Happy Thanksgiving!

During this time of Thanksgiving we send each of you warm wishes. We count our readers and clients among our blessings during this holiday and always.

Eight Reasons to Celebrate Your Company’s Anniversaries

CMBell Company was in Los Angeles at White Memorial Medical Center last week to begin work on the planning for their Centennial.

  
A company anniversary provides an opportunity to breathe new life into your organization—to offer a kind of oasis in the press of daily work. A strategically planned anniversary celebration can:

1. Recognize the people who make your success possible
2. Deepen bonds with your community, customers and staff
3. Inspire deeper engagement
4. Infuse the workplace with meaning
5. Shift internal focus from problems to achievements
6. Reinforce your culture, mission and values
7. Attract positive press
8. Provide a foundation for casting vision for the future

There’s no rule about which anniversaries you should celebrate. Whether it’s a 15th (ours, next year), a 20th, or a 100th, these occasions provide valuable time for reflection and celebration—both of which yield subtle but important fruits in the work place.

Holiday E-Cards Are Environmentally Friendly

Now’s the time to think about your holiday message to your clients. Instead of the traditional, ho-hum preprinted holiday card, do something original, high impact and environmentally friendly—an e-card.

Here are a few examples of work we’ve done in the past:

• A New Year's Prayer E-Card
• Gresham Savage E-Card 2009
• Gresham Savage E-Card 2010

The holidays are a time to create a breathe in the working world—introducing ideas that speak to deeper issues in the human heart. Use your card to acknowledge your gratitude for your clients’ patronage, convey a mutually held value, or introduce an artful and inspiring message that provides a momentary oasis for the recipient. We promise you, it will be far more impactful and welcome than an impersonal, imprinted card.

Client Showcase—St. Anthony North 40-Year Collateral Piece

This is the final piece in a campaign to promote St. Anthony North Hospital's achievements via its 40-year anniversary. This printed piece serves as both a direct mail and a brochure that tells the hospital's story and casts a vision for its future. The campaign theme, "We," celebrates the team's efforts in reaching this milestone, while creating enthusiasm for the hospital's future. It pairs well with the employee video, where we build on a reality-style production to show what "we" means. 

The campaign included transit, outdoor boards, mall displays, building banners, kinetic typography, Web content, videos, and print ads. 

The focus of the messaging was not just about their accomplishments and plans for the future, but was a way to celebrate the achievements of the team, which always infuses energy into an organization.

We can't wait to see what they do together in the next 40 years.

How are you celebrating the achievements of the people who make your business successful? What company do you know that does this well?



Happy 4th of July!

Here are some fun facts about the 4th of July from the U.S. census bureau. Now when you light those firecrackers or raise that flag, you'll know where it most likely came from (you guessed it, China).

2.5 million

In July 1776, the estimated number of people living in the newly independent nation.

309.6 million

The nation's estimated population on July 4, 2010.

$3.0 million

In 2009, the dollar value of U.S. imports of American flags. The vast majority of this amount ($2.5 million) was for U.S. flags made in China.

$920,277

Dollar value of U.S. flags exported in 2009. Mexico was the leading customer, purchasing $333,882 worth.

$209 million

The value of fireworks imported from China in 2009, representing the bulk of all U.S. fireworks imported ($217 million). U.S. exports of fireworks, by comparison, came to just $42.9 million in 2009, with the United Arab Emirates purchasing more than any other country ($14.5 million).

About 1 in 3

The odds that your side dish of baked beans originated from North Dakota, which produced 34 percent of the nation's dry, edible beans in 2009. Another popular Fourth of July side dish is corn on the cob. Florida, California, Georgia, Washington and New York together accounted for 66 percent of the fresh market sweet corn produced nationally in 2009.

31

Number of places nationwide with "liberty" in their name. The most populous one as of July 1, 2008, is Liberty, Mo. (30,568). Iowa, with four, has more of these places than any other state: Libertyville, New Liberty, North Liberty and West Liberty.

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Hospital Anniversary Campaign—Entertain, Celebrate and Communicate with Video

We departed from the more serious style of the anniversary campaign interviews (which will post next Monday) to produce something fun that showcases the hospital employees, who were happily cooperative with some of our creative directing. We loved being able to capture the wonderful spirit of the people at St. Anthony Hospital North, and think this video not only does that, but can help generate internal enthusiasm for this celebration.

Whenever a production can be entertaining, it increases its chance of being distributed virally. While this one will be posted on their web site, You Tube channel and Facebook page, we hope viewers will also send their friends links to the video.

Check back next week for the final installment of this campaign: testimonial videos featuring the leaders of St. Anthony North.

Hospital Anniversary Campaign—Mall Displays and Exterior Banner

If you joined us yesterday, you saw the evolution of the icon for our client's 40-year anniversary that is launching this week in Colorado. Here's the winning campaign icon; you can see how it was applied in the designs below.

For the mall displays, we decided to break the rules that suggest using 7-10 words on outdoor advertising. We didn't intend for viewers to read every word on the ad, but instead to walk away with an overall impression of how much St. Anthony does in partnership with its community. 

Note that on the bottom of the display, you'll see a QR code. Viewers can use a smart phone app to scan the code, which takes them to a special 40-year animation (check back later this week to view the animation, or if you click to enlarge the ad you can scan it now). The print ad echoes this design and also features the QR code.

What do you think. Did we meet the goal?

Print Ad

 

Mall Display

As a part of the overall media buy, we like to use a client's facility to communicate, since it's a cost-effective way to reach people already interested in the organization. There are no media buy fees, and it reinforces the campaign message with the staff, who are important advocates. Similar interior banners on stands are located in the two main entrances of the hospital.

Exterior Banner

Check back tomorrow to see what we developed as part of their social media campaign.

Wisdom for April Fool's Day

"Any fool can criticize, condemn and complain—and most fools do."
—Benjamin Franklin

"Any intelligent fool can make things better and more complex... It takes a touch of genius and a lot of courage to move in the opposite direction."
—Albert Einstein

"No man is so foolish but he may sometimes give another good counsel, and no man so wise that he may not easily err if he takes no other counsel than his own. He that is taught only by himself has a fool for a master."
—Hunter Thompson 

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Client Work Wins Three Service Industry Awards

The Service Industry Advertising Awards competition results were released this week, and I would like to take a moment to recognize two of our clients and my outstanding team for garnering one Gold Award and two Bronze Awards.

Our friends at Yakima Valley Memorial Hospital received a Bronze Award for a two-part print ad series promoting NorthStar Lodge, their cancer treatment center.

 

California-based Gresham Savage Law firm earned Gold and Bronze Awards for their litigation direct mail piece and their 100-Year direct mail piece.

National judges evaluated nearly 2,000 entries for execution, creativity, quality and consumer appeal. The full list of winners can be found here.

Events That Make Sense

We're very cautious about recommending events because of the time they consume (often not calculated in real dollars) and the potential pay-off when compared to other marketing tools.

But here's one example of an event that made sense. Outside shopping malls in Shanghai, China, in-line skaters dressed as prawns, pork, eggs, carrots and fish skated on a giant wok to demonstrate its non-stick surface. After a 20% increase in sales, Supors is looking to take the show on the road.

More and more, we see entertainment themes as underpinnings of successful creative promotion. It would be impossible to miss a show like this if you were a bystander, wouldn't it?

Let's have an open house!

The good is often the enemy of the great. Consider the special event, for example. Very often, event planning uses extensive internal labor resources while producing returns that don't merit the cost. Since labor costs are often hidden, many times the event's true costs are not identified.

When determining if an event is a good marketing investment, begin by adding up the cost of the promotion, the event expenses, the hours staff spent to organize it (including support departments like maintenance and food service). Then ask what value it brings to the organization. Does it recruit new customers? Change consumer perception about a critical service or product? Does it create the desired goodwill among the right audience?

If the same resources were used for direct sales calls, would the impact on the institution be greater? With time at a premium, make sure that your efforts are focused on enhancing revenue and improving the organization’s image with the largest, most influential groups. And remember that choosing to do one thing always means that you are choosing not to do another.