We’ve won a lot of Addy Awards over the years and we always feel good about them. But it takes a lot to get us excited. We got excited about winning a Gold National Addy for our work on JEL last year.

This year we won Best of Show at the Des Moines’ Addy Awards for Stew Hansen’s Dodge City. Car dealers are seldom recognized for the quality of their advertising and that lack of recognition is generally pretty darn appropriate. When Larry Goering hired us to help brand Stew Hansen’s he couldn’t have picked a worse time. Chrysler was in crisis. The economy was in the toilet. Generally, things in the car business sucked.

That’s what makes this Best of Show Award all the more rewarding. We had a client with the courage of a lion. And that’s what the judges really rewarded. Maybe that’s why they call him Crazy Larry.

If you do what everybody else is doing, you don’t stand out. Can’t. Impossible. So when you’re tempted to do the mundane advertising that’s so easy to do. Remember Crazy Larry. He has the Best of Show Trophy that you’d really like on your desk.

Here’s the commercial that won.

A major component of culture is language. When a language dies, so dies the culture and when it thrives, the culture is vibrant.

Yet, with all the talk about corporate culture, we rarely hear about corporate language. Words that have specific meaning to the company and its employees. Short hand for vision, mission and processes can help a company achieve it’s goal. Corporate language should not be confused with corporate speak which is usually cliche and meaningless.

Every company has a vision statement…or nearly every company. Most of those vision statements are two paragraphs long, hang on a wall and are seldom part of the everyday lives of the employees. Even vision statements that read like a billboard are forgotten by employees who have jobs to do.

The Iowa Health System is the largest network of hospitals and clinics in Iowa. Bill Leaver is IHS’ CEO.  He has a vision to continually improve the quality of care across the system. His vision statement is “Best Outcome For Every Patient, Every Time.” Short and understandable.

Stemming from that vision are internal initiatives that include everything from how sheets are folded to how heart attacks are treated. Every level of staff is a target for the vision. In an effort to make the vision more memorable we created an acronym…BOFEPET.

BOFEPET branded Mr. Leaver’s vision. It is shorthand that now everyone in the system understands. BOFEPET has become part of the culture and gives staff at all levels something to work toward.

As you think about your company’s culture, are there ways you can create words that encompass major initiatives that will save time and move your staff closer to it’s goals? Is there language you can create that will help you better communicate with your customers?

We thought it would be interesting to talk to a few golfers about Tiger Woods and his current situation…especially as it relates to a lucrative Nike contract. So we went to the Longview Golf Centre with a camera and a list of questions. This video is what a few golfers said about the situation. We’d love to hear your thoughts.

What would you do if you were the Marketing Director of Nike Golf?

A study presented at the American Public Health Association’s annual meeting, found that 11 percent of Florida high school students and 4 percent of middle school students had smoked hookah at least once.

For those of you who don’t know, a hookah is a big water pipe that is smoked socially like the one pictured in this post. The practice is rapidly growing in popularity among teens and college students.

With so much talk about social networking and herd thinking, it’s not surprising that social smoking is in vogue.

Every time one door is closed on tobacco use, another opens. Socially, smoking a cigarette is becoming taboo, but the hookah on the other hand becoming accepted. The problem is that it’s worse for you than smoking a cig. The urban myth is that because the smoke passes through water, it’s less harmful.

Tobacco has always had a social element to its use. Smoking was considered cool. Cigar clubs abounded in the 1990’s. Now hookahs are entering into the most social of generations. Is it any wonder?

Suggest your 13-year-old  shut down the X-box and exercise, or drink a glass of milk instead of Mountain Dew and you’re in for a battle.

But if the same suggestions come from one of his friends, it’s an entirely different story. For young teens, peer pressure is everything.  

That was the idea behind the Super-Power Summit — a youth wellness initiative that we managed for the Midwest Dairy Council, the Iowa Department of Education’s Team Nutrition Program and Iowa State University Extension for Families and 4H.

The day-long summit feature inspiring speakers such as Charlie Wittmack, who climbed to the top of Mount Everest, and Tim Dwight, an All-American from the University of Iowa who went on to become a leading kick returner in the NFL.

The event also featured a street marketing events that engaged the downtown lunch crowd with physical activities and important messages about eating healthy.