The Landmarks of Excellence constitute the premier awards event for public relations professionals in the region. They are a presentation of the Bluegrass chapter of the Public Relations Society of America and the International Association of Business Communicators, Kentucky chapter.

Congratulations to Mayor Greg Fischer, who was named Communicator of the Year, and to Dan Hartlage, principal with Guthrie/Mayes, who was inducted into the Public Relations Hall of Fame.

New West’s work with clients over the past year resulted in two Awards of Excellence, the top award, along with four Merit Awards and four Honorable Mention Awards:

Awards of Excellence:

• Graphic Design, Periodicals: FIT4FUN/Kentucky Children’s Health & Fitness Fund. This is a lively, colorful, quarterly health and fitness magazine distributed free to all Kentucky public school kids in grades K-3. Our client is Kentucky Children’s Health & Fitness Fund in La Grange. Publisher Jan Winter said she got a little emotional as she realized that “people really believe in this work.”

• Writing, Special Projects: Kentucky Department of Insurance. We worked with the Department of Insurance to spread the word about its new health insurance advocate through a multimedia consumer-focused advertising campaign that included print, television and radio. The budget was limited, but we used creativity and a friendly mascot to demystify the “monster” of health insurance.

Merit Awards:

• Publications, Booklet or Brochure: Kentucky State Fair Board
• Special Event: Kentucky Department of Travel & Tourism
• Graphic Design, Printed Piece: Transit Authority of River City (TARC)
• Overall Community Program, Customer Relations: Transit Authority of River City (TARC)

Honorable Mention:

• Publications, Non-Profit Booklet or Brochure: FIT4FUN/Kentucky Children’s Health & Fitness Fund
• Special Event: General Electric
• Online Communications, External Web Site: Kentucky Cabinet for Health & Family Services
• News Media/Video, Multimedia Presentation: Kentucky Education and Workforce Cabinet

That was one of the main messages we picked up at the Third Annual Emerging Media Summit recently here in Louisville. The summit was put on by the International Association of Business Communicators’ Kentucky Chapter and the Louisville Digital Association. It was a great conference with a lot of good speakers.

Speaker Jason Falls discusses the role of games in social media

Here were some of the other big takeaways:

• Blogs are losing some of their influence as mobile marketing ascends. If you want to do any mobile marketing, you need to have a clutter-free, easy-to-navigate, mobile-optimized version of your web site.
• Technology is changing rapidly. What’s hot today might not be hot tomorrow. Don’t put too much stock in any one tool.
• In social media, no one person can know it all. Any organization involved in communications needs to have multiple people who are comfortable with social media.
• Use multiple approaches to reach out (QR codes, SMS texts, news releases, website, Facebook, Twitter, etc.) and to listen to/quantify what people are saying online (social media monitoring tools, switchboard, surveys, etc.)
• Online health is a growing trend
• Gaming is a growing tool that is applicable to many clients

Tim Hayden of 44Doors compared social media to “the campfire in the village,” where a broad range of conversations is taking place. You can either join them or not, but the conversations are going on. Hayden said mobile marketing brings a new dynamic to communication that is liberating, rewarding and empowering – bridging the online world with the offline. The challenge is in harnessing it.

The use of QR codes in marketing has exploded, allowing smartphone users to wave their devices over a code that takes them to a website. Ergo, instant buy-in from the customer! But does it take the customer somewhere he or she wants to go? Is the site optimized for that little tiny screen the user has in his hand? Does it allow for a quick and seamless exchange of information with him? Does it offer him some sort of reward? Or does it take him to a home page that takes two minutes to load all the graphics, minuscule copy and a confusing array of links?

QR codes are being used for virtual grocery shopping in Korea, wine-brand rollouts in the U.S., restaurant deals, car-repair deals, traffic info, and much more. QR codes are even used as identifiers that could save your life. Say you have an accident and are found unconscious. Medical personnel could scan a code in your wallet that will instantly bring up your health-care history so you’re given the right kind of treatment – and not, for example, a drug to which you might be allergic.

Don’t be surprised if one day soon you walk into your favorite home improvement store and are greeted with an automated voice that says hello and asks if the power drill you bought last time is still working for you, and would you like to save 10% on power tools today?

A foggy summer morning at the D & F Farm in Somerset.

To promote Kentucky Proud produce, we recently shot a 30-second commercial featuring tomato farmer Dwight Faulkner of D & F Farm in Somerset, Kentucky. Eager to capture the gorgeous scenery, our creative team (Paul Gosselin and Mike Duck), the director (Dennis Goodman) and the production company (Videobred) were on location before the sun ever rose. It was worth it, as we got some great shots of rolling fields in the early-morning fog.

You can watch the completed Kentucky Proud spot at http://youtu.be/vzvSRV63iLA

Shooting at Ashford Stud, Versailles

New West is also working with the Kentucky Department of Travel & Tourism to produce a series of three spots showcasing some of Kentucky’s unique attractions, from Lincoln’s birthplace to Cumberland Falls,  from horse farms to distilleries.

Production on the Travel & Tourism spots is drawing to a close, and the ads will air sometime this fall in neighboring states — and likely here as well.

Moms who needed a little “me-time.”

So New West decided this would be a good opportunity to reach out to these tech-savvy moms with some old-school human touch.

We teamed up with General Electric to show off some of GE’s new Profile™ Washer & Dryer pairs at the BlissDom conference in Nashville Jan. 27-28. These are beautiful machines, with all the latest technology, including “Overnight Ready” wash cycles that remove so much moisture you won’t even need to transfer to a dryer, plus a SmartDispense™ system that automatically adds just the right amount of detergent or fabric softener.

In other words, more me-time for the launderer.

And what does a busy woman do with a little free time? She goes to the spa! We decided to reach out to conference attendees through a spa atmosphere, complete with skilled professionals to provide neck massages and manicures.

To sweeten the pot even further, GE gave away a gorgeous new GE Profile™ washer and dryer to one of the attendees who dropped by the booth.

Bingo.

“How amazing was that massage? Loved it! Thx to GE, Opryland spa, and #Blissdom,” mommyinsider wrote on her Twitter page.

“I’m in a conference room…make your first stop the @GE suite where you can get a great massage! #blissdom I’ll meet ya’!” tweeted StressFreeBaby.

“Holy cow…I just saw the Bentley of washer dryers. @rationaltunes would die. GE profile (@GE_appliances),” said Twitter-happy looneytunes.

And on and on.

Now that’s what we’d call a clean sweep.

Hundreds of thousands of visitors explored the Kentucky Experience at the FEI Alltech World Equestrian Games.

The last four weeks have been a blur of activity here at New West. And before we light out to our next assignments, we thought we’d catch our breaths for a brief recap.

It all began with the load-in of all things Kentucky into The Kentucky Experience at the Alltech FEI World Equestrian Games. Two years in the planning, the three pavilions and courtyard gardens welcomed the 500,000-plus people who visited or participated in the Games at the Kentucky Horse Park. From Corvettes to crafts and bourbon to bluegrass bands – every item, every activity and every inch of space was carefully designed, decorated and displayed to showcase the best Kentucky has to offer. For 16 days, the International (and NBC-TV) “sun” shone bright on this Kentucky home! For that work, the Kentucky Department of Travel presented New West with its “Partner of the Year” award.  Thanks for the recognition. It was FUN!

Visitors to the Louisville Water Company's 150th anniversary celebration enjoyed a carriage ride. The historic Water Tower stands in the background.

While WEG was in high gear, we were also helping our friends at the Louisville Water Company prep for a big 150th anniversary celebration. The water branded Pure Tap by New West more than a decade ago was first delivered to businesses in what is now the Central Business District on October 16, 1860. Highlights of the celebration included tours of the magnificent buildings that water company leadership has carefully preserved and maintained over the years (photos) and carriage rides around the Water Tower property on River Road. And through May of 2011, visitors to The Frazier Museum in downtown Louisville will be treated to a display of LWC firsts, facts and artifacts (See http://www.fraziermuseum.org/).

New West helped celebrate a major economic development announcement as well.  Our writers, designers and event management teams helped our GE Appliances and Lighting client orchestrate some world-class good news. It began with an early October announcement at the GE Lighting plant in Bucyrus, Ohio, that will double its workforce over the next two years and ended just last week with the simultaneous announcement at four GE facilities in middle America involving hundreds of millions of dollars of new investment and hundreds of new jobs.

We checked our Google alerts recently and discovered that Jean Gianfagna, founder and president of a marketing consulting firm in Cleveland, had nice things to say about the Unbridled Spirit brand New West created for the state of Kentucky in 2004.

More on that in a minute. First, though, Ms. Gianfagna wanted to talk about her home state’s new “Beautiful Ohio” plate. The plate, Ms. Gianfagna said, “makes a classic branding and marketing mistake: Obscuring the name of the product through ‘creative’ graphic design. In fact, it’s hard to imagine what else the designers could have done to bury the brand.” She complained about typeface that’s too hard to read, “clumsy” visual elements, an overly busy design, and positioning of the word “Ohio” in such a way that plate frame holders will cover up at least part of it.

Many other states have made similar mistakes, Gianfagna said. Kentucky, on the other hand, “designed a clean, attractive license plate whose main visual element is its ‘Kentucky Unbridled Spirit’ branding, the official logo of the brand strategy that applies to all of Kentucky’s tourism marketing and promotion – including its license plates.” This strategy has paid off, she said, noting that public perceptions of Kentucky have improved as a result.

“Imagine the impact,” Gianfagna concluded, “if Ohio officials had followed Kentucky’s lead and recognized the state’s license plate as a branding opportunity. Suppose they created a visually striking graphic design that showcased the brand in a readable, engaging, and memorable way and linked to the state’s tourism marketing campaign. Ohio would be making millions of powerful, positive impressions on people everywhere, every day. And that would be a smart branding strategy.”

Thanks, Jean. We couldn’t have said it better ourselves.

For the full text of Ms. Gianfagna’s remarks, see http://www.gianfagnamarketing.com/blog/2010/03/01/a-branding-blunder-averted-ohio-almost-makes-a-classic-marketing-mistake/