The Echo Team

Last Friday, the Echo team and people from about 20 other ad agencies got together at the Mission Inn for the Inland Empire ADDY Awards Gala.

For those who aren’t ad nerds, the ADDYs recognize outstanding creative work in advertising at the local, regional and national level. The ADDYs are judged by ad industry professionals just like us.

This year was a great year for Echo-Factory. We won the IE ADDYs Overall “Best of Show,” the event’s highest award, for our B-to-B direct mail marketing kit that we created for 1on1 Financial, an investment management firm.

Our Best of Show Winner

The marketing kit was designed as a follow-up tool that the company can use to send to past and prospective clients to encourage them to call 1on1 Financial back. Inside the kit, there’s a box that reads, “We haven’t heard from you.” Inside the box is a cellphone along with the following message.

“We figured your phone must be broken. So, we sprang into action. Which in our case, meant driving down to the nearest 7-Eleven. Enclosed you’ll find a pre-paid cellphone with one number programmed into it. Ours.
Assuming your nearest cell tower hasn’t been destroyed by a flash flood (gasp!) – we hope to hear from you soon. Sincerely, 1on1 Financial”

In addition to the Best of Show award, we won five Gold, five Silvers and two Bronze ADDY awards. The Best of Show and Gold winners will get the chance to compete in the Southwest Regional ADDYs on April 7, where they’ll be judged against work from Los Angeles, Orange County and Las Vegas ad agencies. If our work wins at regionals, it will head to the national ADDY competition.

Winning big at the ADDYs ranks us as one of the top agencies in Southern California, which means we’re doing ultra creative work for our clients. But, it also means our peers recognize it as creative too.

We’re also proud of these awards because of all the amazing work we saw coming out of the Inland Empire. We had a lot of competition this year. We came away inspired, so inspired that we didn’t sleep a wink Friday night. The celebratory shots we were doing until 5 a.m. might have had something to do with our lack of shut-eye too. Either way, congrats to all the ADDY winners and we look forward to seeing everybody again next year.

Our Other ADDY Award Winners:

Ray “The Oracle” Pustinger

We’re pretty pumped that business strategist Ray Pustinger has joined the Echo-Factory team as a principal, account executive and head of our administrative/finance dept. If you haven’t had the opportunity to meet Ray yet, we’d like to tell you a little about him.

Ray comes to us after working on the client side. We first met Ray when he hired us to do work for Precision-Paragon [P2]. At the time, Ray was CEO of [P2] – when he joined the company, it was a $5 million company. Under Ray’s leadership, the company grew to a $44 million company. And, that’s just one example of how Ray’s helped a company grow. He can give you a hundred more.

When Ray left [P2] to start his own consulting firm, RPME Solutions, we thought he’d be a great addition to the Echo team. Lucky for us, he thought so too. 

You see, Ray’s an expert in business strategy and market evaluation. If you know anything about advertising, you know you have to have good strategy to have good advertising. Fortunately, Ray will be helping us provide business planning and marketing research to all our clients. His expert advice will help us provide better creative and media services too, making the work we do for you stronger and more effective.

In addition to his strategy and research work, Ray will also be an account executive, handling some of our existing clients as well as new ones. With Ray, you’re in good hands. As a former CEO and now agency owner/account exec, he understands the client-agency relationship better than any of us. He’s dealt with a lot of the same challenges you’re dealing with which means he’s probably got a solution that will work for you too.

And, as head of administration and finance, he’s already begun helping us create tools that will allow us to better manage our agency and grow more profitable as a result. That means we’ll be better equipped to help you.  It also means Ray can do the same for your company. He’s more than happy to provide an analysis of your organization then help you identify and take advantage of opportunities for growth, profitability or a combination of the two.

We’re happy Ray’s here, helping our agency and our clients grow stronger.  We’re also happy he’s as crazy about bikes as we are. He’s got several dirt bikes and goes on frequent rides throughout the California deserts. We’ve actually got one of his bikes at the office right now – the one he let Mustafa, Mike and Carl test out in Echo’s parking lot. They’re hoping he doesn’t ask for it back.

Follow us on Twitter @echofactory

Twitter’s been around for over six years now but a lot of companies (and people) are still clueless when it comes to tweeting. But, with over 100 million active users out there, a Twitter account is rapidly becoming one of the best ways to reach existing and potential customers.

So, if you’ve just created a Twitter account for your company or are thinking about it, here are five things to think about.

1. Create a Twitter Strategy. Before you start tweeting, you need to figure out your Twitter goals. Do you want to provide customer support? Sell your products/services? Or, talk about what’s happening at your company? Each of these strategies can be very effective at building goodwill for your brand, as long as you pick one and stick with it.

2. Make Tweets Relevant. If you’re using Twitter to promote your brand, make sure your tweets relate to what your company does. People will follow you because they assume you’re the expert about your company and you can give them information they can’t find anywhere else. So, give the people what they want – provide updates about your company, share industry news, give helpful tips, and promote company contests and events.

3. Retweet with Context. Retweeting is a great way to share interesting tweets from other people. But, if you choose to retweet, make sure you add a few words explaining why you find the tweet interesting or how it applies to your company.

4. Stay Active. Life on Twitter happens fast. When people ask you questions or make comments, you need to be able to react quickly. Before you start tweeting, make sure you have the resources to manage your account and update it daily.

5. Get Followers Organically. Don’t try to convert people to Twitter. Use it to reach out to existing and potential customers who enjoy communicating through Twitter. Then, give these people an incentive to follow you. For example, JetBlue tweets last minute flight deals so followers can take advantage of these deals before anyone else. Whatever you decide to offer, just make sure it’s something your followers will find valuable.

When it comes to Twitter, the ultimate goal for any company is to make sure your tweets have information people don’t want to miss. Tweet useful information and you’ll have followers for life.

If our agency had a favorite sport, it would have two wheels, and a disturbing propensity for spandex. Our office is covered with helmets, protective gear and bikes. We refer to Wednesday as Mountain Bike Wednesday. We’ve even created our own jersey for the Echo-Factory “bike team.”

So, when we found out that one of our clients (and friends), Mike Wilson had qualified for the Race Across America (RAAM), we wanted to help out.

RAAM is one of the toughest races in the world. Mike had to qualify to compete by finishing The Heart of the South 500, riding 517 miles non-stop through parts of Alabama and Georgia in 35 hours and 50 minutes. It didn’t hurt that he won that race either.

At 3,000 miles, RAAM is 30% longer than the entire Tour de France, but unlike the Tour, RAAM isn’t a stage race. It’s continuous, which means once the race begins, the clock doesn’t stop until racers reach the finish line. And, here’s the real kicker – RAAM athletes have to finish the race in about half the time allotted for the Tour.

So, for around nine to ten days in June, Mike will more or less live on his bike as he rides from Oceanside, California to Annapolis, Maryland.

Frankly, we’re not surprised Mike’s competing in RAAM. He’s co-owner of Kali Protectives, one of the leading protective gear companies in the U.S. When he’s not cycling, he’s talking about cycling or thinking up ways to improve cycling performance.

With Mike gearing up for one of the biggest rides of his life, we wanted to do something to show our support. We offered to help him train but he kindly shut down that idea. The guy’s prepping to ride 350 miles a day, we’re lucky if the office as a whole pedals more than 50 miles a week. So, we decided to help him out with some advertising instead.

We started out by designing Mike’s jersey for the ride. The jersey’s a win-win. Mike gets to look cool while he rides and advertise his sponsors to thousands of other racers and fans.

We’ll be helping Mike out more between now and the start of the race. And, come June, we’ll be down in Oceanside to see him off.

We wish all the best to Mike and can’t wait to see how he does in the big race. Check out Mike’s blog for updates on his RAAM training or follow him on twitter and facebook.

Mustafa before the crash

If you know us at all, you know we’re obsessed with bikes. From single-speeds to motorcycles, if it has two wheels, we’re into it. In fact, just yesterday, Mustafa crashed a Honda 70cc into our neighbors’ garage and Mike wrecked his knee falling off his mountain bike.

Our client list further reflects our passion for bikes – we do work for Troy Lee Designs and Kali Protectives. That’s why we’re super excited about our newest client: Dainese/AGV.

If you’re not as into bikes as we are, you may not have heard these names before. They are Italian companies – both big in the European MotoGP, street bike and motocross scene. Their helmets and protective gear have been worn by Valentino Rossi, David Philippaerts, Travis Pastrana and many other pros.

The main difference between the two companies is what they sell. Dainese sells clothing and gear for motorcycles and other action sports, and AGV specializes in bike helmets for pros and amateurs. The two merged in 2007, but chose to keep their separate identities.

Since the merger, they’ve been working to expand their U.S. presence. That’s where we come in. As their U.S. agency, we’ll be helping spread the word about Dainese and AGV products. We don’t think it’ll take long for Americans to realize how innovative and frankly, bad ass these products are.

Though we’ve only been working with them for a few weeks, we’ve already created ads that will soon appear in magazines including Decline, Motorcyclist, Cycle World, Racer X and Dirt Rider.

We’re so glad to be partnering with Dainese/AGV, and look forward to creating more amazing work for them. Plus, with the addition of Dainese/AGV, we’re now working with three companies who make some of the best protective gear in the business. And, Lord knows, we need it.