This month, Renaissance opened a new business online. Sanctitees. A line of tee-shirts featuring the words of Jesus, clothing designed to provoke and intrigue, to generate conversations. Of course, this new venture may generate more conversations. Like, “I thought Renaissance was a real estate marketing & brand development firm. What are you doing making tee-shirts?”
Good question.
The answer lies in the current advertising environment, the future of marketing and quite honestly, our own values.
The current advertising environment is both a bold, new world and a vexing journey into the unknown. While some may long for the three-martini lunches, fab clothes and fat media commissions of the “Mad Men” era, those days are long gone, as agency compensation is increasingly tied to performance and outcomes. That’s actually a good thing, because delivering on performance is always a great opportunity to prove the value of good work.
The frustrating part is that right now, a lot of advertisers, private developers in particular, are sitting tight, playing wait-and-see with the economy. As an agency, we can’t afford to do that. We need to keep moving ahead. Even if that means becoming clients ourselves. So we’re making things that people want. And making sure they know how to find them.
We see this as the future of marketing.
With all the media platforms out there today including social networks, marketing over the next years will increasingly become more direct (one-to-one), and more permission-based. People want to know about the things they care about. And agencies are uniquely suited not only to promote those things, but to imagine and create them.
And Sanctitees is something we care about.
In essence, we’re wearing our faith on our sleeves. Now, some people might say faith and business are two separate things, and perhaps they are. But my faith informs my values, and I believe that clients appreciate knowing who you are — especially when they’re thinking of doing business with you.
Sanctitees is just one of our firm’s entrepreneurial ventures. We’ve also partnered with StalwartBuilt, a green-building science company and have started our own line of modern, green homes called, “Habitectur” (website under development). And, our partnership with America’s Education Guide has helped the expansion of this comprehensive guide to accredited public and private schools, colleges and universities into six new markets in Florida, Virginia and soon, California.
Faith. The environment. Education. And of course, real estate (more precisely, its exciting future). We’ve invested ourselves in these areas. And we’re moving ahead with even more to come.
They say do what you love and success will follow.
Over the past 12 years, this has always held true for Renaissance — though these last two have certainly been more challenging than the first ten. But, we believe that by branching out and creating things, by being true to who we are, we will succeed.
Be it revolution or evolution, we are continuing to “Think Forward”.