John Myers Photography is hosting our next RAF event, a winetasting. Mark your calendar in sharpie: Wednesday, June 10, 5 til 8 pm. More details to come soon.
June 10: RAF Winetasting
Reply
Category Archives: Members
You’re invited: 10th annual student portfolio review
Thursday, April 2, 2009
6:00 to 9:00 p.m.
Post Central & The Studios at Linden Oaks, 170 Linden Oaks (base level), Rochester, NY 14625
The RAF created this event to assist in preparing our future creative talent in the fields of graphic design, advertising, new media, and copywriting by offering feedback, advice, and career information. Last year’s event was a big success, with over 50 students in attendance, thanks to the support of faculty members who promoted the program, and encouraged students to register and participate. And of course we couldn’t have pulled this off without the volunteers from our professional creative community that reviewed all the work.
Interested in joining us? All students must register online prior to the event at www.rafconnect.org. Professional creatives that would like to volunteer to review portfolios please contact Bob Kiesow at bkiesow@ardentlearning.com or Anne Esse at anne@anneesse.com. We look forward to seeing you on April 2nd.
Check out photos from the 2009 ADDY Red Carpet!
Photos from the red carpet at the RAF 2009 ADDY Awards are now available for viewing on the RAF’s Flickr photostream. You can get there through the RAF’s photo albums page or go directly to the set on Flickr.
Feel free to comment on the photos and share with others.
(And we’re all about privacy here, so if there are any photos of you you’d like us to take down, drop us an email and we’ll see it gets taken care of.)
— Scott Wolf
Feast your eyes on the 2009 ADDY Awards intro video
You were at the ADDYs right?
No? Well that’s a shame. You missed a great ceremony and an even greater party.
Yes? That’s great, but do you remember any of it past the coat check? I don’t. Well, maybe like 10% of it to be honest. The rest of the time I was downing Dundee and stuffing my face with mashed potatoes and candy cigarettes. One thing I do remember is the awesome intro video / animation created and produced by Dumbwaiter Design. Dumbwaiter was asked by the RAF ADDY committee to come up with a video intro for the awards show that reflected the “Mad Men” theme, and what they came up with was truly exceptional. Here’s the intro in its entirety. Hats off to Dumbwaiter yet again.
—Scott Wolf
What’s PR got to do with it?
I was thrilled to have been chosen as a RIF RAF blogging team member. Ever since, I’ve been looking forward to my inaugural blog post. Yet I’ve also been debating what to write about, because I am a PR girl in RAF’s largely advertising world.
It seems there are several misconceptions about what public relations entails, so I thought it made sense to lead with a discussion about the value of our work.
True, public relations often goes unnoticed, but if we’re doing our job correctly, the work of a PR professional should go unnoticed. We are Jacks-of-all-trades, working behind-the-scenes to bring our clients’ news to the attention of their key audiences.
As a matter of fact, the Martino Flynn PR team recently did just that for RAF. In advance of the ADDY Awards tomorrow, we crafted a press release and secured an item in the D&C about the event.
While generating publicity (aka “media relations”) is one facet of public relations, our arsenal of tools allows us to do many things…whether it’s organizing trade shows, ghostwriting byline articles, or even establishing a crisis contingency plan.
Ultimately, PR can be a credible, cost-effective complement to the communications mix—helping a company to foster relationships with its constituents, and position how it is perceived now and in the future.
What the Dream Team was to basketball, this team is to blogging
Ok, you’d have to know USA Olympic basketball to get that. Even then, it may not make sense. But this does: we recently invited 5 area pro’s to form the RIF RAF blog team.
The group was recruited to represent a range of specialties, and each member will be bringing it a couple times a month, beginning this week. Here’s the lineup:
1. Michael Chatfield, Account Planning, Partners & Napier
2. Duane Bombard, Freelance Creative Director
3. Sharon Harper, Public Relations, Martino Flynn
4. Susan Cregan, Media, Butler Till
5. Andrea Zuegel, Freelance Internet Strategy
To round things out, you’ll also see posts from RAF board members. Consider this an invite to join the conversation. And if you’d like to be included on a future roster, drop me a note.
Matt Jones
Rochester Artech 2009 Digital Art Competition and Exhibition: Call for Entries
The Rochester Artech 2009 Digital Art Exhibition, one of the RAF’s fellow Creativity United organizations, promotes the expression of the arts through digital media and features pieces by high school and college students, and amateur and professional artists from across the Greater Rochester area. The exhibition’s entry deadline has recently been extended to March 6, 2009, with the winning pieces being put on display at ArtAwake later in the month. For more details and info on how to enter work, visit http://www.rochesterartech.com/ or see below.
Hundreds of dollars will be awarded in this digital art competition, with brackets for professional artists, college students, and high school students.
There are 9 categories to submit in – any art that includes a digital element in its creation or display is eligible!
Submissions will be juried by a panel of faculty and professional artists from across the Genesee Valley region.
Winning pieces will be displayed at ArtAwake on March 27.
This competition is open to everyone in the Rochester area!
Hurry – submission are due by March 2 at midnight!
— Scott Wolf
Creative SPEEDATE sold out!
We’re excited to announce that the RAF Creative SPEEDATE event is officially sold out! On Monday February 9th, 64 college students and 32 creative professionals from our community will be coming together speedate-style at John Myers Photography to participate in this annual event. Stay tuned for other upcoming RAF events—plenty of opportunities to connect still to come! Thanks again to our sponsors RIT and John Myers Photography.
— Anne Esse
EXHIBIT: Martino Flynn builds the buzz
Check out this recent work from the High Falls team at Martino Flynn. We asked art director Paul Hill for the buzz:
What was the reason for the change?
The J.W. Dundee brand was mis-categorized within the beer segment—often being placed with the lower-shelf, sub-premium products. Our client needed to convince retailers and distributors that the J.W. Dundee line of products was worthy of being placed with the higher-end craft beer offerings. Also, due to a lack of strong brand identity, there was no awareness of the relationship between the six different J.W. Dundee product styles.
Why did they decide to drop the JW?
There was no one actually named “JW Dundee” — it was a fictional name created at the inception. “JW” was the original brewmaster’s initials, and “Dundee” is the village in NY where the honey was made. Since there was nothing authentic about the brand name, we decided to shorten it.
How did you come up with the illustrative approach?
For the craft beer audience, whimsical and quirky brands are seen as authentic and “anti-big brewery” — so illustration was the perfect choice.
It’s so tough to get clients to buy off on illustration…how did you do it?
Casting a bee to play a marching drum was just not working… it had to be an illustration. But once the clients saw the infinite possibilities that illustration gave us, they were very receptive.
Tell me about the digital element.
Martino Flynn created the DundeeBeer.com website, including the flash programming, in just under three weeks in order to have the site up during the key summer sell-in period.
Anything else you want to tell us?
Martino Flynn also created a slew of permanent and temporary POS elements to support pubs and retailers.
Props to:
Agency: Martino Flynn
Creative Director: Tim Downs
Copywriter: Duane Bombard
Art Directors: Paul Hill, Lisa Nasca, Sherri Baker
Prepress: Anne Trabold, Steve Safran
Production Supervisor: Matt Rankin
Interactive Developers: Scott Wolf/Pete Fazio
Account Executive: Gina Piendel
Illustrator: Richard Wehrman, Merlinwood
Photography: Studio 2B
Client: High Falls Brewing Company
Clickity:
www.DundeeBeer.com
And so it begins: RifRaf Exhibit
It turns out RifRaf is read by Scott Wolf, my mom, AND Jeremy Schwartz of RAF member Partners & Napier. Thanks Jeremy, for the snappy response and the great work for Kodak Entertainment Imaging. (Click on the image to see the ad bigger.) The film vs. digital argument has been raging for some time now. Living in the birthplace of organic, random, beautiful silver halide crystals, I have definitely drunk the kool-aid: I love film. I’d love to hear what local cinematographers and filmmakers have to say about the subject. Hellooo, Matt Ehlers…Tim Wainwright…David Marshall…Tim Beideck…and any of you lurkers out there. Feel free to chime in anytime.
Got some work of your own you’d like to share? Send it along, with a high-res jpg, credits and a brief description.
Here’s the story on this piece:
This is the first of 3 print ads and a link to live online content for a Kodak Entertainment Imaging campaign heralding film capture. We’re letting the industry talk back — in their own, authentic words — against the rising tide of hype revolving around digital capture and reminding motion picture professionals why film remains to be the gold standard for filmmaking. The campaign will culminate in the release of a documentary film which we’re currently editing for an early 2009 release.
The first print ad (attached) features Samuel Bayer, acclaimed commercial and music video director that has brought his vision to ads for Nike, Visa, Volkswagen, and Pepsi and to music videos for Nirvana, David Bowie, Green Day, My Chemical Romance, Sheryl Crow, The Strokes, Smashing Pumpkins and countless others. The ad is currently running in American Cinematographer and other trade pubs.
Check the first of some online content related to the effort.
Credits:
Agency: Partners + Napier
Creative Director: Jeremy Schwartz
Account director: Kurt Jaekel
Account executive: Heather Semmler
Art Director: Jack Jankowski
Designer/Retouching: Jack Jankowski
Copywriter: Scott Allen
Photography: Gabrielle Revere (portraits), Jeremy Schwartz (insets), Justin Arcangeli (product)
Print Production: Doug Hood
Interactive Art Directors: Marcus Lennon, Mike Governale
Interactive Project Manager: Kim Pegg
Interview footage:
Director: Henry Corra
Producer: Jeremy Amar
Kodak Client: Sarabeth Litt, Nicole Phillips
And yes, we shot all content on film, both for print and motion interviews.