Opportunity Lives has grown from a simple news aggregator, to a real voice for positivity and what they call "Results Conservatism". We've been with them every step of the way, and if you're a little patient, you'll see their next endeavor launching in the coming month.
When OpportunityLives first came to Javelin, they wanted to run something of an experiment. Could a conservative voice share positive news and views and have success? The answer: a resounding yes. When we first chatted, the folks at OL heard that Javelin had a unique advantage in the digital space. We’re capable of designing and developing a web presence around content. In the case of OL, we helped shape and write much of the content as they found their bearings and hired up their staff.
In just under a month, we had designed and developed a beautiful website, built custom aggregation features to keep things efficient, and created and maintained social media profiles. We went from nothing to a truly legitimate news outlet practically overnight.
Once the site and social media were up and running, we began to shape the content strategy. We identified aggregating and writing talent, found great stories, and put everything up to the empirical tests we love so much. When ideas failed (and they always do) we quickly pivoted away from them, and when the succeeded, we doubled down.
These days Opportunity Lives isn’t just a news aggregator. In under a year, Team OL has built a huge presence, found themselves regularly on national media outlets, and are well into the process of crafting their next big digital adventure: Opportunity Lives 2.0. The new site mixes research library, think tank, briefing book, and news outlet into one of the most robust political offerings we’ve ever seen online… oh, and we’re spearheading that too.
When Ben Domenech, formerly of Red State, decided to launch a news and opinion site he knew the look and feel had to set it apart from the fray. The Federalist focuses on great writing, cultural commentary, and wit. The design tells you everything you need to know. It's simple, elegant, but bold enough to leave an impression.
The Federalist is one of the youngest and most influential political and culture websites online, and Javelin is proud to have played a part in the launch of this important brand.
Led by political commentator Ben Domenech, who assembled a talented team of insightful writers, The Federalist has had a profund impact in just under two years. Working with their team, we built a simple and elegant web experience. We focused on the reader and the act of social sharing and cut the fluff everywhere we could. We knew the writing was there to support itself and our design merely served to validate the brand. .
Highlights:
• National TV hits and regular guest spots including Face the Nation, Fox News Sunday, and Real Time with Bill Maher
• Hundreds of national and regional radio hits
• Regular links on Drudge Report
• Frequent mentions of The Federalist and its staff writers in major national outlets
The American Enterprise Institute has built a reputation on creating transparency. Together we're building a new era of transparency-seeking applications with their newest initiative: The Open Source Policy Center (OSPC).
The Open Source Policy Center (OSPC) is the newest initiative from The American Enterprise Institute and hopes to usher in a new era of government transparency… one that forces transparency both of what has been done, and also predictions for the future.
Along those lines, the first OSPC initiative has launched into beta testing and should be publicly available by the summer. TaxBrain is one of the most complex pieces of software for predicting national tax outcomes. Unlike algorithms built previously to serve a group of 6 or 10 super-accountants in the basement of the Senate Office building, TaxBrain is easy-to-use and fully web-based. Users can jump on the platform and see all major tax reform plans and proposals with outcomes for the next ten years. Want to try your hand? Just jump on and tweak the numbers or start from scratch and share your findings with the world.
We can’t take any credit for the work of the tax super-brains on this project, but we had challenge enough: How do you take the complexity of U.S. tax law, and make it feel approachable to both the tax expert and the interested citizen? We worked through a great UI and built wireframes. We exhausted the sketchpad and whiteboard, and eventually landed on an experience that is simpler than even TurboTax.
Best yet, we created a brand and identity for both OSPC and TaxBrain that is friendly to users and developers from any walk of life. We’re currently working to build both brands out to the next phase and are sure we’ll be working with AEI for years to come on these projects.
Book publishers still don't understand digital marketing. Our website for Dr. Pillsbury's 100 Year Marathon didn't just give the details you'd find on Amazon with some quick calls to action. No, we built a website that serves as an extension of the book.
Dr. Michael Pillsbury might be the most well renown expert on U.S.-China relations. His most recent book, 100 Year Marathon, used the last century of evidence to make some bold predictions. We wanted to make sure our website was as bold and beautiful as Dr. Pillsbury’s writing.
Unfortunately authors are often stuck in a world of inept marketing efforts, led by antiquated publishing behemoths. Book websites too often house little more information than can be found on Amazon or even the book jacket. Little attention is paid to branding, marketing, or promotion.
At Javelin we don’t ever create websites because “that’s just what you do.” No, we wanted to give Dr. Pillsbury’s readers a special experience; we wanted to make the website a product of its own. And as users are drawn into the website and its content, they’ll more likely convert into book sales.
We built a website that focussed on the crux of the book, not the book itself. We built an interactive timeline of the past century that teased the storyline of the book, but gave users a rich, multimedia experience. Users could get synopses of the book, chapter-by-chapter, or even read some quick samples of Dr. Pillsbury’s beautiful writing.
To further extend the book, readers could come to the site and get a fully interactive Source File Library. They could see the extensive research that went into the book, or just use it as a fully searchable index of research documents about U.S. – China relations.
They tore down walls in hails of concrete. They unfurled barbed wire fences and crossed borders minded by machine guns and guard dogs only hours earlier. They chipped away at statues of Lenin, toppling monuments from East Berlin to Budapest. They fled prisons and gulags where they had been locked away for crimes of conscience, for daring to yearn t...
With hammers and chisels, they brought down walls in hails of concrete. They unfurled barbed wire fences that had held them back for decades, and crossed borders that only hours earlier had been minded by machine guns and guard dogs. They chipped away at statues of Lenin, toppling monuments from East Berlin to Budapest. They fled prisons and gulags where they had been locked away for crimes of conscience.
The fall of the Berlin Wall and subsequent dissolution of the Soviet Union meant freedom for millions locked for decades behind the Iron Curtain. But it also meant coming to terms with the legacy of Communism – humanity’s most lethal ideology, responsible for the deaths of 100 million people. Remembering the victims and those still languishing under Communist systems across the world is the mission of the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation. Through its new websites, designed and developed with the Javelin digital team, and an earned media campaign that garnered coverage from the Daily Beast to the pages of the Wall Street Journal, the VOC is making sure that the stories of Communism’s victims are never forgotten.
• Viral Buzzfeed Listicle with more than 100,000 views
• Op-ed on 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall in the Wall Street Journal
• Op-eds also placed in Politico Magazine, CNN, The Hill, USA Today
• Quoted in LA Times, Washington Times, TIME Magazine, Washington Examiner, Change.org.
• Feature coverage in Daily Beast • 50+ nationally syndicated radio interviews
