The Sioux Falls Area Chamber of Commerce Annual Meeting - A Recap.
October 30, 2009
What does it take to put on the Sioux Falls Area Chamber of Commerce Annual Meeting?
It starts during the summer. Themes are discussed, a stage is mocked up, and a speaker is booked. This year, the Chamber’s theme revolved around the consistent exposure Sioux Falls receives as both a business-friendly city and a place with high quality of life. The forerunner in this praise: Forbes Magazine.
So the natural choice for a speaker? Steve Forbes.
Throughout the summer and into September, the staging is finalized, the design is set and the invites start going out. Schedules are coordinated, extra help is brought in. We build monster set pieces. It’s like being in Play Production, except the stage is massive and the talent does more than botch lines from As You Like It.
As we get closer to the date, work swirls in a fever pitch. Our building is filled with staging pipes and banners – printed in house by Jason – and speeches pass over an entire series of desks. Video reaches the final stages of production, and a handful of lucky HSers work late into the night.
And then, it’s the week of the show.
Though the program is Tuesday night, we begin setting up Sunday morning. The stage takes a day and a half to erect, video is double- and triple-checked, and the HS Dancers go through their final run-throughs. A skeleton crew stays back at the office while the real action occurs at the Sioux Falls Convention Center in a flurry of construction, rehearsal and anticipation.
An hour before the show begins, you’d have no idea that this has been a process of months. When the lights go down, you’re seeing the end of the work, and the beginning of a grand celebration of the area we call home.
By the end of the next day, it’s all gone. The room is ready for the next event. Hopefully, you attended. And hopefully, you gained a new appreciation for everything the Sioux Falls Area Chamber of Commerce does for us – not just businesses, but everyone.
If you could believe it, that’s not even the end. Because chances are, we’re already looking toward next year’s show.
In These Tough Economic Times, PLEASE say something different.
October 29, 2009
Yeah, we’re all probably in the same boat. Absolutely sick and tired of being reminded of our financial crises, constantly inundated with “In These Tough Economic Times…” and “We Could All Use A Little Good News…” Frustrated beyond relief when the familiar pangs of mood music and serious voice over remind us how a company is going to buck the system by staying close to its roots, as if GM could really change this whole thing by releasing a hybrid vehicle.
So it’s always cool to see someone take the tired “save money during a recession” message and do something cool with it.
Like this Volkswagen guerrilla campaign for the new BlueMotion line of vehicles.
The gist: The European map on a batch of Euro banknotes is stamped with a representation of how far you’d get based on the banknote’s denomination. How far would you get with 50 Euros? It’s right there on the banknote.
Then, they released the bills throughout German VW dealers, service shops, etc.
And they did it all without falling back on tired clichés. Which, even without the awesomeness of the idea, gets a whole fist full of thumbs up from me.
Changing the conventional. Or, how to make a bus stand out.
October 22, 2009
A quick word from the corporate sponsor.
Constantly raising awareness. Moving toward a cure.
What’s that? Oh, yeah. We’re pretty excited about a pink bus.
Not just pink, though. PINK. As in, Avera McKennan’s new bus wrap – promoting the Avera Breast Center and featuring some of the region’s very own breast cancer survivors – is unmistakable and impossible to ignore.
After all – it’s bright pink.
Here’s the thing. Marketing and advertising have become so much a part of our every move that we begin to tune it out. We are inundated with visual and aural marketing at every turn. So it’s not just a fight to be noticed - it’s a fight to be relevant, with a message that people actually want to hear, promoting solutions, not features. Or, at least, to offer a change from the typical.
As marketers, we understand that our target doesn’t want to hear us. And it’s up to us to change that convention.
Which is why something like the Big Pink Avera McKennan Bus works. Not only does it promote a worthy cause - get mammograms! - but it’s also a bit jaunty. Jovial. A beacon of fun in an altogether too cluttered advertising and marketing landscape.
Buses are often seen as beat down. They’re driven hard and laid out to rest in some giant garage. We’re fighting to change that convention too, by turning them into a visual medium. They aren’t art yet, but how far are we from that? How far are we from accepting public transit as a focus of attention?
Because when you see a pink bus, is there anything you can do other than say, “Holy cow. That’s totally a pink bus?”
SEO vs. Content: Not a Battle After All
October 12, 2009
Search Engine Optimization gets people to your site. It boosts your page rank. It performs magic tricks, prints money and cures cancer. It’s the golden god of content management, at times, and it’s the number one goal of a company: get your name out there, and get it noticed.
If I sound a little sarcastic, you’ll have to understand that I’m a writer. Which means I have one goal over any other: create interesting content.
It’s this goal that makes me cringe when people say that SEO is the most important part of putting together a successful Web site; that copy should be manufactured with the robotic eyes of a search engine in mind.
And it’s this goal that often leads me astray, railing against SEO in the name of art and literature and everything the act of writing stands for.
Because the truth is – SEO isn’t king. And neither is content, anymore. Seems that both have to work in harmony.
See? Now I’ve just upset both sides of the debate.
There are two arguments in the battle. For SEO champions, it’s, “If your content is good, but no one sees it, is it worth it?” And for the content wonks, it’s “If you get people to your site, but they aren’t interested in staying, is it worth it?”
The real answer lies somewhere in between. It isn’t all or nothing for either side. You need both. In fact, one should naturally lead to another. Great content should generate positive SEO, as great content relies on communicating in a way that gives the reader exactly what they came for. And great SEO means you’re covering all of your bases – that you’re thinking for the masses instead of your little corner of intelligentsia.
It means more than compiling lists of regurgitated facts and keyword-laden copy. Conversely, it means more than developing beautiful prose more akin to Steinbeck than Sergey. It’s right in the middle. It’s what we sought out when we redesigned our Web site. And it’s helped us in both cases: better content and better search results.
No, it’s not SEO über alles. Nor is it content without regard to searchability. Simply put, it’s writing the way people will read. Will think. Will care. It’s managing content logically and creatively.
It’s copy written for robots and people. How futuristic. Are you doing it?
18 Years and Counting
October 1, 2009
The story goes something like this.
Every year for our anniversary – and any other event worthy of staying late and enjoying each other’s company: holiday party, staff retreat, etc. – Lynell and Tammy whip together a “Weird” Al Yankovic-style parody of a classic song.
Usually a dance is developed. Typically, there are costumes.
This year, for whatever reason, the theme was “Grease.” Maybe it’s because HenkinSchultz turned 18 this past Wednesday. Or maybe Lynell just had a wig she needed to use before returning it to the costume store.
Or maybe… well, who knows, really.
All that matters is that we had a lot of fun celebrating our last days as a child – and first days as an adult. We can smoke now! (But we can’t drink, and we’re still six years from renting cars.)
Anyway, thanks to all who have made the past 18 years so fantastic. And Happy Anniversary to us!
- Wishing for the Attainable
- Let Your Voice Be Your Guide
- Penn and Misspeller
- Eat Your Brussels Sprouts
- Rhymes With Rice
- Embrace Losing, Embrace a Tree
- Buses Attract Attention, and Most Recently, Awards
- From the Mouths of Babes
- Needed: One Awesomewriter.
- To Inform and Delight
- Joe: Your building is one of the coolest things I’ve ever seen –I’m more thinking the kid is going...
- Joe: Your building is one of the coolest things I’ve ever seen –I’m more thinking the kid is going...
- Joe: Your building is one of the coolest things I’ve ever seen –I’m more thinking the kid is going...
- Corey V.: That kid’ll surely be better than the one that just left.
- Mark Cummins: Here’s my awesome copywriter resume: Mark Cummins 6007 S Cliff Ave #204 Sioux Falls, SD 57108...
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About HenkinSchultz
HenkinSchultz is an agency. An advertising and marketing and branding and design and production agency. All of those things, and then some.
But, underneath all that, we're really a bunch of thinkers. As in, we think about stuff, both pertinent and not, with and without boundaries, as if our lives depended on it. And this right here, Post Haste, is where we write about it.
Visit us at http://www.henkinschultz.com.