Westamerica

Many of you know that I'm an avid mountain biker.  I ride so I can eat without guilt.  That, plus it's just plain fun.  When I turned 50 five years ago, I helped organize a fundraising mountain bike event called "50 Mile Ride for Project Rwanda".  Well, I'm not 50 anymore.  A few years have passed, and that original fundraising ride has turned into an annual event.  Our 6th annual Rwanda Ride was held on Saturday April 28, 2012.  And 782 of my riding "buddies" showed up to help celebrate another birthday ride.  Along the way, we raised over $100,000 in this year's event.  This brings our six year total to over $320,000.  Proceeds benefit Project Rwanda (a micro-enterprise venture that provides cargo bikes to impoverished coffee growers in Rwanda) and Team Rwanda Cycling (creators and managers of the first Rwandan national cycling team).  We were extremely blessed in every way in this year's event.  To learn more, please check out this EVENT RECAP that was recently shared with our participants.

The results are in.  The people have spoken.  Our Super-Scientific Super Snack Sunday Survey is complete.  Based on our contest, while millions of Americans were glued to your televisions, here's what you were snacking on:

Guacamole/Dips (29%), Pizza (21%), Chips (19%) (which means 10% of you apparently eat Guacamole and Dips with your bare fingers), and Chicken Wings (13%).  Junk food rules - very few of you picked veggies or nut mix.  And better sell your Orville Redenbacker stock - fewer than 1% of you eat popcorn on Super Sunday.  We had a few write-ins, including chili, nachos, and those mini-hot dogs you only see once a year.  And a few sweet-tooths out there favored gummy worms, Oreos, and even lemon-drop martinis.  Ugghhh.  Plop plop fizz fizz, time for some relief! 



Congratulations to Abdullah Miskinyar of QLogic Corporation, winner of a brand new 40" TV in our Super Snack Sunday contest.  Way to go Abdullah, we hope you enjoy your new TV!  And thank you to all those who submitted entries in our contest.

Here’s your chance to win a brand new TV!  You don’t even need to know anything about football.  You just need to trust your gut (pun intended).  Tell us your favorite Super Bowl snack food, and we’ll enter your name in our Super Snack Sunday drawing for a new 40” flat screen TV.

CLICK HERE to cast your vote and enter our contest. Hope your favorite team (and your favorite snack) wins!

No, this is not one of those tricky math riddles.  This is a golf story.

Greg Yerkes is one of WAG's ace sales reps.  He's also an "ace" on the golf course.  And now he's able to claim he scored an "ace", the coveted hole-in-one, a golfer's biggest claim to fame.  Well, actually in Greg's case he had to card a THREE - not a one - for the hole.

Let's set the stage... It was a pleasant Sunday, July 11, 2010 at Greg's home course, Mesa Verde CC.  But Greg was having "one of those days" on the course when nothing seemed to go right.  He was the victim of recent golf lessons (and all of us golfers know how badly a few golf lessons can screw up our games).  After much weeping and gnashing of teeth throughout the round, Greg finally arrives at the 18th tee.  It's a long par three, and true to his game that day Greg pulls his tee shot out of bounds.  He tees it up again, and hits a solid shot toward the uphill green.  Walking up to the green, the ball is nowhere in sight.  Greg is sure it must have rolled off the green or in a bunker - but it's nowhere to be found.  That is, until he looks inside the cup.  Sure enough, the ball is in the hole.  A hole in one!  But no, it's a hole-in-THREE.  All his golf partners could say now was "nice PAR Greg".

It's still a great accomplishment, and an even better story.  We took a poll here at WAG, and we think that getting a hole-in-THREE is a lot more rare than getting a hole-in-one.  So, congratulations to you Greg!  Those golf lessons must be working!

We have a winner in our “Insights from the World Cup” contest!
As you know, we were trying to come up with the “Top Ten Marketing Insights” we learned from watching the World Cup – but we came up one short.  So, we called upon our clients and friends to help us out.  We received dozens of entries, most of which were great “quality scoring chances”.  We appreciate the time, the energy, and the creativity that all of our participants invested in this contest.

It was tough to pick a single winner.  Just like in the soccer final between Spain and the Netherlands, this contest went into overtime.  In the end, we’re very pleased to congratulate Amy Yen from Business Wire as our World Cup Winner.  Here’s her winning entry:

Lesson Ten:  Tell a Story.  The World Cup, like the Olympics and many other televised sporting events, are full of storylines about players, teams and countries.  A player overcoming a devastating injury or an underdog team making a Cinderella run can inspire and captivate people who could care less about soccer.  A great story can make them care.  In marketing, there’s an overflow of messages in every medium these days.  But if your brand can tell a great story, it can still make people care.  Your marketing should always try to tell a great story in an interesting way.

Congratulations to Amy!  Your iPad is on the way.  And thank you again to all who participated in our contest.

If you’d like to read the first nine of our Top Ten Insights from the World Cup CLICK HERE.

Westamerica Graphics invites you to join leaders from Southern California's graphics and design industry for the most fun event of the year - the 9th Annual Shoot for the Cure golf tournament.

Our tournament will be held on Wednesday September 22, 2010 at the beautiful and challenging Oak Creek Golf Club here in Orange County.  We'll have a $10,000 putting contest, long-drive and closest-to competitions, yummy burgers from In-N-Out, and an award reception following the tournament.

What a great excuse to spend a day enjoying the sun and the fun, networking with your peers to raise funds in support of a worthwhile cause.  City of Hope is a world-renowned research, treatment and education facility for cancer, diabetes, HIV/AIDS and other life-threatening diseases.  Ranked as one of "America's Best Hospitals" in cancer and urology by U.S. News and World Report, City of Hope is also designated as a Comprehensive Cancer Center - the highest honor bestowed by the National Cancer Institute.

The Graphics Industry Council is a volunteer board of industry executives that come together to support City of Hope.  Westamerica Graphics is a founding member and long-time supporter of this Council.

For more information and to register, please visit Shoot for the Cure

Thanks for submitting your entry in our "World Cup Insights" campaign!

 

As you know, we came up one short in our Top Ten Insights from the World Cup, and we could sure use your help.  All submissions will be considered, and the winning entry will be posted on our blog.  As if that’s not enough, the winner also gets a free 16GB iPad ($499 value).  Best of luck to you!

If you stumbled across this blog story by accident, please go to WorldCupInsights.com to enter our contest.  Share this with a friend, and invite them to enter too!
 

To learn more about Westamerica’s Integrated Marketing Solutions, click HERE

What does your shirt say about you?

Plenty - if you want it to.  Some creative and adventurous folks out there are printing "QR Codes" onto t-shirts, to create walking billboards for themselves.  Heidi Tolliver-Nigro writes about it HERE.

To learn more about how to use QR Codes to promote your business, check out this STORY on our web site.  Mark our words - you're going to be seeing a lot more of these codes in the coming months.  Get on board!

Our WAG U workshop "My 4 Hats" promised to be both FUN and EDUCATIONAL.  We hope we delivered on both counts!  As promised, here's a RESOURCE LIST of web sites and books that Joven and Luke have recommended.

On behalf of Westamerica Graphics, I want to thank you for your support of our WAG U events.  We hope these seminars demonstrate our commitment to helping you succeed.  I also want to thank our presenters, Luke Mysse and Joven Orozco - two "rock stars" in the OC design community.  Well done, guys!

You can connect with them here:
Luke Mysse
Joven Orozco

The creative team at Jovenville sure kicks out some fine work.  We’ve had the privilege of working with them to produce several award-winning pieces.  Here celebrating an Award of Recognition in PIA’s Premier Print Awards is WAG’s own Jim Sutherland, and the Jovenville team of Joven Orozco (Ringmaster) and Kenneth Lim (Visual Scientist).  Jovenville received this award for their Ritz-Carlton Club brochure – a gorgeous piece printed in 4 color process on Curious Metallics cover, then die cut and glued to create a cool “reveal-window” effect.  Well done Joven and team!