Animated fun from the PartnerShip Pole!

Here is a reprint of the article and video I posted on The PartnerShip Connection Blog this morning. So I thought I would share it here as well:

Continuing a tradition that began a few years ago, PartnerShip has once again created a short and fun seasons greetings video in appreciation for our customer partners and our carrier partners. This year's video gives you an exclusive, behind the scenes view of what goes on at the PartnerShip Pole ... we hope you enjoy it! (you can also view it directly on the PartnerShip YouTube Channel). The PartnerShip team wishes you all the very best during this busy holiday season, as well as a prosperous and joyous new year!



Special thanks to Barbara Teleha, the PartnerShip graphic designer responsible for this year's animated fun!

Holiday Luncheon at PartnerShip

Here is a reprint of the article and video I posted on The PartnerShip Connection Blog this morning. Thought I would share it on the Hollywood Four Blog as well:

Consistent with annual tradition, the PartnerShip employees gathered together last week Friday for a fun, holiday luncheon. In addition to good food, and a couple holiday games, we also had our first ever "ugly sweater contest." As showcased in the video below, the employees who participated in the contest really strutted their stuff. Ultimately, it was Alex West (customer service representative) that won the popular vote. Congratulations Alex and thank you PartnerShip for providing such a great workplace culture!

My Interview with SupplyChainBrain

While attending the TMSA conference back in June, I was invited to do a short interview with the editor-in-chief of SupplyChainBrain, an online media outlet for the transportation and logistics industry. They recently posted that interview to their website (they have a very rich, streaming video component to their web content). The video clip is about 6 minutes long and it can be accessed here. Unfortunately (or fortunately) you can only access the video file if you first register to their website (it's free). I thought the interview was okay considering I didn't see the questions until about 5 minutes before the interview. Obviously I knew they were going to ask me about the TMSA and the value of the conference, which is why I had already given a little thought to my response to the last question in the interview. If nothing else, it was good exposure for my new company and the PartnerShip brand.

PartnerShip Fantasy Football League

Having participated in fantasy football for the past 20 years with my college and high school friends, I was delighted to learn that PartnerShip, my new workplace, has an employee-run fantasy football league. Unfortunately, there were no more slots left this year and, despite some big money offers, I couldn't buy a team from anyone. But I was offered a join-ownership stake in a team. The details are outlined in the faux news release I drafted below. Our official league draft was last night as highlighted in the short video at the bottom of this post. Should be fun!

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

August 21, 2012

JOINT VENTURE ANNOUNCED IN THE PARTNERSHIP FANTASY FOOTBALL LEAGUE

WESTLAKE, OH – Tyler Reid, owner of last year’s Hipster Nation has announced a new joint venture with Scott Frederick, the media mogul owner of various Hollywood properties and trademarks. The new team will be re-branded as Frostee Ruckers Hollywood Crushers for the 2012 season.

Despite a strong showing in his rookie 2011 campaign, Mr. Reid saw an opportunity to infuse his franchise with additional capital and football expertise. “When someone like Scott Frederick is available in the open market, you don’t just sit on the sidelines, you grab him while you can,” said Mr. Reid. “The alternative was having him buy into a competing franchise, and that was simply out of the question.”

It was rumored in recent weeks that Mr. Frederick was looking to buy a new team in the prestigious PartnerShip Fantasy Football League. Various reports indicate that, despite offering substantial sums of money, the marketing tycoon was not able to find any takers among the famously stogy ownership group in the PFFL.

“Yes, I admit I was initially seeking a full ownership position in the league,” said Mr. Frederick. “However, when Mr. Reid approached me about a possible joint-venture, I was very intrigued. I think we’ll make a great ownership team: Tyler provides the youthful confidence, and I provide the experienced arrogance. In other words, he’ll provide the ‘smack’ and I’ll provide the ‘talk!’”

Full terms of the arrangement have not been fully disclosed. However, reports suggest that, while both teams will have equal ownership stakes in the combined franchise, Mr. Tyler will remain as the head of operations, while Mr. Frederick will chair the board. PFFL pundits are already predicting the team as the early favorites to win the 2012 season.

Tyler Reid LLC, based in Brunswick, OH, also has investments in the music industry. Hollywood Inc., based in Medina, OH, will continue to own sporting properties in other leagues, as well as continue its well-known presence on the web, and at special gambling events.

For more information, please visit www.frosteeruckershollywoodcrushers.com (not)

The PartnerShip Golf Team

The four-person PartnerShip golf team participated in the Cleveland Corporate Challenge tonight. The last event I participated in was softball. The company has competed in at least two more events since then (kickball and skeeball), but I wasn't a part of those teams. Our golf team -- shown here -- was comprised of me, Leah (marketing), Polly (program manager), and Joe (operations). Of course, I led the team with the lowest score, but everyone was still pretty close. Unfortunately, not close enough to finish in the top five. Oh well, we still had fun (and maybe we'll still get a couple points). There are more events to come, but the final two that I will participate in will be bowling and 3x3 basketball (here's to my good health!).

PartnerShip Challenges Area Businesses

PartnerShip LLC is once again participating in the the Cleveland Corporate Challenge -- a 14 event corporate athletic competition promoting company camaraderie, employee wellness and business networking while helping local charities. We are competing in the Division 1 category (1-79 employees). Our first event, co-ed softball, was this past Saturday. We won two games and lost two. The team photo is shown here (I am second from the left). It was good fun, and a nice employee bonding experience - although my old muscles could feel it the next day! I don't recall which events PartnerShip will be participating in, but I signed up for 4 events: Softball, Bowling, Mini-Golf, and 3x3 Basketball. I'm looking forward to the next event.

In somewhat related news, our parent organization - NACS Inc. - made #30 on the Top Cleveland Workplaces 2012 list in the medium (150-499 employees) category. It was a nice confirmation of what I now know about this organization versus the last place I worked.

Employee Appreciation Awards for Marketing

This is pretty cool. PartnerShip recently began an "employee appreciation" program whereby employees receive nominations and formal notes of appreciation throughout the month - all which translate into "skid" stickers that an employee placed on a football helmet cutout they were given at the start of the program. Recognition is supposed to be any exceptional activity or act that goes above-and-beyond the normal call of duty.

At the end of the month a small committee reviews the feedback and selects an "employee of the month." That employee gets to showcase a life-size PartnerShip football helmet in their office for all to see over the next 30 days (and a generous gift card for lunch). Joe in our "Operations" department won the inaugural award for the first month.

For the second month of the program, the review committee decided to present the award to the entire Marketing team (see photo) for our team effort in reintroducing the PartnerShip brand, all of the new marketing materials that have been created and, of course, the Brand Champion kickoff/training sessions that were held a couple weeks ago for all employees. I think this is very cool that the whole team should receive this type of recognition (and no on individual) - after all, more often than not, it takes a team effort to do amazing things ... and, in my book, there is no "I" in success!

TMSA Conference

I returned home this evening from the 2012 TMSA Conference in Hollywood, FL. Similar to the event last year, it was a great opportunity for me to network with some new and former industry colleagues; enjoy a little educational stimulation around trendy marketing topics; establish benchmarks against where my PartnerShip is at relative to some of our industry peers; and also just unwind and have a little fun.

The conference started on Sunday with a friendly golf outing (I won $100 for having closest to the hold shot). Sunday was a nice opening reception for mingling. Monday and Tuesday were pretty much all-day general and breakout sessions. On one of the breaks, I participated in a video taped interview with the folks from SupplyChainBrain.com (the topic was TMSA and the value the organization brings to professionals in our industry). I also participated (unfortunately, one of only a few) in the #TMSA12 twitter feed (and even won $50 answering a trivia question) which was a good social media exercise. The educational highlight was definitely the closing keynote speaker, Joe Pulizzi, who talked about content marketing (it was great stuff, and I brought home is Managing Content Marketing book).

Lastly, I caught a Miami Marlins game at the Inaugural Miami Marlins Stadium last night (that was my 29th major league stadium) before heading back home today. Here are a few pictures of the Westin Diplomat Resort and Miami Marlins Stadium. It was fun and educational, but always great to get back home.

PartnerShip Brand Champion Kickoff Meetings

Every now and then I have been sharing a few tidbits about some things I have been doing at work. Yesterday I led a "PartnerShip Brand 2.0" kickoff event (with some help from my team) for all PartnerShip employees. There were two sessions: One in the morning for half the team, and one in the afternoon for the other half (including our California office employees who participated through video conference). The goals for the meetings were to ensure all of our employees ...

• Have a good understanding of where the company has been over the past 20 years, and where we would like to go in the future - to become Brand Historians;

• Feel energized and excited about the PartnerShip brand and the new brand tools we have been developing (including new exhibit materials, new brand collateral and a new website that will be coming soon) - to become Brand Architects; and

• Speak confidently and consistently about who we are, what we do, and what makes us special in the marketplace - to become Brand Champions!

Throughout the presentation, it was emphasized that great brands have three common traits: They have Credibility, Consistency, and Character (if they don't, they become a Commodity). All employees left the session with some very cool brand tools and reinforcement aides.

In between the morning and afternoon kickoff sessions, we had an employee cookout and enjoyed a quick "cornhole" tournament. Overall, it was a great day to be a PartnerShip employee and definitely an augury for the many good things to come.

PS: Click here to check out our company Facebook page and to view some the employee pictures taken at yesterdays events.

New PartnerShip Blog

It's been a while since I posted anything here regarding work. So, one cool new thing that I recently introduced at work was a new, The Partnership Connection Blog (ship.partnership.com/blog) using our HubSpot marketing platform. As a blogging platform, HubSpot is not the greatest tool, but it has some other integration features that make up for it. Any ways, I have been "seeding" the blog with a dozen or so posts to build a foundation of content, and to begin establishing credibility with the major search engines (e.g., Google, Bing, etc.). Going forward, me and my team will be using the PartnerShip blog for inbound marketing - posting relevant content with "key words" that will help drive inbound traffic from the major search engines, and providing some measurable "call-to-actions" where we can capture information about businesses that are interested in our shipping programs and services. The blog is just one small component of an overall "brand & web 2.0" project me and my team have been working on the past couple months. We will formally "kickoff" the new brand with a couple of all-employee in two weeks where I will provide some brand training and where we will introduce some of the new brand deliverables, such as new exhibit materials, new brand collateral, and a preview to the new partnership.com website (which is about 3 months away from being implemented).

CAMEX - Campus Market Expo 2012

This weekend Hollywood (the marketing professional) flew out to Salt Lake City, UT to attend the CAMEX 2012 trade show. This is a pretty big deal for PartnerShip, but an even bigger deal for our parent organization, the National Association of College Stores (NACS). It was pretty much like going to a giant, college campus store (made me wish I was back in college again), and there was definitely some cool products on display. It was also a good opportunity for PartnerShip to create new business relationships and reinforce many old ones. From a marketing standpoint, I think we had a pretty good presence on display. Being this was my first CAMEX show, I am sure I will have some other ideas for future shows (CAMEX is in Kansas City next year). On more of a personal level, I really enjoyed bonding with my fellow colleagues over the couple days. Here are a few random photographs and video clips I took on my iPhone.

Scott's Office

Last week a took a couple quick video clips with my mobile phone showing where I work (also where I work out in Crocker Park by our favorite Trader Joe's store). Thought maybe a few friends and family would enjoy seeing where I spend my week days now.

HubSpot Marketing Software

I'm pretty excited, today we had a kickoff meeting to begin using a new marketing application at my workplace today called "HubSpot." It's an "all-in-one" inbound and outbound marketing tool that let's marketers create blogs and landing pages, optimize their websites for search engines (SEO), generate analytical reports on website traffic and usage, conduct outbound email marketing campaigns, and ultimate generate more qualified leads for our services. I am sure it will take us a few months to get the product fully integrated into our marketing efforts and our CRM platform, but should be a great tool for me and my marketing team going forward. So hopefully I will be able to report a few success stories throughout the year.

I'm In the News (sort of)

My new company issued a press release regarding me recently joining their team. At least one major publication - Supply & Demand Chain Executive - picked it up and ran it online (so far). My marketing team also was nice enough to Tweet the link and post it to our company Facebook page as well. Kind of nice to be welcomed, recognized and appreciated again. We'll have to see if any of the local papers pick it up and run it tomorrow in their business sections.

Marketing Update

Well, after tomorrow I will officially be a two-week veteran at my new company. As reported back in December, I accepted an offer to join the PartnerShip LLC team and it has been a whirlwind ever since (in a good way). I have a great boss; a good, small marketing team; I have met lots of great new people; I've learned a lot about the company; and I have started to formulate quite a few of initial ideas around marketing strategy and execution. The company has built a great foundation of business, but we have a lot of marketing opportunities going forward in the areas of branding, business development, process, promotions, social media, web development, tradeshows, market research and analysis. Our fiscal year closes at the end of March right after the big NACS CAMEX tradeshow. Whether fiscal or calendar--it looks to be a very busy and exciting new year!