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Our good friends at Kmart approached us with the challenge: create a teen destination to enhance their share in the $216.3 billion annual teen apparel market. Partnering with Kmart we’ve created Stylesip - a unique online destination where teens can engage and interact via interactive experiences including social sharing and editorial-driven content.

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Colossal Squid Industries is proud to partner with Alberto Culver’s TRESemmé and Nexxus brands on digital planning, strategy and creative. Recently for TRESemmé the Squid had the opportunity to throw down on the complete brand site re-architecture and redesign of TRESemmé.com.

The Colossal Squid Insights and Planning group got under the hood with behavioral models, usability studies and competitive analysis to develop personalized experience paths in accessing the TRESemmé catalog of nearly 60 awesome hair care and styling products. We also developed a contextual content linkage system that collocates relevant TRESemmé marketing integrations, professional styling advice and product information. Relevant companion products magically find their way together at the proper time and place on virtually every site page.

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All Squids had a great time at Pitchfork. We saw this as an incredibly unique recruiting opportunity by bringing Colossal Squid directly to the talent in Chicago. It also allowed us to support a great cultural event in our West Loop neighborhood.  Check out pics here on Facebook.

We ran a notice in Craigslist asking interested individuals to stop by our booth with resumes or just hang out an meet some of our 45 Squids. Here are some interesting results we gathered from the event:

• We collected 70 resumes, had hundreds of meetings, and one request for fried calamari;
• Many at the event saw our logo on the Jumbotron between acts and came back with resumes the 2nd and 3rd days
• Over one hundred tweets on the #Squidfork hashtag
• Got lots of cool extras with the resumes, like a hand drawn picture of a squid
• Received a couple of new business inquiries
• Our clients and employees loved having a central hangout place
• 22 employees (half the agency) got involved volunteering at the booth and setting up and tearing down

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7/16/10 UPDATE: Follow the gang this weekend on Twitter @ #Squidfork

Chicago, IL (June 25, 2010) – Colossal Squid Industries, an independent digital creative agency, is proud to be the first digital sponsor of the Pitchfork Music Festival on July 16 – 18, 2010 in Chicago’s Union Park.

“It’s not everyday that you encounter a nimble and creative company that can tailor itself to work with the different demands of a concert event,” said Mike Reed, Director, Pitchfork Music Festival. “We’re lucky enough to have Colossal Squid, a like-minded group, right in our own backyard! As the provider for all of our wireless and hard wired internet needs we’re set to provide the attendees at the event and the webcast viewers around the world with our best.”
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A Squid landing party traversed a bunch of Great Lakes and ended up in Toronto for NXNE. You can follow some of their exploits on our Facebook page.

For the uninitiated:  North By Northeast Music, Film & Interactive Festival and Conference: 650 Bands, 50 Stages, 40 Films - June 14-20, 2010.

Now in its 16th year, North by Northeast Music Festival and Conference (NXNE) has become the Canadian festival destination for new and emerging talent—unsigned bands, indie favourites, and major-label headlining artists alike. Seen as the most anticipated summer music event in Canada, NXNE has cemented itself as an essential showcase opportunity for the best in new music.

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We sure do.

Colossal Squid Industries is proud to be the Digital Agency of Record for Kimberly-Clark’s SCOTT® Brand.

While many brands are now beginning to enter the social networking space, SCOTT® had spent the last four years cultivating an active (actually obsessive) site-dependent community that was built around user generated tips. SCOTT® saw the opportunity in the social space to augment their existing community, but did not want to lose the branded, site-adjacent place where they could interact with already plugged-in consumers.

Colossal Squid Industries redesigned and built the SCOTT® Brand site to include community built on the Jive platform for the very first time. This nimble product is architected in a way that allowed us to feature community posts and data in several places at once, turning organic peer-to peer communication into marketable headlines that “don’t come from the brand” but promote the product in a more grass roots fashion.

And it’s pretty cool too. Check it out here.

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“Two-year-olds like to be independent! Favorite words are “Mine” and “No” and “I do it!” Emotions take on a roller coaster-like quality as 2-year-olds can go from excitement to anger to laughter within a few moments. A great deal of time is spent exploring, pushing, pulling, filling, dumping, and touching.”

This is no April Fool’s Day joke.

Two years ago we began a foolish notion that we could start a new kind of agency that felt right for us. Inspired by the great history of Chicago advertising and despite the worst recession in our lifetime, we’ve engaged in two Digital AOR agreements, made some fun and noteworthy games, and helped some major brands sell more of their things.

We’ve grown from two to 40-ish digital pioneers in the West Loop who were up for trying something new. And we’ve met some seriously great clients.

So to everyone who has taken a chance on us and believed in this place, we thank you.  Now back to work.

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