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.

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.

More importantly, why should I follow you?

This Twitter thing maybe the largest bandwagon in the world. Micro blogging about burritos, traffic jams, and mocha. Wooohoo!

There seems to be two sides to the issue. You love it or you think it’s the most worthless waste of time ever to hit a mobile phone.

I’ve been getting follow notices from the strangest places. A grocery store twenty miles away from me. A convenience store chain. A fishing guide in Florida. Even a competing ad agency! Okay, I admit I follow them.

I appreciate their belief that I have something intelligent to say in 140 characters, but do they really expect me to reciprocate? Where’s the strategy? Where’s the cross promotion? Where’s your boss?

Social media is a great way to “socialize your brand” and it’s also a great way to waste your time and to look silly. Have a strategy? Answer the question, “Why should anyone follow me?”
If you have an answer to that question, use it in your bio…maybe even your name. If the answer is “Great deals at the grocery store!” maybe I’ll follow to see how great your deals are. But if your answer is, “Because I’m trying to use social media so I don’t have to spend any money!” don’t waste my time.