Celebrating 100 Years of Motorcoach Excellence

Celebrating 100 Years of Motorcoach Excellence

As part of the celebration of 35 years of MessageMakers, we're telling the stories of 35 great projects throughout our history. This is one of them.

MessageMakers producer Tom Lietz interviews a subject for Indian Trails' 100th anniversary video

In 2010, after conducting a successful campaign with Michigan Flyer, MessageMakers was offered an opportunity to work with the largest motorcoach company in Michigan: Indian Trails.

MessageMakers was tasked with promoting and creating the experience for Indian Trails’ 100th anniversary celebration.

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We worked in tandem with Indian Trails to produce brochures, invitations, press releases, videos and the Indian Trails 100th anniversary party, which repurposed the Indian Trails bus station as the site of the giant celebration.

The anniversary video highlighted stories from throughout the company's history and utilized historical images to give a sense of the richness of the company's history, including company co-founder Cora Taylor becoming the first female in Michigan to receive a chauffeur's license (and, presumably, to drive a bus).

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To ensure that the celebration was not just limited to those directly associated with Indian Trails, MessageMakers sent press releases throughout the community inviting all to come.

“[MessageMakers distributed these press releases] so that it wasn’t just an in-company kind of celebration, but the whole community,” said Tina Ray, senior writer at MessageMakers. “People who had retired as bus drivers, people who knew people who worked for Indian Trails, people who were family or who just cared about the company could come in and participate and really appreciate this pillar of the community.”

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Indian Trails' anniversary served as a unique opportunity for MessageMakers because the project contained so many elements. MessageMakers brought creative teams together with the client to brainstorm a number of innovative ideas to publicize Indian Trails’ 100th anniversary. For example, the invitations utilized a die-cut logo to create interest while maintaining a clean look.

“That's how we generally work with our clients,” said MessageMakers president Terry Terry. “We’re not here to sell anything, we’re here to get results for our client. That’s always number one with us.”