Occupy Peace launches a ‘historic’ global peace rally with a grass-roots touch

Creative Circle Media Solutions donates time to launch website with simple, polished design and produce posters, t-shirts and other marketing material

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Imagine a global peace movement that combines the best of grass-roots branding with polished, professional design.

That’s exactly what happened with Occupy Peace, when Trends Research Institute turned to Creative Circle Media Solutions for a website that would capture the heart of the movement.

Trends Journal publisher and renowned forecaster Gerald Celente envisioned Occupy Peace on Sept. 20, 2015, as the start of something big – something no one has done before. The concept was simple: We are quick to go to war, but not quick to choose peace.

“This is going to be the most historic peace movement this country has ever seen,” Celente told the nearly 800 people who gathered for the rally in Kingston, N.Y., the headquarters of Trends Research Institute, which is called “the most historic intersection in the country.”

In the week since the event, more than 500 additional people have joined the movement, boosting the online community to more than 10,000, said Trends Research Institute chief executive officer Derek Osenenko.

Creative Circle handled branding, signage, t-shirts and built the web site to showcase the five tenets of Occupy Peace:

      Close foreign bases, bring troops home.

      Secure the Homeland

      Military Works-Project: Troops rebuild America

      Congress must vote to go to War

      We the People will tell Congress how to vote.

“We thought it was important to support this cause,” said Creative Circle president and founder Bill Ostendorf. “How can you argue against peace?” The event and the website provide a playbook for anyone to advocate for peace.

And that’s just what keynoter and consumer advocate Ralph Nader said to the crowd. “It’s easier than you think to change the government.” The lineup also featured Buddhist teacher Robert Thurman, nutritionist and alternative health advocate Gary Null and Cindy Sheehan, whose son was killed in the Iraq war and who grabbed national headlines with her makeshift encampment outside then-President George W. Bush’s Texas home.

“We birthed a movement that all agree stands by itself for vision and tactical wisdom,” Osenenko said.

“None of our efforts to so successfully launch this mission was possible without (Creative Circle’s) help, creativity, endurance and guidance,” Osenenko added. “The site looks great, works great and is poised to take on new value and meaning.”

The inspiration for the Occupy Peace logo design was a grass-roots touch: The idea came from Occupy Peace’s global community, said Creative Circle lead designer Lynn Rognsvoog, who took the dove and the peace sign and simplified it so it could be repurposed for branding on T-shirts and other collateral.

Unlike the vibrant colors in Creative Circle’s design of the Trends Journal magazine site, the Occupy Peace site relied on red, white and blue. “Red, white and blue is certainly an important part of the Occupy Peace identity,” Rognsvoog said. “It was one of the ways that Gerald (Celente) was signaling that while he is in favor of peace, he is certainly a patriot.”

Creative Circle built the website “almost overnight,” Ostendorf said, advising Trends Research Institute on every facet of it – how to present the core principles, what the banner should look like. The website has a responsive design. Photos and videos are up from the rally, and more are to come. As the movement picks up steam, Creative Circle will likely continue to improve the robustness of the site.

“We have lots of ideas to make the site more interactive and useful,” said Ostendorf.

The website is the perfect example of how Creative Circle is responsive to just about any media solution for its clients, even when the organization has limited resources and time. “We can bring a lot of smart resources to bear to something you want to do, in a professional way, with limited resources,” Ostendorf said. “That’s really the secret we bring. In addition to our core design, training and web technology projects, our clients can outsource a wide range of tasks to us to help them get a project or event off the ground. If you want to execute something and do it well and do it fast, there aren’t a lot of places you can turn to, and get wide range of help.”

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