Once again, we were privileged to be a part of the 2012 Loveland Valentine Kickoff Celebration. This year the kickoff was held at the Loveland Stage Company. The festivities opened with a dance number by the Loveland Stage Company Dancers who did a tap dance number to the catchy Glenn Miller song “In The Mood”. Then Jodi Inabnitt, Loveland Chamber President, read a bit of the history of the Loveland Lady tradition, after which Pastor Bill Hounshell, of New Hope Baptist Church, honored past Loveland Ladies and announced the 2012 winner, Jan Ranard, owner of Pizazz Studio. Each Valentine Lady and nominee were presented with a bouquet of flowers as they were escorted to their seat on stage by either Mayor Rob Weisgerber, Vice Mayor David Bednar, or City Manager Tom Carroll.

Here is Marirose Stiver’s beautiful song as an individual video.

Along with the announcement of the new Valentine Lady is the unveiling of the official Loveland Valentine Card. This year’s winning designer is Jamie Morath. The cards are available for $1.50 at Kroger, the UPS Store, Loveland Healthcare Center, Loveland Chamber, Pizazz Studio, Huntington Bank, Union Savings Bank, Historical Museum, The Lodge, and the City of Loveland. Then be sure to drop your card off at the post office to be postmarked “Loveland, Ohio” and sent on to your valentine.

After the fun at the Stage Company, the party continued as the Ladies headed to brunch over at Tano’s Bistro. It was so special to stand back and watch these ladies, who are not only friends because of being Valentine Ladies, but are truer friends through the bond of loving Loveland.

VS Productions was honored to be asked to take pictures of these events. Be sure to check out All Around Loveland website for more pictures.

As you can tell from the title, this is Part 2 of my expo experience. I do recommend reading that post first, but it’s not mandatory.

This expo was special. Like I said, the open floor plan facilitated mingling among vendors at nearby booths as well as booths across the room. This was especially beneficial for the Taste vendors. While I don’t believe many of those walked the room (they did have to serve food, after all), as others did, they would make their way around the room more than once, perhaps having seconds while visiting other booths. Through Jodi’s special connections, the expo was promoted by at least 5 other area chambers who encouraged their members to attend the expo and experience a Taste of Loveland and Loveland businesses. This brought many people out and the networking was fantastic.

Almost 200 people attended the lunch where Cammie Dierking was emcee and Icky Woods was the main speaker. After teaching us all the Icky shuffle (which I have on video), Icky told the story of the death of his son and how he brought some good out of the tragedy by starting a foundation that promotes asthma awareness and also provides scholarships for athletically as well as academically qualified teens. After the lunch, Icky sat in the lobby and signed tee shirts to support the foundation. The Chamber gifted the Jovante Woods Foundation with $1000 in appreciation for his speaking.

Cammie was given a basket of Loveland treats from chamber members to welcome her to Loveland. She is building a house and anticipates moving here in about a year. Welcome, Cammie!

The creativity abounded at the expo this year by some vendors thinking “outside the box” for their displays.

Avalon Otterbein Small House for Nursing Care highlighted their pet therapy by bringing one of their dogs, a beautiful blond dog (sorry, I forgot to ask what kind it was). But what a delight to meet them and I had a wonderful conversation with them about their facility in Maineville.

Probably the highlight of the day, vendor-wise, was the live music provided by Matt Snow, “The Cincinnati Sinatra”. It was such a nice change of pace from the typical muzak. And I don’t believe it was a planned occurrence. It was so much fun to watch him entertain the room and I got some of it on video. Kudos to the chamber for allowing this extra bit of exposure for him as well.

The day was capped with Matt Snow announcing the winners of the vendor drawings.

Everyone I talked to throughout the day was very happy with the change of style for the expo. Being able to walk the room and not be stuck at one’s table seemed to be a big hit with everyone. Deepest special thanks to all the hard work by Jodi and Tracy. The vendor gift bags were a nice touch and put a smile on everyone’s face. Giving me an opportunity to showcase my work by playing my video during the lunch has touched me deeply.

As this first year of new management comes to an end, and if the great success of several events throughout the year is any indication, I think the Loveland Area Chamber of Commerce is in for some incredible growth.

Well, after looking forward to the business expo for so long, it’s hard to believe it’s finally over. October was a busy time that also included going to Florida for a week for my brother’s wedding, a presentation at Podcamp Cincinnati the Saturday before the expo, and creating a video to be shown at the expo luncheon. Even though it was good stress, it was stress, nonetheless and the next day, Friday, I felt like a physical weight had been lifted off my shoulders. Although my chiropractor would disagree, based on the tension in my neck!

The expo, for me, was a huge success. Having been involved the last two years as well, I believe this was the best one yet. First of all, the open floor plan this year, by definition, encouraged vendors to visit with each other before the lunch as well as throughout the day. And I took extreme advantage of that. I set up my booth (table) display, but was rarely there. I don’t know if that was a good thing or not, but I think it worked for me. I did manage to meet up with several people as they were walking around the exhibits, but I would imagine there were some I missed as well. Too bad I couldn’t be in two places at once! The biggest unfortunate was that my business partner (ok, my husband) couldn’t attend. Even though I always appreciate how much he does for me, I become even more painfully aware of how much that is when he isn’t there. But he was able to help me setup and tear down, so he was able to be there for me at the most work-filled times.

Since I wanted to spend most of the day roaming, I made sure there was a sign to that effect on my table. My sign had my picture and told people I was around taking pictures and video. If they wanted to talk, please find me. And a few did. My display also consisted of a few tools of my trade such as a professional studio light, my Sony VX2100 video camera, a professional directional microphone, and some basic marketing signs and rack card brochures. It resemble a little video set. I also brought my 27″ iMac that played a short Keynote which displayed some social media / video statistics and a clip from the Boost video. While I didn’t get many business cards in my shopping cart (yes, a real shopping cart), I didn’t really expect to (I wasn’t doing a giveaway) but I did get a lot of cards from people I personally met, which means a more valuable warm call than an anonymous dropoff any way.

The next week, as I sat down to make my follow-up calls, I didn’t get that feeling of dread and self-consciousness that I usually do. The calls were to people I had already met and I knew would remember me and our conversation. So I could relax and “be myself” and was able to confidently get appointments.

Well, that’s all for now. Check out the next installment of my recap (I have gotten a bit “winded”, but I was (and am) so excited about it, that I must go on…

Loveland Chamber Expo 2011 BOOST Video

This video was produced for the Loveland Area Chamber of Commerce’s 2011 Business Expo on October 27, 2011. It aired during lunch, and on occasion during the event.

I am honored that Jodi Inabnitt, President of the Chamber, asked me to create this video for the lunch. I had a total blast creating it and learning some new special effects in order to evoke feelings of fun and excitement to carry people through lunch and into the expo. Of course this video is not one person’s achievement; this video could not have been possible without the generous gifts of time given to me by everyone represented in this video, and I thank you all profusely!

I’d also like to thank Luke Hitchcock for creating such an inspirational logo for the event, and I look forward to working with you again for more phenomenal graphic design work.

If you market your business, you should be marketing with video. If you don’t think video can help grow your business, or you don’t know HOW video can help your business, then please call me for a free consultation and I can share with you several ways video can help BOOST your business!

If you need any of these services, I can personally, professionally, AND CONFIDENTLY recommend any of these people to give you top quality service!

Luke Hitchcock, Luke Hitchcock Design, 513-310-8124
Marsha Burton, Oasis Golf Club and Conference Center, 513-583-8383
Jesse Powell, Sam’s Club, 513-677-5020
Nancy Kaufman, Huntington Bank, 513-683-0970
Darian Gaines, Image Cleaning Systems, 513-583-8885
Jan Phillips, Evolving Design, 513-293-1090
Robert Zins, Julian’s Deli, 513-583-1725

Well, that time has finally come and gone…again. For the last two years, I’ve been on the Expo Committee for the chamber helping plan this event. As summer ends anticipation grows for the Loveland Business Expo at the end of October. Last year was a rousing success, and WAY so much fun, that there was great anticipation for this year.

Expectations Met?

Well, this year didn’t turn out exactly like we’d planned, but we count it as a success nonetheless. We ended up with a new client on Tuesday that wanted a video to play at the expo on Thursday. And to me, client-trumps-expo. Every time. (and they were ecstatic with the video, btw). But it did affect our preparations for the expo. We were not able to get to the expo until noon to set up (we did set up the greenscreen itself on Wednesday night). But the technology was another matter. While Don did a lot of troubleshooting, and we were finally ready to go about 2pm, I still made a point to talk to people and promote our community website AllAroundLoveland.com website. That is why there aren’t more pictures or video of the event. My thanks to Jim Sutter for snapping this one of us. You can see in the (huge!) tv that we were playing some promotional videos. My thanks, also, to Richard at Loveland Bed and Breakfast for letting us borrow that beautiful HD tv! (definitely check out his cabin for a luxurious getaway–and tell him I sent you!)

Greenscreen Effect

So we had a harried start, but a fantastic time. We demonstrated the greenscreen effect in video. The subject stands in front of a greenscreen and the software tells the computer “where you see green, replace it with this video”. A couple weeks ago I shot some footage of downtown Loveland and downtown Montgomery. As I was standing in front of the greenscreen, Don replaced the green behind me with the video I’d taken; so it looked like I was standing in downtown Loveland when I was in the booth. Several people thought we had a camera set up downtown and were doing it live.

It All Comes Down to Lighting

Now, things weren’t perfect. In using a greenscreen, lighting is extremely important, and the expo setting was not as amenable to that as we’d hoped. But we were able to achieve the effect and everyone was excited to see it. We only recorded a small bit of it but because the quality was so poor, I prefer not to publish it! I’ll do some sample recordings in the next few weeks to show it better.

It’s Always Worth It

Overall, while it wasn’t what I’d been envisioning for the past year, the actual goal was reached. I wanted to be noticed, for people to say, “I’ve been watching you all day and just have to ask, what ARE you doing?” which definitely happened. We also made several contacts for warm follow-up. If just 1 turns into an actual client, then the work was worth it.

We are already planning what to do for next year and, while it will be simpler than the past two years, it will be just as fascinating and fun.

Well, now that I’ve had some time (ok, almost 3 weeks), I’d like to share some of my reflections of the business expo I just participated in.

Short version: Awesome! You need to be a part of it next year. Great value; great exposure; great fun (at least to me).

Long version:
When I first heard the Loveland Area Chamber of Commerce was having a business expo, I immediately signed up. I was a little worried the price would be too high (they generally are at all expos. The “little guy” can barely ever participate.) But when I found out it was only $149, I was elated. I even joined the planning committee. That was a lot of fun, and gave me the opportunity to see how things run behind the scenes, and just how much work goes into pulling off one of these events. Plus getting to work with other people in the chamber, getting to know them and them to know me, was a golden opportunity.

Now, my plan for the booth (actually it was a double, corner booth) was a little more complicated than most. It was not going to be “just set up your information on a table and they will come” kind of thing. I wanted to teach people something. Give them some knowledge they need to know.

Well, that specific part of my plan didn’t work out quite so well, BUUUT, we did end up talking to people all day; to the point that I hardly got to sit down. I walked away with a small stack of cards, and of that, about 5 serious follow-ups. THAT was a successful event.

I have been in contact with these people, and a couple of the projects are coming to fruition. If 1 turns into a full-borne project (and it will), then it was worth the $$, time and effort.

So I’ll be posting the event soon for next year’s expo, so If you’d like me to put you on a mailing list so you receive that info, JLMK (just let me know).

~vick