Monkey Outta Nowhere

Color4aCause: Helping Haiti

Last week's earthquake in Haiti has prompted an out-pouring of response, including donations, humanitarian trips and all manner of charity and fund-raising projects. Our own head monkey, Kevin D. Hendricks, has enlisted the help of his 4-year-old daughter Lexi and launched Color4aCause.

Lexi draws pictures to encourage visitors to donate to Haiti relief efforts. Make a donation, get a picture. It's that simple. In the first week $635 has been raised. So far Lexi has drawn 26 pictures.

The money raised is going to the relief efforts of Kevin's church, Messiah Episcopal Church in St. Paul, Minn., which has a 20-year partnership with organizations in Haiti.

In addition to making a donation and getting a picture, the site also invites other children to color for a cause and submit their own pictures.

Kevin admitted it's a crazy idea on his personal blog, noting how quickly the idea came together. He formulated the idea on Friday, recruited designer and coder Ben Jordan to design and build the site and it went live Sunday night.

The site also has a Twitter feed and Facebook group to keep fans updated. Color4aCause has been featured by We Life Simply and Halogen TV.

Bloggers to Watch in 2010

Our own head monkey, Kevin D. Hendricks, was chosen as one of 11 Kingdom Bloggers to Watch in 2010. He's in some pretty renowned company there.

5 Year Anniversary: Yo-Yo's

This past year Monkey Outta Nowhere celebrated five years in business. That's quite an accomplishment, especially with the current economy. In celebration we printed up Monkey Outta Nowhere yo-yo's and sent them off to our long-standing clients. It's something we've wanted to do since the very beginning and we're thrilled to finally have the excuse to do it.

Along with the yo-yo's we included this explanation:

A shiny black yo-yo danced on a Chicago street corner in the summer of 1999. On the other end of the string was a skinny college kid working weekends as a street performer. The passing crowds would pause, kids staring in wide-eyed wonder as the yo-yo flew and spun in utter defiance of gravity. They left pocket change for the yo-yo man, enabling him to pay the bills his unpaid internship couldn't.
That summer the yo-yo earned the money, but the internship launched a career. It gave that skinny college kid the experience, the contacts and the confidence to succeed and one day launch his own company.

That one day came in 2004 when Monkey Outta Nowhere began. That yo-yo man was our founder and head monkey, Kevin D. Hendricks. It only seems appropriate to celebrate Monkey Outta Nowhere's five-year anniversary with the enclosed party favors. We hope you'll join us in celebration.

Happy Holidays and Many Thanks.

-Monkey Outta Nowhere

You can see more pictures of the entire packaging and mailing process.

Thanks to everyone who made five years possible. I'm truly humbled to be able to serve you all by doing what I love. Thank you.

Update And it doesn't get much cooler than seeing clients sharing and enjoying your present. OK, multiple clients sharing and enjoying your present. And adding it to a collection of desk toys. And taking a well deserved yo-yo break.

And now for a little bit of our own yo-yo fun:

You can also watch our head monkey doing some more advanced tricks.

New Monkey Outta Nowhere Business Cards

We just ordered some slick new business cards. Check 'em out. Designed by Michael Buckingham of Holy Cow Creative, the back of the cards feature some of the major projects we work on. It's a great solution and should keep head monkey Kevin D. Hendricks from having to juggle multiple cards. He talks more about the new cards on his personal blog.

UnSummit, Cultivate & Story: Oh My!

We run a pretty tight ship around here at Monkey Outta Nowhere, but in the last month we've splurged and attended three conferences: UnSummit in Minneapolis and Cultivate and Story in Chicago.

OK, UnSummit is a free anti-conference so we didn't exactly splurge to attend that one. But it still takes time and effort to get there. The day-long Saturday event sparked lots of thinking and ideas, primarily about social media and marketing, and offered a great chance to meet local people. Specific lessons from UnSummit can be found on my personal blog.

Cultivate and Story were two church communications conferences in Chicago (OK, Story was really 40 miles outside Chicago in Aurora). And OK, I didn't really splurge for those either--Cultivate is cheap and I scored a free ticket to Story. But Monkey Outta Nowhere did have to shell out for daycare, travel and lodging, so this wasn't a cheap trip. I've been working in the church communications field since 2004 when I started editing the church communications blog Church Marketing Sucks. In that time I haven't attended any church communications events, so this was a great chance to dive in and meet people I've followed online for years. Both events, though very different, had incredible content. I also share lessons from Cultivate and Story on my personal blog.

WebDesign.com

In 2009 Monkey Outta Nowhere began creating content for WebDesign.com, a web services company that helps small businesses and organizations maximize their potential on the web. We helped write a foundational white paper and contributed to WebDesign.com's blog.

Some of our blog entries include:

A series on utilizing Facebook, including an especially helpful piece on how to make the most of Facebook fan pages.
Another series on how businesses and organizations can make the most of Twitter.
Content is King - A reflection on the importance of content.
Your Mother's Marketing Rules - Arguing for honesty in marketing.
Your Own Platform to Counter Complaints - Urging organizations to get into the online conversation.
The Web Has Your Marketing's Back - Having a web site can boost your other marketing efforts.
Why Wouldn't You Want a Website? - Tackling misperceptions about websites.
Lame Website or No Website? - Pushing for even a weak website as better than no online presence.

Web Site Tweaks

We've made a few tweaks around the ol' Monkey Outta Nowhere web site:

We've added a new contact form.
We updated and revised the about us page.
We updated the bio of our founder, Kevin D. Hendricks.

All small, quick changes that hopefully bring our site in line with some of the web advice we've been sharing lately. And more importantly, they should make our site a little more effective.

Movie Review: I Can Do Bad All By Myself

I recently reviewed Tyler Perry's I Can Do Bad All By Myself for the teen site PlanetWisdom.

Blogging for WebDesign.com

Earlier this year I started blogging to help launch the new site WebDesign.com. I've written a number of entries about how web sites can help small businesses. Here's a quick sample of the better entries:

And that's just a quick overview. Visit WebDesign.com for more.

Dora's Mexican Restaurant

As I mentioned on my personal blog, we're teaming up with a local restaurant, Dora's Mexican Restaurant, to help them navigate the online world and boost business. We're going with a bare bones web site (we're talking textbook bootstrapping here) and free tools like Twitter and a Facebook page.

This is one of the rare times when Monkey Outta Nowhere actually builds a web site. As anyone can tell, we're not known for our coding skills. But it works, and what we're really offering here is strategy, content and execution. We're hoping the 'tell a friend' impact of social media paired with content (daily specials, offers and updates) will bring people through Dora's door.

Summer Movie Reviews

Summer movie season is in full swing and I stepped up to the plate for the teen site PlanetWisdom, writing reviews on Night at the Museum 2: Battle of the Smithsonian and the Eddie Murphy flick Imagine That.

Recent Church Marketing Sucks Posts

While I've been involved in the nonprofit church communications blog Church Marketing Sucks since its humble beginnings in 2004, I've had more of a behind-the-scenes, editorial role in the past year or so and have done less blogging. But in the past month I've written my fair share of new blog entries:

More Movie Reviews

Another pair of movie reviews has gone live, Obsessed and Ghosts of Girlfriends Past at the teen site PlanetWisdom.

Movie Review: Push

Last weekend I reviewed the super-powered Push for the teen site PlanetWisdom. It was a fun little bit of popcorn action, but don't try thinking too hard. As one reviewer lamented, "Not even a drunk Dakota Fanning can save this mediocre sci-fi thriller."

Movie Review: Taken

Last weekend I got to see the Liam Neeson flick Taken and write a review for the teen site PlanetWisdom. You can read my review of the vengeance-fueled action thriller online, though perhaps the most important line is this comment: "Most victims of human trafficking don't have Liam Neeson to go all CIA operative on their captors." That sad reality makes what would have been another violent action movie much more poignant.