Giving Thanks

As I sit down to write this, I've just enjoyed a piece of homemade pumpkin pie with fresh whipped cream (ah, the advantages of having a kitchen at the ready!). After a long weekend full of gourmet delights and laughter with friends and family, it's only fitting to consider a few of the things I am thankful for this year at Crazy Savvy:

• First on the list, natch, is the birth of Crazy Savvy! As faithful readers are well aware, the fates aligned and we took the big step to open our doors for business earlier this year and we've never looked back. The experience of building a communications agency from the ground up has been such a satisfying endeavor.

• Which brings me to a most important entry on my list: Our clients! We feel so blessed to have the opportunity to work with smart, engaging, creative individuals. You know who you are. Look for a more tangible token of appreciation in the weeks to come!

• Of course, we are also thankful to have a growing corps of talented, trusted collaborators with which to partner. From photography to web design, proofreaders, and many other talented professionals, we work with the best. (Want to join the ranks? Drop us a line at info AT crazysavvy DOT com. We'd love to talk.)

• Go ahead, call me shallow, but I also give thanks each day for my MacBook Pro. It's a thing of beauty. 'Nuff said.

• I'm also so thankful for the support of my family and loved ones and thankful for the flexibility that being a business owner affords me to be present in their lives. (Oh what a wonderful feeling it is not to have to explain that you will be late to work, again, because of a parent-teacher conference, school performance, doctor visit, fill-in-the-blank.)

• Finally, I'm thankful for a business partner who is the yin to my yang. The savvy to my crazy. (Or depending on the day, dare I say the crazy to my savvy?) Seriously, I couldn't ask for a more talented, dedicated partner in business.

Happy Thanksgiving to all of you from Crazy Savvy!

Post, Script

Happy Monday! We're busy, busy, busy on deadline so this will be brief .... but speaking of deadlines, if you want to be considered for the coveted title of Crazy Savvy's Coolest Fan (ok, maybe we can work on a wittier name for that ..... hm ....), you'd best get your postcards in by the end of the year! We'll announce our favorite letter at the close of 2009, and the winner will get .... something. A prize, glory, undying respect .... yeah, still working on the incentive program, too.

To inspire y'all to great epistolary works of genius, here is a postcard we just received in our mailbox today. It's from none other than ..... me ..... and it was sent two whole months ago from Jamaica. (Take it slow, mon, indeed.) I never thought I'd get it. But, better late than never, right?

Now, kidlets, get writing!

Happy Anniversary!

We are very excited to say that this week marks the six-month anniversary of the founding of Crazy Savvy. Of course, we had been dreaming and scheming, planning and hoping for a long time beforehand. But it was this week in May, six months ago, that we finally made the jump — and we haven't looked back since. (Today's photos come from our celebratory excursion to Blackbird .... yum-a-licious.)

It's hard to believe that it's been six months. On the one hand, it feels like no time at all. I can blink my eyes and recall the very first days, when we were so busy getting things up and running — talking to our accountant, determining our legal structure, filing all the requisite papers, developing our business plan. I remember how giddily we turned to the task of creating our website, our brand, and our promotional materials, and the many Saturday and Sunday morning design and concepting meetings that accompanied these endeavors. I recall (with great fondness) the day we signed our first new client, and how validating it felt to be able to take it (quite literally) to the bank. It seems hard to believe, in light of these vivid memories, that we've already been running full steam ahead for a whole half-year.

On the other hand, though, it feels like we've been doing this forever (maybe because, in one capacity or another, we have been!) It was a dream for both of us for so long that finally being able to live it feels right, feels natural, feels ... well, feels great! When we look at our base of clients — spanning industries, corporate & not-for-profit sectors, geographic locations, project types, and more — and the identity materials, operations procedures, and routines that have come out of running C/S, both Erin and I feel like they've been there practically forever. Our lives have changed in so many ways over this past half year, and yet it feels incomprehensible that we were ever — or could ever — be doing anything but this.

We want to thank you, Loyal Readers, for accompanying us on this adventure! We've been truly blessed by the support, encouragement, expertise, and connections that our C/S faithful have shared with us. We hope to return the spirit of the favor by taking on some interesting pro bono work around the holidays — more on that later, too! As we look ahead to the next six months, we're excited to continue growing our business, honing our skills, exploring new partnerships, and creating great (we hope!) work.

The timeworn axiom goes: The more things change, the more they stay the same. In many ways, we've witnessed the very inverse of this statement, as our lives have been marked forever by the C/S experience, in ways we are only starting to understand. But in some fundamental fashions, the axiom also proves true .... for all the change and upheaval and newness we've experienced, we still love working together, still experience the thrill of getting paid to (essentially) be creative, think, and have fun. We still drink too much coffee, duel at Scrabble, giggle a little too loudly (in the privacy of our own office!) We're still, at heart, crazy and savvy ... and that, folks, is what it's all about.

Crazy Savvy Mishmash

I don't think "busy" even begins to describe the current state of affairs here at Chez Crazy Savvy. But since idle hands are the devil's playthings — and since we're both looking forward to Christmas shopping, vacations, and other fun holiday-time expenditures — you'll hear no complaints regarding workload from us. What you will hear (um, read), though, is a brief update on what we're up to right here and now!

Client work is cracklin'. After a wonderful presentation to a client's Board of Directors Wednesday night, we're busy putting the finishing touches on a big marketing and communications piece designed to hit our client's doorstep just before the holidays. Since we're doing much of the design, in addition to all of the writing, creative/art direction, and production in-house, it means our lives have been taken over by InDesign and Photoshop .... oh joy. We're also getting acclimated with some new clients and projects, meaning scores of meetings and creative briefs are on our to-do lists. A website we've been working on is getting ready to go live in December, touch wood, so we're certainly looking forward to that, too!

On the C/S home-front, we're continuing to pursue business development leads .... some exciting things on the horizon ... and of course throwing ourselves into the design and concepting for our annual holiday card extravaganza. Phew! My brain hurts just thinking about it all. And these are but snippets of everything that's on deck here at Crazy Savvy ... yet, of course, we wouldn't have it any other way. As Thanksgiving approaches in (yipes) almost a week, we're so grateful for the opportunity to do the sort of work we love, partner with amazing clients, and have a fun time at the office each and every day. (Indeed, moments of stress are quickly diffused with an inane comment or quip, usually resulting in prolonged giggling fits.) We'll be back soon, ladies and gents, and in the meantime — don't forget to write!

MNAMA '09 Recap, Part III: Get Your Shop On

Happy Friday! (And Friday the 13th, no less .... ) I'm afraid we'll be spending our weekends working, but that doesn't mean we can't breathe a sigh of relief that Friday has, at last, arrived. This has been one heck of a week here at C/S — wonderful, undoubtedly, but I don't think either of us has been able to catch our breath!

I did want to take the opportunity, though, to reflect on another great presentation from the MNAMA conference while it's still fresh in my mind. Entitled "Leveraging Customer Marketing to Drive ROI at Retail," the session was led by Amy Dragland-Johnson at SC Johnson and Shelly Sinas at Pepperidge Farm. The dynamic duo provided a fascinating overview of customer marketing — a topic about which I had much to learn!

Customer marketing, the guru-istas explained, essentially means approaching marketing from the retail perspective. Insights are developed from the shopper's point of view, and leveraged in retail situations to facilitate product purchase. There are tons of opportunities for creative approaches here — the presenters discussed, for example, an initiative debuted at Target stores that paired Ziploc baggies and Goldfish snack crackers on aisle endcap displays. Brilliant! Like Forest Gump would say, they go together like peas and carrots .... heh. The initiative was a smashing success, leading to sales growth for both products and resulting in increased overall brand visibility for both companies.

It was fascinating to take in this unique marketing perspective. As someone with an agency-side background, most of the work we do for retail products is complete well before the actual item hits stores. We're used to developing the back-end concept and creative for products, but tend to have very little interaction with the actual retailer or the consumer at point-of-purchase. It seems to me that there's a wealth of opportunity for enterprising agencies to utilize their creative talents to devise strategic customer marketing solutions — and both presenters echoed the client-side desire to work with agencies that can bring this skill to the table. Definitely something we'll explore more here at C/S!

But now, back to InDesign, photo selection, copywriting, and those other parts of The Biz .... Happy Friday, one and all!

MNAMA '09, Part Two: Social Media Roundup

Now that Jen has had the opportunity to share a few of her impressions about the MN-AMA conference, it's my turn to dish a bit about the social media presentations we attended. I'll admit this right up front: I was curious to see if the presenters would be building up the Social-Media-as-Panacea Phenomenon that I see all too often. I was happy to see that my common sense manifesto was the prevailing theme of the day.

To shamelessly paraphrase James Carville, "It's the relationships, stupid."

As a social media consultant, I see my role as demystifying social media — taking down the veil of mystery (and the accompanying wave of panic!) that social media represents for so many savvy, intelligent people. Jen and I live and breathe social media — it was a no-brainer that it would be a core element of our business model. Just imagine the look on our faces when one of the introductory speakers for the keynote address was discussing the (large) proportion of Facebook users who log in daily and she extemporized, "Who are these people?" Seriously? At that point, I began to wonder just a bit at what the day was to hold for me on the "social media" track.

My fears were quickly assuaged when I entered the hall where the Geek Girls — Nancy Lyons and Meghan Wilker of Clockwork took the stage. Entertaining and engaging, they had me cheering internally with their message that social media is less about "fabulosity" and more about forging real connections. I guess you could say they were preaching to the choir.

My favorite moment in the presentation came when an audience member asked a statistical question and moments later, an iPhone-wielding librarian in the audience handily provided the answer. Now that's the power of technology (not to mention librarianship) in action.

Next up was John Olson, who also aimed to back up from the "noise" surrounding social media, focusing his speech heavily on connection. In a professorial fashion, he took us from La Belle Epoch to Palermo's grassroots anti-mob campaign fueled by black-and-white flyers up to the use of Twitter in the Iranian election in June in his overview of how various tools have been used to forge connections. It was refreshing to see social media given a bit of grounding in a historical perspective.

I was surprised when Olson — who spoke at length about his agency's approach to thinking in social circles — claimed to utterly neglect his own Facebook profile. "I don't really understand broadcasting your life," he opined. "Perhaps someone here could explain it to me." I didn't take him up on that particular challenge, but I did note with no small amount of irony he followed that rejoinder up with an incredible story of how through Facebook he was able to reconnect across countries and languages with a former caregiver for his adopted son. Pretty incredible stuff.

So there you go, folks. Social media offers you a new set of tools to be used in service to the timeless human goal of creating connections with those around us. This is true whether you are thinking in terms of your private life or your business. Not exactly groundbreaking in terms of my own professional development, I'm afraid, but a most enjoyable day all the same.

MNAMA '09 Conference Recap: Keynotes, Lovemarks, & Other Compound Words

Hi. Now that my brain has stopped spinning from the endless PowerPoint presentations (and my feet have stopped bleeding from my adorable but not very practical Burberry heels), let's reflect on this year's MNAMA conference, entitled "Get in the Game: Smart Moves to Optimize Marketing ROI." (Wow, the very title gets my blood pumping faster .... not.)

I'll add some miscellaneous notes at the bottom, but for the moment I'll focus my attention on the morning's keynote speech. A la our beloved Wonkette, I'll try to recap the presentation somewhat line-by-line .... though with considerably less profanity than Wonkette serves up (alas).

The presentation was called Lovemarks: The Future Beyond Brands and was delivered by John Bowman and Peter Hubbell of the NYC-based ad agency Saatchi & Saatchi. Clearly they were smart guys, and with impressive credentials to say the least. My stream of consciousness thoughts appear below, along with the speakers' remarks.

They introduce the presentation. Lovemarks .... hm, makes me think of how my mom would refer to hickies back in high school. Interesting. The term is intended to denote brands that inspire "loyalty beyond reason" in their faithful consumers. Affection beyond reason? Hm, definitely reminiscent of high school!

So apparently in this brave new world of post-recession marketing, emotion, rather than reason and analysis, leads to action. Great, I agree completely. But it cracks me up that they then proceed to show myriad charts and analytics to substantiate this point. Gee, practice what you preach? But the graphs plotting the concepts of love and respect on a matrix do have their own amusing charm .... reminds me of marriage counseling or an Aretha Franklin song.

After a lot of great ad clips from brands like Toyota, Cheerios, and T-Mobile, we get to a rather astonishing denouement: people like things that make them feel good. I want to laugh at the obviousness of this statement, but then it occurs to me that perhaps, for many people in the marketing world, it isn't all that obvious. They can think of a thousand points of jargon (ha) and point to mile-high stacks of market research and analytics, but when it comes to understanding what motivates the consumer, I think our industry is often guilty of not seeing the forest for the trees. Marketing, to me, is fundamentally about common sense, and I think a lot of people in our field get paid a lot of money to complicate things .... which gives us all a bad rap. But rant over, back to the presentation.

The gurus sayeth: We should look at consumer relationships not as transactions but as means of involvement, participation, and relationship-building. "Join" has become the buzzword for the new marketing world order. Yeah, okay, I buy this. I think one of the reasons social media has taken off is that people want a dialogue, not some endless advertising soliloquy. But phrases like "participation economy" make me want to cry. The way to galvanize consumers to "join" isn't by replacing sterile phrases like "return on investment" with the equally (in my humble opinion) impersonal notion of "return on involvement." But maybe that's just my affinity for semantics coming out .... we don't like marketing jargon here at Crazy Savvy.

The gurus continue: Effective advertising means telling a story. Yes! Indeed! Brevity is key — the biggest laughs of the morning came when the presenters showed a series of ads, Life Compressed By Stuffit. Brilliant! But I am sick of hearing about "journeys." The presentation ended with advice for the industry. Most of it was great, but I had to laugh when they told us to "boost mystery, sensuality, and intimacy." Hm .... well, I will suppress further commentary here so as to not offend the sensibilities of any delicate reader, but that sounds more apropos for a Viagra ad or a honeymoon to me.

OK. So some random thoughts on the rest of the day:

• It's freezing here at the RiverCenter .... for the love of all things wonderful, can someone turn up the heat? (No. No one did.)
• If I see any more bad stock photography in PowerPoint presentations, I will gouge my eyes out. Although I suppose I should fortify myself for the eventuality ....
• The visual theme and motif for the conference this year was chess. As somewhat (ok, "somewhat" being a massive understatement) of a chess aficionado myself, I found myself wandering around the various booths wanting to sit down and play at one of the chess boards on display. Even the culinary highlight of the day was a piece of dark chocolate in the shape of a chess piece (the queen, natch). Mmmm.
• On the matter of giving presentations: Presenters, please assume your audience is functionally literate. There's no need to read verbatim off your slides. Kthnxbai.

All in all, my snarkery aside, it was a great day — met some wonderful people, gleaned interesting insights, arrived at new business ideas for C/S and our clients. Erin will check in tomorrow with more on the social media aspects of the day, so stay tuned!

Notes from the underground

Manic Monday begins ..... oops, not now, but quite a few hours ago. We are busy! But it was a nice weekend. Business Partner Dearest took on the gargantuan task of repainting Crazy Savvy's world headquarters .... why do I have a nagging suspicion that my lack of involvement in this project may be due to my conspicuous predilection for pink paint? Heh. I kept busy enjoying the surprisingly temperate weather here in the Twin Cities, taking Pushkin for a long hike one day and spending tons of quality time with my wonderful pony on the other. But enough frivolity! We have business to attend to, after all.

It's a crazy (savvy) week for us indeed. After a wonderful client presentation first thing this a.m., we're energized and excited about the progress on our project together — a communications calendar for 2010. Tomorrow will find us heading off to the AMA's annual conference here in Minnesota, where we'll be up close and personal with one of the fantastic presenters (and a great friend!) Meetings, project drafts, proposals, and marketing materials round out our busy week. Phew!

But I would be remiss if I didn't mention one of the most fun (and near to our hearts) projects that we've got on our hands right now. Yes, the annual holiday card brainstorming has begun! We have a concept that we love, and are working on details and production specs as we speak (um, type). Try not to be too excited ..... cards won't be in the mail for another six or so weeks .... but, as with most of our other endeavors, they'll be well worth the wait! We promise. And if you know of any great design interns or illustrators who'd like a crack at this (and many other fun gigs) .... well, you know where to find us.

Fodder for Your Procrastination

Jen and I often spot typos, egregious errors, and assorted grammatical failures in our travels. However, it just wouldn't be nice to share them with you here, now would it? (Little known fact: we once ran a blog that did just that in our pre-entrepreneurship days!) Still, I know we're not alone in our proclivity for enjoying English-language mishaps so I thought I would share a few of our favorite destinations when we need a respite from deadlines and the to-do list.

First off is the "Blog" of "Unnecessary" Quotation Marks. I will never tire of this site! It makes my head spin that so many people truly and utterly Do Not Understand the function of quotation marks. Always a pleasure.

We've also spent many a moment laughing ourselves silly over at the English FAIL blog. Good times, lovelies, good times.

Perhaps you are not a grammar geek? Well in that case, might I suggest you check out the ever-dependable Passive Aggressive Notes. It's always a happy distraction, I promise you.

Finally, anyone who has spent much time on Etsy will undoubtedly enjoy Regretsy. I'd tell you more, but, frankly, this is one you just have to experience for yourself.

And thus concludes my brief little tour of Internet amusements — my go-to sources for when I need a little pick-me-up. Got a good one I missed? I'd love to hear about it.

Casting call

First off, hope all of our Devoted Readers had a very happy Halloween. We sure managed to keep busy: my beloved business partner attended a costume party and took her darling children trick-or-treating. (I am sure she's just thrilled with the copious amounts of candy they managed to snag ... nothing like a sugar-high before bedtime!) Yours Truly had a quieter night ... whipped up some homemade curry that was scary-delicious and lazed about on the couch watching horror flicks. Perfection! It was also a birthday weekend for moi ... Sunday the first found me older and, perhaps (if I'm lucky) wiser, too.

All in all, an eventful weekend.

But back to work. We’re excited to announce an opportunity to join the Crazy Savvy team! We’re looking for a talented, motivated graphic design intern to work with us on both client projects and some nifty promotional materials. Flexible schedule, roughly 10/hrs a week, and a great window into the Minneapolis creative world ... pretty cake, if you ask me. Tell your friends! Although we may be more-than-slightly biased, we think C/S is a pretty fun place to work.

If you go to MCAD, you can check out our job posting here. If not, shoot us an email at info@crazysavvy.com with a letter of introduction detailing your qualifications and interest in the position. (No unsolicited portfolios, please, though links to online portfolios are just fine.) We wait with bated breath ....