Author Archives: ScorchAgency
A Vision Four Years In the Making
I started SCORCH® AGENCY on a snowy day in January of 2009 with the determination not to fail and the fire to grow a successful agency from scratch. SCORCH officially launched on 09.09.09 and we have been growing ever since. Over the last four years, some very talented people have helped grow my vision and our creative ability to the level of a nationally-recognized agency. Our clients have ranged from local businesses and non-profits to …
READ MOREVenture Draft 2012: Where Athletes, Venture Capital and Tech Firms Connect
SCORCH is pleased to sponsor the first annual Venture Draft Conference held at St. Louis University’s Anheuser Busch Auditorium on August 10th and 11th. Hosted by the Brandon Williams Economic Development Corporation (BWEDC) and the St. Louis University Entrepreneurship Center, professional athletes, venture capitalists and technology experts will meet face-to-face to discuss new business opportunities. “The venture community is always trying to keep up with new technologies while professional athletes are looking for ways to leverage …
READ MOREFacebook for All: IPO Day Opens New Doors for Social Media Giant
Today’s NASDAQ opening brought a new type of investor as Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg rang the bell at the company headquarters. On Thursday, May 17, shares opened to investors at $38 each. For those of you counting, that’s over $16 billion for the over 420 million shares. In less than 12 hours, this number grew to $42/share. That boosts the total value to $116.6 billion. WOW. Ranking third in the history of IPOs next to …
READ MORERevamped Social Media Marketing Features In Foursquare
In the last year and a half Foursquare has added five million registered users, bringing the geo-social application’s total user base to 20 million as of April 2012. According to online sources only about 5% of adults use location-based check-in apps. Per Foursquare’s blog, users have checked in 2 billion times in the last two years, suggesting that members check in about 100 times each annually. Foursquare is a location-based social network popular with smartphone …
READ MORERemarkable Renaissance Rendezvous for Food Outreach
Food Outreach asked the St. Louis community to open their hearts and wallets at Ye Olde A Tasteful Affaire 24 on Sunday, April 15. This year’s renaissance-themed auction transported attendees back to medieval times with festivities fit for a king. The royal court (VIPs) sipped on specialty cocktails and small batch beer provided by Urban Chestnut Brewing Company, which was recently voted one of the top five new breweries in the world. Guests feasted on …
READ MORESocial Media | Facebook Timeline for Pages – Tell Your Story
On February 29, Facebook announced timeline features for brands with an attempt to revive its social media approachyet again. The new features will change how individual business pages will interact with consumers. Prior to switching your page over to the new look, there’s a few areas you’ll need to update accordingly for a more adequate aesthetic approach overall efficiency.Branding: The profile picture area has evolved. It has shrank, giving plenty of room for the new, 851 …
READ MOREPin It – Using Pinterest for Business
If you’ve got a Facebook page and you tweet or occasionally find yourself on YouTube posting videos, you should be pinning. Pinterest, the online pinboard social network, has now surpassed YouTube, Reddit, Google+, LinkedIn and MySpace for referral traffic with 3.6 percent, barely behind Twitter’s 3.61 percent. The unique presence Pinterest has amongst its competition has boosted them to the top used social sites.
READ MOREMore Than Just a Revenue Rockstar
Social Media ROI is not just a catch phrase used by stealthy marketers of the past. A new generation of corporate marketing managers are finding innovative ways to redefine return on investment for the social space. The marketers toolkit now includes Facebook applications that entertain, encourage customer engagement and distribute content in return for measurable data. Marketo developed the “Revenue Rockstar” multi-marketing platform to do just that.
READ MOREAmerica SCORES Record Breaking Weekend
The Great St. Louis Soccer Dribble took place at Robert R. Hermann Soccer Stadium on Saturday, September 10, 2011 at Saint Louis University in the heart of Midtown. A grand total of 428 dribblers and countless spectators participated to break the world record. Mayor Francis Slay, @Mayor Slay on Twitter, was the honorary chair and Bill McDermott was the vibrant MC. Each participant received an event t-shirt, ball and tickets to the SLU vs. Akron …
READ MORETSPN: Is Twitter the new headquarters for sports information?
Twitter has become an outlet for just about everything. Celebrities, brands, bots – you name it, and they probably have a twitter page. But what about sports? Every professional team has their own page, and now athletes are filling up the Twittersphere with friendly battles (i.e. Anthony Stewart (@astew22) of the Carolina Hurricane and brother Chris (@cstew25) of the St. Louis Blues), adventures during the lockout (see Chad @ochocinco of the Cincinnati Bengals), to their …
READ MOREHoward Stern – King of All “Social” Media?
*Walks into church basement, steps up to microphone* “Hi, I’m Matt Fitzpatrick… and I’m a Howard Stern fan…” “HI MATT…BABA BOOEY!!!!” Admitting that I am a Howard Stern fan can be met with disdain, shock and surprise (some are shocked that he is still around). But I’m here today to admit to the world that I, Matt Fitzpatrick, listen to Howard almost every morning; though I don’t do it for the smut, the crazy guests, …
READ MOREHow It Really Happened: A Scorch Agency Compendium
Let’s put the rumors to rest right now. I can tell you without hesitation that Scorch did not just pop out of the “Great Idea Jack-In-The-Box” as a fully fleshed out, up and running, staffed with the right people, in a cool office, well-respected marketing agency. Four Costco-size bottles of Advil and a case of Tums later, I can personally attest to that.
It was a frosty day in January 2009. I had just gotten laid off from my “last” Sr. Art Director position. The economy was tanking and I was joining the ranks of the many talented and creative St Louis folks finding themselves suddenly out of a job. Crap.
READ MORELess Is More: Designing For The “New Twitter”
or: How I learned to stop worrying and love the interface. Hear ye, hear ye: the new Twitter is upon us. While many of the Twitter pundits are weighing in on just how “improved” the new design is, the fact is very clear: New Twitter is here to stay. The anticipation and excitement that preceded the rollout of the new design has now given way to much wailing and gnashing of teeth — and nothing has …
READ MORESocial Media For Restaurants – It Works!
Many businesses across the country are grapping with the question: “Should we be using social media?” Or maybe they’re asking an even more pointed and inappropriate question: “Should we be trying to sell more product using social media?” Companies that have been sending direct mail pieces, and running print ads, radio ads, even TV ads… they’re asking themselves, “Is social media a space we should be playing in?” Scorch’s answer (and my own answer) is …
READ MOREMosaic Restaurant Foursquare Promotion
Client: Mosaic Project: Social Media Campaign Platform: Foursquare Date: Spring 2010 Scorch was tasked with bringing consumers to Mosaic Lounge, with two goals in mind: 1.) Increased foot traffic and bustle in the Lounge, and 2.) Having them try Mosaic’s signature drink – the Fresh Fruit Mojito. Scorch created a promotion utilizing the geo-location social media platform Foursquare. During the month of May, each time a patron checked in at Mosaic on Foursquare, they received a free …
READ MOREScorch Agency CMO Named Most Influential Saint Louis Twitter User By STLTweets.com
At the July gathering of the Social Media Club of St. Louis, Jason Fiehler, CEO of Infuz, released the findings of a very interesting report. STLTweets.com completed a comprehensive study of the tweets made by St. Louisans during the first six months of 2010. They were able to locate over 220,000 St. Louis Twitter users, and logged almost 5,600,000 tweets they made during the six month period. A great deal of very interesting data was culled …
READ MORELet Your Hair Down To Market Effectively
I was meeting with a business colleague recently – a company that I would love to work with. As I was discussing things with the head of marketing, I was explaining what Scorch specializes in and how we might be able to help. Almost immediately, he said, “I know, I know, social media is the place to be.” The person was trying to assure me that, even though they had no money budgeted for social …
READ MOREWhat We’re Reading – July 14th 2010 – Hot Links From Scorch
Playing the part of Internet DJ, here’s a sampling of what Scorchers have been reading lately. 1.) Darren Rowse at Problogger.net has a nice article on how to get things done when you’re feeling overwhelmed. Often when we’re freaking out, when we have a plate stacked high with things to do… we end up getting less done. It can be a paralyzing feeling, and our new 140-character culture is changing us from being task-oriented beings …
READ MOREA Cow With Nine Thousand Facebook Fans
Something awesome is happening in St. Peters, MO. As a St. Charles County native, I’m fully aware of how non sequitur that statement is, but bear with me. The cow on Mid Rivers Mall Drive across from Vista Grande is on Facebook! That’s right! Bessie! An offbeat St. Peters landmark for many years, with the crazy seasonal clothes and hats, a random backyard cow statue now has a huge Facebook fan page. First, some …
READ MORESocial Media Day Celebrated By The Social Media Club Of St. Louis
June 30, 2010 was Social Media Day across the globe. A day to celebrate the revolution that social media is bringing to the doorsteps of communication, networking, friendships, personal branding, and business branding, over 600 meetups were held all over the world. St. Louisans celebrated at Gio’s Ristorante in conjunction with the Social Media Club of St. Louis. The night was filled with #smday tweets, …
READ MOREMike’s Favorite Tweets (and Blog Posts) for The Week: June 5th – June 13th
I was definitely excited at the response to my first Favorite Tweets (and Blog Posts) post and have taken some of the things that I wish I could have done better, or differently, into account this time around. This is a fun opportunity to try some different things with the Scorch blog and to use that trial-and-error to further develop the format of this post series. Ironically, the best feedback that I received on the …
READ MOREMike’s Favorite Tweets (and Blog Posts) for The Week: May 31st – June 4th
With my preferred, and most used, Twitter client being Tweetie 2 (I kind of refuse to call it Twitter for iPhone), I actually do most of my personal and business tweeting with two thumbs. And due to the small size of the screen, and an even smaller amount of patience for 3G, I frequently just mark tweets as “favorites” so that I can read them later on my laptop. Being that I now find myself …
READ MOREScorch Work In The Wild: Axius Financial
As we approached the building, we were almost taken aback to find a 1-color version of the corporate identity that we developed for Axius Financial on the outside door. These guys hardly even waited for the files to finish downloading before they plastered the new logo over everything that they could!
READ MOREIn The Red: A Tax Day Themed Event at Mosaic 4/15/10
We developed a full scale event to compliment our social media efforts for Mosaic and ultimately raise awareness about Mosaic Lounge. It just so happened that the event coincided with the 1-year anniversary for Social Media Club St. Louis and thus a Social Double Header was born.
READ MOREMerb’s Candies’ Outdoor Campaigns
Merb’s Candies challenged us to come up with a way to showcase their famous Bionic apples online. Somewhere in the discussion the client asked if we thought creating a billboard was a good idea. Well, who wouldn’t be tempted by a 10’ tall plump caramel-coated, pecan-encrusted beauty of a Bionic apple as they zip by on the highway? We thought this was a great idea and got to work.
In less than 24 hours we had the perfect shot. A layout followed, then client approval and it was up alongside Highway 44 in 7 days. (We don’t love having to do things that fast, but everything came together beautifully!)
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