Laurinda Schenck, already digging into an important presentation as Saturday’s newest intern. Welcome, Laurinda!

School’s out, which means the interns are in. Well, one of the two we’re expecting at Saturday this summer is here. Laurinda Schenck, an account service intern, has taken up residence at Big Window No. 2, which has a premium view of a nice shade tree and a red 1998 Isuzu Trooper which never seems to move from its parking space in front of the Saturday office.

Laurinda is a student at Appalachian State University, majoring in Advertising with a minor in Spanish, and is an active member of the Advertising Club and the American Advertising Federation. She has previously been a marketing intern for two summer camps, and her most recent endeavor was to design a new brand to promote the sport of fly-fishing. Sounds like her resume is shaping up nicely.

When Laurinda isn’t Instagramming, pinning or tweeting, she enjoys drawing and traveling. But this summer, she’s looking forward staying busy as part of the Saturday team in the Queen City!

One of her first duties? To tell us about her in her own words:

I graduated with honors from UNC Charlotte with a Bachelors in Fine Arts. My concentration was in Graphic Design. In the summer of 2012 I interned with Saturday and established great relationships with the team. Soon after I finished my internship I started working as a part time designer for Little Red Bird while finishing my senior year of college.

I love what I do and believe in the power of design. I am absolutely confident that my calling lies in the field of creating, specifically design and advertising. I promote collaboration. I believe in taking responsibility for design. I create beautiful solutions and I strive to forge lasting professional relationships. I believe that living in strong community with others is essential. I am not afraid to learn as well as jump into unchartered territory. I am honored to be apart of the Saturday team because they not only share the same values but also because I admire the creative they do.

So humble. She was actually the top design grad in this area, so we feel very fortunate to have her join us! A few of her accomplishments:

AWARDS and RECOGNITION:

• 2013 AAF Charlotte ADDYs, Best of Show Student ADDY
• 2013 AAF Charlotte ADDYs, 3 Gold Awards, 1 Silver Awards
• 2012 AAF Charlotte ADDYs, Best of Show Student ADDY
• 2012 AAF Charlotte ADDYs, 1 Gold Award, 1 Silver Award
• 2012 ACP Pacemaker Award
• UNCC Department of Art & Art History Award for all around Junior art student, 2012
• UNCC Department of Art & Art History Award in Graphic Design, 2013
• 2012 Shameka Smith-Hamilton Memorial Award, 2012

Welcome, Laura. We’re predicting more big things in your future!!

Better than biology? High school seniors Tyler and Rob dig into a project for Brixx Pizza during their shadow gig at Saturday.

Last week, two high school seniors, Rob Neil and Tyler Singleton, spent the day shadowing John and Mark to learn about our line of work. Saturday makes an effort through mentoring, internships (and now shadowing!) to get young people involved in our business and it’s always a fun learning eperience for us as well. Here’s a recap in their own words.

While walking into Saturday, Rob and I did not know what to expect. However, we could tell that we would have a great time.

During our time at Saturday, Rob and I had a lot of fun helping produce and coming up with creative ideas for Saturday’s new project. We enjoyed listening in and being part of their meetings. Going to Brixx’s was a real blast. We ate delicious pizza while discussing and sketching concepts for MBA (Masters of Beer Appreciation). We also got to be part of the marketing team and helped decided on certain decisions.

Going to Saturday was a very intriguing experience. We learned a lot about branding and what goes into creating a website. By observing and participating in Saturday’s meeting, we learned a lot about how an advertising agency runs. We also learned a little bit about the marketing side of branding and what makes people make the choices they make. The people were very friendly, helpful, and insightful. We had a great experience and would love to do this again someday.

Here are a few of the winning entries (For an event recap, click here)!

Gold ADDY: Cabarrus County Fair “Pursuit of Happiness” Poster

Silver ADDY: Cabarrus County Fair “Running Mates” Poster

Silver ADDY: Poster Series

Silver ADDY: Print Ad Campaign

Silver ADDY: Brawley’s Beverage Urinal Advertising

Silver ADDY: Sisters Cove Logo

Miss Fortune in action (Photo by Clear Sky Images)

The evening ended as it had begun, with a stunning six-foot-eight female impersonator named Roxy C. Moorecox (immediately establishing that this evening would be a bit different than your average Rotary function). Roxy played the part of “Miss Fortune”, joking, singing, spreading good luck (and some embarrassment) here and there. Everyone really had to keep alert with Roxy around. A dapper John Causby, Groundcrew Studios, was on podium patrol. As the presenter for the evening, John happily dispensed award after award; Silvers, Golds, Student, Judges’ Picks, Best In this and that, and, of course, Best Of Show.

How’d Saturday do? Glad you asked. We are proud to say we were one of the top earning agencies for this year’s ADDYs! Our 2012 Cabarrus County Fair campaign creative took home a Gold ADDY and three Silvers. Also winning were our logo for Sisters Cove, a new lake development at Lake Norman in Charlotte, and work for Brawley’s Beverages. The Brawley’s award was for a message on a, uh, urinal, or inside it, uh, pointing to the drain, for, well … just check out our post about our winning entries.

We are also extremely proud of our intern, Laura Knight, who is graduating UNCC this spring. Not only did Laura win three Golds, one Silver and Student Best of Show for student projects, but those are in addition to her recognition as part of our Cabarrus County Fair team. What a year for her.

The Saturday gang celebrating our awards (and the biggest win of all – a successful ADDY event!) Photo by Mitchell Kearney

While awards were the evening’s centerpiece, there was plenty of merriment to be had both before and after the presentation. Being this year’s ADDY creative agency, we we’re able to ingeniously sandwich the awards between two cocktail parties. And with a tasty signature cocktail, the “Voodoo Doll,” nobody went thirsty.

Speaking of voodoo dolls. Charlotte’s own Big Bad Props provided a human-sized doll for our photo booth. The doll proved very popular as AAF’s photographer Mitchell Kearney snapped shot after shot. Guests did not need much encouragement skewering the poor fellow with big wooden pins. On the other side of the venue, Steve Nelson was steadily busy in the Palmistry Studio, where partygoers learned their fate.

You can see photos of the event and all the great photo booth images here. Mobile snapshots continually fed an Instagram wall all night (those photos are immortalized here).

The Voodoo doll partying at JJ’s (via Instagram #CLTAddys)

Before heading out into the evening, possibly to JJ’s Red Hots to the official after party, attendees received complimentary ADDY showbooks. This year’s book is a larger format than previous years, dedicating plenty of viewing space for award-winning work. Loftin & Co. Printing made a substantial donation to make this a beautiful reality, something appreciated by everyone who thumbs through the book.

Saturday would like to thank all our partners who made this year’s show everything we dreamed it could be: AAF’s Beth Hernandez, Kimmy Kaplan, Shruti Chandra and Alexis Acosta who were fully on-board from the get-go on anything and everything; Tyler Lee of the Big Chill and his capable assistant, Abby; Clay “Roxy” Smith; Darwin Hadley at Red Hammer Interactive and Keeley Carrigan for Voodoo game awesomeness; Mike Carroll for mucho photography talent; Marty McKinney; Marilyn Trockel and Bill Loftin at Loftin & Co. Printing; Jeff Hamrick at Big Bad Props; Dani Rolli and Christoph Ebert of App.etite; Andy Pinckney and his team at PSAV; Brion Blais of Speedpro Imaging for creating outstanding signage for everywhere; Mitchell Kearney, Brett Osborne and Shelly Osborne for capturing the whole thing on film; Jim Schaefer of Subtle Impressions; Brian Kolshak and Neil Asher of Balfour Beatty for video and general muscle; and Tyler Piercy for odd jobs, including chauffering for the after-after party.

Be sure to check out the blog again soon for a look at the making of the campaign and all the juju that made this one of the most comprehensive ADDY efforts to date.

The hospital, a long time client of Saturday, wanted to inspire people to get the most out of life by being healthy, active and happy. That’s the message of our new “Thrive On” campaign, which includes images of fun, energetic people, many of whom live, work and play in Onslow County.

Also important to Saturday: create a new creative concept for the hospital that was positive and forward thinking, and one that could be used for both image advertising, as well as service line marketing initiatives.

The image campaign, which began January 20th, includes TV, billboards, print and radio and is the first truly integrated image effort for the hospital in several years. In addition to traditional media outlets, the hospital will introduce the Thrive On message electronically through online advertising, mobile and social media.

View the TV, below. And be sure to visit our portfolio for more work from the campaign.

This latest version does not disappoint. In fact, it contains many stop-you-in-your-tracks facts about digital and social media, and their impact on our lives. Like, for example, the fact that 53% of people on Twitter recommend products in their tweets. Or how about the fact that Gen Y considers email so passe that some universities have stopped distributing email accounts?

Take a look, and let us know – did any of these new facts surprise you?

Both ads underscore Onslow’s goals of “connecting people with other people and with health information through digital.” By carefully selecting targeted local publications and newspapers, we were able to further reinforced the hopsital’s community centric positioning and help promote their online efforts.

Enjoy….We look forward to sharing more Onslow work in the coming weeks!

Flash banner ads and social media helped extend the message into online and promote sharing.

As part of the campaign, we worked with the hospital and local businesses to create a promotion that encouraged women to get a mammogram from October 15 – November 15.  Women who participated received a pink bracelet with OMH branding and a fun cancer-fighting message, along with coupons redeemable at local businesses, including Starbucks and Belk. We’ll be monitoring the results of the promotion throughout early November, but from what we hear it’s been wildly successful!

We didn’t want to get overly political, so we asked people to simply, “Vote for fun” and go to the fair. We urged them to declare their “Fundependence” and reminded them that they had the “Freedom to Laugh” all they want at the fair, which is nice because there are so many places you can’t act silly and laugh and have fun.

Visually we used old-timey fonts and electioneering staples such as stars, stripes and bunting for a very friendly turn-of-the-century look (last century, that is), when whistle stop campaigning was all the rage and stump speeches actually took place on a tree stump.

Print, outdoor and online all reinforced the “vote” theme by integrating a variety of messages, including, “Vote for Smiles” and “Vote for Oats” (featuring a smiling horse chomping on a pile of hay). Radio and TV both used the concept that at the fair you have “The Freedom to Laugh.” The TV spot was augmented by a viral video of a bride losing herself to laughter on the alter, where unlike the fair, one doesn’t expect to laugh uncontrollably. A HUGE shout out to Groundcrew Studios and Limerick Studios for their help with TV & Radio.

Check back soon – we’ll be unveiling more of this year’s work in the portfolio soon! And be sure to visit our facebook page to see pics from our visit to the fair!