Armstrong real estate team and lifelong friends Lyle Doucette and Shawn Webb were considering rebranding their business when they stumbled across the work of an 8-year-old artist this summer.
Aaron Lynch, 8, had drawn an image of a cartoon frog onto an 11x14 piece of cardboard and entered it into the IPE. Webb, who had made it tradition to view all the artwork with his daughter, said they both took a liking to the piece.
“It’s just so cute that you just can’t help but fall in love with it but using it for our marketing was actually Lyle’s idea,” Webb said. “So we contacted the IPE office and they contacted Aaron’s parents and they said they were interested.”
The team soon learned that Lynch had two interests: art and video games. So, they put together a video featuring him and his work and paid him with a $250 gift card to EB Games.
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Lynch had named the frog, “Flippers” — the team deemed it fitting.
“The name was kind of perfect for our business in real estate when you think about flipping a house. So ‘Flip’ became our new mascot,” Webb said. “We think the picture works because of the way it makes you feel but the character. The imperfections of it are what attracted me to it and why we like it so much so we wouldn’t want to change that.”
He said that they had discussions around professionalism and whether using the drawing in their rebranding would work. Ultimately, they decided it fit their personalities and, by proxy, their brand.
“The way we see it is if you were put off by of this cute, little smiling frog then you would probably be put off by Lyle and I as your agents,” said Webb. “For whatever reason, it just fits. Obviously, we’re going to use him as a tool to advertise ourselves, but really, it’s about us having the opportunity to promote a young guy with a passion.”
The artwork can now be spotted on promotional signs for Webb-Doucette Real Estate throughout Vernon and Armstrong.
“It’s kind of fun because it was really exciting to give a kid a chance and maybe inspire him in some way,” said Webb. “You can’t help but look at this frog and feel good. Real estate can be pretty mundane and boring but if we can promote a little bit of happy and if you can’t look at that frog and smile, you’ve got way bigger problems than we can solve with real estate.”
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