May Employee Spotlight: Erica Dzwonkiewicz, Graphic Designer

Hometown
Shelby Township, MI

Education
Wayne State University & College for Creative Studies

Creative inspiration
I find inspiration from my peers at work and in my personal life. I also go to as many local art shows and galleries as I can! (And Pinterest!)

Favorite cereal
I’m a pretty healthy eater, so I love Smart Start.

Top three interests outside of work
1. Being outside! I love biking at Stony Creek.

2. Volunteering with the Make-A-Wish Foundation. My favorite Make-A-Wish volunteer project is the annual bike tour, the Wish-A-Mile 300. My primary responsibility is to interview everyone involved, so I get the opportunity to meet a ton of great people and interact with our wonderful Wish Families.

3. I love the energy of being in Downtown Detroit. Going to the DIA and the Detroit Symphony Orchestra performances are two of my favorite downtown activities.

Favorite YouTube video
Anything involving cats. Who doesn’t enjoy cats doing silly things?

The best ad campaign of all time
The old Guinness ads from the 30s and 40s (My Goodness, My Guinness!). Not familiar? Check out one of them here: http://bit.ly/Ia2FiV

What was your first job?
My first job was for my dad’s charter boat company. I was a deck hand/first mate.

What did it teach you?
I learned how to deal with difficult people and keep a smile on my face! Also how to tie lines, read buoys & operate a single-screw boat.

What is one thing you’d be willing to practice for an hour a day?
I’d gladly go back to practicing dance for an hour a day!

Do you cook? What is your favorite recipe?
I’ve just started learning to cook. I’ll try anything I find on Pinterest!

Quote to live by
This too shall pass.

Crittenton Hospital serves communities in Oakland, Macomb and Lapeer counties with specialties in cardiovascular surgery, woman’s services and orthopedic services. pushtwentytwo, based in Pontiac, Mich., is an integrated marketing and communications agency specializing in the  healthcare, automotive, building industries as well as emerging businesses.

“pushtwentytwo’s experience and creativity will play a key role in our endeavors to communicate the quality experience patients receive when trusting their care to Crittenton,” said Crittenton Hospital Medical Center’s Director of Marketing and Communications, Brian Birney. “pushtwentytwo understands our hospital and our community, and will be a great asset as we continue to grow in all of our specialties.”

Crittenton selected pushtwentytwo to create and execute strategic marketing campaigns to extend and solidify brand awareness.

“Hospitals, like other businesses, are constantly working to discover new and innovative methods to reach their community and support their patients,” said pushtwentytwo Partner, Dave Sarris. “Crittenton is in a unique position to demonstrate their strengths to the community, which is already engaged with the brand, and provide health focused guidance and information to further carve out competitive differentiation and increase brand awareness.”

About pushtwentytwo
pushtwentytwo is an integrated marketing communications agency that is focused on propelling clients ahead by offering original solutions to their marketing problems.  The agency provides a unique blend of strategic thinking and creative implementation in the following industries: automotive/manufacturing, wholesale, technology, residential and commercial building, healthcare, and professional and financial services.  pushtwentytwo provides branding, advertising, new media solutions, public relations, investor relations and more, to help clients move forward, thinking. For more information, call 248-335-9500 or visit www.pushtwentytwo.com.

Blogging is a word that gets thrown around by a lot of agency people. It’s a buzzword so it often gets mixed in with the social media pitch. It’s also usually accompanied by a request for large amounts of support content and that’s where it usually dies – who has time for that? So the blog gets shelved and you miss out on what could be a very powerful marketing tool (the SEO value alone is enough to make it compelling).

So here’s a suggestion – don’t create a blog, curate one.

As so many successful bloggers have proven, content isn’t a problem. It’s out there – everywhere. All you have to do is sort through it and serve up the stuff that’s most relevant to your audience. The drudgereport is among the most trafficked sites on the web and all it does is curate the news with a point of view – so why not use that model to get your point of view out there?

And there are plenty of tools out there that make it easy. Tumblr is a great curation tool. It’s simple, easy to use and doesn’t require you generate copious amounts of unique content. Pinterest is another burgeoning social tool that’s essentially a curation tool (it’s also integrated with Facebook so it can kill two content birds with one stone).

The beauty of both tools? You can be set up and curating in a matter hours.

Or with a little help from us, you can probably get that down to a matter of minutes.

Don’t believe me? Check out the brand new creative inspiration tumblr we just created for push. From “idea” to “I did it” in under 15 minutes. Seriously.

Check it out.

Rob Wilkie is the creative director at pushtwentytwo, an integrated marketing and communications agency supporting leading and emerging companies.

We love projects that we can sink our teeth into – especially when they benefit our community. That’s why we were ecstatic when we learned about Lafayette Place Lofts, the latest (by 30 years) and largest (nearly $20 million) construction investment in Downtown Pontiac.  The über-hip Lafayette Place Lofts, will serve the community with great places to live, great fresh food at the Lafayette Market and fitness at a new Anytime Fitness facility.

With so much to be excited about, we jumped right into the project with our creative hats on and produced a multifaceted marketing campaign to introduce the project to the public. With such a wonderful investment in our community and local economy, we could barely harness our excitement and we believe the campaign success is a demonstration of our feelings for Lafayette Place Lofts.

We began with the brand.

The Lafayette Place identity was inspired by the historic nature of the building and designed to fit with the architectural cues and overall feeling that the property possesses. The circular marks and vintage art deco-style typography harken back to the period of the building’s original development but also takes a modern spin with the contemporarily crafted ligature letterforms. It is a good balance of old and new that provides a timeless look with both urban appeal and historic charm. The colors were chosen to reflect the fresh and vibrant downtown attitude and natural colors associated with market produce.

Then we moved on to the message.

For such an important investment in Downtown Pontiac, it was imperative that the key messages in support of the project hit strategic notes to; communicate the public impact, address the need for such investments in the community, and discuss the history of the building. With these priorities in place, we developed a successful PR campaign which encompassed all facets of local and regional media, including 19 stories to date and significant key message pick up. Click on the below logos to view a sampling of the Lafayette Place Lofts media coverage.

With the initial public push behind us, we look forward to further supporting Lafayette Place Lofts through 2012. For more information about the project, visit (the pushtwentytwo designed and developed) www.lafayetteplacelofts.com.

Click on a news outlet below to view coverage:

The specific people may change, but if you’ve ever been through a website redesign project, you’ll know how hard it can be to please all of the stakeholders and accommodate all of their input. Each has their own ideas, goals and thoughts. Of course, some are more important than others, but corralling them all into something manageable is a challenge – and it’s a critical one.

For any website redesign to be successful, competing wants and needs have to be distilled down and focused on real goals. It isn’t always easy, but it’s perhaps the most important part of the process.

For a recent site redesign, our team’s efforts were focused on a single goal – increasing the number of retail leads our client’s site was producing. It was a clear, focused and unambiguous goal but by no means an easy one to achieve.

The project kicked off in late 2010 and by early 2011, the majority of our design (UI and graphic) work was completed. Development was completed by mid-summer and the site was finally launched in July. You can check out the redesigned site (and hundreds of modular and manufactured homes) at championhomes.com.

This week, our client shared some numbers with us:

The net result: unique customer leads were up more than 300% by the end of 2011 – a fantastic number considering that traffic to the site has remained fairly flat during the same period. And although the results were beyond our expectations, they weren’t surprising.

That’s because whenever we work closely with a great client, towards clear and measurable goals for a creative solution, we invariably achieve those goals.

Regardless of whether we use green.

Rob Wilkie is the creative director at pushtwentytwo, an integrated marketing and communications agency supporting leading and emerging companies.

Everybody’s talking apps these days and with good reason – the market for apps is exploding and companies are looking to make sure they don’t miss out. For marketers, the temptation is also great and the rush to produce branded apps is on because just having an app right can provide some novelty value.

But before committing to an app, take a step back and ask yourself whether it’s really worth it.  At this point, app development is …

1) Fairly Expensive – experienced app developers (and agencies with app developers) are in high-demand so you’ll be paying a premium.

2) Not Cross-platform – unless you build versions for iOS, Android, Windows Phone and Blackberry, you’re ignoring a heck of a lot of users.

Those are two pretty big considerations and an expensive-to-develop app that plays to a limited audience isn’t necessarily a great marketing investment.

So before you decide to invest in an app, ask yourself a simple question: is this an “app” I’m thinking about or is it really just a mobile website?

You’ll likely get way more bang for your buck with a mobile website and be inclusive of a much larger audience. And in some cases, a website can be made “mobile-friendly” with relatively little work.

The mobile version of robotwhisperers.com we created for Dassault Systèmes is a great example. It includes all of the content from the desktop version of the site but has been optimized for mobile devices. It looks and performs like an app and works well whether it’s on running iOS, Android, Windows Phone or Blackberry mobile device.

Another good example is Gabriel’s mobile part search. Rather than spend a ton of time and money developing an app-based search tool, we leveraged all of the hard work that went into developing Gabriel.com’s part search and developed an optimized version for mobile devices. You can check it out at m.gabriel.com.

Of course, there are times when apps make sense. And apps allow us to utilize the cool technology that’s built into your mobile device (like GPS) – a mobile website can’t do that.

So the real question is: which option makes sense for you? If you need help deciding, shoot me or any other member of the push team an email. We’d be happy to talk through your options and help you decide whether you really need an app for that.

Rob Wilkie is the creative director at pushtwentytwo, an integrated marketing and communications agency supporting leading and emerging companies.

Being named as a finalist in three categories that highlight the scope of the agency’s capabilities is a testament to pushtwentytwo’s commitment to innovation and creative thinking – and to the clients the agency has the privilege of serving.

“We believe it’s important to persistently push each other and our clients to produce stronger, more innovative work,” said Mike Verville, partner, pushtwentytwo. “To be named as a finalist for this year’s D Show awards is a testament to both the breadth of the creative spirit we foster and the depth of our technical understanding.”

The D Show Awards is the region’s leading creative awards program highlighting and showcasing the talent, agencies and people that make up Detroit’s creative, media, entertainment and production communities. The 2011 winners will be announced at the Max Fisher Center for the Performing Arts & Orchestra Hall on Nov. 30.

About pushtwentytwo
pushtwentytwo is an integrated marketing communications agency that is focused on propelling clients ahead by offering original solutions to their marketing problems. The agency provides a unique blend of strategic thinking and creative implementation in the following industries: automotive/manufacturing, IT/technology, residential and commercial building, healthcare, and professional and financial services. pushtwentytwo provides branding, advertising, new media solutions, public relations, investor relations and more, to help clients move forward, thinking. For more information, call 248-335-9500 or visit www.pushtwentytwo.com.

“We are thrilled to support Gabriel in the development of a new strategic and creative direction for its marketing and communications efforts,” said Michael Verville, partner, pushtwentytwo.  “It’s exciting to have the chance to help a company like Gabriel implement a new overall rebranding program to reinvigorate its legendary brand in the automotive aftermarket.”

Gabriel selected pushtwentytwo to develop the company’s overall marketing and communications plan.  Part of that overall effort was the redesign of Gabriel.com.  Among the site’s many new features is an expanded and improved part search tool which allows users to search for recommended parts by vehicle year, make, model and engine, or part number.  When accessed from a mobile device, Gabriel.com optimizes its part search to provide the best mobile user experience possible.

In addition, the new Gabriel.com – launched late last summer – provides educational resources, FAQs, and customer training videos from “The Answerman,” Gabriel’s technical support team.  This revolving video series offers first-hand advice from Gabriel technicians about product applications, installation and troubleshooting.

About pushtwentytwo
pushtwentytwo is an integrated marketing communications agency that is focused on propelling clients ahead by offering original solutions to their marketing problems.  The agency provides a unique blend of strategic thinking and creative implementation in the following industries: automotive/manufacturing, IT/ technology, residential and commercial building, healthcare, and professional and financial services.  pushtwentytwo provides branding, advertising, new media solutions, public relations, investor relations and more, to help clients move forward, thinking. For more information, call 248-335-9500 or visit www.pushtwentytwo.com.

About Ride Control, LLC
Ride Control, LLC operates in both the aftermarket and original equipment manufacturer (commercial, industrial and recreational vehicle) segments under the Gabriel® (U.S. and Canada) and GRC® (Mexico) brand names. The company originated the world’s first automotive shock absorber, “The Snubber,” in 1907, and continues today to be a leader in the design, engineering, development and production of shock absorbers in North America.  Ride Control, LLC generates more than $210 million in sales and has more than 1,400 employees in the U.S., Canada and Mexico. The company maintains design, manufacturing, warehouse, sales and management offices throughout North America including Troy, Michigan; Chickasha, Oklahoma; Brentwood, Tennessee; and Queretaro, Mexico.  For additional information, please visit www.gabriel.com.

Okay we admit, strategery isn’t really a word, but it is commonly used amongst marketers when figuring out how to be smart and make the best decisions when it comes to promoting their clients’ businesses. These days one of the largest pieces of the marketing pie is social media – it’s also one of the newest aspects of the profession with constantly evolving best-practices.

A question we commonly hear when discussing social media planning is timing – when to post messages, how often and how to know if your target audience is seeing them – particularly when it involves Facebook. There’s no single strategy that will work for every organization, but there are a few ideas that you can take into consideration when figuring out what works best for you.

• There’s a method to posting messages – success is more calculated than you think.
• Try posting all sorts of content at different times through the day – questions, photos, polls, etc. See where you get the most impressions.
• Understand the basics of Facebook’s algorithm. Check out EdgeRank for some tips.
• Take advantage of free monitoring and analytics tools such as Facebook’s built in  analytics tool.
• Play! Experiment! Try new things! It’s the only way you’ll find what works for your organization.

For more advice on Facebook planning strategies, check out a Mashable post by analytics expert, Jeff Widman, which sheds some light on this commonly puzzling aspect of social media planning.

Corinne Petras is the public relations director at pushtwentytwo, an integrated marketing and communications agency supporting leading and emerging companies.

This morning I came across a great presentation by games researcher, Aaron Dignan, called “How to Use Games to Excel at Life and Work.” that asks the question: How can we integrate game concepts into our work lives to help us push ideas forward?

Well worth a watch.

Rob Wilkie is the creative director at pushtwentytwo, an integrated marketing and communications agency supporting leading and emerging companies.