Reports

And they’re off. From the backstretch seats of Del Mar Race Track I’m on
my dogs yelling at horses, mourning my losses, and making new connections.
Only recently did I join Ad2, but I can already tell it was a wise move. Our
trip began with a group ride to Del Mar, where a series of impromptu trust
falls broke out in the parking lot. When we got to our seats, with beer in hand
we caught a glimpse of Mario Lopez accepting a blanket of flowers for his
horse’s performance. So naturally I thought, “If AC Slater can win, so can I.”

I was sorely mistaken. In fact I discovered I know nothing about horse
racing save for the oversized hats. I must say however that taking a loss has
never been so comfortable. The day was spent chatting, cheering and clinking
glasses with a great group of like-minded professionals. For a newbie to San
Diego and the local advertising scene, I was welcomed graciously and made
some exceptional new contacts. And even though the job hunt looms before me,
I’m liking my odds more everyday.

Ad 2 San Diego broke in summer 2010 with our 1st Annual Kickball Tournament. Underground Elephant, MJD Interactive Agency, Treeline Interactive, & a whole bunch of Free Agents made it out to compete for the title of Baller Agency of the Year…

Congratulations to Treeline Interactive for coming in 1st place!! That was quite a finish to the tournament!

Special Thanks

Woodstock’s Pizza, Pacific Beach for donating the many delicious pizzas!

VAVi Sport and Social Club for joining us and providing kickballs, games, prizes and other giveaways.

The 2009 – 2010 Ad 2 Calendar year is almost to an end. Our board will be renewing in July and new opportunities to participate will be available. Below is a description of some of the most popular positions.

Government Relations

For this position, you have to be ready to kick some butt in a moments notice. The Government Relations Chair works directly with AAF issues and helps our local audience understand its importance. The main goal of this position is to form strategic alliances with San Diego legislative officials.

Don Son did a great job establishing the Government Relations Chair this past year. He had clear reports regarding important AAF issues and kept us up to date on their progress.

Membership

The Membership Chair makes sure that we are providing our members with the most value for their money. They prepare a strategic plan to build the club’s membership.

Ad 2 San Diego’s membership has more than doubled during my time as President. Its important that we have a Membership Chair who is eager to provide our members with more value added services.

Communications

We can never have enough good people to work on our Communications Committee. Ad 2 San Diego’s communications tactics are regarded as the best in the whole country. This is evidence in our 1st place finish for the AAF Club achievement awards.

We are looking for progressive Marketers who can leverage new social media, while still making the most out of traditional approaches.

Programs

Our programs crew is responsible for both educational and social functions. We try to rotate every other month between the two. We do have several core events established throughout the year. These include our Pub Crawl, Sports Marketing Night, Cause Marketing Night, Student Agency Tour, and Combined Holiday party.

Public Service

Public service is Ad 2′s most humbling committee. We put on a pro-bono marketing campaign for one non profit each year. This position gives you a very meaningful opportunity to contribute to a San Diego non profit.

I hope this list helps explain our different committees. If you are interested, please submit a bio and letter of intent for which committee you would like to Chair (or even join).

See you at the Happy Hour on the 27th!

I received very good news today from JoAnn Schechter, VP of Club Services for the American Advertising Federation (AAF). JoAnn told me that Ad 2 San Diego won 1st place in Communications for the AAF Club Achievement Contest. This is one of the most prestigious awards by the AAF. We have a history of placing well in this category:

• 2010: 1st Place
• 2009: 3rd Place
• 2008: 1st Place

The San Diego Ad Club also placed well in the AAF Club Achievement Contest. They took 1st place in Programs. The Ad Club’s events are always first notch, especially their “Ad Legend” series. This past year, they had Super Stars from the likes of Alex Bogusky and Dan Wieden.

Last week, we had our 2nd annual Agency Tour. I can’t thank BusinessOnline, Geary Interactive, Vitro and Nufer, Smith, Tucker PR enough for being very gracious hosts. Geary really went out of their way by having four of their Executives speak to our students about what their agency is about. They also provided lunch for everyone. Its a pleasure knowing that San Diego has such classy agencies in its backyard.

If you are free this Thursday, join us at the Sneak Joint in Mission Beach. They are hooking us up with some drink specials and FREE appetizers. Help us celebrate our AAF Club Achievement win!

This month, Ad 2′s efforts are focused on helping out our advertising community. We won’t have an exclusive Ad 2 event with the intentions of focusing all of our efforts to promote the SAFE party on March 25. Ad 2 members and students will receive discounted pricing of $35. This is one of the Ad Club’s staple events and it is always a blast. One year I bought $25 worth of raffle tickets and ended up leaving with a new putter, $100 in gift certificates to Longboards and 4 hornblower cruise passes. It pays to attend this fundraiser!

We are also promoting the ADDY’s after party, which will be at Siren. If you can’t attend the Addy’s, the after party is a must attend event.

Our Public Service Committee, lead by Tobin Nageotte, has started the production of a really cool micro site for the Challenged Athletes foundation. The goal of the site is to build awareness and raise funds to purchase equipment for the athletes.

Next month, we are bringing back our Agency tour. If you are a downtown agency who would like to participate, please let us know as the agenda is filling up. We’re also getting ready for our first ever kick ball tournament!

Hope to see you at the SAFE party this month.

Special thanks to Geoff Miller from Winning Mind for speaking at our February 10 educational event. Geoff’s presentation kept everyone on their seat until the end. I really enjoyed his examples of “framing” and the infamous Monkey video. If you liked his presentation, how about giving him a good review on the Winning Mind Yelp page or on his Google Map?

This month Ad 2 had some really nice member benefits from our educational partners. We received discount codes for BlogWell and the Online Marketing Summit. One of the biggest perks for being an Ad 2 member is that you receive discounts to a lot of the Conferences that come into town as well as all the San Diego Ad Club’s (our parent organization) events.

We are working on some really cool events to finish off the AAF Calendar year. To hear what’s going on, you are welcomed to come to our next board meeting. It will be on March 2, from 6:30 – 7:30 at the Ad Club office in Hillcrest.

In our second installment of the video Presidents Message, I talk about our new corporate membership structure, a really fun happy hour on January 21, and a new exciting educational event on February 10.  Our programs team really hit a home run working out a deal with Typhoon Saloon in Pacific Beach.  Ad 2 members will get a free drink!
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Ad 2 San Diego, PRSA New Pros and the Young Nonprofit Professionals Network joined forces to kick off December with our 4th annual Holiday Party. Big thanks to everyone who came out! It turned out to be a fun event with tons of new people to meet and mingle with.

Thanks to Sidebar for providing a great venue and donating delicious pizza from Ciro’s Pizza! Don’t miss our next Ad 2 event in January to get the New Year started with a bang!

On November 13th we hosted the 2009 Ad 2 Mid Year Retreat at The Dana on Mission Bay. We were joined by 40 Ad 2 members from clubs all over the nation. The event started with a mixer at the Dana on the night of the 13th. The next morning we had an all day workshop which included team building projects, and various breakout sessions. We ended the event with dinner at Las Hadas, and a night of bar hopping in the Gas Lamp District.

This event allowed executives from each club to pick each others brain on topics like public service, member retention, social media, and programs. I felt this expierience was beneficial for myself and my fellow board members, and we picked up some tips that will help us better Ad 2 SD. Check out what some of our other board members had to say.

Stephanie Gulley

As the Social Media chair on the Communications Committee for Ad2SD, I was eager to meet other Ad 2 members that shared my position to exchange ideas on two specific areas: (1) how we could better promote our Ad 2 events and (2) encourage other professionals in our areas to join our events.

During our break out session, I learned that other chapters were taking advantage of Facebook and Twitter to promote their events like us. However, I was suprised to learn that other chapter didn’t promote events on their site as often as we did (i.e. Event Announcement, Event Summary, Photos, etc.) but after sharing our success stories with other members, I’m confident that that will change in the future.

Marcus Barron

The mid-year retreat was a great way for AD2SD to connect with other AD2 clubs across the country. It was the perfect opportunity to share what was working and get advice on things that weren’t. Playing off each others ideas gave us a chance to reflect on our events and programing and how we can improve it to make it even better.