We’re very excited to be starting the design of our 2012/13 CK Today calendar that is so popular in Chatham-Kent. This will our 9th issue, but our first since we’ve become HUB Creative Group. We have some new ideas, which is always fun.

Enthusiastic photographers have already started submitting their great photos. If you have a photo you think would be appropriate, please remember that we need “slice of life” images of “Chatham-Kent people doing what Chatham-Kent people do”….nothing too staged…and make sure there are people in the shots. If you have photo that fits our theme, please send it to us at photos@hubcreativegroup.com

Or mail to HUB Creative Group
4-300 Lacroix St., Chatham, ON N7M 6M6

And remember, we try to match photos with specific holidays, so if you have one that shows a funny or poignant moment at Easter, Christmas, Halloween or Remembrance Day, we’d love to see it.

Not familiar with the CK Today calendar? IT is designed to flow around the school year. It features a lot of handy things – like PA days, national holidays and many local events, just to name a few.

We have to be picky about our photos to ensure a high-end calendar. So please remember that calendar photos need to be clear and crisp. Please ensure your photos meet the following requirements:

• Landscape format photos only
• Glossy prints at the size of 10”w x 8”h (returned only with self-addressed, stamped envelope)
• Digital files at a minimum resolution of 300 dpi with an image area of 8” x 10”

We look forward to seeing your photos!

How important are the photos in our lives? Check out this commercial from Kodak. I get chills everytime I see it…

The final lines of the commercial: keep me, protect me, share me. Yes share me. This commercial was produced 20 years before Facebook was even thought of – so the mantra of sharing photos has been with us for a long, long time. facebook just makes it really, really easy…

Here’s more about From Inc.com:

How Instagram Grew From Foursquare Knock-Off to $1 Billion Photo Empire

News of Facebook’s acquisition of Instagram boomeranged around the Web yesterday with near-light-speed velocity. The interest made complete sense. Instagram, a start-up which had existed for a mere 551 days, which had never made a cent in revenue, and which employed just a dozen people, had pulled off one of the most impressive exits in recent memory. And it all seemed to happen overnight.

So how did Kevin Systrom, the 28-year-old company’s founder, pull it off?

The common, almost Tweet-sized narrative, is that Kevin Systrom, a freshly pedigreed member of Silicon Valley’s nouveau elite—he graduated from Stanford University, interned at Twitter, and worked at Google—founded Instagram in March 2010. But this is only a sliver of the story.

You can read the full story at Inc.com

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Champagne and ginger ale popped around here at HUB last week when we were told we had been awarded the RFP to develop a Community Marketing Communications Plan for our beloved Chatham-Kent. It was a long process to earn this honour, but it was worth it. Now the real work begins.

Who are we? What makes us smile? Where are we happiest? What keeps us here? These are the questions we will strive to answer. A lot of your neighbours will be giving their input. Maybe you’ll be called on to answer…what makes Chatham-Kent special?

We are a unique place. Full of promise and power. Let’s tell the world. We’re ready.

Mary Genge

Mary Genge is a Principal and the Creative Director at HUB Creative Group.

Social Media builds your brand but it’s not for everyone…especially if you’re not committed to keeping it current. You need to post, inform, show pictures, give people things to think about, and then sell your product or service.
But the key is to keep it current, and for a lot of small businesses that is difficult.

So is Social Media right form of advertising for your business?
Ask yourself these basic questions about your Marketing and Advertising Plan.
1. Do I do the same advertising every year and expect different results?
2. Do I react quickly to what is going on in my industry?
3. Do I just throw advertising at the wall and hope something sticks?
4. Do I really know my market and how to reach them?
5. Am I easy pickings for a salesperson with a new idea?

If you have answered yes to any of these questions, than its time to let HUB look at your Advertising Plan. Maybe, just maybe, it’s time to look where you spend your advertising dollars.

Social Media is right for you if you know your business goals and your customers. If your clients are using Social Media to buy products/services like yours, then maybe you should be part of the game. We had a client last week that quoted a new set of tires for a Facebook friend. Social Media worked for him because he let us plan a good strategy for him. After all, 1 Billion people are ready to hear from you if you’re sending the right message in the right way.

Social Media can work. Let us show you how.

Mike Genge
HUB Creative Group

What’s the difference between a targeted sales pitch and the kind of sales pitch you get from the Herb Tarlick’s of the world (if you’re over 45, you know who I’m talking about)? Herb Tarlick was a sleazy salesman for WKRP in Cincinnati, a fictional radio station from a 1970’s TV show. Tarlick was the old style salesman who believed that lots and lots of smooth words would sell …as long as you talked long enough, you would confuse the customer into buying your product. Let’s just say…Herb was off target.

In reality, it’s the brief targeted message that gets buyers to buy. There’s a wise old adage that says: when a person goes into a hardware store to buy a 1/8” drill bit, what he really wants is a 1/8” hole.

I always ask clients to tell me what the customer is looking for when they walk into their store or click on to their website. Put yourself in your customer’s shoes and ask: “What’s in it for me?”

Look at the front page of your website. When people read the first sentence, can they quickly answer the question: “Can this company supply what I need?”  On our HUB website, the first words after “Welcome to HUB” is… ”great creative and effective marketing…” to “help your business excel.” That last part is the 1/8” hole.

Solve the customer’s need in a quick, succinct way. Need help? Give me a call. It’s often easier for a third party to sum up your critical services and products. Leave the Herbs for cooking. Target your message and sell.

Mary Genge

Mary Genge is a Principal and the Creative Director at HUB Creative Group.

She’s been cooking up tasty creative for 26 years and loves the power of words.

As the quote next to me on my desk says. Opportunity “Don’t wait for your ship to come in…Swim out to it”. Look for Marketing Opportunities, and exploit new things. It can be done locally.  Ask me how.

Mike Genge

After reading the article though, I tucked it way thinking “good for them” – I can’t wait to go see a Wings game and hit up Mexican Village sometime soon.

Now fast forward to this week’s announcement from St. Clair College regarding their taking over operations of the Capitol Theatre.

This could not have come at a better time for Chatham-Kent.

Are we having our own renaissance here in Chatham-Kent? We have nearly 200 IT jobs in the DCC as well as a tech incubator at The Ground Floor; a hotel and condo development and even a post-secondary arts program and dance school being considered. Not to mention a flurry of boutique retail springing up on King Street thanks to Dan Warrener, Sonia Roe, Up and Running and Haute Pink Dance Wear. With a burgeoning technology scene and an invigorated focus on the arts, combined with more people living and working downtown I can only hope that our own downtown can turn it around like our friends across the border.

Here’s a little snippet of the Inc.com article, with a link to the full article below:

How the Motor City Got Its Groove Back

Home to a burgeoning concentration of tech start-ups and incubators, Detroit’s “Webward Avenue” is not just a street–it’s also a movement. Can it transform Detroit?

A few weekends ago, Glomski took his wife and 2-year-old to see Sesame Street Live at the Fox Theater. To get there, he parked in his office’s parking lot, passed by Comerica Park, home of the Detroit Tigers, through Grand Circus Park, and through a corridor of restaurants, bars, and coffee shops, including old prohibition-style speakeasies, live jazz clubs, and a coffee shop with music venue tucked away in the back.

The area is starting to see the benchmarks of activity that define a creative hub, all which fight the notion that Detroit is economically hopeless.

“People have shifted in their minds,” Chesnutt says. “They love spending time—and more importantly, spending money—downtown.”

Pedestrian traffic has increased, and more hopeful signs emerge almost every day.”You are seeing buildings that are vacant and unoccupied for an awful long time that you know just got sold,” Smith says.

Read the full article here at Inc.com.

We are so excited for what the future holds not only for the Capitol Theatre and for downtown – but for Chatham-Kent as a whole! Now it’s off to the Downtown Deli for a Corned Beef Sandwich!

Companies of all sizes understand the value of maintaining a presence in social media as a way to connect with customers and generate new leads. But how exactly do people interact with their favourite brands in social media? On which social sites do they tend to be more interactive with businesses, and how do they prefer to engage?

ATYM Market Research put together a very informative infographic based on its research into how people interact with brands on social media sites like Facebook and Twitter, and they came up with some pretty captivating statistics.

Here are some highlights…

• 85% of internet users have Facebook accounts; 49% are on Twitter…
• 74% of internet users use Facebook daily; 35% use Twitter daily…
• 58% of Facebook users have liked a brand on Facebook…
• 42% of people have mentioned a brand in a Facebook status update…
• 50% more people say their brand mentions in Facebook status updates are only positive (versus negative or mixed)…
• 84% of Facebook users who have liked a brand are active on Facebook daily…
• 59% of Facebook users who have liked a brand have mentioned a brand in a status update…

We would love to show you how we can help you  your brand engage more customers and prospects using social media – to get started just drop us a quick e-mail with your contact info and we’ll connect with you asap.

Here’s the complete study from ATYM Market Research…

Source: AYTM Market Research

Besides Angelina Jolie’s blatant “I-may-not-make-great movies-but-I-am-a-sex-goddess-and-don’t-you-forget-it” stance, what did you take away from Sunday night’s Oscars? Some people thought it a little dull, but I saw a great marketing campaign unfold in the disguise of “what makes movies magical to you” snippets from movie stars.

Stats show that movie attendance has dropped 16% in the last five years. People aren’t making the trek to the theatre when they can pay the same amount to view the same movie at home 6 weeks later… and consume a lot cheaper popcorn! Or you can view on your iPad or your SmartPhone! The theatre companies have done their best to give you better food, better seats, better sound…but still attendance is dropping.

So on Oscar night we were presented with charming and cheesey “unscripted” documentary-style clips of movie stars telling us when and why they first fell in love with the movies. Most of them referred to sitting in a theatre and enjoying a “larger than life” experience on the big screen.

Was this done to make the stars seem more real? Or was it done to remind us that no matter how big our tv screens are, they still can’t match the magic of seeing The Artist, Adam Sandler or even Alvin the Chipmunk on a 10 metre high screen.

The marketing message from the Oscars? Go back to the big screen! If we don’t buy the tickets, the stars can’t wear the diamonds.

See? There’s a marketing opportunity at every turn. Ask HUB Creative how you can market your way to bigger diamonds!

The partners of Hughes Advertising Agency, Mike and Mary Genge, and Bulldog Design, John Lyons and Ike Erickson, are excited to announce the merger of their two agencies to create HUB Creative Group, effective January 1, 2012.

“Merging the marketing and advertising expertise of Hughes with the print and multi-media expertise of Bulldog was a no-brainer”, says John Lyons. “Both agencies are known for creativity, so by bringing us together we create a multi-talented agency that can serve our customers better than ever before.”

“The name HUB Creative Group represents the joining of Hughes and Bulldog, but what is really important is that we are creating a hub of creative talent at one location,” says Mary Genge. “Under one roof we offer our clients 26 years of marketing and advertising experience along with graphic design for print and web, search engine optimization and social media. And let’s not forget in-house printing and production services that improve turn-around time.”

Ike Erickson is especially excited about the team of graphic artists and web designers that HUB Creative Group offers. “We have four, highly talented graphic designers and two website developers who, working together will create some amazing materials. We will raise the bar both locally and regionally and it’s all good for our clients. We are already meeting with clients in Toronto who want to see what our integrated services can do for them.”

“We know Chatham-Kent is evolving into a different kind of community…one with skills that are comparable to other thriving agri-urban areas. HUB Creative Group is going to be a part of that and leading the parade,” says Mike Genge. “We are not only amalgamating skills, we are unifying two centres of creative energy into one hub that will serve a broad scope of businesses and organizations. Call me. Let me show you what we can do for you.”

Background

Serving clients for over 25 years, Hughes Advertising Agency specializes in creating comprehensive marketing, advertising, fundraising and public relations campaigns.

Highly respected for graphic design, website development and printing, Bulldog Design Inc. has been serving a wide range of customers for 18 years.