Advertising Balloon Company

At the turn of the century, art director, Gale Venosdel, and I made a pretty cool poster for netLibrary. We would have made many more ads together, except for the fact that Tom Evans thought I was “contentious,” and he didn’t want that kind of energy around his pacific little agency. Be that as it may, we’ve all gone on to make many more ads for all sorts of clients.

Gale is now at Littlefield in Tulsa working on Tulsa Health Department, among other accounts. THD provides a multitude of services like free immunizations and low cost screenings designed to keep the 600,000 Tulsa residents safe and healthy. But first, the government body, like any advertiser, must get the attention of its intended audience.

Tulsa Health Department challenged the team at Littlefield to portray them as a warm, welcoming government agency instead of a stuffy bureaucracy. In my view, these whimsical, animated spots certainly do the job.

Gale also tells me the campaign has been selected to appear in Lürzer’s International Archive. Of course, the real mark of excellence is gaining favorable treatment here on AdPulp

Gale Venosdel: art director
Cullen Koger: writer
Cori Dantini: illustrator
Ryan Gallet: animator
Intake Studios: production

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I’ve been thinking a lot about how well suited social media marketing is for small business, for small businesses are actually social in real life.

With that in mind, I took note of April’s Confidence Indicator from DiscoverCard.

Some of the key findings in the report include:

• In 2007, 22 percent of small business owners were members of an online social networking community such as Facebook, Linked-In, My Space or Twitter. Three years later, that number has more than doubled to 48 percent.
• Of those who are active on social networks, 55 percent promote their businesses, which is up from 45 percent in 2009.
• 32 percent of the small business owners cite new leads as the top benefit received from their activity in this channel, followed by picking up business tips at 12 percent.

Small business owners–like large brands–have a story to tell and social media marketing is a punk rock way to roll. It’s totally hands on, and the rise of Facebook in particular has given many small business owners the platform they were looking for. There’s no web developer necessary, and that fact alone, is a breath of fresh air for many small business owners who find the management of their digital presence to be highly frustrating, expensive and a major time suck.

In related news, you can now “follow” a company on LinkedIn.

Mashable calls the new functionality “LinkedIn’s version of the Facebook Fan Page.” Following a company on LinkedIn provides the user with information on recent hires and promotions, new job opportunities and company profile updates.

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“Come on, Steve. Don’t go all Howard Hughes on us.” -Jon Stewart, advising Steve Jobs to “chill baby”

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The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Tea Party

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