announcement Archives | Outsource Marketing

Outmark’s 25th anniversary time capsule

Mon, 25 Jul 2022 22:44:14 +0000

Turning back time for our 25th anniversary

To celebrate the 25th anniversary of Outmark®, we decided to bring it back to where it all began, 1997. What better way to honor the ’90s than to share our own throwbacks from The Good Decade? Past the old Tamagotchi and that orange Rugrats VHS, you’ll find a bunch of totally tubular peeps.

Even though the Outmark team didn’t know each other back in the day, it’s pretty clear we all knew that it’s fun to be good. We hope some of our ’90s memories spark some of your own. Let’s get jiggy with it. Bring on the throwbacks.

It’s time to open the time capsule

Abigail Quam – Marketing Coordinator
Favorite ‘90s throwback: Cartoon Network

Andrea Moretsky – Marketing Integrator
Favorite ‘90s throwback: Pearl Jam

Britta Springer – Marketing Integrator
Favorite ‘90s throwback: The fashion accessory slap bracelets

Hayley Watkins – Graphic Designer
Favorite ‘90s throwback: Watching Nickelodeon

Jeanie Walker – Marketing Integrator
Favorite ‘90s throwback: The 211 Pool Hall

Jen Kodosky – Operations Manager
Favorite ‘90s throwback: Listening to Biggie, Black Street, and Usher

Kayla Everett – Graphic Designer
Favorite ‘90s throwback: Super Mario 64

Kayla Horton – Marketing Integrator
Favorite ‘90s throwback: The movies The Craft and Practical Magic

Lilly Stall – Marketing Coordinator
Favorite ‘90s throwback: Baby Bottle Pop candy

Lizzie Gow – Copywriter
Favorite ‘90s throwback: The movie Matilda

Nick LaPolla – Lead Developer
Favorite ‘90s throwback: The movie The Matrix

Olivia Shaw – Marketing Coordinator
Favorite ‘90s throwback: The movie The Parent Trap

Patrick Byers – Founder/CEO
Favorite ‘90s throwback: Griffey, Gar, Bone, and the Big Unit

Paul Deans – Digital Lead
Favorite ‘90s throwback: The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

Rheana Hersey – Director of Creative
Favorite ‘90s throwback: Butterfly hair clips in allll the colors

Rick Blythe – CRM and Marketing Automation Specialist
Favorite ‘90s throwback: The classic leather jacket

Tricia Vowles – Marketing Integrator
Favorite ‘90s throwback: Blockbuster

Be kind. Please rewind.

You’ve come to the end of Outmark’s 25th anniversary time capsule. While we’ll always look to the future to inspire better marketing, we carry our past experiences with us. Everyone’s story shapes their unique point of view and bridges a connection with others, and we think that’s pretty dope.

Now, if you don’t mind, could you get offline? We need to make a phone call.

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Rheana Hersey named Outsource Marketing shareholder

Wed, 24 Feb 2021 00:01:44 +0000

We are pleased to announce that Rheana Hersey has been named a shareholder at Outsource Marketing, and has been promoted to Director of Creative Services.

Rheana joined Outmark in 2013 and has guided a full spectrum of creative work — from branding to advertising, web design, complex print projects, packaging, environmental design, and more. Her ability to bring fresh thinking to every new project, her creative talent management prowess, and her organization skills have made her an integral part of the Outmark team.

“We’re doubling down on our creative services and are bringing in and building new talent,” says Patrick Byers, Outsource Marketing’s founder. “I can’t think of anyone better to help us maintain our high standards and develop a department that can consistently deliver great creative for our clients.”

Rheana is up to it: “We respect the challenges all marketers face: short attention spans, the cluttered environment, reactive and tactical brand executions, tight budgets, not to mention COVID and all that it brings. I know great creative is a key ingredient to break through, and am excited to lead Outmark’s initiatives to help our clients make it happen.”

Look for creative to emerge in all the nooks and crannies in 2021. Including some places you might not expect.

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New Nonprofit Launches to Help Prevent Teen Opioid Overdoses

Fri, 22 May 2020 00:06:06 +0000

Earlybird Alliance is a newly formed nonprofit organization of concerned parents and community members driven to act in response to the devastating impact of youth substance abuse. Formed on the Seattle Eastside after the recent deaths of local teens by Fentanyl overdose, this grassroots group aims to help parents, guardians, educators, and youth leaders find information, resources, and support before their youth reach the crisis point.

Holly McIntyre’s son was best friends with one of the boys that died last year. “It’s one of those things you never expect to hit home. The deaths of three boys from Sammamish and, more recently, one from Mt. Si, is absolutely heartbreaking. Earlybird was formed to help get in front of this problem, in part by helping families feel less alone and have a clearer path toward support,” said Holly. “Inaction wasn’t an option.”

Earlybird has embarked on a branding and website development project with Outsource Marketing. Outmark® recently named the new organization and will be completing the project pro-bono to support this important cause and to honor 143 Day—a celebration of kindness inspired by Fred Rogers, from the PBS television show Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood.

About Earlybird

Addiction and overdose deaths are a national epidemic and an emerging issue among youth in our local community. Most support organizations are designed to help families already in crisis—Earlybird aims to support them before it gets that far. The organization is a grassroots nonprofit composed of parents and community members who are concerned about youth substance abuse and moved to act. To keep apprised of Earlybird and their mission, follow them on Facebook.

About Outsource Marketing

Founded in 1997, Outsource Marketing is the marketing outsourcing pioneer on a mission to make marketing effective and fun. Outmark® offers clients fully integrated marketing services and a proven way to achieve strategic, seamless, and sustainable results, on-demand.

For more information, contact Earlybird at info@earlybirdalliance.org.

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What’s fun about work? It’s up to you.

Tue, 28 Jan 2020 17:57:56 +0000

January 28th is “National Have Fun at Work Day.”

Yep, there’s a day for that. Your workplace officially has permission to go bananas in the name of fun. Nerf gun fights (you’ll shoot your eye out!), snacks, games, puzzles, crazy hair, pickle eating contests…you name it. It’s a good team-building, morale-boosting opportunity for you and your staff, and also a great way to show your customers the human side of your brand.

At Outmark® it’s no surprise we love this day since we live and breathe, “It’s fun to be good.”

Having fun should be part of every day for your team, not just work anniversaries, employee birthdays, or a day you may never have heard of before you read this. Even Nerf gun fights get old after a few hundred battles though, so making fun happen is a deliberate process that takes planning, time, and a budget. To get started, define what “fun” means and map it to your company culture and brand.

For Outmark, fun means we surround ourselves with team members, clients, and vendors who love what they do and are excited about what’s to come. It means getting warm fuzzies when our client is thrilled with their new creative, ringing a cowbell when goals are crushed, counting down the seconds to a website launch, or feeling goosebumps down our arms when we watch our client’s new video. It’s laughing at ridiculous memes, being silly in Slack, having absurd on-hold music and bantering back and forth with our equally fun clients.

So, yes, definitely take advantage of the official “National Have Fun at Work Day.” But we urge you to take a step back and consider how you can weave more fun into your work—every day.

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Actually is literally a useless word

Wed, 15 Jul 2015 15:55:59 +0000

“Perfection is achieved not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.”
– Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

At Outmark, we keep a tally in the office every time someone says actually or literally. Actually, if you use either word in a conversation, we’ll literally shame and beat you in public. Just kidding. (Or am I?)

Now you’re actually confused.

We track these words because people use them so often, they’ve lost their meaning. Literally now means “figuratively,” and actually just makes you sound like a timid schoolboy too nervous to speak plainly.

So why do we keep dropping them into our sentences?

Because like a linguistic steroid, they seem to add strength and power.

But actually, they don’t. They do the opposite.

Let’s fix that…

Both words weaken your writing. Get it now?

I hope you actually do.

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Need a speaker to energize your organization? Book Patrick this fall.

Tue, 15 Jul 2014 00:00:36 +0000

Our founder, Patrick Byers, has been preaching, teaching, speaking and writing on marketing for two decades now.

If you’re looking for a someone to energize your team, Patrick is a passionate, professional speaker who has presented to audiences nationwide on a host of marketing-related topics including:

Responsible Marketing: How your organization can do well by doing good
Using Social Media to Create Social Good
Personal Positioning: Marketing yourself in a brand-oriented world
Battling Information Overload: How to market amid info glut
The Power of Positioning
Winning the Name Game
Permission Marketing: Why it works
Why Outsource your Marketing?
How Going Rogue Can Help You Go Big

You can learn more about Patrick, read a few testimonials or book him at patrickbyers.com.

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15 things we learned in 15 years – the hard way

Mon, 21 Jan 2013 18:59:43 +0000

To commemorate Outsource Marketing’s 15^th Anniversary, last fall we decided it might be fun—and a little cathartic—to think about the things we’ve learned since 1997.

We’ve learned a lot, but narrowed it to the following list, in no particular order:

“Safe” is dangerous. Safe is invisible amid infoglut. Safe fails. Creative must be bold and brave, and make everyone just a little uncomfortable to break through.
Fuzzy math is better. Ninja spreadsheetin’ skills are great, but when it comes to creative, less is more. With talent, if they aren’t adding, they’re subtracting. And when it comes to budget, it’s seldom enough.
Nobody follows small ideas. What pumps you up? “Hey, we want fancy new tri-fold brochures!” or “We want to reinvent the way widgets are sold worldwide!” ‘Nuff said.
You can’t polish a turd. If the brand sucks, fix it first. No matter how good the creative is—it will be compromised. And it will still be a turd.
Say you want a revolution? Be careful what you wish for. Marketing changed little since the turn of the century. Until the Internets. Inbound marketing. Social media. Mobile. Keeping up is now a full-time job.
Your gut is smarter than your brain. Yes, always do your due diligence. But you know that crazy little feeling in your gut called intuition? It knows something your brain hasn’t figured out yet. Listen to it.
Sometimes you have to do what the client wants, so you can eventually do what they need. Be like a Trojan horse – just sneak in awesomeness instead of wrath.
Stock up on the midnight oil. Plans change, the creative process can’t be forced, and excuses are like armpits: everyone has ‘em and they all stink.
Know when to step away from the canvas. You can always make it better. Always. The trick is to know when it’s good enough, and then move on.
Hire slow and fire fast. You can bust your arse to try to make hastily hired talent work, but the wrong person can be a cancer that simply has to be removed. It happens to the best of us. Don’t let it happen to you.
Marketing planning is better than a marketing plan. Plans that end up on a shelf aren’t worth the paper they’re printed upon. Your plan should be alive, not a document you review once a year.
Usability is more important than features. Online project management tools? We’ve tried ‘em all. The expensive, full-featured products were never fully adopted. Adoption of the simpler, easy-to-use software? 100 percent.
Beware of bright shiny boxes. I love social media. You probably know me from Twitter. For most organizations it should be a side dish, not the meat and potatoes of marketing. Do it well, but don’t let it become a distraction.
Engagement matters. Our model has made it possible to develop and deploy best-fit client teams since the beginning. But having specialists is just table stakes. Having experienced, engaged talent all pulling the oars together is pure magic.
You need to love your clients more than they love you. If you don’t love ’em, they won’t get your best work. It’s human nature. Your focus will always be elsewhere, and they won’t get all the great ideas that happen off-the-clock. Those ideas are reserved for the clients you love. Clients should feel loved, and agencies should only work with clients they can fall head over heels for.

Alfred Sheinwold said “Learn all you can from the mistakes of others. You won’t have time to make them all yourself.” We’ve been paying our dues and trying to learn from our mistakes for over 15 years now. If you can learn from them too, it’s definitely been worth it.

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The responsible way to develop your marketing budget

Fri, 07 Mar 2008 09:15:04 +0000

In four conversations last week, I found myself talking about what to think about when developing a marketing budget.

I’ve been asked dozens, if not hundreds, of times: “For my industry, what percentage of sales should we devote to our marketing budget?” I get it from my students. I get it from our clients. And I get it from the people in the audience when I speak. My answer is usually, “It doesn’t matter,” or, “Why do you care?” depending on how feisty I’m feeling.

Ultimately, your marketing budget needs to be zero-based. Though few people talk about it, I’m not alone on this–it’s one of the cornerstones of Integrated Marketing Communications.

Think about it: Do you really want to do what your competitors are doing? Even if you did, your goals and financial capabilities would never be identical. A company that wants to reduce base erosion by 10 percent would have a different budget than one that wanted to grow their base by 30 percent.

Zero-based budgeting is a process that simply means don’t start with baseline assumptions. You can and should reference what you’ve done in the past, but you really need to start from your objectives to build from there.

You simply shouldn’t pre-project budgets based on industry averages or agency recommendations that don’t reflect your company’s goals and resources.

Instead, pay for what you need to meet your goals, based on the appropriate strategy, tactics and deliverables necessary to execute your marketing plan.

That’s the responsible way to invest in your marketing.

Note: In part, this post has sourced some information from the white paper length preview of my book on Responsible Marketing.

At Outmark, we know that culture matters. We believe that it’s fun to be good, so we pick employees, partners, and clients that are good at what they do and fit our playful culture. Want to learn more about how we can help you make marketing the fun part of running your business? Schedule a free marketing consultation today.

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