We’re in the final stages of completing our business card designs. We’ve really been wrestling with finding the perfect design. We want our cards and all of our identity collateral to be simple and professional, but not boring. Production value is really important to everyone at DaviesMoore, so we want to practice what we preach to our clients. Really, this video we found on YouTube explains what we’re going through.




We do need our business cards. We’ve got a lot of things cooking and we are all hoping to wrap this thing up soon. But we need to remember that, according to this guy, perfection can’t be rushed. So, hopefully we’ll have something brilliant to show you in about 25 years.

By Michael Reagan

All this talk about the abundance of experience we have at DaviesMoore is really starting to show. Every day at work, I am impressed by my co-workers whose unique skill sets and perspectives are really making work fun and interesting. It seems all of the design and copywriting coming out of DaviesMoore is being done with more confidence, precision and collaboration.

We have been fortunate enough to have a ton of logo and branding work lately — the holy grail of graphic design. Whether we’re continuing to develop our own brand as a Boise advertising agency or doing new logos for several of our clients in Idaho and one in Louisiana, it’s been so cool to watch everyone work together to develop some of our most creative logos ever. 

What’s not so cool is the sign of experience that’s growing above my left temple. Yep, one single, long, course gray hair.

Oh well, I guess my first gray hair means I’m getting smarter. I wish my growing waistline was a symbol of something cool.

Walls painted: check.
Databases, servers and systems in place: check
Boxes unpacked: check
E-mail and phones set up: check
Focused on doing great marketing and advertising, not on moving: check

Finally. The dust has settled. We’re finding our groove. It’s been a lot of fun getting to know one another — and more importantly — working with each other. While so much has changed, it’s reassuring (for both the MMG and Davies Rourke folks) to know that we have a lot in common.

Not only is everyone committed to doing great advertising, we are discovering just what a diverse combination of talent and experience DaviesMoore now possesses. Most importantly, it’s still a great place to work. We’re still the laid back and relaxed people you used to know. And that’s what makes DaviesMoore a real Boise advertising agency. In other words, we’re authentic. We’re true to who we are and where we want to go. Yes, we’re professional. Sure, we’re organized. Of course, we’re creative. But what makes us an authentic Idaho ad agency is the fact that we’re honest, fair and relationship driven … not like them slick big city folk.

We’re about substance and style. We’re about building an impressive portfolio and creating advertising, branding and public relations campaigns that deliver impressive results for our clients here in Boise, around the state of Idaho, the Northwest and the nation.

As kids growing up, many of us at DaviesMoore saw life like a television show or a movie.

Early in our first brainstorm, someone threw out “sexy” as a joke to describe the new agency. After the laughter quieted, something about it resonated (we have no idea why). Later, during the strategic phase, we identified a goal to be bold. And part of being bold is taking risks.

We knew we wanted to do something totally different than either MMG or Davies Rourke had done before. We wanted to pay homage to the classic, quintessential ad agency since our agency dates back to the early 1950s, but do it with a contemporary twist.

During the creative direction phase, we got really excited when someone mentioned the television series, Mad Men, as a source of inspiration. Using images from other popular television shows, we let the inspiration of the archetype ad agency craft the spirit of our photo shoot, as well as the art direction of the site. We each portrayed the character of our position at DaviesMoore as if we were in a television drama—paying homage to the ideal of a modern, yet classic ad agency that is a bit, well, sexy (don’t laugh!).

Yes, we may seem a little moody with our bright key lights and warm colors, but we believe this art direction will help set us apart from the previous agencies that MMG and Davies Rourke were before. Sure, posing like rock stars is a little risky, but so is launching a new brand. And who doesn’t like to feel sexy?

The DaviesMoore Creative Team (top: Michael Reagan, Ernie Monroe bottom: Jason Sievers, Aaron Grable)

The DaviesMoore Media Department (left to right: Nikki Reynolds, Leo Morgan, Brooke Smith)

The DaviesMoore Account Team (top: Tyler LaDouceur, Jory Sutton bottom: Edward Moore, Jeff Nielsen, Carolyn Sali)

The DaviesMoore Finance Team (Roger Finch, Vicki Ward)

Taking these photos was a lot of fun. Getting everyone together to hang out in the dark was yet another great bonding exercise, and we’re pleased with how these images turned out. Congratulations to Jory for his time and talent to make the photo shoot a success.

Also, we’d like to especially thank the folks at c308 for all of their hard work to make our website sing. Thanks to On The 45 for their assistance with ux and search engine optimization. Thanks to Brian Harrison of Idahoadagencies.com and our followers on Twitter for playing along.

This has been fun … and the fun is just starting!

Getting everyone at Davies Rourke and MMG together for the first time was a lot like a first date. We were all a little nervous and had lots of questions about the logistics of combining two companies. As we went around the table and introduced ourselves, we laughed and we learned about each other as individuals and the future of our agency. The more we understood, the more excited we became. We left that first meeting thinking, “This is going to work.”

Rather than jumping into the fun stuff like naming and logo design, first we took a step back. We developed a creative brief, just like we always do. We find that sometimes agencies forget this step because they know their business so well. We wanted to make sure that our new brand was rooted in the right strategy.

Our next challenge was to come up with a name for our new entity. Our solution was to leverage the equity in the name Davies – Ken Davies was Idaho’s original ad man – and combine it with the name Moore, as in our president and fearless leader, Edward Moore. We had tossed around other ideas before someone suggested DaviesMoore and when we heard it, it just felt like the right name because it perfectly communicates the idea of old and new. Once the name had been decided the next step was to come up with a logo and start making some decisions about the look and feel of our new company.

It was a truly collaborative process as the creatives at MMG and Davies Rourke sketched, brainstormed and explored visual solutions for our identity. As a group, we decided which ideas to throw out and which to continue to develop. In the end we had a couple of logo options that bore the fingerprints of the entire design team and we gathered the larger group to make the final decision. It wasn’t easy, but when the dust settled an early version of the logo you see on this page was decided upon.