Live Your Passion

September 6, 2011

It’s easy to just go through the motions from day to day. Go to the weekly staff meeting: check. Make a phone call: check. Respond to emails: check. But when was the last time you checked on your passion for work? Ideally, joy for the work you do supersedes all those mundane daily tasks and makes you excited about waking up every weekday.

Passion for creativity is the foundation that HenkinSchultz was built on 20 years ago. We strive to be inspired every day and to inspire our clients, too. After the jump are some fun ways we promote creativity and passion for work among our employees.
HenkinSchultz anniversary party
An actual HenkinSchultz party. Yes, they get can a little theatrical, but that’s because we’re passionate about throwing parties.

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By amie

Filed Under HenkinSchultz, The Process

Five Quick Tips to Optimize Your Website

August 9, 2011

A few years back, you probably created a website for your business or organization. But have you done anything with that website since you first got it? If not, your site probably needs an update to be effective in today’s market.

Now, we realize the process of optimizing websites and creating effective web content can be daunting. There’s no one way to do it, and there can be a lot of steps: auditing your current site’s content, creating measurable goals, developing user personas, revising copy, testing user experience. Overwhelming, right? But everyone has to start somewhere. These five quick tips can get you on track to make your website work for your business:

1. Update regularly.
Take five minutes each day to update something on your website. This tells search engines that your website is active.

2. Create a schedule.
Decide ahead of time what updates you’ll do. Remember, four great updates are better than eight meaningless ones.

3. Focus on the future.
When writing, keep in mind where you want your site to be—not where it is now. The more you focus on where you want it to be, the sooner it will get there.

4. Add “alt tags” to images.
By describing your images using words, your photos have now become searchable. This gives search engines even more ways to direct users to your website.

5. Submit your sitemap.
This will tell Google, Yahoo! and Bing exactly what content you have on your site, making it even more search-engine friendly.

These simple changes obviously aren’t a comprehensive list. They are a starting point, though, to help you optimize your website for search engines so customers can find you online.

By betsy

Filed Under Technology, The Process

Color Me Happy

July 12, 2011

JazzFest posterDo you know what your business’s colors say about you? Many people don’t give it a second thought, but color is a crucial element of design. Color evokes emotion, sets a scene and grabs the audience’s attention.

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By amie

Filed Under Advertising, Marketing, Design, HenkinSchultz, The Process

Don’t Be Content With Your Old Web Content Strategy

May 17, 2011

Here’s an impressive fact, straight from Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt: every two days, we create as much information as we did from the dawn of civilization until 2003.

Whoa. Mind. Blown.

Because of the Internet, people can access and share information more easily than ever, and they don’t want us to waste their time. As advertisers, our websites have to be good—make that really, really great—to get our customers’ attention among massive volumes of information. We have to think of the best way a website’s content helps customers, which will make a business achieve its goals.

That’s what we call content strategy management. Now, that’s a very simplified definition, but make no mistake: it’s a big deal for the future of websites, social media and everything else online.

The Old Way of Creating Content
Last week, I attended Confab, a content strategy conference in Minneapolis, Minn., and it motivated me to further understand the complexities of web content strategy. To understand why web content strategy is important, we talked a lot about how businesses created websites in the past. A business owner said, “I need a website!” without really knowing the purpose for it. A web designer laid out the website, and a copywriter filled in the blanks later. Often, this process resulted in extreme frustration, rewriting and redesigning. And that’s a lot of inefficiency, wasted time and lost revenue.

The New Way of Creating Content
With the glut of information out there, the old method doesn’t work anymore. Customers have many, many options, so if you’re not giving them the substance they need, they’ll go somewhere else. Plus, many alternatives are available to get your message out there—your website, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and much more. Each one has to be carefully considered if it will help achieve your business’s goals. It’s not great to have a Twitter account just because you can. It should have a specific goal that meets your customers’ needs.

The quality of the content is what’s important. Think about who your customers are and what they want; then build your content around their needs. Luckily at HenkinSchultz, our process has always started with the message and the content. Thinking about content strategy has made us even more determined to be deliberate about content and our customers’ needs.

By amie

Filed Under Technology, The Process

A Mix of Tradition and Technology

March 22, 2011

Dakota Provisions is a world-class meat processing facility located in South Dakota, but they were concerned that their technological innovation was being overlooked due to their strong ties to tradition and their humble corporate culture.

We worked with Dakota Provisions to strike a balance between technology and tradition. Dakota Provisions revised its look to focus more on technological innovation and sustainability efforts while staying true to its traditional values.

With a new company video, eye-catching sales and marketing materials, and an improved marketing plan, Dakota Provisions looks anything but old-fashioned.

By amie

Filed Under Advertising, Marketing, Design, HenkinSchultz, The Process

We’re All Connected

March 31, 2010

We’re all connected to our customers. Our clients. Maybe not in person, but by name and organization, through the chains of command and channels of communication. And the things we do in the name of our customers will, in fact, stick with us – and with them – for good or for bad.

I was reminded of this through a simple postcard.

As a board member for the South Dakota Humanities Council, I play a small part to help allocate grant funding. Our grants are designed to promote the humanities throughout South Dakota – especially in areas that may otherwise be underserved – and are focused on education, media and other programs that highlight history, literature and culture.

Often, I think about these grants for a few days out of the year – the days leading up to a board meeting and the day of the board meeting itself. Then, after the money has been distributed, the entire process escapes my mind. I forget about it. My part is over.

Which is why I was so surprised to receive a thank you card in the mail, expressing gratitude for my recent part in allocating funds for an art installation in Pierre.

While my interactive connection to the grant had long passed, the grant itself – the funds, the projects connected to those funds, and the people connected to those projects – was just beginning to blossom. And, through my part in voting allocation, I am forever connected to it.

It’s the same with everything in life.

When our businesses make a major change, we are forever connected to it. Six months from now, people will continue to discover the change, despite the fact that we’ve long moved on.

When our product fails, we are forever connected to it. When it succeeds, we are forever connected to it.

The words we use to affect policy, to sell a product, to cover up a scandal, to explain a feature, to direct attention and to make real marketing happen through word of mouth and broadcast and web – we are forever connected to them.

No matter where we are, our decisions and communication will touch people down the chain and into the consumer world. And months from now, someone will be finding that decision or communication for the first time.

Our names will be connected to it.

I mean, talk about pressure, right? In the end, it helps if we think twice about what we’re going to say and the policies we’re enacting. Because no matter what, we’re connected to them.

By Corey

Filed Under Marketing, The Process

The Internet of Things

March 17, 2010

ReadWriteWeb has been spending a healthy amount of time researching and discussing The Internet of Things, a concept that describes how, in the future, there will be more things on the Internet – sensors, devices, automated systems – than people.

A new video from IBM’s Smarter Planet group illustrates what The Internet of Things will mean to our future, specifically the social and cultural change that will occur as a result.


Our place as marketers in The Internet of Things is still being developed, and because of this there’s a propensity for fear. The technology is adapting far faster than we can keep up with, which leads to brash and unseemly forays into interruption marketing. We fight to be a part of the answer, and in doing so we bypass working with the system by working in spite of the system.

So what’s our responsibility?

As The Internet of Things becomes more automated, it will also seek out better ways to become more monetized. Which will lead to more opportunities for marketing. Which will lead to more ways in which a person is interrupted during their life.

It’s a slippery slope, and this is where our part will come in – our responsibility to understand, both for our clients and for the customers they serve, that not every channel needs to be interrupted.

That, by choosing the right channels, standing by permission marketing and understanding which options will help a brand (rather than hurt it in ways we may not even understand), we can continue to lead our clients to effective marketing.

All without taking advantage of society and its quickly fracturing attention.

(Via: ReadWriteWeb)

By Corey

Filed Under Advertising, Technology, Marketing, Criticism, The Process

HenkinSchultz: Official Google Advertising Professionals

March 11, 2010

It’s about Analytics and Ad Ranking and CPC and Quality Score.

It’s about CTR and Keywords and Region Targeting and Content Bids.

It’s about CPM and Impressions and Ad Groups and ROI.

But really, it’s about understanding the basics - and the subtle (and sometimes complicated) nuances - of search engine marketing as it pertains to Google AdWords. And, furthermore, about presenting our clients with added opportunities for promotion and awareness outside the traditional printed and broadcast mediums.

So we finally got around to taking the test. And here we are: official Google Advertising Professionals. (And we’re pretty stoked, by the way.)

We get to show off the badge. But our clients get the real prize: an added level of knowledge and awesomeness from their chosen marketing partner.

By Corey

Filed Under Advertising, Technology, Marketing, HenkinSchultz, The Process

Where Is the Line? (On Advertorials and Front Page Ads)

March 9, 2010

No one would claim that the garden variety advertorial is a journalistic endeavor. Situated alongside a publication’s content, however, it can often be mistaken as real – especially if designers have taken great pains to replicate font, layout and details.

Advertorials happen. They happen all the time. Whether you think they’re effective or misleading, you probably rarely give them a second thought.

That is, until they begin appearing on your front page.

Alice In Wonderland

Historically, newspapers and magazines have held the front page as an Advertising Free Zone. It only makes sense. No one buys a publication because of the ads on the front; they look to the cover as a de facto table of contents. That’s where the impulse to purchase is created.

But with the decline in advertising revenues, publications have begun allowing more and more leeway. Small banner ads appear near the bottom of the front page. Plastic covers promote wireless services. Post-it notes offer coupons. Ads are creeping into that valuable space, precisely because it’s valuable. Precisely because magazines and newspapers can’t sell the insides as much as they once could.

So, you can imagine, if you offer a newspaper $700,000 to print a full front-page wrap, there’s a good chance they’re going to take it.

Alice in WonderlandThat’s what Disney did with the Los Angeles Times. The ad – a four-page wrap that mimicked the Times’ front page – was designed to “create buzz, and to extend the film’s already brilliant marketing campaign,” said John Conroy, spokesman for the Times. It also pushed the day’s headlines to a second page.

It’s not the first time the Times has slipped advertising in under the radar. Last April, an ad for NBC’s Southland gave only minimal indication that it was, indeed, an advertisement – and that was long after the “article” would have been read.

Newspapers: a Vehicle for Journalism or Advertising?

Which begs the question: where is the line? When does journalism begin and advertising end?

According to the American Society of Magazine Editors, ads and editorial content require a clear separation, and front-page ads not allowed. But when faced with the decision between selling a lucrative front cover ad and the ASME’s minimal repercussions (a letter or reprimand and exclusion from the National Magazine Awards), there’s often no more than the approval of a publisher standing in the way.

More than anything, newspaper and magazine readers place their trust in the publications they’re consuming. When ads are placed in a way that blurs the line between editorial and advertising – when advertisers seek to gain attention through deception by designing an ad that looks like real content - that trust is taken advantage of.

In other words, the content of the ads should be considered – not the location.

The Times ad reaches the news outlets because it’s on the front page. But it’s clearly an ad. It steers clear of deception simply because it’s too big to be believable. No one read that and thought, “this is a Los Angeles Times article about the movie.”

However, an advertorial clearly wants to be seen as content. Its entire premise is dependent upon a reader seeing it as an article. Posing as something it’s not, the advertorial plays upon the trust of the reader.

In other words, outrage seems to be misguided because the definition is so hazy. The line is smudged. Possibly irreparably. And it’s up to us – as advertisers and publishers – to, once and for all, redraw the line. Clean it up. Set some standards.

The balance, really, stands between editorial honor and the need to keep the lights on. We can take sides, fighting against either the stuffiness of journalistic integrity or the demons of advertising greed. But both sides have their arguments. Because without determining where that line is – the line between honorable content and the advertising that helps pay for it – we may lose the trust of our readership.

By Corey

Filed Under Advertising, Marketing, Design, Criticism, The Process

On Deadlines

February 18, 2010

South Dakota State University Foundation Web siteDeadlines are the bane of a creative’s existence.

They signify a finish, a point at which the creative process stops and the technicalities begin. Everything leads to that deadline, and as time approaches, stress builds.

It’s the nature of the business. And it’s what makes a good number of us thrive.

Sometimes, our deadlines are far away. We’re afforded a large chunk of time with which to make magic happen. But most of the time, however, we’re on tight deadlines. Publications and print dates and special events and product launches are all tied to a specific date, and to that specific date our marketing and advertising materials must coincide.

Deadlines are a bane. But they’re also a framework and a promise.

So when a super hot job lands on our doorstep, sometimes there are only a few hours available to plan, design and implement. Take, for example, the case of a recent Web project we handled for the South Dakota State University Foundation.

With site design approved on Tuesday, there was but a crazy overnight coding session holding it back from getting to them by Wednesday. And it was done. Four days later, after content was entered, the site was live.

What what?

Listen, none of us want to work on midnight oil deadlines. But sometimes, they happen. And when they do, there’s a certain feeling of accomplishment – and dedication – that drives us to turn it around in an emergency.

It’s a deadline. They’re the bane of our existence. But, they’re also what makes the industry so exiting, and, in a way, what makes it so rewarding.

What what, indeed.

By Corey

Filed Under Advertising, Technology, The Process

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