Ad2 Roanoke is excited to offer this year’s first social at 202 Market in downtown Roanoke. This is a great networking opportunity for all people interested in advertising and learning more about the industry!

www.202market.net
202 Market Square, SE
Roanoke, VA 24011

“Creativity can solve anything.”

We’re excited to present Art & Copy for a limited engagement to the area. You’ll be able to see it April 6th at the Grandin Theatre in Roanoke or April 7th at The Lyric in Blacksburg.

Seating is limited, contact ad2@ad2roanoke.org for advanced ticket sales.

Film Trailer after the jump.

"Telemachus, your margins are spot on, but you need to watch your kerning."

In February, Ad2Roanoke is kicking off the first year of its mentorship program, and we’re looking for students and fresh graduates who are interested in getting a head start in the advertising industry. We’ve hand-selected a talented group of local advertising veterans who are happy to serve as professional resources and cheerleaders. The participating experts range from the creative to the strategic, so regardless of whether you want to be a creative director or an account supervisor, we’ve got someone ready to give you some one-on-one career advice.

Eligible participants must be:

• Current or recently-graduated students in the advertising industry
• Available the evening of February 16th for the pairing event in Roanoke
• Accessible by email
• A current member of Ad2Roanoke

This is a great opportunity for those looking to get a leg up in the field, but seats are limited! If you’d like to attend, please send an email with your name, the name of your school, your (estimated) graduation year and where you’d like your career to take you, to ad2@ad2roanoke.org. We’ll be selecting participants first-come, first-served based on eligibility and professional goals, in order to find the best match, so feel free to elaborate on your professional plans. Event details to follow.

If you are not a member of Ad2Roanoke but wish to participate, you may join the club at http://ad2roanoke.org/membership/join/

Big thanks to John Park for starting us out. See these with captions on Flickr.

AD2 Roanoke and Steve FM present you with the solution to holiday stress, the 2009 Ugly Sweater Gala. Cover up the extra pounds from Thanksgiving with glitter and horizontal neon stripes. Have a Cosby-esque jello shot and soothe away the facial tics. Whatever you do, make sure you wear something that would make Aunt Ethel proud. We know you have one. Work it. Wear it.

The cover for this event is $10 or $5 with a donation of gently worn clothing that will go to the Rescue Mission. This fund-raising event is open to everyone.

RSVPs aren’t required, but let us know if your coming on Facebook.

Listen: Download audio file (Ugly-Sweater-Gala-09.mp3)

Want to know what happens when advertising professionals stay up for 24 hours to produce creative for 18 area non-profits? Come see for yourself!  We will have ALL the amazing work on display from the 1st Annual CreateAthon!  Web sites, videos, print concepts, logos, and more.

202 Market

October 27th, 2009    5:30 P.M. – 8:30 P.M.

This is a free event and all are welcome to come, eat free appetizers, and be merry!

Our second Ad2uesday of the year was a success as we all gathered in the loft of 202 Market to celebrate the past and future of Ad2 Roanoke.  Attendees included several past presidents of Ad2, branded with prom queen style ribbons, as well as other past members who continue to support Ad2 in all that we do.

Everyone was a good sport as raffle tickets were forced down their throats for amazing prizes like an original Gameboy complete with Madden ’96, a Polaroid camera, and the best prize of all, a Thighmaster and VHS tape claiming to give you a “firm fanny.”  Superlatives were also given out to deserving members Tony Pearman and Todd Marcum for being the “Most Likely to Be Bigshots”; Brad Soroka for “Most Likely to be on MTV”; Amanda Snapp DeHaven for “Most Likely to document everything”; and Lindy Adams “For Most Likely to be a Governess.”  All of our recipients gave humble acceptance speeches highlighting the ways in which Ad2 has helped them catapult their careers to where they are today.

As promised in all our invitations, a gold lame board of embarrassment featuring “Mr. T” asked members to purchase photos of themselves from past Ad2 days.  Our friends at 202 also made up a special drink menu that was a hit! Bartenders furiously mixed Totally Tubular Tinis, and AquaNet blue motorcycles to very happy patrons.

Thanks again to all who came out in support of us.  We wouldn’t be here and able to throw such a fabulous party without you!  Special thanks also go out to Huong and Jeff for taking these beautiful pictures.  I don’t know how they managed to make an 80s party look glamorous, but then again that’s why they’re professionals…

CreateAthon is “a 24-hour, work-around the clock creative blitz during which local advertising agencies generate advertising services for local nonprofits that have little or no marketing budget.” 2009 is the 1st year (of which I hope they’ll be many) in which Roanoke agencies and design firms from the SouthWest Virginia area collected their gear and made haste to the call. Now, while the Roanoke CreateAthon was adopted and organized by our sister organization, AdFed, several AD2 members were asked to participate. And, brother, they did not disappoint. Here are a few of our stories.

Hear more from Aimee Drysdale, Erica Gliener, myself and others after the jump.

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Aimee Drysdale hunkered down early in the day and had multiple logo projects to develop alongside her team. From her blog:

Our group was designated as the “logo group.” Allan Mower met our group at 2:30pm on Friday September 18th to brief us on the projects we would be working on that night, and here are the results…

The group enjoyed working with this design because the target audience was ages 8-18 and it was something different from the rest of the projects we worked on. The Roanoke Youth Symphony wanted a fresh and youthful look that would separate them from the Roanoke Symphony Orchestra. Our goal was to use musical notes and instruments to form the letters “RYS,” and bright colors to illustrate youthfulness. We created the “r” from the musical notation of a trill, the “y” from a trumpet shape, and the “s” from a violin shape. We also wanted to tie this logo back into the Roanoke Symphony Logo. We did this by using the same “red” color from the logo given to us [...]. This was our solution:

To see more of Aimee and the gang’s work and to read about her night, you can find the rest of her write-up at her blog.

Erica Gleiner put her time in with a heavy crew to build 3 campaigns for 3 organizations. I’ll let her explain:

Despite feeling like Rip Van Winkle for the past couple of days, my CreatAthon experience was a thrilling one. I had the great pleasure of working with Jim Dudley of Dudley Creative, Tony Pearman, Rachel Spencer and Jessica Malave of Access, John Greissmayer from ND&P, Ariel Clark of TBA and Amy Nance-Pearman from Boyd Photography. We were presented with three clients at the beginning of the event, Special Olympics, Apple Ridge Farms, and Children’s Trust. After a vigorous brainstorming session, we had a print campaign for Children’s Trust and Apple Ridge Farms as well as a brochure and a series of posters for The Special Olympics.

Once concepts and copy were nailed down, we split up the campaigns between the three designers on the team and got to work. Tony was busy art directing The Special Olympics photoshoot that was going on in what is normally the drawing room. Greissmayer was feverishly writing tag lines and body copy in the painting room. Ariel was creating humorous fake statistics for Apple Ridge Farms that would make even Fred from Accounting proud. I was laying out print, transit, and outdoor ads for Children’s Trust, while Amy was hitting the ground running with the meager art direction that we had time to give her.

All in all, we not only completed everything on time and within the 24 hour period, but we knew we had 3 impressive campaigns to show for it. Our hard work, temporary insanity and sleep depravation all seemed trivial when Janice from Children’s Trust came in the next morning. Being able to provide her and Children’s Trust with the campaign was amazing enough, but we also considered what that would help her do in the future. Best case scenario, maybe someone would see one of our ads and consider how they were treating their kids, or maybe someone would decide that they wanted to help and become an advocate. I know it probably makes me sound naive, but I strongly believe in the power of advertising and hope to never loose that feeling. This weekend, I witnessed 40 of the busiest people in town drop what they are doing, and their competitiveness, to create something that enables these groups to continue provide the services to our community that we so desperately need. I am still in awe.

And still sleepy.

Jessica Malavé worked along side Erica with the Apple Ridge Farms campaign, as well as a few others:

I had a great time at CreateAthon despite the sleep deprivation. Working with the “competition” was a good experience. It was impressive to see all that put aside and work together for the good of the club and the nonprofits. I had the pleasure to work with Tracie Hoprich (Access), Dawn Stein (Access), and Geoffrey Frankel (Modea) on the Greenvale website. I also worked with Tony Pearman (Access), Ariel Clark (tba), John Griessmayer (ND&P), and Greg Vaughn (Greg Vaughn Photography) on the Apple Ridge print ad and poster campaign.

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As for me, I got the opportunity to not only design, but build out a template for CHIP (Child Health Investment Partnership) to use in a Content Management System (CMS) for a future version of their website. Thanks to Brian and Amanda, we got a great design and I had the time write code as they successfully tackled a design for a brand new site for the Greater Blue Ridge Chapter of JDRF (Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation). Since the site isn’t completed, I thought I’d give you a little preview of what the new CHIP website experience will be like hopefully in the future.

Click below to watch the video. It will open a new widow.

As a freelancer, it was great to be able to be in a room with people that were such creative powerhouses; to bounce ideas off and get instant feedback from people who’s opinions I trusted would garner the best results. It was also a great opportunity to meet professionals from the area I’d always heard from but never had an excuse to meet or work with in the past. I even got to teach a little bit, which was surprisingly fun for me.

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For more on the event, see the press coverage links below, this or this Twitter feed of our action through the night, and for a great run-down check out John’s blog over at Access as he spent the entire night documenting in real-time with video.

Create-A-Thon helps local non-profits | WSLS 10

Advertising wizards put heads together – Roanoke.com

Connie Stevens’ report on CreateAthon for WVTF (mp3)
Download audio file (200909211543210.createathon.mp3)

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If you’ve got a story you’d like to share about CreateAthon, drop me a line or leave it below in the comments.

It’s official, I spoke with Steve FM and they will be taking requests and playing whever WE want at the Ad2 Reunion!  Steve FM hosts parties every Tuesday night at 202 playing music and videos from the 80s and 90s, and it’s always a great time.  This coming Tuesday will be even better with the addition of Ad2 Roanoke past and current members all jamming out and reminscing over their favorite videos and favorite experiences from Ad2.  Can’t wait to see everyone this coming Tuesday!