Envoy Mortgage The Gift of Home Program
Envoy Mortgage announced in January that they will gift 50 households across the US a month in mortgage assistance as part of it's Gift of Home program to show gratitude to their customers who are essential workers.
The surprise works like this: the realtor who sold the winner their home walks in with the mortgage team and present the winner with a present. Inside of the present there’s a letter:
Then they present the winner with a huge check.
Then after that they bring in some huge balloons to celebrate!
All the while they have a professional film crew in there recording everything.
Sounds pretty amazing, touching, sweet, and emotional right?
(I’m not crying - you’re crying)
Kimberly from Envoy Mortgage reached out to me on Friday. She said that they had drawn their winner from the Rochester Envoy Mortgage Branch, Mark. He works at Cutting Edge in Troy - and they were going to be surprising him in just 4 days with a giant check to pay for a month of his mortgage on his family’s home. This was their way of showing gratitude to him as an essential worker. Kimberly wanted to know if I could build for them (over my already kind of stuffed busy weekend of deliveries and installs, I won’t lie!) two helium filled 3ft balloons with a custom logo on it (Envoy’s logo) with tassels trailing down and a weight at the bottom, and a 6ft balloon arch. Kimberly told me that the team would be installing the balloon arch themselves (which already kind of cued me in that they were probably looking for a balloon garland, but that happens all the time - people usually ask for an arch but they’re looking for a garland) and that I wouldn’t need to do anything outside of building everything and delivering it.
Kimberly then sent me the following photos of what she was asking for:
Inspo Pic 1: 3ft balloon with personalization
Issue: Helium inside of a latex balloon with vinyl on it can contract when exposed to the extreme chilly weather we are having outside. Which can then cause the vinyl to wrinkle: thus ruined custom logo.
Inspo picture number 2: DIY Garland that you can get on amazon or etsy for $12-$25 depending on the balloons
Issue: These are definitely not ever the length they claim to be with how “full” the photo appears to be (it’s usually 2-3 kits combined). Also - hullo these are photoshopped.
So there were 2 little issues with the request… outside of it being a sort of last minute rush order on a busy weekend (honestly the order itself wasn’t too big so it was manageable by just me… Jess was already scheduled to work her other job and Thomas was busy with his voice coaching so I kind of had to lump it onto my plate regardless)
The first issue: usually when a corporate client wants their logo on a 3ft balloon: they usually already have their logos pre-made on balloons. It’s usually something they have a lot of and made in a back room somewhere, so that whenever they have a big party they go to a balloon decorator and give them a handful of the 3ft balloons and the 12in balloons and say “Hey! Blow these bad boys up and put them on some ribbons - we’re having a company picnic and I want my logo balloons up at the park for everyone to see who we are as they pass by!”
HOWEVER right now - the balloon manufacturers are currently not making custom logo balloons for anyone. The big manufacturers like Pioneer (the makers of Qualatex, which is the brand of balloons that we tend to use the most) have been SO behind on production for balloons this past year since the pandemic started that they don’t have time to take on the additional task of custom logo printing.
There are some balloon COLORS that have been out of stock for MONTHS like pearl sapphire blue & pearl peach (oh my gosh Jess and I LOVE these colors and we can’t get our hands on it right now) And mocha. You guys, mocha is out of stock and not anticipated to be back in stock for months - a neutral brown that everyone loves. Is that not THE worst!?
The second issue: We don’t use helium (yet) in any of our balloon arrangements. At this point in our business we just haven’t had a need for investing in a helium tank because everything that we’ve been asked to do can be achieved with air. Not only that but we can easily create the illusion of helium pretty easily - most of our clients are surprised when we tell them that none of our arrangements have any helium in them at all.
However, *insert trumpet sounds here* Nikki the Crafty Bot does indeed have a way to create custom balloons!
Did you know that we can create custom balloons? We can make a custom, personalized 3ft balloon in our office. We can customize pretty much any sized balloon with any personal message you want.
I wrote back to Kimberly and her team and told her that I didn’t have a way to get a custom balloon created from a manufacturer due to the pandemic, but that I could make it myself… and that when it came to the balloons being inflated with helium that I couldn’t create them that way. BUT that I could still give the illusion of helium with our balloon poles. I pointed out to her that not only would the balloons themselves not have the shrinking risk the helium has with vinyl on the latex, but that because they would be on a pole instead of on a string - they would be stationary and therefore wouldn’t be turning around in the photos.
Initially she wrote back and said “We actually think we are going to skip the balloons for this delivery. I think it’s going to be too complicated with the weather - we will be meeting up outside and the balloons will have to be out there for about 30 minutes before we go in to present everything to him. We had to skip the balloons for our Illinois and Texas delivery too due to the weather.”
At first I thought “Well - I’m already slammed this weekend… I guess it is what it is” But then I thought
“What’s a surprise without balloons!?”
So I wrote Kim back and I offered a solution.
I pointed out that due to the dark colors of Navy - that in Texas they likely skipped due to the fact that if the decorator didn’t know what they were doing: those balloons might have started to pop in that 30 minute period in the hot sun. As for Illinois: I pointed out they they likely wanted to skip because standing outside in the cold temperatures with helium balloons meant that the helium likely would have shrank, causing the vinyl to wrinkle and ruining the logo.
I told her that since we wouldn’t be using helium, the chances of the shrinking would be less likely, but that I would PERSONALLY stay in my van for that 30 minute period of waiting time keeping the balloons nice and warm, ensuring there would be no shrinking of the latex/vinyl wrinkling. And that I myself would be the person coming to do the delivery in case anything goes wrong: I would be there to fix it.
You tell us the problem: We are here with a solution.
The team was ready to move forward after that email. But then we had one last kink thrown our way: “We need the balloons to stand up on their own - we might not be able to mount them up since we are delivering them to his work. Can you make them stand on their own”
What did I JUST say up there? Solutions - we have SOLUTIONS. I took a quick gander through the other deliveries of these surprises on their Instagram. I saw what was happening: A firefighter had won and they were able to tie his balloon garland up on the pole - great! However, a woman won and when they delivered it to her front porch - it’s just sitting on the ground behind them in the photos. Another woman won in another state and when they delivered to her in the library - in her photos her balloon garland is just laying on the floor.
I tried really hard to push for a bigger garland so that it was a little closer to the photo in their inspiration and gave them some mock-ups - They specifically wanted 6ft. And I’m here to make whatever the client wants me to make for them. So I told the Envoy team that I could construct their garland on a self-standing frame that would have a curve at the top like they wanted, but it wouldn’t go quite as lateral as the photo in their inspiration photo and they said it was fine.
So off I went to building an organic balloon garland of 6ft. Since it’s on a frame I’d classify it as a “Mini demi arch” - this is really close to what we would build for a table top demi arch for like a cake table. It worked really well for what they needed it for.
At R2PCo HQ
Building the demi arch
After I built everything - it was time to go!
All loaded up and ready to head to Troy!
I got to Cutting Edge in Troy and saw the team. They all went inside to present Mark with the present and the big check. I was eagerly awaiting for my entrance in my van (keeping the balloons nice and warm!) Kimberly said she would come outside after the initial surprise and give me the signal to get the balloons ready.
The Envoy team said that I was welcome to stick around after I brought the balloons in, and could take photos/video.
Then I got the signal: Time for the surprise: Bring in the balloons!
Check out the video I created documenting the balloon delivery.
Hearing Mark talk about how the pandemic has affected his family and his wife really got to me.
His wife had been laid off from her job, both of his kids have been zoom-schooling, and he’s lost some family and friends to COVID.
It all hit me right in the middle of my chest, and I felt it. While I was standing there taking photos and videos, I was doing my best to look happy and excited for him, I was also trying to hide the tears streaming down my face.
Anyone who knew us as Face Painting Robot prior to pandemic knows how much this pandemic affected our company: basically none of my artists have had work this year except for Jess and I, we haven’t face painted since March of 2020, and we lost approximately 70 scheduled events last year when the shut down hit. Obviously that hit to the company trickled heavily to my family the most - as this is my full time job and the way that I provide my income to the family. So hearing how the pandemic was hitting his family really struck me hard.
I was really grateful that I was asked to be part of this delivery: even more grateful that I got to hear this man’s story. What an amazing gift that this mortgage company is giving back right now. It’s large corporate businesses like this that are giving back to small people and small businesses and supporting small businesses that are really helping us through this very challenging time. For that I am so appreciative.
To see Mark’s full story - Click Here
