Marion, Montgomery, Inc.

I think I safely speak for the Interactive Team when I confess that we feel very lucky to get to play on the internet for a living. We also have the pleasure of working with some terrific clients. In the last 60 days, we have launched seven sites! Check out some of the fun we’re having…

University of Houston’s Housing – A site with future and current students in mind. It’s easy to navigate, has a feed for the event calendar, shows photos and/or videos of all the rooms, and links up the Twitter account for each Halls’ RA. There’s even a section dedicated to the questions and concerns of parents.

Interactive Theater – Whimsical, colorful, and fun. With callouts for Teachers and Parents, links to their social media efforts, and a “talking” Captain Hook, you can really get in on the act.

Planned Community Developers – In addition to the heavy SEO efforts and design update, this site now focuses on providing brokers a self-service spot with in-depth information on the properties such as floorplans, specs, photos and available space. With a hot property like Sugar Land Town Square, now it’s all just a click away.

Sugar Land Town Square – Speaking of, we just launched a mobile version of the site complete with a new parking finder. No need to waste time searching for a parking space, now you can navigate right to an open garage with the built in map.

Lone Star Shootout Tournament – An invitation-only fishing tournament hosted by another client, Caracol Coastal, this was a quick-turn site (1 week!) with the goal of creating a quick reference for participants and an easy-to-update site for the tournament organizers.

Lake Pointe Texas – This launch coincided with the splashy Lake Pointe Town Center Family Festival.  The site was reorganized into retail and residential sections, with greater focus placed on what shoppers want – retailer coupons, new store opening announcements, and an interactive shopping and dining map.

Long Meadow Farms – When you’re driving around searching for a new home, wouldn’t it be great to be able to lookup photos, pricing, inventory homes and builder information right from your smartphone? Now you can in Long Meadow Farms.

What an inspirational trip! The HOW Conference was amazing, but then again how can you not be inspired when you’re surrounded by the beautiful rocky mountains of Denver, with ninety-degree weather and zero humidity? The whole atmosphere was just so refreshing, from the dozens of street performers, to the friendliness of the local people, to the huge blue bear peering into the conference center. Any designer will tell you, much of their inspiration comes from the environment they are in or have been, and Denver certainly is a great place to draw motivation and rejuvenation.

With over forty speakers coming from all over the country, the How Design Conference provided a wealth of knowledge for us to absorb and just take in. I love design, so meeting and hearing the stories of some the top designers in the world was a privilege I’ll never forget. There were far too many amazing sessions to go through them all, but I feel I have to mention at least two, to give them the recognition they deserve:

Cameron Moll – Good vs. Great Design Not only is he classed as one of the top twenty designers in the world, he is an author, speaker, freelance designer, entrepreneur, father of four, and still in his thirties! He provided great insight into where he draws his inspirations from and simple ways to better manage, your time, and productivity.

Von Glitschka -  Creating Five-Alarm Concepts Provided some extremely valuable techniques like brain mapping, word association, and the use of both sides of your brain, to create better solutions to problems and to not lose focus of the clients goal.

I feel like I’ve inherited years of experience over the course of three days and I’m very thankful to MMI for giving the opportunity to attend the conference. Finally, I’ll leave you with the best advice I took from the week,

“Load the chamber (your head), know that you’ll never know what you don’t know, conceptual triggers are everywhere.” – Von Glitschka.

“Inspiration exists, but it has to find us working.”

-Pablo Picasso

Designers are a product of our environment. We draw inspiration from colleagues, media, design publications, the internet and even the room in which we sit. To maintain a good design sense, we have to stimulate our own senses. Design is an ever evolving medium. For this reason the creative team at MMI is excited to attend the HOW Design Conference in Denver, Colorado next week.

Fostering a knowledge of the latest technologies and design trends is essential to remain a relevant designer and requires dedication to do so. As I participate in the upcoming conference I hope to be inspired by prominent designers from around the country. I hope to engage in conversation with fellow designers with different perspectives than my own. I hope to gain technical knowledge and creative rejuvenation. I hope to be motivated. I hope to feel the impact on my work when I return. I hope for no turbulence on our flight. I’m not a “good flyer.”

Inspiration requires receptiveness and initiative. On behalf of my colleagues, Claudia and Matt, we appreciate the opportunity to be changed as designers and we look forward to sharing our experiences when we return.

The other day I found myself reading a very, very long email chain to get to the point of an issue. It took me a while to sift through the fragments and string together the instructions, make assumptions on emotions and tone, to finally discover the root of the matter. I still love email and couldn’t live without it, but most often than not a conversation (especially the listening part)— in person or via the phone will always yield better communication outcomes. Reading the NY Times article We Have Met The Enemy and He is PowerPoint, General McMaster pointed out that it created an “illusion of understanding and an illusion of control.” Isn’t that true about so many of the ways we communicate with one another?

In PR, we remember when calling reporters became passé, then emailing was the new phone call and now direct messaging via Twitter seems to work for some. I think these methods can also foster meaningful dialogue, but with varying communication styles, some things get lost in translation. Verbal communication is something we’ve been doing since childhood, unlike email, so it’s kind of the one uniting medium of interaction. Short messages and bites of information can be efficient. For me, when it comes to practicing public relations and providing client service, I’ll be calling.

Today The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center announced the premiere of their new logo – something they have only done four times in their 69-year history. Details on the new look, which brings the iconic red strikethrough of the word “cancer” front and center, can be found here.

To introduce their bold new look to the communities we work with, MMIers Sarah and Emily are out and about today delivering the good news to our friends in the media.

We are so excited to be a part of sharing their mission of Making Cancer History. Congratulations!

MMIers Sarah and Emily head out the door to delivery news of the new MD Anderson logo to local publications.

Teams here are busy promoting the Shell Houston Open, planning for the 2010 Vintage Car Show at Vintage Park, gearing up for the opening of Perry’s Steakhouse & Grille’s premier Dallas location, and buzzing around implementing a plethora of other projects.

Spring has sprung at MMI, and in our usual flurry of activity we find new reasons to celebrate, as we happily welcome some new clients to the MMI family:

American General Life Companies

Cardinal Health

Corinthian Colleges

Phillips & Reiter, PLLC

Want to know more about the MMI family? Some veteran members of the list could tell you a thing or two about unquestionable value. Click here for a look at our clients.

It’s hard to believe it’s been a whole month since we wrapped up the Mom 2.0 Summit. Working behind the scenes was such an amazing experience for MMI. Highlights include:

• Coordinating with the wonderful staff at the Four Seasons Hotel Houston.
• Finding the perfect outfits at Cheeky Vintage for the Mad Men kickoff party (and watching Maggie change a tire with The Bloggess).
• Meeting Mom 2 Summit’s keynote speaker Gretchen Rubin, author of New York Times bestseller The Happiness Project.
• Working with the fabulous people at FotoFest to organize a first-of-its- kind art exhibit celebrating the accomplishments of women online, and subsequent online auction benefiting Haiti.
• And last, but not least, collaborating with the lovely ladies behind it all — Laura Mayes of Kirtsy and Carrie Pacini and Marla Trevino with The Tasteful Life – who made it all come together beautifully.

We were privileged to be a part of it, and can’t wait to see what the next Mom 2.0 has in store for us – April 2011 in my hometown, New Orleans!

Working with various organizations in Sugar Land, I have come to think of Sugar Land as my home away from home. As such, it’s  a pleasure when the synergies between my clients  are so evident that two of them can come together to do great things.

Most recently, the WATCH Health Fair took place in Sugar Land Town Square and the M. D. Anderson Clinical Care Center in Sugar Land was right in the thick of it. The fair provided free, useful information regarding children’s health for parents – and a whole lot of fun for kiddos.

M. D. Anderson representatives Sharon Jamison, left, and Niki Olanrewaju hold down the fort at the fair.

A lot of what I do in Sugar Land is bring clients into the fold – into the community to do good, to meet the people, to meet the newsmakers and stir up some news of their own. Although Sugar Land is certainly no small town, I’ve enjoyed fostering these relationships that make my clients and the community feel like old friends and good neighbors.

For an ongoing list of all the great things Sugar Land Town Square and M. D. Anderson are doing in the Sugar Land community, you can stay connected here and here.

Every year the excitement builds and the hype escalates to what is fondly known as the Houston Addy Awards. This month at the 2010 Houston Addy Awards ceremony we were honored to take home four awards for outstanding campaigns in online and broadcast media.

We’re honored and elated by the recognition, but for us the real excitement of those successes started long before the nominations came in, because beyond the awards, it’s the results of those campaigns that make us most proud.

Like the 35% increase in visits to the new Perry’s Steakhouse & Grille website since the first five months of redesign, the 15% rise in site visits to Sugar Land Town Square’s website and the 114% and 61% increase in site visits from Google to the Perry’s and Town Square websites, respectively.

Or the 415 airings of the US Family Health Plan PSA in four key markets, inspiring every-day Americans to redefine “What is Courage,” and prompting a collective 4.6 million viewers to the US Family Health Plan website to find out more.

Some were more long-term in their success, like the Military OneSource campaign that led to a 71% increase in utilization of the Military OneSource 24-hour hotline from 2008 to 2009, and culminated with the Addy Award-winning spot.

Like Bryan noted with his work on the interactive projects, it’s a labor of love, a creative endeavor, but ultimately it is providing results to take home to our clients that makes us love what we do.

Thanks to all our clients who allow us to do great work, we could not have done this without you!

I have been working in public relations for almost six years, and in that time I have never had the privilege of working on such a diverse list of clients all at once. That’s how it is for everyone at MMI. A day’s work can involve different projects for financial, health care, consumer and real estate clients. This may seem stressful to some, but to me it’s pretty great.

MMI is an agency of all-around athletes – working and thinking in different ways to stretch and tone complementary skills.  From the ground-level leg work to the high-level concepting, this flexibility of roles makes us a stronger team.  We do have specialists in design, interactive and public relations for example, but we all bring diverse industry experience. We find that this broad knowledge base and understanding brings great ideas to the table–applying lessons learned and successes from one area to another.