Stone Opens the Window to Art

Marketing calls for creative and inventive thinking, new ways of gaining visibility and interest. But the world tires quickly of gimmicks and cleverness, and hungers for real experience and connection.

We see that everywhere in real estate marketing, so we’ve turned our full attention to ways our clients can connect with their communities to create more engaging user experiences with tenants, employees, consumer and others.

That’s how we approached our assignment to help Stone Real Estate promote vacant retail space in commercial properties they represent in the downtown Chicago market.

We saw those darkened retail windows as potential media space. Rather than designing traditional leasing banners, we envisioned putting that space to use for a worthy cause, something that would also display well and bring vibrancy and interest to the buildings and the streets they face.

We approached Arts of Life to see if they would allow us to reproduce and display the art of some of their members. Arts of Life is an artist community that champions the growth and support of adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities. These are passionate artists who want to use their creative skills to be part of society, make productive contributions, express their views of the world and learn to become practicing artists.

That’s how the partnership began. Now reproductions of works by Arts of Life artists are on display in the retail windows of the Wrigley Building, the Railway Exchange Building, and on the southeast corner of Randolph and Peoria, with more planned for vacant retail windows around the city. Calls are coming in and some of the originals have been sold as a direct result.

With Stone Real Estate's help, many high-visibility retail windows downtown are now a medium for raising awareness, promoting yet undiscovered talented artists and creating a very different value - connection to the community. And Stone sees an opportunity to continue promoting their connection to Arts of Life as a way to further distinguish their firm.