The Green City Challenge approached Red Rooster Group to promote an eco-conscious race in which competitors undertake tasks at green destinations around New York City, finishing at Battery Park for a green festival. Our design of the logo and sponsorship sheets established credibility for the event and attracted corporate sponsors including Xerox and Veridian within 3 weeks.

Logo

Typically logos are abstract, but abstract logos take a long time to build recognition for the organization. Since we didn’t have the luxury, we created a pictorial logo using only type to convey the upbeat nature of the race. The words Green City are depicted as a city, and the word Challenge suggests the movement of the participants through the city.

Message

To quickly attract the attention of sponsors, we organized and presented the information on the sheets to be very accessible – headlines clearly state the purpose of each sheet (soliciting sponsorship and destination venues for the event), and a chart of the sponsorship levels describe the benefits. The key to secret in selling the sponsorships is in presenting it as an advertising and marketing opportunity for the sponsor. Corporations are interested in reaching more people that would be interested in their products or services, and so the event was presented as an effective means to do that in a unique way. The association with the the organization as a nonprofit was presented as a secondary benefit.

Design

To visualize the nature of the event and the sponsorship opportunities, we used icons to highlight the event’s three tracks – Live Green, Work Green, Eat Green, with a listing of the types of businesses related to each. To give the event a specific look, we used a limited color palette to establish recognition for the event. The resulting sheets distinguish the event in the ever-growing “green space” in what will be the first of an annual event.

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