Blog Foul / Catsup

Apparently it's a total no-no to not have at least one post per month.

(insert a million excuses here)

So this is my "make-up" for May and June.

May:

• St. Louis Brewers Festival. What a great opportunity to be involved at such a high level with this group. This is the second year and it is truly a highlight of the year to help organize, market, produce and run this event. Last year was a sell out, and this year was too (albeit we had to lower the total capacity limit because of torrential rains). Despite those rains, feedback from the public was 99% positive!
• Here's The Pitch...Ball. Agency jumped through hoops to put together a stellar (and non-traditional for the audience) pitch to "keep" a program we've worked on for 5 of the past 6 years. Lost, but came to find out our hooks/ideas were very similar...that's good!?
• Tee Time. Fit in a couple of productive golf outings and SLOWLY catching up to the other guys in the group. First year to use the big stick and it's a bit wild but making up for it in distance.
  

June:

• Tee Time II. Invited to play in Tony LaRussa's ARF tournament. Great times had by all. I hope Sal Bando would agree... he played in our group. Didn't place at all, but I've never been disappointed chasing around the little white ball when I could have been in the office!
  
• Bottom's Up. Invited to attend the American Craft Beer Festival in Boston, MA. Great turnout for the Alstrom brothers who run Beer Advocate and produced the event. Additionally, we ran a special presentation hosted by Here's To Beer and Celebrity Chef Dave Lieberman: A blind Beer Tasting Challenge. "Lieb's" an awesome guy and some of the best parts of the trip were when the whole group would go to dinner and Dave would pontificate on the background and preparation of many of the dishes we were sampling.

• Speaking of Work. Some projects came up with similar timing as well as a few things that could be huge. We'll see...
  

So the big highlights (low light if you count the lost pitch) all had some relation to work. So does that mean work doesn't suck?

Chug and Plug

For all we know, this may become a recurring feature on the unknown blog...chug and plug.

As I'm enjoying a beer it strikes me that this is the time I have been "searching for" to keep the unknown blog fresh. Just yesterday I was discussing blog management with some colleagues at the AMR workshop I am attending. So there's the "chug" which also acts as a nice segue to the "plug."

Speaking of AMR...

AMR is Agency Management Roundtable and was founded and run by Dave Wood. Dave and AMR are hosting two different "roundtables" this week, and I am fortunate to attend both.

The first, on Monday and Tuesday, is Account Executive Bootcamp. I had two motives for this class: as an Account Group Director in a small agency with few formal processes I am constantly looking for tools to help train the other staff, and second, I myself had never attended something outside of an agency's walls that dealt with Account Management.

I hope to have a member or two of the staff attend the next bootcamp that is scheduled. And I myself - though only being a two-day session - am better for attending as well.

The second session or roundtable I am attending is called Financial Firepower. The agency finances have become increasingly more intriguing to me as my responsibility in the agency has increased. While I may be the most "green" at accounting, all the attending members have made me feel quite welcome. This type of event and meeting is incredibly refreshing - spending time with agency principals/owners/etc (from non-competing markets) and hearing their perspective as well as them listening to me and offering advice/guidance/etc (and that's not the primary objective - it's to better understand agency financials and learn tools/etc to make agency financials easier to understand!)...

Article Smarticle

FSI Blowout!!

Here’s good quick read for anyone working on business that deals with FSIs.

Interesting to note that in this age of digital marketing, marketers are spending more and more on freestanding inserts.

The article, from brandweek.com cites that overall spending for the category has doubled from ‘06 to ‘07.

The article mentions a few new offerings that have been drawing interest from clients. Co-marketing programs where retailers and Consumer Package Goods partner to create specific offers....and cross medium promotion on websites like redplum.com.

It’s nice that the author of the article recognizes that the medium isn’t perfect, closing with:“Still, roughly 90% of FSIs are sandwiched in newspapers, which continue to struggle. That’s why, despite the recent surge, Hughes said, “FSIs, in a way, are like S&H green stamps: a great thing that is receding into the past.”

However one point that could have been addressed in my eyes is: if an already cluttered medium is seeing advertiser spending double in just one year, then wouldn't it bode marketers to look elsewhere as this would be a sign that the medium is becoming all that more cluttered?

Peaks and Valleys

A recap of the past 5 weeks:

• iBook crashes hard.  Not a software problem, but hardware problem.  Drive is kuput.  Info lost. 
• Promoted to Account Group Director.  A chance to make some change and lead like never before.
• Communication failures abound inside the agency. 
• Vacation to Australia. Relax like never before.
• Return from Australia to find my two best co-worker friends (interactive director and creative director) resigned the day before to go to competing agency. Regroup like never before.

Looking back over the past five weeks there is much for me to expand upon to meet my goal for this blog (the correlation between work and life).  Alas, I miss that precious and most sought after asset: time.

Another note: I have abandoned my attempt to write in all lower case (see previous posts). Old habits, such as punctuation, are hard to break.

the sincerest form of flattery

as I continue to hone in and refine my goals for this blog... i've posted a new link in the "places to go, people to see" links to the right: paul isakson.

paul and i worked together for about a year, during my tenure at barnhart/cmi (now barnhartusa ). i thoroughly enjoyed my time with paul, as we did not share accounts so we could be friends without letting the day to day in the way.

paul was the one of the sharpest knives in the bcmi drawer and his career success does not surprise me a bit.

i'm not sure when paul started his "blog" but i have been following it for close to a year now. his site is especially useful in the fact that he posts extremely interesting advertising and marketing finds along with his well articulated and thought out point of view. it's fun to learn from others!

paul also finds a way to intersperse some of his personal life along with the industry insights and commentary he shares. quite similar to what i would like to do with this space.

in addition, paul's site probably gets hundreds of visitors regularly. where as this space is lucky to be hit by a spambot.

thanks for the inspiration paul!

test entry

many years from now, we'll look back at this and think "wow. who'd have thought?"