Utilizing our creative talent, we worked to improve the center’s gym by painting four murals of athletes in action on the walls. RTCRM employees demonstrated an even deeper commitment to this project by donating their Kudos Award money (an internal monetary award given to employees for going above and beyond their normal responsibilities) to provide lunch for all of the volunteers that day. RTCRM generously matched all employee-donated funds.

Participation in Hands on DC was coordinated by RTCRM’s Emily Reagan and Deb Yurow. Emily, as a site coordinator, was in charge of organizing volunteer efforts for the DC Youth Services Center location. Deb flexed her Project Management muscles by acting as the site registrar. Emily joined Hands on DC three years ago after looking for a positive use for her free time, and has been a dedicated volunteer ever since, taking on leadership roles within the organization.

“A great group of people is involved in Hands on DC,” says Emily. “They are hard working and dedicated and have been doing it for years. They clearly love it and have a lot of passion for what they do.” This was RTCRM’s second year of participation in the Work-a-Thon, and the agency plans to participate in future volunteer efforts with Hands on DC.
Hands on DC is an all-volunteer, nonprofit organization that organizes projects to improve Washington, DC, public schools. Its largest event is the spring Work-a-Thon, which hosts over 2,000 volunteers in over 30 DC public schools. Hands on DC also raises funds to support local college scholarship programs and encourage greater community involvement in the public schools. Find out more about Hands on DC.

RTCRM Volunteers Gather in Front of a Finished Mural

More photos of the event.

Terracycle makes affordable, eco-friendly products from a wide range of different non-recyclable waste materials, like the Flavia coffee packets. Their hope is to eliminate the idea of waste by finding innovative, unique uses for materials others deem garbage.

Terracycle, in association with Flavia, sent RTCRM two large, green and white recycling bins, in which we can deposit our Flavia package waste. When the bins are full, we simply send them off to Terracycle, where the packets will be used to make new products and prevent tons of waste from going to landfills.

So what really happened? What concerned industry most? Did FDA give away any of their plans? Registration closed quickly…and many who wanted to attend were turned away. Even those who were able attend will want to hear other expert interpretations of the discussions. On Thursday, November 19, beginning at 1:00 p.m., join FOI Services, Inc., Attorney Arnie Friede, and RTCRM’s Healthcare social media expert Carlen Lea lesser for a 90-minute teleconference.

You’ll hear expert analysis of what was surprising, what was left out, and what the major issues are going to be in the months and years to come.

To register online, or for details on additional upcoming teleconferences, go to www.foiservices.com/tc. You may also call 1-800-654-1147 (outside the US and Canada call +1-301-975-9400) to register by phone.

Today’s costume celebrations culminate with a Costume Contest.  Winner gets a 4GB iPod.  Woot!

Pictures to follow.

This film is not scheduled for a DC release, so if you want to see it, here’s your chance.

photo courtesy of flickr user waɪ.ti

Starting Monday, RTCRM will switch out our disposable Styrofoam kitchen cups by using our own mugs, cups and glasses.  It’s all part of an effort to decrease our waste and promote simple, sustainable, green goals.

To learn a little bit more about the negative health and environmental impacts of Styrofoam, check out the Grinning Planet and the Earth Resource Foundation.

Today at RTCRM we held our monthly all-staff in our DC headquarters, but this month’s meeting took on the special format of Pecha Kucha. The presentation format boils down to presenting 20 slides with only 20 seconds to present each slide.  Needless to say, it’s pretty difficult to cover any subject matter in only 6 minutes and with the slides on auto-play.

My brief descriptions below come in no way close to conveying the energy, intelligence, wit and verve of these presentations and their presenters.  Everyone did a truly magnificent job and, in my opinion, RTCRM’s first agency pecha kucha was a great success.

• Laura & Corrine: Explored a stream-of-consciousness and profiled the different coping mechanism for work and life stress.
• Tae & Todd: Provided practical and strategic information on hailing New York City cabs.
• Emily & Tony: Enlightened us to the hidden inspiration found in New York’s smallest corners.
• Paul & Melba: Detailed the rational and emotion reasons why swear words should be included in advertising copy.
• Rebecca: Imparted a little bird knowledge and described her personal favorite birds.

**Of note, this blog author was presenter, which makes her in no way biased

I’m not sure I know anyone who works in advertising who doesn’t love the show Mad Men.  Their season 3 promotion allows you to create your Mad Men avatar!  I had to jump right on this.  That’s me in the  bright blue in the middle.

I noticed that the cartoon versions of Don Draper and Roger Sterling (left) are looking a lot like RTC’s Matt Connor and Jeff Ross.  Does that make Barry Kessel the Bertram Cooper of RTC?

Needless to say, I think this promotion is a brilliant use of social media and viral marketing.  Check the Twitter avatar of half the people who work in advertising and they have changed over to Mad Men avatars in the past few days.   But the question always becomes, how do you prove success on promotions like this.  RTC wasn’t involved in this promotion, but here’s what I’d do.  Until the show airs, you can’t determine real ROI of increased viewers.  So, right now we’d be watching the leading indicators.   But what are those leading indicators?  Here are a few of the stats we’d be watching:

Stats as of 07/29/2009 for past 7 days:

• URL posted to Twitter 685 times
• URL posted to 112 blogs
• “Mad Men Yourself” mentioned on 84 blogs
• “Mad Men Avatar” mentioned on 65 blogs
• 315 results on Flickr for “mad men yourself”
• Posted to Delicious 224 times

One thing we learn right away is that Twitter fans are Mad Men fans.  It’s an interesting piece of data for future promotions.  A quick check on my Facebook friends showed more than a few have also utilized and shared their avatars!  Names are obscured to protect their privacy.

Lots to learn from this promotion, and lots of fun to be had!

It’s a really long video, but darn funny if you work in marketing &  advertising.  Possibly a little to the gallows humor side, depending on your specialty.   It’s definitely time to get over the past, stop complaining, and move into the new world.  Adapt or die — that’s the clear message of this one.   And could we have fun again?  Those Mad Men enjoyed themselves.

Thanks to AgencySpy for this one.