Graves Advertising works hard and likes to have fun, too! Recently, we decided to turn the typical pot-luck lunch into a picnic in the park. We all made our favorite Mexican food dishes and found a nice shady spot in the park near our office. We stuffed ourselves with tacos, a chicken enchilada casserole, Sun Tea, chips and salsa, Mexican-Style rice and Geoff’s famous zesty guacamole. It was a good thing we had the forethought to bring lawn chairs; we were all in need of a nap after the feast! It was a nice way to enjoy lunch-time as co-workers and friends!

I can’t believe how fast my boy daniel is growing. I remember when i use to carry him with just the palm of my hand. Now he is such a big boy. He is going to be three soon. Better watch what he eats.

I showed this picture to Daniel and all he said was “Daddy, you wearing my shirt? Why you wearing my shirt?”  Kids are too funny.

Graves Advertising in Lake Forest walked away with five marketing awards, including its seventh Grand Award in six years, at this year’s first-ever 2006 Prism Awards, hosted by the Desert Sales & Marketing Council (DSMC), a regional associate of the Building Industry Association (BIA). The gala event was held on July 22 at the Indian Wells Country Club. The agency was recognized for its creative work on Family Development’s Brava condominium community in Palm Desert. The five awards included: Best Logo Design with four or More Colors, Best Brochure for a Community with an Average Sales Price of $400,001 to $500,000, Best Newspaper Ad for a Single Community, and Best Direct Mail Piece. The agency also received the evening’s Grand Award for a Community with an Average Sales Price of $650,000 and Under. This was Graves Advertising’s seventh Grand Award in six years from some of the country’s most prestigious new home marketing and sales award celebrations.

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For client RVVA, LLC, Graves Advertising staged the groundbreaking for a three-acre Village Park in the new Verano master-planned community in Cathedral City, California. The park features a basketball court, large tot-lot, shade structures and open playing fields, as well as ample space for family picnics and on-site parking. The mayor of Cathedral City as well as other VIP’s were in attendance at the event.

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SPECIAL TO BUILDER DIGEST
FIRST QUARTER, 2007

By Geoffrey Graves

You know in those old westerns when its night in downtown Tombstone, and a nervous third-banana-type bad guy who’s got that look on his face that tells you he’s not long for this movie is creeping down the side of Hafford’s Saloon just waiting for Wyatt and his brothers to come along and suddenly the third banana hears a sound (probably the creak from a loose door blowing in the wind) so he starts shot-gunning holes in the sides of barns, water barrels and out-of-luck chickens just as Ike Clanton and the rest of his mean gang appears at one end of the street, the Earps on the other, and the next thing you know it’s Gunfight at the OK Corral bullets flying in 360 directions? Well, in the last few months, that is what many of the new home ads look like in California’s newspaper real estate sections.

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SPECIAL TO BUILDER DIGEST OF CALIFORNIA
FOURTH QUARTER, 2006 ISSUE

By Geoffrey Graves

If you’ve been keeping up with all the prognosticating gurus who are taking best guesses at where the housing market is going, you’ve heard everything from so much “froth” being taken out of the market, to a coming “soft” landing, to an imminent “hard” landing. The most recent speculation I saw was from a respected bond-meister who predicted a “soft-hard” landing, which really ticked me off because I was going to predict a “hard-soft” landing but he beat me to the punch, only backward (one of us must be dyslexic).

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SPECIAL TO BUILDER DIGEST
FIRST QUARTER, 2006 ISSUE

By Geoffrey Graves

So, you’ve closed on the dirt, got the architect started on the plans, and now you need a name for that new community. How do you start? Ask the wife for a list of her favorite words? Have a contest among employees to name that new community? Name it after another project you had that sold out in two months (wow!), so that’s your lucky name and ensures more successes? In fact, maybe you decide that that name is so good, by golly, you’re going to name all your other projects from now on with that very same guaranteed-to-sell-homes name! Or, maybe you name it after your favorite restaurant. Or after a woman that you like. Or you combine the names of both your kids into some kind of name that sounds cool to you, but nobody else gets and they keep asking what it means later on.

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SPECIAL TO BUILDER DIGEST OF CALIFORNIA
FIRST QUARTER 2006 ISSUE

By Geoffrey Graves

For the sixth year, Marketpointe Realty Advisors of San Diego, The Ryness Company with offices throughout the west, and Graves Advertising of Lake Forest presented “New Attitudes – The Southern California New Home Consumer Attitudes Survey” at the Building Industry Show (BIS) set this year in Long Beach. The three companies are the founding partners of this program which, as a pro-bono service, is presented in its entirety to BIS attendees, and to various BIA, SMC and other industry groups throughout the year. During the months of September and October ‘05, over 1400 home shoppers were surveyed as they exited new home model complexes throughout Southern California, making “New Attitudes” the freshest real time information available on new-home shoppers. The survey evaluates five different geographically defined areas as well as the overall Southern California marketplace. The five sub-markets include Los Angeles/Ventura Counties, Orange County, San Diego County, The Inland Empire, with the Coachella Valley (Palm Springs areas) separated out as a fifth sub-market.

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