We’re looking for an account supervisor with 4-5 years agency experience to manage the crap out of a wide variety of clients and projects. The right person for the job will be flexible, move quickly, and be super-sharp. (Apparently, we’re hiring a knife-wielding cheetah.)

Working on your own with mid-sized accounts and as part of a larger account team on larger ones, we’ll be counting on you to develop scopes of work (including timelines and pricing) and then wrangle agency resources across our media, planning, and creative teams to deliver what you promised – on time and on budget, natch. We’re looking for someone who wants to partner directly with clients and learn their industry as if it were their own. And if you like cocktails, we have a cart that gets wheeled around on Friday afternoons (and sometimes on other days that end in “y.”)

Continue reading →

Do you respect wood? If so, you’ll appreciate Mortar’s client gift this year:

Oh, and you’ll need a drinking vessel to go with those shiny new coasters.

Merry Chrismukkah, everybody.

Why are you still here? It’s New Year’s Eve. Get out there and do what the glass told you to.

Don’t you hate it when you start something, but everything gets in the way of you finishing it? Like when you’re one bite into a mind-blowing panini, and someone yanks you into a meeting about timesheets. Or when you’re trying to write a blogpost, and people keep sending you amazing internetz finds like this. Or this.

Or when you’re on your way to a bachelor’s degree. You commit yourself to earning that all-important piece of paper with Latin scribbles on it. But sometimes, unexpected things derail your quest. There’s no need to get into the details of those things, in the same way we won’t discuss what kept you from attending Sally Jenkins’ slumber party in first grade. All we know is, stuff gets in the way.

Since 2002, Mortar has handled the advertising work for Golden Gate University, a school primarily known for its graduate programs. But this summer, GGU wanted to promote its undergraduate program, which deals with a much more specific audience. These are people who have been out of the college game so long they’ve forgotten how insipid college food can be, not to mention what the word “insipid” means. They’re also blasted with continuing education ads left and right – none of which have been effective. Continue reading →

When you’re surrounded by more ads for cloud services than actual clouds, you begin to question whether Bay Area residents ever consume anything that doesn’t come with a heaping side of hashtags. So we consider it a treat when we’re able to work on a brand that sells real, tangible products you can eat – commonly known as “food.”

New Leaf Community Markets is an organic grocery store chain that began in Santa Cruz and gradually spread its way around the Bay Area. After opening a new store in Pleasanton, New Leaf saw an opportunity to introduce themselves to their neighbors through a more distinctive brand. In other words, they wanted to show people they aren’t just a mini version of Whole Foods. We started by crafting a tagline that captures their mission to deliver the freshest, most sustainable, local, and organic products possible. “Purveyors of goodness” encapsulates that idea, and gives New Leaf the approachable neighborhood feel they were after.

Continue reading →