Tag Archives: grand rapids

Surviving CES and Experiential/Event Marketing

Posted on by Andrew Rushmore

The office is buzzing even more than usual lately and that can only mean one thing for our team: CES is coming! This will be the fifth year our client (Fulton Innovation) attends the show; we’re excited, as always!

Experiential and event management is exciting yet there are many ‘nail biting/ nerve racking’ moments that can be averted with a proper strategy. If you’re interested in experiential marketing, in the middle of planning an event, a marketing student, etc. than then post is for you. I’m going to share the top ten tips and tricks I’ve picked up in my five years of experience with CES – hopefully you’ll stop biting those nails now! Click below to read more.

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Community Involvement: Our Opportunity to Lead

Posted on by Andrew Rushmore

We live in a fast paced world in tough economic times: focus on the bottom line is just as important now as it is when the economy is flourishing. Yet just as there’s value behind every plan, every marketing strategy and every well thought out business model that drives revenue, there’s value in giving back to the community.

I’m grateful to the leadership at Steketee Greiner and Co. for their encouragement with my interest in engaging the community; ever since I joined the company in January I’ve been encouraged to grow not only as a professional but as a community leader as well. My interests carried over from my leadership position as Chair of Ad 2 West Michigan’s Public Service Campaign for Wealthy Street Theatre, located in East Grand Rapids and blossomed into opportunities with assisting Grand Rapids Whitewater (GRWW) as well as the Cool Cities/Cool Connections outreach program.

Over the last two months I’ve had the opportunity to provide guidance to young adults who graduated or were in high-school in the Ionia School District. It involved touring their town, giving feedback on marketing efforts the young adults had in place to encourage safe driving, meeting with city leadership officials in Ionia and then letting them see the Grand Rapids. After an hour with Mayor George Heartwell and Third Ward Commissioner Elias Lumpkins, we ended the experience by helping the young adults paint bus shelters by Veterans Park, downtown; it was a great way to let them leave a short term legacy of how Grand Rapids looked through their eyes.

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Passion for Advertising is Becoming Passion for Social Media

Posted on by Andrew Rushmore

I want to begin by greeting our readers, as this will be the first post I have had the honor of contributing to our company’s blog since I came to Steketee Greiner and Company (SGC) almost six months ago. It’s been an amazing journey and I’ve been thrilled to be a member of such a dedicated team of professionals.

In my professional development, before being an employee with SGC, I joined a local organization called Ad 2 West Michigan; in a year I was elected to the role of Chair of Public Service, where I have worked with my friend and professional club associate Ray Cashbaugh (Chair of Creative), as well as the handful of dedicated, to build our charity campaign for the Wealthy Theatre (located in East Grand Rapids).

Ad 2, a division of the AAF (National), is a club for young professionals in Advertising, Marketing, and Public Relations between the ages of 18 and 32. In light of my involvement, I had planned to join the AAF and Ad 2 for their National Conference in Orlando, Florida, as a representative of Ad 2 West Michigan even before my employment with Steketee Greiner; imagine my pride to represent not only Ad 2 West Michigan, but also a rapidly growing company driven by an innovative spirit. The passion I have for my relationship to SGC allowed me to network with professionals in the Advertising industry with a vigor that perhaps Seth Godin would be proud of. Continue reading →

In the End, Google Fiber is About More Than Just Google

Posted on by admin

When Google announced they would be taking applications from cities interested in receiving free fiber optic broadband, there was a surge of interest from cities across America – it grew into over 1,000 responses to Google’s request for information (RFI) – and, with some unspoken encouragement from Google’s RFI around community spirit, many of the cities involved in the initiative began to leverage digital media to raise awareness for their efforts, to drum up active support from community members and to show Google exactly how excited they are to be considered for the “grand prize.” In most cases, the people responded. Many who had an interest in bringing Google’s promise to their city acted as brand champions, spreading the story everywhere through both traditional and non-traditional channels. For many of these champions it became a highly competitive race to get Google’s attention, showing the vested interest participating cities have with Google’s fiber broadband technology.

As we began to monitor conversations around the initiative and the participating cities in the digital landscape, several cities stood out as clear leaders. These leaders had over ten thousand Facebook fans alone, with some breaking twenty and even thirty thousand. Pictures, tweets, blog posts, videos and more all supported the digital media presence of active cities, showing how very hands on participants became – fiber became a catalyst for community growth in cyberspace and beyond. And I say beyond, and this is a key learning for everyone, because the cities that controlled the largest share of digital voice were those that not only pulled together strategies for deploying digital media but carried it through to PR and experiential activities as well.

As Google’s March 26th deadline loomed closer we monitored even more excitement online as many cities saw last minute increases to their fan bases. This was likely tied to the flood of nationally recognized events various cities used for promotion, as well as the effect of word of mouth and the variety of media coverage that backed the buzz around Google’s fiber initiative. Continue reading →

Google Fiber Initiative Report – Round Two

Posted on by admin

Below is the second in our series of reports ranking the online share of voice for the cities participating in the Google fiber initiative.

This report updates our initial metrics based on the insights we’ve collected from our research, which includes all of the direction submitted through blog comments on our first report and emails we’ve received directly. And on that note, thank you to everyone who took the time to contribute to this research on behalf of your city. As we hope we’ve shown in these reports, active participation is essential to any good online efforts, and yours is much appreciated.

Please note that if your city did NOT make the top 10 in our report, it is no indication that you are in any way not competitively positioned in the initiative. Again, Google has multiple factors in their decision making process, including how interested a community is in working with Google, community support, local activities, needs and resources, approved construction methods, local regulatory issues and area broadband speeds. And though most participating cities assert that online interaction in their campaigns will increase the chances of favorability in their selection, ultimately Google will decide which factors are most relevant.

The second report is available for download here. Just click on the image below.
And please reach out to us through the comments below if you have any questions or comments on the information and insights we’re presenting.

 

Download Media Kit (6MB ZIP)

Google Fiber Initiative Update (Not a New Report Yet, but Some Thoughts Nonetheless)…

Posted on by admin

We’re receiving a number of inquiries from supporters of cities that weren’t included in our report, and the bottom line is that in order for these cities to get on the digital radar, they need to organize their approach by relevant search terms that supporters can find easily and, once connected, more effectively contribute to the campaign. That’s the value of these reports. This is an exercise in demonstrating to viewers the value of developing organized, measurable digital (and social media, etc.) campaigns in order to get the greatest value for the time and spend. The cities that tend to have a more fragmented social media approach (for example, Ann Arbor titling two separate Facebook pages “A2 Fiber” and “Ann Arbor for Google Fiber”) are making it more difficult to be heard as a single voice on a national level and are running the risk of going unnoticed. The way to get noticed beyond your local efforts is to get organized and create a unified, holistic digital/social media strategy of relevant, searchable content. Continue reading →

The Race is On(line) for Google Fiber – How the Candidates are Faring in the Digital Space

Posted on by admin

With community events for Google’s fiber initiative beginning on March 19th and the growing level of online community involvement that’s building here in Grand Rapids, we put together the first in a series of reports measuring the digital conversations and online efforts surrounding the participating cities looking to have Google’s hyper-speed fiber communications lines installed, creating a rank of the top 10 candidate cities by share of the total conversation happening around the initiative online.

This first report ranks the aspiring cities by share of total number of mentions in conversations happening between February 15 to March 17 on digital media channels, and we’ll continue to publish reports weekly showing the collected digital efforts and rankings of the top 10 cities until Google makes its final choice.

Google has multiple factors in their decision making process, including how interested a community is in working with Google, community support, local activities, needs and resources, approved construction methods, local regulatory issues and area broadband speeds. Most participating cities assert that online interaction in their campaigns will increase the chances of favorability in their selection by Google, and we’ll be presenting the data and insights that will ultimately show how important a factor online share of voice is in the process.

The first report is available for download here. Just click on the image below. And stay tuned for additional reports in the coming weeks.

UPDATE: As we continue our research and measurement for our next report, we’ve noticed that some cities’ online efforts are being conducted around nicknames relevant to their campaigns or local communities, rather than the direct name of the city (Ann Arbor and Sarasota, we’re looking at you!). Based on this, we’re filtering at more detailed levels to make sure we’re capturing that information and reporting accurately. We invite any city involved in the initiative NOT directly using their name for their online efforts to reach out to us (either through a comment below or through our Twitter feed – @steketeegreiner) with any specific search terms to make sure that we have your city represented properly.

SGC Selected to Develop 2010 Strategic Marketing Plan for Founders Brewing Company

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Founders Brewering Logo

Sorry for the moment of shameless promotion, but great news! We’ve been selected by local beer juggernaut, Founders Brewing Company, to work with them to develop their 2010 marketing strategy. The project is a perfect fit for our consulting group as it taps into our rigorous strategic planning process. Also, we love beer, and they happen to make some of the most recognized craft beer in the world, so that worked out nicely.

Read the full press release here.

We’ll now return you to our regularly scheduled value-added blogging…