Samuel Mockbee, the “Citizen Architect”

Visit the Samuel Mockbee site.
Visit the Citizen Architect site.

Challenge:

Great Southern Wood has partnered for years with Auburn University’s Rural Studio, providing YellaWood® materials to student architects building beautiful, innovative structures in impoverished communities.

Anticipating GSW’s sponsorship of a film about the Rural Studio and its legendary cofounder, Samuel “Sambo” Mockbee, Armchair set out to design two websites. The first would promote the Citizen Architect film, and the other would honor Mockbee and his legacy.

Solution:

We were inspired to build the sites in the same way the Rural Studio builds homes—by using existing materials. We took publishing platforms like Flickr, WordPress, and Vimeo and exploited them to create a beautiful and cohesive platform on which people could discover Mockbee and his work.

The sites are architectural in form, stripped down in design, and subdued in tone—echoing both the beauty and humanity of Mockbee’s Rural Studio.

Results:

Armchair considered the sites a success before they even launched, when Mockbee’s family responded with pleasure and pride.

The websites are also an example of how Armchair delights to work: as brand stewards developing relationships of trust over time, rather than innovators-for-hire.

Through collaboration with Great Southern Wood and the Mockbee family, we were able to tell Sambo’s story in a manner that was delicate, respectful, and deserving of his contribution.

YellaWood, Y’all

Visit the site.

Challenge:

YellaWood® has been an industry leader in pressure-treated pine for 40 years.

After working with Armchair on other projects, they asked us to extend their television campaign—the YellaFella ads—to the web.

How could they take their brand further? And how could they translate increasing brand recognition into sales?

Solution:

Armchair designed a website to host the YellaFella videos as well as the interactive YellaFella games that Armchair created.

The star of the site was one of our games: a fun, visually rich, “work-safe opportunity to slap a Cowboy.”

The game also acted as an indispensable tool that tracked site usage and provided tangible statistics such as how many times the bad guy was slapped.

After securing YellaWood®’s brand recognition on the web, Armchair translated it into sales by equipping the site with a tool to help visitors locate YellaWood® products in their area.

Armchair created a way for fans to interact with the world of YellaFella, translated user engagement into sales, and enabled YellaWood® to measure their success.

Results:

Upon its launch, Yellafella.com quickly went viral across social networks like Facebook, where it has an affectionate fan base.

The bad guy in the game has been slapped over 8 million times, visits to the site have increased 200%, and enrollment in YellaWood®’s email list has grown 4000%…

And counting.