Happy New Year to our clients, friends and business associates…

Business has been bubblin’ around here and we would like to share lots of good news, introduce new employees, new technology assets and recent accomplishments.

We are expanding our skill sets and have brought on-board four new employees.

Our new Project Manager, John Jambor, replaces Jason Nolley. Jason was our interim Project Manager as he and his wife have plans to move to the Indianapolis area. Jason will be missed. John adds a whole new set of skills and expertise to the Force 5 family.

John comes to us with 20 years experience in IT and web development. His most recent position was in the gaming industry and we are all hoping he shares some of that online expertise with each of us.

Kelly Andrews has joined us as a multi–media developer and graphic designer. It is rare for us to have a highly skilled and experienced associate who has a foot in both camps so to speak – the technical camp and the visual aesthetics. Kelly is gifted, talented and is one of those rare designers who understand that what works well visually in print will need refinement for the web.   Kelly comes to us with a B.A. in Fine Arts from IUSB and programming training from Purdue School of Technology.

Brett Simpson is our new database guru and network administrator – something that you can not have enough of in our world. Brett has managed his own businesses as well as having experience in the corporate world at Bayer HealthCare (formerly Miles Inc.) and Carleton Inc. where he also managed webmaster duties for several websites.

Adding to our expert pool of programmers is Geoff Warner. Geoff graduated from IU a mere two years ago and is our resident problem solver. He has added enormous coding skills to our group, fixes impossible problems and has risen to the challenge of our fast paced production world. Geoff also classifies himself as a Guitar Hero expert – and proved so at the Force 5 Holiday party.  Rock on, Geoff!

Southwestern Michigan College is a great client for Force 5.  Recently we produced a new "stop-gap" brand television commercial as we work together to develop a new multi–channel integrated campaign to tell their new story.  Lots of great new changes and accomplishments are on the horizon for the College. Here’s a sneak preview… Student housing, student housing and more student housing and a four year degree.  We will share all the new news as it develops between now and September and share the marketing communication solutions we develop with the College.

Print vs web – Web vs print?  Guess what, you need both! It is how to best integrate the power of both medias… the push and pull – the ying and the yang of it all.

Our client, Notre Dame University's Pre–College Program relies on our expertise to help them engage a prospect visually and emotionally in print so they hop on the internet to learn more – all the deep facts which can not be explored in print.  Once on the site the engagement is strong enough that interested parties can begin the application immediately. Now, that is good push and pull!

Awards are nothing more than that – awards, but we like to always share the good news and our clients’ love the recognition – and we do too.

We were retained to develop the grand opening marketing program of American Countryside Farmers Market in Elkhart, Indiana. The multi–channel marketing communication and brand development solutions were awarded Gold category recognition in the 2007 MarComm Competition. The grand opening program consisted of visual identity and tagline development, print advertising, broadcast and radio, extensive public relations, media tours and an innovative collaboration with three of the South Bend Tribune properties – The Tribune, Flagship Publications and the SBT website. Click here to checkout the press kit which has links to all broadcast spots.

The Tribune collaboration was recently recognized by the Hoosier State Press Association’s 2007 Creative Advertising Competition.