Everywhere you look – it’s all about building community. On TV, American Express is telling me there’s a “date on my card” and there’s the “date when you realized it’s more than a card.” And then I’m asked, “Are you a member?” In the world of Facebook, I’m welcomed to a wide variety of groups and causes by friends who understand my idea of community. On the Internet, I see companies like Zappos and Threadless who build their brand by building a community. Now top that with the genius behind Barack Obama’s grass roots funding campaign that created an impassioned community and I have to wonder — is grass roots the new way to grow funding for community-based organizations? No longer, it seems, must public service entities chase the large cash cows. Instead, by building an online presence that engenders an interest-based community, it seems the real power in raising funds is by realizing, quite simply, that every dollar counts.

Does grass roots have new life?

2009 marks the 10th anniversary of the first publishing of the Cluetrain Manifesto:  The End of Business as Usual, the irreverent yet completely invaluable book written by four fixtures of the 1999 high-tech business establishment — Sun Microsystems engineer Chris Locke, technology business consultant Rick Levine, Silicon Valley publicist Doc Searls and high-tech marketer and NPR contributor David Weinberger.

You might be thinking: “A book written in 1999 — that’s so last century.”  Well, think again.

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Local interactive design and marketing agency to create integrated web and print marketing campaign for small- to medium-business financier

The Funding Place, a quality financier offering responsive business cash funding to meet the demands of small- to mid-size businesses, has partnered with Thomas Marks & Associates and Peritus Design (TMA+Peritus).

TMA+Peritus, a strategic interaction agency specializing in the interaction between businesses and customers through branding, public relations, print, web 2.0 and social media marketing, has been hired to assist The Funding Place in the areas of interactive public relations, brand articulation, integrated marketing collateral and website design for client recruitment, and support for national events and trade shows.

“Key to The Funding Place is their ability to quickly interact with prospective clients so that they can assess needs and provide high-quality, responsive cash funding alternatives that meet those immediate business needs,” explains Tom Marks, President and Managing Partner of TMA+Peritus. “TMA+Peritus is recognized throughout Wisconsin for its innovative use of integrated web, print, marketing and branding strategies that invite customers to engage with a company. These strategies will allow The Funding Place to utilized their website as a streamlined portal in which they interact with their customers, quickly assess their needs, and provide exceptional customer service and responsive funding.

“A pink rose is a salmon rose is an orange rose is a hot pink rose”

My apologies to Gertrude Stein.  When we’re all in the same room looking at a rose, its precise color will be experienced by everyone in that room– barring a visual impairment or the wearing of rose-colored glasses.  The perceived color of this rose will vary slightly throughout the day, depending upon varying natural lighting and a blend of artificial lighting.  Now if we’re all on different computers looking at a digital image of that same rose, the color will probably vary greatly.  Light pink on one computer becomes dark salmon on another.  Magenta may look more like fire engine red on another. (more…)

A guerrilla marketing campaign is designed to be a creative, unconventional and memorable form of promotion.  When done correctly, the campaign can generate unique forms of publicity to get your company noticed.  The December 8 issue of Adweek features some of the most engaging promotions of the year.  Ranging from IKEA turning a subway car into a retail showroom, to a world-wide travel company using photo wraps to turn ordinary bench seating into different travel destinations.

What are the most creative or “head turning” campaigns that you have seen?

It seems that everywhere I look, there are news reports of people cutting back during this recession, yet, as I travel to the shopping centers, carts are full.

I’ve had conversations with people who say since gas prices have dropped, that they are less concerned with their holiday shopping budget. Other people are clearly sharpening their pencils and watching every penny.

So where do you fit into this mix? Are you spending more, less or about the same this holiday season? What tips do you have for stretching the power of your dollars?

Perhaps I should just turn off my computer. Day after day, the stock market, economic news and world events have made it hard for me to get out of bed with a positive attitude. So I put my laptop aside on Thanksgiving and after a good night’s rest ventured out to see how the local economy was handling Black Friday.
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