ADwërks News
01/13/2009
Holiday Give Away Winner
As a part of ADwërks holiday mailing for 2008, we included a Holiday Giveaway. Dozens of clients, vendors, friends and family entered.
On New Years Eve, with a glass of bubbly in hand, Head ADwërker Jim Mathis drew 2 names of the entrants.
The first prize went to Don Griffin of Edina, MN! Don will be receiving a genuine Craftsman toolbox filled with lots of holiday goodies!
The second prize goes to Lori Hoeft of Eau Claire, WI. She gets a set of screwdriver shaped chocolates.
Congrats to Don and Lori and thanks to all who entered.
12/30/2008
USA Today Features ADwërks, Sioux Falls
In case you missed this past Friday's edition of USA Today, it included a feature story on North Main Ave. in Sioux Falls... and ADwërks' own little chunk of the street is featured prominently.
Click here to view the story and video online. It includes an interview with ADwërks owner Jim Mathis!
10/26/2008
ADwërks Retooled
Welcome to the machine.
After a year of top-secret research and development, the new ADwërks.com is live.
The new site has been completely retooled and fully tested by the ADwërks team. All systems have been calibrated to the highest standards and are now live and operating at full capacity.
Take ADwërks.com for a test run today and see what we're made of.
After you experience the site, swing by our new shop at 512 N Main Avenue in Sioux Falls to see where it all comes together.
05/27/2008
New ADwërker!
Katie Jacobsen has joined the ADwërks team as Secret ADgent, responsible for media buying and planning. Katie is a 2004 graduate of the University of South Dakota and is a native of Springfield.
Katie is working primarily on the CarHop account and she's looking forward to market trips to luxurious locations like St. Joseph, MO and St. Cloud, MN.
04/14/2008
Cajun Toothpicks Earn Top Honors for the Boss
ADwërks owner Jim Mathis put his culinary skills to the test at the recent Gourmet Guys fund raiser for the Center for Active Generations.
Mathis earned the judge’s First Place Award in the Appetizer Category for his Cajun Toothpicks—Andouille sausage and gulf shrimp on a bamboo skewer topped with a home-made remoulade sauce.
“It’s great when a person can participate in a fundraiser for such a worthy charity and have fun doing it,” Mathis says. “To have the judges pick my recipe as a winner was just icing on the cake—or remoulade on the shrimp—in this case.”
The 7th Annual Gourmet Guys was held April 13 at the Center for Active Generations in Sioux Falls. Preliminary numbers indicate the event brought in around $50,000 for the center.
03/01/2008
ADwërks earns Telly Awards for local television ads
ADwërks has once again been recognized for excellence in television production at the 29th Annual Telly Awards.
ADwërks received Telly Awards for eight different commercials produced in 2007. Six of the commercials were part of a campaign for the South Dakota Department of Health’s HealthySD.gov campaign. One spot was for the new exhibit “Starting Line: Fit for Life” at the Washington Pavilion in downtown Sioux Falls. Another commercial was for radio station Y101.3 FM in Sioux City, Iowa.
The Telly Awards recognizes outstanding local, regional, and cable TV commercials and programs from among 13,000 entries annually from all 50 states and many foreign countries.
02/21/2008
ADwërks earns statewide ADDYs
ADwërks has been recognized for excellence in advertising at the 42nd Annual South Dakota ADDY Awards, hosted by the South Dakota Advertising Federation.
The company received a Gold ADDY for its television commercial promoting a new exhibit at the Washington Pavilion. And a self-promotional Christmas mailer for its clients and vendors earned ADwërks Gold and Silver ADDYs.
ADwërks also received six other Silver ADDY Awards:
-Two for direct mail postcards created for SpEd Forms, a company which offers software for special education professionals in Minnesota;
-One for a promotional event mailer for Delta Dental of South Dakota;
-One for a promotion kit created for McDonald’s “McSkillet Burrito”;
-One for a television commercial for radio station Y101.3 in Sioux City;
-One for a direct marketing mailer for Ronald McDonald House Charities of South Dakota
The ADDY’s are the advertising industry’s annual awards recognizing excellence in the advertising arts.
02/01/2008
In Defense of Goliath
By Jim Mathis, Certified AdvertologistTM
In the world of advertising, the Macintosh is more than a computer, it is a religion. Steve Jobs is the electronic Messiah, promising new salvation each year at Macworld. His Apostle Steve Wozniac has faded into history, like an Old Testament fable. But the religion lives on.
On television, we see the Mac portrayed as the young, hip technophile and the PC is a stodgy, middle aged man (as if there is something wrong with being a stodgy, middle aged man). But there is something oddly wrong with these commercials, John Hodgman, the guy who plays the PC, has very cool job as a author, humorist and correspondent on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. Meanwhile, Justin Long, the Mac guy was best known as the nerdy Warren Cheswick on the long-defunct TV series Ed. In real life the PC guy is cooler than the Mac. Odd.
A full page article in the January 28, 2008 Advertising Age confirmed something I have long suspected. Mac users are more arrogant than PC users and they are not at all modest about it. It is as if somehow the choice of operating system has made them better than the lowly masses.
And as good true believers, Mac users are evangelists about their product choice. Bold proclamations are made about the superiority of OSX, the elegance of the design and the resistance to viruses. But while they shout the virtues of their beloved Macs from the rooftops, Mac users gather quietly in basements to discuss re-installing operating systems, grouse about compatibility problems and blame Bill Gates for all of the evil in the world.
Now here is my dirty little secret: my agency, in its nine year existence has grown, created successful and award winning campaigns, developed wonderful, long-standing relationships with our clients and even made a small profit. And we have done it all without a single Macintosh. That’s right, no Macs.
Now, don’t get me wrong, I am not anti-Apple. I love my iPods and I will be the first in line when the iPhone is available in our market. We have several Apple Cinema Display monitors and we love them. But I’m a PC user. And I’m not ashamed to admit it.
Our PCs run all of the software the Macs run… Adobe Photoshop, InDesign and Illustrator. But they also run the other software I need to grow my business. My accounting software provides me with simple, efficient time tracking, and instant access to balance sheets, p&ls and all of the reports I need to run a business. But it won’t run on a Mac.
And let’s not forget how our industry got its start: media. More than a hundred years ago, the first ad agencies made their income not from creative but from media. They did the creative as a means of getting the media commissions. And the best media buying software runs on PCs.
Today we all live and die by our e-mail. I can tell at a glance when I get an e-mail from a Mac user. They are ugly and unformatted. No elegant signature. No control of the font size or style, just a regurgitation of type on the screen. Come on Mac users, why is that? Do they somehow look better on your machine? If that’s they case, remember that 95% of the other computer users in the world are not seeing it the way you do. The funhouse mirror may look good to you, but the rest of us see what you really look like.
That brings us to the compatibility issue. I have—on a few rare occasions—had a file that I was not able to open on my computer, but the vast majority of those where cases where the Mac user had not saved the file with an extension. Your omission becomes my headache. But I don’t have compatibility problems when I send files to clients. They use PCs too. The most common problem we encounter is that clients can’t view QuickTime movies. They don’t have the Apple software.
I will admit the big shiny box on the floor under your desk is prettier that the big black box under my desk. But while Steve Jobs was unveiling his newest creation—an ultra-slim, super lightweight laptop—I was already using an ultra-slim, super lightweight laptop, from Dell. One inch thick, three pounds and the same Intel chip as the new Mac. Not as sexy, but just as efficient. And I saved enough money to buy a cool new iPod Touch.
The Mac evangelists will continue to preach their gospel, telling the rest of us that we should rebel against Microsoft; continuing to hurl stones at Goliath, but it seems to me that it’s a lot like a vegetarian preaching the evils of red meat at the Tea Steakhouse. You’re not going to change a lot minds.
Yes, I was once a Mac user, but like a child who was raised in the church and later leaves the flock, I have found there is freedom on the other side of the stained glass window. Having spent time in both worlds, I see that they are not as different as either side would like us to believe. In this creative industry, we need to remember that every computer, regardless of operating system, is just a tool and good technology only makes bad advertising suck faster.
10/01/2007
ADwërks adds more ADwërkers
ADwërks has reached into opposite corners of the U.S. to find two new staff members
George Meyer, known internationally and internally as CreativeGeorge®, has joined the ADwërks creative team. His duties include creative direction and idea execution. A lifelong Alaskan, he recently migrated to Sioux Falls for the high wind. He has over 11 years of agency experience as a creative professional and really likes cheese.
Diane O'Connell joins ADwërks as Efficiency Strategist with duties that include office management and accounting. Diane, originally from Puerto Rico, was an Air Force officer and graduate of the U.S. Air Force Academy and holds an MA from the University of Oklahoma.
12/15/2006
Why Alex Bugosky Can Eat My Shorts.
Alright already, enough with the Alex Bugosky worship. Crispin Porter +Bugoksy is the hot shop in the US nowadays. Every time advertising wunderkind Alex takes a poop, somebody hands him a Clio. Frankly, just once I’d like to open ADWEEK with seeing AB idolized. So I am publicly coming forward and saying that Alex Bugosky can eat my shorts. If he wants a challenge, try fighting it out in the low-budget trenches of small market advertising.
Does that mean I think CP+B is doing bad work? Nope. Some of their stuff is downright brilliant, really breakthrough advertising. The Mini, IKEA, Truth… all outstanding creative, worthy of every bit of praise it has received.
Then there’s the creepy guy in plastic Burger King helmet. Breakthough? Hardly, they dusted off an old tag line and put a guy in Mardi Gras costume. The only stroke of genius—hiring Mark Mothersbaugh to recut the tagline, thus harkening back to his Devo* days—was lost on the average consumer. It will make a nice trivia question 10 years from now. But I have yet to talk to a soul who didn’t find the guy waking up next to the King creepy. I tried hard to think of another word to describe the plastic-headed King, but creepy just seems too right.
What about the Subservient Chicken, you say? No one can deny that was some really out-there advertising. But in an ADWEEK article as well as an article in Fast Company, reporters dared to ask whether or not it worked. Nope. Cool creative, but it didn’t make anyone buy chicken sandwiches.
Despite Alex’s hard work, BK is continuing to get their asses handed to them, not just by the Golden Arches, but perennial also-ran Wendy’s. Had it not been for a finger in a bowl of chili, the little girl in pigtails would have wrestled the number 2 slot away from the King.
I should admit a little bit of bias. ADwërks is a regional McDonald’s shop. But “I’m lovin’ it!” works! And Mickey D is kickin’ ass. While quick service restaurants in general are growing, the King flounders.
Here’s the thing. In the end, if all of our clever marketing and advertising doesn’t make the cash register ring, then we are in the wrong business. If ads are entertaining, but don’t sell products, they are bad ads.
Many of us here in the SDAF spent the month of December preparing our ADDY entries. Feverishly sifting through a year’s work, picking out the pieces worthy of the $41 entry fee, but the awards don’t matter. My clients would much rather sell a few more widgets than get a framed certificate proclaiming their Silver ADDY.
So on the odd chance that Alex Bugosky Googles himself and stumbles across this article, I’ll say it again. Eat my shorts, Alex. You may have a shelf full of Gold Lions, but if you want to show us what you’ve got, spend a month selling hamburgers in Sioux City in January. The vast majority of the hard-working advertising professionals out here are working with small budgets in small markets. Give any of us in Sioux Falls a big-ass production budget and a cool client like IKEA and we’ll make magic. The challenge we face everyday is making small budget magic for a used-car dealer in Topeka, Kansas. Now that takes some creativity.
Every year I get to spend a weekend or two judging ADDYs, most often in markets similar to Sioux Falls. And every time I see work that amazes me. In places like Waterloo, Iowa and Great Falls, Montana there is outstanding work being done. And when I look at what’s being produced here in South Dakota, we are doing work that truly competes on a national level. And frankly, I think it’s a much bigger challenge to make a local Volkswagen dealer stand out than to spend millions of dollars shocking us with a “Safe Happens” campaign.
Come to think of it, I wouldn’t be surprised to find out the whole Wendy’s “finger thing” was another shocking promotion idea from Alex Bugosky! Now that would be clever marketing.
*For those too young to remember, Devo used to do a really hot rendition of the Burger King Have It Your Way jingle in their live concerts. The irony of having the Devo front man re-sing the tag was a great inside joke.
Holiday Give Away Winner
As a part of ADwërks holiday mailing for 2008, we included a Holiday Giveaway. Dozens of clients, vendors, friends and family entered.
On New Years Eve, with a glass of bubbly in hand, Head ADwërker Jim Mathis drew 2 names of the entrants.
The first prize went to Don Griffin of Edina, MN! Don will be receiving a genuine Craftsman toolbox filled with lots of holiday goodies!
The second prize goes to Lori Hoeft of Eau Claire, WI. She gets a set of screwdriver shaped chocolates.
Congrats to Don and Lori and thanks to all who entered.
12/30/2008
USA Today Features ADwërks, Sioux Falls
In case you missed this past Friday's edition of USA Today, it included a feature story on North Main Ave. in Sioux Falls... and ADwërks' own little chunk of the street is featured prominently.
Click here to view the story and video online. It includes an interview with ADwërks owner Jim Mathis!
10/26/2008
ADwërks Retooled
Welcome to the machine.
After a year of top-secret research and development, the new ADwërks.com is live.
The new site has been completely retooled and fully tested by the ADwërks team. All systems have been calibrated to the highest standards and are now live and operating at full capacity.
Take ADwërks.com for a test run today and see what we're made of.
After you experience the site, swing by our new shop at 512 N Main Avenue in Sioux Falls to see where it all comes together.
05/27/2008
New ADwërker!
Katie Jacobsen has joined the ADwërks team as Secret ADgent, responsible for media buying and planning. Katie is a 2004 graduate of the University of South Dakota and is a native of Springfield.
Katie is working primarily on the CarHop account and she's looking forward to market trips to luxurious locations like St. Joseph, MO and St. Cloud, MN.
04/14/2008
Cajun Toothpicks Earn Top Honors for the Boss
ADwërks owner Jim Mathis put his culinary skills to the test at the recent Gourmet Guys fund raiser for the Center for Active Generations.
Mathis earned the judge’s First Place Award in the Appetizer Category for his Cajun Toothpicks—Andouille sausage and gulf shrimp on a bamboo skewer topped with a home-made remoulade sauce.
“It’s great when a person can participate in a fundraiser for such a worthy charity and have fun doing it,” Mathis says. “To have the judges pick my recipe as a winner was just icing on the cake—or remoulade on the shrimp—in this case.”
The 7th Annual Gourmet Guys was held April 13 at the Center for Active Generations in Sioux Falls. Preliminary numbers indicate the event brought in around $50,000 for the center.
03/01/2008
ADwërks earns Telly Awards for local television ads
ADwërks has once again been recognized for excellence in television production at the 29th Annual Telly Awards.
ADwërks received Telly Awards for eight different commercials produced in 2007. Six of the commercials were part of a campaign for the South Dakota Department of Health’s HealthySD.gov campaign. One spot was for the new exhibit “Starting Line: Fit for Life” at the Washington Pavilion in downtown Sioux Falls. Another commercial was for radio station Y101.3 FM in Sioux City, Iowa.
The Telly Awards recognizes outstanding local, regional, and cable TV commercials and programs from among 13,000 entries annually from all 50 states and many foreign countries.
02/21/2008
ADwërks earns statewide ADDYs
ADwërks has been recognized for excellence in advertising at the 42nd Annual South Dakota ADDY Awards, hosted by the South Dakota Advertising Federation.
The company received a Gold ADDY for its television commercial promoting a new exhibit at the Washington Pavilion. And a self-promotional Christmas mailer for its clients and vendors earned ADwërks Gold and Silver ADDYs.
ADwërks also received six other Silver ADDY Awards:
-Two for direct mail postcards created for SpEd Forms, a company which offers software for special education professionals in Minnesota;
-One for a promotional event mailer for Delta Dental of South Dakota;
-One for a promotion kit created for McDonald’s “McSkillet Burrito”;
-One for a television commercial for radio station Y101.3 in Sioux City;
-One for a direct marketing mailer for Ronald McDonald House Charities of South Dakota
The ADDY’s are the advertising industry’s annual awards recognizing excellence in the advertising arts.
02/01/2008
In Defense of Goliath
By Jim Mathis, Certified AdvertologistTM
In the world of advertising, the Macintosh is more than a computer, it is a religion. Steve Jobs is the electronic Messiah, promising new salvation each year at Macworld. His Apostle Steve Wozniac has faded into history, like an Old Testament fable. But the religion lives on.
On television, we see the Mac portrayed as the young, hip technophile and the PC is a stodgy, middle aged man (as if there is something wrong with being a stodgy, middle aged man). But there is something oddly wrong with these commercials, John Hodgman, the guy who plays the PC, has very cool job as a author, humorist and correspondent on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. Meanwhile, Justin Long, the Mac guy was best known as the nerdy Warren Cheswick on the long-defunct TV series Ed. In real life the PC guy is cooler than the Mac. Odd.
A full page article in the January 28, 2008 Advertising Age confirmed something I have long suspected. Mac users are more arrogant than PC users and they are not at all modest about it. It is as if somehow the choice of operating system has made them better than the lowly masses.
And as good true believers, Mac users are evangelists about their product choice. Bold proclamations are made about the superiority of OSX, the elegance of the design and the resistance to viruses. But while they shout the virtues of their beloved Macs from the rooftops, Mac users gather quietly in basements to discuss re-installing operating systems, grouse about compatibility problems and blame Bill Gates for all of the evil in the world.
Now here is my dirty little secret: my agency, in its nine year existence has grown, created successful and award winning campaigns, developed wonderful, long-standing relationships with our clients and even made a small profit. And we have done it all without a single Macintosh. That’s right, no Macs.
Now, don’t get me wrong, I am not anti-Apple. I love my iPods and I will be the first in line when the iPhone is available in our market. We have several Apple Cinema Display monitors and we love them. But I’m a PC user. And I’m not ashamed to admit it.
Our PCs run all of the software the Macs run… Adobe Photoshop, InDesign and Illustrator. But they also run the other software I need to grow my business. My accounting software provides me with simple, efficient time tracking, and instant access to balance sheets, p&ls and all of the reports I need to run a business. But it won’t run on a Mac.
And let’s not forget how our industry got its start: media. More than a hundred years ago, the first ad agencies made their income not from creative but from media. They did the creative as a means of getting the media commissions. And the best media buying software runs on PCs.
Today we all live and die by our e-mail. I can tell at a glance when I get an e-mail from a Mac user. They are ugly and unformatted. No elegant signature. No control of the font size or style, just a regurgitation of type on the screen. Come on Mac users, why is that? Do they somehow look better on your machine? If that’s they case, remember that 95% of the other computer users in the world are not seeing it the way you do. The funhouse mirror may look good to you, but the rest of us see what you really look like.
That brings us to the compatibility issue. I have—on a few rare occasions—had a file that I was not able to open on my computer, but the vast majority of those where cases where the Mac user had not saved the file with an extension. Your omission becomes my headache. But I don’t have compatibility problems when I send files to clients. They use PCs too. The most common problem we encounter is that clients can’t view QuickTime movies. They don’t have the Apple software.
I will admit the big shiny box on the floor under your desk is prettier that the big black box under my desk. But while Steve Jobs was unveiling his newest creation—an ultra-slim, super lightweight laptop—I was already using an ultra-slim, super lightweight laptop, from Dell. One inch thick, three pounds and the same Intel chip as the new Mac. Not as sexy, but just as efficient. And I saved enough money to buy a cool new iPod Touch.
The Mac evangelists will continue to preach their gospel, telling the rest of us that we should rebel against Microsoft; continuing to hurl stones at Goliath, but it seems to me that it’s a lot like a vegetarian preaching the evils of red meat at the Tea Steakhouse. You’re not going to change a lot minds.
Yes, I was once a Mac user, but like a child who was raised in the church and later leaves the flock, I have found there is freedom on the other side of the stained glass window. Having spent time in both worlds, I see that they are not as different as either side would like us to believe. In this creative industry, we need to remember that every computer, regardless of operating system, is just a tool and good technology only makes bad advertising suck faster.
10/01/2007
ADwërks adds more ADwërkers
ADwërks has reached into opposite corners of the U.S. to find two new staff members
George Meyer, known internationally and internally as CreativeGeorge®, has joined the ADwërks creative team. His duties include creative direction and idea execution. A lifelong Alaskan, he recently migrated to Sioux Falls for the high wind. He has over 11 years of agency experience as a creative professional and really likes cheese.
Diane O'Connell joins ADwërks as Efficiency Strategist with duties that include office management and accounting. Diane, originally from Puerto Rico, was an Air Force officer and graduate of the U.S. Air Force Academy and holds an MA from the University of Oklahoma.
12/15/2006
Why Alex Bugosky Can Eat My Shorts.
Alright already, enough with the Alex Bugosky worship. Crispin Porter +Bugoksy is the hot shop in the US nowadays. Every time advertising wunderkind Alex takes a poop, somebody hands him a Clio. Frankly, just once I’d like to open ADWEEK with seeing AB idolized. So I am publicly coming forward and saying that Alex Bugosky can eat my shorts. If he wants a challenge, try fighting it out in the low-budget trenches of small market advertising.
Does that mean I think CP+B is doing bad work? Nope. Some of their stuff is downright brilliant, really breakthrough advertising. The Mini, IKEA, Truth… all outstanding creative, worthy of every bit of praise it has received.
Then there’s the creepy guy in plastic Burger King helmet. Breakthough? Hardly, they dusted off an old tag line and put a guy in Mardi Gras costume. The only stroke of genius—hiring Mark Mothersbaugh to recut the tagline, thus harkening back to his Devo* days—was lost on the average consumer. It will make a nice trivia question 10 years from now. But I have yet to talk to a soul who didn’t find the guy waking up next to the King creepy. I tried hard to think of another word to describe the plastic-headed King, but creepy just seems too right.
What about the Subservient Chicken, you say? No one can deny that was some really out-there advertising. But in an ADWEEK article as well as an article in Fast Company, reporters dared to ask whether or not it worked. Nope. Cool creative, but it didn’t make anyone buy chicken sandwiches.
Despite Alex’s hard work, BK is continuing to get their asses handed to them, not just by the Golden Arches, but perennial also-ran Wendy’s. Had it not been for a finger in a bowl of chili, the little girl in pigtails would have wrestled the number 2 slot away from the King.
I should admit a little bit of bias. ADwërks is a regional McDonald’s shop. But “I’m lovin’ it!” works! And Mickey D is kickin’ ass. While quick service restaurants in general are growing, the King flounders.
Here’s the thing. In the end, if all of our clever marketing and advertising doesn’t make the cash register ring, then we are in the wrong business. If ads are entertaining, but don’t sell products, they are bad ads.
Many of us here in the SDAF spent the month of December preparing our ADDY entries. Feverishly sifting through a year’s work, picking out the pieces worthy of the $41 entry fee, but the awards don’t matter. My clients would much rather sell a few more widgets than get a framed certificate proclaiming their Silver ADDY.
So on the odd chance that Alex Bugosky Googles himself and stumbles across this article, I’ll say it again. Eat my shorts, Alex. You may have a shelf full of Gold Lions, but if you want to show us what you’ve got, spend a month selling hamburgers in Sioux City in January. The vast majority of the hard-working advertising professionals out here are working with small budgets in small markets. Give any of us in Sioux Falls a big-ass production budget and a cool client like IKEA and we’ll make magic. The challenge we face everyday is making small budget magic for a used-car dealer in Topeka, Kansas. Now that takes some creativity.
Every year I get to spend a weekend or two judging ADDYs, most often in markets similar to Sioux Falls. And every time I see work that amazes me. In places like Waterloo, Iowa and Great Falls, Montana there is outstanding work being done. And when I look at what’s being produced here in South Dakota, we are doing work that truly competes on a national level. And frankly, I think it’s a much bigger challenge to make a local Volkswagen dealer stand out than to spend millions of dollars shocking us with a “Safe Happens” campaign.
Come to think of it, I wouldn’t be surprised to find out the whole Wendy’s “finger thing” was another shocking promotion idea from Alex Bugosky! Now that would be clever marketing.
*For those too young to remember, Devo used to do a really hot rendition of the Burger King Have It Your Way jingle in their live concerts. The irony of having the Devo front man re-sing the tag was a great inside joke.
