The Boozy Taste of Victory

Waaaaaay back in June, we hosted the Market Insights: Distilling a Brand event where we invited experts behind Seattle's unique distilleries to speak about what it takes to build a brand in their competitive market. We also wanted an excuse to drink the fruits of their labor. 

In honor of the event, Local Craft Tours graciously donated a gift certificate for two free distillery tours to give to a lucky event-goer. The winner of those certificates was Brittany Hunt. This is the story of her tour experience. 

But first (dramatic pause), we're super excited to announce (more dramatic pausing) that we have two more tours to give away! 

How to get a free distillery tour

For starters, you'll have to be present at our upcoming Art Bash event on Thursday, November 20. You can get tickets here. We'll be announcing further details on how to acquire said tour gift certificates soon. In the meantime, enjoy Brittany's review of her day of sipping and socializing.

View fullsize

Brittany and Daniel hop aboard their van local distilleries. 

Our carriage awaits

Thanks to the Seattle AAF, Daniel Hunt and I toured three local distilleries. We were couldn’t believe what a fabulous tour it was! The trip started with a luxury van and surprise cocktails waiting for us on the drive. Our driver was amazing, and our group was a lot of fun.

View fullsize

Barrels and bottles of Batch 206 liquors.

Batch 206 Distillery 

Our first stop was at Batch 206 Distillery, a true small batch artisan facility, located in the heart of Seattle. We tasted many award-winning products, including a gin with hints of cucumber, and a peach moonshine that was dangerously delicious.

View fullsize

The devil is in the details of Fremont Mischief.

Fremont Mischief

Our second stop was in Fremont Mischief, a family-run craft distillery with the finest rye whiskey and rum. They had a beautiful distilling room and lots of quirks with their brand: We learned about their M logo, their relationship with Jim Beam, and why their beautiful crow bottles are being phased out (You’ll have to visit to learn why!).

View fullsize

Letterpress Distilling owner Skip serves 'em up fresh. 

Letterpress Distilling

Our final stop was at Letterpress Distilling, where the owner himself, Skip, poured us his very own vodka and limoncello. He crafts in small batches, and only uses real honey (not sugar or corn syrup) for the limoncello. I highly recommend trying it, and make sure to pronounce it “lee-mon-chello” - Skip will be impressed.

Overall the tour was a fantastic day. We wished we could have visited all the craft distilleries around Seattle. The tour is s a perfect activity for locals and visitors alike, and the hand-crafted flavors are a wonderful gift for the holidays. Five stars!

Visit Local Craft Tours online for tickets and more information.

---

Brittany Hunt is a Master Cat Herder at Dynamo Plus Creative Studio and a regular around AAF Seattle events. 

Need Art, Will Provide Canvas

Art Bash is coming soon!

We're looking for a collection of artists to create inspiring pieces for Art Bash 2014. You are invited to help us identify artists whose work you'd be proud to showcase. Whether the artist comes from your shop or someone who you've teamed with in the past and impressed you, we want your best. 

Want to participate? Email events@aafseattle.com 

Please include the following in your email:

• Name and email of the primary contact.
• Agency or company, if affiliated with one.
• The neighborhood where the canvas should be delivered.

What is Art Bash?
Art Bash is one of our biggest events of the year where we give Seattle's top creative agencies and partners blank canvases. They create art. We throw a party where you can bid on the art to help raise money for our Western Washington University Minority Student Scholarship Fund.  

When: November 20, 6–9:30 pm
Where: 415 Westlake, Seattle
Tickets: $15-$35 online 

Theme
This year's theme is Throwback Thursday, inspired the SVC Wayzgoose competition where we watched teams combine old and new technologies, design languages and themes. With that we are ushering in a "what's old is new again" mash-up into Art Bash.

The Canvas
We'll provide you with a 24" x 36" canvas. What you do after that is up to you. All we ask is that you produce something great and follow the theme, however you interpret it. 

Please plan to return your completed work of art by Thursday, November 13 to the Y&R Group office in South Lake Union. Details will be included when we deliver your canvas. 

Get details and tickets for Art Bash.  

Mobile First Recap

Ever since our last Market Insights event, our phones have been blowing up with your tweets, IMs, emails, texts, comments, pings...asking for more info about mobile first. App and you shall receive. We dialed up our expert panel and asked them a few follow up questions. 

What are a couple key takeaways you hope that attendees got from the discussion of "Mobile First?"

James Spence
Associate Creative Director, Oracle Marketing Cloud

It’s better to take a small step forward than to come up with a perfect plan to solve everything. Using an iterative process like this allows you to try something, measure it, and apply what you the next time you make a change. You’ll learn more and get more done.

"Mobile first” is a great place to begin. Focusing on the small screen forces you to look at the constraints and opportunities, and build solutions that work for a growing number of mobile users. 

That being said, it’s the one of many steps in developing a truly great customer experience. You also have to understand who your customers are, what they need, and how your company help them do this. You can then create content, build applications, and orchestrate interactions that enrich their lives by helping them solve real problems.

Responsive design is a tactic that should support a greater strategy. It’s not a silver bullet — it simply solves a presentation problem. Displaying content better for mobile doesn't make the content itself better or more relevant for your users.

David Burke
Agency & Brand Lead, HasOffers by TUNE

Responsive design is dated as a concept and limits the consumer experience. Begin to embrace adaptive web or RESS: Responsive Design + Server Side Components.

Web based tracking and cookie technologies aren't working as well in mobile. Server side technology solves this.

Anders Rosenquist
Director of Emerging Media, POSSIBLE Seattle

At a very tactical level, there is usually a lot of low-hanging fruit around optimizing for mobile.  Ensure your emails present well on mobile. Make sure your location finder on your site works from a mobile device (and can auto-detect your location).

From a more strategic level, make sure you are providing a good mobile web experience. But instead of asking what app you should create to keep up with every other brand with an app, you should be thinking about the role of apps. Think about where they fit within your brand’s ecosystem, how they are supporting your goals, how are they being used in conjunction with other channels, and what repeat utility can it provide to you customers. You don’t want to just recreate your mobile web experience in an app, you want to provide something extra, something useful, something that will matter to you customers.

The panel from left to right: Andy Boyer, David Burke, Anders Rosenquist, James Spence. Photo by David Speranza

What additional thoughts do you have that are important?

David Burke

Mobile media inventory is under-priced right now. It's smart to take advantage of low cost and high reach. 

Anders Rosenquist

Wearables are certainly going to be a huge market, comparable in size (maybe even bigger) than smartphones. Also, the internet of things (IoT) is going to be huge as well. We've only scratched the surface, but expect to see a proliferation of devices centered around a common communication language in the next 12-18 months. 

Will you recap the resources that you personally find valuable for staying current on this topic?

James Spence

Design + Development

Luke Wroblewski:
http://www.lukew.com/ | https://twitter.com/lukew | http://www.abookapart.com/products/mobile-first

Brad Frost:
http://bradfrostweb.com/ | https://twitter.com/brad_frost | http://futurefriendlyweb.com/

A List Apart:
http://alistapart.com/ | https://twitter.com/alistapart

Smashing Magazine:
http://www.smashingmagazine.com/ | https://twitter.com/smashingmag

Email Marketing

Litmus:
http://litmus.com/blog/ | https://twitter.com/litmusapp

Campaign Monitor:
https://www.campaignmonitor.com/blog/ | https://twitter.com/CampaignMonitor

Mail Chimp:
http://blog.mailchimp.com/ | https://twitter.com/MailChimp

Brian Graves:
http://www.brianleegraves.com/ | https://twitter.com/briangraves | http://responsiveemailresources.com/

David Burke

Performance In:
http://performancein.com/

iMedia Connection:
http://www.imediaconnection.com/

Anders Rosenquist

Boy Genius Report: great for gadgets and industry news.
http://bgr.com

GigaOM: solid industry insights with venture capital perspective.
http://gigaom.com

Daring Fireball: blog by industry vet John Gruber.
http://daringfireball.net

The Verge: good techie/geeky site.
http://www.theverge.com

Wall Street Journal tech blog: wide range of tech/mobile insights.
http://online.wsj.com/news/technology

Instapaper: a way to save articles that strips out ads for reading on phone or tablet. 
https://www.instapaper.com/

---

Special thanks to our photographer, David Speranza. When he's not attached to a camera, he's busy compiling a curated guide of what shows are new and notable on his blog What's On Netflix Now? It's a regularly updated with movie lists, featured reviews, and monthly roundups of what's streaming. 

Western Regional Conference Roundup

Your trusty board recently took Reno by storm in hopes to double our revenue and advertising brain power at the AAF Western Regional Conference. Now that they've all recovered from the whirlwind of experts, seminars, buffets and lounge singers, we asked them to share their thoughts and things they learned at the conference. 

AAF Seattle board and friends

---

Martin McGee, President

What I wanted to get out of this conference was to network with other clubs in the region to see what is and is not working for them. I want to get ideas to implement in Seattle and possibly provide ideas for other clubs to try.

My priorities coming out of this conference are around planning for the club—both short and long term. While the club has goals identified for the current year, I would like to develop a multi-year strategic plan.

The ever photogenic Martin 

---

Mark Kurtz, Diversity & Multiculturalism

AAF Seattle is a force in the Western Region. We have the foundation in place to grow. The landscape of the term "advertising" is expanding to include many forms of marketing and we need to flexible in order to cater to the needs of our members.

This conference reinforced the responsibility we have as advertising and marketing professionals to elevate our work to the highest level. Numerous examples were given throughout the conference that rely on the many skill-sets that AAF Seattle represents—especially around creative storytelling and how to connect audiences to those key messages in a meaningful and relevant way. The collective work that our members produce has the ability to impact billions of people and this is a great industry to represent.

Mark puts his lucky charm to the test

---

Charlotte Boutz, Vice President & Programs

I love to hear what other clubs are doing—both their success stories and their challenges. Each market is so different, so clubs approach serving their communities differently, but there’s still a lot to learn and share. 

The Reno team did a great job producing “bonus” content that was not directly related to the business of the organization, but helped open our minds and keep the energy level up. I was especially inspired by the team at Goodby Silverstein & Partners sharing the NBA Jingle Hoops campaign, and Jonathan Woytek from Pereira & O'Dell on the Skype Stay Together campaign. Beyond the concept development, which was incredibly powerful in both cases for different reasons, the creative problem solving that these teams pulled off throughout the production processes was jaw dropping. What a fun pair of reminders of why we’re in this business, and what it takes to tell a good story well.

Charlotte enjoys the Reno nightlife

---

Audrey Berglund, American Advertising Awards

I always look forward to networking with other ADDY chairs and figuring out best practices based on their experiences. It’s a great place to share ideas and gain support.

This conference served as a great kickstart to this year’s American Advertising Awards. I got a lot accomplished in the way of event timeline, budgeting and committee building. I definitely have a plan of attack moving forward and am set up to run effective committee meetings.

Audrey strikes up a convo with the locals

---

Cindy Pennington, Executive Director

I want our membership to know that your elected board desires to learn more about growing and promoting the advertising industry in Seattle. They want AAF Seattle not just be relevant to the agencies, but to the businesses, vendors and clients in the Seattle area.

Cindy takes in the sights

---

Nik Amar, Advertising Education

I got some great ideas for programs from other clubs. It's a priority for me to work with the board to create greater, more bombastic membership drives, considering how essential membership is to the survival of our club.

Our club is large and diverse in membership and behavior. Members can take an active role in our club’s future through regular attendance and simply meeting and suggesting things to the board (not to mention volunteering).

Nik explores Reno's culture

Open Committee Positions

Believe it or not, your beloved club doesn't run on fairy glitter and sun beams. And even though your fearless board leaders put in a fair share of blood, sweat and ugly cry tears, they still couldn't make AAF Seattle operate without the help of volunteers. 

Whether you're looking to network, puff up your portfolio and resume, or fulfill your court ordered volunteer hours, we've got plenty of open spots to feed your ulterior motives. Bonus: you get to hang with the best dang ad folks this side of the Snoqualmie Pass.

Check out our positions and if you're interested, send us an email with the following:

1. Your name
2. Your job title
3. The volunteer position you're inquiring about
4. Qualifications or experience you may have that relate to the position

Communications Committee

Copywriter

Write snappy copy for event communications, blog posts, social media posts and other communication needs. Apply now

Art Designer

Design graphics and logos, and choose images for event communications. Layout newsletters and other advertisements. Apply now

Communications Liaison

Serve as the go-between of the Communications Director and the Seattle American Advertising Awards (ADDY) creative team. Determine and execute a communications plan for the awards show. Manage the communications schedule and advise on communication capabilities within the club. Position duration is September-March. Apply now

ADDYs Committee

Commitment: 2-3 meetings/week depending on action items. Meetings last 30 minutes-1 hour. Position duration is September-March depending on volunteer role.

Competition Committee Volunteer

Call for entries through judging. Will identify and target companies to enter competition, manage collection of entries, sort entries for judging and coordinate judging day, including laying out work to be judged. Apply now

Judging Coordinator

Help Judging Chair recruit some of the best creative minds in the US. Coordinate travel, lodging, dinners and social events. Apply now

Creative Director

Responsible for concepting theme carried out through communications, print and digital materials, and the show. Apply now

Awards Show Coordinator

Acts as a liaison between the venue and the committee, negotiates rentals and F&B. Apply now

Sponsorship Committee

Sponsor Liaison

Serve as the go-between of the Sponsorship Director and the Seattle American Advertising Awards (ADDY) committee. Pursue cash sponsors for food and beverages, as well as in-kind sponsors for wine, beer and liquor. Position duration is September-March. Apply now