Tegan Quarterly: Spring 2023

Hey there friends!

We hope 2023 is treating you well so far. We might still be recovering from the excitement of Ted Lasso Season 3, the Dallas Stars’ playoff run, and Laura‘s emotional T-Swift rollercoaster (elation from scoring Eras tix to the devastation over the breakup news), but we’re still optimistic that the best is yet to come.

For our sixth Quarterly Review we’ll be taking you on a fun-filled journey through the Tegan-verse, featuring everything from ChatGPT to client projects, to long-awaited nuptials. We know you’re here for the hot goss but will you stay for the dad jokes? Good. Cause believe it or not, we only send this to our favorite peeps. Thanks for sticking around.

Five months into 2023 and we’ve already checked a ton of boxes on our to-do list, picked up a couple major awards, and become BFFs with a stellar bunch of new clients along the way. Our team helped launch sites on sites on sites (no exaggeration), refresh apps, and tried not to squeal when we saw our campaign billboards begin to pop up all over town. Some might say we’ve just been lucky. We’ll say that we’ve just been Tegan.

Around the office, there’s been fierce competition for Bachelor and March Madness supremacy. (Congrats Julianne and Katie, by the way). But we’ll still take Alabama’s loss as a consolation prize. (Sorry, not sorry, Laura.) Sightings of Little T the squirrel, aka the official Tegan mascot, have increased dramatically with the arrival of spring weather and lunchtime patio hangs have become our new favorite pastime. And, in case you’re wondering, we’re still going strong on a steady rotation of office dogs, so lucky for us, we always have a furry friend around.

What’s next, you ask? Well, if the first quarter is any indication, you can expect lots of new faces, fun collabs, and hopefully a few more trophies to add to the shelf. We’ve had an incredible start to 2023 and we can’t wait to see what’s next.

Cheers!

–Aaron and John

Cool things we did

Project Launches

Halff site launch

We had the best time collaborating with our friends from Spire, another Dallas-based agency, to develop a brand new website for the team at Halff. This stellar engineering and architecture firm with a people-first ethos deserved to have a digital presence that reflected their mission and values. Our team loved playing the role of assist-maker for this brand refresh.

PBK’s multi-site launch

Redesign six online platforms you say? Create a seamless, unified look and feel between each one you say? Sign. Us. Up. We aren’t ashamed to admit that we may have consumed an inordinate amount of coffee and called all hands on deck to pull it off. But we did, launching sparkling new sites for PBK Sports, BEAM Professionals, LEAF Engineers, DIG Engineers, Kubala Engineers and Edgeland landscaping, which all fall under PBK’s umbrella.

Safe Harbor Marinas’ app-date goes live

When Safe Harbor rolled out new benefits for their Members in February, they needed an updated app to show off the added perks. Our team led the way to refresh the look and feel of both iOS and Android versions of the app with new design, a custom dashboard, and cool features to improve user experience.

Safe Harbor Marinas’ Montauk Yacht Club site launch

Woohoo! Our friends at Safe Harbor are really going places, folks. Besides being the largest marina owner and operator in the world, they acquired the prestigious Montauk Yacht Club earlier this year. The resort needed to have a platform all its own, so we gladly hopped aboard to design, develop, and launch the new site.

Dallas Holocaust and Human Rights Museum’s OOH ads

Work for our multi-year “Humanity Lives Here” brand campaign, along with the Museum’s Rise Up rotating exhibition, reached all new heights. Our print and digital OOH displays sprung up in prominent positions across the city, including billboards off of I-35 and I-75. Not gonna lie—it never gets old seeing our work in the wild.

New client partnerships

Rockcap

We were psyched to officially welcome the amazing folks of Rockcap. into the Tegan fold. This all-star team is mixing it up in the world of Dallas commercial real estate in the best way possible, so naturally, we couldn’t wait to jump in with both feet. As Rockcap’s Agency of Record, our work together kicked off with a narrative refresh. Our team put together a streamlined narrative, popping new colors and fonts, and a logo that’s definitely going to turn some heads. With plenty of more collabs on the way, including a glow-up for collateral pieces, we’re loving every second spent so far.

Learn more about our new partnership here.

Beech Valley Solutions

It isn’t every day that a premier staffing and consultancy group taps you to join their team. But that’s exactly what happened with our buds at Beech Valley Solutions. Besides being gracious and good-humored about our accounting jokes, the BVS team is exceptional at connecting organizations to the top 2% of CPA and finance talent. Our first order of business is to boost the company’s web presence with creative design and content updates. From there, the sky’s the limit. Afterall, as the old formula goes, =SUM (BVS:TEGAN).

Read all about it here.

GeoMark

For over three decades, our friends at GeoMark have led the way in providing expert geochemistry research and analysis. Basically, they know more about oil, gas, and rocks, than anyone—sorry Bill Nye, even you. So, when they asked if we could help with branded collateral development, we got pretty sedimental. Our team will also handle template development so that future marketing pieces are streamlined and ready to go. We didn’t choose a hard rock life, it chose us, and we couldn’t be more grateful.

Hot industry trends

ChatGPT
It’s no secret that ChatGPT has been THE talk of the town lately. But for the blissfully unaware/tech-averse, here’s a quick refresher: ChatGPT is a revolutionary language-based technology that harnesses artificial intelligence to generate human-like text responses. It’s capable of conversation, dialogue, analysis, research, and synthesizing content in a more advanced way than ever before. And needless to say, it’s making big waves in just about every industry.

While chatbots have been around for a while, ChatGPT takes things to a whole new level with its advanced language generation capabilities. The latest iteration, GPT4, can take one look at your refrigerator and give you recommendations for meals based on the ingredients you already have. It can take the bar and the SAT (and actually score pretty high). It can write scripts and essays and poetry in the style of Edgar Allan Poe or Ted Lasso. And it can explain super complex topics in a way that an elementary aged kid could easily understand. Cool, right?

So what does ChatGPT mean for advertising and marketing? One of the key benefits of ChatGPT is its ability to generate initial ideas quickly and efficiently, freeing up time for more creative endeavors. It’s a great brainstorming partner, ideator, and information synthesizer.

In the age of social media, ChatGPT is going to be crucial. It can be used to pen personalized responses to customers in real-time, improving their overall experience and brand perception. Snapple is already using ChatGPT to generate bottle cap facts, demonstrating the technology’s potential to connect, entertain, and bring added value to the table.

But while ChatGPT is shaping up to be a powerful tool for marketers, it also poses a challenge: With more and more companies using the technology, brands will have to become even more thoughtful and creative to compete. ChatGPT has the potential to radically level the playing field with initial content development, meaning that brands will need to find new and more innovative ways to differentiate themselves.

At the end of the day, it’s important to remember that even with all its bells and whistles, ChatGPT still falls short in the human experience department. On its own, it will never be able to adequately replicate the emotional power of storytelling in advertising. Afterall, a bot can’t tell personal anecdotes or converse from unique points of view or experience. It can’t improvise beliefs, mimic delight, or decode the way it feels to watch your kid ride a bike for the first time.

For now, humaning is still up to us humans. That’s our hot take anyway and we’re sticking to it.

Agency Awards

We got the gold(s)!
We’re thrilled to announce that our team was awarded with two gold designations in both Website and Integrated Marketing categories at the 2023 MUSE Creative Awards. The winning work included the comprehensive site redesign we delivered for our incredible friends at Temple Emanu-El and our “Humanity Lives Here” brand campaign for the distinguished Dallas Holocaust and Human Rights Museum. You can find us clinking glasses (still) and making room in our trophy case for the new arrivals.

Read more about our latest wins here.

Employee updates

Love & Marriage
The string of Tegan-era weddings continues, this time with our very own Jacey Edwards becoming Jacey Thomas. Is there anything better than a stunning bride, a teary-eyed Andy, and matching post-ceremony footwear? We’re gonna say no. It’s an understatement to say that we’re over the moon for Jacey, Andy, and Bernie the honorary office pup. On deck we have Laura, who’s tying the knot with Ezra later this year. And yes, we’ll be adding “matchmaking” to our official menu of services by popular demand.

Big Moves
Ryan’s moving! But not to worry, he’s staying at Tegan forever. His and Bailey’s new house is going to be the perfect setting for making memories and welcoming a new member of the family, (drumroll, please) Baby Jarrell! Ryan is both pumped and terrified to be a girl dad, and Hudson is unsure why his parents are calling someone else “the baby” all the sudden. But we already know they’re going to do great. Our pro tip? Never underestimate the power of a handful of Goldfish and a nap to solve problems big and small. Three cheers for the parents (and brother) to-be!