Holiday 2011 Mixer with The Albany Ad Club, NYCRAMA, AWM, and WPC

The Capital District chapters of the Ad Club, American Marketing Association and Women's Press Club will join together for a night of holiday cheer.

December 1st, 2011
6:00-8:00PM
Albany Institute of History and Art
Part of the proceeds raised at the event will go to the Schoharie County flood victims.

Members: $30.00 | Non-members: $30.00 | Students: $30.00
RSVP www.nymarketing.org

Stay tuned for more information!

Renew Your Ad Club Membership and Build Your Business Resources

When you become a member of the Albany Ad Club, you join a community of influential advertising, marketing, public relations and media professionals, who work together to foster and promote the advertising industry throughout the Capital Region.

These are challenging times for our industry, but there is strength in numbers. Networking is still our strongest new business tool, and The Ad Club's continued affiliation with the American Advertising Federation means more business and more value for our members.

More Recognition:
The ADDY® AWARDS (formally the NORI Awards) has 60,000
entries annually, and honors excellence in advertising among 210
affiliates nationwide at the local, regional and national level. As a member, you can take advantage of reduced member ADDY entry fees.

More Revenue:
Need a better job? The AAF Job Bank is the place to find
it. Share your resume with thousands of top marketing and
advertising employers on the Marketing Career Network.
Need projects? Connect with The Creative Group, a staffing
service specializing in placing advertising, marketing and
creative web professionals on a project basis. View their 2011
Salary Guide.

More Resources:
We've got More Resources with our affiliation with the
AAF, connecting you with 50,000 ad professionals in 210
Ad Clubs nationwide. Not to mention, there's discounted trade subscriptions, seminar
speaker access and educational materials, discounts on shipping, car rentals, insurance services, web and telecommunication services, and trade subscriptions to Ad Age, ADWEEK, Brand Week, Media Week and the NY Times.

Learn about ALL of your Ad Club's powerful business-generating
benefits and discover why Ad Club Means Business.

http://www.albanyadclub.com/membership/join.aspx

Questions about which membership level is right for you? Send your questions to info@albanyadclub.com and we'll share with you all the reasons to become an Ad Club member today!

Audio imaging and branding

 "Audio Imaging and Branding Seminar"

What does your brand sound like? Do people recognize your business or organization when they hear it? While visual branding is second nature, the way things sound is an important and often overlooked component in creating a lasting and recognizable image.

From voice mail, advertising, and recruitment to trade shows, power point and video, join us as we discuss creating an audio image for your company or clients.

Join the Ad Club at White Lake Music & Post's spectacular new studios on Tuesday, November 1st and learn:

- How to avoid common audio mistakes
- How to better identify the sound of your business
- How to ensure audio continuity when promoting your business

All this plus Q&A, prizes, and great networking. Sound good?

 About our Speaker:
David Bourgeois, President and Creative Director
White Lake Music & Post/Voice Coaches
.



With more than 25 years providing compositions and audio post-production for film, television, advertising, and multimedia, David's clients include Discovery Networks, TLC, HGTV, and WE Network as well as numerous regional, local, and government agencies and businesses.  In 1990, David began developing training methods in effective recorded communication. David's methods became the model for the Voice Coaches individualized training process.

Date:  Tuesday, November 1,  2011
Time: 8:00-10:00 AM (Networking from 8-8:30am)
Location: White Lake Music & Post, 26 Vly Road, Albany NY
Cost is $10.00 Ad Club members, $20.00 non-members

Breakfast and coffee will be served.

To register please email info@albanyadclub.com by October 30 , 2011
Reserve soon--Limited space available!

The Addys are returning to Albany!

GET INVOLVED: The ADDY® Awards Return to the Capital Region!

The Albany Ad Club is at a turning point as we are now re-affiliated with the nation's largest advertising industry organization—the American Advertising Federation, representing 50,000 advertising professionals in 210 affiliate chapters.  Among the many new benefits being offered to our members, the most welcomed is the ADDY® Awards.  Our members can once again participate in this national creative awards competition generating over 60,000 entries annually.

Leadership Needed.

As we prepare for our region's first ADDY® Awards since 1973, the Albany Ad Club is seeking an individual or group to chair its 2012 competition, laying the foundation to make it a major creative competition in upstate New York.  This role requires effort, dedication and devotion as it offers priceless visibility and positions everyone involved at the highest levels of marketing networks.

 
Brief Description of Competition
The Albany Ad Club's ADDY® Awards chair is responsible for overseeing the work of the following committees and to ensure all work is cohesive, on schedule and on budget.

*Design Committee (committee secured):
Organizes volunteers, meetings/locations, materials and other logistics for designing various collateral materials including:

Entry materials
Program book
Event invitations
Awards and certificates
Misc ads, event signage and materials
Also sources reduced or gratis printing of all materials
*Entry Day Committee(committee secured):
Coordinates all "call for entry” efforts leading up to and on entry day

Organizes volunteers, locations, materials and other logistics for accepting entries on designated day
Becomes familiar with Addy Awards entry software and entry rules according to AAF standards 
Develop entry materials explaining entry rules, categories, etc. and works with Design Committee to create, produce and mail it
Organizes entries and lists of entries for judging committee uses
 
 *Judging Committee (committee secured):
Coordinates judging of entries

Organizes volunteers, locations, materials and other logistics for judging entries
Sources, qualifies and recruits judges
Makes travel, meals and lodging accommodations for judges
Works with Entry Committee to arranges for packaging and storage of entries prior to judging
Arranges for location and logistics for judging entries
Arranges for post-judging storage of entries
Works with Event Planning Committee to transport entries from storage to event
 

*Event Planning Committee (committee secured):
Plans awards presentation event

Organizes volunteers, locations, materials and other logistics for awards event
Sources and makes arrangements for a suitable event venue
Prepares, creates and/or designs gallery at venue to display entries

*Show Committee (vacant)
Produces presentation of awards

Organizes volunteers for awards presentation
Works with judging committee to prepare awards presentation
Writes presentation scripts
Creates audio and video awards presentation
Coordinates talent (including presenters)
Arranges for technical equipment
As advertising professionals, we've all participated in awards competitions and contemplated how we'd produce them differently and, in our minds, better! 

Chairing this event is a unique opportunity to:

Produce the first Albany Ad Club's ADDY® Awards in over 30 years.
Build your professional career and expand your network
Grow your experience by learning and applying new industry skills
Meet and work with other talented members of the Albany Ad Club and their organizations
Promote a sense of community within our industry – locally and nationwide!
As you can see, The Albany Ad Club's ADDY® Awards is all about COMMITTEES.  Each committee consists of smart, creative and dedicated individuals looking for a Chairperson to coordinate all of their efforts.

If you want to consider this key role in the premiere ADDY® Awards, please contact the Albany Ad Club today at info@albanyadclub.com.  

To learn more about the ADDY® Awards and AAF, visit http://aaf.org.

Mobile Marketing and Communications

We’ve all been watching the explosive growth in sales of smartphones like the Droid and iPhone. Now sales of the iPad and other tablets are starting to take off as well. Its quickly becoming important to target users of these devices. This will be the first of a short series of posts addressing the impact of mobile devices in our marketing marketing and communications initiatives.

Recently, FutureMedia's Colin Baird spoke at an Ad Club Education Seminar about some of the key factors you should consider when choosing whether and how to develop for this medium.

The Mobile Market
Colin showed us just how rapidly this sector is growing. The number of mobile apps downloaded has grown from 2.5 billion in 2009 to an estimated 4.5 billion in 2010. Gartner estimates that number will jump to 17.7 billion in 2011. Clearly consumers are interested.

Currently, smartphone market share is led by devices using the Android OS, followed closely by RIM (Blackberry). Apple’s iPhone trails a bit in third place. At first glance you might think that we should focus on those devices in that order.

But Colin showed us that’s not all there is to it. Smartphone usage stats are just that: stats for smartphones. Missing from those numbers are other types of mobile devices. For example, to date Apple has sold over 55 million iPod Touches and 15 million iPads. Once these numbers are entered into the equation, its clear that Apple is currently leading the mobile device market.

Choosing Target Operating System
So how do we decide where to focus our time and money? Do we develop an app for Apple’s iOS, or for Android? What about Blackberry? Well, It takes a little homework. As Colin points out, you need to know your:

• Target Audience
• Technology Choices
• Distribution Objectives
• Budget

There’s quite a bit to say about each of these topics, so we’ll cover them in detail in a future post.

Feed Your Head at Ad Club's Annual Meeting

This is not Dr. Hillman

Feed your head and your tummy at the Century House in Latham on June 23, featuring tasty breakfast fare and a little psycho-AD-nalysis by Dr. Mark Hillman, in that order.  

The facts:
Where: Century House, Latham
When: Thursday, June 23, 8-10:30 a.m.
Guest Speaker: Dr. Mark Hillman
"The Psychology of Advertising" 

The gist:

Ad agencies who still want to be around in five years aren’t thinking the way they used to. They're getting more and more into the heads of their audiences, thinking innovatively and taking risks. This is not something we do lightly, we need to better learn the psychodynamics of interaction and how audiences want to buy.

I'll interject here, before I am called on the carpet, that, yes, we have always researched our audience before marketing to them. Haven't we? But Dr. Hillman takes this to a more clinical level, a higher grade of Kool-Aid. And in today's fragmented communication landscape, it's just what the doctor ordered.

Get a Personal Tutor for InDesign from Albany Ad Club

This will be a great opportunity for all of us in the art and graphic design fields to gather more knowledge from a super team - MicroKnowledge & The Albany Ad Club. It's clear that we must learn everything we can to survive the coming stampede of new technology. We can either be overwhelmed, or we can be prepared with opportunities like this. Let's be prepared---Two and a half hours of hands-on tutoring for the first 15 people who sign up AND the chance to win a training certificate valued at $199 from MicroKnowledge, the premiere training and consulting firm in the area! That's a great deal. And dinner too! So sign up at info@albanyadclub.com for this hands-on seminar at MicroKnowledge, with trainer and Development Specialist Eleonor Morrell.
Details: DATE: May 17. PLACE: MicroKnowledge at 21 British American Blvd Latham. TIME: 5 - 6 PM Sign up and Dinner , 6 - 8:30 PM Hands-on Seminar on Basic InDesign. PRICE: $25 for Ad Club members, $40 for non-members. See ya there!

Albany Ad Club presents InDesign Tutorial

So you can't land a new job or move into a better one at your workplace because you don't know how to use InDesign software. Well, cancel the pity-party; the Ad Club and MicroKnowledge are going to get you started!

That's right, this coming May 17, the Ad Club and MicroKnowledge are teaming up to offer a tutorial on the basics of InDesign. MicroKnowledge's Eleonora Morrell will lead a hands-on seminar, showing you how to:

• Create multi-page documents
• Work with text
• Work with graphics
• Prepare for output

At the end of the tutorial, you'll know enough about InDesign's page layout and image placement techniques, creative tools, and precise typography controls to create newsletters and similar documents. And won't that look good on your resume?

And every participant can get his or her name into a drawing for a MicroKnowledge training certificate, worth $199! Use the certificate for more InDesign training or anything else MicroKnowledge offers!

The seminar will go from 6 to 8:30 PM. But don't worry about missing dinner; the Club will provide a light meal from 5 to 6 PM, so you'll have a satisfied belly when the seminar starts.

Ad Club members get all this for only $25 per person; $40 per person for non-members.

MicroKnowledge is located at 21 British American Boulevard in Latham, NY, just a hop, skip and jump from the Albany International Airport.

So, c'mon, join us for this informative, hands-on seminar! But seating is limited, so sign up at info@albanyadclub.com before it's too late! You have nothing to lose but your lack of InDesign knowledge.

Bonsai Exhibit Slated For Sayonoris

The terrible devastation in Japan, coming on the heels of Ad Club's announcement of "Sayonori" for the theme of the final NORI Awards event, caused a dilemma.

NORI themes have traditionally taken a campy spin and this is not a time for levity with regard to the Japanese. The board discussed abandoning the theme, but this just felt wrong. Instead, we decided to celebrate this ancient culture with a respectful execution, including a fundraising effort.

A lot of plans are still in discussion, but with the beautiful Key Hall and accommodating GE Theatre at Proctors as our setting, we're excited about the night.

This much I will reveal: during our cocktail hour in Key Hall we will be honored to have on display some fine examples of bonsai trees, courtesy of the Mohawk Hudson Bonsai Society.

These good folks have joined with the Albany Ad Club to help raise funds for Japan relief, specifically the bonsai community, by contributing raffle proceeds and other donations to The National Bonsai Foundation's Tohoku Disaster Relief Fund. This fund will help families within the bonsai culture that were devastated and in many cases left homeless following the earthquake. All contributions to the 501(c)(3) fund are tax deductible and we plan to have a beautiful bonsai tree, provided by the MHBS, to raffle off.

Stay tuned for more developments, and don't miss the reservation deadline for our June 10th event when we say sayonara to the NORIs and konnichiwa to next year's ADDY Awards.