Wouldn’t it be cool to job shadow the Shadow!? Not as cool as what we have in store for Xavier & Cortez tomorrow!

Ok, maybe our design studio can’t compete with crime fighting, danzal undistressing experience they might have with the Shadow but it will be fun and informational for the guys to hang out with the crew at BCG.

Below is the press release for the kick-off of Nat’l Job Shadow Day. We have volunteered on a few occasions in the past 2 years, teaming up with Prep-KC and the OneKC initiative to aid in the development of our high school students in Kansas City. I love working with them because everyone whom I have met: staff, other businesses and the students (check out our previous blog about when we had Jerry & Katrina in the studio) have all been very professional, fun and easy to work with.

I have personally performed over 1000 hrs of community service in the past 5 yrs, (none of which were judge mandated) and there is nothing better than partnering with an organization that is just that, organized! Vist Prep-KC (whom has a nice website btw) and check out OneKC for more info on how our town has come together to bring up the whole, despite state lines.

February 1, 2010

District kicks off national career & technical month with Job Shadow Day

KANSAS CITY, MO. – Twenty-seven high school students are geared with questions and resumes as they look forward to National Job Shadow Day, Feb,. 2, 2010. They will be following resident professionals and hiring officials for a full day to see what a “dream career” is like in real life.

Tuesday will see aspiring leaders in business, the arts, and science careers off to their first day of observational work. Their assigned professionals are associates at Barkley Advertising, Brockton Creative Group, BalancePoint, City of Kansas City, Kansas City Star, Mazuma Credit Union, Optimal Health Center, T2, and Vedros Photography.

Job Shadow 2010 is a yearlong national effort to enrich the lives of students by acquainting them with the world of work through on-the-job experiences and a carefully crafted school curriculum that ties academics to the workplace. “We encourage young people to explore their futures through career awareness and mentoring opportunities,” said Tineka Fips, KCMSD College and Career Specialist. “They learn about great jobs, but most of all, they will form relationships to encourage them to pursue the education that will make these careers possible.”

National Job Shadow includes America’s Promise, Junior Achievement, the U.S. Department of Education, and the U.S. Department of Labor.

The Kansas City, Missouri School District (KCMSD) offers a world class education to approximately 17,000 urban students (PreK-12) under the leadership of J. Wm. Covington, Ed. D. We are culturally and intellectually diverse, featuring quality neighborhood schools, arts and science signature schools, Montessori, a career & technical center, free early childhood education, and language immersion in Spanish or French.

For more information please contact Andre Riley, District Communications Specialist, (816) 442-9337, or Mary Spencer, Sr. Media Relations Specialist (816) 560-7337.

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Whether it’s at a networking event, meeting with a potential client or vendor or speaking with budding graphic artists, the same question always arises: what makes you guys different?

As a young creative studio of 3 fairly recent college grads, one MBA and visual communications expert classically trained on the West Cost, you want the answer to be something like:

“Well our father learned the art of communication from his father, and he learned it from his father and these age old family secrets of being creative and doing business have been passed down to us.”

or

“We’ve developed a new technology that blah blah blah and blah’s and it works amazingly.”

or

“We have the ability to read minds. It helps.”

I think you get it. The point is that we all want and feel the need to say something memorable and impressive but really, half the time it’s just you! Your team! The people who make your company what it is.

And that answer is not memorable and unfortunately is the default answer that everyone is most likely using.

Last year BCG was nominated for an award, 25 Under 25, which recognizes the top small businesses under 25 employees in Kansas City. Applying was rather grueling as we were forced to look under the hood and figure out what was fueling our engine and what made it different than the other cars parked down the street (that was a metaphor for the other 6 or 7 creative agencies in the River Market btw).

Well, after asking our clients and looking at how we did things, we got an answer…but it’s still not as exciting as being apart of a creative lineage.

The answer is simple, old school and obvious…We offer superior customer service and account management.

I know you were looking for something else. So were we! But to be honest, we have acquired several clients solely based on their bad customer service experiece with other agencies. And we’ve kept our flagship client since day one *knocking on wood* because of it. And the awesome part about it is that great customer service is actually not as common or as easy as you would think or hope.

To make a long story even longer, please read the article that spurred this post.

McGarryBowen Is Ad Age’s Agency of the Year

It’s a short article about John McGarry and how his “Old World” approach to account management, coupled with adapting to the change in the game, has fueled 25% growth (600 Million dollars) in ‘09.

It was our programmer’s bday and we took him to Manny’s for lunch. Unfortunately it was only 11:30 and not Beer:30 so there were no pitchers of margaritas or any Dos X flowing. There was, however, a little song singing, dessert and a sombrero!

Happy Birthday John! Oh, wait, he cant read that…How’s this

“<p> <script type=“text/javascript”>HAPPY{} try {BIRTHDAY><Tracker = _JOHN!(”UA-52824-3″); ();} catch(err) {} //</script> <div<ptag>“

Here are some pics of our team at the ceremony. 

I was reading USATODAY.COM today and came accross an article that caught my eye, “How fast R U? Iowa girl wins U.S. texting title”   Who whould have thought that there is a reward for how fast a person can text? The competition is sponsered by LG and takes place over two days. With challenges that range from texting blindfolded to texting while maneuvering through a moving obstacle course and even how well contestents knew texting abriviations. For example the term PAW means Parents Are Watching. Conestents have to opportunity to win up to 250,000 dollars if they win the title of “Texting Champ” or 50,000 dollars to the winner. LG participates as the sponsor and advertises THE LG enV3 or THE LG enV TOUCH as the best phones for texting. I will now do one of two things, set my phone down for a few days, or start practicing.

As a professional in the business world and an online marketer, my life (personally and professional) is all connected. Between my Facebook profile which is linked to my company site, which is in the signature of my email located right above my LinkedIn profile address, there is no way that a prospective client or vendor can’t find out anything and everything about me with the click of a mouse.

With that said, no matter what your professional intentions are with sites such as LinkedIn, Twitter or Facebook, it is important to dot all of your “i’s”, cross every last “t”,  and keep it professional (or at least PG) at all times.

Here a few tips to optimize your LinkedIn presence:

You know that status thing that you sometimes update on your facebook page? We’ll it’s on LinkedIn as well…USE IT. It will increase your visibility and search engine optimization of your page.

Do you notice how your job title is the first thing besides your name that comes up when visiting your LinkedIn Page? Make that a description of you or your objective (just like what you have on your resume). That gives someone a fair opportunity to judge who you are and what you’re about and decide whether or not they want to scroll through the rest of your page

If you haven’t already, edit your URL to your name. Again, SEO.

Write your summary for 2 target audiences: an employer or client AND GOOGLE. In the instance of looking for a new position, just copy and paste your resume (assuming that your resume is action keyword optimize for those companies that use computer programs to scan them). SEO is huge when people are scanning your profile for relevancy and qualifications.

Now although I just said, “copy and paste your resume”, FOCUS on the future. Write about your goals, vision or the mission you want to achieve by utilizing a networking tool such as LinkedIn. Your past work history will be interesting to most people to an extent but no one wants to read your Job Obituary.

(Let’s throw in a Facebook tip since their probably connected somehow) If you haven’t gotten this one yet, un-tag yourself in photos that you wouldn’t want a prospective client or employer seeing. And if it was posted by you, take it down.

Join related groups! And when you’re a member of a group, participate in discussions: ask questions, forward interesting articles and links, post helpful tips, etc (Its called interactive for a reason).

This blog posting is truly just a small piece of the tip of the iceberg. Visit http://learn.linkedin.com/ to learn more about optimizing your profile and using this tool to its full potential.