By teamsf
STUDENTS, ORGANIZERS CELEBRATE 10TH ANNIVERSARY, GIVE AWAY $17,000 IN SCHOLARSHIPS
TROY, Mich., May 19, 2010 – The Detroit Auto Dealers Association (DADA) awarded high school students deterring underage drinking with $17,000 in scholarships at the Courageous Persuaders Awards Celebration, featuring a red carpet arrival hosted by renowned television personality Huel Perkins, anchor at WJBK Fox2. The awards celebration was held on May 18th at Troy Marriott in Troy, Mich.
The DADA is the primary sponsor and administrator of the Courageous Persuaders program which is facilitated through the DADA Education Foundation. “We are thrilled at this year’s entry turnout and to celebrate the students that understand the serious dangers of underage drinking,” said Bill Perkins, DADA President.
The competition, now in its tenth year in Michigan, encourages high school students to create 30-second television commercials warning middle school students about the dangers of drinking alcohol. The contest drew 743 video entries, which included 1,196 students from 383 schools in 45 U.S. states.
Student scholarships and award winners:
- Grand Prize, $3,000 – “Don’t Drink – Understand!” by Camryn Washington, Chelsea Washington, Homeschooled, Southfield, Michigan.
- First Place, $1,500 – “Peer Action” by Benjamin Webber, Tim Callesen, Trevor McDowell of Davison High School in Davison, Michigan.
- Second Place, $1,000 – “Agents Against Alcoholic Beverages” by Corey Gipperich, Ross Stolzenburg, Sean McIntyre of Lake Orion High School in Lake Orion, Michigan.
- Third Place, $500 – “Don’t Skip Steps” by Robyn Gray, Doug Oliver, Brad Powell, Lee M. Thurston High School in Redford, Michigan.
In addition, special sponsored awards were presented to the following:
- Lindsey Renee Cianciolo Family Memorial Scholarship $3,000 – two $1,500 Michigan based scholarship winners: “Adieu” by John Russell from Lenawee ISD Tech Center, Adrian, Michigan. “Word Score” by Michael Crawford from Detroit Catholic Central High School in Novi, Michigan.
- DADA Award, $2,000 – contributed by the Detroit Auto Dealers Association: “Don’t be a Tool” by Devon Green of Walled Lake Western High School Commerce Township, Michigan.
- New York festivals, $2,000 – chosen based on the commercial’s effectiveness to inform and inspire: “Pass Me Another Lie” by Karianne Caylor, Dakota Forgette, Kaylyn Schultz of Carney Nadeau Public School in Menominee, Michigan.
- Adcraft Club of Detroit Award, $2,000 – presented to the commercial that conveyed factual information about the dangers of alcohol use in the most persuasive and creative manner: “Think Don’t Drink” by Jonathan D’ Abrosio of Lake Orion High School in Lake Orion, Michigan.
- State Farm Award, $1,000 – chosen based on the commercial’s effectiveness on the dangers and consequences of underage drinking and automobile usage: “Spelling Bee” by Troy Gould of Oakwood High School in Dayton, Ohio.
- College for Creative Studies Award, Free Continuing Education Course – “Spelling Bee” by Troy Gould of Oakwood High School in Dayton, Ohio.
- USA Today Award, $1,000 – chosen by the USA Today Detroit staff from among the most persuasive commercials, as judged by middle school students: “A True Friend” by Ariel Sinelnikoff of San Rafael High School in San Rafael, California.
- USA Today Courageous Leader Award – presented to a special teacher for his or her extraordinary contribution to the Courageous Persuaders program: Kara Clayton of Lee M. Thurston High School in Redford, Michigan.
Winners were selected after several rounds of judging. During the first round, a panel from the Detroit Auto Dealers Association viewed the entries and identified the top 70 contenders. Those entries were then reviewed by students at middle schools who completed questionnaires. Results of the questionnaires determined the winners.
“This video worked because it showed that friends can help other friends not drink,” said a middle school student who judged the winning Grand Prize Award. “The play on words was an entertaining example that kids should say no,” said another.
The Courageous Persuaders program was created in 2000 by Oakland County District Judge Michael A. Martone and John Barczyk, a local McCann-Erickson advertising executive. In 2007, the DADA became the primary sponsor and administrator of the Courageous Persuaders program through its DADA Education Foundation.
The grand prize-winning commercial will be broadcast on television and the winner will also be featured in a print ad that will run in USA Today this summer, and will be televised on TV stations across the U.S. Winning videos will be posted on www.courageouspersuaders.com. For additional information, please contact the Detroit Auto Dealers Association office at 248.643.0250.
About the DADA Education Foundation
The mission of the DADA Education Foundation is to promote excellence in education through quality programs and leadership. In addition to the Courageous Persuaders program, the Foundation also administers Automotive Education Day at the North American International Auto Show (NAIAS), and the NAIAS Poster Contest.
About Detroit Auto Dealers Association (DADA)
The DADA was founded in 1907 by 17 local car dealers, and has grown to more than 220 member car and truck dealers who donate their time and resources to a host of community activities.
Detroit area auto dealers participate in the NAIAS, LLC, which is responsible for the production of the North American International Auto Show (NAIAS). The most significant charitable venture of the DADA is the annual NAIAS Charity Preview, which has raised more than $82 million for children’s charities in southeastern Michigan since 1976. To find out more about Detroit Auto Dealers Association, visit www.dada.org. To find out more about the North American International Auto Show, visit www.naias.com.
Contact: Sandy Herp, Tel: 248.283.5138, sherp@dada.org
About SmartFinds Internet Marketing
SmartFinds Internet Marketing is proud sponsor of Courageous Persuaders helping with Internet marketing. SmartFinds is a 2009 Michigan 50 Companies To Watch awardee. The most critical element of SmartFinds Internet Marketing services is the creativity and imagination to apply the technological aspects of the digital marketplace to the marketing objectives of a particular business. You can visit SmartFinds Internet Marketing at www.smartfindsmarketing.com or at www.smartfindslocallisting.com
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By teamsf
Not to my surprise, I find mobile marketing has both a digital and traditional definition. The digital definition is as one would expect, marketing your business message through mobile devices. In the traditional definition there are moving billboards that are associated with mobile marketing. We are going to be talking about mobile devices.
The mobile industry certainly has grown quickly the past three years. The iPhone coming to market was only the beginning. It didn’t take long for mobile applications to make these devices more useful to the consumer. With the flood of mobile applications consumers were able to find many different uses for their mobile device. Games and Entertainment were only the beginning. More useful applications like tools, utilities and resources also found their way to the mobile device.
As of December 2009 there were 285,610,580 mobile devices in the United States against a population of 308,505,000. Basically 91% of the population has a mobile device. Feel free to look at the Wikipedia article at for more statistics worldwide.
With 91% of the U.S. population having a mobile device, and these devices having considerable capabilities, it is undoubtedly the next significant source of information for consumers and businesses alike. Using it as a phone is only the beginning. Email, Games, Entertainment, Texting, Instant Messaging, Browsing, Photos, Camera, Calculator, Calendar, Maps, Voice Recognition, News, Banking, Weather, Finance, Social Communities, and Radio are only a small fraction of what mobile devices are used for. Their capabilities will continue to grow as this mini-computer will have more use in our daily lives.
As an Internet and digital marketing agency we’re going to focus on how a business can use mobile marketing. We’ll focus on four specific areas and describe a starting point and a planned progression for the next few years. Each area has many details and this information is designed to be in summary. Future articles will specifically discuss each section separately.
Messaging Services
This is known as “texting” and includes SMS Texting (Short Message Service) as well as MMS (Multimedia Message Service). For a business to tap into this marketing tool you have to begin by getting permission from prospects and customers to send them SMS or MMS messages. Begin by seeking out a service that provides SMS and/or MMS services. You will be assigned a text number that customers can send a subscription notice to. You can add this feature into your website, email marketing or display in your business to promote how prospects and clients can get alerts from you by SMS or MMS. Because it will take time to build up subscribers you will want to start this sooner rather than later.
Mobile Websites
We have had discussions with clients in which they felt as long as their website was showing on a mobile browser then they had a mobile website. Not the case. A website that was developed specifically for a standard computer or laptop monitor does not mean you have a mobile version of your website. On a mobile version of a business website a user will not need to zoom in or out or pan left or right when viewing your website. The website will be a “lite” version of your primary website with specific call to actions that are useful to the users visiting your mobile website. A good example is Delta Airlines. Go to their website on a standard computer. Then go to their website using a mobile device’s browser. You will see two very different websites. As a business you will want to budget and get a mobile version of your website as one of your very next steps.
Mobile Applications
At some point every business will have a mobile application and it’s even possible that mobile applications will diminish the need for domain names. Mobile applications can be useful as a tool for your customers or you may decide to have an application for branding purposes that is a simple game. There are certainly many possibilities for mobile applications and you will need to consult with a marketing firm to decide how to best utilize mobile applications. Mobile application development budgets vary dependent upon creative, interface functionality, database use and Internet streaming.
Mobile Advertising
Text advertising like Google adwords and banner advertising is available direct to mobile devices. The difference is how they’re delivered. For example banner ads will appear in free mobile applications and when the application is used at the bottom. You can push your mobile banner ads through mobile advertising networks like AdMob (acquired by Google) and Quattro (acquired by Apple). Development of your mobile ads requires a different approach since there is limited physical dimensions of your message.
By utilizing all four mobile marketing components for your marketing plan over the next couple of years you will be able to tap into a new marketing tool that happens to be well suited for local business marketing. Waiting for two years to pass and then deciding to plan and adopt this technology is probably the wrong answer. You need to incorporate this process now and build it into your business marketing process otherwise you will be left behind.
Certainly your time resources are limited and Geo-Marketing Services are provided by SmartFinds Internet Marketing. You will find this to be of great benefit to your time resources and the low cost service may eliminate your yellow page ad costs. Let the experts of over 16 years Internet marketing experience help you use this local business marketing tool properly and prevent brand security issues from occurring.
By melih
As an Internet marketing agency we have to work with many service providers and that includes all the geo-listing (a.k.a. local business listings, local listing, business directories, interactive yellow pages) websites. Our communication with them is for our clients and in the event the information requires correction, then we have to communicate with these geo-listing websites to resolve the inaccuracies.
In this case we had to reach out to Citysearch and follow their procedure. What we learned after searching the Citysearch website (which partners with Ask.com Local) is that our client’s business and information was not listed in Citysearch. We learned in one of our communications to Citysearch customer service that we need to send them an email with the business information.
April 28th, 2010
The Citysearch website for customer service suggests sending inquiries to myaccount@Citysearch.com or cscs@Citysearch.com.
The email we sent originally to the above email addresses was:
“If a business is not listed within Citysearch, how do we go about adding a listing? We are a Internet marketing agency and have clients that we update their listings at Citysearch, but we’re not sure what happens when a listing is not already in your system. If you can point us in the right direction that would be appreciated.”
April 29th, 2010
The response we received from Citysearch with the email address CSMerchantSupport@Citysearch.com is below. At this point everything is moving along quite well and we received a response within 24 hours. No complaints…yet!
“Hello
Citysearch will be glad to add your business but we do require some information to fill your request.
Business Name:
Address:
City:
State:
Zip Code:
Cross Street (if applicable):
Phone:
Website:
Tags (services you provide):
Business Hours:
If you would like to add this information on your own you may do so and when the information is active on the site you may then ‘Claim the Business’
http://www.Citysearch.com/profile/add_business
You may claim the business, but you will need to become a Citysearch user. By going to www.Citysearch.com you may create a user account. Once you have done so you may go to the profile page for your business and click on ‘Own this Business?’ Populate the information requested. The process of claiming the business will take up to 30 days. You will receive a confirmation when the process is complete.”
May 11th, 2010
After securing the correct information and setting up a Citysearch account we submitted the following e-mail to Citysearch.
“Please add the following two listing locations to my Citysearch account xxxxxxxxxx (keeping account information anonymous purposely)
Listing 1 with all information required per April 29th response.
Listing 2 with all information required per April 29th response.
Please feel free to contact me if you have any questions.”
Same day response received from Citysearch as follows:
“You may claim the business, but you will need to become a Citysearch user. By going to www.Citysearch.com you may follow the Register link and create a user account. Once you have done so you may go to the Profile Page for your business and click on ‘Own this Business?’ Populate the information requested. The process of claiming the business will take up to 30 days. You will receive a confirmation when the process is complete.”
You can see the process is already degrading. In our initial email we had identified that a Citysearch account already exists! We, also, asked for the two listings to be “added”. Now, you would think that if someone in customer service was actually comprehending what they are reading those two points would have raised a red flag for a little research before a reactionary response. We can only assume no research was done based on the reply.
From our office, same day still and it’s not even noon EST yet we sent the following reply:
“I am a Citysearch user, I have an account with the user name xxxxxxxxxx as stated below. There is no ‘profile page’ for these two listings – please add these to your database so that I can get to the “own this business” option. Thank you”
We continue on the same day with the following reply from Citysearch Merchant Support. Please keep in mind that all of the communications on May 11th are in the same email thread. If anyone were to scroll up or down they could easily follow the dialogue with our Geo-Marketing team.
“If you would like to have your business appear on Citysearch without an advertising budget you may submit your information to us.
Business name Address Phone numbers Hours Categories for your business (examples bar, spa, dog walker etc.) Your website URL, Twitter, Facebook URL”
At this point what do you think we did? We scrolled down to the bottom of this email dialogue to our original message text copy and copy-pasted the same exact information that we started the conversation with them with! At this point it is now the end of business day on May 11th.
The only good news in all of this frustration was that it happened on the same day. To that end we will give Citysearch a good grade. However, the fact that the dialogue had to circle back to the beginning raises a question if English actually is the preferred language being understood at Citysearch?
If English is the language being read, written and understood at Citysearch then the competency of the customer service staff is highly questionable. In this economy when there are so many competent people looking for jobs you would think that we can hire staff that can actually comprehend an email dialogue.
While this situation is specific to Citysearch, I can attest that the problem of customer service by email occurs with all large corporations and the staff responding to emails. Email communication does make customer service more efficient and reduces the costs of phone calls. One would think that if the customer service staff of these large entities could take another 30 seconds to actually comprehend the dialogue further efficiencies could be gained.
Stay tuned as we finally get this resolved.
By teamsf
Geo-Marketing (or Geographic Marketing) is a new method of marketing a business and its website through web searches, mobile searches and social media. As you can see, the geo-marketing tools being used are digital and through the Internet or Mobile devices.
While geo-marketing’s definition is the association of data and maps in the traditional sense, the added convergence of local business listings, mobile marketing, and social media makes this method of marketing more powerful than ever before. This marketing tool is no longer just a large business marketing tool, but is available to small and medium size businesses too.
We should define what we mean by local business. A local business is any sized business dependent on the local consumer for its revenue. This means you could be a national company like Home Depot, U-Haul, or Best Buy or you could be a local florist or independent store only known to your local geography.
From a technical standpoint an Internet user’s IP address is tied to GPS data, like longitudes and latitudes, which are mapped with technology to geographies around the world down to the city and street level. While all this data may seem overwhelming, the good news is that most businesses do not need to concern themselves with this part of geo-marketing. Many of the tools already have all of this information built into their software or hardware technology so we can stay focused on how we will use geo-marketing tools.
The difficulty with any new marketing tool is a business’s inability to adopt the methodology early. When it comes to technologies and the Internet, in the past, by the time most businesses are ready to adopt a marketing tool, the industry has already moved on to something new. Being an early or at least an earlier adopter of marketing methods on the Internet and through digital devices can only benefit the business.
We have seen many signs over the past two years regarding the evolution of geographic marketing. When companies like Google, Apple, and the investment community of Wall Street start to put $100+ million and more behind a technology it will become part of our daily lives whether a business wants it or not. Consumers have and will be using more of these geo-marketing tools to find businesses, services or products near them.
Let’s take a look at the three main tools that consumers are using to find businesses, products or services close to their geography.
1. Web searches are the first and most obvious, however, these are web searches in which a map displays with targets the businesses that match the search criteria. Unlike the traditional yellow pages, these geo-listings (a.k.a. Local Business Listings) can be claimed and updated with your business marketing information in order to meet these search criteria.
While this may sound relatively easy, geo-listings also include: consumer reviews that need to be managed; the clean-up of duplicate listings; coupons; offers; discounts; videos; photos; citations; QR bar codes; and, hyper local websites. Understanding what to start with and how to strategically use these components can be done by a professional marketing firm that specializes in this area. You can read more about these components in one of our previous articles here.
2. Mobile Marketing is the next most significant geo-marketing tool in which SMS Texting, Mobile Applications, Mobile version of your website, and Mobile advertising are your key components. The starting point in this process will be with SMS Texting to get your alerts out to customers that subscribe to your short bursts of information. The reason why this is your starting point is that it will take time to build your list of subscribers.
3. Social Media Marketing continues to evolve and is, also, geographic in its targeting ability. Consumers are using Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Wiki sites, Four Square, Instant Messaging and other social community tools on their mobile devices. While they use it mostly to find businesses, products and services, in the social communities they are seeking recommendations from their friends (near and far). They are, also, using these social communities to post their experiences with a business, product or service. For this reason you have to monitor the social communities in order to embrace any potential problem situations and work with them.
These three geo-marketing components are important to any business size – large or small – and each have their own sub-components that need to be well understood in order to succeed. Understanding the strategy amongst them; the acceptance and embracing them early; and, finally planning on a 3-year return will put you on the right path of geo-marketing.
Certainly your time resources are limited and Geo-Marketing Services are provided by SmartFinds Internet Marketing. You will find this to be of great benefit to your time resources and the low cost service may eliminate your yellow page ad costs. Let the experts of over 16 years Internet marketing experience help you use this local business marketing tool properly and prevent brand security issues from occurring.
