By Amy Dawson, Senior Vice President/Healthcare Account Director

Marketing to a “Bundle of Contradictions”

I’m a parent of two teen girls. They’re great daughters, but I often wonder how I will keep my hair from turning gray between now and 2015 when the youngest graduates from high school. Both girls are absolutely obsessed with their cell phones and maintaining their extensive network of friends through texting, MySpace and Facebook.

In fact over the weekend, I was at the Verizon store twice. The first time was to repair a phone that wasn’t working, causing my oldest to panic over the number of text messages she was missing. Her Facebook status cited that her phone was broken so all of her contacts were aware she was out of texting commission. The other Verizon visit was for a phone upgrade for the younger daughter - and not just any phone would work. It had to have certain features and benefit to be acceptable, and to give her thumbs their daily workout.

So when I read a new white paper this morning, “The Teenage Girl as Consumer and Communicator,” released by Euro RSCG Worldwide PR, I wasn’t too surprised.

The white paper confirmed something I’ve seen in my two girls - and in every teen girl I know - they go online to maintain their friendships. In fact, 71 percent are online with friends, not just surfing randomly. And their value-minded moms seem to be influencing them with 77 percent more likely to buy sale-priced items than one at full price.  This is great to hear, considering how fickle teen girls seem to be with their tastes and preferences changing all the time.

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By Katherine Zuehlke, Account Supervisor

Like what you see. Love how you feel.

That’s the tagline we want every woman in central Ohio to remember and live by. Fahlgren recently launched our first brand campaign with The Charles Penzone Salons, and we’re excited to see our creative hit the market.

Charles Penzone Salons came to us a few months ago with a challenge — drive guests into The Charles Penzone Grand Salons and make the brand high-fashion but attainable. After working closely with the Charles Penzone team, including Mr. Charles Penzone himself, we came up with a plan to target young professionals who were going through changes in their lives: getting married, having babies, and taking their life and career to the next level. These women were focused on beauty and confidence, and we saw them as the perfect audience for the brand.

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By Jenny Fuerst, Director, Corporate Communications

“This Best of Show award reminds us that TV continues to be a powerful medium for connecting with target audiences. Traditional advertising is not dead; it’s not an either/or. It’s about the art and science of selecting the right mix of channels to run great, engaging creative that connects and engages your target audience,” said Pete McGinty, President, Fahlgren Advertising.

 ”As a leader in the central Ohio advertising community, we’re reinventing ourselves everyday while staying dedicated to developing unique and insightful campaigns that not only gain recognition from our peers, but most importantly, move the needle for our clients.”

Get more details on the campaign and the other ADDYs we won in the full news release.

By Jenny Fuerst, Director, Corporate Communications

Fahlgren, Edward Howard to Join Public Relations Businesses

Neil Mortine and Kathy Cupper Obert

Alignment Forms Independent Powerhouse:

Largest Firm in Ohio and Top 30 Nationally

The acquisition, which joins the capabilities of Fahlgren Mortine Public Relations and Edward Howard, is expected to close during the first quarter of 2010 although integration and coordinated new business and marketing efforts will begin immediately.

Check out more details of today’s exciting announcement in the news release.

By Wendy Jenkins, Art Director

Co-authored by Kyle Younkman and Nathan Shipp

Each year HOW, a publication specializing in design, holds a design conference featuring a wide range of sessions including creativity, design principles, business, career, technology and production, in an effort to inspire and inform designers of all levels. This year, the conference was held in Austin, Texas and Fahlgren was kind enough to send Wendy Jenkins, Kyle Younkman and Nathan Shipp to experience everything that HOW and Austin had to offer.

Austin: The Experience
While we were lucky enough to visit Austin during a record heat wave, the average day being about 105 degrees, that didn’t stop us from getting out and exploring. Plus, due to Kyle’s uncanny ability to strike up conversations with absolute strangers, we were able to learn a lot about what to see, what to eat and where NOT to go. According to our cab driver who picked us up at the airport, Austin has “everything,” well except for line dancing. He may have been onto something. We experienced everything from cupcakes out of an airstream trailer to a mass exodus of bats from under a bridge.  And then there was HOW…

Austin: The Conference
The official conference began with a networking event. Everyone received a belt buckle with 10 descriptions written on it and you had to find people who fit each of those descriptions to sign your card. This is where Nathan became VERY popular as he was the guy “getting married this summer.”

The opening keynote, Progress vs. Novelty, touched on some interesting points regarding consumer behavior and the intersections between culture and commerce. Robert Walker, a columnist from the New York Times Magazine discussed how good design can elevate the value for the consumer, partner and client.  People want to display and share things that are well designed. At the same time, we need to stop targeting the same market of consumers, because they are running out of space to display these things. We need to consider the groups we haven’t spoken to, different age groups, income levels, regions, etc. We also need to listen to the consumer - consumers have more vehicles to express their opinions on products, facebook, twitter, etc -  and not just simply react.

Out of the sessions, we each picked our favorite that were both the most memorable and beneficial to share:

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By Ann Oliver, Account Director

Finding reasons to celebrate

We recently launched a new campaign for Balloon Time Helium Balloon Kits. We started the project by laying out our communication objectives, and then talked about strategies that will help us reach these goals. Sounds pretty traditional so far, right?  But connecting with moms and reaching moms during the party decoration purchasing cycle has led us to develop some very fun social media applications to integrate with our traditional programs.

Why this investment in social media now?

Is 2009 the year to risk our limited marketing funds and test the waters of social media? Our Balloon Time client has enjoyed tremendous success with their online marketing program since its inception just four short years ago. Of course over that time we’ve evolved the program and changed some of the media partners and tactics we started with. But our objective has remained consistent - connect with influencer moms. The research we’ve seen points to social media as a key connection point.

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