Sametz Blackstone Associates launches twelve client Web sites.
Sametz Blackstone Associates launches twelve new client Web sites. Compelling, engaging sites build awareness, comprehension, and brand—increasing connection and nurturing relationships for organizations of all shapes and sizes.
Boston, MA, November 29, 2007—Sametz Blackstone Associates, a leading Boston brand-focused communications practice, has recently launched Web sites for a diverse range of organizations including League of American Orchestras, Harvard NeuroDiscovery Center, Cabot Research, Harvard Museum of Natural History, Boston Center for the Arts, Harvard University Library, Dana Hall School, the Autism Consortium and Schepens Eye Research Institute. Each site advances the strategic goals of the organization, helps to build and advance relationships with key constituent groups, and deploys language, imagery, and technology to achieve tactical results. Most sites are part of larger, integrated communications programs; all of the sites are built on content management systems (CMS) that provide organizations the ability to easily maintain their own sites.
League of American Orchestras
Over the past three years, the (then-named) American Symphony Orchestra League engaged in an intensive planning process that resulted in a new strategic direction—a plan to both transform the organization and to significantly improve how the League could help orchestras meet the challenges of the 21st century.
Sametz Blackstone collaborated with the League to help realize their bold new plans. The new Web site is part of a comprehensive re-branding and re-naming project—a communication initiative to re-invigorate the League and to help it to better connect with the many constituencies whose engagement with the League is critical for its ongoing success. The new site demonstrates (rather than talks about) the League's meaning and value and makes clear that the new League will be an expanded source of learning and leadership development; an even more effective advocate for orchestras before government bodies; a center for meaningful knowledge; and a powerful engine for innovation and R&D—to help orchestras realize today's opportunities and meet tomorrow's challenges. While very deep, the site is easy to navigate and helps a very diverse set of visitors get quickly to what is meaningful to them. Because of its robust content management system, the site both streamlines content generation and makes it easy for staff to keep its important new communication tool up-to-date, relevant, and valuable.
Harvard NeuroDiscovery Center
The Harvard NeuroDiscovery Center is a pioneering biomedical research collaboration focused on ending suffering from neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, multiple sclerosis, ALS, and Huntington's. By drawing on the intellectual strength and proven capability of the Harvard medical community, the Center accelerates the pace of discovery and its translation to prevention and treatment.
Part of an integrated re-branding (and re-naming) project, the primary goal of the Harvard NeuroDiscovery Center Web site is to support philanthropic fundraising. By compellingly communicating the Center's vision, its novel structure, and its pragmatic approach to solving the problems of neurodegenerative disease, the site aims to attract major donors who value a systems approach to striking at the heart of diseases. Secondarily, the site provides resources and background information for its research membership.
www.neurodiscovery.harvard.edu
Autism Consortium
The Autism Consortium is an innovative collaboration of scientific and clinical leaders working with families to change the research paradigm and accelerate the search for answers to one of the great medical challenges of our time. The Consortium was founded in 2006 by a visionary group of scientists and philanthropists in Boston who recognized that the problem of autism was too great to solve piecemeal, too urgent to address incrementally. The Consortium's exceptional membership includes the Broad Institute, Children's Hospital, Harvard Medical School and Harvard University, Massachusetts General Hospital, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Part of a comprehensive brand communications strategy developed by Sametz Blackstone, the Consortium Web site is central to advancing the Consortium's mission. The site engages families with autistic children; philanthropists searching for significant giving opportunities; and scientists, clinicians, and other caregivers eager to collaborate and share discoveries. The connection benefits each constituency. For example, families who may be afraid of participating in clinical research (or unable to find a way in) can learn about cutting-edge research projects and are invited to participate. This, in turn, helps researchers to reach more families to grow and diversify their data.
Cabot Research
Observing a significant gap between potential and practice, Cabot Research was formed in 2004 to deliver the benefits of applied behavioral finance to equity portfolio management.
Much has been written over the years about the potential of behavioral finance, but its promise has been largely unrealized. As a start-up company striving to carve out a new market space, it was important that the Cabot Web site provide the appropriate face of the company, support its position in the marketplace as an applied behavioral finance company, educate visitors about what that means, and promote its flagship offering: Impact analytic software. Rotating case study abstracts on the homepage provides visitors with instant insight into real-life benefits of Cabot's offerings, and the use of pop-up definitions educates visitors–in real time–about important terms like alpha, p-value, behavioral shifts, and other concepts that may not be familiar.
Harvard Museum of Natural History
Through exhibits, experts, and exchanges, the Harvard Museum of Natural History presents the beauty and complexity of our natural world, from its geological makeup to the plants and animals that have evolved over millions of years. Showcasing the intellectual treasures collected by Harvard scientists over 150 years, the Museum invites visitors of all ages to explore, look closer, and dig deeper.
The new Web site, part of a complete re-branding program, presents a rich array of timely, relevant exhibits and events to a broad audience. It positions the Museum as a major New England cultural, historic, educational, and scientific asset and encourages membership and philanthropic support. The open-source content management system (CMS) on which the site is built streamlines and distributes internal communication tasks. The site includes a dynamic calendar and an animated exhibit map.
Boston Center for the Arts
The Boston Center for the Arts (BCA) is a non-profit visual and performing arts complex located in Boston's South End. The BCA is a creative home for artists, an arts destination for audiences of all ages, and a vital arts and educational resource for urban youth.
The new Web site is part of a comprehensive branding and communication program that is increasing visibility for the BCA, bolstering earned and contributed income, building participation in programs and events, and continuing an active transformation of this 35-year-old institution. The new site lets visitors connect to the BCA in whatever way makes sense to them: by artistic discipline, by event, by program, or even by day of the week. There's an interactive map that walks visitors around the four-acre campus. The technological underpinnings of the site allow it to be easily maintained and updated by non-technical staff.
Corporate Design Foundation
Corporate Design Foundation, a non-profit education and research organization, was founded on the belief that design can make a major contribution both to an individual's quality of life and to a corporation's success. Further, that both individual and organizational interests can be served through the effective use of design: product design, architecture, and communication design.
Sametz Blackstone has worked with the Foundation for many years and recently collaborated to plan, design, and launch a new Web site that lives the mission of the organization. The site helps the Foundation connect to current and future business leaders and business school faculty; develop collaborations between design and business schools; conduct research; act as design's advocate; promote its signature publication, @issue; and conduct conferences and workshops.
Harvard University Library: online annual report
The Harvard University Library system is comprised of more than eighty libraries. Over the last six years, Sametz Blackstone has been working with Harvard to unify the print and online communications of this complex system—connecting, among other areas, digital acquisitions and collections, information technology, high-density storage, and preservation.
Most recently, Sametz Blackstone collaborated to launch the Library's first online annual report. It, like all the other online efforts, is configured to allow Harvard staff to easily use templates to create and update pieces month-to-month and year-to-year. The printed version of the annual will no longer exist as the Library takes its first step towards paper-free communications.
http://publications.hul.harvard.edu/ar0506/
Dana Hall School
Dana Hall School is a community dedicated to developing creative, capable, and courageous young women prepared for the challenges and opportunities they will face as adults and world citizens. Dana Hall students grow, mature, and begin to realize their potential through a rigorous and robust educational experience set in a strongly supportive environment that encourages exploration, growth, leadership, and collaboration.
The redeveloped Dana Hall Web site is part of a strategic cross-campus branding and communication program that aims to build and strengthen relationships with all constituencies important to the School: students and prospective students and their parents, alumnae, trustees, donors, and prospective donors. "Fit" is a crucial aspect of choosing an independent school, especially for girls who might board. The Web site features first-person stories that demonstrate the range of experiences and opportunities available to students—stories told in language that's personable and direct, from credible peers and engaged faculty. A special DanaPix feature displays photos taken by students. Since we knew from research that visits to the campus have a positive effect on both students and alumnae, the new site endeavors through its language, imagery, and behavior to create a sense of "being there" and to encourage each prospective student to "see myself at Dana." There are also dedicated extranet sites for parents and alumnae through which they can connect to each other and gain access to additional information.
Schepens Eye Research Institute
Schepens Eye Research Institute is the largest independent eye research institute in the nation and an affiliate of Harvard Medical School. The Institute fights blindness by developing new technologies, therapies, and knowledge to retain and restore vision. Through a continuum of discovery, the Institute works toward a future in which blindness is prevented, alleviated, and, ultimately, cured.
The redeveloped Schepens Eye Research Institute Web site is designed to raise the Institute's public profile, support scientific outreach and recruiting, and to increase fundraising from individual and organizational philanthropists. Through discussions about eye disease and injury, previews of current research work, and overviews of the Institute's current activities and priorities, the site demonstrates the Institute's intellectual heft, and invites the participation of many kinds of people. There are many "ways in" to the site. And because many of the viewers of the site have impaired vision, the site is designed specifically with these visitors in mind and is built to the standards in Section 508 of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).
Boston College Center for Retirement Research
The Boston College Center for Retirement Research promotes research on retirement issues, transmits new findings to the policy community and the public, helps train new scholars, and broadens access to valuable data resources.
The goal of the new Web site was to elevate key content (the Center's many research publications, papers, and briefs) so that it is more easily available to researchers, educators, policy makers, and the general public. The new site features a customized search function to help researchers find what they're looking for more quickly: visitors are able to search and sort by paper type (briefs vs. longer working papers) as well as by topics such as social security, pensions, international issues, and more. It was also important that the Center's staff be able to easily update and manage the ever-growing array of publications. Visually, the site adhered to Boston College's identity while also communicating (through imagery) that the topic of retirement is relevant to all of us, not just those nearing retirement age or already retired.
Wellesley Centers for Women
The Wellesley Centers for Women brings together an interdisciplinary community of scholars engaged in research, training, analysis, and action. For over thirty years the organization has conducted studies on issues such as gender equity in education, sexual harassment in schools, child care, adolescent development, gender violence, and women's leadership—studies that have influenced both private practices and public policy.
Sametz Blackstone was charged with the goal of managing and organizing a huge amount of information into a cohesive and accessible site. The site markedly increases a visitor's experience by connecting people, publications, projects, topics, and events. It also succeeds in building awareness and comprehension for the Centers.
About Sametz Blackstone Associates
Sametz Blackstone Associates provides strategic communications counsel to leading corporate, academic and cultural organizations. A twenty-eight year-old global practice located in Boston’s historic South End, Sametz Blackstone integrates brand-focused strategy, message development, design, and technology to develop and produce compelling communication programs that help evolving organizations navigate change. Clients include centenarians and start-ups: Boston Symphony Orchestra, Boston Ballet, Boston Center for the Arts, MIT Sloan School of Management, Mass Audubon, McGovern Institute for Brain Research, Schepens Eye Research Institute, Raytheon, Goodwin Procter, Harvard University, Yale University, Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research, WGBH, and one of the world’s largest management consulting firms. For additional information visit: www.sametz.com.
###