After a year of struggle, she’s back.

If you attended the 2009 Hatling & Flint Circus party, you may have heard the horrible news that Barbie was launched from the cannon and got trapped in a tree.

Original footage has been lost. This is not the actual Barbie.

Despite our efforts, she could not be rescued. We tried and tried with no avail — we had to count our losses. We watched autumn turn into winter, winter to spring, and now, spring to summer.

She has been through turbulent wind, pelting rain, bitter cold temps, freezing blizzards, blinding snow and scorching heat. She survived plagues of bugs, threats from squirrels and cuttings from territorial birds.

We’re still not sure how she got out of the tree. With thoughts of another winter on the horizon, she may have been a jumper. The birds may have grown tired of her purple tutu and big smile. Maybe the tree grew tired of her constantly perfect posture. Either way, she was back on solid ground. Once on the ground, she had the ants and a riding lawn mower to contend with. Luckily, Bill saw a purple ballet costume and stopped the mower just in the nick of time. We don’t know the events of that Thursday in July, but we do know that she landed on the padded lawn with that expression and pose that only Barbie could hold.

An excited Barbie. Once on the ground, she had a hard time leaving her tree.

Through all of this, she hasn’t lost that sparkle in her eyes or that big, genuine smile. Her clothes may be a little tattered and sun bleached, but by golly, her hair is still perfectly coiffed.

Obama vs. Jen

I didn’t campaign on a promise of “Change We Can Believe In” because, quite frankly, I think the organization has a pretty good thing going! As the incoming president of the American Advertising Federation-Central MN, I would like to speak to the benefits of being a board member, plain ol’ member who enjoys all of the AAF member benefits, and an active volunteer in my local club. The benefits and growth I have experienced from being involved are priceless. I have met people, prospective clients…who have in some instance became active clients, learned a ton from extraordinary luncheon speakers, mentored current students, networked with local pros, people from other states, clubs, and agencies and have had a ton of fun in the process.

The new President, Jennifer Keul

As plagiarized from the American Advertising Federation website:
The American Advertising Federation (AAF), acts as the “Unifying Voice for Advertising.” The AAF is the oldest national advertising trade association, representing 40,000 professionals in the advertising industry.

AAF Mission
The American Advertising Federation protects and promotes the well-being of advertising. We accomplish this through a unique, nationally coordinated grassroots network of advertisers, agencies, media companies, local advertising clubs and college chapters.

Here’s what the AAF does:
· Brings members together to yield creative business solutions.
· Protects and promotes advertising at all levels of government through grassroots activities.
· Educates members on the latest trends in technology, creativity and marketing.
· Provides programs to assist local association volunteer leadership.
· Presents the industry with its future leaders.
· Honors advertising excellence.
· Promotes diversity in advertising by encouraging the recruitment of people of diverse cultures.
· Applies the communication skills of its members to help solve community concerns.
· ADDY Awards – the world’s largest and arguably toughest advertising competition.

And on a local level, being a member gets you:
· Discounts to AAF luncheons and events
· ADDY registration
· Opportunities to attend social events
· Exposure and access to local professionals in the industry
· Networking opportunities
· A ton of great benefits, such as discount pricing to Adweek, Advertising Age, Brandweek, AdCases.com, FedEx Shipping, Hertz rental, and MANY others.

You don’t all have to jump online and register to become a member of your local AAF Chapter (even though I would if I were you), but I do encourage you to give your support to a local organization that will be mutually beneficial.

A public policy news and information website published by Praxis Strategy Group of Grand Forks, N.D., has been named as a top site for 2010.

Grand Forks, ND (Vocus/PRWEB ) March 16, 2010 — A public policy news and information website published by Praxis Strategy Group of Grand Forks, N.D., has been named as a top site for 2010.

Planetizen, recognized as one of the world’s most popular urban planning websites, included newgeography.com on its 2010 list of the best planning, design and development websites for 2010. The sites named to the annual list are said to represent some of the top online resources for those interested in planning, design and development.

Websites are nominated by Planetizen readers and staff and judged against a common set of criteria including content, design and usability.

In citing NewGeography.com, judges commended its fair and balanced content, even though it sometimes goes against the grain of popular thinking among planners: “It was inevitable that certain voices that reject the current belief system of urban planning – people like Wendell Cox, Joel Kotkin, and Michael Lind – would band together. What wasn’t inevitable is that their collaboration would be readable, fair, and dare we say, balanced. With a bent towards the libertarian, Kotkin and crew cover urban issues, housing, politics and the suburbs with a hefty dose of demographics and GIS maps.”

Launched in 2008, NewGeography.com includes analysis and commentary on economic development, demographics, economics, politics and other public policy issues. It features writing and research from authors across the U.S., Europe, China and New Zealand and publishes an annual “Best Cities for Job Growth” in partnership with Forbes.com.

Praxis Strategy Group is a partner with the Flint Group

We have all heard this phrase and have been pushed to do it. We do this each and every day for all of our clients. We think outside the box to come up with a great strategy, and we execute each aspect of that plan with no boundaries.

Have you ever wondered what “thinking outside of the box” means and comes from? You have?! Wonderful. Well, it means to think differently about something, an unconventional way of thinking both smart and creative. We imagine boundaries around everything and that causes us to stay within the parameters. What if there were no limits? For us, that is how we look at each client. No boundaries and no limits. Thinking outside of the box actually started as a puzzle in Sam Loyd’s Cyclopedia of Puzzles in 1914. The phrase was coined much later with much debate as to who started it.

Why does it have to be a box? It doesn’t necessarily have to be a box, but Loyd designed it that way originally. You could make the box anything. It could be your coffee mug, your cubical, your hat. Of course, you wouldn’t put dots all over your mug and try to connect them and the puzzle would not really work, but the main thing to remember is to push your limits and go beyond the parameters. Here is the puzzle from the Cyclopedia of Puzzles, well, not the actual puzzle, but a replica designed by yours truly.

The box.

Try to connect all of the dots with 4 or less straight, connecting lines.

Did you figure it out? If so, we may just need you on our team. If you couldn’t figure it out, that’s ok, just push yourself to the limits…or unlimits.

Bill speaking at the Chamber's "Lunch Time Learning"

As companies voluntarily join or are unwittingly dragged into social media, their brand is being exposed to greater pressure than ever before. Brand Vulnerability is at an all time high as consumers have adapted to new digital tools faster than companies. At a recent “Lunch Time Learning” held at the St. Cloud Chamber, Bill Hatling spoke about the reach of social media and offers practical steps for businesses to confidently enter the social media environment.

For slides from the presentation, click here.

LiveCity Yaletown

When the cauldron was lit and the games of the 2010 Olympics were declared open, HatlingFlint was there at the Opening Ceremony, tweeting live. And we weren’t alone. Turns out there were lots of tweeters inside BC Place, around Vancouver, and all over the world who were sharing their Olympic experiences from where they were at that moment. This may not seem that unusual, but looking back only four years ago to the last winter Olympics, social media was virtually unknown. Today, social media is playing a very big role in connecting fans with athletes, teams, countries, and the overall Olympic experience.

It is for this reason that the US Speedskating team has added two members of the HatlingFlint team to their Olympic delegation, for the sole purpose of managing their social media campaign. Many of the athletes such as Apolo Ohno, Allison Baver, Jordan Malone, and Katherine Reutter, just to name a few, were already veterans of social media, but for the team as a whole, it was new.

Members of the US Speedskating team skating in Vancouver

The purpose of this new social media campaign that is still in its infancy, is to bring the Olympic experience of the team to fans of Speedskating, and continue with a sustaining program after the Olympics are over. Despite the well-publicized sponsorship of Comedy Central’s Stephen Colbert of the US Speedskating team, after the Olympics are over, his involvement will be complete, so the team continues to seek a new gold-level sponsor who will take the torch from Colbert. Having a sophisticated social media campaign in place will be attractive to any future sponsor, and can serve as an additional means by which to get this message out.

The primary components of the campaign include:
Facebook fan page – updated several times per day with photos, race updates, and of course, daily medal counts. Fans have also engaged by adding their own photos of them wearing their Colbert Nation caps, historic photos of Olympics from the past, and posting questions about where  to get tickets to events.
Twitter – most popular are the live tweets from the venues as the races unfold. Even though some of the events are not broadcast or delayed, fans can choose to follow the action immediately. Two times per week, a trivia quiz keeps fans coming back to answer a question and go into a drawing for a cool prize.
YouTube – new videos are uploaded showing many different sides of athletes from competitions, practices, goofing around, and their opinion on brussel sprouts.
Blogs – daily monitoring allows us to comment on every blog that mentions Speedskating in some way; so far there have been over 100 blog posts to date and growing. Featured bloggers are added to the facebook page which helps give them even more exposure.

So take advantage of this new phenomenon and join in the fun. Engage with the US Speedskating team online and we’ll keep you up to date on every possible moment we can, now through the Olympics, and well into the future.

2010 Gold Awards and Judges Choice Award

HatlingFlint recently won eight ADDY® Awards at the American Advertising Federation of Central Minnesota awards ceremony held on Saturday, Jan. 30, 2010. The ADDY Awards recognize creativity in numerous forms.

Pediatric Home Service’s Thrive Campaign received a gold award and also won the Judge’s Choice Award. The Thrive Campaign consisted of videos, a direct mail piece, ads and a microsite. The agency also received a gold award for Illustrations from the HatlingFlint Circus posters.

PHS Thrive Campaign and HatlingFlint Circus Illustrations

Silver award recipients were the Blattner Energy website, Glenn Metalcraft photos, the HatlingFlint Circus posters, a video of Tyler’s Success Story for Pediatric Home Service, and St. Cloud State University’s MBA Engaged Marketing campaign.

The award-winning pieces will advance to the district competition in Minneapolis on March 19-20.

After last week’s blog posting, how did your brand clean up? Here are five more questions to see if it’s time to brush up.

Have you acquired new companies or shed divisions?
When your company acquires new ones or divides, it may mean a shift in business strategy or it may not. Regardless, it may mean you’ve left your brand behind.

Has your revenue growth stalled?
If your category is dying, you can’t necessarily blame poor performance on your brand. But if your sales growth doesn’t match your category’s growth – and it hasn’t in awhile – it could be time to overhaul your brand.

Has your market changed around you?
Lots of new players, new developments and new customers in your market? Your brand may be well-positioned to take advantage. Or it may not. Time to figure it out.

Has your senior management restructured?
Brands belong to the people, but brand development begins at the top of the food chain. When there’s a lot of change at the top, there’s bound to be some confusion below. A strong brand development process is a great way to get everyone on the same page.

Has your company turned 20 years old?
Okay, this one belongs to my friend Jim Hughes, of the Brand Establishment, who’s been doing this a long time. Jim swears a high percentage of established companies that come to him for his brand development expertise are about 20 years old. Why? His hypothesis is that at about the 20-year mark many companies find they’ve lost their focus, the market has changed around them and maybe there’s been some senior management change. Whatever. Maybe it’s like the 17-year locust or seven-year itch. But I’m guessing that if your company’s about 20, some of the other nine clues are making themselves evident.

So where does your company stand? Healthy brand or unhealthy? For most successful companies, working on brand building – understanding it, delivering on it, communicating it, measuring it – is an all-the-time thing. If your organization has a clear vision of your brand and is acting on it, you’ve probably already stopped reading. If not, you’ll probably find yourself nodding yes to a number of the clues; it may be time.

Brand position and brand value are always topics that draw a lot of interest. From the CEO on down, the brand is important, and most organizations get that. With the current economic times being what they are, marketing professionals need to pay attention to how the brand is perceived in the marketplace. Has it lost some of its glow or have things changed in the organization? Has the industry you serve changed? If you answered “Yes” to any of these questions, read on, maybe it’s time to brush up your brand. Over the course of the next two blog postings, we will address this topic and point out 10 unmistakable clues that could point towards your need for brand development.

Have you lost market position?
If you were number one 10 years ago and number three now, there may be a number of things to fix. Tinkering around the edges won’t get you back to the top spot. Start with your brand.

Are your marketing investments delivering diminishing returns?
You’ve done media advertising, direct mail, and SEO. You’ve invested in CRM and new collateral. But no matter how much you spend, you get just about the same results. Sure, the world of media is changing. But could the big problem be your message? New executions and new media won’t fix it. Time to pay attention to your brand.

Are you dissatisfied with your logo?
Everyone gets tired of their logo at some point, just like we get tired of the same old clothes. In most cases you’re probably best advised to leave it alone (the logo, not the wardrobe). But if your logo doesn’t seem to fit who you are, and you don’t quite know why, it’s time to ask yourselves what your brand’s all about. And you’d best figure it out before you redesign the logo.

Are you dissatisfied with your name?
Your name is kind of like your logo; if it doesn’t fit, you need to know why. Funny thing, in the course of brand development you may decide it makes sense to retain your name, but you’ll find yourselves becoming a company it fits better.

Has there been change in your business strategy?
Your brand strategy is the “face” of your business strategy. So it almost goes without saying that a significant change in business strategy should provoke a long hard look at your brand.

Stay tuned for more tips on brushing up your brand.