Another Match Made in Haven

January 27, 2011 in Advertising/Marketing Business | No comments

I realized today that I hadn’t ever posted the work I helped create for Animal Haven, a KC-area non-profit animal shelter. Each year, ad2 (part of AAF-KC) chooses a non-profit organization to work with on two different projects. First, ad2 puts on a casino night called Art of the Deal with much of the profits benefiting the chosen charity. All year long, a group of ad2 members called the “Virtual Agency” serve as the organization’s ad agency, helping with anything from internal research & communications to collateral development or other needs.

For Animal Haven, the Virtual Agency was tasked with creating a unique TV campaign to set Animal Haven apart from the other animal shelters in town, and draw in potential customers who might be shopping at PetSmart, PetCo, etc. After a fun brainstorming process, we arrived at the idea of “Another Match Made in Haven”, playing off the Animal Haven name and letting people know the selection of animals is broad and a perfect match is easy to find.

With the generous help of the talented crew at Liquid 9‘s help, here’s the three-spot campaign we created:



This was my first time working on a TV campaign and it was a lot of fun. The client seemed to love where we landed and, hopefully, it’s helped bring in some new customers. Thanks to the guys at Liquid 9 (especially Dan Gedman, Cody Smith and Patrick Meagher), Corey Cassaw, Aaron Cathey and the rest of the ad2 Virtual Agency for their help in creating this project.

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Add Jabra to Your List of Companies that “get” Social Media

August 23, 2010 in Advertising/Marketing Business | 2 comments

A while back, I wrote a post about companies I’d had experience with on Twitter – the good, the mediocre and the bad. I got some feedback from three of the companies I mentioned, plus a comment from a guy named Adam Waid with a much worse experience. Now that I’ve had another interesting interaction with a company on Twitter, I figured it was time for another post.

I bought myself a new Bluetooth headset about a month ago, after losing my previous one. I probably use it for a total of 1 hour a week, at the most, and I don’t walk around the mall with it on my ear as a fashion statement. So I went to Best Buy and found a low-end Jabra (BT2070) for $29.99, I think. After getting it home and trying it for a while, I just couldn’t get it the speaker part to stay in my ear. It kept falling out so I had to hold it in with one hand to hear people, which kind of defeats the point of a Bluetooth headset.

Not feeling like driving up to Best Buy, I posted a message @Jabra_US asking if I was doing something wrong or if they had any tips. Within an hour or two, I was trading messages with Wayne (part of the @Jabra_US team). Wayne did some research, asked me a couple questions, and finally sent me this DM.

Effective, friendly, personal communication - perfect.

So I sent him my address, not sure what I’d be getting. We traded a couple more messages, including one after 11 PM (Wayne, you work too hard!). And then a package arrived with a brand new, Jabra BT2080 arrived at my door – a much nicer headset that costs almost twice as much at Best Buy. Wow. They sure didn’t need to do that. They could have apologized and recommended I take it back to Best Buy, and I would have thought that perfectly reasonable and been fine with it. But instead, they went above & beyond with fast, friendly service, they took care of my problem, and they’ve now got a customer who will recommend them to others and probably not buy another brand in their category ever.

To the @Jabra_US team (especially Wayne), I say, as a consumer, thank you! And as a marketer myself, I say, thank you for another example of a company that truly “gets it.”

Jabra did not ask me to write this post or do anything in exchange for the replacement headset; I’m posting this because I’m suitably impressed.

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5 Year Milestone

August 9, 2010 in Advertising/Marketing Business | 2 comments

Like 95+% of blogs out there, I’ve been sporadic at best with updates. Though I consider myself a pretty good writer, I’m not phenomenal like my good friend Paige Worthy so great ideas to write about don’t always come to me. Figured it was time for a few reflections though, now that I’ve hit my five-year milestone at ER Marketing.

Five years ago, I had just finished my 90-day full-time “trial” at ER. I interned throughout second semester, graduated in late May and started on the trial then. My first day was July 17, 2005 and I already realized that I’d just graduated from a highly-rated school of journalism and I knew…next to nothing. But thanks to Rachel Hack, my former boss during my internship for AAF-Kansas City (it was the Ad Club then), I’d landed at a perfect spot to start my career, with two bosses that gave me the opportunity to learn, succeed and grow…as well as failing when necessary.

I failed big time in May of 2006, enough that I met with my two bosses on that Monday morning and told them I couldn’t meet the higher expectations they’d set, and I left the company. For the next eight weeks, I searched for jobs, sat around being lazy far more than I should have (short-term vision and a generous severance will do that to a foolish 23 year old) and, eventually, started thinking about what I really wanted to do next. About that time, desperation began to sit in as the new opportunity I thought was just around the corner didn’t happen. I stayed in touch with my former bosses at ER throughout those eight weeks, and when they asked me to return to the company, I was relieved and optimistic that things would be different this time around.

For the past four years, they have been different. And as my sixth year at ER Marketing begins, I’m excited for what comes next and I know that, when/if I ever leave ER, telling Renae Gonner and Elton Mayfield I’m leaving will be harder than anything I’ve done so far. The respect & admiration I have for them is tremendous, and continues to grow. Thanks Elton & Renae.

With that, I’d like to share ten things about this business I wish I knew five years ago:

  1. You know nothing…and that’s ok.
  2. Be curious, every day.
  3. It’s ok to raise your hand and say, “I can’t do this” or “I don’t understand this.”
  4. Yes, we have the Internet, iPhones and social media, but the business hasn’t changed that much since David Ogilvy penned this classic guide to advertising – the core truths still hold true.
  5. Find a way to measure it, whatever it is, whenever possible.
  6. Ask somebody to grab a beer and learn something new – your peers are always ready to help.
  7. Big clients & big agencies aren’t the only way to have fun in this business.
  8. B2B can be as fun as B2C.
  9. An internal campaign that unites a company can be more valuable then the greatest Super Bowl ad you’ve ever seen.
  10. Manage Expectations of your peers, your bosses and your clients…every day.

Here’s to the next five years – cheers.

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