THE NIELLO COMPANY
With 100 years of service in the Sacramento area, the Niello Company is the region's largest family-owned automotive group. While working at RSE, I led a majority of their creative projects, including: their bi-annual sales branding; monthly dealership promotional production work, including print and digital display production; and art direction and production of their Pre-Owned Select brand and collateral.
BI-ANNUAL SALES REBRAND
Every year, the Niello Company hosts two huge sale events, one to close out the year and celebrate their anniversary, and another to kick off spring with the “Best of Niello” sale. In 2017, the client wanted to create established design campaigns for each of the yearly sales that would be iconic to Niello.
ANNIVERSARY SALE REBRAND
The first of the sales rebrands was the Anniversary Sale. The explorations for this sale incorporated Niello’s existing brand elements and colors and introduced conceptual elements that speak to Niello’s luxury car brands and the customer base that these brands attract.
Below are a few examples of the directions I produced and presented to the client.
ART DIRECTION
DESIGN
BRAND DEVELOPMENT
CONCEPTING
PRODUCTION DESIGN
Final Direction
The final direction was an ornate art deco style that would remain silver in color until the 100th year anniversary, in which the client plans on producing the sale collateral in gold. The art deco theme provided an elevated and sophisticated approach to car sales while also giving tribute to the era in which the Niello Company began. The design direction was implemented across sale materials spanning print, outdoor, digital display, broadcast, and in-dealership signage and print materials.
BEST OF NIELLO SALE REBRAND
The Best of Niello sale was the company’s second of two bi-annual sales and after creating a long-standing branded look for the Anniversary Sale, Niello wanted to follow suit with their “Best of Niello Sale”. I took a similar approach to this sales campaign, combining Niello’s core values of automotive excellence and tapping into their clienteles’ enthusiast mentality. Producing concepts with low-fi mockups helped present the concepts clearly to the client and promoted buy in.
Below are a few examples of the directions I produced and presented to the client.
Final Direction
The client decided to move forward with the “This is Niello” direction. We worked through various trophy designs, but when the client decided that ultimately they didn’t want to move forward with the costs of producing a trophy, the team had to quickly pivot. I set to work creating a logo that encompassed the same idea, but could be made with our digital tools in-house. I turned the concept of a trophy into an emblem of a vehicle as a badge of honor.
NIELLO PRE-OWNED SELECT
The Niello Pre-Owned Select brand had been newly developed and introduced into the Niello Dealerships late 2016. As a company, Niello was beginning to explore digital advertising, such as Facebook pre-roll ads that played before a video on the platform and retargeting ads.
I was responsible for taking the existing Niello Pre-Owned Select branding and extending and developing the brand’s tone and voice beyond the in-dealership placements. I worked with our copywriter to come up with different seasonal video ideas with accompanying billboards and retargeting digital display ads. Each month, I lead the conceptualization and production of the videos, billboards, and digital display ads. Working with our in-house video team to animate the videos and production designer to help produce the display ads.
NIELLO WEEK
Each month, the agency was responsible for churning out all 12 of Niello’s dealership’s monthly digital display banners promoting their monthly special. Due to the specific and small time frame the agency would receive the monthly promotion detail in, the recurring project earned the name “Niello Week” in the agency. I led all of our creative efforts for this monthly project, which I managed and executed each month on top of the workload of other client projects.
My success in handling such a large production workload each month on top of my regular art director duties relied on my excellent organization skills and focus on quality, accuracy, and efficiency. Through this time-intensive monthly task, I honed my production expertise and organizational capabilities.
