March 12, 2010
What do you get when you put together 1 holiday season, 2 SUVs, 4 volunteers, and 180 blankets? If you guessed a warm and fuzzy feeling inside, you’re oh so close! Aside from that you also get Operation: Manifest Blanket Donation. What’s that you ask? It was a whirl wind of a day where myself and 3 other Manifest employees volunteered time out of their busy busy day to trek to a Chicago-area Walmart, purchase, and jam pack 2 cars with box upon box of soft micro-fleece blankets. And when I say jam-packed I’m not exaggerating; take a look yourself…we thought we were going to have to call for reinforcements. In fact, we actually did until we found a few extra crevices for every last blanket (including Liz and Chris’ laps). Why 180 blankets? For the holiday season Manifest donated one blanket on behalf of each of our clients. Great job clients!
Car #1- Ryan Nicholson ponders where on Earth the last boxes will fit
Car#2- Christine Mortensen (me) finds the last nook and cranny
All of this was a coordinated effort on behalf of the organization Ten Thousand Blankets founded by Jeff Leitner for Blanket Week, a crazy ambitious, campaign to collect and donate new blankets to those that need them.
But our Operation didn’t end there. From the store we caravaned to our final destination, The Pacific Garden Mission on the Near south side of Chicago. Since 1877, Pacific Garden Mission has been a refuge for those in the area seeking food, shelter, clothing, medical, and dental care. It’s a great and facility and we’re proud to have done something positive for this community.
You can make a donation to Ten Thousand Blankets as well! Next Week in fact is Blanket Week where they’re looking to donate as many blankets as possible between Monday, March 15 and Sunday March 21, 2010. So you can have that warm and fuzzy feeling too.
To see all of our photos check out the Manifest Facebook Fan Page.
Liz Metz is an excellent blanket holder!
Chris and Myself unloading at The Pacific Garden Mission
February 16, 2010
Chase Blueprint: A good example of how NOT to use a Facebook App. Chase had a good idea in trying to leverage existing assets (i.e., video, banner ad integration, a microsite, etc.) but the execution falls WAY short when they let the design and messaging become cluttered and pop-ups (iFrames) don’t load properly. I have to ask, was Facebook a good choice for this campaign? It probably was, but this serves as a good example of why you need to tailor your experiences to both your audience and the channel(s) you choose to communicate through.
You can’t just take all of your content and throw it together like it’s a salad. To continue the food metaphor, your social marketing should be more of a well planned and organized buffet. You choose what to serve and where based on what your guests might like; they decide what to put on their plate.
Check out the Chase Blueprint Facebook Fan Page for yourselves and let me know what you think.
January 6, 2010
Apparently Capital One REALLY wants my money (and yours too, well so do all the banks and creditors right?). I was just checking my email and saw this “wonderful” offer Capital One is promoting for it’s “high yeild” bank account. It claims that if I start out now and deposit $10,000 and continue to save $250 per month over the course of 5 years I’ll have $26,070 assuming that I don’t make any withdraws. See below…there’s even a pretty graph!
HELLO!!!!!!
If I save $250 per month for 5 years on my OWN that’s $15,000. Add my original $10,000 and I’m at $25,000.
So basically Capital One, you’re saying in a perfect world (of a sad 1.2% interest rate) I’ll earn $1,070 in interest over the course of 5 years? Hmmmm no thanks. I can think of better ways to invest my money.
What do you think?
Don’t even get me started on the headline of “Trust. Worthy. Banking. Results.” Why not put that all in one sentence instead of four? Oh right, because you’re a bank and you’re full of crap. Ok, I’m done now. Thanks for reading 
December 22, 2009
I love these adaptations of our logo and brand that our Creative Director, Christine Bridger, originally created for an internal T-shirt design contest. And they’re just too good to be forgotten in an Illustrator file somewhere. So I quickly made a few desktop backgrounds out of them for you to download and use as you like.
‘Tis the season for giving after all!
There are 2 sizes, 1024 x 768 (top 4) and 1600 x 1200 (bottom 4)
1024 x 768
December 21, 2009
Last Thursday we held our 3rd Annual Manifest Holiday Sweater Jubilee and subsequent gathering at a local establishment. It’s a small in-house event we started since we traditionally hold our official holiday party in mid-January. I just wanted to share with you a little before-and-after photo essay of one of our refrigerators. A picture is worth a thousand words, isn’t it?
Well stocked before the Holiday Sweater Jubilee
After the Holiday Sweater Jubilee
Wishing everyone a safe and happy holidays to you and yours! Thanks for reading.
December 15, 2009
On a recent project I was welcomed to the team via email in which the closing statement was just too good not to share nor to illustrate:
“Success will be found at the intersection of Time and Money.”
— Jennifer Conklin and Howell Malham, Manifest Digital
What Success Looks Like
November 3, 2009
By golly, I think she’s got it! I think I’ve finally settled on what the heck to call my blog!?
LIFE OUT LOUD
If I just use the initials it’s also LOL. This is going to be fun to work with over the next couple of weeks (hopefully only a couple weeks!).
It only took me 3 years. Ever notice how it’s always more difficult to do things for yourself than it is for others, e.g., a site design, your own identity, the name of your BLOG! Sigh…such is life.
What do you guys think? Yay? Nay?
November 2, 2009
They’ve gone and done it again. They just keep me coming back for more…
No. Not a crack dealer but you’re close! Nike.
This year I was convinced that by buying something related to the Chicago Marathon I’d somehow jinx myself and not finish the race. So this time around I made sure I waited until my happy (and sore) ass was sitting at home recovering from the race before I even LOOKED at the gear. I bought 3 items, a hoodie, a running shirt and new shoes since I’d been running in the same shoes all training season. The latter is a no-no by the way. You should change your running shoes about every 300 miles or 6 months if you run consistently.
So I made my purchase via their recently (and beautifully) re-designed Nike Store. About 2 weeks later I get an email asking “How’s your new Nike gear?”
What I thought in my head…”It’s GREAT, I’m glad you asked!”
Nike asks you to "Speak Your Mind"
Here’s what the high-level Nike customer cycle looks like:
- Get customers to the store
- Provide a flawless shopping experience
- Provide prompt service (returns are painless)
- Ensure that products meet or exceed expectatio
- Follow up and request for feedback
Now THAT’s customer service and a great brand experience. This is what all brands should be striving for. The end result, at least in my case, is a loyal customer (I have more Nike gear than I know what to do with).
What’s that you say?
“But I’m not NIke. I don’t have a BAZILLION dollars to spend on marketing.”
Hogwash. Nothing I listed above mandates an insane marketing budget. It’s just good business. And if you can’t afford that, well then my friend I have a question for you. What are you doing in business? I will admit however, that the “getting people to the store” part will likely require more investment but that’s another post for another day.
The other thing that Nike prove here is that no one is perfect…the three “Review Product” buttons didn’t properly link to the items I purchased, nor did my search via product number, although a search for “Chicago Marathon” eventually worked. So, major negative points for this simply NOT working but it did get me back to the store none the less and it did plant that tiny seed in my head that says Nike cares what I think. Pile on a couple more of those tiny seeds and you’ve quickly got yourself quite a harvest 
