2013 Launch Scholarships Announced at UNT Show
By: Alexandra | Published: 05/15/13

The 2013 UNT Communication Design Show was held Friday, May 10, in the gallery at the College of Visual Art and Design. Launch awarded $1,000 scholarships to the top junior design and art direction portfolios. This year’s winners were Whitney Smith for graphic design and Natalia Vargas for art direction. This is the seventh year that Launch has awarded scholarships to the student design and art direction majors whom Launch representatives and UNT faculty recognize as having achieved an outstanding body of creative work. Congratulations to Whitney and Natalia!

(Photo: Whitney Smith design award winner)

UNT 2013 Launch Scholarship Recipient Whitney Smith

 

Launch Agency Recognized with DFIWMA Interactive Marketing Awards
By: Alexandra | Published: 05/10/13

Launch Agency digital work garnered four awards at the Dallas-Fort Worth Interactive Marketing Association’s (DFWIMA) 2013 Excellence in Interactive Marketing Awards (EIMA). The award ceremony was May 9, 2013 at the Omni hotel in downtown Dallas.

Nature Nate’s Honey website was awarded 1st place for Most Effective Online Brand Awareness Campaign. Online Brand Awareness was judged by the look and feel of website creative as a reflection of the brand, including the site experience, overall design, usability, use of technology, etc. Nature Nate’s is a Texas-based premium honey distributor that provides raw, unfiltered, regional honey in major grocery retailers.

Promised Land Dairy’s rich media banner campaign was awarded 2nd place in both the Best of Show and Most Innovative Online Brand Creative categories. The Best of Show placement indicated the 2nd highest score of all entries, across all categories. The rich media banner campaign consisted of pre-expanding rich media ads created by Launch Agency, delivered on the Rocketfuel display platform via Pointroll. Each 4-week flight featured a video unit of a dairy farmer pulling a wheelbarrow of milk canisters across the computer screen. The farmer would fall, causing the milk to “spill” into an integrated 300×250 companion unit containing the farm-fresh ingredients specific to that quarter’s seasonal flavor of milk. The resulting ad unit highlighted one of Promised Land Dairy’s seasonal milk varieties, including Very Berry Strawberry, Mooberry Blueberry, Creamy Dreamy Orange, and Marvelous Mocha. Promised Land Dairy  is a Texas-based premium milk made only from Jersey cows, available in a variety of sizes and flavors at major retail grocery stores.

The Children’s Advocacy Center of Collin County’s (CACCC) Gala “Impact Moment video” was awarded 3rd place in the Most Effective Non-Profit/ Public Service Campaign category. The 2012 Impact video was a 90 second film which showed the severity of child abuse in Collin County through numerical facts and statistics, described the wide scope of services available and delivered a compelling call to action to support the mission of the CACCC. The video debuted at the 2012 annual fundraising Gala to an audience of more than 900 attendees, and has been used as a PSA piece. The CACCC’s mission is to bring safety, healing and justice to children victimized by abuse or neglect. They have provided free services to over 43,000 children to-date.

The DFWIMA‘s Excellence in Interactive Marketing awards banquet is an annual event recognizing DFW area leaders in the field. The 2013 winners demonstrated thought leadership, superior execution, outstanding metrics, and innovation in areas of online, interactive marketing from work completed in 2012. Entries were submitted entirely online (via custom webpages and entry forms) and judged by a distinguished panel comprised of representatives from academia and media. Entries were judged according to 1) creative (execution and functionality), 2) clarity of advertising message, 3) performance, and 4) overall experience.

2013 ADDY-lation for Launch Agency
By: Alexandra | Published: 02/21/13

Launch had an impressive showing February 20th at the 2013 Dallas ADDY awards. The 2013 awards, which highlighted the best individual ads and campaigns created by Dallas-Fort Worth area agencies and companies in 2012, were determined by a group of industry experts outside the Dallas-Fort Worth market. After long valet lines, a “major country music star” performance and a stand-up comedy routine, Launch managed to take home six trophies—three times what the agency pulled in the prior year. Here’s the breakdown:

Silver ADDY’s:
  • Nature Nate’s Website
  • Launch Christmas Card (2011 edition)
 Bronze ADDY’s:
  •  Nature Nate’s Press Kit
  •  Sam’s Club Cookbook
  •  Consonant Pain App
  •  Boston Terrier Rescue of North Texas Logo
Launch is a full-service advertising agency based in the Dallas/Fort Worth area founded in 2003. They are nationally recognized for award-winning creative work, and for competitively positioning and marketing both fast-growth and mature companies.

Launch is on the move
By: Rebecca | Published: 07/02/12

Well, the word is out.  We’re expanding!  In just a few short months, we’ll be knocking down walls and redecorating our new, larger space. Make sure to keep an eye on our Instagram feed (@LaunchAgency), where we’ll be documenting the action as it happens.  For more details about the change, click here.

Launch Agency Recognized With Two Interactive Marketing Awards For Promised Land Dairy Client By DFWIMA
By: Alexandra | Published: 06/07/12

Launch Agency was awarded for its digital marketing work on behalf of Promised Land Dairy, by the Dallas-Fort Worth Interactive Marketing Association’s (DFWIMA) 2012 Excellence in Interactive Marketing Awards (EIMA). The award ceremony was held in downtown Dallas at Union Station.

Launch made two category submissions for work completed in 2011 for their client Promised Land Dairy, and won second place for both entries. Their work was recognized in the categories of Most Effective Online Brand Awareness, and Most Effective Use of Social Media.

Online Brand Awareness was judged by the look and feel of website creative as a reflection of the Promised Land Dairy brand. It included the site experience, overall design, usability, use of technology, etc. The Social Media category was judged by the execution of a successful online strategy directing users to a specific action. In this category, Launch designed and utilized a Promised Land Dairy Facebook Page to build awareness and track the specific site actions of Store Locator searches and Moo-mail email club signups.

“We’re proud of the exceptional results we achieved for Promised Land Dairy, and honored to be recognized by such a prestigious organization,” said Alexandra Watson, Launch’s New Media Specialist.  “We are already looking forward to next year’s competiton.”

Promised Land Dairy is a Texas-based premium milk distributor that provides all-natural fluid milk made only from Jersey cows. Promised Land milk is available in a variety of sizes and flavors at major retail grocery stores.

Launch is a full-service advertising agency based in the Dallas/Fort Worth area. They are nationally recognized for award-winning creative work, and for competitively positioning and marketing both fast-growth and mature companies.

This award-winning work was also noted in the latest issue of Dairy Foods industry magazine.

2012 Launch scholarships awards announced at UNT show
By: Rebecca | Published: 05/24/12

The 2012 UNT Communication Design Show was held Friday, May 11 in the gallery at the College of Visual Arts and Design. Launch awarded $1,000 scholarships to the top junior design and art direction portfolios. This year’s winners were Ryan Raschbaum for graphic design and Katie Hittle Arani for art direction. This is the sixth year that Launch has awarded scholarships to the student design and art direction majors whom Launch representatives and UNT faculty recognize as having achieved an outstanding body of creative work. The collection, which includes many local, regional and national award-winning pieces, showcases the continued excellence of the University of North Texas Communication Design program.

SXSWi 2012 Interactive Trends Infographic by Launch Agency
By: Alexandra | Published: 05/09/12

SXSWi 2012 Infographic Chart by Launch Agency

SXSWi 2012 Conference 3 More Trends Impacting Advertising Agencies
By: Alexandra | Published: 05/08/12
We received an overwhelming amount of information (and associated swag) at this year’s SXSW Interactive conference in Austin. While the seminar topics seemed quite diverse, Launch Agency Senior Copywriter Alex Slotkin pointed out three key memes that surfaced and seemed of particular relevance to the advertising industry as a whole in the first part of this blog series, SXSWi 2012 Conference Top 3 Memes for Advertising Agencies. 
In that first blog post, the three key memes from the 2012 SXSWi Conference were identified as : 1) The changing role & function of ad agencies, 2) the increased importance of content creation and curation, and 3) social as the new norm. From a social media perspective, there were three additional memes that were trending within the SXSWi seminars that closely correlate with the above:
1.    Agile, real-time marketing is driven by technological innovations: Just as the rise of social networks has caused shifts in public relations and customer service, new breakout technologies are now driving change in agency and campaign structure. “Multi-channel” campaigns are now a must, and agencies have to staff for this and consider campaigns that parse content into “snackable” portions across a variety of platforms while maintaining a core brand idea.
2.    “Big Data” has personal privacy implications: As more content is created and shared on the internet daily, businesses and marketers are gleaning increasingly more and deeper data on people. These massive data sets are being referred to as “Big Data” and marketers are using this information in a more intentional way to analyze trends, predict consumer behavior, and personalize marketing experiences. The downside of this data glut is the myriad personal privacy and data ownership issues. We’ll certainly hear more about this meme as technology pervades more and more of our time and resources.
3.    With social as the new norm, the “Fear of Missing Out” is amplified: Consumers now have to keep up with the Joneses online as well as off-line. There is increasing pressure to have the latest technology, join the newest platforms, download the hottest apps, and create the most interesting posts. JWT led an excellent seminar on this topic of “FOMO”, and developed a very interesting short video on the subject which can be viewed here.  Brands and marketers can ultimately respond to this social media “FOMO” by easing it, escalating it, making light of it, or teaching consumers to cope with it.
All of these memes/trends from SXSWi point to a drastic shift in how we live, communicate, and market/sell in this high-paced, technology-saturated modern age. Launch Agency has created an infographic as a final installment in this blog series, as a quick-hit summary of these memes and more from the 2012 SXSWi conference.

 

SXSWi 2012 Conference Top 3 Memes for Advertising Agencies
By: Alexandra | Published: 04/20/12

This year’s SXSW Interactive conference (held annually each March in Austin, Texas) was especially overwhelming, both in terms of sheer numbers (an estimated 24,000 uber-geeks were in attendance this year) and in terms of the topics covered. In fact, this year Launch Agency got extra coverage on the social media end of the spectrum, courtesy of New Media Specialist Alexandra Watson, who will be providing her take in a second installment of this blog series titled “SXSWi 2012 Conference 3 More Trends Impacting Advertising Agencies”.

Despite the large and varied nature of the conference, a few key memes seemed to surface that were of especial relevance to Launch and the advertising industry as a whole:
1. The changing role & function of ad agencies: There was much talk of the need to “think more like a startup” or tech company, where ideas are developed and brought to market more rapidly, then improved in an iterative way. Also, there was some buzz about the need to “make things,” going beyond the usual agency core disciplines to actually create new products that demonstrate our range of thinking and ability to actually bring these ideas to market. The thought is that it harnesses the varied skill sets within the agency and can lead to actual products that can either be sold to clients, or create  separate businesses unto themselves.
2. The increased importance of content creation and curation: Our media landscape has been utterly transformed by the huge glut of data and content available via the Internet. In order to stand out, we need to make sure the work we’re putting out there is relevant,  specifically targeted to a receptive audience and built for easy sharing. A broadcast mentality no longer works (but the good news is the barrier to entry and the risks associated are now far lower). Further, we can help manage the info-clutter and can build brands that become de facto authorities on relevant topics by taking on the role of curator. Going beyond mere aggregation, this entails having a definitive point of view, both in what we link to and how we wrap those links in our own authorial voice.
3. Social is the new norm: Brands ignore the power of social media at their own peril, as it has become the way by which the majority of people now communicate and discover. With so many new social services coming out, it can be confusing to know how to best capitalize on this phenomenon. But the key strategies of identifying and reaching key advocates, engaging them in authentic conversations and making social content easy to share are key. If we do our jobs right, and pinpoint our audience precisely, social media can become the ultimate word-of-mouth marketing tool for our clients.
This only scratches the surface of what we learned and experienced at the conference, but we’ll follow up with a second post plus a Launch summary infographic.

Launch Agency receives Eagle Award from Children’s Advocacy Center of Collin County
By: Rebecca | Published: 03/27/12

Each year, the CACCC honors the person or organization who’s had an extraordinary impact on the abused children of Collin County. This year, the Eagle Award was presented to Launch Agency for calling attention to the good work of the Center, an organization that operated under the radar for approximately 20 years.

Agency principal Diane Seimetz on the Eagle Award, “While we don’t donate our time and talents for recognition, it’s a great feeling to know you are making a difference when you do.”

Mike Newman of the Plano Profile on the CACCC: “Their mission is a simple, to-the-point one: ‘to provide safety, healing and justice to children victimized by abuse or neglect.’ The job of accomplishing it is anything but simple.”

Launch principals Seimetz, Michael Boone and David Wilgus are grateful for the honor. And express thanks to the talented team that worked so hard on behalf of the CACCC, including Alexandra Watson, Jon Fullrich, Laura Carroll, Ryan Ingram, Reuben Miller and Alison Hamilton.

To learn more about the CACCC, visit www.cacplano.org.

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