It has been a few months since I moved to Georgia and immersed myself in the economic development landscape. One of the aspects of my new position has been to leverage the brand direction set in place by the marketing and communications team as well as our agency of record, Engauge.

To me it is a refreshing approach because it draws upon hard figures and statistics unique to the region with a foundation of “We Speak Business.”

Above is an energy ad I recently worked on for an upcoming conference. Below are two more. One is an aerospace ad for Georgia Trend (left), while the other is a logistics and infrastructure ad for Site Selection magazine (right).

What do you think?

Click either image above to view larger.

I have officially started a new position as director of account management in the marketing and communications department at the Georgia Department of Economic Development.

I will primarily be serving the Global Commerce teams as they generate economic development throughout the state. They are an active group composed of 5 main teams:

• Aerospace, Defense and Advanced Manufacturing
• Logistics, Energy, Agribusiness and Food Processing
• Corporate Solutions
• Health Sciences and Advanced Technologies
• Existing Industry and Regional Recruitment
• International Investments

In addition, ten international offices actively represent and promote the state to key decision makers in their regions.

In 2011, the International Trade Team assisted 265 trade deals in at least 37 countries; meanwhile, the Global Commerce team members supported 158 missions and trade shows.

The Georgia Department of Economic Development also operates its Tourism Division as well as Film, Music & Digital Entertainment.

Another key business team is the Georgia Centers of Innovation. Focused on six industry clusters and located throughout the state, the Centers assist and partner with Georgia companies to help them accelerate growth and provide industry-specific knowledge, connections and innovative business solutions.

For example, Bioscience:

There is a lot going on here in the state of Georgia. Stay tuned!

Just returned from San Antonio, Texas where I organized a special event for more than 400 publishers and media executives at the Sunset Station.

Logistics from:

• Event Location
• Transportation
• Catering
• Specialty Drinks
• Country Band
• Mariachi Band
• Flamenco Dancers
• Booth
• Banners
• Posters
• Flyers
• Email Marketing
• Social Marketing
• Videography
• Photography
• Presentations

…were all a part of the event marketing and management process.

After last year’s event I had some high expectations to meet, but I think everyone had a great time. What’s more, it served as a great branding and marketing vehicle.

As one individual stated to me after my follow-up email marketing message:

“I’ve never seen a more compelling followup to a convention by an exhibitor, even though I’ve been in the trade press for more than 30 years. Bravo.“

Works for me!

Produced a new video recently. I know it is a little corporate but that is how it needed to roll. When I was writing the script, the main challenge was condensing 18 years of company history in to roughly 3 minutes. Of course, I got lost in Neo Sounds trying to find the right mood. There are folks out there who can appreciate what I am saying.

Recently, my company moved office spaces to accommodate the growth we are experiencing. I’ve had the pleasure of working on improving the interior design of the new space from a somewhat stale corporate environment to one that is more inspiring. I’m still not done but progress has been made.

Here are a few shots from my mobile:

For the lobby, there was the chance to combine steel and vinyl to extend the design across several glass windows. I found an architectural sign company in Miami, Florida that was able to bring the design to reality. It is way more powerful in person.

For some of the larger walls it was important to find a solution that was both cost-effective and creative. Hiring a painter was a consideration, but in the end I went with this murals company.

This is a 20 x 8ft wall making up a total of 5 individual panels made of vinyl with a sticky back. It took 3 people approximately 2+ hours to hang it. I ordered them slightly larger to compensate for uneven ceiling heights, etc and then trimmed it to fit.

This is a 12 x 8ft space where I chose an image that harks back to the early days of publishing. There is another one in orange next to this room. My mobile doesn’t do the image justice, but it really adds depth and interest to the space as you consider how far news and media production have come. I found the images on the Library of Congress website where they were free for usage. Obviously a touch of Photoshopping was added.

This panel resides in the conference room on the other side of the lobby above and is 8 x 6ft. The hexagon treatment connects with the same vinyl exterior on the windows facing the other side. Reference to the past and focus on the future is encapsulated in the “Media Evolution” statement, which I am weaving into other aspects of my marketing initiatives in 2012.

Now to roll this same approach across both our Maryland and Denmark offices. Whew!

You can click here or the above graphic to view this year’s holiday message. The Flash file does not have the supporting CSS and HTML that was originally used, but you’ll get the idea. My goal was to make it global in appeal and feature a broad range of clients that represent several different nationalities.

I can’t believe it has already been a year since I distributed the last holiday message to our database. Notable is the fact that during this time I have worked hard to increase our database by more than 75% with qualified leads, prospect and customers.

This increase has made an impact. Our bookings this year increased by more than 20%. Several of these customers represent some of the larger media brands in North America such as Digital First Media; others constitute niche publications like the American Medical News.

Another one that hits especially close to home is the Evening Post Publishing which owns the Post & Courier, a newspaper I delivered on my bike as a child and have read either in print, online or on my tablet for most of my life. It’s a small world.

My work has taken me numerous places and exposed me to many new things. There is no doubt that 2012 will be an interesting year.

Just put the finishing touches on a new Cloud Publishing brochure along with corresponding web pages. In addition, I ran a full 2-page spread in New & Tech to create some brand awareness and hopefully generate some new business. The above image is from the advertisement.

I enjoyed learning more about the infrastructure for enterprise-level redundancy, security and scalability.

My next step is to develop a case study that details the finer points of hosting massive amounts of data in the Cloud, as well as providing browser-based access to multi-channel publishing solutions for large media companies.

This year we had a very successful presence at IFRA Expo in Vienna, Austria. On the first day alone we had more than 90 people participate in our theatre demonstrations to learn more about how our product would bring greater efficiency and create new monetization strategies for their company’s multi-channel publishing endeavors. Our success was a combination of factors and certainly a strong brand, advanced planning and solid marketing strategies were to thank. Here were some of the necessary steps:

Build a Good Database

In preparation for this year’s conference, it was imperative that we got a good jump on scheduling demonstrations at our booth. Over time we had carefully compiled Lead data – including email addresses – in Salesforce.com from multiple countries across Europe through tradeshows and other means. This meant we had a solid database of Leads and Prospects to distribute targeted email marketing messages to with the invitation to attend the tradeshow and participate in a personal demonstration.

Website Presence

The next step was to create a branded website conference page that communicated the value of our product along with offering hourly options to sign up for demonstrations. I wanted to capture as much information as possible, and then be able to report on it later. Therefore, I used Salesforce.com to set-up the campaign and process the Web-to-Lead data.

Data Capture & Reporting

Upon submission of the form, the attendee’s information and time preference were passed to Salesforce.com and recorded at the Lead level. Any Salesforce.com user within our organization would be able to query the entire list by applying a custom Field setting ie "IFRA Expo." This meant Sales knew exactly who was – and wasn’t – signing up and could follow up with a telephone call or personal email message. Salesforce.com also allows for the automatic distribution of branded confirmation emails using their Communication Templates, which helps to further the relationship and close the loop.

Email Marketing

Email marketing platform, Vertical Response, directly integrates with Salesforce.com, so it is easy to pull and create Lists based on various criteria as well as feed email marketing activity back to the Contact level in Salesforce.com. This is handy on many levels. For example, if a tradeshow Lead is eventually converted to a customer, anyone in the organization can look at the activity and see how the lead to conversion transpired, what kind of communications they received, and where the relationship originated.

Internal Communication

It was also important to communicate internally with the entire organization regarding our marketing activities and what attendees would gain from our demonstrations. Your employees are important brand advocates and also communicate regularly with existing customers. Word-of-Mouth should always be utilized. I also created a handy little graphic and link to the sign-up form for everyone to voluntarily apply to their email signatures.

Booth Presence

Designing a booth for a 40×20 ft space is not a task to take lightly, and I stressed over this more than probably anything else. Fundamentally, I approached the direction of the design by thinking first, what did we need to achieve functionally? Second, I asked myself how to best convey our brand promise of integration, connectivity and seamless publishing to multiple channels. You’ll see that the flat screens actually appear as if they are a part of the design; likewise, all of the panels are connected with a design metaphor represented by the transparent tubes.

Public Relations

Large tradeshows like IFRA generally invite specific media contacts to report on activities such as new products released and cutting-edge technologies that will revolutionize the industry. Of course, you want to take advantage of this and try to gain as much positive media exposure as possible. Crafting a press release helps to synthesize your message, and you can always post them both to your website and the conference website, which is also good for SEO. In addition, I use Cision to query additional media contacts that might not necessarily attend the show but will report on industry related news surrounding the conference.

Social Media

I made sure not only to use our existing LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter accounts to broadcast our activities to potential customers, but it was also important to take advantage of the collective conversation and the corresponding #hashtag that conference organizers created. I was able to dialogue in real-time with people at the show and answer questions, invite them to our on-site event and communicate pertinent information.

Advertising

If you have it in your budget, a great lead up to any successful tradeshow is timing targeted ads in specific industry publications. This allows you to develop further brand awareness as well as reach potential leads that you may have missed in your website, email marketing, public relations and social media efforts. Many times these printed industry publications are also available at the tradeshow.

Special Event

A great way to break down barriers between you and potential new customers is to create a specialty event outside of the normal proceedings of the conference. Like it or not, drinks are a great way to build relationships. Organizing a social hour at your booth is an effective means of utilizing your existing space. Just make sure to get permission from conference organizers ahead of time. I created little business cards that Sales reps could pass out to attendees.

I am leaving out the incredible work it takes to put on a solid demonstration, as well as the importance of choosing the right people to be at the booth. Suffice to say, several other individuals were crucial in putting those components together. But as the event marketer, be prepared to be involved with this as well.

I know it seems like a lot – and it is – but if you take these steps towards building a comprehensive marketing strategy for your next tradeshow I guarantee you it will be a success.