There are many reasons why Melissa Gillette is looking forward to autumn:  the return of hot chocolate, hiking, bonfires, and new episodes of her favorite TV shows.  Plus, she gets to sport her many scarves again (Melissa has a huge box of them tucked away in the back of her closet, just begging to be worn).  But what she’s really excited about is being at Doe-Anderson because she eventually wants to work for an advertising agency. “I’m really looking forward to learning about the different departments, their functions in the advertising process and figuring out my niche,” she explained.

Melissa is a recent graduate of the University of Kentucky, where she earned her B.A. in Business Administration in marketing, as well as a second major in Spanish.  A Louisville native, you can often find her enjoying the Great Outdoors in Seneca Park and practicing her Spanish at El Nopalito. 

Sara Horstman is currently pursuing her M.A. in Communications at Bellarmine University (and yes, they are a Doe-Anderson client).  Like Melissa, she is a Louisvillian and her love for the city is evident. “I have so many favorite places in Louisville,” she said. “I love going to Churchill Downs and the Waterfront, getting sushi at Osaka on Frankfort Avenue and just walking up and down Bardstown Road.” Oh, and she likes football. A lot.

She’s sure to learn a great deal about advertising during her semester at Doe.  In fact, she already has a keen eye for good work. After all, Sara said two of her favorite ads are the Bud Light “Real Men of Genius” radio commercials and the Maker’s Mark billboard on 1-71N.

Our resident Southern gentleman, Andrew Bovine is a native of Nashville, Tennessee. Though he’s still learning about The Ville, he’s already discovered one of the city’s great treasures—Graeter’s ice cream.  Andrew has spent the last four years at Spring Hill College in Mobile, Alabama, where he earned his degree in business (with a concentration in marketing) and minored in graphic design.  To Andrew, advertising is an interesting science.  “It allows people to creatively inform an audience about a product or service.  The neat part of this is the response that it is triggered. Ultimately, I feel that advertising and marketing is about building relationships, and that is pretty cool.”

When asked what his favorite thing about fall was, he couldn’t pick just one. “The weather, the changing leaves, the start of football season, the back-to-school season, and interning at Doe.  It’s only the second day, but things are looking bright.”

Meet the Fall Class of 2010. From left: Sara Horstman, Andrew Bovine, and Melissa Gillette

Since becoming involved with the internship program board two-and-a-half years ago, it has quickly become one of my favorite duties of my job, as well as a very rewarding professional experience.  Doe-Anderson is very supportive of our internship program and it shows.  The company realizes how important their knowledge and enthusiasm is to the agency’s evolution and I’ve seen firsthand the exuberance and “life” they can bring to the office.

And though they might not be as seasoned as the rest of us, interns have a lot to contribute to an agency, corporation or non-profit organization. What exactly can we learn from our younger counterparts?  The answer:  Plenty.

 1.   Share their enthusiasm.  Remember how excited you were when you landed your first internship?  My first internship was with a non-profit organization that focused on education.  I eagerly accepted any assignment my supervisor gave me, whether it was editing a press release or helping out with a research project.  We should approach our jobs with the same zeal as a brand-new intern.  Remember—a positive attitude can carry you to a higher place, but a negative one will always land you in the gutter.

2.  Be willing to do your share of grunt work.  I don’t care who you are or what professional level you are, you still need to know how—and be willing— to build a media list, assemble a press kit or make follow-up phone calls to the media.

3.  You don’t know everything…nor will you ever.  No amount of classroom work can prepare you for the workforce.  Case in point:  Prior to my second internship (at another non-profit organization), media relations was a fairly foreign concept to me.  Sure, I had read about that segment of public relations, but honestly, I had no clue how to actually do it.  Even today, I’m still learning new skills, such as figuring out the intricacies of CisionPoint.

4.  They can offer a unique perspective.  Sometimes when you’ve been working with a client for years, or even decades, it can be difficult to generate new and interesting ideas for taking their service or brand to the next level.  You know the client so well (after all, it’s your job to be their go-to expert) that sometimes you can get lost in the everyday happenings of the account.  Learn to look at your client with a fresh set of eyes.

5.  Ask questions. It’s a good thing to have an inquisitive nature, especially in this industry.  One of the greatest attributes a PR practitioner can have is being able to look at something from many angles.  This can be related back to point #3:  No matter what age or where you are in your professional development, there’s always room to learn. 

6.  Follow the rules.  Interns are usually on their best behavior; after all, they’d probably like to get a full-time gig out of this experience.  It’s the little things that matter—showing up to the office and meetings on time, following company protocol, and being polite to all employees (no matter where they fall on the totem pole) can take you to the next career level.  We all get a little lax from time-to-time, and it never hurts to be reminded of the rules.

7.  Take initiative.  Though we’ve had many different types of personalities among the students in our program, the top interns always stood out because they were self-starters.  They weren’t afraid to approach employees in different departments, call the media to pitch a story, or ask to be included on new business assignments.  Drive and eagerness can go a long way, and they are qualities that even the most experienced PR professional should possess. 

As the summer draws to a close and interns from across the country return to their respective college campuses, I hope they know how much we appreciate their efforts, even if at times it doesn’t seem that way.

When you see that fresh-faced intern sitting in the lunchroom, take a minute and get to know them.  You just might be surprised at what you could learn.    

OK, I admit it.  I have a problem.  It goes into hibernation for about six months every year, but when July and August roll around, the cycle starts all over.  That’s when I discreetly buy a magazine and hide it from others because it reveals my obsession.  I also spend more time on the Internet going from one site to another hoping to discover something new, something few others have found yet.

It started 20 years ago when a relative asked me to play fantasy football.  Ever since, I’ve been hooked.  But I’m not alone, the popularity has grown immensely. What’s unusual, though, is that I rarely see fellow workers create a league – a company league.

Every place I’ve worked, there’s always been an effort by the HR staff to raise morale.  This usually involves a company picnic, a Christmas/holiday party, a cocktail hour at a nearby bar.  All these things eat into my personal time.  Even though I’m a PR person, I’m still a curmudgeon.  Forced social situations are just that – forced.

Rule 1.  Find someone in the office who knows how to run a league.  This person exists, I promise.

Rule 2. Use one of the free fantasy football websites.  I like cbssports.com, but ESPN, Yahoo and others are good, too.  The person who runs your league will probably have a favorite.

Rule 3.  You don’t need to know much about football.  The websites make it easy to draft a team and select a lineup.  They tell who’s hot and who’s hurt.  You spend as much or as little time as you want mired in the details.

Rule 4. This is not for guys only. In our league last year, women owned 40% of the teams.  Half of them made the playoffs.

Rule 5.  One team can have multiple owners.  This gets more people involved.

Rule 6.  Play for money (just don’t tell the HR director).  Have everyone pay an entry fee.  Keep it low.  Something like $20 per team will do.  Spread the winnings around (don’t do a winner take all).  If you don’t play for money, people will lose interest and not manage their teams.

Rule 7.  Hold your draft during a lunch hour.  Now you’re not eating into my personal time.  You can pick your own players or you can let the website automatically select your team.  If your draft is running long and you’ve got a meeting, just leave.  The website will finish making your selections.

Rule 8.  Manage your team.  Nothing’s worse than an owner who selects a team and then pays no attention to it.  The person who runs the league needs to politely encourage delinquent owners to stay active. 

Image by youfantasysports via Flickr.

The NFL season is just around the corner. But if you can’t pull together a league before the season begins, most websites will let you form a league after the first, second or even third game.  Be careful.  This is habit forming.  If your hallway conversations sound something like this:  “If Wes Welker’s knee is OK he’s gonna be great in a PPR league,” then you have become an addict.  Let the games begin.  Play responsibly.

The ultimate goal in creating an advertisement is for the consumer to react to it. I believe advertising has always been an interactive industry, where you are creating something that will hopefully connect with the public. However, with the eruption of social media and skyrocketing usage of internet on mobile phones, interactive advertising has created a whole new ballgame for itself. This new virtual world has unleashed outlets for advertisers that were never seen as possibilities before. Now you can advertise directly on a cell phone, cater your advertisements to select Facebook profiles and even have a QR code in a magazine or poster. It’s almost unbelievable how far advertising can go. Which brings me to this question—How far is too far?

While researching current trends, I stumbled upon an article discussing a brand new interactive billboard in Times Square for the clothing store Forever 21. It was created by Space 150, an advertising agency in Minneapolis. This billboard shoots live video of Times Square in New York City and then a “model” comes onto the screen, takes a photo of the people watching and then shows the Polaroid. It’s easier to understand if you take just a minute and watch this video:

http://vimeo.com/12855619

Crazy, huh? To some this might seem cutting-edge and cool, but to others it may come off as an invasion of privacy or even creepy. Personally, I think this is very interesting and another way to reach out to the consumer and maybe even bring new customers into Forever 21. I find it fascinating that billboards now have these capabilities and it makes me wonder if this billboard is the way of the future. At the rate technology is advancing, I don’t think we’ll have to wait too long to find out.

Last semester at university, I took a Promotions and Advertising class, where conveniently, we reviewed and dissected Super Bowl advertisements.  Although the Doritos and Budweiser ads captured the majority of the class’s attention, I was more interested in the new campaign for Old Spice, where the consumer is in a shower, on a boat and riding a horse, all in one commercial. So why was I most attracted to the ad with the tagline “The Man Your Man Could Smell Like” when clearly I am not the intended, final consumer of this product? Maybe it’s because in a roundabout way I am the target.

Since its inception in 1934, Old Spice has aimed to target middle aged to older gentlemen. And recently, Old Spice has had to work diligently to combat product competitors, for example Axe, whose target market is also males, between the ages of 12 to 34. A need for new, transformational advertising was initiated when Mark Fitzloff, a copywriter at Wieden + Kennedy recently remarked, “if you put Nikes on your feet, you’re making a statement. If you are using Old Spice, you’re not.”  That is the old spice. 

Now, 76 years later, the target market has polarized, and Isaiah Mustafa is the new spice. Ladies, specifically those in relationships with men, are now the brand focus. For men, Mustafa may just be a familiar NFL star back on the television. But for the new target, he’s the handsome, influential, driving force to the store.  Old Spice was meticulous in producing this ad with females in mind because, stereotypically, the female in a household drives purchase decisions, particularly for male toiletry items. And interestingly enough, the first product ever produced by Old Spice was a body wash for women.

Not only is this ad catchy and memorable in terms of content, but it was also produced very creatively. It can take three days to shoot a 30-second commercial, but this was done in one single shot. Check out the video for production secrets of this commercial directly from Wieden + Kennedy’s Craig Allen and Eric Kallman. You may find yourself whistling their jingle for the rest of the day, or even better, running to the store so you can smell like a real man.

Like any other agency-client relationship, it’s important to set some parameters before you begin working together.  Drafting up a scope of work is crucial—it helps to manage the agency’s workload and meet client expectations as well.  Everyone’s time is valuable, and the client deserves the very best efforts from its agency.

The good thing is there’s no shortage of deserving non-profit organizations that would benefit from working with an agency.  The trick is finding the right fit for your business.  I know of one agency that gets feedback from its employees about potential pro bono clients.  Employees feel like their opinions are valued, and the client will have people who are truly passionate about their cause working on their account. This can also help tremendously when assembling a team for these types of projects.

As I said before, pro bono projects are an excellent way to do some truly unique creative work.  It’s also an opportunity to gain some additional visibility for the agency and its employees.   Many non-profit organizations I’ve worked with are more than happy to try something new, whether it is a social networking strategy, an in-your-face print campaign or a humorous radio ad.

I know many others on the agency side have experienced working with pro bono accounts, and I’d love to hear about it. And, as always, if I’ve left out an important tip, let me know in the comments section.

Try looking at it from an editor’s point of view.  Among other things, they want stories that:  

*Tell us something new or are happening now

*Are connected to a current event

*Impact a large number of people

*Tell something unexpected or challenge assumptions

*Describe a system success (or failure)

Does your event do any of these things? Is it really newsworthy? Let’s say it is, even then there’s no guarantee of coverage. Sometimes it’s a matter of pure logistics: timing, available staff and proximity to deadline. Newsrooms are increasingly covering more news with far fewer people. There are plenty of newsworthy stories that may go uncovered simply because there’s no warm body to assign to them.

Editors are bombarded with requests for coverage; dozens in a single day – and that’s after tossing out those that didn’t even make the cut. Among the dozens of remaining events, many will occur at the same time, so choices must be made and crews must be assigned. Throw a little spot news in the mix and you can see how editors get pulled in many different directions.

It’s easy to get discouraged, but don’t. The next time you want media coverage for your event, look for a newsworthy angle that will grab an editor’s attention – and if all else fails, hope for some good timing.

Image by Shavar Ross via Flickr.

I know this because Foursquare told me so.

If you’re not already familiar with Foursquare, it’s a location-based mobile service that is this year’s Twitter (a social utility so hot, everyone in business is talking about it, but so new that no one knows if it’s a good idea to spend money on it).

[If you're a restaurant, bar or other local attraction, it's probably a good fit.  If you're not... maybe not so much.]

While I’ve been watching blog posts, news articles and client questions fly through my inbox about Foursquare lately (as well as Gowalla and other similar services), I haven’t seen too many marketing or advertising applications of the service that really caught my attention.  However, the campaign that the Chicago Tourism Board recently launched is the exception.

What the Chicago Foursquare campaign has going for it is that it goes beyond couponing and discounts, or even the gaming mechanism of “badges,” “stickers” or “mayorship” to create a memorable, personally-significant experience of the brand.

I don’t know about you, but Ferris Bueller’s Day Off was one of my favorite movies as a teen.  Invite me to Chicago to recreate some of the scenes from that movie, and you’ve effectively captured my curiosity.

Give me a (digital) memento of the trip, and you’ve created a connection between your brand and one of my fondest youthful memories.

Make outstandingly clever use of a social utility I’m already using, and you’ve inspired my confidence, as a traveler and consumer, that you’re going to make solid recommendations the next time I visit your destination.

Offer a free trip to people who can make the best case for why they should win a trip to recreate a scene from the movie, and see if that doesn’t spur conversation.  (90 likes and 463 comments on a single Facebook status update.)

Eventually, efforts like this will help to build a community of enthusiasts who share the story of their exceptional experience with others in the form of word of mouth advertising.

While Chicago Blackhawk fans are celebrating their big win this week, I think the Explore Chicago should be celebrating this campaign as a big win as well.  When it comes to building brand enthusion through the 5 Cs, this one really hit the goal.

The rich traditions of Spanish language and culture have always attracted me as a student. Now, as an intern, the concept and growth of Hispanic marketing in this industry has perfectly married my educational and professional interests. In past decades, the Hispanic population has been considered a minority group in the U.S.; now it has become one of the fastest growing groups, accounting for almost 46.9 million residents (as of 2008). With such a drastic demographic shift in the U.S., not only geographically, but socially and culturally, a new form of marketing is surfacing: Hispanic niche marketing.

Although the Spanish language is the binding characteristic of Hispanics, they cannot be considered a homogeneous group, because of the regions and cultures in which they include. Thus, targeting a person becomes more important than targeting an ethnicity, as a whole. Not only knowing the statistics of this group is critical, but also knowing how to effectively communicate, market and advertise to our fellow consumers. After researching Hispanic advertising agencies, I ran across some staggering statistics from the Olé Advertising Agency in New York City. I read that the average U.S. Hispanic spends 20% more time online, with the majority of the sites visited in Spanish.  They also use the internet more than 17 hours a week, making the use of the internet greater than the use of television.

Many U.S. companies have created separate entities, such as Tapestry, the Multicultural Division of Starcom MediaVest Group, in order to effectively target this rapidly growing group. One of the best examples of multicultural, Hispanic marketing comes from a research study conducted by the Yaris sector of Toyota, which was used to promote their vehicle to this new market. Their task began with one-on-one interviews in the homes of young Hispanics, asking questions particular to their culture, heritage and lifestyles, avoiding the conversation of cars. As a result of this study, Toyota researchers and marketers determined that Hispanics are attempting to break free from the mold and stereotypes assumingly established in this country. In the end, Toyota introduced the “Mundo Yaris” (roughly translated to Yaris World), so that the Hispanic population can be portrayed as “trendsetters” in the U.S., thus leading to the Yaris becoming the most recognized sub-compact vehicle among Hispanics.

As I transition from the school environment to the grown-up adult world, I cannot even begin to count how many job postings I have scoured online.  And although I do have a minor in Spanish and consider myself a fairly good conversationalist, many of these jobs will only accept applicants who are fluent in Spanish. This new employment requirement serves to magnify the concept and importance of targeting these affluent individuals in our country.

To me, it is an exciting thought that the industry I am jumping into is radically changing not only its methods of marketing and advertising, but also in the people in which they are targeting. I think we could all benefit from learning about cultures different from our own.  Plus, it’s important to stay ahead of the game, because we never know what’s coming around the corner, or in this case, around the world.

Since listening to the entire book, I’m happy to report that I learned several ways to improve my verbal communications skills.  Take a peek at a few things I’ve re-learned:

 1.  Stop saying “ASAP.”  It’s been stated that 90% of our problems are due to miscommunication.  The term “ASAP” is a great illustration of this fact.  For example, let’s pretend you are working with a colleague on a proposal for a client.  If your colleague asks you to have your portion of the document ready “ASAP,” ask for a definite time or date instead.  What “ASAP” means to you might mean something entirely different to another person. 

2.  Expectations are everything.  Like any healthy agency-client relationship, it’s always important to agree upon expectations up front.  This will help you avoid “surprises” later on.  Be clear and concise when expressing your expectations to others. 

3.  Know when to shut up.  Sometimes the best thing to say is…nothing at all. 

4.  Put yourself in situations that will “stretch” your communications skills. Go to a networking event alone and challenge yourself to meet three new people.  Offer to participate in a new business presentation.  Attend a Toastmasters meeting.  Remember, growth doesn’t usually come from complacency.   

5.  Lose “um” and “hmm” from your vocabulary.  It’s okay to let one of these slip every once in awhile, but if you do it on a consistent basis, it can make you seem less professional.