Rizen Creative Ideas, advertising & design for underdog brands

“Liberty: One of Imagination’s most precious possessions.” -Ambrose Bierce, The Devil’s Dictionary
Happy 4th of July.

Despite the SPAM filters, the distractions, and the clutter, email marketing works. Specifically, for business-to-business marketers, it is a great way to add value through information and insights that are relevant and timely.
One key to their success is to transform your email newsletter PROJECT into a communications PROGRAM. By that we mean focus on the [...]

2010 is half done. Congratulations, you made it. Here’s quick look at this blog’s most popular posts so far this year:
The fridge is stocked.
Kickstand business books.
Rizen’s idea wall.
New BCVB web site.
Jeff’s Ignite Boise preso.
A pile of cash.
Digital immigrants vs. natives.
SWITA Recognized.

Ideo and Rizen share at least one thing in common: we have the opportunity to use design to improve almost everything. Products, sure. But also customer experiences, proccesses and more.
In “Change By Design,” Ideo (one of the world’s most renown industrial design firms — and much more) CEO Tim Brown walks readers through Ideo’s “design [...]

We were very honored to be nominated for the Boise Chamber of Commerce’s 2010 Small Business of the Year award. And while we weren’t selected as a winner, it was great just to be involved.
Congratulations to the winners:

Clearview Cleaning Company
Syringa Networks
Zeppole Baking Company

Sprout Robot: sends you seeds when you need to plant them.
Grilled Cheese Burgermelt: you have to see it to believe it.
Balihoo Wins Red Herring 100 North America Award congrats!
Idaho Wine Tours: get out and take in some great Idaho wine.
The meaning of the EPCOT logo: told not long after it opened in 1982.

Some things aren’t meant to be sent via direct mail. This week–on one of the hottest days of the year–Ron came home to find this direct mail piece in the sweltering tube-oven that is his mailbox. It’s for Kraft Mayo. And it had samples.
Ewwwwwwwe.
The lesson: Not every product is a good fit for every medium. [...]

For more than six months Rizen has been working with Pioneer Title to create a tool to track the local real estate market. Yesterday it launched. Dubbed the PTC Index, it is a monthly measurement of the vibrancy of the Treasure Valley market. Based on a custom weighted algorithm, it combines nine critical measurements [...]

Kia, you’ve got my attention. It’s impossible to ignore human-sized hamsters rapping to Black Sheep* in classic hip-hop music video style. Believe it or not, that song is going on 20 years old. I should know, I owned the cassette tape.

It’s Interesting that they take shots at their boxy competition (I’m theorizing here) -The Nissan [...]

Apparently Apple and it’s latest generation iPhone are alive and well, opposite of what you might be hearing from the industry and GOOGLE, because the buying public have spoken. On Tuesday, June 15th, Apple made the new iPhone available for pre-order for delivery on the 24th. The turnout to collect one of these coveted pieces [...]