Some people might find the title of this post offensive so I should first say, it was the winning headline for our headline writing contest which was part of our annual open house.

It's hard to believe the top notch party planning staff at PARTNERS+simons (lead by Amy Kitson) pulled off another amazing open house. Kudos to you all.

Our annual December open house has become one of the best nights out in the local advertising/marketing/interactive community and what makes it terrific, aside from the always exceptional food, drink and music (thanks to The Loomers), is just the eclectic mix of people brought together in the expanse of 25 Drydock Avenue. This year's crowd seemed to top the 500-600 persons count. One of our largest gatherings yet.

It doesn't hurt that Tom Simons encourages every PARTNERS+simons employee to not only invite clients, but we also open the night up to include friends, family, business partners, and anyone else we think would make the party interesting.

This year's open house took on something of a Vegas theme. Tom played Steve Winn, presiding over his very own Vegas strip. It was pretty cool. Everyone seemed to be having a terrific time at the various tables, throwing away fake P+s money.

And then there was the headline writing contest which was incorporated into our famous poster invite. There were a handful of winners. I gave away the winning headline already. But OMG, we received in excess of 250 entries.

And so that the evening doesn't dissapear without a trace, the exceptional production folks at Boston.TV decided to show up for the evening and captured the essence of the night with some fun P+s party footage -- take a look.

Yup, another year in the can.

Posted by Chris Demakis at 10:13 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

We have all heard about the decreasing impact of mass media and the diminishing influence of the :30 spot. So I find a delightful irony in that PARTNERS+simons has been much more active this past year in TV broadcast production than at any time in our past. But I hasten to add that the strategies we employed and the objectives that we worked towards were hardly traditional.

One of our efforts was a series of four serialized episodic spots that drove viewers to the web where they could see a full five minute film version of the whole story.

Another campaign employed segmentation, addressable messaging strategies and cable delivery to localize the content -- by neighborhood.

A third foray was a direct response effort for a medical therapy -- that lowered previous acquisition costs by an order of magnitude.

All three of these examples are -- by definition -- television advertising in the traditional :30/:60 format. But that's where the similarity ends.

All are insightful blends of "art" and "science." Each practice leading edge segmentation and addressability strategies. All are easily measurable (and regularly measured). And just as important, all are thoughtfully and sensitively integrated into sensitively calculated multimedia campaign chemistries.

What will this year bring? Well, I know this: we've already got three broadcast advertising assignments in the chute, along with a very deep 2.0 development assignment and...

Posted by Tom Simons at 12:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)