We are honored to have attended @adfedsa 2022 American Advertising Awards. Thank you to the Ad Fed San Antonio board for hosting such a well executed evening. We are proud to have a part and to share several accolades on behalf of our clients and also the talented team who dedicate their entire selves on every project.
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A tribute to our amazing crew that work so passionately behind the scenes to make our commercials stand out and our clients coming back for more. It is often the extra mile that they go, and when we bear witness to the unique talents and offerings each person provides.
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In celebration of our fearless female leaders, and day one of Women’s History Month, Geomedia attended the San Antonio Tech Bloc’s first ever Women of Tech Bloc Luncheon at one of it’s corporate sponsor’s headquarters, Rackspace.
The board of panelists included Carla Sublett, CMO, Rackspace Hosting, Cristal Glangchai, Ph.D, and Founder of VentureLab, April Downing, CFO, WP Engine and Debra Innocenti, Partner, Strasburger & Price, LLP.
The event began with a strong opening made by Ivy Taylor, Mayor of San Antonio, who described the event as “purpose driven” and “changing the stereotype”.
The message to be your true, authentic self was loud and clear. After being in the shadow of men for decades, women have a tendency to grow a tough skin, forcing them to put their femininity aside in an attempt to be taken seriously.
“You have to stand your ground. You need to know your stuff. Be vulnerable,” April Downing, CFO, WP Engine, said about being successful as a woman in tech.
Carla Sublett, CMO Rackspace Hosting, expressed that in order to connect with others on a professional level, you don’t need to act like a man to gain respect or get to the top, just be your honest self.
The Women of Tech Bloc encouraged women to nurture and lift each other up instead of tearing each other apart. Being surrounded by successful, hardworking people will help you to be the same.
“We need to develop little microcosms of women to surround ourselves with and help each other,” Debra Innocenti, Partner, Strasburger & Price, LLP.
Another important topic of the afternoon was the importance of a good mentor and being a good mentor to someone. According to Innocenti, you don’t need to have one specific mentor in your life, and the mentor(s) you end up with may not be the person you expected.
“There’s not going to be one person who’s going to satisfy all the things you’re looking for,” Innocenti said. “It needs to be a thoughtful relationship. Make an effort to talk to people of all generations.”
Being an entrepreneur or woman in business can be a challenge, especially when you’re figuring out where to start. According to Downing, the first mistake people often make is not asking whether or not what they’re trying to do is an actual business.
“Try to figure out if what you’re doing is really a business,” Downing said. “Give yourself honest criticism.”
Though many vital topics were discussed during the afternoon, the panelists collectively agreed that the most imperative factor in one’s success was following your passion and not giving up.
“We can be or do whatever we want,” Cristal Glangchai, Ph.D, and Founder of VentureLab said. “If you follow your passion success is going to follow as well.”
To see more of the event or get involved in future events with Women of Tech Bloc, visit their website at www.satechbloc.com.
The beautiful part about being a proven, full-service production company is the amount of creative freedom that our clients trust us with. We usually don’t work as just hired hands. Instead, we work with agencies and their clients in a creative partnership that allows everyone involved to draw on years of experience and imagination.
We recently had an opportunity to exercise our creative muscles with San Antonio advertising agency One-Eighty on a national broadcast and internet campaign for Valero Energy Corporation. The goal of the campaign was to showcase Valero’s great business accomplishments, along with its generous charitable side. One-Eighty and Valero (who we last teamed up with on a 2015 Alamo Bowl campaign) came to Geomedia with a basic idea: Valero is a big, successful company that makes wise business decisions, but it also positively impacts communities around the United States in many different ways.
Starting with that idea, we drew on our collective creative resources to build an innovative, compelling campaign.
“Tom Norman and Lisa Breshiers with One-Eighty had several great ideas to support the concept, so we worked alongside them to develop a vehicle that illustrated this information in a smart and creative way,” Geomedia executive producer Zach Nasits said. “We agreed that this campaign required a simple, sophisticated style that would communicate Valero’s impressive statistics and achievements without sounding self-serving.”
Initial concepts incorporated imagery that played with icons of “the head,” to illustrate Valero’s business side, and “the heart,” to convey Valero’s charitable side. This idea was a good starting point, but Tom and Lisa wanted to push the envelope by developing spots that had more emotional engagement for the viewer. They challenged us to use our skills to come up with something truly unique.
With further conceptual design and development, we finally unveiled the right vehicle for this collaborative campaign. We decided to go with elegantly simple, 2D basic graphic icons and add complexity by having them flow and evolve into each other.
To convey this idea to the client, we produced new concept boards, as well as a mix of animation tests. Some of the tests were a “safer match” to what we anticipated a large corporation like Valero might expect, while others developed into something a little more experimental.
Valero decided to move forward with the style from one of the tests – which we referred to as the PR Softsell. This style presented Valero’s story in a way that embraced artistic potential and flexibility with elegance and sophistication. The technique was welcoming, confident and could appeal to anyone – investors and the general public alike.
Aesthetically, we all agreed that we should keep the visuals and audio score as clean and straightforward as possible to keep the story we were telling front-and-center, without any distractions. Simple colors. Simple sound score. Confident and compassionate voice-over narration.
Animation Director, Jeff Stoyer, along with animation generalist Martin Jaeger, completed the visuals over the course of several weeks. Turnkey audio post-production was performed by Keith Harter Music.
Our involvement in this project reinforces what we’ve always believed: Nothing demonstrates value to clients better than the combination of experience, creativity, passion and execution. Lisa, One-Eighty’s creative/art director said it best, “Geomedia has been up for any challenge we’ve given them through the years. They always bring innovation to the table and partner with us creatively so we can deliver a project that surpasses anyone’s expectations.”
Check out both of these great spots below!
Valero Energy “Did You Know” from Geomedia on Vimeo.
Valero Energy – “Did You Know, Pt. 2” from Geomedia on Vimeo.
The response to DinoTrek VR Experience has been overwhelming! We built the app to show off the potential of Google Cardboard for iOS, and we’ve since expanded it to Android and Oculus.
In the three weeks since its release, DinoTrek VR Experience has earned a 5 star rating on the Google Play Store, a 4.5 star rating on the App Store and and 4.5 star rating on WeAreVR.
In addition to an awesome public reception, DinoTrek VR Experience has been featured in several virtual reality publications.
Apple Insider named us one of the best virtual reality apps for iPhone.
We made the Weekly Top 10 VR Downloads on RoadToVR.
VR Focus gave us a quick shout out.
We were even featured in Oculus Rift Italia. We don’t know what they said, but hopefully it was nice!
In addition to these write ups, several other content aggregators picked up our press release. It’s awesome to see how excited people are about the spread of virtual reality. We’ve just scratched the surface of this technology and we’re already plotting our next big move. If you haven’t downloaded DinoTrek VR Experience yet, try it out and see what you’re missing.
Virtual reality is already being used to treat a variety of medical conditions, but it’s not just helping patients. While the technology is still new, the applications of virtual reality in medical training are being taken seriously by medical schools and practitioners.
Surgical Training – Medical students are using virtual reality simulators to train in the basics of surgery. In addition to providing students with an introduction to the technical aspects of procedures, virtual surgery can be used to place students in high-stress situations (like a patient bleeding out) that would be impossible to replicate with real patients, better preparing them for future difficult situations.
Wayfinding – During the construction of the new University Health Systems hospital, Geomedia was tasked with recreating the entire building in a virtual reality environment. Using architectural plans, the Geomedia team was able to create a true-to-life facsimile of the hospital, complete with furniture and room numbers. UHS utilized the virtual world during employee training, so that doctors and support staff would be familiar with the layout of the building prior to having to treat patients in potentially high stress situations.
Improving Bedside Manner – Nursing students in Washington and Wyoming used the virtual world Second Life to develop their patient interaction skills. Student nurses would control a digital version of themselves and interacted with a digital patient, played by another student. Professors are able to use the simulated world to introduce scenarios that would be impractical or rare in a real world setting.
Geomedia’s production team joined up with San Antonio Solid Waste Management and Spurs player Danny Green to produce a spot encouraging the folks in San Antonio to recycle. In short, “Be Green, Like Danny.”
We did all of the copywriting, creative direction, props and set design. We shot the video with an all San Antonio crew in 5k.
We built an entirely green house set from scratch. With some help from our post production geniuses, everything from the books to the popcorn is an appropriately environmentally friendly green hue.
Copenhagen San Antonio even helped us out with some tasteful green furniture.
Back home in the offices we color graded and did all of the post production in-house. It was a true turn-key production!
The finished product will be played on the big screen at Spurs games, so next time you’re at the AT&T Center, keep an eye out and remember to Be Green, like Danny!
In a recent gig in advance of the Alamo Bowl, Valero wanted us to help them show how they provide gasoline from coast to coast. In order to do that, we had to bring Maine and California to Texas.
Lobster Imposter
When you think of Maine, you obviously think of salty sea dogs and lobster. The sea dog was easy – add a hat, add gloves and drop some “r”s and you’re set. The lobster, however, was a little trickier.
Our original idea was to work with what nature gave us and just use a real lobster. Unfortunately, in order to do that, we’d need a lobster wrangler on set to make sure we weren’t mistreating or otherwise damaging the crustacean. (No word on if we would be free to eat it after the shoot.) This seemed like more trouble than it was worth, so we decided to have a prop lobster made.
The thing about lobsters is, they’re really big. When you ask for an eight pound lobster, you may be surprised when the prop you get back is the size of a fire extinguisher. It dwarfed our salty sea dog! Strike two.
Finally we decided to ditch the practical effects and let our 3D animation and visual effects team take a crack at generating a lobster for us. We shot our sea dog holding a weighted and painted candle in his hand, so that everything would look right, and sent it to post. What came back was lifelike digital lobster that not only looked real, but moved too! Fisherman and lobster were united at last, as it should be.
Invasion of the Giant Artichoke
The artichoke, on the other hand, that bad boy was all real. It actually started as a joke. During casting, someone said it would be funny if the California representative was dressed as an artichoke. A quick google search turned up a costume designer who had made one, and we were sold.
Shipping it turned out to be pretty tricky. They don’t really make boxes designed for human-scale artichokes. When it arrived in Texas, the suit was a little dinged up. Luckily, director Murray Breit and a few handy assistants were able to repair it.
Of course, the thing was awkward to wear and a pain for our actor, so we had to call in Murray again to rig up a system to suspend the costume. His genius saved the shoot and the actor’s back.
With our actors and props in place, we shot our segments and went to work turning a set in San Antonio into two coastal vistas. Such a stunt required solid planning in the pre-production stage, on-set ingenuity during video production, and some solid time in the visual effects studio. Check out the video above to see the difference once our post production crew got their mitts on it.
P.S. If you’re looking for a 5 1/2 foot artichoke costume, we have one at a very good price.