The Pantone Hotel is the stuff of a graphic designer’s dreams. Each room has a different color scheme based on the Pantone color chart, which is the graphic designers’ tool chest when it comes to matching colors. Each room uses Pantone color swatches as art work that set the tone and feeling of the room. The hotel’s overall look embodies clean, European design with lots and lots of beautiful white space. The attention to detail is pretty impressive, too; the bicycles, coffee mugs and even signature cocktails are marked with their Pantone colors.

And, hey, we can even afford to stay at the hotel on a graphic designer’s salary! The only downside of the Pantone Hotel? When we stay there, we probably won’t see much of Brussels.

Meet Hilairee Griese. (Rhymes with rice, in case you were wondering.) Hilairee, an account executive assistant, is the latest addition to the HenkinSchultz team. She juggles complicated projects for a variety of accounts, and she works with HS’s account executives to make sure clients get exactly what they’re looking for.

Hilairee hails from Platte, S.D., and she graduated from Northwestern College in Orange City, Iowa. During her last semester in college, she interned at the marketing department of Easter Seals in Chicago, so she knows the ins and outs of navigating a corporate system.

We’re pretty impressed with Hilairee’s organizational skills – her ability to keep to a schedule is unparalleled. But what we really, really like about her is her thorough knowledge of the TV show Friends. If the South Dakota Advertising Federation ever sponsors a TV trivia contest instead of a golf tournament, we’re totally going to win.

Oh, and speaking of golf, Hilairee has one mean golf swing. That should help keep the creatives at HenkinSchultz in line.

That doesn’t stop us from trying, though. A foursome took to the course for the South Dakota Advertising Federation’s annual Golf Tournament on June 25. And while our drives may not have landed anywhere near the green, we took advantage of every photo opportunity. Guess we just can’t leave our mad advertising skillz at work.

Instead of hitting the green, Justin’s ball hit this tree.

Kristi may have golfed horribly, but she posed well.

Cami is a tall drink of water, but it turns out she is not a long shot of a golfer.

We didn’t place at all in the tournament, but Hilairee did get to drive this cart around.

Award: Silver for Publication/Internal
Avera Health, Avera Quality Report

Award: Silver for Publication/Internal
Avera McKennan Foundation, Human Touch Newsletter

Award: Bronze for Special Events
Avera McKennan Foundation, The Big Grape Benefit 2009

Congrats to all the Avera staff members, who are great to work with on fun, award-winning marketing campaigns.

“It looks like a toy chest threw up in here.”

Ladies and gentlemen, we have a future copywriter on our hands.

Copywriter? More like Awesomewriter!

There’s something different about working at HenkinSchultz. Something different – and pretty darned awesome.

Don’t believe us? See for yourself: HenkinSchultz is currently looking for an awesome copywriter/social media expert. Key duties include:

Send your resume to Joe: joe@henkinschultz.com. And prepare yourself for the most awesome writing job you’ll ever find.

Thanks. Now, back to the blog.

Last night the South Dakota chapter of AIGA (the professional association for design) provided a free showing of Milton Glaser’s To Inform and Delight at Southeast Technical Institute.

From Arthouse Films’ blurb:

For many, Milton Glaser is the personification of American graphic design. Best known for co-founding New York Magazine and the enduring I ♥ NY campaign, the full breadth of Glaser’s remarkable artistic output is revealed in this documentary portrait, Milton Glaser: To Inform and Delight. From newspapers and magazine designs, to interior spaces, logos, and brand identities, to his celebrated prints, drawings, posters and paintings, the documentary offers audiences a much richer appreciation for one of the great modern renaissance men.

Artfully directed by first time filmmaker Wendy Keys, the film glances into everyday moments of Glaser’s personal life and capture his immense warmth, humanity and the boundless depth of his intelligence and creativity.

To Inform and Delight is a wonderful movie chronicling the famed New York designer Milton Glaser and his warm connection with humanity. If you’re in Sioux Falls or the surrounding area and want to catch the movie on your own, make sure to get registered for Adobe Days on May 6th, where AIGA SD will be giving away a copy to one lucky member!

Let’s ask Kentucky Fried Chicken.

Since 2005, Kentucky Fried Chicken (or KFC, depending on the day) has seen its market share drop. It’s not a drastic drop, but it’s enough of a drop to raise concern – especially as the fried chicken industry expands and challengers Popeye’s and Chick-fil-A rise to fill market share.

According to a AdAge report, KFC is down to 30% of the chicken market. Add to that over a 1.5 billion dollars in growth, and a LOT of people are either switching from (or outright shunning) the Colonel.

And that brings us to KFC’s recent flash: The Double Down.

The Double Down, if you haven’t heard, is a sandwich – and that term is being used VERY loosely – that uses two fried chicken breasts instead of bread. Inside is a cheesy goo mixture of bacon and grease.

It’s really nothing more than a marketing ploy – the same type of empty strategy that KFC has used constantly through the last several years. It brings to mind the grilled chicken experiment, which was more “Oprah’s talking about our grilled chicken!” than “we believe you should eat grilled chicken because it’s what you want.”

On the other hand, Chick-fil-A offers healthier options as a matter of principle – not as a marketing ploy. They are enjoying the ride as an underdog, pushing the horses to a cultish status. They use better chicken. They employ people you actually want to buy chicken from. They serve it in stores you actually want to eat chicken in.

Chick-fil-A isn’t depending on decades of market dominance and flashy hype machines to sell chicken. It’s depending on substance.

KFC? Well, they’re doubling down on their bet that you’ll eat anything. And while sales may spike for a short amount of time as people rush to try this monstrosity, they’ll soon fall back to where they were.

Flash vs. substance? One gets you attention. The other gets you loyalty.

Which do you think KFC would rather have?

I was reminded of this through a simple postcard.

As a board member for the South Dakota Humanities Council, I play a small part to help allocate grant funding. Our grants are designed to promote the humanities throughout South Dakota – especially in areas that may otherwise be underserved – and are focused on education, media and other programs that highlight history, literature and culture.

Often, I think about these grants for a few days out of the year – the days leading up to a board meeting and the day of the board meeting itself. Then, after the money has been distributed, the entire process escapes my mind. I forget about it. My part is over.

Which is why I was so surprised to receive a thank you card in the mail, expressing gratitude for my recent part in allocating funds for an art installation in Pierre.

While my interactive connection to the grant had long passed, the grant itself – the funds, the projects connected to those funds, and the people connected to those projects – was just beginning to blossom. And, through my part in voting allocation, I am forever connected to it.

It’s the same with everything in life.

When our businesses make a major change, we are forever connected to it. Six months from now, people will continue to discover the change, despite the fact that we’ve long moved on.

When our product fails, we are forever connected to it. When it succeeds, we are forever connected to it.

The words we use to affect policy, to sell a product, to cover up a scandal, to explain a feature, to direct attention and to make real marketing happen through word of mouth and broadcast and web – we are forever connected to them.

No matter where we are, our decisions and communication will touch people down the chain and into the consumer world. And months from now, someone will be finding that decision or communication for the first time.

Our names will be connected to it.

I mean, talk about pressure, right? In the end, it helps if we think twice about what we’re going to say and the policies we’re enacting. Because no matter what, we’re connected to them.

A new video from IBM’s Smarter Planet group illustrates what The Internet of Things will mean to our future, specifically the social and cultural change that will occur as a result.

Our place as marketers in The Internet of Things is still being developed, and because of this there’s a propensity for fear. The technology is adapting far faster than we can keep up with, which leads to brash and unseemly forays into interruption marketing. We fight to be a part of the answer, and in doing so we bypass working with the system by working in spite of the system.

So what’s our responsibility?

As The Internet of Things becomes more automated, it will also seek out better ways to become more monetized. Which will lead to more opportunities for marketing. Which will lead to more ways in which a person is interrupted during their life.

It’s a slippery slope, and this is where our part will come in – our responsibility to understand, both for our clients and for the customers they serve, that not every channel needs to be interrupted.

That, by choosing the right channels, standing by permission marketing and understanding which options will help a brand (rather than hurt it in ways we may not even understand), we can continue to lead our clients to effective marketing.

All without taking advantage of society and its quickly fracturing attention.

(Via: ReadWriteWeb)