Lights. Camera. Supor.
Brand, content, and product strategy for a New Jersey legend’s leap into film.
J. Supor & Sons needed help turning a collection of century-old warehouses, and red-brick offices—just a few minutes from downtown Manhattan!—and their a sixty-year-old heavy-hauling brand into the “Hollywood of the Northeast.” No small task!
Our team began with stakeholder workshops, film-industry interviews, and a site audit to find the overlap between a dozen competing visions for the campus. We followed that with a scored analysis of NYC’s level 2 sound stages and the world’s largest studio families, revealing a gap nobody was filling: A Hollywood-level, one-stop studio just minutes from Manhattan, at New Jersey prices.
We discovered Supor Studio City.
The brand architecture, content strategy, website, concierge app, and digital signage plan we defined gave Supor a way to compete with New York on the terms of the decision makers who choose a studio, not the studios themselves.
Let me show you how.
Client
J. Supor & Sons / Supor Studio
Role
Design director
Principal brand designer
Key services
Brand strategy
Product strategy
Content strategy
User & business research
Project team
Program manager
UX designers
Copywriter
Creative director
Development manager
Project budget
$60,000 to 100,000
Project timeline
Three months
Act one: Research.
Our research team explored a number of different categories—from the current state of the market and internal subject-matter experts—to get the best possible sense of where Supor Studio City is starting and where we should be headed.
The people who choose a studio aren’t the people who work in it. Interviews and a discovery workshop produced four audiences, each with its own journey: above-the-line decision makers, below-the-line crew, office tenants, and visitors.
Four audiences, four journeys. Producers wanted floor plans and a single point of contact.
Crew wanted to find their way without asking.
Tenants wanted a desk and a community.
Visitors wanted to rub shoulders and an autograph.
We also scored seven NYC level 2 sound stages on size, equipment, amenities, services, and differentiators, then studied the global studio giants for branding patterns and traps. And we looked outside film to co-working spaces, phased neighborhood developments, and art festivals for models of self-service booking, community, and reasons for visitors to return.
Two traps to avoid: brand families that blur together…
… and film-reel iconography that’s already obsolete.
Seven local competitors, one gap. Nobody offered stages, backlot, shops, offices, lodging, and dining on a single campus.
Act two: Messaging & a brand system.
The strategy came down to a single sentence: Supor Studio City is the only Hollywood-level facility in the region combining large-scale stages, a massive backlot, on-site shops and residences, and education and technology partnerships. And we were just as clear about what it wasn't: a level 2 studio, a new player, or a distant location.
Identifying all the services and facilities—as they mattered to the different user segments …
… helped us see where some were universal, while others were facility centric.
Which helped an organization focus on the repurposing of valuable real estate …
… see the difference between the studio and the city.
With a campus that would grow to include a co-working space, sound stages, a restaurant, a hotel, and a trade school, one look for everything wouldn’t work. We designed a brand architecture with Supor Studios as the parent, Supor Studio City as the flagship, and distinct sub-brands for each destination. Tenants would assign each building an identity whether we did or not. So we decided to lead that conversation.
One parent brand, one flagship campus, and room to add Supor Studio Kearney. Or London.
We also recommended requiring the Supor mark in the end credits of every production shot on site.
The Vault, the century-old red-brick co-working complex. The mark honors its submarine-pump manufacturinghistory
Jersey’s Finest, the sound stage brand, built for hand lettering on the sides of the buildings. It also isn’t trademarked, if you can believe it.
Above the Line, a restaurant and event space styled after movie-poster credits.
The High Lot, a future hotel where each floor is dressed as a different set, making it a fourth filming space.
Act three: Strategy & tactics beyond the brand.
Research said decisions are made on information, so we designed the digital ecosystem around the customer's journey rather than the org chart. A single website would put stage specs, measured floor plans, availability, and transit details up front, launching in phases as buildings came online. A concierge app would bring the self-service expectations of modern co-working into filmmaking. Interactive signage would handle wayfinding, VIP welcomes, and live stage status on campus.
Our website’s objectives are many: to showcase those services and facilities ready and available, to promote upcoming developments and generate interest in them, and to constantly reinforce our unique position as the “Hollywood of the Northeast.”
Leveraging a variety of commercial and custom technology solutions, we’ll build a best-in-class concierge app for our customers and tenants, giving them access to all of Supor Studios' services at the touch of a button.
And as we branch into higher education with our trade school, we’ll have another opportunity to show off what makes Supor Studios “Jersey’s Finest.”
