Rapunzel Creative Marketing

LYNN GREGORSKI, PRESIDENT, RAPUNZEL CREATIVE, RIDGEWOOD NJ

Rapunzel Creative is a full-service marketing agency with branding and strategy at our core. Our mission is to help companies build innovative brands, boost their market awareness, and generate sales growth. We do that by really digging into and understanding the brand to find those nuggets that inform the work we produce, and help it really stand out.

Rapunzel Creative was founded in 2011 by Lynn Gregorski after a long career in television production, cross-channel marketing, and advertising. Over the past 11 years, she’s put together a team of experienced creatives and strategists who develop award-winning campaigns and marketing assets for a range of companies and nonprofit organizations. The entire Rapunzel team are all so proud of the work we do to help organizations that are improving the lives of those they serve. Rapunzel Creative is WBENC certified and certified as a WBE by the State of NJ.

Tell us how and why you became involved in socially responsible communications, any thoughts on why design can be an especially effective tool for this goal, and, if you wish, give us an example of a project of which you are proud.

We believe it’s important to support nonprofits that make a difference in their communities and for the populations they serve. This is especially crucial the more we are all bombarded with so much messaging across all channels. Because of that, we know our designs must grab and keep the attention of consumers our nonprofit clients serve, and of the donors they rely on to fulfill their missions.

A recent project promoted the life-saving work of a nonprofit that provides free medical care to working uninsured people living at or below the poverty level. The year-end appeal that we designed personalized the organization’s work by showing real people it assisted, with photography and storytelling that helped generate powerful ROI with the organization’s highest-ever level of donations.

Another cause-related recent project was for a municipality’s environmentally related public service campaign. To educate residents on the issues and motivate them to take remedial actions meant using bold, surprising images and catchy headlines on the website, a direct mail campaign, and social media ads. Thanks to the attention-getting images and impactful messaging on the postcards and website (which guided residents through the issues and solutions), the click-through rates on the ads and website traffic for this educational initiative about local environmental concerns remained high throughout the two-month campaign. Given the analytics, residents clearly understood what was at stake in their town.

Given the confluence of events and challenges our society now faces, does this moment in time present any special opportunities, urgencies, obstacles to designing for good?

It’s vital to accentuate the positive, to convey hope and energize consumers when designing for good. Plus, clean website design with eye-catching images and smart site navigation helps overcome general information overload. We always look for opportunities to personalize the stories, use bright visuals and color palettes, and include positive calls to action. When possible, use real people to make the organization’s story relatable, inject some fun (where relevant) to engage consumers, and highlight the brighter side of the nonprofit’s work. These design elements have helped our nonprofit clients grow their communities and donor bases.

PICTURED TOP LEFT TO RIGHT (STANDING): JENNIFER KLEIN, DIRECTOR OF BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT, BRUCE TANG, DESIGN DIRECTOR, PATRICIA BOYLE, CUSTOMER SUCCESS MANAGER. ON COUCH LEFT TO RIGHT: LEAH HIGGINS, LEAD DESIGNER/DEVELOPER, LYNN GREGORSKI, FOUNDER, PRESIDENT & CREATIVE DIRECTOR ON FLOOR: CARYN STARR-GATES, STRATEGIST & LEAD COPYWRITER