Sara Mouw, a University of Iowa MBA student focusing on marketing, has joined HRB (Henry Russell Bruce) as a public relations intern.

Mouw, a 2010 graduate of Central College with a BA in Business Management, spent a year as an Assistant Sports Information Director at Pacific University in Forest Grove, Ore. before returning to her home state to further her education. She brings the experience of interacting with the media, writing news releases and creating a buzz on social media to her role at HRB.

“Not only was her degree a good match for HRB, but her experience in a highly competitive sports marketing arena gives her an edge in understanding the expectations of coworkers and clients,” said Shelby Kraus, V.P of Public Relations/Account Supervisor.  “Her maturity will also give her the ability to get up-to-speed quickly and have a very diverse and effective internship.”

When not studying marketing theories or writing news releases, the former Central College volleyball player is teaching the game she loves. Upon returning to Iowa, Mouw joined the coaching staff of the Iowa Rockets Volleyball Club and is currently coaching a 17 and under team that recently qualified for the USA Volleyball Junior Nationals.

No, we’re not hiring interns this young. Yet. This is two week old Stella Rae Mast. Her mother, HRB account supervisor Jill Mast, brought Stella in for her first exposure to the world of advertising and public relations. Clearly Stella wasn’t too enamored with what she saw ... or what she was hearing.

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We’re happy to announce that our mobile site has launched! Just point your browser to hrb-ideas.com on any mobile device, and you’ll be treated to the new mobile site. Using an iPad? Turn your iPad to landscape for the full site, or turn your iPad to portrait for the mobile site… instantly! Our site now updates which version of the site is being shown depending on your screen size instantaneously (this even works if you make your web browser too skinny to show the full site, try it out [modern web browsers only]). Of course, you can opt to always use the full site by pressing the button at the bottom of the page (it will remember your preference, and you can switch back any time). We are quite excited & proud to bring our new mobile site to everyone. If you’d like, you can even turn this into an app simply by adding it to your home screen on any iOS device. It adds it to your list of apps, and you won’t even see the web browser’s interface at that point. We’ve come to enjoy how seamless it can be alongside other apps.

Here’s some pictures of it running on a few of our devices:

Our site running on an iPhone 4S (looks great on a Retina display)

The related articles section got a facelift to be more mobile-friendly.

The tab bar makes an appearance for switching between the sections of our site.

We welcome you when our web app is opened via the home screen.

You can swap between the mobile & full site at any time.

Our site running on the new iPad (another case where it looks great at Retina resolution)

Larger Android phone screens can display the site no problem.

Another addition to the app screen. This time with an icon that's optimized for the new iPad's Retina display.

The text, title bar, and other interface elements were made with the 2x Retina resolution in mind.

One of our favorite features for tablet users, you can switch to the full size instantly by rotating the tablet. Don't worry about how it does this so fast... it just works!

St. Louis Cardinal mascot “Fredbird” talks baseball with Denise and Colleen at the grand opening of Jumer’s new “Blue Square Café.”

“Fredbird” points out his displeasure at seeing a chicken dish on the “Blue Square Café” menu.

It’s finally time to give everyone’s taste buds a workout.

The new “Blue Square Café” menu, designed and produced by HRB.

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Carrie Herrera of L.L. Pelling accepted the NAPA Outstanding Website Award

L.L. Pelling's homepage is designed to feature projects, services and news in the industry

Lanham, MD – The National Asphalt Pavement Association (NAPA) announced today that LL Pelling Co. Inc. of North Liberty, Iowa, is a winner of NAPA’s Outstanding Web Site Award for 2011 in the producer member category. The award recognizes Web site designs that promote the use of asphalt and the asphalt pavement industry.

LL Pelling Co. Inc., worked with Henry Russell Bruce, a Web development and marketing firm in Cedar Rapids, Iowa revamped its website (www.llpelling.com) in 2011 in order to provide more information to local businesses and to taxpayers about the benefits of asphalt paving.

The new site features quick links to the company’s location, projects and services as well as educational material about asphalt’s many advantages as a paving material. A revolving display of asphalt pavement images on the home page helps reinforce LL Pelling Co.’s key messages to its audiences.

Other goals of the company’s Web site redesign were to improve the channels of communication for visitors, making it easier for them to contact specific individuals via email, phone or fax.

The company’s success in this effort can be measured by the fact that it now receives weekly bid requests, general questions and sponsorship opportunities via its website. Visitor leaving feedback have expressed their appreciation for the amount of educational material that the site offers.

We want to wish everyone a Happy New Year! To kick off 2012, we want to share some of our favorite apps that we think you might like, too. You might even say that these are our favorite apps of 2011!

We’d love it if you’d let us know if we’re missing something that you think everyone, or at least those with similar interests, should be using that didn’t make it onto our list.   It might have a chance at making the 2012 list!

View the full list of our favorite apps!

It’s a well known yet seldom followed saying – “Practice what you preach.”  But when we considered the prospect of rebranding HRB, we knew we had to follow ourselves the same advice we preach to our clients … that the most objective and ultimately most valuable branding efforts are done with the direction of an experienced outside advisor. You can’t read the label from inside the bottle, right?

After over 15 years with the same “label,” a logo we affectionately call “Herb” because its three letters also resemble a face, it felt like the time was right to go through our own rebranding effort. When Herb was first designed and put to work as the face of HRB, our company and the business of advertising was considerably different. Traditional media – TV, radio, print – was still king. The Internet was in its marketing infancy. The iPad, iPhone and Droid were only the distant dreams of Silicone Valley tech heads. Twitter and Facebook? Mark Zuckerberg was still playing video games in grade school.

It’s a vastly changed world now. Digitally-based, incredibly fast moving, with websites considered as the first point of brand contact instead of merely an afterthought … and handheld devices putting the power of brand engagement in the hands of millions of consumers.

To acknowledge those big changes in our industry, we decided to make a small but important change for ourselves. So we engaged the services of FUEL, a talented group of strategically-minded designers, to rethink and redesign our logo and visual brand. We vowed to be good clients and provide them with all the input they requested (which was a lengthy process), then ultimately, trust their thinking and their visual concept for our brand. Frankly, it was nice to be on the client side for once.

What you see here, the new logo, colors and look is a result of that collaboration. For us, it’s an important reminder of the new thinking we need to consider and then deliver every day. To our clients, it’s a reminder that brands aren’t static entities that can rest on their laurels. To Herb, it means a well-deserved retirement.

Wherever he is today, traveling the world or spending his pension at a casino in Branson, Herb can be confident our new logo stands for the same product we truly care about delivering … growing our clients’ brands to grow their business.

We’re grateful for the iPhone and iPad app for Cover it Live. Texas Governor Rick Perry addresses the national media and some 60 D. C. Taylor Co. employees Tuesday in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.

Maximizing a PR Opportunity

The HRB public relations team got a chance to flex its media relations muscles this week and to help a client capitalize on a rare event.

Just three days after announcing his candidacy for the U. S. presidency, Texas Governor Rick Perry visited our client D. C. Taylor Co. Tuesday morning in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, his only stop in the city. D. C. Taylor Co., one of the 20 largest commercial roofing companies in the nation, learned about the visit just last week. Out of thousands of companies in the city, Perry’s advance team chose this one to introduce the candidate in person in the intimate setting of a roofing warehouse. Perry’s wife and two daughters were there, too.

We met with our client late last week to discuss what we could do to promote the event to benefit the client. We decided that the client would want to capture this and create a video and media package and to provide live coverage of the entire event on Cover it Live. To house the Cover it Live feed, HRB had to create a landing page on their website. So there would be more relevant content for D. C. Taylor customers, HRB set out to repurpose educational materials and created an eBook, and designed a banner for the homepage to direct visitors to the see the coverage and comment. Additionally, we helped create an email notification to the company’s opt-in list to notify them over the live coverage. We developed a media brief to hand out and send out to the media and an updated news release is going out Tuesday afternoon recounting details of the events to customers and prospects and the trade media.

During the hour-long event, we feed photos and text to an HRB team member who posted the material in real time. A news release went out to the client’s trade publications and out to the rest o the world via PRWeb. Dozens of people signed on to the Cover it Live account to follow the event and comment on it.

Most exciting for our client was the list of media that showed up for the event, including:

• Reuters
• Associated Press
• NBC National
• CBS Evening News
• The Gazette
• ABC National
• ABC Evening News
• Des Moines Register
• CBS Local
• Republican Caucus
• Dallas Morning News
• New York Times
• KCRG
• World Magazine

Their website traffic has doubled due to our efforts. The client is happy with the event support we provided. And , just as importantly, we all had fun with it.

Are you maximizing your public relations opportunities at every turn?

Golf Best Shot to Fund Scholarships.

Two and a half years ago, our friend and partner Brian Carr passed away while HRB was displaced by the flood and temporarily located in Hiawatha with our friends at Fastek International. It was a staggering loss for his family and friends, and for the HRB family. He was athletic, witty, bright – and as a CPA – great with numbers. He always kept the scores on the golf course. We think of him often.

To honor their father, Brian’s children have put together a memorial golf tournament to raise funds for the Brian Carr Memorial Scholarship Fund. The event date is September 30, 2011 at Ellis Golf Course, Cedar Rapids, with a shotgun start at noon, followed by a grilled dinner, awards and prizes. These kids have gone to a lot of effort to honor their father. And, we want to help them do that.

Brian attended both MidAmerican Nazarene University in Kansas City and Mount Mercy University in Cedar Rapids and had a positive impact on countless students through his roles as mentor and coach. He was a gifted accountant, father, husband and golfer. The Scholarship Fund benefits accounting students at MNU and MMU.

Brian was a good guy and a good friend. Feel free to pass this message along to anyone else who may have known Brian or just wants to play golf to support a good cause.

All of the information about the event, including registration and sponsorship opportunities, can be found at this link: http://www.wix.com/bcmemorialgolf/2011.

I hope to see you there. And so do Brian’s kids – Pete, Maggie, Hilary and Quinn – and his wife Linda.

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The first thing I noticed upon entering McCormick Place on Sunday was the overpowering, but very pleasant, aroma of food. Enticing smells of pork, beef, fish, teas and spices filled the air. It’s all part of the fun at the National Restaurant Association’s annual convention and exhibition. I spent part of the weekend in Chicago in support of a new client who was exhibiting at the show.

Over the years I’ve attended many trade shows, most of them related to supply chain, bar codes, RFID, electronics, IT, aviation and aerospace and even rental products. But I’ve never before been greeted at the registration desk with such an attention-getting gastronomic assault on the senses. Foods and beverages of all types were being prepared throughout the enormous North and South exhibition halls. Each dish or drink was presented in an attractive and inspiring setting. Free food was everywhere and freely distributed to anyone who happened by. That was a new experience for me.

There is a sense of irony here because our client is in the technology business, one of our specialties. Numerous technology providers were at the show demonstrating their wares. What struck me most was the amount of automation software available to restaurants to support loyalty programs, geolocation couponing, online ordering and a lot of integration with Facebook and Twitter to drive store traffic and grow the database.

Generating and managing data was a major theme for those providers, a key message they were trying to get across to the restaurants.

At the end of the day, the trip made me think about you and your business.

Are you managing your data? Are you making offers and creating calls to action that generate leads for your database – leads that you can use for your email marketing campaigns? Are your lead generation efforts integrated with your CRM and email marketing platforms? Have you been able to bring some automation to these efforts? We’ve been able to integrate and automate our online marketing efforts. And, it has paid off by generating more leads through our website.

How important is lead generation and data tracking to your operations? Please post a comment and let us know what’s working – or not – for you.