Strut is very excited to announce that we have been named agency-of-record for Heritage Park, one of Calgary’s premier destinations.

In her congratulatory message to Strut, Sandra Kam, Manager, Marketing and Special Events, stated, “...your team at Strut Creative, knocked our socks off with your strategy, thought provoking presentation and honesty. Heritage Park Historical Village is excited at the possibilities of strategically what we might achieve by working by with Strut.”

We can’t wait to get started and be able to share our ideas as we work with the team at Heritage Park to achieve their objectives. Here’s to the start of a long, rewarding relationship for many years to come.

Though we were very excited to release the initial HomingDevice app for iPhone, launching just as iOS 4 was released created a few unforeseen issues. Version 1.2 fixes a few bugs which previously prevented iOS 4 users from fully experiencing the same interaction with the app’s rich content as iOS 3 users.

Don’t have it yet? Download HomingDevice for free at the Apple App Store and revolutionize your home buying experience.

And yes, there will be support for other smartphones in the future.

Sadly, one of the longest-serving, hardest-working members of the Strut team is no longer with us.

Joining Strut just over a decade ago and (almost) always willing to start early, work late and even churn away on weekends to get a last-minute presentation out the door, our beloved HP 8550 colour printer has moved on to peripheral heaven. 

The cold-hearted and practical people we are, we replaced her with a shiny new colour printer before the motherboards even had a chance to cool off,... a printer that is faster, better, a little smaller and a lot less expensive than what we paid those many years ago.

Rest in peace our toner-eating friend, rest in peace.

With the number of hours we spend sitting at our desks, we figured it was about time to retire our conglomeration of mismatched office chairs. Taking advantage of a well-timed promotion, we bestowed upon our butts, fabulous Embody chairs by Herman Miller.

More than just stylish and good-looking, these sculptural chairs can be fine-tuned to fit every body at Strut from the smallest to the tallest and everyone in between; providing much-needed lumbar, leg, arm and neck support. Developed specifically for computer users, these chairs are also designed to keep your brain limber as well --improving blood circulation which means more oxygen to the brain and (hopefully) better ideas for our clients.

Beyond that, Embody chairs are also rather environmentally-friendly. Using less material than an average office chair the Embody chairs are made from 42% recycled material and are 95% recyclable.

However, with an amazing 12-year warranty, we don’t expect to be recycling our Embody chairs in the near future.

It all started with a brainstorming session with a potential new client. At the end of the meeting a small, puffy, blue cloud floated amongst a whiteboard wall jammed full of scribbles, sketches and diagrams -- many connected back-and-forth to the cloud by a series of energetic arrows.

That cloud was an unformed nugget of an idea that arose during a 4-hour discussion of sales cycles, decision-making processes and the evolution of how people interact with information. That cloud was the idea for a smartphone app.

For Heartland and Hawthorne Homes, it was exactly the type of forward-thinking they were looking for and an idea they could see revolutionizing the way they interact with new home buyers throughout the traditional buying process.

The project was kicked off in March with Strut working closely with Heartland and Hawthorne to map out the HomingDevice™ tool and ensure it was a valuable part of the home buying process and not just an app for app’s sake.

The free app allows home shoppers to create a profile for each home they visit, take photos using their phone and add comments for each room as they walk through. Users can rate each room and add homes to a “favourites” list. The app saves all the information and the buyer is then able to sort the homes using various criteria including price, area, size and ratings. HomingDevice also features integrated Google Maps to make it easy to locate presentation centres and show homes.

Taking advantage of the user database generated once a profile has been created, Strut will seamlessly integrate users’ information with an upcoming, revamped builder web site and another “top-secret” application for presentation centres, so that they have access to the information they have gathered on each home, no matter where they access their profile from.

The HomingDevice app comes preloaded with information on Heartland and Hawthorne homes, but users can manually add all the same information for any home they are considering, whether it be a new home from another builder, or a pre-owned home.

Available now for iPhone in the App Store, HomingDevice will soon be released for BlackBerry and Android.

Strut is currently in the early development stages of our second smartphone app that will definitely be a game-changer in another totally unrelated sector.