“Marketing is changing and the avenues we use to help our clients reach their audiences are undergoing dramatic transformations,” said Phil Reilly, president of CMD. “That means our employees are forging into new territories and going the extra mile to stay on the cutting edge of the latest tools and channels. We’re pleased to recognize a number of our employees with new titles and expanded responsibilities.”

The agency has promoted the following team members:

Production Management Group
- Laurie Michelotti, from producer to senior producer
- Amy Rasch, from producer to senior producer
- Pat Hopkins, previously an associate producer, now a producer
- Tim Burkhart, from producer to senior producer
- Jon Agee, from producer to senior producer
- Kristin Wulfestieg, from producer to senior producer

Technical Services Group
- Tal Zivelin, from interactive developer to front-end developer/technical coordinator
- Jon Austin, from developer to senior web developer/programmer

Visual Design Group
- John Hall, from designer to senior designer

Interactive Planning and Architecture Group
- Chris Rohde, from user experience architect to interactive business analyst/information architect

Media Group
- Ken Muraoka, media planner/buyer, to digital planner/buyer

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“We blazed new trails into online marketing avenues such as social media and digital communications more than two years ago, and they are accelerating our growth,” said Phil Reilly, president of CMD. “Our eight new team members will help lead and support our client’s initiatives and open doors to opportunities in the digital communications arena.”

CMD’s new employees include:

- Kathy Middleton, senior account supervisor. She recently worked at Opolis Design, Sandstrom Design and as head of operations, creative services for Adidas

- Curt McKay, account supervisor. McKay is a graduate of Norwich University in Vermont and his experience includes both client and agency work

- Nicole Levin, senior designer. Her past experience includes stints as an art director at Compass Rose Media and a senior designer at Xerox

- Seth Mills-Cannon, associate technical director. Previously, he worked at Curiosity Group and Rapidigm Interactive

- Marsha Haverty, information and user experience architect. Prior to joining CMD, she worked for Agency.com

- Lynn Twiss, producer. Twiss was previously a senior interactive project manager at Substance, White Horse, and Opus Creative

- Amie Manske, media supervisor. She brings more than 10 years of media experience to the agency

- Mike Fofrich, graphic designer. Fofrich was previously a designer for the National Jewish Health Center
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Thank you.

As we take the next couple of days to spend time with family and friends this Thanksgiving holiday, we want to say thank you to our clients and friends of CMD. As we all know, it’s been a challenging year for many – both personally and professionally. Through it all, we’ve battled to create more from less, set the bar higher under some pretty extraordinary circumstances and pulled together as a team to not only survive, but thrive. We’re grateful especially to our clients, our partners and everyone on the CMD team who work together each and every day to help make us all better, tougher and wiser. We wouldn’t be here without you…literally. You’ve kept us inspired to reach beyond expectations and we are thankful for the opportunities as well as the challenges, and for all those times we’ve dotted the i’s and crossed the t’s together. Because of you, we are confident that there will be many more successes and plenty of excitement ahead of us going into 2010.

So from our “agency family” to yours, Happy Thanksgiving. Above is a little video and some pictures to share with you how we celebrated Thanksgiving this morning here at CMD – thanks to our very own account services team for always taking good care of us, including getting up bright and early to prepare a fantastic breakfast for the whole agency!

- CMD

These awards showcase the reasons behind the CMD team’s transformation from solely focusing on public relations to reclassifying its activities as earned media, which better describes the approach for seamlessly leveraging both social and traditional PR practices.

“To us, earned media is the attention, reputation, credibility and awareness that is earned organically (non-paid) through value of the information and the merit of the interaction you have with the audience,” said Darcie Meihoff, APR, managing director of CMD’s earned media group. “That includes a strong combination of solid PR thinking and the ability to tap the latest opportunities social media presents. It embodies our commitment to remain on the forefront of emerging trends in communication while continuing to deliver great results.”

Here’s a brief recap of CMD’s work that received 2009 Spotlight Awards:

JELD-WEN Contest Scares up Terrifying Utility Bills – Spotlight Award

Situation

With rising energy costs and a growing interest in environmental concerns, energy efficiency is top of mind with homeowners.

Strategy

The CMD team created the JELD-WEN Scariest Utility Bills Contest to tout the importance of home energy efficiency and  find a real-life example to prove that efficient windows and doors can help homeowners save money.

Results

The contest was wildly successful, nearly doubling the contest entries objective and earning placements in publications including the Chicago Sun Times and Houston Chronicles. The U.S. Department of Energy even expressed interest in using JELD-WEN’s contest winner as a case study of their own, positioning JELD-WEN as the expert on reducing energy costs.
Be sure to check out this year’s Utility Bill Bailout Contest. It might just win you new JELD-WEN ENERGY STAR® qualified windows and doors and an appearance on an upcoming episode of the nationally syndicated show Today’s Homeowner with Danny Lipford. http://www.jeld-wen.com/bailout/

JELD-WEN Lighthouse Campaign – Spotlight Award

Situation

JELD-WEN Windows and Doors needed to raise awareness and directly link its products with reliability, a crucial factor from homeowners, builders and remodelers when considering which windows and doors to purchase.

Strategy

The CMD team created a campaign that helped JELD-WEN walk its reliability talk and prove product performance by helping restore highly visible landmarks, America’s lighthouses, which also face some of the toughest climate conditions in the world.

Results

The campaign has helped build JELD-WEN’s image of reliability, created strong product performance proof points, and generated millions of media impressions, all while fostering tremendous goodwill.

The CMD Earned Media team also earned two Award of Merit honors for “An Exploration into the Digital Frontier for Intel and Lenovo” and “Building the HealthCareGoesMobiles.com Virtual Community.”

Lowe comes to CMD after spending the past nine years as a creative director and consultant for agencies such as Wieden + Kennedy, 72 and Sunny and Ogilvy & Mather. His diverse background and expertise includes creating successful campaigns for a variety of clients, including Microsoft, Starbucks, Siemens Mobile, Motorola and Autodesk. With a penchant for crafting experiential marketing initiatives, he will add depth and a strong consumer focus to CMD’s creative and digital strategy teams.

“Whitney comes to CMD with a wealth of experience, and a resume that reads like the Who’s Who of the advertising industry,” said Phil Reilly, CMD president. “Our goal is to deliver high-caliber ideas and dynamic marketing programs that help our clients grow their business. Adding top-notch talent to our team is a big part of fulfilling that.”

CMD has experienced strong growth by providing marketing services that help generate demand, and has been involved in spearheading a number of new programs and initiatives for its high-tech clients that are designed to reach consumers directly. The agency, which is at the forefront of delivering the latest digital and social media solutions, currently serves a roster of clients that include some of the biggest local, regional and international names in technology.

About CMD
CMD, which uses synergistic marketing disciplines to generate demand for clients, is ranked among the nation’s top 50 interactive agencies and is among the top 20 independent agencies, according to Adweek and Advertising Age. The agency provides advertising, film and video, public relations/social media, media, digital and Web services, print design, strategic services, meetings and events management, direct and database marketing, training, and promotion marketing for a client list that includes McCormick & Schmick’s, Arbor Custom Homes, Cisco Systems, Hewlett-Packard, NW Natural, ACDSee, Timber Products Company, Intel, Microsoft, IBERDROLA RENEWABLES, and JELD-WEN, inc.

For more information, call 503-223-6794, visit www.cmdagency.com, Twitter @CMDPortland, LinkedIn http://is.gd/Ad5S, Facebook http://is.gd/sQwk, or blog http://blog.cmdagency.com.
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VEGAS WEDDING, PORTLAND-STYLE
SCRAP and Opera Theater Oregon marry glitz & glam all for a good cause, Sept. 26

What:
What do opera, Elvis and the environment have to do with one another? It all bubbles up to a show-stopping party that audiences won’t soon forget.

SCRAP, Portland’s favorite source of environmentally friendly creative inspiration, is hosting a Vegas-style party featuring the singers of the Live Opera Jukebox. For donations, singers will accept requests to perform timeless Vegas show tunes in opera-style for the crowd.

In true Vegas spirit, a real officiate will be on hand to perform marriage ceremonies on demand during the event and attendees will be able to express their own creativity by making festive veils, corsages or bouquets from recycled art supplies provided by SCRAP.

Tickets for the event are $20, which also include light refreshments. The Wedding in Vegas party benefits SCRAP and Opera Theater Oregon (thank you, thank you very much).

When:
SCRAP’s Wedding in Vegas party is Saturday, Sept. 26, 7 p.m. Tickets are limited and can be purchased in advance at www.scrapaction.org

Where:
CMD Agency, one of Portland’s leading creative marketing agencies, located at 1631 NW Thurman in Portland. Parking is free in CMD’s parking lot.

Contact:
Darcie Meihoff, CMD on behalf of SCRAP, (503) 488-4252 or dmeihoff@cmdagency.com

After the release of Microsoft’s latest search engine investment, Bing http://www.bing.com, there was an onslaught of credible and non-credible reviews of everything from its underlying technology to the choice of its name. The most ironic comments were from many a Scotsman; the word “bing” in Scotland can also refer to a wastepile.

In Google’s Technology Overview http://www.google.com/corporate/tech.html, the perfect search engine is defined by co-founder Larry Page as something that “understands exactly what you mean and gives you back exactly what you want.” Anyone who’s recently committed a search query to the annals of Google’s SERPs (search engine results pages) does realize this is more of a quest than current reality.

I’m not here to pore over discovery into the poor makings of a search engine, nor wax poetic on the glorious wonders of search visualization, however, part of what I get paid to do and definitely what drives me as a digital strategist is to understand current technology trends and to glance into the future to identify what brands should be paying attention to.

The reality is that semantic and visual search options are here. And, if you’re a big brand relying on the 90% (and growing) market share that Google and its partners in SERPs Yahoo and Bing hold, you’re playing the right odds. But, for every monolithic corporation there are a handful of visionaries and technologists that are willing to take a risk at making something better and more powerful for the user.

That said, there’s a movement around the creation of common information structures. The W3C has published guidelines at http://www.w3.org/RDF/FAQ on participating in the Semantic Web. It’s also worth looking at Common Tag http://commontag.org and others on the development of an open tagging format. On April 13, 2009, Arun Radhakrishnan wrote a post on Search Engine Journal regarding “9 Semantic Search Engines That Will Change the World of Search,” http://www.searchenginejournal.com/semantic-search-engines/9832/, and I believe he and others are definitely onto something. The crux of the situation is that users still want the fastest route from query to results; but the majority of those users doesn’t necessarily care or understand its relevance. So cycling aficionado that I am, I decided to dive into some searches.

In a quick comparison of Hakia (one of the aforementioned “9”) vs. champion Google for the term “Tour de France,” each yielded similar results. Even though Hakia was developed by looking closer at ontology and semantic rankings, it really doesn’t yet take advantage of many Web assets. And, it’s still text-based, so the results cannot be custom tailored visually.

When I started to play with the visual search engines, the real fun began for this cycling enthusiast (and admitted right-brainer). The power of the visual cloud, like seeing what you’re searching for in Searchme, was compelling.

And, Viewzi offered several different views into its results. The more visually delicious options are the Google Timeline and the Photo Tag Cloud (shown here).

Last on my Tour de Search is Spezify, a search tool utilizing relevant, free and open APIs to generate a more diverse set of results. Although more traditional SERPs have options to view blogs, microblogs, social resources, e-commerce, images, etc., it’s impressive to see the free associated relationships drawn up in a visual mind map based on keywords, tags, titles and content.

So, what’s the real takeaway for a brand navigating the Semantic Web and visual search aggregation?

The answer can be simple: The User Experience. It’s why we have strategists, information architects, user experience engineers, information and visual designers. It can also be complex, as the art of search engine optimization (SEO) is being redefined.

The aficionado of your brand may not use the path most traveled; from a desktop on the leading browser or from the leading search engine. What’s a critical failure? How about when a user, expecting to see visual results from your brand instead receives the “In order to view this page you need JavaScript, Flash Player, or Flash Player 8+” message?

For instance, many of the web assets from one of my favorite personal brands, Nike, are not accessible from my favorite device, the iPhone, using its native OS Safari browser. When I don’t have JavaScript or Flash Player installed on Firefox or Chrome or Internet Explorer, the same falls true. Until Windows Mobile 7, Google Android’s newest native browser, and future versions of the iPhone OS Safari browser are released, I still won’t be able to consume the visual layer or search in this new visual sense.

As to my original Tour de France reference, right now it’s less about seeing who takes the yellow jersey (maillot jaune) awarded to the best overall rider and more about appreciating who wins the white jersey (maillot blanc) given to the best up-and-coming youngster.

Prior to joining CMD, Fitzpatrick co-founded a marketing consulting firm that specialized in providing marketing, sales and program management to Fortune 100 enterprise technology companies. In addition, his experience includes working as a brand manager for Nestlé Beverage Company, a marketing manager for Clairol, Inc., and a Western region market manager for Specialty Brands.

“CMD offers deep levels of expertise in the digital and traditional media space along with a focus on delivering strong ROI, which has given us more opportunity with our high-tech clients,” said Phil Reilly, CMD president. “Andy’s experience will be a tremendous asset with new and existing clients.”

CMD currently serves a roster of clients locally, regionally and internationally.

So, we all agree that social web is on the cusp of becoming something even bigger and more valuable to large organizations and global brands. What’s more important is how it affects each of us. Everyone is writing about the stages of social media adoption, conversations, relationships, and metrics and I can’t discount any of it – as a digital strategist it’s what I live and breathe every day. As an example, just a couple weeks ago, Jeremiah Owyang of Forrester posted his take on The Future of Social Networks.

The thing I’ve noticed the most is how everyone tends to agree with what social is becoming, but nobody wants to have opinions on what’s holding back the proverbial floodgates. If I had to point at one single thing holding us back right now, I’d say it’s mobile infrastructure. Last summer, I had the chance to briefly entertain a group of Japanese ambassadors. We talked about the current state of technology in the U.S. and Japan, specifically mobile. What became glaringly apparent is the sheer proliferation of Internet usage via handheld device in Japan. It’s not only happening in Japan, but also in Western Europe. With advancing improvements like 3G and Intel’s WiMAX 4G network, devices, operating systems, and applications will also get smarter.

When we can shoot, edit, and publish video quickly from one device; when we can sync up, beam out, capture, and create other forms of media; and, with that same device we can transact, do business, entertain ourselves with downloadable and streaming media, and most importantly, do the stuff we’ve been doing already, called “social media,” then truly the social web just becomes an extension of us. A daily accessory we automatically carry like the shoes we put on every morning. In this framework social media is the interim vehicle to continue relationships and conversations when we can’t be face-to-face. It’s something more creative, more emotional and therefore exponentially more appealing than an email or text message. Consequently, in the future we’re all going to look back on Twitter (and SMS) like a scene where Indiana Jones brushes the dust off the etchings of the Ark.

Again, in this construct there will be no excuse to be AWOL from your clients, friends and family for multiple days just because you can’t get back to your hardware. That is, of course, unless you’re leaving the grid on purpose.

So don’t worry too much about whether or not you should do something because @Oprah or @Pepsi is doing it. Worry about whether WiMax is coming to your major metropolitan area and keep abreast of the latest handheld devices coming up by grabbing RSS from Techcrunch, Wired, mobile blogs, etc.

In the meantime, I’ll be firing up Tweetie (my favorite iPhone application) and getting into the conversation; that crazy social web just might lead me to a handshake (offline).