2008 March

Mar

Almost Here…

Skagit Valley Tulip Festival
April 2007

Mar

February was a very busy month for me (much like March), spent mostly on seeing a doctor or twenty every single week and on special projects for the City of Newcastle that included improving the website, participating in a very cool focus group for the new transit station & city identity designs, and creating materials to a) bring people to our summer events and b) find sponsors to pay for them.

With the amazing photography of our talented friend, Rick Takagi, I was able to create what is probably the two most important and far-reaching promotional pieces of our event year. One of which I had never done before, and which still indimidates me just a bit by the fact that it will be published in real live magazine this May.

Announcing Newcastle’s Concerts in the Park Series
starting June 25 from 6:30pm-8pm @ Lake Boren Park
this is the City’s first 1/3rd page vertical ad for 425 Magazine.

I’ve since realized this ad also lends itself extremely well to a 2-sided bookmark that could be distributed during the series. Once I have the band schedule finalized, bookmarks will be my next printed project.

We’ll be running 2 more ads in 425 this year, promoting our annual Newcastle Days festival and a new Holiday Event (still TBD).

(click image to enlarge)

Community Events 2008 Sponsor & Vendor Pack

Newcastle events are 100% free to the public. As a result, we depend heavily on sponsorships from businesses and organizations. The #1 most requested item (besides booth applications for Newcastle Days), this packet outlines all our events, the dates and basic package benefits for each.

Last year, sponsorships funded 50% of our total event costs. The challenge this year is to recognize that potential sponsors will be saving their dollars for high return opportunities – and to highlight that considering the impact of experiencial marketing, events are exactly that.

Sponsor applications don’t open until April 1, but I already have two very interested sponsors. If you know any organization (small or large) that might benefit from sponsoring a Newcastle event, feel free to send them my way.

And if you’re just interested in going to an event, come on down! It’ll be a great time, and if you see me (I’ll be the one running around like maniac), be sure to stop me & say hi!

Related Links
City of Newcastle Special Events

Mar

Over Albuquerque

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with the Sandia Mountains beyond
October 2007

Mar

Jules Jewels #5: Peep-o-licious

(Did you hear that loud clicking sound? That was the collective missile lock for five-bagillion porn spam comments. It’s like my blog just became its own little Death Star.)

So, I’m sitting here trying to be all creative and inspirational and stuff, and all I can think of this: the coffee I’m drinking right now tastes exactly like that particular smell of coffee and cigarettes I remember as a child at my grandparent’s house in Dallas. Not Albuquerque, where they’ve lived and smoked and drank coffee for the last twenty years. Dallas. Because somehow those same collection of smells were totally different in another state.

Annnnd welcome to Random Tuesday! This episode brought to you by: Task Avoidance. With new nicotine flavor! It’s Lame!

(No. I have not started smoking. But I can see why it’d be easy to think that.)

(Especially after I tell you what this post is really about.)

I’m talking about Peeps. Not to be confused with my ePeeps, I’m talking about those ultra-florescent sugar-marshmallow sticks of Easter sweetness that my sister likes to open and set on a counter for a month and a half so they’re the confectionery equivalent to pure granite when she sits down to eat them with a glass of…I don’t know, Tang?! What do people eat with Peeps? Is it like red with beef and white with chicken? So that’d be what, Peeps and tequila?

Maybe that’s what I’m missing. See, I don’t eat Peeps. They are, how you say, muy disgusto. HOWEVER, thanks to our fine friends at the Seattle Times, it seems there is now a far more constructive use for these sugary devils (and hell, the news in general) that I could definitely get on board with.

This weekend the winners of the Seattle Times annual Peeps contest were published. Reminiscent of my good old eBay Days, the Peeps Diorama event is something I’d been looking forward to ever since seeing last year’s submissions because they so reminded me of those times when my coworkers spent a month organizing the Exact Same Contest Only More Awesomer, because they didn’t rely on no wimpy marshmallow building materials. No, they used GOURDS.

While I found this year’s results to be a little anti-climatic (woo! more spam!), I can’t criticize seeing as I didn’t even enter. Because out of all the things that happened in the last year, I couldn’t think of a single interesting thing to Peep-ify. Except…no…that one thing…eh…

Yeah. I’ve got nothing. Here’s a few of my favorites instead:

Marilyn Peeproe