This year’s theme is Unmasqued. Check out the site here. The Ball is a great event and an amazing opportunity for agencies large and small to get involved, get your name out there and network with other professionals in the industry.

We look forward to seeing you there!

About the Ball

2010 Greater Kansas City PRSA PRISM Ball
Friday, Oct. 8, 2010
Hilton President Kansas City
1329 Baltimore Ave.
Kansas City, Mo.

6 p.m. – VIP/Sponsor reception
6:30 p.m. – Doors open & cocktail reception begins for all attendees
7 p.m. – Dinner served
7:30 p.m. – Awards program

Cocktail attire suggested.

About PRSA

The Greater Kansas City Chapter of the Public Relations Society of America is a thriving organization that strives to advance the profession of Public Relations throughout the greater Kansas City region. They currently have over 225 members and hold regular professional development luncheons to enhance their professional growth.

While we are at it, a quick tip on customizing your Facebook Fan page. Design a graphic with a targeted message, attention grabbing visuals and make it 200×600 pixels. This will show up on your profile over-sized and can be really impactful. Send us links to your FB Fan pages so we can join! Check this one out for Variety!

Polar Plunge from Austin Walsh on Vimeo.

We teamed up with Austin Walsh Photography and donated our creative talents to helping raise money for Special Olympics Kansas.

The goal was $200,000. Our methods were billboard advertisement and email marketing. The result:  a 10% increase in registration amounting to over $220,000.

Check out the video above produced by Austin Walsh Photography on what went on behind the scenes at the photoshoot in their amazing studio.

As a marketer and a B2B sales guy sometimes it’s hard not to get caught up in the social media craze and expect business to go through the roof because of all my tweeting, facebooking and blogging (thanks for reading btw). In the video above you learned that there are 300K businesses on Facebook, Dell sold 3M computers via Twitter and Genius.com converts 24% of its social media leads into sales opportunities. What that means is that social media does produce an ROI (and that return depends on your business model and goals) What that does NOT mean is that you don’t have to build relationships anymore!

The internet has compressed time in so many ways, but sales always has and always will be centered around establishing confidence and building relationships. Social media just means that you have more opportunities to touch your prospects and clients to build on that relationship.

The sales that occur quickly are very nice and I really do hope that I am able to sell $3M worth of logos over Twitter, but my bread and butter will remain organizations and companies that get to know me over a period of time and remember to reach out to me when they are ready to get serious about their corporate branding and online presence. Don’t forget to follow me on Twitter! www.twitter.com/timmccoy2

Read this article, Adapt to the New Nuancesof Building B2B Relationships by Andrew Wetzler. Sometimes the Media Post website is down so sorry if you can’t get to it.

Creatives all across the world know of “the Spark”. Sometimes we really “just aren’t feeling it”. We look for creative inspiration in all directions: street signs, TV commercials, websites, competition, antique stores, magazines, play-lists and the very popular (not for this guy) cup of Joe. What ever it is, once it hits you, it’s an artist’s race to the finish to get it down and recorded (on paper, wax or screen) before a distraction hits and it fades away.

Although it began with a TV commercial, a global campaign centered on a digital push launching March 1 will allow consumers to produce their own mixes of music and, beginning in April, create animated films at Sprite.com. They say you must “demonstrate what the brand was about and allow you to experience the brand.”

I get mine from Bruce Lee movies [and now maybe Sprite]. Where do you find your spark?

Here’s a link to the rest of the article.

The homepage boast 8 large images that ask the viewer “What are you inspired to do?”. From there you can explore what Inspired Action is all about. It’s main focus is helping individuals find their direction. The viewer will have the opportunity to read thought provoking quotes, get ideas on how to advance their careers, read through articles and videos and even connect with Todd as helps you through your Inspired Action Plan.

Below are some screen shots of the homepage and the interface. You can also visit the site here, Inspired2Act.com. Big shout out to Todd! We hope you are as proud of the site as we are!

Wouldn’t it be cool to job shadow the Shadow!? Not as cool as what we have in store for Xavier & Cortez tomorrow!

Ok, maybe our design studio can’t compete with crime fighting, danzal undistressing experience they might have with the Shadow but it will be fun and informational for the guys to hang out with the crew at BCG.

Below is the press release for the kick-off of Nat’l Job Shadow Day. We have volunteered on a few occasions in the past 2 years, teaming up with Prep-KC and the OneKC initiative to aid in the development of our high school students in Kansas City. I love working with them because everyone whom I have met: staff, other businesses and the students (check out our previous blog about when we had Jerry & Katrina in the studio) have all been very professional, fun and easy to work with.

I have personally performed over 1000 hrs of community service in the past 5 yrs, (none of which were judge mandated) and there is nothing better than partnering with an organization that is just that, organized! Vist Prep-KC (whom has a nice website btw) and check out OneKC for more info on how our town has come together to bring up the whole, despite state lines.

February 1, 2010

District kicks off national career & technical month with Job Shadow Day

KANSAS CITY, MO. – Twenty-seven high school students are geared with questions and resumes as they look forward to National Job Shadow Day, Feb,. 2, 2010. They will be following resident professionals and hiring officials for a full day to see what a “dream career” is like in real life.

Tuesday will see aspiring leaders in business, the arts, and science careers off to their first day of observational work. Their assigned professionals are associates at Barkley Advertising, Brockton Creative Group, BalancePoint, City of Kansas City, Kansas City Star, Mazuma Credit Union, Optimal Health Center, T2, and Vedros Photography.

Job Shadow 2010 is a yearlong national effort to enrich the lives of students by acquainting them with the world of work through on-the-job experiences and a carefully crafted school curriculum that ties academics to the workplace. “We encourage young people to explore their futures through career awareness and mentoring opportunities,” said Tineka Fips, KCMSD College and Career Specialist. “They learn about great jobs, but most of all, they will form relationships to encourage them to pursue the education that will make these careers possible.”

National Job Shadow includes America’s Promise, Junior Achievement, the U.S. Department of Education, and the U.S. Department of Labor.

The Kansas City, Missouri School District (KCMSD) offers a world class education to approximately 17,000 urban students (PreK-12) under the leadership of J. Wm. Covington, Ed. D. We are culturally and intellectually diverse, featuring quality neighborhood schools, arts and science signature schools, Montessori, a career & technical center, free early childhood education, and language immersion in Spanish or French.

For more information please contact Andre Riley, District Communications Specialist, (816) 442-9337, or Mary Spencer, Sr. Media Relations Specialist (816) 560-7337.

###

Whether it’s at a networking event, meeting with a potential client or vendor or speaking with budding graphic artists, the same question always arises: what makes you guys different?

As a young creative studio of 3 fairly recent college grads, one MBA and visual communications expert classically trained on the West Cost, you want the answer to be something like:

“Well our father learned the art of communication from his father, and he learned it from his father and these age old family secrets of being creative and doing business have been passed down to us.”

or

“We’ve developed a new technology that blah blah blah and blah’s and it works amazingly.”

or

“We have the ability to read minds. It helps.”

I think you get it. The point is that we all want and feel the need to say something memorable and impressive but really, half the time it’s just you! Your team! The people who make your company what it is.

And that answer is not memorable and unfortunately is the default answer that everyone is most likely using.

Last year BCG was nominated for an award, 25 Under 25, which recognizes the top small businesses under 25 employees in Kansas City. Applying was rather grueling as we were forced to look under the hood and figure out what was fueling our engine and what made it different than the other cars parked down the street (that was a metaphor for the other 6 or 7 creative agencies in the River Market btw).

Well, after asking our clients and looking at how we did things, we got an answer…but it’s still not as exciting as being apart of a creative lineage.

The answer is simple, old school and obvious…We offer superior customer service and account management.

I know you were looking for something else. So were we! But to be honest, we have acquired several clients solely based on their bad customer service experiece with other agencies. And we’ve kept our flagship client since day one *knocking on wood* because of it. And the awesome part about it is that great customer service is actually not as common or as easy as you would think or hope.

To make a long story even longer, please read the article that spurred this post.

McGarryBowen Is Ad Age’s Agency of the Year

It’s a short article about John McGarry and how his “Old World” approach to account management, coupled with adapting to the change in the game, has fueled 25% growth (600 Million dollars) in ‘09.

Young Variety KC – Beers For Bikes 2010 from Brockton Creative Group on Vimeo.

TIP #6 – I double dog dare you!
Chances are, if you aren’t the inventor of a a new cutting edge product (potentially built in your garage), then at face value, you and the widgets you sell are not much different than your competitor and his widgets who is across the room.

With that said, I dare you to be different! I’m not saying stick your tongue on the frozen flag pole, but take a unique approach.

When introducing your company, use that catchy tagline you’ve been going back and forth on. Think of this as a test market. If you sell t-shirts, you should be wearing the coolest t-shirt in the room. If you can’t think of something catchy or how your product or service differs, than maybe you’re just the best dressed person in the room. I’m okay with that!

TIP #7 – Follow up
You’ve heard it a million times but it continues to separate the good from the great. It’s important to follow up with everyone that you exchange cards with because you never know where that next sale or partnership will come from. Collect those cards, send those emails and give people the chance to remember who you were.

“It was nice meeting you. I was the guy wearing the Hungry-Hungry-Hippos T-shirt.”

TIP #8 – The Big Fish…maybe
More important than following up is Following Through. You met some nice people that you will “keep on your list” but there was hopefully that one “prospect” that had you smiling, rambling (speaking highly of your company), making promises and thinking “I can’t wait to tell my team who I just met!” No matter how much potential lies in this new relationship, if you don’t do what you said you would do, when you said you would do it and how you said you were going to do it, it will fizzle into nothing. It could potentially get your brand off to a bad start as well…but that’s another subject!

TIP #9 – And for the Grand Finale…

…here a few quick and small tips that I think should make the list. I know they’re simple but many people forget the little things…and it’s the little things that count.

9 1/4 Keep a little cash on you. Tip bartenders, especially when the drinks are free.
9 1/2 Check your breath. Chew gum before networking, not during.
9 3/4 Take your parking garage ticket in with you to get it validated.
9 7/8 Hold your drink in your left hand to prevent cold, soggy hand shakes. (But when eating hold your plate in the right hand and eat with your left-switch when you shake).

TIP #10 – Other peoples money
During your free chamber networking experiences, if you head the above 9 tips in any way, you just may get a new client, partner or vendor. Hopefully, the revenues or cost savings will be enough to finance your new chamber membership!

Try these tips out with a few different chambers around your metro area and before you know it, your business will be a household name (in the business community).