A New Year is Upon Us......Have a Happy, Healthy 2008

Well Friends, New Years Day has come and gone. A lot has happened in the past year. January was when your friendly neighborhood Sales and Marketing Director, ME!, officially started, last January 1st, (although I was there full time since around December of '06, but hey, at least in January a paycheck started, lol.)


Of course the biggest thing for Accent Media, was our move to Downtown Youngstown, after 4 years in the old Howland office. The 650 square feet of Howland was great when the company was just Chip, and then a couple more came aboard. By the time I started in December of '06, we were up to 6 of us and an Intern. As fate would have it, we met our now very close friends Mary Jo Maluso, and husband Rick Blackson. The couple known throughout the Valley for their vocal and instrumentation skills, as well as their work in front of and behind the camera, had a project they wanted to talk to us about. In the conversation we talked about our need for more room and Mary Jo recommended the old PharMor Building at 20 Federal Place in Youngstown. The 7th floor used to host Pharmor's production studios, and Mary Jo's mom Claire, worked in the building and could get us a tour of the place. Of course it was love at first sight. The 4,500 available square feet was perfect for growing into. We could use half of it immediately, and have first option on the second half as soon as we were ready. No walls would have to be moved, there was a sound room and a special effects room and a full studio all just waiting to be used. Three months of hard labor later, painting, decorating, moving equipment in, etc., we proudly held our Open House on Thursday, August 16th with none other than Rick and Mary Jo singing for us as we invited 300 of our friends and neighbors to check out the new spot. We love showing off the place and giving tours, so if you havent had a chance to stop by, just give me a call and I will take you on a personal guided tour, anytime Monday thru Friday, from 9am to 5pm.


2007 also gave us some great new Interns, both production and marketing, and new employees, and a sad farewell to a couple of our valued employees, moving on to other adventures in their lives. With school an important part of some of our editors lives still, we are proud of the accomplishments they have achieved and are pursuing. We wish them the best luck in this Spring semester and will try not to work them too hard while here at work.....(like that would ever happen, they are always working on about 3 projects at once.) We look forward to some new Interns in the coming year, and hopefully hiring a couple of our old Interns as they finish up this last semester at school.


We are heading into the new year with a lot of new clients and are looking to grow even bigger in 2008. I have just started closing out the books on 2007 and I am happy to report that Accent Media's sales grew more than 40% last year, and we are projecting to grow as least as much in 2008. Accent Media welcomes new clients such as Jump Stretch, Prima Health Care, Kent State Univeristy, and hopefully YOU!! We are proud to be working with with Adtronico and the many new clients they are bringing to Accent as well. American Gladiator Fitness, the Eastwood Mall, Austintown ER, are just a few of the clients they are working with and we are happy to be making their projects look the best in Northeast Ohio.


Being in downtown Youngstown has been an exciting time for us as well. We have become good friends with a lot of our neighbors here, and are looking forward to be even more involved in downtown activities in 2008. Fellow blogger friend Phil Kidd will soon be taking over as the Downtown events coordinator as Accent's friend Claire Maluso takes some time to enjoy retiremement with her great husband John. Phil's leadership in his Defend Youngstown blog and campaign makes him the ideal replacement. Phil's enthusiasm for the city rivals most of our elected officials and they are lucky to be working together now with such a fine young man. We are looking forward to lots of new ideas building upon the progress that Downtown Youngstown has already made. We are looking forward to the Bean Counter's Jason coming back with a concept by a new owner but in the same location. Rumor says work will begin again at the building above them, and I am looking forward of it actually happening this time around. You will probably also be able to catch me many evenings at the new Rosetta Stone Cafe. I cant resist a great cup of coffee and wireless internet after work to unwind, or to finish up some work outside of the office environment. I look forward to a happy and prosperous 2008 blogger friends...and hope the same to you all as well.........Scott Sales and Marketng Director, Accent Media, LLC.

New Years and Farewell for Now

New Years Eve is fast approaching, and if you're like me, you're always waiting until the last minute to make plans. Well, here's an idea if you don't have anything going on...and if you have plans...change them, because downtown Youngstown is where you need to be. The Annual First Night Youngstown will be taking place, showcasing local talent, and offering food and activities in a alcohol-free and family-friendly environment. Bring the kids along to do crafts, eat, check out local acts like the Zou, Posture Coach, Jones for Revival, Dead Beat Poets, Jaclyn Hodos, Eric Thompson and BJ O'Malley...there are just too many to name. The opening ceremonies kick off at 5:30pm in our building at 20 Federal Place. We may also be offering tours of our new office to any who may be interested, get in touch with us if you want to check it out.

Well, it's been a great couple of months for me here at Accent Media, but it's time for my internship to end. I want to take the time to thank the staff here letting me help out, and for putting up with me; and thanks to all of you who have kept up on my blogs. If all goes as planned, I look forward to coming back to Accent Media after my spring semester. Until then...farewell.

-Dave

Keeping Warm in the Ohio Cold

Our last blog until Christmas, it's been a while and time has sure passed us by. We'll be out of the office for the next four days, so we wanted to take this chance to wish everyone a Merry Christmas.

Getting into the holiday spirit, we recently did some filming of the "Miracle on Easy Street" Christmas show. This is an annual production at the De Yor Performing Arts Center, which is run by the Youngstown Symphony. We are very excited to be working on the DVD for both casts and we would like to commend them for a job well done this past weekend. Speaking of the Youngstown Symphony, did you know that Accent Media did all of their commercials and webisodes? Well if you didn't, you do now. Stop by their website and check out the past webisodes we have done and keep an eye out for more to come.

The New Year also brings good news. We are in negotiations to go to San Francisco in the upcoming months to film a pilate episode for a TV show about good health. The staff here at Accent Media is eager because if all goes well, we will be filming on the weekends over several weeks in San Francisco. It seems that we have developed a niche for health an wellness videos over time. As we mentioned in our last post, we have recently been involved with Jump Stretch, working on instructional videos for their FlexBand product. We are also still working with Shine! to redesign their current website and market their two locations in Columbiana and Boardman. Also, we did in the not too distant past. So, we think we're getting the hang of this new niche, it's a good feeling.

In completely unrelated news, we got a new coffee maker at the office. We're talking the king of the coffee makers, a Keurig single-cup machine that will make coffee, cider drinks, hot cocoa, and tea. It keeps us warm in this cold Ohio winter.

Merry Christmas all.

A jump into Christmas

Thirteen days until Christmas...sure we've gotten the tree up and the
cards mailed, but it still seems to be approaching us faster as the
years go by. You know what that means, it's time to eat, eat, eat
again...can't we just move Thanksgiving away from Christmas so we have
more time to get rid of those extra pounds in between?

Well, for those of you feeling bloated this holiday season, here is an idea. Go to jumpstretch.com to find different solutions to get back in shape. Jump Stretch, based out of Youngstown, offers the world's first all rubberband gym, where you can get a personal trainer, choose from a variety of classes and pick up some of their FlexBand exercise equipment. It's the perfect gift for your holiday exercise buff or the couch potato who wants to do something healthy and get in shape. We're working with Jump Stretch to develop a training video on how to use the FlexBands to their fullest potential. We'll keep you up to date. Is your company looking for training videos? Keep us in mind for your video production needs.

Local Talent Follow-Up and WYTV

Hello all, back again for another week with plenty to keep us busy. First, we want to thank our friends at Defend Youngstown for spreading the word about our last blog, in response to our search for local talent. Check out their blog and keep up on what's happening in the area.

Speaking of local talent, we would like to say good luck to Matt Palka, who recently made a video for his song "Frayed Blue Jeans". The video was filmed in and around Youngstown and is a great showcase for what the area has to offer. Matt entered his video in a contest, where a recording contract is up for grabs, go vote for it here.



Thanks to Shout Youngstown for passing along this information. If you want to learn more about Matt and his video, you can log on to his blog.

Now, to change gears, we'd like to acknowledge those who have recently been laid off from their jobs at WYTV. We are always willing to talk to anyone with experience in video production and related fields. Lay-offs are never pleasant any time of the year, especially for scarce jobs in video production, we are always looking for extra help. Contact us if you are interested and we can set up a time to meet. Best of luck to you all.

Finally, are you tired of waiting on the phone for hours and never talking to a real person? Phone trees are a real hassle and a waste of valuable time in our fast-paced lifestyles. We recently came across a new web service called Bringo. You sign up for this free service, and when you need to make a call, Bringo will do the work for you and notify you when a live person is on the line. It sounds like a great concept and we are looking forward to giving it a try.