflect on work we complete, more often than not at some uncomfortably blistering pace, makes me think I need to be open to understanding and accepting validation more in general.
We work in an incredibly competitive, feverishly paced industry. These awards represent projects that span the breadth of our core competencies and were in some way or another touched by every single team member doing the best that they possibly could to help make our clients successful.
I realize now that these awards signify that *in addition* to meeting our client’s goals and helping write their success story, our work is being appreciated by other creative talent in our industry as well…peers that understand the hustle and what good hard work is when you see it.
If this is what feeling validated is like, sign me up all day.
Recognition is Humbling.
This speaks for itself, but we are truly humbled to have been recognized to this degree by the American Advertising Federation. A jury of fellow creatives singling out our work out of the battering ram of submissions is incredibly rewarding and we couldn’t be more grateful.
None of it really comes easy for any of us, and I’ll spare you the cliché agency nonsense masquerading as team-building or business growth …such gems as “Excellence is a habit”, or “you can’t choose which projects you go all in on or which you push through the pipe – go all in every time and be inspired!”……it’s all bullshit.
We’re a team and a family. We fight, bicker, bitch and moan. We burn ourselves out on the grandest of scales. We’re all incredibly guilty of not seeing beyond the closest Deadline o’Clock coming full throttle, but also staring it right down to not only our own mental nerve-endings but of those around us as well. It’s intense, it’s challenging, it’s relentless, and I wonder on occasion how we didn’t implode or collapse on ourselves completely by now…
Why is calling ourselves out like this so important? Humility. It’s all rooted in Posture’s commitment to getting the absolute best solution for the visions and goals that we are fortunate enough to be trusted with by our clients.
My mind loses sight of that, and we just need to remind ourselves every now and again that we are never pushing for the *wrong* solution, or the *easy* way out when it gets tough. We are pushing for the new, the best, the most abstract, the brightest…we’re pushing further.
We were recognized and rewarded for our take on the creative spirit of excellence in the art of advertising.
I can’t tell you how proud that makes me to say, and with just a smidge less self-consciousness this time around the bend.
Let’s Push Further.
We look forward to what this year may bring, having the opportunity to be pushing new boundaries, exploring new tech, creating new types of content and solutions for our clients…virtual reality, 360° video, Blockchain development…the sky is the limit, and I’m looking for 2018 to be a pretty rad year.
About the American Advertising Awards/ADDYs
Conducted annually by the American Advertising Federation (AAF), the local chapter is the first of a three-tier, national competition. Concurrently, all across the country, local entrants vie to win ADDY Awards – recognition as the very best in their markets.
All local Golds get automatically forwarded to the second tier where they compete against winners from other local clubs in one of 15 district competitions. District ADDY winners are then forwarded to the third tier, the national stage of the American Advertising Awards.
The ADDYs 2018 is the advertising industry’s largest and most representative competition, annually attracting more than 40,000 entries.
In It for the Long Haul – v3
Think it. Build it. Ship it. Tweak it.
So here we are, late 2017, and the first iteration of our new web presence is officially out there. To me, Posture v3 really wasn’t just another redesign. This was a vehicle to show how we’ve grown, how our team works together, how the scale and process of the work we’ve done has increased and improved, and most importantly as a vessel to convey how we help & work with our clients throughout a project cycle and the journey that follows.
We have obstacles, failures and successes throughout our projects, and feel we demonstrate admirable problem-solving skills quickly when under the gun.
We have become partners in crime with our clients. We use collaborative tools to manage our workflow alongside their internal teams. We are a resource to offer perspective and ultimately solutions when a new project arises.
We are trusted to take on complex projects and manage their digital presence, no matter the scale or requirements.
This evolution of Posture Interactive is the beginning of a much larger story we are telling. Iterative, organic…a pulsing piece of our culture you can feel if you dive in.
Our goal now is to treat this new home on the web much like a software product – we have our MVP (minimum viable product) now, the bare bones basics to be built and iterated upon.
As we release v3.1, 3.2 and so on our goals will align, we will identify improvement points with the site, how to better design for our users when we are trying to get them to complete an action, and what steps need to be taken to fix and maintain both.
Think it. Build it. Ship it. Tweak it.
I’m proud of where we are today, and we are only getting started…
_mat
