The 2013 ADDYs have come and gone but our excitement still remains. Studiobanks took home two Silver ADDYs this year; one for our work on Discovery Place Kid's mobile site and a second for our very own Holiday Microsite.

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To spook things up for our industry, AAF Charlotte recently hosted a Halloween Dodgeball Ex-SCARE-aganza event that engaged members of our advertising/marketing community. Our team mysteriously transformed into Scoobiobanks, your friendly neighborhood gang of ghost hunters, mystery solvers and creative all-stars.

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Each summer, District 3 (D3) of the American Advertising Federation (AAF), comprised of AAF clubs in Asheville, NC, Charlotte, NC, Greensboro, NC, Raleigh, NC, Charleston, SC, Greenville, SC, Midlands, SC, Hampton Roads, VA and Roanoke, VA, holds a leadership conference to engage and prepare incoming board members for the new club year. These annual leadership conferences typically draw between 75 to 100 attendees, and AAF Charlotte had the pleasure of hosting this year’s conference in early August.

The first night of each conference features a large-scale, icebreaker game that allows attendees to mingle with other clubs. The responsibility of planning and executing this game falls on the conference’s hosting club, which in turn was my responsibility as an AAF Charlotte board member. I quickly recruited talented copywriter Katie Fisher of Balfour Beatty and Studiobanks' newest designer Joe Bauldoff to help out.

D3 asked us to create a game that incorporated the conference theme, “Social Uprising” in which attendees learned to integrate social media tools into all aspects of club management. During initial planning, we were a little stumped by incorporating social media tools, which are primarily used on an individual basis, into a game that needed to be interactive for a live, in-person group of people. Ultimately we decided on a concept that was a mix between the style of the scripted “dinner and a murder” mystery game and the classic board game, Clue. The twist was that our game would utilize Twitter to support the social media theme of the conference.

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To celebrate creative excellence in our industry, Studiobanks joined more than 32 Charlotte advertising and design firms at last week's 2010 Charlotte ADDY® Awards & Gala Show. Held at the snazzy Westin Hotel in Uptown Charlotte, we were honored with a Gold ADDY® Award for Muzak’s 75th Anniversary mini site, which showcases the company’s successful history in an ever-evolving industry, and a Silver ADDY® Award for Crossroads Charlotte’s Website, a social networking site established to promote the positive future of the Charlotte area, the interaction of ideas and community involvement.

Thank you to clients Muzak and Foundation for the Carolinas for their amazing partnership and collaboration on these award-winning projects! Also, cheers to all involved in putting together a tremendous show and congratulations to all of this year's winners.

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We hope everyone enjoyed (and recovered nicely) from our holiday party! A crowd of almost 125 guests gathered at Dilworth Billiards for a festive evening of mixing and mingling with our clients, colleagues, friends and family. Cheers to everyone who came out to celebrate the holidays with our team!

A special thank you to new client La Paz for the delicious holiday eats and to clients for donating a wonderful collection of door prizes, including two lunch passes from AAF Charlotte, a $50 gift card from Asana Activewear, $70 in gift cards from Blynk Organic, First Night Charlotte tickets and Ruth’s Chris coupons from Charlotte Center City Partners, a t-shirt and toboggan hat from Dilworth Billiards, four tickets to Discovery Place, a fleece blanket and backpack from Muzak, two tickets to Opera Carolina's La Bohème, a 60-minute massage from Urbana Cityspa & Teabar and a $50 gift card from Varji & Varji!

If you missed the party, enjoy the photos. Merry Christmas and Happy 2010!

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Campaign Monitor, an online email service provider that serves as the backbone of our client newsletter system, has just featured our AAF Charlotte newsletter design in their design gallery. While it’s more likely that they are more impressed with Wray Ward's Sunbrella ad, they still had some nice things to say about the newsletter:

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The sold-out 2009 Charlotte ADDY® Awards & Gala Show once again provided a very fun evening for members of the Charlotte advertising industry. The night was especially memorable for the Studiobanks crew, as we swept the interactive categories and brought home a total of 16 awards: 2 Gold ADDYs, 14 Silver ADDYs and the award for Excellence in Art Direction for the Eric Hunter Website.

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From AAF Charlotte:

The Florida Supreme Court has ruled that Amendment 5 must be removed from the ballot. Amendment 5 could have opened the door to a tax on advertising services. The proposed constitutional amendment would have cut the property tax by an average of 25 percent—an estimated $9 billion in 2011. The property tax is the main source of education funding in Florida. The amendment would have required the legislature to maintain same level of education funding. While it did not mandate where the new revenues would come from, it specifies that the legislature could have raised the six cent sales tax by one cent and eliminated existing sales tax exemptions, including advertising.

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