The Five and Dime

We recently finished a fun project for Swiss Valley Farms that included the design and production of a custom trade show display, photography and design for light boxes, a 3-1/2 minute looping video for an LED display, building of the shipping crates, and all of the coordination of those items.

The trade show display, light boxes and video for Swiss Valley Farms/Faribault.

We had about a month to pull everything together. Finding willing partners down the street from us at BrightBox Industries, Inc., we set out to the task. As BrightBox’s name implies, they make custom light boxes. But they’re also known for a variety of display work; primarily in-store displays, but they are also up to the trade show task.

The Fancy Food Show is an important show for The Caves of Faribault, a subsidiary company of Swiss Valley Farms, so they wanted to showcase a variety of their cheeses in this quality setting. Our design reflected the upscale nature of the show, including a cherrywood display reminiscent of a parade of homes quality kitchen, complete with a granite solid surface backsplash. (Well, at least it looked like granite.)

Lauren Albracht, Marketing Specialist at Swiss Valley Farms, was heavily involved throughout the design process. One of  her goals was to make sure the display worked extra hard for her company by being multi-functional for other shows. She explains, “We are very excited about the flexibility this booth provides. We can change the lightbox graphics and video reel to adapt to new product introductions and speak to different audiences at the shows we attend.”

There was one added challenge in designing this custom display: the final assembly of the display had to be accomplished without any tools and all parts needed to be shipped in one crate.

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This post is about the AAF and ADDY awards, and is mainly written for ADDY awards participants. Anyone is welcome to read it, but it probably won’t have relevance for many businesses who aren’t participating in the ADDY awards.

ADDY judges in Tampa Bay. L-R: Leslie Haines (Nashville), Randy Gunter (Madison), Judy Thompson (Cincinnati) taken in front of the Columbia restaurant, Ybor City, Tampa, FL.

Recently I was in the Tampa Bay area judging their local ADDYs, the advertising awards sponsored by the American Advertising Federation (AAF.) The local advertising club’s entries were down significantly this year, almost half of what it had been in previous years. In fact, all of the clubs in Florida were down this year. (And I am going to be inquiring about other clubs across the country, so I’ll keep you informed.)

I predicted that the local clubs were going to be hurting with lower entries four months ago. No, I’m not much of a psychic, I was just included on an email from the national headquarters of AAF announcing that they were going to raise the prices of the entries and they expected the local clubs in turn to also raise their prices. (more…)

Are you using email marketing as part of your marketing mix? If you are, and you are sending materials out en masse, there are certain requirements you need to follow in order to do it legally. This is referred to the “CAN-SPAM Act” which was signed into law in 2003 by George W. Bush.

Some of the most common mistakes we see are simple ones.

First, you need to have an “opt-out”, an easy way for your email recipients to be taken off of your email list. (And then make sure you take them off!)

Second, you need to state within the email where you are located. This includes your address. (Not just a website address or phone number.)

These are two of the most common mistakes we see in emails that we receive. But, there are other requirements.

You can learn more about the CAN-SPAM act at the Federal Trade Commission website. They have an easy to understand page that goes into more detail. View it at http://business.ftc.gov/documents/bus61-can-spam-act-compliance-guide-business.

I’m heading this week to the Tampa area to be a judge for their local ADDY awards. I’ve done quite a few of these over the years. It gives me a chance to hang out with advertising people in a different market, see a lot of good work, it’s always a lot of fun and I typically learn something everywhere I go.