Citrovia

What we did

Advertising
Brand Guidelines
Brand Identity
Copywriting
Marketing
Naming

When Life Hands You Lemons

During the construction of their new development Manhattan West, Brookfield Properties needed to build a large construction shed in the middle of the city. Knowing that a traditional shed could be unsightly, they wanted to create something more fun and engaging for the community.

In partnership with the creative minds at Cuttlefish, Brookfield conceived and designed a fantastical and interactive lemon garden. Impossibly large and otherworldly fruit would decorate a bright and refreshing space where New Yorkers could reconnect in a post-pandemic world.

They asked Frank to name this experience, build a brand identity system, and conceive out-of-home and guerrilla marketing campaigns that would capture and excite New Yorkers’ imaginations.

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The Challenge

Visiting a construction site isn’t high on most people’s priority list. We needed a name and identity system that would be cheerful, exciting, and intriguing.

With the world reopening, we saw an opportunity to offer New Yorkers
a refreshing change of place. We developed a strategy to expand the activation area through guerrilla marketing, social media, and traditional advertising. A big lemon takeover of the Big Apple.

Brand Strategy

Positioning

Initially conceived prior to the pandemic, Citrovia was an opportunity to connect with what you love about New York, an ode to the vitality and possibility of the city. Now it represents something different, and even more potent. It’s a sign that the city is coming back. An opportunity to re-fresh, re-charge, and re-imagine what life can be. A place to re-connect with what you love.

Coming Up Lemons

Naming

We brainstormed a wide range of names and visuals across multiple applications, looking for something that would spark joy, curiosity, and imagination. “Citrovia” ultimately won out, with its whimsical and slightly sci-fi timbre inviting New Yorkers to escape to a wondrous new world.

A Refreshing Change of Place

Brand Identity

Citrovia’s fun and fantastical brand identity taps into a desire for escapism and elicits a dash of FOMO. It promises novelty and possibility. The grass really is greener in Citrovia, and the lemons are… yellower? You get the idea.

Bold, engaging type, color, and other brand elements make up a simple and usable system for creating surreal and magical experiences in Citrovia.

Squeeze the Day!

Marketing

The lemons at Citrovia are big, but New York City is even bigger. The Out-of-Home campaign used NYC-specific applications such as taxi cab toppers, city skyline billboards, and more to tell the whole city what was growing over at Manhattan West.

Enter a Lemon State of Mind

Guerrilla Marketing

Citrovia is anything but conventional, so why would we stick to conventional marketing tactics? Our guerrilla marketing campaign employed branded bikes, postcards, and refreshing ice slushees to spread the lemon state of mind across the city and inspire New Yorkers to visit Citrovia.

Little Lemons in the Big Apple

Brand Collateral

We took our mission to “lemon-ize” the city a bit literally, developing a fun cast of distinctly New York-flavored lemon characters. In partnership with the Salvadori Center and Cuttlefish, these Citrovians helped teach children about proportions in an interactive workbook and even came to life in AR.

Give ‘em something to talk about

Social Media

No modern brand would be complete without a digital presence. We built a branding system for Citrovia that’s ripe for creating exciting and engaging posts across platforms like Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter. Share the citrus.

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