At BBR, we are primarily known for our marketing and design capabilities within traditional media venues.  However, we do love the chance to work on super-creative and alternative projects – like designing a parade float that integrated branding for a client.  Recently, we had the opportunity to focus our creativity on a different type of project for a growing industry – a food truck.

The food truck industry provides a proprietor with a way to engage consumers that is unique from traditional media.  Trucks provide a relatively low-cost entry into the restaurant industry.  It allows an existing enterprise to expand the risk of spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on a new brick and mortar location.  Trucks allow for brand growth and expansion into larger regional areas and test markets.

A successful food truck is built upon a comprehensive creative concept.  Designing a cool, professional brand is almost as fundamental as the quality of the food sold as people will make assumptions about your food from the exterior of your vehicle.  However, the concept and brand are pointless if the marketing strategy that accompanies your business is passive.  Successful food trucks capitalize on connections.  The use of websites, social media and mobile apps will help customers locate a truck.  However, to sustain interest and develop brand loyalty, you need ways to keep customers coming back – again and again.

Promotions engage customers throughout the year.  Customers will become familiar with your online presence and brand presence through continuous social media promotions.  Posting updates and pictures from contests pique customers’ interest.  ”Check-ins” on Foursquare and Yelp, and “Likes” on Facebook provide ways to award discounts and coupons to further sustain customer awareness.

Along with aggressive strategy, it is important to give customers value for their relationship with you.  Whether it’s handing out free samples or distributing well-timed coupons, a strong marketing strategy will define your identity, capture attention, identify cravings, sustain interest, capitalize on opportunities, and garner repeat business.

Don’t forget – a food truck is mobile.  And your best strategy is to keep moving!

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It started inauspiciously enough, more of a life experiment than a full-fledged, capitalistic business strategy.

The plan?

Open a new kind of design and advertising agency.

The differentiation?

Place the emphasis of the new company’s foundational philosophy on creative excellence rather than the bottom dollar. Emphasize a life of balance in order to allow creative spirits to flourish.

The perpetrators?

A Blonde, a Brunette and Redhead. (And one feisty bean-counter, now retired.)

On July 1, 1997, that dream was realized and thus began BBR Creative, an experiment for working mothers, devoted wives, inspired artists, and one heck of a friendship.

Pure brilliance or utter madness?

Only time would tell.

15 years later, it seems a good time to assess the success of our little life experiment.

All too often, companies tout a balanced environment on their corporate website, but then fail to take the steps to support that promise. And I understand; it’s hard to turn down clients who wield the currency that make businesses tick. It’s hard to let things go when EVERYTHING is deemed “an emergency,” and your family, who gets used to taking a back seat for everyone else’s emergencies, does so uncomplainingly. It’s hard not to cultivate a company culture that advertently or inadvertently supports employees who are diligent enough to stay late, come in on the weekends or send emails out at the wee hours of the morning, or even realize as a business owner that this is a sign to hire additional help, whether or not they ask for it.

But as part of a partnership whose beginning was founded in the world of design and not in management or finance, we wanted to redefine the art of running a successful business. We were mothers with growing families and we did not want to sacrifice key family moments for our professional success. We were artists who understood the need for balance. We understood the need for time off from “the business” to rejuvenate in order to look with fresh and inspired eyes at every project for a careful selection of clients. And as friends, well, everyone knows what a business partnership can do to friendships. Needless to say, we learned to be big girls, take disagreements in stride, and wake up to a new day.

The other night, I had a revelation. It happened at a graduation dinner for the daughter of Sara, the “redhead” of the partnership. Looking around at the table full of girls made up of my partners and the group of daughters who – oddly but loyally – bore the same colored hair as each corresponding mother, it really made me catch my breath. Our experiment was a success.

And our success wasn’t defined in the number of creative awards that poured in from our client projects, nor the tight community of employees we like to call the BBR Family, nor the continuous growth of that Family, as we continue to accommodate the work from our expansive client list.

Our success was defined by this tableau: our ability to celebrate a momentous occasion in the life of one of our daughters, a celebration that was one in a series of many life moments. Looking around at the faces of our daughters, and the pride we had in our loving, close relationships, I felt fulfilled and peaceful. We were successful in forging lives that were open enough to celebrate all aspects of life, professionally and personally.

To all the mothers out there who are balancing it all, HAPPY MOTHER’S DAY! And to our daughters, BBR Generation II, I wish them lives that are full, and lives balanced enough to offer them plenty of opportunities to celebrate, professionally and personally.

Thanks to Rachel Hull, who honored us with this suggestion for this Mother’s Day blog.

The other day I realized that I use many freeware and shareware programs during a normal workday and that most people might benefit from their use. So, I’m compiling a short list of a few of my favorites, and what they do. Hopefully they can be of help to you with your business needs, or at least make some of your daily tasks easier.

1. Easyfind. This one is free search application that you can download to your computer that works much better than the normal OS finder to search for missing files, documents and anything else you have “lost” on your computer. It will also search networked devices. (Spotlight has always been poor at this)
2. Switch. This is an audio and video converter. Although not free ($29.99), it is still pretty cheap. It will convert your A/V files to many different formats. I find this helpful when we need something to be converted across different platforms.
3. Flip4Mac. This free utility will let Mac users view .wmv (Windows Media Viewer) files, which is the format for many online downloads. This little gadget can make the lives of diehard Mac fans much easier.
4. Cyberduck. This is a free FTP (File Transfer Protocol) utility. It will let you transfer large files if there is an FTP server available. Most printing companies, video production businesses and design/marketing businesses will have these servers set up to be able to exchange large files.
5. Drop Box. This is a neat utility useful to anyone who does any computer work in multiple locations. It allows you to set up a free account, put files in a secure folder and access that folder from any computer in any location as long as you have Internet access. It is free for up to 2BG of space. If you don’t have an idea of what that means, it means TONS of Word files, photos, presentations or pdfs. This is an easy solution when you need to work on files from work, home or on the road. You can set up separate folders so that anyone else can have access to your files, such as your assistant or team member.  And if you are on a trip, you don’t have to worry about bringing files with you, or dealing with the unpredictability of emailing files, especially large ones.

With more and more Americans looking for work and using social networking sites on a daily basis, here are some interesting statistics about job screening and social networking.

In  2011, 300 hiring professionals were surveyed, and of those, 91% of them had used social media to screen potential employees. In the survey, it was found:

•  76% used Facebook
•  53% used Twitter
•  48% used LinkedIn

Of the hiring professionals who used social media for screening, 69% said they rejected eligible candidates because of what they saw on social networking sites. Here’s a breakdown of some of the top reasons candidates were disqualified:

•  22% was because of inappropriate photos or comments
•  19% because their posts included a reference to their drinking or using drugs
•  13% lied about qualifications
•  11% posted negative comments about previous employers
•  11% demonstrated poor communication skills
•  10% made discriminatory comments

However, n the flipside, 68% said they hired candidates because of what they saw on social media, here are some of the top reasons:

•  Gave a positive impression of their personality and organizational fit
•  Profile supported their professional qualifications
•  Profile showed they were creative
•  Profile showed solid communications skills
•  Profile showed they were well-rounded
•  Candidate had good references posted by others
•  Candidate received awards and accolades

As you can see, potential job seekers might need to take a second (or even third) look at their social networking accounts, to make sure there’s nothing out there that could potentially cost them their dream job.

If you want to get your hands on one of these high-quality prints, visit the BBR shopping cart, and snatch up one of these limited edition 11″ x 17″ posters, for only $20! All proceeds will be donated to support children and the arts. We can only make 100 of these, so be sure to get one while you can.

Be sure to check out Part 1 of Free Marketing, where I review the Amazon reviews of the horse head mask.

If you’ve even heard the words “Three Wolf Moon” before, you probably don’t need to read this blog post. Unless you want to revisit a great example of the internet at its finest. And if you’re WEARING what I’m about to talk about, we can be friends.

The photo above can also be found on what may be the most infamous shirt ever sold on the internet: Three Wolf Moon. Which, as you can plainly see, features three wolf heads howling at a very full moon. But, according to Amazon customer reviews, that’s not all it is. Apparently it can change lives. Supposedly, it can destroy marriages. Is it too sexy for society? One reviewer thinks so. There are over 2000 customer reviews for this puppy. You can spend hours reading the stories (I can only assume most are fabricated) involving supernatural occurrences that were a result of purchasing one of these shirts.

One customer even submitted a high-quality video “review” (pictured above) which features wigs and a song. It’s over three minutes long.

If you’re going to write a funny review, you’re looking to get a few laughs from fellow internet aficionados. If you put together a sweet video, you’re looking to get some hits on your website. The funny thing is that these are all CUSTOMERS seeking attention. The Mountain, which makes MANY animal-related shirt prints, was seeking NONE of this attention. I mean, it’s a shirt with three howling wolves on it. But the internet TOOK that shirt and transformed it into something almost spiritual. A community of silliness. And unintentional viral marketing. Which, for The Mountain AND all of us, is a really great thing.

I’m going to end this blog by saying that I just ordered the shirt with a really huge pug face on it. I plan to wear it. In public. Thank you.

Ah….the results were telling. Red and yellow you could just gorge on, for days on end, warm and generous and full. Blue and green were the sad remains of a pie-lover’s nightmare – stingy, paper-thin slices. In that moment, looking at the division of colors in my pie chart, I could see my whole life story.

Emergenetics is a personality profiling system, a tool to define a person’s natural behavioral and thinking characteristics. The answers one submits to an online self-assessment questionnaire generates your Emergenetics profile, revealing a pattern of thinking and behavior traits that defines how you think, work, create and communicate.

Your Emergenetics profile is made up of 4 colors that represent the way you “think.” Blue is for Analytical; green  for Structural, red for Social and yellow is for Conceptual preferences. The higher the percentage of a particular color, the stronger your preference for that “thinking” attribute and all that it encompasses. Your profile is further defined by 3 “behavioral” attributes: Expressiveness, Assertiveness and Flexibility. These 3 “behavioral” attributes differentiate the Emergenetics personality profile from other personality assessments.

It  explains why two people with similar color charts can have such different personalities. Two people might have similar preferences for analytical and structural ways of thinking (Blue-Green), but be completely opposite in terms of flexibility or interacting with others. A comprehensive report for each profile includes a colored pie chart and bar charts for your “thinking” and “behavior” results, as well as accompanying explanations of how you approach problem-solving; conflict; group environments; and other interesting information to define ideal environments, communication modes and even jobs.

Of what use is Emergenetics to a company, besides a fun afternoon of comparing pie charts amongst colleagues with many hilarious “A-ha!” moments? A company can use Emergenetics to define the make-up of their current staff to assess strengths and weaknesses in business operations. Ideally, profile information ensures that job functions of employees match their “thinking/behaving” preferences. Learning about the differences in how others think and behave leads to better communication and work relationships. A business could use Emergenetics screening to hire the ideal candidate for an open job position. A company may consciously hire someone whose profile shows a specific color or behavior preference to balance their overall company profile. Ideally, the goal of a healthy, well-running company is to have a collective, balanced color palette. All percentages of Emergenetics profiles are derived from a national database of 350,000 participants.

BBR Creative showed an extremely high percentage collectively for the Yellow (Conceptual) attribute (compared against a national average), which is natural for what you would desire in your creative agency. However, we value and recognize the people within our agency who also show strong preferences for Green (Structural), as they are integral for getting jobs accomplished, on time and within budget. There is a lot of data collection and research affiliated with our campaign strategies, making Blue (Analytical) attributes valuable, and anyone who has attended our beer bash can attest to our strong Red (Social) side. Since our Emergenetics seminar we now display our colored pie charts on our desk. In the scurry of creative brainstorming, production details, client emergencies and deadlines, it’s always nice to keep in mind personality differences when you approach someone with a new idea or (gulp!) an issue.

And Camille, our articulate, expressive and wonderful Emergenetics Associate coordinator, points out that if you lack a particular color, it absolutely does not mean that you can never be analytical, imaginative, expressive, social, assertive, etc. It simply means that it might be against your natural inclination to think and behave a certain way. And behaving against your nature takes more conscious time, effort and energy. But anyone who is motivated and willing to put in the extra time and energy is capable of change. This probably explains why the same people need reminders about missing timesheets. And why certain people are early for meetings and the same ones who seem to run late. And the reason why I’m exhausted at the mere thought of reading instructions to hook up a DVD player.

I look with longing at Kristen’s pie chart, her expanse of green so solid – tangible proof of the discipline which drives her calm mornings, her ability to set and follow strict timelines, the glory of her home closets that are organized by item and color. I want to scoop up her green and add it to my own, in order that I might improve – pack a daily, healthy lunch; go to bed earlier; send out holiday cards that don’t have the word, “Christmas” scratched out and “Easter” filled in. It’s that darn red expanse (Social) that prevents me from getting rid of holiday cards altogether.

But looking at her pie chart and mine together, I do notice that her colors are a great balance to mine. In terms of a professional team, we make a wonderful duo. It’s just too bad we’re not married…..

For more information about Emergenetics and how it can help YOUR business, contact Camille Pavy Claibourne APRN, PhD.; Emergenetics Associate, ERI Services; email; Phone: (337) 344-5856.

Various photos involving a horse-headed individual holding various small children, barbequing, performing IT work and practicing the world’s oldest profession appeared before my human eyes. As I uploaded my own photo of HorseBurt looking at a painting of two galloping horses, I thought “Well, I bet the mask creators never planned for this sort of publicity.” For such a strange item, word-of-mouth and viral marketing is a godsend. This customer gallery was featured on The Onion’s AV Club’s news feed recently, highlighting the mounting insanity for the horse head. For the cost of zero dollars, a product received national coverage via the internet. Well, I suppose the only cost was that the product had to be slightly morbid and bizarre enough to entice an internet-savvy fan base. But hey, whatever works.

The customer reviews are, as you’d expect, also very funny. Some reviews mean SRS business, however, and actually describe the mask’s quality. Not this one, however:
“I wore this Ann Coulter mask to my last Halloween party and got rave reviews…” – Mike R., Seattle

Internet activity like this is mostly for fun. But you can’t argue that this is helping to spread word about the existence of this not-so-lifelike horse mask, right? Free marketing is GREAT marketing.

Be sure to check out Part 2 of Free Marketing, where I review the Amazon reviews of the Three Wolf Moon shirt.

I love Ukranian Easter Eggs. I think they are absolutely beautiful.

In 2005, I had the opportunity to visit the beautiful city of Prague in the Czech Republic. The Olde Town Square’s markets were filled with beautiful Eastern European crafts.

The one item that intrigued me the most were the hand-painted, blown chicken eggs that were being sold. They came in little white cardboard boxes with dividers that separated each individual egg and were packaged 6 to a box. They had delicate little strings attached that  would allow for hanging. Each was so intricate.

I have since learned that this beautiful Eastern European art form is called “pysanky”. The symbols found on the eggs range from symbols depicting life, fortune and growth to Christian themes of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

I found a website online that teaches the basics of pysanky.  http://www.learnpysanky.com/ The site contains the symbology and patterns used when making traditional Ukranian eggs. For those of you out there who want to be challenged this Easter, I encourage you to try your hand at pysanky. BBR has quite a few artists that follow us and I would LOVE to see their unique interpretation of these hand-painted eggs. Francis Pavy? Denise Gallagher? Burt Durand? — I am challenging you to make “Hanky Pysanky” this Easter!

See slideshow of Pysanky Eggs below:

BBR has a wide variety of clients, which makes my job so interesting as I get to learn about the details of different industries. One of the most inspirational clients I have had the pleasure to work with over the course of this past year is The Arc of Acadiana. Executive Director, Kenny Patton, and Operations Director, Cindy Leleux, and their staff have worked tirelessly for over 20 years to build one of the most successful non-profits in the state.

The Arc of Acadiana, an affiliate of the national non-profit, The Arc, works tirelessly to bring services to the intellectually and developmentally disabled in our community. One of their main goals is to bring the highest quality of life and self-sufficiency to each of their clients. They are constantly thinking and working to provide their clients new services and components to their day programs, employment services and other support services.

Most recently, The Arc of Acadiana completed the first successful privatization of a government-run facility for the disabled in Iota, LA. This was a true success for not only their organization but also the clients whom they serve.

They are currently promoting a first, annual bead drive to secure Mardi Gras beads that supports their clients’ employment throughout the year. Clients at each of their five facilities work to restore, detangle and repackage recycled bundles of beads. They are re-sold for a great price by the clients and The Arc of Acadiana. If you haven’t already done so, please consider donating your beads to The Arc of Acadiana this year at any participating Lafayette Auto Dealership. For more information, visit www.arcofacadiana.org.

The Arc of Acadiana also works to provide a variety of employment opportunities to their clients, such as lawn care, paper shredding, laundry services, etc. For more information on how you or your business can be a part of providing employment opportunities for The Arc of Acadiana clients please visit, www.arcofacadiana.org/employmentservices.