It’s been a week now since our Neighborhood Bar-B-Q and it was a great success.  Our theme was “encouraging neighborhood.”  The theme began with the idea of wanting to be involved in our business community, and getting to know those around us.  We realize that oftentimes businesses get “tunnel vision,”—and who can blame them (us) because there are always day-to-day things to deal with in business and one can easily get caught up in their work.  It goes along with the adage, “there are never enough hours in the day.”  The theme of “encouraging neighborhood” actually originated from the fact that we wanted to encourage companies around us to break away from that habit, and we wanted to engage with each other.  That’s why we were (and still are) encouraging neighborhood interaction.  We want the neighborhood to be an encouraging body, not just another business networking group.

At the Neighborhood Bar-B-Q, we had a total of 22 companies represented by approximately 55 individuals.  We enjoyed pulled pork, brats, fresh fruit, salads, grilled vegetables, baked beans, and wonderful desserts.  We also had some great live music from local “neighborhood” talent.

At MOVE, we believe that business is not about just “dollars and cents”; it’s about relationships.

We’d like to extend a big “thank you” to the following organizations that came out in support of our Neighborhood Bar-B-Q!

A2Y Chamber of Commerce—For more information about joining the Chamber, contact Cheryl O’Brian at (734) 665-4433.

A2 Fiber wants you to help them Google to install a high-speed broadband network in AA.

A2Y Leadership—Be a leader.  Explore your community.

AutoKnowledge provides knowledge management software applications for automotive product developers.

Baker Strategy helps you make SMART Customer Strategy happen.

Dominant Systems Computer Networks is offering neighborhood coupons for free analysis services, up to one free hour of telephone support, and PC repair for a flat rate of $159.  (Contact Dominant Systems for more specific information.)

Eagle Crest Conference Resorts is considered to be "The Resort of Southeast Michigan,” an initiative of Eastern Michigan University and a partner with Marriott Hotels.

Goeztcraft Printers has been serving the community since 1900 with full service printing from pre-press to bindery.

Info Ready is a new category of powerful software that streamlines the grant development process.

JOUST Strength and Fitness is offering a neighborhood special for 50% off on workout programs in August.

Marriott Hotels and Resorts is a beautiful facility in Ann Arbor/Ypsilanti that is partnered with the Eagle Crest Conference Resort.

Master Automotive Diagnostics is offering the “neighborhood” a Free Vehicle Inspection Program (V.I.P.) and a detailing package for cars at $79.95 ($89.95 for trucks, SUVs, vans, and crossovers) that includes a coupon for a free V.I.P. oil change. (Contact Master Automotive Diagnostics for more specific information.)

MOVE Communications is an integrated marketing communications company that will help make sure you have the right idea to set your sales in motion.  Call us to set up a free 1-hour consultation on how to improve your marketing by enhancing your website or creating a brand video.

Prakken Publications publishes magazines that focus on technology and education.  Their publications include TechDirections and The Education Digest.

The Produce Station offers delicious fresh produce and superior catering services.

Ribeiro Jiu-Jitsu is a highly accredited Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu academy.

Rightaway Delivery specializes in time-sensitive scheduled deliveries as well as emergency deliveries.

Signs By Tomorrow creates affordable, high-impact signs and visual messaging solutions.

The Southside Business District is a network of some of the best-kept shopping secrets in AA.

U of M Herbarium is a world-class research museum dedicated to the study of plant and fungal diversity in Michigan, the Great Lakes and globally.

Whirly Ball is a game that combines the skill of basketball and Jai-Alai, and is played from electric bumper cars.

Zingerman’s Mail Order offers corporate gifts with ZING!

Today I attended the weekly Lunch Ann Arbor Marketing presentation at Conor O'Neills on Main Street. Aside from having a fantastic lunch, I learned a lot about the importance of music within your strategic plan and messaging. This weeks presenter was Don Kline of Fleming Artists and 8BoxMuxic. He began by going over a history of jingles and their role in advertising. He referred to successful jingles as "earworms," a snippet of a song that gets stuck in your head, it embeds a message in your brain. The very first and one of the most successful earworm was Breakfast of Champions by Wheaties in the 20's. The longest running jingle to ever be used was by Slinky. Slinky's tactic was to use a song that would stick with children like a nursery rhyme, it became part of the family dialogue about toys. Then he talked about how in recent years advertising music has become more mainstream by incorporating popular music and upcoming bands. His example was Cadillac's use of the band Phoenix and Led Zeppelin. It speaks to the generation they are trying to sell to.

Next he talked about obtaining music to use in your marketing materials. There is royalty free music that is free to use, but may be over used, and creative commons licensed music that is licensed by the musician that allows free usage of the music within certain terms; ie. it must be for a charity purpose or you cannot alter it in anyway etc. There are many types of creative commons licenses. He also talked about ASCAP and BMI licensed music as well as master licenses which can cost anywhere from $10 to $10,000+ dollars.

The end of his presentation had some great tips for implementing music on websites and they are as follows:

1) Make sure the music enhances your message and is not just there to be cool.

2) You MUST have an off button, people get really irritated if they don't have an option to stop the music.

3) Be legal. Do your due diligence to make sure the music you are using is, in fact, free to use.

4) Use the best audio quality possible.

5) Make sure the music compliments the site and brand. Don't have smooth jazz playing on a pro-sports team's website.

6) Don't start the music abruptly loud. The view doesn't want to be startled so....

7) Ease into the music.

8) Make sure the music has a purpose. Is it for an intro, background music, etc. People don't usually want to listen to music the entire time they are using the site.

9) Loop the music if necessary.

10) Don't employ the butcher. Make sure the music is fluidly edited and is not choppy.

Make sure to keep up to date with LA2M and support Ann Arbor Fiber!

Happy 2010!  It's a new year and depending on how you prefer to calculate it, a new decade.  The world of marketing has changed pretty dramatically in the last year, let alone the last 10.  Let's look at a couple of ways that marketing has changed.

1. Social Media - In 2009 alone, social media exploded as a marketing medium.  Marketing professionals are still trying to figure out how to use Twitter and Facebook effectively to communicate with their audiences.  It may seem kind of silly but it takes some serious thought to create a social media strategy that will reach your target audience and engage them to keep coming back.
2. Video Online - MOVE has been producing videos throughout our 25-year history.  In that time we've seen plenty of things change.  Formats like Betacam and even DVcam are almost obsolete now.  But almost more dramatic is how accessible video has become online.  YouTube made it very simple for anyone to put a video online.  And because anyone can do it, it became almost a requirement for websites.  The quality of videos that can be shown online has improved greatly in the last couple of years too.  It used to take a long time to stream a very small video online but now internet and video technology has improved to be able to stream high quality video without any interruption or waiting. 
3. Budget -  Ok, I know, no one really needs to be told this but in the last couple of years, marketing budgets have contracted dramatically.  It hasn't just hit one sector or size of company either, it's everywhere.  But companies still need to do marketing.  They still need to communicate with their customers.  So as marketing professionals, we have to be creative about what we do.  We need to help our clients repurpose content in new ways and spend their money on projects that will create the most impact with their budget. 

Through all these changes, and many more, we at MOVE have held on to the belief that the best way to move people is by telling them a story.  Whether it's in automotive, education or publishing, every product or service has a story that is unique.  And every story has the power to move people to action.  As we begin 2010, we're looking forward to helping our clients move ahead...further...faster. 

All of us are doing more on-line every day, every minute, every tweet.  As you're thinking about your online presence as a company, it's helpful to have a framework to consider.  Our colleague Casey Frushour of Casey's Head forwarded us this summary of guidelines from Smashing Magazine called "Design to Sell: Eight Useful Tips to Help Your Site Convert".  It's a great distillation that's worth  glance.  Here's a taste. 

The Ann Arbor Area Chamber of Commerce puts on an annual conference called Impact in the fall.  This year both Don and I attended for MOVE.  The Chamber describes it as a public policy forum that will "bring leadership, business and community voices together to create alignment on a compelling vision of regional success to ensure that the Ann Arbor region continues to thrive." 

The partner organization for the event this year was A2 Success.  This name should sound familiar to you because I have mentioned the initiative in previous posts about the Washtenaw Ave Talent Center.  A2 Sucess is actually a county-wide initiative with the goal of ensuring "smart and successful growth of the Ann Arbor region."  Under the umbrella of A2 Success there are a number of focus areas.  The ones that they presented on at Impact this year were corporate leadership, government efficiency, improving K-12 performance, talent centers, and transit.  Some of these groups were further along in the development process than others but I think they received a lot of good feedback during the break-out sessions and hopefully that will help them to target their message and efforts as the move forward. 

One of the things that I found most interesting was the responses in a text message poll that we participated in at the end of the event.  Because it was done via text message and internet they could project real-time updates as the responses were sent in.  One of the questions was something like, "Which of the 5 topics discussed today should be the focus of the Chamber?"  You could check with the Chamber for actual percentages but I think that corporate leadership received something like 60% of the votes.  The interesting thing is that the attendance at each of the break-outs sessions was pretty even.  So even though people are interested in education and transit and believe that they are critical to our continued success as a region, most of them thought that the Chamber should spend its time on corporate leadership. 

That says two things to me.  First, people believe in the Hedgehog Principle.  This is Jim Collins' belief that companies who adopt one core principle and stick to it are the most successful.  So, while it seems that people attending Impact believe that all 5 focus areas are important, they think that the Chamber should stick to its core principle of promoting commerce through corporate leadership development.  If you read the Chamber's mission statement it actually includes "leadership in economic, political and educational development."  But I think most people just think business when you think of a chamber of commerce.  Second, jobs are what are going to keep people here.  If there aren't any jobs here, we're not going to be able to attract the sought after young professionals and keep the experienced ones.  Not everyone is an entrepreneur who will create a job for themselves if there isn't one here.  No matter how great the quality of life is somewhere, if you can't find a job there, you'll move to where you can.  And while, developing corporate leadership doesn't necessarily guarantee more jobs, it is could lead to growth and new development. 

There are lots of ways to get involved and voice your opinion.  Check out the A2 Success website or contact the Ann Arbor Area Chamber to connect in.

When you think of the vital cultural epicenters of Washtenaw County, Washtenaw Avenue isn't on the top of most people's lists.  In fact, most residents try to avoid it by any means necessary, especially at rush hour.  Traffic is always congested, it's not at all pedestrian or bike friendly, and getting in and out of the strip malls can be kind of a nightmare.  However, it is the primary throughline from downtown Ann Arbor to downtown Ypsilanti and is one of the main entry points for visitors to both cities.  For that reason, the county has put together an action team through the Ann Arbor Region Success initiative in order to "Redevelop Washtenaw Avenue as a Talent Center with an array of housing types in which talent can live, fixed transit service, and sustainable economic growth." 

A little over a week ago I attended one of the brainstorming meetings for community members and interested parties, including developers, planners, and members of the business community.  My good friend, and fellow Ann Arbor native, Anya, is managing the project so she invited me to attend and wear my "housing hat" as a member of the Housing & Human Services Advisory Board.  We spent time during the morning identifying particular areas of Washtenaw Ave that could benefit the most from redevelopment and then dreaming up how they could look.  In some ways it seems like a bit of a futile effort because the things that we all would like that area to be seem so far off.  But I realized that this project is kind of like marketing our community and that gave me a new perspective for what can be achieved. 

Every good marketing effort has a plan or a strategy behind it.  Here at MOVE we ask a couple of questions as we develop a marketing plan with our clients.  The first is "Where are we?"  I think most A2/Ypsi residents would agree that where we are with Washtenaw Ave is not where we want to be.  We split up into groups during the morning and across the board there was interest in more green space interspersed with commercial and mixed use spaces and more accessiblity to public transportation for the many residents who travel along this corridor each day from home to work or school.   This brings me to the next question, "Where do we want to go?"  More and more people in the community are demanding walkable spaces where they can live, work and play.  We want to like Washtenaw Ave.  But, "How will we get there?"   How can we encourage desireable development?  How can the environmentalists, public transportation, developers, business-owners and residents all be happy with the outcome?  It will definitely take a spirit of collaboration from all parties.  The interesting thing that I have learned though is that it's really more important that everyone agree on where they want to go than what the plan is to get there.  The plan is what makes the ideas actionable but if everyone doesn't agree on a common goal that plan will never be completed.  I'm excited about the possibility for Washtenaw Ave because it seems like there is a consensus forming about what it can be. 

For those of you who are a Young Professional, you might let out a little chuckle at the mention of this phrase.  It's a big buzzword these days, particularly here in Ann Arbor.  At almost every networking or business community event that I go to I hear the term at least once; "Keeping Young Professionals here is the key to our success as a region...", "We have to appeal to Young Professionals with...".  I definitely don't want to discount this thinking.  It's important for a community to have a diverse population and that includes age diversity.  But, the thing that always trips me up is the definition of a Young Professional. 

I think that most of the things that I've read define this group as college graduate working professionals between the ages of 23 and 35ish.  And that's all fine and good but the range of perspectives and interests represented by that group is vast.  How do you begin to understand and address all of the associated needs that these Young Professionals have?  Does an investment banker care about the same things as a social worker?  What sorts of social opportunities is an introvert looking for?  Is a 23-yr-old looking for the same things as a 33-yr-old?  What do you need to provide for someone who has more of an entreprenuerial spirit versus someone who likes the structure and stability of a large organization?  Does getting married and, maybe even more so, having kids automatically displace you from this category no matter what age you are? 

On top of that, there's the old chicken and egg issue of jobs.  There aren't a whole lot of jobs for new college graduates or people with a couple of years of experience in Ann Arbor, let alone the rest of Michigan.  If there isn't a job for you, you probably aren't going to stay somewhere for very long, no matter how desirable of an area it is.  But if it's not an area that's desirable to these Young Professionals, will businesses choose to locate there, therefore creating jobs?  

I am much better at posing questions than answering them so I'm sorry if this leaves you feeling a little unresolved but as a community I think that these are questions worth asking and trying to find answers to.

On an unrelated (and less important) note: I got to ride in a Porsche Boxter convertible in Orange County, CA this weekend. While the highlight was definitely being there for my college roommate's wedding with some fabulous college friends, I have to admit this was a close second. Even if you're not a car person, it's an experience everyone should have.     

We are pleased to announce that we received 2 bronze Tellys from the 30th Annual Telly Awards for our work on the Johnson Controls re3 video and the MSU Weekend MBA Program video.  Per their website, "The Telly Awards honor the very best local, regional, and cable television commercials and programs, as well as the finest video and film productions, and work created for the Web."  Thanks to all of the people who put in a lot of hard work on both of these projects.

A couple of interesting facts I learned about the Tellys.  First, they don't award gold or platinum awards, just silver and bronze.  I couldn't find anything about why they do it that way.  I have never seen any other awards with silver as the top award.  Second, the statues are designed by the same firm that does the Oscars & the Emmys.  I don't even know who that firm is but I can say that when you hold the statue it does make you feel a little like you're up on stage in a custom Valentino evening gown accepting the award.  Fortunately you can skip the speech where you're trying to remember to thank everyone you've ever known. 

Some people look at awards as a way to boost their credibility, others think that they're a waste of money just to pad your resumé.  Quite honestly, there is probably some truth to both of those attitudes.  But the way I see it, awards are a way of recognizing the hard work of the people on your team.  It's easy to be so focused on finishing a project that once it's done, you don't take time to recognize the work and talent of the people who produced it.  We are fortunate to work with a great network of very talented people and it's good to recognize that and it's also nice to have some other industry professionals, like the judges at the Tellys, recognize that too. 

STONE BRIDGE Productions shares the same vision and passion as MOVE Communications for stories worth telling. 

It was a call from Brian Belanger in the spring of 2008 that started the ball rolling. Brian, a producer/director/composer from Royal Oak who I’ve worked with over the years, shared with me the story, “November Requiem”, that he was writing and beginning to shoot in the sleepy town of Rogers City, Michigan. It was just the kind of story I love to shape. And it was a few short weeks later that we were editing the trailer, in order for the producer, Anne Belanger Marlowe (Bon Ami filmworks), to use as a tool to raise grant money to proceed with the project. November Requiem tells the story about the community of Rogers City, and the effects and healing following the loss of 23 of its sailors that went down with the Carl D. Bradley November 18, 1958. 

The trailer was edited using Final Cut Pro, on a MacBook Pro, at the STONE BRIDGE Productions Milan location. John Kaley (MotionPixel Images) added his AfterFX magic to several of the scenes and title sequences of the trailer (you can watch it at YouTube). John later composited the flashback scenes in the final film. The full-length documentary was edited at the Ann Arbor location, under the same roof as MOVE Communications, with the addition of a Mac Pro workstation. 

The much anticipated film debuted at the Rogers City Theatre November 18, 2008 to the community which had suffered the loss of 23 of its fathers, brothers, and husbands 50 years earlier. Rogers City held a week of commemorative events remembering the men lost on the Carl D. Bradley, and the debut of the film was one of the central events. It was met with tearful gratitude for the telling of a story, which had been repressed, but not forgotten, for so many of the town’s people. The recovery of the ships’ bell in 2007 was featured in November Requiem, and family members were able to see it, touch it and ring it, for the first time in 50 years. For those whose loved ones were never recovered from the wreck, they were able to experience closure that they never had before. 

Congratulations to everyone involved in November Requiem for being honored with a Golden CINE award this June. What an honor and privilege to tell the story of such an intensely personal event that changed the lives of so many people in a small close-knit community.  My gratitude goes out to Don Hart at MOVE Communications for his years of mentoring and support to enable me, and my endeavor of STONE BRIDGE Productions, to undertake a project of this scope and import. Here’s to many more. 

David Peterson
STONE BRIDGE Productions

Yesterday we celebrated our 25th anniversary with some of our friends, colleagues, clients and partners here at MOVE headquarters.  It's easy to get down in the state of the economy and such these days but it was really refreshing to just take a break yesterday and reflect on our history.  We put together a slideshow of photos from the past 25 years and included a list of current and former MOVE employees and the people that we have worked with as partners or vendors throughout our history.  It's a great list of very talented people.  And it was really fun that some of you could make it to the party to celebrate with us.  If you weren't able to, here are some photos to show you all of the fun you missed out on.  And make sure you're here to celebrate with us in another 25!