Granite Hill Estates

It’s About Life, Not Lifestyle

After meeting the residents, we agreed to take Granite Hill Estates — a retirement community in Hallowell, Maine — as a client on one condition: We wanted promote life and living, not lifestyle. Because so much of the senior marketing we’d seen seemed to focus on leisure, rather than on living, we wanted to take a different tack. And given the zest for living the residents demonstrated, their physical and intellectual vitality, we knew they deserved better. So did Granite Hill.

Granite Hill Estates Identity: Before and After

We created brand conventions and used colors that were vibrant and engaging. We evoked the serenity of the campus while reflecting the energy of the residents. And we interviewed the residents to create content that was persuasively genuine to prospects.

From the first moment of their first visit, everyone from OCG was focused on treating our community with respect and our residents with dignity. Their sincerity showed in the work they did for us. As a result, our occupancy rates went up and stayed up.

Jennifer Fleck

Executive Director

The Problem

Communications for continuing care retirement communities (CCRCs) like Granite Hill typically tout lifestyle to obscure the fact that their services include everything from independence to end-of-life.

The Resolution

Create communications that celebrate the full lives lived and the lifelong learning pursued by the residents of Granite Hill. In so doing, attract prospective residents, as well as the family members who have their best interests at heart.

The Problem

Communications for continuing care retirement communities (CCRCs) like Granite Hill typically tout lifestyle to obscure the fact that their services include everything from independence to end-of-life.

The Resolution

Create communications that celebrate the full lives lived and the lifelong learning pursued by the residents of Granite Hill. In so doing, attract prospective residents, as well as the family members who have their best interests at heart.

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Emails

Identity

The original Granite Hill mark had been created to suggest a retirement community. We wanted it to reflect a living community. So, we gave it a bold type treatment to suggest energy and rendered it in a shade of green that suggested tranquility.

Web

We created a simple, vertical navigation structure for the new Granite Hill site. And we used imagery that reflected the active nature of the community, the resident’s abundant gardens, and the scenic beauty of the 135-acre campus.

Postcards

Since direct mail is proven to be effective in reaching the target demographic for Granite Hill (people aged 62 and older), we created a series of postcards that promoted the advantages of living in the community, as well as the prolific series of events conducted on campus.

Inserts

Like direct mail, Granite Hill’s target demographic group also was a regular consumer of newspapers. So, we created a series of full-color, 8½’ x 11” inserts and had them stuffed into Sunday editions of regional newspapers to take advantage of that day’s increased readership.

Radio

To reach the adult children of prospective residents for Granite Hill, we wrote a series of 15-, 30-, and 60-second radio spots. We scheduled those spots to run during morning and afternoon drive-time hours, in which the members of the target audience were most likely to be listening.

Emails

To supplement our postcards and the newspaper inserts, we created a series of graphic emails that enabled us to reach prospective residents, as well as their adult children, from the lists generated by the website.

Identity

The original Granite Hill mark had been created to suggest a retirement community. We wanted it to reflect a living community. So, we gave it a bold type treatment to suggest energy and rendered it in a shade of green that suggested tranquility.

Web

We created a simple, vertical navigation structure for the new Granite Hill site. And we used imagery that reflected the active nature of the community, the resident’s abundant gardens, and the scenic beauty of the 135-acre campus.

Postcards

Since direct mail is proven to be effective in reaching the target demographic for Granite Hill (people aged 62 and older), we created a series of postcards that promoted the advantages of living in the community, as well as the prolific series of events conducted on campus.

Inserts

Like direct mail, Granite Hill’s target demographic group also was a regular consumer of newspapers. So, we created a series of full-color, 8½’ x 11” inserts and had them stuffed into Sunday editions of regional newspapers to take advantage of that day’s increased readership.

Radio

To reach the adult children of prospective residents for Granite Hill, we wrote a series of 15-, 30- and 60-second radio spots. We scheduled those spots to run during morning and afternoon drive-time hours, in which the members of the target audience were most likely to be listening.

Emails

To supplement our postcards and the newspaper inserts, we created a series of graphic emails that enabled us to reach prospective residents, as well as their adult children, from the lists generated by the website.

Next Steps

If you’d like your brand to reflect the vitality of the people it represents, please contact us today.

We give new life to every brand.