Rizen Creative Ideas, advertising & design for underdog brands

We love to re-energize brands.  It’s one of the reasons we do what we do.  It runs deeper than updating a logo and marketing collateral.  Sometimes you just have to smack the mustache and sideburns off tradition to dramatically shift public perception and company culture to succeed.
At first I was skeptical about the new face [...]

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.

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. [...]

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 [...]

Today, Google paid it’s respects to PacMan on it’s 30th anniversary with a working version of the game surrounding Google’s logo. Very cool. Kudos to Google for honoring their space with this gaming icon and more importantly not charging us .25¢ to play. I think a number of us could have funded our educations with [...]

Some fun stuff from around the web…

Seth Godin on the importance of not focusing on strangers when you market. [here]
A great example of nothing has to be a commodity — even if you have to lean on another brand. [here]
A pretty cool (and free!) Pantone alternative. [here]
Interesting article on protecting your brands reputation. From [...]

While Bethany was cleaning out the “Closet of Mysteries” in our office this week, she stumbled across this. It’s a roll of trade show booth backer — the sort of stuff Velcro sticks to. There’s a big roll of it (we used some of it for a client event awhile back), how much, we have [...]