The Momentum Center will facilitate interdisciplinary research to end childhood obesity

Ann Arbor, Mich., … Hile Design LLC has been hired by the School of Public Health at the University of Michigan (UM) to develop a website and brand identity for the newly formed Momentum Center (Momentum).

Hile Design was previously engaged by the UM School of Public Health to assist with the development of Momentum’s name, logo and tagline: “Driving Discovery to End Childhood Obesity.”

Momentum will be a catalyst for discovery and the reversal of trends related to childhood obesity. By pursuing innovative research involving unique collaborative relationships from multiple disciplines across the entire University, the center will link basic sciences to population-based research. Momentum will also accelerate the research of social, physical and chemical environments as they relate to childhood obesity.

“We’ve greatly enjoyed our engagement with UM’s Momentum Center, and we look forward to creating a website for them that reflects their extremely ambitious and innovative brand,” said Dave Hile, President of Hile Design, “It’s always gratifying to help an organization develop a ‘brand new’ brand and our appreciation at being the creative agency selected to assist them is amplified by the importance of Momentum’s mission and the passion their staff has for making a major contribution to the movement to end childhood obesity.”

Non-profit aims to increase awareness of the diagnosis and treatment of social anxiety

 Ann Arbor, Mich., …Hile Design LLC has been hired by the Andrew Kukes Foundation for Social Anxiety (AKFSA), of Boca Raton, Florida, to provide creative and design services including brand development and marketing strategy.

AKFSA was founded by the parents and brother of Andrew who took his own life at the age of 30 after battling severe depression brought on by social anxiety. The goal of AKFSA is to broadly increase public awareness about the diagnosis and treatment of social anxiety. By educating those who suffer from social anxiety and those who can make a difference in their lives, AKFSA believes sufferers can find balance and peace in their lives.

“The Andrew Kukes Foundation has a tremendous passion and vision for helping those who feel trapped by social anxiety,” said Dave Hile, the President of Hile Design, “We feel honored that they chose us as partners in spreading their message—which is ultimately a message of tenacious hope— to the broader world. It’s always gratifying to play a role in an initiative that will change lives for the better.”

Individuals suffering from social anxiety, or concerned for those who are, can learn more about diagnosis and treatment at the foundation’s information rich website: www.akfsa.org.

Animation Promoting Scio Township Takes District’s Top Prize

The Hile Design team that developed the animation — Charlie Szczygiel (left), Dave Hile, and Caleb Brokaw (right) — pictured with Scio Township Supervisor, Spaulding Clark (center right).

Ann Arbor, Mich., … Hile Design LLC is pleased to announce that the Ann Arbor creative firm was awarded a Gold ADDY in the category of Elements of Advertising: Visual – Animation or Special Effects for its “Open Doors” motion graphic promoting Scio Township; the animation went on to win “Best of Show” across all categories.

The winners of the 2013 District 6 ADDY Awards were announced on Friday, February 8, 2013 at the Riverfront Banquet Center in Flint, Mich. Conducted annually by the American Advertising Federation (AAF), the ADDY Awards select and promote the best of advertising and its practitioners. This year, entries included submissions from leading ad agencies and creative firms in the greater Flint and Ann Arbor regions.

Hile Design created the animated video, titled “Open Doors,” for Scio Township’s Economic Development Action Committee (EDAC). The video serves as a snapshot of who’s doing business in Scio Township and what draws them there. Developed for the business section of Scio’s newly redesigned website, the video is also available on YouTube as a tool for commercial realtors and volunteer advocates to use when speaking to business owners looking for a great location to establish their companies. “Although we’ve won quite a few ADDYs over the years, this is our first ‘Best of Show,’ ” said Hile Design’s President, Dave Hile. “We’re very proud of the work we did with EDAC and commend them for being great, forward-­‐thinking partners in developing the animation.”

View the animation:

Hile Design is an Ann Arbor brand development and advertising firm that has been creatively serving businesses of all sizes for nearly 30 years with a full range of integrated services. To learn more, visit www.hiledesign.com. 

Having raised three kids with my wife (all grown now), we did a lot of reading to, and with, our children when they were young. Because I read these books over and over, sometimes just for fun, I would change a word — only to instantly be corrected by my kids even though they weren’t old enough to read yet. Such is the connection with children and the stories they love.

But what kind of person creates all those wonderful books that become such an important and formative part of a child’s early life? Today we hope to get some insight into what goes into the process of developing books for kids.

Robert Scully illustrated and released his first book Jack and the Lost Tooth in 2009. He is working on his latest creations titled Stumble Trip Fall and The Practice Pet.

Dave Hile: Hi Robert. First of all tell us a little bit about yourself. Let’s start with your day job. You’re the VP Design Director at FAI Design Group in New York. Share a bit about what you do there.

Robert Scully: I want to start off by saying it is great to be talking to you Dave.

Well, I have been at FAI over 9 years. I manage a team of 3 designers. I create, design, and develop National and Private Label Brands for many retailers. We work very closely with our clients to create useful, award-winning designs. I am very proud of the work we do there.

DH: Working with large corporate clients during the day seems pretty far removed from illustrating children’s books in your home studio at night. How did you end up illustrating kids books and was creating artwork always a part of your life?

RS: As a child, I enjoyed drawing like all children do, but, at the age of 6, I realized that I wanted to draw when I grew up. Incorporating story telling into my art making wasn’t something I realized I enjoyed until I was in college at Parsons The New School of Design, where I was studying illustration/animation. Seeing the work of Lane Smith, The Stinky Cheese Man, inspired me to want to create illustrations for children’s books. After college, I started my career in the animation field working on stop-motion commercials for Chex Mix and also inbetweening on a Marvel comic project — which was a dream come true (inbetweens are the drawings between the key frames which help to create the illusion of motion).

During the late 90s, when the Internet was booming, I was involved in Flash animation / web design until the collapse of the industry in the early 2000s. At that point, I decided I needed a change and redirected my creativity towards package design, which always fascinated me. I discovered I enjoy the challenge of creating designs to sell products. I have been fortunate to work with some great clients & brands such as, Pepsi, Buy Buy Baby, Macy’s & Bed Bath & Beyond, to name a few. Throughout the changes in my career, I have never given up my true passion, which is drawing, illustrating, and creating stories and sharing them with people.

DH: I’ve mentioned how important books were to my kids. What role did books play in your childhood? And what were some of your favorites?

RS: Books were a huge part of my childhood. I can remember my father reading to me every night and how that had a huge effect on me. The nightly routine of reading a book with my dad was precious time we spent together. The stories we read became part of that memory. Some of my favorites growing up were: Dr. Seuss, Curious George, Harry the Dirty Dog, Encyclopedia Brown and all fairly tales and fables. When I read them now to my son & daughter, they give me a warm feeling of comfort.

DH: Your wife Anne writes the stories that you illustrate. How did the two of you decide to work together?

RS: Funny story, she kind of got sucked into it. I was searching for a story to kick off my career as a children’s book illustrator and was stuck. I was bugging Anne for some ideas. One day, I came home from work she had written a story about the tooth she had lost as a child. That turned into Jack and the Lost Tooth. Since then, we have been collaborating together creating more titles. We currently have 3 in the works. Illustrating the stories does take longer than writing them. Anne is always open to ideas I might have for new stories. I love coming up with book concepts, and I give her the freedom to create stories around these concepts.  Recently, we were very happy to have found a publisher who wants to take all of our titles and make them into interactive e-books. We look forward to getting our stories to more people.

DH: Interactive e-books… cool! So what comes first when you’re working on a book together: words or pictures?

RS: Most of the time it will start with something that inspires me, something I observed, or something from my past experiences which will create the spring board for the story. Once the story has been written, I work on creating the character’s model sheet, and I might design a cover for the book to get the creative juices going. A great example of this is the Practice Pet. It all started when I was playing with my son, and he had a stuffed animal dog that moved and barked. Then, it hit me; what if it was a real dog, and we didn’t realize it? And that was the moment I thought “there is a story here,” so Anne took the idea and ran with it; changing the dog to a snake and the Practice Pet was born.

DH: Tell us about the physical process of developing imagery. Do you begin with sketches and then scan them into your computer to be rendered digitally or do you work another way?

RS: I always start with storyboarding out the whole story. I work out how each spread will work with the text and how many pages the story will be; once I am happy with the pace of the story, I will then tighten up each page. These stages are all done on paper with pencil. I love to work on tracing paper with blue and red pencil (left over from my days as an animator; an “inbetweener” to be exact). This helps me separate the characters from the background. Then I scan the drawings into Adobe Illustrator where I make the art vector where I expand upon my original drawing. From there, I can do several things, like add paper backgrounds & watercolor effects to achieve texture as seen in Stumble Trip Fall, or just keep it clean and simple by adding some shadows and lighting as seen in Jack and the Lost Tooth.

DH: Besides illustrating, how do you incorporate your graphic design experience into your books?

RS: That is a great question. I try to take a lot of the structure and architecture that goes into my package designs and apply them to my illustrations and the layouts of a spread from one of my books. I feel it is important to have a basic foundation of design in order to have great illustrations. Without design, illustrations lack structure; they go hand in hand.

I enjoy playing with shapes, fonts, and color to come up with graphic solutions that will satisfy both my passions of illustration and design. I feel that my experience as a designer has improved my ability to layout spreads, which enhances my illustrations. I love drawing and illustrating, but when design theory is applied, it helps to create a sense of balance and improves the illustration’s aesthetic appeal.

DH: Talk specifically about Stumble Trip Fall which will be released soon. What’s the story about, and what is the backstory behind the book?

RS: It’s about a bear and his search for where he belongs. Along the way, he encounters a fox, a mole, a goat and a duck who help keep him moving so he can finally discover where he is most at home.

Stumble Trip Fall is a very personal story for me. It is the first one that I wrote and illustrated on my own, without Anne. This story mirrors my own journey with creating children’s books; not settling on other peoples’ success, and finding my own way and never giving up.

DH: Robert, thanks for sharing your passion and process for developing your books. Finally, what is the best thing about creating books for children?

RS: For me, creating a story that can affect a person, change the way they see life or provide other insight, is the reason why I like creating stories. Creating stories lets me make connections with others beyond my reach and across generations. Plus illustrating is just plain fun and brings me back to being that 6-year-old boy who loves to draw.

DH: Thanks again Robert.

RS: Thanks Dave, this was a Lot of fun.

Finds out more about Robert Scully and his books at www.robertscully.com.

In our former blog post we shared our views about social media and our own company’s experience with the media. Now, we’ll share some companies that inspire us with their understanding of how SM can be used with great success to enhance brands.

IKEA doesn’t just specialize in cool inexpensive furniture and surprisingly delicious meatballs. This worldwide corporation, based in Sweden, has also been able to unite its global customer base using the opportunities granted by robust social media. Ikeafans.com is a viral community for customers ranging from one hemisphere to the next, offering a place for forums, blog posts, an encyclopedia for the obscure IKEA items, a marketplace with deals shared from one customer to the next, and a gallery to show off the IKEA furniture at home.  Now, you may be thinking that this doesn’t count because it’s just another website. But, we will counter this argument by saying that IKEA has tapped into the idea of existing social media platforms, such as blogger and Flickr, in order to create their own web-based community for their customers.

IKEA also has Twitter accounts that are unique to each country in which it has a presence. While a single corporate account couldn’t hurt, the individual Twitter accounts show customers that IKEA is attuned to their specific needs, no matter where they are. Twitter is not just used to offer basic info and special deals, but also to address customer concerns and to communicate through dialogue, photos and shared advice. With over 114,000 followers for the IKEA USA account alone, we think this furniture & accessories store is doing pretty well on the social media market.

Jeep has created a counterculture community that is reflective of the rugged appeal of the Jeep vehicle. Through their Facebook and Twitter accounts, as well as their corporate website, Jeep has formed a viral community that emotes a sense of rebellion, adventure and disdain for the comfortable… easily illustrated by the minivan or compact car. Jeep uses social media as a baseboard for launching community events. This includes their nationwide scavenger hunt to win one of three new Jeep Wrangler Islanders. Through clues left on FB, Twitter and their corporate website, Jeep gave out the challenge for Jeep fans to find three hidden tiki dolls in order to win the prized vehicle.

The idea paid off, because the social media campaign was repeated with the release of the Arctic Yeti Dig. Combining the use of their Facebook and Twitter accounts, Jeep was able to engage and interact with their customers and fans in a way that could be realized both on and off their website.

Starbucks is #1 in social media. At least, that is what was determined in a study done by advertising research firm PhaseOne between July 2011 and January 2012. We don’t need to look up the details of the study to believe that Starbucks has come out on top in the social media race. Here’s why:

1. Starbucks created one of the most successful online/offline campaigns by displaying posters in major cities, then challenging people to be the first to find and tweet pictures of the posters. Even Starbucks store employees were included in the campaign with the challenge to submit headlines for future ads.
2. Starbucks sponsored a single 60-second television commercial on “Saturday Night Live” advertising a coffee giveaway on the previous Election Day. Starbucks then posted the video on YouTube. Within days, it was the fourth-most-viewed video on YouTube, and people were mentioning Starbucks on Twitter every eight seconds.
3. With 33 million Likes, the Starbucks Facebook Page is a large forum for debates and dialogue. The company has created a community beyond coffee, for spirited discussion on hot button topics such as marriage equality and bans on firearms.

With 33M Facebook fans and over 3 M followers on Twitter, the numbers are proof that Starbuck’s social media presence has recreated the way it views connecting its brand with its customers. Chris Bruzzo, SVP Channel Brand Management, said that social media is the, “Difference between launching with many millions of dollars versus millions of fans.” Clearly, Starbucks is one of the businesses using social media the right way, having such a presence online that those “millions of fans” are probably resulting in those “millions of dollars.”

Now, a quick quiz:

Q: what do these three social media hot shots have in common?

A: They are all Business-to-Customer (B2C) businesses.

They are all aimed at the consumer, the everyday people who buy furniture, cars and coffee. But, what about the B2B businesses (like our company, Hile Design)? Is social media an uneven playing field, with the B2C guys getting the advantage?

Yes: We think it’s pretty clear that it is easier for a B2C company to set up a Facebook page and begin to appeal to the average user via interesting posts, special deals, campaigns, and coupons etc. B2B companies have a harder time appealing to the right people, i.e., other business execs and owners, with something as simple as a status update.

But, also, no: It is possible for a B2B business to have a successful presence on the social media scene. The key is not to forget what we’ve said from the beginning: that social media is not a place to sell things; it’s a place to enhance and build relationships.

Successful Social Media for a B2B Company

Who is using social media effectively within the B2B world? One of the first names that come to mind is Caterpillar, the Peoria, Illinois-based manufacturer of large earth hauling equipment. Uh, Caterpillar? Who’d want to follow them on Facebook? Well plenty of folks it seems, since they have over 105,000 FB Likers and 28,000 Twitter followers.

Why are they so successful? One word, “innovation,” comes to mind. Like Starbucks who continues to ask their customers what could make their coffee and service better, Caterpillar invited their followers to become involved in the design development of their CT 660, a multi-purpose truck body that can be customized as a cement mixer, refuse hauler, or dump truck. They incorporated feedback from the actual operators who would be driving the vehicle. That really communicates their genuine interest in serving their customers in a tangible way.

The company actually has quite a diverse product line, so they have created Twitter subpages to address the particular needs of these niche users. They eventually plan to create pages for almost all of their individual products.

Their FB followers feel so connected with the company via social media that they are now beginning to actually place orders and ask for technical help on Facebook. Of course Caterpillar follows up these requests with traditional emails or phone calls, but it speaks a lot about how successful their online engagement has become.

Get the full story on Caterpillar’s social media success.

Let’s Wrap This Up

Social media is an optional business tool, for those with the infrastructure to manage it. It’s something that is available for people that are seeking to connect with their customers on a more personal level and are committed to maintaining this relationship over the long haul.

Hile Design would not invest in social media if we didn’t have writers who love to blog, designers who are willing to provide graphics, industry peers willing to be interviewed or provide a guest post, or an owner (me), who devotes about an hour, each morning, to finding and posting interesting content to Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. If you don’t believe me, visit our FB page, and while you’re there, go ahead and share this post, and Like our page, and comment on a status or two. (Oh, come on, you knew that was coming, right?)

It seems that everywhere we turn there’s an article or blog post titled:

(Fill in number here) Steps to Mastering Social Media

Some are written with dogmatic certainty while others leave us with more questions than answers. We’d like to stay away from identifying ourselves as “gurus,” telling you how to attract more Facebook followers or how to leverage LinkedIn to its full potential. There’s just such a deluge of that kind of information already out there. Instead, besides sharing some general thoughts on social media, we’re going to offer our take on the role it’s played in our own company. Then, in Part 2, we’ll share some success stories of several big name brands that we think “get it.”

Defining Social Media

Social media encompasses more than blogging and “The Big Three.” While Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn are the most widely embraced venues in the social media kingdom for business, there are many other communal sites such as YouTube, Google + (Google’s attempt to compete with Facebook), BranchOut (Facebook’s LinkedIn wannabe), Blogger, Flickr, Delicious, and Pinterest to name but a few. But that doesn’t begin to tap the industry specific social sites. Currently our company participates (to varying degrees) in no less than 28 marketing/advertising/design online communities. We won’t spend time describing them, but we do want to get across that social media is more than “Likes” and instant updates, especially when it comes to specific industries.

Social media allows for web-based community where you can unite, share, be inspired and create. For instance, one of our favorite industry-related sites is Behance (http://www.behance.net). It’s a great place to get inspired by other creatives from around the world and bounce around ideas with peers. Through the site, we’ve developed valuable professional relationships with talented creatives. As a matter of fact, several of them have either been interviewed or written guest blogs here on Hileites.

What Social Media Isn’t

We’ll start with discussing social media for Business-to-Business (B2B) entities, since this is how we, and most of our clients, utilize the media. To fully appreciate how it can affect business positively, it’s important to understand what it’s not; namely, an advertising medium. (We acknowledge that for Business-to-Consumer (B2C) companies there’s an advertising aspect represented through the announcement of sales and the offering of coupons. But even this should be used with discretion so as not to be perceived as hard sell tactics or worse, spam.) So, if it’s not about advertising per se, what’s it all about?

Social media is about, well… being social. It’s about building business, peer, and customer relationships, which lead to brand affiliation and (hopefully) eventually, to brand loyalty. Pardon me if you already know this and are thinking “Well, Dah!” But as we work with clients ten years after LinkedIn was born, nine years after Facebook changed the way we communicate, and seven years since the first tweet got tweeted, we are still questioned by new clients about the purpose of these platforms and how they can enhance their businesses.

Although the global management consulting firm McKinsey & Company sites that 72% of all companies are using some sort of social technology, many business owners who don’t have internal marketing departments still don’t have the time to follow the latest trends about what SM is and how it should be used. In fact, most of the people who follow this kind of information are marketing professionals, not business owners since they’re too busy running their businesses.

Social Media May Not Be for Everyone, Right Now

Ha! That got your attention, didn’t it! An article in the Huffington Post recently deemed social media an “indispensible business tool.” But, is this really true? Our company works with a lot of start-ups, who regularly ask us if they should blog and set up Facebook and Twitter pages. Sometimes our answer is “Maybe not right now.” It takes so much effort to get a new company off the ground that often the effort to launch requires the allocation of limited resources elsewhere, like a website that really addresses company goals, search engine optimization (SEO) that allows potential customers to find them on major search engines, and other marketing venues.

If a company is going to embrace the social landscape, they need to have the infrastructure (staff and resources) to consistently formulate something compelling to say (or share), because effective social media is all about interesting and/or valuable content. Since it requires lots of time and resources, companies who jump in need to commit to doing SM for the long haul (or they can decide to hire an outside professional company to handle this service for them if they can afford it).

Need statistics? The Harvard Business Review surveyed 2,100 companies utilizing social media and found:

• A mere 12% of those businesses felt they were using the medium effectively.
• Another 45% felt like they were “getting there” and
• A whopping 43% confessed to be “ineffective users.”

Wow, only 12% felt like they were being effective, and that doesn’t necessarily mean that they are gaining meaningful financial return on their time and investment. But it’s not just about time and resources. Social media can also affect brand perception for good or ill.

There’s nothing quite as telling as a blog or corporate Facebook page that hasn’t been updated in a year and a half. Believe it or not, it’s not that uncommon to see. What does this communicate? Whether true or not, it suggests a business that’s not going anywhere. Other pitfalls? To borrow from an article in Forbes magazine, business owners make some consistent mistakes when taking a stab at social media, including: one-way communication, expecting instant “results,” and spamming. So, in these instances, social media can actually do more harm than good to a company’s brand.

Our Approach to Social Media

For us (as well as many other companies), social media is a platform for presenting our company in a more informal way. It is outside of the dynamic of buyer and seller, allowing for the traditional corporate persona to diminish and to be replaced with a more personable identity. But social media means more than loosening the proverbial tie. It is also the place for us to present ourselves as experts in our industry, offering (hopefully) entertaining and/or valuable information, advice and interaction.

Although we are active daily on LinkedIn, and Twitter, we particularly like the engagement Facebook offers. This differs from many other companies who prefer to place most of their social media efforts on the former platforms.

On Facebook we take a low-key approach to blowing our own horn. In fact, only about 30% of what we share is actually about us. We use FB primarily to share graphic, product and architectural design executed by other designers and companies from around the world. If it’s interesting to us, we hope it will be interesting to our “Likers” as well.

We also supplement this with inner-office pictures, personal humorous status updates that convey our corporate culture, and occasionally a new project we’ve completed. We decided to concentrate our social media on creativity, because so many other agencies talk about the analytics and technologies of digital marketing engagement. There’s just so much of that out there that we wanted to talk about something else.

What Is Our Expectation of Payoff?

We’re not looking for instant sales generated from our daily engagements, but we are investing in the long-range goal of creating brand awareness and alignment. Our hope is that at some point in the future, one of our “Likers” may suggest to a family member or friend who is starting their own business to check us out. However we have experienced shorter-term results as well.

First, our social media is a strong generator of visitors to our website, and the time they spend on our site is significant. For 2012, after Google organic searches and direct links, Facebook is our leading visitor source followed by our blog (which you’re now reading) and then LinkedIn. Twitter is down the list at number 20, which is still significant considering we had 220 different sources for site visitation via links. Of course, visits don’t necessarily translate to customer conversions, but if we consider our long-term goal of brand awareness, it’s been very effective.

Secondly, a company whose marketing director and other management staff were regularly reading our FB posts contacted me. They asked if I would come and speak to their company about social media. I was glad to put a presentation together which I shared with their entire company at their annual sales meeting. Then about six months later, we were able to bid on, and then develop one of their product websites, providing tangible results of our Facebook efforts.

In our next post, we will share with you several companies that really understand the purpose social media plays in their brand and have used it with significant return.

Hile Design has been hired by Flexible Automation, Inc. of Burton, Mich. to design and build a new website for their current URL: www.flexautoinc.com.

Founded in 1983, Flexible Automation provides the complete integration, both mechanical and electrical, of commercially available automation equipment into custom assembly machines. Their robots and assembly machines are designed for use by many of the world’s leading manufacturers of automotive, medical, industrial and consumer goods.

“Flexible Automation is another great example of the incredible talent pool and resources we have here in Michigan,” said Dave Hile, the President of Hile Design, “They produce truly amazing machines, and we look forward to building them a website that illustrates their creativity and strengthens their brand and business.”

We recently had the pleasure of completing another custom animation. This one was commissioned by Randy Albert, CEO of LevelUP LLC. Randy and his team help small and midsized businesses transition from start-up and “survival mode” to “prosperity mode.”

Basically, start-ups grow, grow, and grow, and, while revenue grows and grows, too, profit languishes behind. In Randy’s words, business owners are “surprised that the relative luxury of additional resources is more than offset by the complications of being bigger.”

Randy’s job is to help businesses realize that the approach to growing an established business is fundamentally different than the approach to creating a successful start-up. The animation’s job is to be creative enough to garner some attention and help business owners begin to reflect on whether their thinking has changed to match their business climate.

Leave a comment and let us know if the message resonates with you.