The new website makes ample use of the new TheftZapper brand and logo, which features a menacing, dark-hatted criminal silhouette. Strategic Insights proposed the brand as a way for the technology to become more memorable and allow Perimeter Security to further differentiate itself from its competition. Dean Lowder agreed immediately that such a powerful name and logo would significantly enhance his marketing efforts. The Strategic Insights team consisted of Bill Cokas, creative director, and Jenn Soloway, art director and web developer. The selected logo was designed by Chris Griffin, associate creative director, following an agency-wide exploration.

To further dramatize the benefits of TheftZapper Electric Fence, Bill Cokas traveled to Charlotte, NC and Rock Hill, SC to interview Dean Lowder as well as satisfied TheftZapper customers. The results were captured on video, edited and posted to TheftZapper’s new YouTube channel, and fed into the new website.

“We are extremely pleased with the overall effort,” said Bill Cokas. “This is Strategic Insights’ sweet spot: helping a solid company with a respectable product or service establish a firm footing with its brand, preparing it for the next level of success.”

The new website makes ample use of the new TheftZapper brand and logo, which features a menacing, dark-hatted criminal silhouette. Strategic Insights proposed the brand as a way for the technology to become more memorable and allow Perimeter Security to further differentiate itself from its competition. Dean Lowder agreed immediately that such a powerful name and logo would significantly enhance his marketing efforts. The Strategic Insights team consisted of Bill Cokas, creative director, and Jenn Soloway, art director and web developer. The selected logo was designed by Chris Griffin, associate creative director, following an agency-wide exploration.

To further dramatize the benefits of TheftZapper Electric Fence, Bill Cokas traveled to Charlotte, NC and Rock Hill, SC to interview Dean Lowder as well as satisfied TheftZapper customers. The results were captured on video, edited and posted to TheftZapper’s new YouTube channel, and fed into the new website.

“We are extremely pleased with the overall effort,” said Bill Cokas. “This is Strategic Insights’ sweet spot: helping a solid company with a respectable product or service establish a firm footing with its brand, preparing it for the next level of success.”

The new site makes ample use of Inspector Q, a spokescharacter Strategic Insights created for RapidXchange several years ago. Inspector Q personifies the unique 12-step safety inspection process that each propane cylinder goes through before it its returned to the marketplace. After the introduction of Inspector Q on its original website and other marketing materials, RapidXchange saw significant growth. “Inspector Q has really helped set RapidXchange apart. Partly thanks to his memorable presence–and promise of safety and quality–we have been able to greatly expand our territory,” added Daren Parker, owner of both Parker Gas and RapidXchange.

“It has been a pleasure working with the Strategic Insights team,” said HangTime owner Talitha Batts, who selected the agency. “The level of skill, expertise and incredible patience of every staff member is impeccable. I look forward to working with the team on several of my upcoming projects.”

With its original location in Wallace, HangTime aims to attract kids and parents who are looking for recreational options other than passive video games or hanging out at the mall. Talitha stresses that fitness is a big part of HangTime’s mission—thus the name “Fit n’ Fun Zone.” In addition to inflatables and fitness-based video games, HangTime will feature batting cages and a rock-climbing wall. The location—which Talitha hopes to franchise—will be open for scheduled parties and camps, plus open play sessions where kids are free to simply “drop in.”

“Our assignments don’t get much more enjoyable than creating a name, logo and website for a business built around having fun,” said Bill Cokas, creative director for Strategic Insights. “Talitha has been delightful to work with—her enthusiasm is contagious and her dedication to HangTime’s mission has inspired us to ‘think younger’ and create a vibrant, colorful brand for HangTime that will draw in kids like a magnet.”

“We have worked very hard to perfect our services. Strategic Insights has the ability to make our message heard in a clear and concise manner, which will afford us the opportunity to grow and become a competitive resource in our field,” said co-owner Ryan Sobus, who selected the agency. “We are so excited that Strategic Insights will enhance the professional credibility we have strived to establish.”

Based in Raleigh and staffed by registered and licensed dietitians, Healthy Diets aims to inspire and educate individuals who have a medical need or a personal desire to improve their health and well-being. Ryan Sobus believes that everyone deserves to be healthy and has the ability to achieve it, with proper awareness and motivation. Healthy Diets works with individuals and corporations, offering a tailored counseling approach that seeks to change the way people think and relate to the food they eat. Services include metabolic testing, allergy testing, individual and group nutrition counseling, and grocery store tours to encourage healthier shopping habits.

“We’re very excited about being able to work with Healthy Diets at this stage in their growth and help them establish a long-term competitive identity and edge. Fortunately, they excel at what they do and they’re very passionate about it, so 2/3 of the equation is already in place,” said Bill Cokas, creative director for Strategic Insights.

“We have been long overdue for a legitimate site,” said Todd McGowan, CEO of Haddock Collision. “However, our customers don’t tend to go out and do unprompted searches for body shops—they usually find us through their insurance agent. In many cases, by the time they see our website, the decision to use us has already been made.”

With that in mind, Strategic Insights proposed a compact but easy to navigate and informative website that would help undecided customers make up their minds and give confirmed customers “validation” that they’d made the right choice. Designer/developer Jenn Soloway knew that the site would need to be mobile-friendly, since a great many people accessing the site would be in their cars. “We have a separate mobile site for users looking for quick on-the-go access, with the option for viewing the full site. On the full site, dropdowns are activated with a click vs. a hover, so that mobile users are not left out of the navigation or required to scroll to the bottom of the page.”

Since a large portion of Haddock Collision’s business is high-end cars and imports, Strategic Insights felt the site needed to convey a feeling of luxury, using colors and textures associated with the interiors of such cars.

Lastly, the agency harnessed the power of video to shoot several testimonials featuring actual Haddock Collision customers, allowing them to tell their own stories—in their own words—on camera. These videos are accessible from the homepage and pull from Haddock Collision’s YouTube channel. More videos will be added in the coming weeks and months.

”This website is the latest in a series of projects developed for us by Strategic Insights,” said Todd McGowan. “It’s a great companion to our new brochure and estimate flyer, and we are excited about the role it will play in helping further brand our business as we continue to grow.”

“We are thrilled with the finished product and foresee it to be a valuable resource for both us and our patients,” said Kelly Lewis, Marketing Director for Carolina Back. The site is a mix of static and dynamic content pulled from multiple data sources on several different servers and features a lite content management system to allow the site owners to administer the frequently updated areas of the site.

With a location in Cary and in North Raleigh, Carolina Back Institute has been offering its patients non-surgical pain relief since 1992. Despite the name, Carolina Back specializes in conditions of all kinds, from back, neck and joint pain to Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and sports injuries. Carolina Back’s physicians, physiatrists and physical therapists are experts in the field of treating pain, and do so with the long-term well-being of their patients in mind. Available treatments range from such advanced procedures as prolotherapy and laser therapy to well-known successful approaches like physical therapy and acupuncture.

“Since it was comprised mainly of Flash and images, Carolina Back’s original website was largely invisible to search engines,” remarked Jenn Soloway, art director and web developer for the project. “Our goal with their new site was to design first and foremost a pleasant user experience, so visitors—and Google–could easily find what they needed. Equally important was to give the site a contemporary, professional look and feel, that worked well in any browser environment, including mobile devices.”

”We have worked with Strategic Insights for many years on several projects and it has always been a fantastic experience,” added Ms. Lewis. “The professionalism, feedback, and willingness to listen to our specific needs made my role as Marketing Director an easy one on this particular project.”

Prior to joining Strategic Insights, Dan worked as a restaurant consultant for Restaurant.com, a marketing company providing local and national exposure for individual restaurants and chains. Before relocating to North Carolina, Dan also worked in his home state of Illinois at CSOxync, Inc. as an event and sales director and at J9 Executives, where he was one of the owners as well as an executive director. His background includes many years of both business development and account management, skills Strategic Insights values highly.

“We were very impressed with Dan’s attitude and demeanor,” remarks Bill Cokas, Creative Director of Strategic Insights. “From his very first interview, he came across as confident, self-assured and ready to close the sale. His dual experience with both new business and managing accounts is a rare find in this market and will be a tremendous asset to the agency.”

Dan graduated from Greenville College in Illinois with a Bachelors of Arts in Communications. He is active in several marketing organizations and networking associations, and lives in Cary with his wife and young son.

“I am very impressed with the teamwork and the one-on-one relationship Strategic Insights has with their clients, which was one of my main reasons for joining the team.” Dan says. “I am excited to be part of the core group that will take Strategic Insights to the next level.”

Bill Cokas
Creative Director
Strategic Insights

9:15 am I went to vote at my polling place. Out of 2,500 registered I was 638. That’s considered reasonably heavy. My precinct swings Republican with a lot of white upper middle class and retirees.  A high turnout would suggest a Bush victory for NC which is highly anticipated. How much that translates down the ballot it the key issue. My Republican friend who has served in high government positions told me last night that after Governor, NC has always put Democrats in Council of State and Judgeships. I suggested that the state judgeships might go Republican but he was disbelieving. He found it hard to believe that Ralph Campbell could lose to Merritt. I talked with Dick today. He reported heavy turnout in some black communities. We need heavy turnout for Ralph and Jim and the rest of the Democratic ticket. I believe that Charlotte is a key area for Ralph. Charlotte will be a strong area for Vinroot so the ticket-splitting for Democratic Candidates down the ballot will be worth watching. If we have a high turnout among blacks and if we can get close to 50% for Ralph in Charlotte, we will win this race. We placed additional media (radio) in the Charlotte market among the stations that reach the general voting population.   Previously we had placed radio spots on stations that reach into the black community. This should have some impact. Last week I was feeling that we were set to lose Ralph’s race but now I am feeling a little more upbeat. I do not know why, other than I have figured out a logical method of how Ralph could win. Barlow and I both agree that we do not know what the overall heavy turnout means to our races.

Our radio ads for Ralph were all very positive in tone. This reflects the character and personality of our candidate. I detest trying to make someone do something that does not demonstrate how that person lives their life. Ralph is a very good and decent man who cares about his family and his friends. Above all he is loyal. During the last two weeks of the campaign there was significant pressure for Ralph to turn to negative advertising to take Les Merritt to task for his negative tactics regarding Ralph’s family and his leadership while in office. I was a part of these discussions and even prepared a radio ad that brought out a few problems Mr. Merritt has had over the last few years. There was heated debate but in the end we, as a team, decided that his current ads (one had Senator John Edwards, Cliff Cameron, and Burley Mitchell endorsing Ralph, the other talking about Ralph’s recent audit of the Department of Revenue that recommended a 7-day turnaround for state tax refunds) were strong enough to carry the message and Ralph felt more comfortable with them. He will not be dragged into the mud to fight. He insists on keeping it clean. I like that.

7:30 p.m. The crowd is gathering at NRH. The suite is filling up and the computers are hooked up in the war room. Dick Barnes sets up the election night procedures. Dick is a chain-smoking, guitar-playing, country-singing political junkie. He has great instincts and terrific organizational skills. He understands how to GOTV and how to organize county-by-county grass roots efforts. And he is somewhat old school but understands the need for media efforts in campaigns. Dick will get to the room in a few minutes and he’ll worry, wring his hands and agonize the entire evening. Over the last week Dick has mentioned to me on several occasions that in Ralph’s campaign he had done all he could with the resources he had which were only about $250,000, of which media was only about $60-$70,000. It’s about time for the rubber to hit the road. At 7:40 the media is predicting Easley the winner in the Governor’s race based on exit polling.

8:10pm. Gore has been declared the winner in Florida, Michigan, and Illinois. Everyone is ecstatic but I remain somewhat dubious. It’s too early to get excited or concerned about anything. The crowds are large in the halls.

9:00pm. The numbers are bouncing all over the place. We went from being down 60/40 to being up 55/45.

Throughout the evening Ralph’s total run between 52% to 50.5%. We’re nervous because we don’t know which precincts are reporting and which are not. The war room has gotten too crowded and it’s hard to think through anything logically.

11:00ish. Finally Jim Long gets a call. It’s time for him to go downstairs to the main hall to declare victory. He is leading the Democratic ticket with almost 57% of the vote. But what about Ralph? He’s only about 30,000 votes ahead with about 65-70% of precincts reporting. The media had not called Ralph’s victory but who cares. Jim Long declared Ralph the victor and we all marched down where the two of them gave victory speeches and the crowd yelled and the 25 or so TV stations did interviews and it was all very exciting.

12:00pm. We went back upstairs to the war room and began worrying again. This time, with the added pressure of having declared victory when no official victory was imminent. I decided that I had had enough and left to go home about 1:00am. I followed the returns on computer until about 2:00am when I felt Ralph’s lead was adequate. Dick stayed behind in the war room continuing to worry, although he had had a beer by the time I left.

Race

Race is always an issue when an African-American is running. It cuts both ways. Early on in the campaign I strongly felt that we needed to put Ralph on TV, black face and all. In prior elections we selectively used his picture so as to take advantage of his not being known statewide. The problem is that the general voting population doesn’t know him and his office of State Auditor might be the lowest profile of all Council of State officers except State Treasurer. Despite the race baiting tactics of Merritt’s Campaign (he ran a print ad in the far western and eastern areas of the state with a fuzzy picture of Ralph, a black man, and a clear smiling picture of Merritt with the headline “A Clear Choice for State Auditor”) and the negative dirty tricks used against Ralph in the two prior elections, there are many voters who still don’t know who Ralph is or his African American heritage.

Merritt’s aforementioned newspaper ad probably gained a few votes for him in areas that still have a substantial population of bigoted people. But as in most cases like this, the ad served to bring out the vote in predominately black precincts. Through the black churches and the GOTV efforts, we made sure that every black person in the state saw that ad. For every vote Merritt gained with that ad, Ralph won 50 new votes.

Wednesday Morning:

One of the first people I called was Barlow Herget. Barlow was hired to be a campaign spokesperson, public relations counsel and overall campaign bulldog. He plays these roles quite well. Barlow is a former City Councilman and ran for Mayor and lost against Tom Fetzer in his first election bid. My observation is that Barlow is much better in a support role than as a candidate. He loves to push, fight and challenge. He’s a good debater in meetings but will never walk away mad or taking anything personally. And, above all he loves to campaign. Being from Arkansas, he’s a friend of Bill and Hillary, but we’ll leave that alone. The problem with the morning after this election is that many campaign staffers and friends were still concerned that Ralph had not won. As of 10:00am there were 32 precincts not reporting and Ralph was ahead by about 30,000 votes. I explained to several people that morning that if each unreported precinct averaged 1,000 voters, Merritt would have to win almost every vote to overtake Ralph’s lead. Similar to Jerry McGuire I asked each skeptic to repeat the words “Ralph’s won” to me over the phone. Later that day Merritt conceded the election.

Dick and I talked later in the day. He had been up until 5:00am the night before. Dick and I agreed that all the things we did were required to get this victory. Those included Barlow’s work with the media, Dick’s local organizations and GOTV in the black community, and the extra media played in the three major metro areas in NC.

Reid Overcash

(Mr. Overcash is Chairman of the Board of SharedVue, Inc., a sister company of Strategic Insights)

Recently the election law was amended to try to deal with a problem that was created when several people ran for a single seat on the N. C. Supreme Court in 2004. Because the seat did not come open until well after the primary election in May of that year, it precluded the possibility of a runoff. The “winner” was elected with less than 30% of the vote.

Although well-intentioned, the authors of the new legislation decided an Instant Runoff Vote (IRV) would give the winner a true majority of the votes.

In an IRV, voters rank their top three selections in order, so if a majority is not determined by their first selection, the second and then possibly third selection are added to two highest vote totals from the first selection.

The IRV was put to the test this year when Appeals Court Judge Jim Wynn was appointed to the 4^th Circuit Federal Appeals Court and took that position this past August–more than two months from the date of the next general election, thereby requiring the seat to be properly filled by voters on November 2.

So, when Judge Cressie Thigpen was appointed to Wynn’s seat in August, a new election was created and the floodgates opened. When the smoke cleared, 13 people had filed for the seat with four qualifying for public financing. These candidates received only about a third of the money the other publicly financed candidates received, yet still had to a run statewide campaign.

On Election Day, voters went to the bottom of the ballot to make 3 ranked selections among the 13 candidates—in essence, 39 choices for one judgeship. There were about 3000 precincts across North Carolina all trying to explain to the voters what to do. The statistical permutations were mind numbing.

After the first machine-counted round of votes was tallied, Judge Cressie Thigpen led with 20% and former Judge Doug McCullough came in second with 15%. Then the poll workers had to go about the manual process of finding the voters who chose Thigpen and McCullough for their second and third choices. But if you had voted for one of the two leaders, your vote for second or third was not counted.

If anyone reading this is confused, you are in good company. As the vote totals have been reported, Judge McCullough is leading by just 6,000 votes, so Judge Thigpen has requested a recount. The votes are being properly recounted from the first selection onward.

I believe in a statewide election the IRV is possibly unconstitutional, unwise and unmanageable.

In a typical election, I vote for my chosen candidate; that candidate and one other lead the election, but don’t have a majority. A runoff is declared, and a month or so later an election is held to vote for one of the two candidates left. That allows me to go back to the polls and vote a second time for the same candidate I voted for the first time. In other words, I’m not eliminated from voting in the runoff. In the IRV, I am disenfranchised from the runoff vote since my vote is set aside after the initial primary counts. I know of no other election process where a voter is prohibited from voting in a runoff simply because he/she voted for one of the remaining top two candidates.

Judges Thigpen and McCullough have no way to monitor statewide to make sure the process is uniform and fair, since they used public financing and have expended their funds from the campaign. They are not allowed to raise additional money.

Lastly, the entire process, from the voter’s perspective to the poll workers trying to understand difficult instructions on how to count the ballots, makes this process an instant throwaway.

There is a simple solution to never having to see this again by changing the law governing the appointment process. Any seat coming open after the beginning of the filing period (usually around the first of February) should be appointed until the next general election year, in this case 2 ½ years. That would allow a normal election process, so if 13 people ever want to run for the same seat again there can be a legitimate runoff.

Reid Overcash

Mr. Overcash is Chairman of the Board of SharedVue, Inc., a sister company of Strategic Insights, and worked in the Judge Cressie Thigpen Campaign.