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.

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.

Launch digital planner receives Google Certification and DFWIMA Scholarship
By: Alison | Published: 05/06/11

Launch Agency digital & social media planner, Alexandra Watson,  just passed Google’s AdWords certification exams in advanced search engine marketing. She is now a Google AdWords certified professional. Alexandra was also awarded a DFWIMA (Dallas-Ft Worth Interactive Marketing Association) scholarship for excellence in interactive marketing.

Watson attended DFWIMA’s 2011 Excellence in Interactive Marketing awards dinner at the Dallas Museum of Art on April 19th, to be recognized as a scholarship recipient. The scholarship program is new to DFWIMA this year. The fund was established in 2010 to support the study of interactive marketing at DFW area universities. Outstanding students were selected by faculty nomination and included recipients from Southern Methodist University, Texas Christian University, University of Texas at Arlington, University of Texas at Dallas and University of North Texas. Watson was selected by Temerlin Advertising Institute faculty as SMU’s first recipient of this prestigious award.

Watson graduates from SMU in May 2011 with a Master’s degree in Advertising-New Media. She maintained a 4.0 grade point average while working full-time at Launch to build the digital and social media planning discipline at the agency.

2011 DFWIMA Scholarship Group

Watson 2011 DFWIMA Scholarship Recipient

Launch Welcomes Media Intern
By: Matthew | Published: 02/07/11

Alexandra Watson

With bounding enthusiasm, Alexandra Watson, New Media masters-candidate-intern extraordinaire, began her first official day at Launch two weeks past.

Her superpower — the ability to discern media consumption habits of the world’s most elusive prey in the Ahab’s quest of advertising. Her research interests include digital & social media strategy, influence within social networks, online metrics & analytics, and cross-cultural communication (which she researched for 5 weeks in India last summer).

She is above all else, a loving mother of two girls and a dedicated wife. Currently she is working on her Masters at SMU in Dallas. Before returning to school she worked in the financial services sector with non-profit organizations. She also has extensive experience in database management, database marketing, CRM, and business planning.

To see if she even has any free time, and if so, how she likes to occupy it, read on:

Q: If you were a toaster, what would you toast, and to what degree?
A: Sesame seed bagel, well-toasted. Practical and filling but a bit different.

Q: How do you feel about the pending robot apocalypse?
A: As long as the robots will need an analyst for their data, I’m okay with it.

Q: Hobbies?
A: Photography, scrapbooking, painting, singing, Lego games on Xbox 360 with my kids.

Q: Favorite copywriter intern?
A: Definitely Matt L.

Q: What is your ideal vacation?
A: A week at a beachside resort with my family in a place we’d never been to before. Hawaii, Puerto Rico, or somewhere on the Mediterranean would be great.

Q: Favorite inspirational rocket/space related saying?
A: “I will love the light for it shows me the way, yet I will endure the darkness because it shows me the stars.” (Og Mandino, American essayist & psychologist, 1923-1996)

Q: Best film adaptation of a novel?
A: The Count of Monte Cristo (new version). The movie was better. In the book his revenge goes on for years and years.

Q: What is the best weather?
A: Cool and cloudy. With a chance of meatballs.

Launch welcomes Alexandra and Alexandra welcomes Girl Scout cookie orders. The form is on her desk. Check out her blog at blog.strategyrockstar.com.


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