This Week at Cyphers

Hey y'all -

I just wanted to write a quick note to catch you up on some of the stuff that has gone down this week at The Cyphers Agency. All in all it was a pretty good week, I think.

Hopefully soon, we'll have this blog linked to our Web site, so you'll be able to go right to www.thecyphersagency.com and click on the blog link. But, ithout further ado, here's a recap:

1) Still waiting to hear from KC Company (www.kc-pella.com: Pella window and door distributors for Maryland, DC, Northern Virginia and Delaware). I'm really excited about that prospect, because the size of their company is right about in line with our target prospects. Also, the ladies in the marketing department seem REALLY awesome to work with, and I really think we can help them. The main thing we'd be doing is taking their entire budget and working to deliver a more integrated and efficient media mix. Right now, they're doing a pretty good job with HTML email communications with potential customers, but they are wasting a lot of money on very expensive print media. They probably should be doing more direct mail as well, but we'll see as we get into the planning stage and start to research it a little bit further. I'm keeping our fingers crossed that we will hear from them shortly....

2) Dave Cyphers and I went to pitch the Marriott creative on Wednesday. In case you don't know, Marriott Wardman Park (one of the biggest hotels in Washington D.C.) is one of our clients. We are working with them right now to rebrand the restaurant that they are pouring $2,000,000 into for renovations. The creative pitch went well. I 'think' we've settled upon a pretty cool name: Stone's Throw. This name combines the positioning (unique for being inside the hotel) and the Earthy/Stone elements that diners will find when they walk through the door. We meet with them next week to share some of the logos we've come up with.

3) Dave and I also had a very cool first meeting with a new prospect called Allied Trailers. They are one of the big suppliers of storage containers, mobile offices, mobile classrooms, etc on the East Coast. Despite being a pretty sizeable company, they are still family owned. David Sherman, the president of Allied Trailers seemed like a great guy, and his office was INSANE. He had a big glass table that had a semi-truck engine as the base, and his walls were covered from floor to ceiling with diamond plate. He also had a custom Triumph motorcycle IN his office. He says he doesn't ride it much, but he does get out on it sometimes! We're putting together a proposal for Allied that is going to outline our approach to helping him, which is going to commence with developing his brand. It's much needed at this point. I'm certainly excited about that.

4) The AE search is still in full swing at The Cyphers Agency. We think we're definitely on to someone, though. Kimberly Putnam is her name, and she seems really cool so far. She's going to have a decision for us by Monday morning. Again, my fingers are crossed. As much as I love our clients, I do enjoy doing business development, and not as much doing AE work...I'd love to get back to that full time if possible, but can't do it without help.

5) The Lawry's creative pitch to the folks out in California went very well. The owner, Richard Frank, is apparently a pretty tough cookie, with a keep eye for design. Usually that spells disaster for an ad agency, because these people tend to only really like their own vision and be critical of others' designs. But in this case, even though he had some pointed art direction, we have some solid feedback that we can build on.

Well, that's about it for now. Check out our Web site soon for some upcoming site edits!

Garret K. Ohm
Business Development
The Cyphers Agency
www.thecyphersagency.com