Mar
16th

Oneupweb : 10 Years in Traverse City

Posted by Maureen on March 16, 2010 at 12:35 pm

Break out the cake, it’s time to celebrate! Oneupweb has officially been headquartered in the Traverse City area for 10 years.

I thought it would be fun to see what was going on in the world when our CEO, Lisa Wehr, picked up and moved from Alaska to Northern Michigan back in 2000. Here’s what I discovered:

Justin Timberlake was still at the top of the charts with ‘N Sync. (That was well before he brought sexy back. So does that mean sexy was still going on?)
Mel Gibson showed us What Women Want (great quote – “I’m the man-eating &%^$# Darth Vader of the ad world”).
Bush defeated Gore.
Richard Hatch won the first US Survivor.
Y2K (need I say more?).

Ah, yes. Remember when. Anyway, in 2000 Oneupweb had seven employees. That number grew quickly, requiring five moves over the past decade. The last move was to where I am currently writing this blog post from today—a 30,000 square foot facility overlooking Grand Traverse Bay. We currently have 43 employees, and (always growing) a couple of open positions we’re looking to fill. Here’s a pic of our current digs:

It’s been an amazing decade, one full of growth, awards, technologies and community giving. Here are a few highlights for Lisa and Oneupweb over the years:

Named to BtoB’s Who’s Who for six consecutive years for being a key thought leader in the search marketing industry.
Named a top search marketing agency in the world three times by AdAge.
Created two of the nation’s leading proprietary analytics tools.
Featured as a thought-leader in more than 400 articles.
Honored with numerous industry awards including ADDYs, Tellys, Communicator Awards and a BMA Sledgehammer.
Named an Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year.
Completed a 5-day tour of the state offering our services for free to any business that needed them.

Being headquartered in Traverse City, far removed from a bustling metropolis like New York or LA, has proven to be good for Oneupweb. It’s here in our hometown that we can really focus on our clients, dig in and get to work. And being in Northern Michigan has probably also helped us stick to a policy that Lisa instilled from day one—writing it on a piece of notebook paper and sticking it to the wall with duct tape.

Be humble, be honest, be professional.

It’s simple, which is something you don’t find a lot of lately. With the amount of communication options at our fingertips, everyone is clamoring to be the most advanced and have the newest gadgets. We long for things that are complex, and as a result, are quickly leaving simple behind. I was reminded of this today by Lay’s potato chips (random, I know). They just started a new campaign that “happiness is simple“.

It’s the minute you get to spend watching a beautiful sunrise over the bay. That quick break you take to play a game of ping pong. That moment when you get home, take your shoes off and relax knowing you’ve put in a hard day’s work. Yes, simple is good. A simple promise, faithfully followed, has propelled one woman’s dream from a small basement office to one of the nation’s leading digital marketing agencies.

And you can bet, when she looks back on it all, she can’t help but be happy (no, I didn’t have to consult Nick Marshall on that one).

GD Star Rating
loading...

Socialize This Post

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you leave a comment.

Mar
9th

Oneupweb : ADDY® Award Serves as a Reminder of What Can Be Accomplished

Posted by Maureen on March 9, 2010 at 11:38 am

We just announced that Oneupweb has been awarded a Best of Show for our One for the Road: Operation Michigan microsite by the Great Lakes Bay Region 31^st Annual ADDY^® Competition. And that’s not all—we also won a Judges’ Choice award for our stop-motion video, How We Grow Brands, and two additional Gold ADDYs for our augmented reality piece, the StraightUpRocket, and our corporate website, OneUpWeb.com.

Of course, we’re thrilled! But the Best of Show award means a little bit more to us, as we all put our blood, sweat and tears into the One for the Road: Operation Michigan campaign. This was truly about giving back to others, inspiring hope and camaraderie in a state that was facing the worst of the economic downturn. (For anyone who needs a refresher, we basically set out on a five-day, four-city tour of the state, offering our services for free to any Michigan business that met us along the way.) It’s amazing to stop and think of the number of people that we talked with on this trip, the number of businesses we helped and the positive aftermath that we’ve seen with those companies as a result.

There’s something we all tend to do, and that’s to put our heads down, get to work and almost forget about where we’ve been. This award serves as a reminder of what we accomplished, and gets our creative juices flowing. What will we come up with next? You’ll have to stay tuned to find out.

GD Star Rating
loading...

Socialize This Post

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you leave a comment.

Oct
2nd

Archeologists Discover and Translate 10,000 Year Old Social Media Site.

Posted by Rob Aldrich on October 2, 2009 at 3:24 pm

In an amazing discovery, student archeologists uncovered and actually deciphered what is being heralded as the first known social media site 10,000 years before the Internet was even conceived.

null

Although not all information has been made public, some of the original posts and translations are shown below.

null

What? Not social media you say? Hmm…. Well, let’s start with the official definition of social media.

so-cial me-di-a [soh-shuhl mee-dee-uh]

Media created using tools that are highly accessible by the masses which also facilitate

communication related to the media.

Doesn’t a cave painting fit that bill? Countless people over thousands of years have visited that wall, contributed to and learned from it. They have recorded their daily struggles, their achievements and the mundane day-to-day events. If that isn’t social media, what is?

Still not convinced? Well, considering the definition I gave you was mine, I guess I can understand. In the spirit of actual research, I asked five well-informed people for their definition of social media.

Here is what I got (names have been changed to protect the innocent):

Edna: For businesses: social media is humanizing companies whilst promoting transparency through honest engagement with people. In other words, enough with the crap. For people: social media helps people connect and communicate with each other better than ever before.

Pierce: Social Media is a blanket term which describes the technologies and methods people (and businesses) use to communicate online in an effort to share opinions, experiences and perspectives.

Fredrico: Use of tools, usually online, that allow people to share thoughts, comments, stories, links, photos, and videos with friends, colleagues, and strangers.

Linda: Connecting (networking) person-to-person on the internet through user-generated content.

Beauford: Ok, social media is a kind of opt-in push delivery mechanism by which you are connected to people with like interests in near real-time. It’s all about immediate two-way communication, whereas the old guard was about one way.

I couldn’t find an actual definition in the dictionary, but looking online turned up additional definitions.

So what is social media? I maintain my definition is right (including cave paintings and bulletin boards at grocery stores), but at this point, I need to admit to a really old trick used by magicians (and “experts”). It’s called misdirection, because guess what? It doesn’t matter.

It starts to become clear why there are so many experts. If you consider the fliers that you just printed for the local teen dance to be social media, and you were the one that made ‘em… hey! You are an expert. It’s great to be an expert; oh the perks!

Clearly defining social media really only serves to help identify “social media experts”. Which mainly helps um… them.

None of this addresses the real question: How can your business harness the awesome power of digital media, smite its competitors, and claim its rightful position at the top of the food chain?

Can you channel the power of this media tempest? Yes. How? That changes every day.

Find someone who is immersed in this new sea. Instead of hiring a swim coach, find a swimmer who crosses the ocean each day and ask them what’s important. Keep them close. Tomorrow, the most relevant thing will be different – and they’ll know about it.

Social media isn’t Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Flickr, <insert endless stream of social sites here>. It isn’t the web, newspapers, or bulletin boards. It’s all of these things and an 8,000 year old hand painting on a cave wall. It isn’t new and it changes faster than the weather.

Right now, you have the opportunity to be more responsive, aware, proactive, and adaptive than ever. The channels are there, and early adoption is the edge you have over your competitors.

The current is pushing us all the same way. You can swim against it or drift along. Better yet, swim downstream and be there waiting with a towel when everyone else gets out.

Robert A.

The Premier Social Media Expert of the Universe (TPSMEU)

*Editor’s Note: If you like the information in this blog, check out our blog that is dedicated to social media at StraightUpSocial.com.

GD Star Rating
loading...

Socialize This Post

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you leave a comment.

Aug
20th

One for the Road: Grand Rapids

Posted by Maureen on August 20, 2009 at 4:03 pm

Phew! This is the first free second I’ve had since the rain stopped pouring down on us in Grand Rapids. We’re at John Ball Zoo, well, the park right outside John Ball Zoo. Okay, if you really want to get specific, we’re in the Duck Pond Pavilion. But anyway…

Yes, it rained. It rained a lot this morning. But we still unloaded and set up shop, and then a miracle happened. The sun broke through the clouds, the rain went away, and the businesses started showing up.

Grand Rapids, Kalamazoo, Muskegon. People from all over the area were asking a ton of different questions about online marketing. This one had a new product to launch, that one had questions about social media, and on it’s gone. And it’s been fantastic! I think the One for the Road: Operation Michigan crew is more pumped than ever. It’s just such a great feeling to meet with people and help them with their digital marketing. And the more people we help, the better it gets.

In true Oneupweb style, we’ve also had some interesting antics. Here are a few:

Teal and Dave fight over a piece of food. Teal acts like she is going to hand it to Dave, then licks it. Teal wins.
Pizza sauce was spilled on a white One for the Road t-shirt. A shout wipe from my mom that was in my stocking last Christmas saved the day.
In the duck pond there are paddle boats that look like giant swans. If we can figure out how to get on them, we have a race planned. There has already been a lot of trash talk, and it’s early yet.
Our motor home doesn’t quite fit into the angled parking spaces.

Okay, I have to run. More people are here, and I love meeting with them to learn about their particular needs.

I have to mention, we’ll be back home in Traverse City tomorrow (I can’t wait to sleep in my own bed!), offering our online marketing consultations for free from 11am to 6pm. If you’re in town, please stop by! And don’t forget to check out the trip on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and Flickr.

We’ll see you on the road.

GD Star Rating
loading...

Socialize This Post

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you leave a comment.