From its inception, Coney Island was based on the events, places, food, and atmosphere of Coney Island in New York.
Allen Cronen and his wife recalled the memories and events of her childhood, growing up on the east coast.  Coney Island restaurants have popped up across the United States. It was their dream to bring Coney Island to the Hutchinson area. Moxie Media was hired to help create the identity of the restaurant.  Lots of time and research went into the logo design and pre-opening events. Moxie Media staff coordinated the first ever Hot Dog eating contest featuring Nathan’s famous hot dogs in conjunction with Water Carnival. Frisbees were given to everyone to build the excitement of the opening.  People in Hutchinson soon knew that something special was coming to Hutchinson, a family friendly restaurant with fantastic famous food.  A radio jingle was produced, a website was launched, the staff was outfit with colorful aprons and name tags, and the restaurant has opened. The menus were digitally printed at Moxie Media and people can order the famous food of Coney Island.  Overwhelmed by the number of people coming in, the restaurant got off to a rough start. Join their Facebook Fan page we created for them and let people know the food is really good, reasonably priced and if you had a good experience there.  I personally enjoy the cheese curds on a stick, famous from the Minnesota State Fair.

New owners for the Hutchinson Mall prompted a rebranding of their logo, website and other marketing materials.
Working with new owners Gus Wurdel and Tom Daggett, Moxie Media was hired to update the logo and create a website to showcase the tenants of the mall. The new website brings attention to the tenants with rotating photo images of each store front. Information on the website includes featured events at the mall, mall tenant contact information. The goal was accomplished to fill the mall with tenants and bring new life to it corridors.  The holiday season gave us another opportunity to spark up the graphics for signage and Holiday Shopping Cards.

A complete array of items was needed for the Rube Goldberg Machine Contest held at Minnesota State University, Mankato.
After completing the design of the logo, a direct mail campaign was designed using oversize postcards sent to high schools to encourage students to register their teams online. When students arrived at the competition, they received a t-shirt with the colorful logo imprinted on it.  To top it off, trophies were created also reflecting the logo and were awarded to the top 5 teams.  Congratulations to the winners and their creativity in building this unique machine.

If you took a survey in the community, you would get lots of different answers.

Yellow  or  Gold?

What does that mean to you?  lemon yellow, squash gold, atheltic gold, gopher gold, sibley east yellow,   gustie gold, sunshine yellow.  And does it really matter?

I think you can understand the confusion.  Color is very subjective.  The conversation came to the table as we were meeting with the Hutchinson School Superintendent. I asked the question, what is the pms color for the Hutchinson Tigers?  In my efforts to do the marketing thing and make sure that anything we do for the school district was done in the “correct” school colors, I found that the Hutchinson Tigers were Black and Gold or Yellow or….any of the variations listed above.  But everyone has their own interpretation of what color gold or yellow looks like. 

My branding and marketing sense kicked in. I thought, “Every one should be using the same color, the same way.  That is a key component in promoting corporate branding and identity.  After all, the Jolly GREEN Giant is never red. The McDonald’s GOLDEN Arches are never orange.  They are always the same color.”  But ….then I got to thinking again, to me the arches look more like yellow, not golden.  Hence the problem.  

Major companies spend millions of dollars on branding.  It costs a lot.  School districts do not have lots to spend.

Here is what does matter.

They are building a community with diverse population of students united by the school they all attend.  And you know … you would never catch a Hutch Tiger wearing Mankato West Red at a game.  But you will catch them wearing every variation of gold or yellow  possible because they are proud of their school and their athletes and students.

GO TIGERS!