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Great video of last summer’s Doodle Downtown chalk art competition, organized by TDG’s own Laurel Antonmarchi. The event was last summer at Main Street Square in Rapid City.  Stephen Peot of Rapid City shot and edited the film. He definitely captured the fun mood of the event. 

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Interesting conversation with Laurel Antonmarchi over lunch yesterday about how passion for your work affects the quality of your work. I told her about my experience years ago with a couple of coffee roasters. The first roaster loved the smell, flavor and buzz of a well-prepared cup of coffee. That passion was apparent to me with every steamy sip of his coffee I drank.

The second company’s owners saw the fresh-roasted coffee craze as an opportunity to get in on the ground floor of a trendy new business. They learned everything about coffee roasting. They could quote chapter and verse about the coffee-growing regions, roasting temperatures and the rituals of brewing high-end coffee. But as far as I could tell, they didn’t drink coffee. I’m not even sure they liked it. And their coffee was, well, nothing special really. 

I won’t name names, because both companies are still in business. But it illustrates a point that Laurel and I were talking about. You really have to believe in what you are doing. You can’t fake it, at least not for long. 

-- DAN Daly

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The songwriter’s lot is a tough one — personal rewards are great, and the financial rewards can be. But few songwriter achieve the type of celebrity status as the musicians who record those songs.

Members of the up-and-coming Nashville band, Old Dominion, have found songwriting success, and now seem poised on stardom as recording artists.  The band is in Deadwood for the Wild West Songwriters Festival.

They have penned songs recorded by the likes of  The Band Perry, Keith Urban and Luke Bryan. Meanwhile, their first single, “Break Up With Him,” is currently No. 6 on the Billboard Country Chart.

I had a chance to meet with Brad Tursi, Matthew Ramsey and Trevor Rosen — three of Old Dominion’s five members, Thursday afternoon. If you had to choose, I asked, between songwriting and performing, which would you pick? 

'We don’t have to choose,” Tursi said, breaking into a broad smile. "That’s the beauty of it.” 

Added Ramsey, “We’ll always be writing songs, no matter what else we do." Although four of the five members are from Virginia — that’s where the name Old Dominion came from — they formed in Nashville.  And they remain songwriters at heart.

The band has been to songwriting events before, but never the Wild West Songwriters Festival. In fact, this is the band’s first visit to Deadwood. “We’ve heard a lot about this festival, and we’re happy to be here in Deadwood,” said Rosen.

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Front-End Website Developer

Job Title: Front-End Website Developer

Salary:  $32,000 - $37,000 per year DOEQ

Status: Full Time

Company: TDG Communications, located in Deadwood, South Dakota, is a full-service advertising agency, specializing in branding, public relations, creative, media placement, interactive marketing, video, and web development.

Job Description: An experienced website developer/coder, comfortable with responsive design and mobile requirements, who takes pride in having their code standards compliant and isn’t afraid of a challenge.This person will work in a team that is responsible for designing, coding and modifying websites, from layout to finish and according to a client's specifications. Also, the Front-End Website Developer will assist clients with technical support, maintenance and updates.

Desired Skills & Responsibilities:

High level of proficiency with PHP and MySQL in a Lamp hosting environment.

Understanding of HTML 5, CSS 3, JavaScript, XML, AJAX, jQuery, Responsive Web Design and web services.

Capable of converting Photoshop/Fireworks mock-ups into CSS/XHTML templates.

Experience working/developing in Joomla! and WordPress Content Management Systems.

Implementation of security and data protection.

Participate in all phases of software development life cycle.

Comfortable with maintenance of existing code base as well as new development.

Ability to work independently and in a team environment.

Ability to work on multiple assignments simultaneously and still maintain strong attention to detail.

Understanding of cross-browser compatibility issues.

Understanding of SEO techniques and best practices.

3+ years experience with website front end coding and interactive design

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Information Systems or related field or relevant combination of education and experience.

Benefits Information:  Available benefits include group health, extended illness coverage, simple IRA, access to Aflac policies, a killer in-house espresso bar, extremely flexible scheduling and an office full of great people.

To Apply: Please email cover letter, resume and references to tera@tdgcommunications.com.

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Creating Kick-Ass Login Passwords

If online safety and security isn't a concern to you then you are going to get in trouble sooner or later. Books have been written about this subject but let's just focus on one simple point. Passwords

The single biggest threat to the security of your online accounts is the login passwords that you use.

I know, BORING! HEARD IT BEFORE! DON'T HAVE TIME!

Here are current best practices and tips on how to create and use secure passwords. First the rules then the tips that make them easy to follow.

Best Practice Rules:

Use a unique password for each online account

DO USE random words. DON'T use random characters

Include some capital letters, numbers and symbols like hyphens

The longer the better. shoot for 12 or more characters

Ya I know that's pretty hard core. Here is how to manage this in your head. You have to create a set of rules that you can use to create and remember a hardcore password.

Easy to Use Tips

DO NOT USE these tips as is. Change it around to fit you.

Step 1: Create a core set of 3-4 random words. You will always use these words. Here are my 3 words: bells utilize energetic

Step 2: Remove the spaces and capitalize the last letter of each word. Result: bellSutilizEenergetiC

Step 3: Put a number at the beginning and end of the core words Result: 3bellSutilizEenergetiC8

Step 4: Put any number of symbols at the beginning or end of this Result: 3bellSutilizEenergetiC8** This is the core set that you will always use so memorize it.

Now 3bellSutilizEenergetiC8** is a pretty rocking password BUT there is one big problem. It has to be unique to each online account.

Step 5: To make it unique take parts of the domain name you are logging into and add it to your password. Use the first 2 and last 1 letters of the domain name at the start of your password. Example for logging into wellsfargo.com: weo Result: weo3bellSutilizEenergetiC8**

To see how secure this password is go to https://www.grc.com/haystack.htm and enter our example kick ass password: weo3bellSutilizEenergetiC8**

According to GRC, if a hacker used a Massive Cracking Array Scenario (basically a super computer) it would take 76.43 million trillion trillion centuries to crack.

Now this is a secure password and all you have to do to remember is it remember your core set of 3bellSutilizEenergetiC8**

Why bother if hackers can steal your password from a website?

Ok so let's say that you follow these rules and tips and you create unique, hardcore passwords for all your online accounts. Let's say one of these websites gets hacked and they steal your password for the account at that website. Because that password is unique to that website the passwords you use for other websites are still safe.

But can't the hacker figure out my password logic and guess?

Remember, hackers are dealing with thousands or millions of compromised passwords that they are trying to use to hack into millions of other accounts, and they don't know which of them you have accounts on. They are simply going to use your compromised password to log into to a huge list of other websites. Because your password is unique (even by a little) their attempt will fail and they will discard it and move onto someone else's password.

The hacker is searching for a needle in a haystack. The key to keeping safe is making your haystack as big as possible.

- Jack

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Keystone Chamber’s new website is monumental!

TDG is proud to present the Keystone Chamber of Commerce’s shiny new website! Designed with a clean uncluttered look, this site will make your trip-planning to the Black Hills a breeze.

The Keystone website focuses more on content that helps users find the information they are looking for quickly and easily.

With options like Get Here, Lodging and Dining, tourist can choose what they want to do in the area. Not sure how to spend your days in Keystone? Let us help by clicking the “Plan Your Visit” tab that gives you a day-by-day itinerary.

Thanks to TDG's amazing web guys, tourist can make their Black Hills trip monumental with just a few easy clicks.

After all who doesn't want to visit the Home of Mount Rushmore?

-- Sadie Snyder

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Free + Premium = Freemium

Got to love the evolving English language. My latest favorite word: Freemium. In just eight characters, it sums up the popular online marketing tool. Give away a product with limited usability for FREE, then offer to sell the PREMIUM version. Free+premium=freemium. Brilliant. The freemium business model seems to be everywhere these days. Evernote, DropBox, Skype, LinkedIn and even Google offer freemium services. There are not a lot of Black Hills businesses that have taken a dip in the freemium pool, but I think there's potential. It doesn’t always work, though. I read a Wall Street Journal story (no, I didn’t pay) about a Massachusetts company, Chargify, whose freemium structure just about sent it into bankruptcy. It offered its billing management service free to companies that had fewer than 50 customers per month. The free version was a hit, the paid version was not. Chargify put up a paywall -- another great word -- and revenues improved.

At best, you can expect less than 5 percent of your users to upgrade to premium. The trick is to structure your freemium service in a way that encourages users to upgrade. 

If you give away too much, or if your paid version doesn’t add value, users won't upgrade. Why buy the cow when you're getting the milk for free? But it your free version is nearly useless, they won't see the value in your product. It's like giving away a car with four flat tires, and then trying to sell air for $10,000 per tire.

Marketing is a lot more than advertising or promotion. Having a good product is not enough. Pricing, packaging, availability play a big part.

-- DAN DALY 

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Snowmobiling with the Rushmore Mascots

Working for a full-service advertising and public relations firm in the Black Hills, you never know what project you might be doing. Some are downright fun. I mean, how can you not have fun snowmobiling in Spearfish Canyon with George, Tom, Teddy and Abe?

Our client, Spearfish Canyon Lodge, wanted photos of the Mount Rushmore Mascots aboard snowmobiles in Spearfish Canyon. The Rapid City Convention & Visitors Bureau was good enough to let us use their mascot costumes. The Lodge staff was good enough to wear them.

The canyon was gorgeous the day TDG's Sadie Snyder and I hopped on a snowmobile and followed the big heads up to Roughlock Falls. Sadie, it turns out, is a much better snowmobile driver than I am. She's also a great photo assistant/art director.

I have to say, there's something disconcerting about working with terrycloth figures who have enormous heads and absolutely no facial expressions. "As you drive by, try to get as close together as possible," I said. Four blank stares. "Can you hear me?" More stares. (Inside the heads, they were nodding in agreement.)

I wouldn't want to play poker with these guys.

-- DAN DALY

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Best tourism website in Illinois! Congrats to Blackhawk Waterways

A  TDG Communications website won the Illinois Governor’s Award of Excellence. Our client, Blackhawk Waterways Convention & Visitors Bureau in Polo, Ill., won the award Monday night at the 2014 Illinois Governor’s Conference on Travel & Tourism in Chicago.

The website features the outdoor activities, history, dining, arts and rural culture of the four-county Blackhawk Waterways region of Northwest Illinois. It was named the state’s best website among Illinois tourism groups with a budget of less than $700,000 a year.

"Our new site is simple, sharp, and inviting -- just like our region," said Diane Bausman of Blackhawk Waterways CVB. “Thanks and credit go to TDG for all the blood, sweat & tears they put into it."

The website, launched last spring, was the first among any Illinois CVB websites to use responsive design, a technology that makes a site easily viewable on a cell phone, a tablet, a laptop or a desktop. The site adjusts itself to fit the screen on which it is being viewed.

“In our experience working with tourism clients in South Dakota, Illinois, Montana and other destinations, we know that a website has to be more than just a destination showcase. It has to be an effective tool for tourists to make the decision to visit, and to help them plan their trip,” Monte Amende, creative director and partner in TDG Communications.

Check out the website visitnorthwestillinois.com

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If you make a living in the public eye, free speech has a price

At a newspaper I worked for several years ago, there was a young guy who worked part-time as a photographer. One night, after a few too many beers, he wandered into a convenience store to use the restroom. The clerk wouldn't give him a key.

So he went out to his car, returned with his camera and started shooting photos of her. When the clerk asked what he was doing, he said, "I'm a photographer for the newspaper, and I'm going to do a story on what a b**** you are."

The clerk didn't see the news value. Neither did the editor, who fired the photograph the next morning.

A reporter at the same newspaper was a pro-life activist who spent a lot of her personal time at abortion clinic protests, often ending up in jail. Eventually, she too was fired. The stated reason: missing too much work. However, she was convinced that it was a political move by a controversy-shy publisher.

I bring up these stories because I've been reading lately about Justine Sacco's racist tweets that got her fired from a top PR job, and Phil Robertson's gay bashing that got him banned from "Duck Dynasty."

There has been a lot of talk about free speech, censorship and private vs. public activity. After more than two decades as a journalist, I can tell you: If you spend any time in the public eye, then everything you do is public. If you put yourself out there, especially when someone pays you, then you can't choose which part of your visible life is off the record.

That applies equally to the mayor of Toronto as it does to journalists, radio personalities, bloggers, PR people and reality TV stars. It's not about censorship -- the First Amendment protects you from the government, not your boss -- but about consequences.

If your employer puts unreasonable restrictions on your free speech, find a different employer. Or shut up.

-- DAN DALY

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The smell of victory

Montana's awareness programs are the best. How good, you ask? This campaign worked so well, that even when expired, it caused mild panic and evacuations.

Here's the story: 

GREAT FALLS, Mont. (AP) — Those scratch-and-sniff cards the energy company sends to customers to teach them to recognize the artificial smell added to natural gas? Turns out they work pretty well.

Energy West general manager Nick Bohr tells the Great Falls Tribune that workers recently discarded several boxes of expired scratch-and-sniff cards in Great Falls. But when the garbage truck picked them up and compressed the load Bohr says "it was the same as if they had scratched them."

The resulting odor prompted numerous false alarms and building evacuations as the garbage truck traveled through downtown Great Falls on Wednesday morning, leaving the smell in its trail.

Bohr says the company apologizes for the disruption.

Impressed? They did good work and sent a message, all while smelling like old eggs. Here's to hoping your media can cause a stink.

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If you type in “bad design,” Google sleuths you up a site called Good Design // Bad Design. The first good post shows Star Wars pictures, told with a typographic flair. There’s Yoda, with angle-bracket ears, upside down parenthesis for well-worn cheeks, and a discreet capital “D” turned on its side for a nose.

It’s the type of design that leaves you curious, wanting more. That coming from a person who’s never in the history of life wanted anything “more” regarding Star Wars. Good design has this ability to take you out of your realm and get you thinking about what could be.

So. If good design gets your heart all aflutter, what does bad design do? Well, it doesn't hurt - not necessarily - as long as you’re not designing grenades and the like. Bad design, it’s just not well thought-out. I have this beautiful red bowl at home. At first, it’s shiny and invites you on a date for cookie-dough ice cream. But then after you wash it, the red dulls. You pour in hot ramen, and the inside cracks. Its little blue stain reminds you of the blueberries you ate -- four weeks ago. That’s just inconsiderate.

Bad design isn't always downright ugly. It just...disappoints. I guess the point is this: If you can design your own Yoda, do it. If you want to make your own damn ice cream bowl, be my guest. But if in two weeks your ice cream is leaking all over the place, well, you have a decision to make.

You could devote a big hunk of your spare time to practicing construction of ice cream bowls. Until you do enough research and learn all the technical skills that go into making stuff, perhaps leave it to the professionals.

To see TDG’s gallery of ice cream bowls*, click here. 

*And by ice cream bowls, we of course mean design.

- katie

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Coming to an address line near you -- Ellipses.dotdot

Just had a brainstorm. ... OK, maybe a squall.

Soon companies will be able to create their own dot-Brand domains, like "fiction.amazon" instead of amazon.com/fiction." According to the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, or ICANN, nearly 2,000 companies and regions applied last year for the new extensions.

“We are standing at the cusp of a new era of online innovation,” said Rod Beckstrom, CEO of ICANN. “That means new businesses, new marketing tools, new jobs, and new ways to link communities and share information.”

I got to thinking. "tdg.tdg" seems redundant and repetitive. So, I'm going to suggest that we change the name of the company to Ellipses, and get the domain extension of dotdot.

Then we could have a web address of ellipses.dotdot -- Get it?

- DAN DALY

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Mobility movement is gaining speed

The other day, I went to a 2-hour appointment and accidentally left my phone at home. I thought about going back for it, but didn't. Who can't go two hours with a phone? ... Me, apparently. I wouldn't describe myself as depressed for those two hours -- but I had this nagging feeling that there were things happening in the world, important things, that I was missing.

I'm not the only one. Today I saw a study by IDC (funded, I should point out, by Facebook) that examines our obsession with smart phones and social media. First, IDC noted that in the U.S. there are 155 million smart phones in use, which means half of all Americans use them. By 2017, nearly 68 percent of us will be smart phones users. (I suspect that number is low.)

Some tidbits from the survey:

Just 16 percent of our smart phone use involves actual phone calls. The rest is texting, browsing, posting photos, etc. Rather than smart phones, they should be called pocket computers.

78 percent of us reach for the smart phone within 15 minutes of waking up. (44 percent of us use it as an alarm clock.)

32 minutes is the average time spent on Facebook each day.

33 percent of Facebook users say they used Facebook to send and receive private messages to friends. Could Facebook replace email as the primary way to communicate online? (Did I mention who sponsored the study?)

-- DAN

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Meet MAX

South Dakota Housing Development Authority's new incentive, called the Mortgage Credit Certificate, allows borrowers through its First-Time Home Buyer Program to recoup 20 to 40 percent of their mortgage interest as a tax credit. For most borrowers, that could be worth up to $2,000 a year -- for the life of the loan.

Are you still awake? ... My point exactly.

TDG's challenge: Take this very important message to a demographic group whose eyes tend to glaze over during discussions of things like tax credits and mortgage interest.

One of the older staffers suggested we do a takeoff on the old "C.C. Rider" song from the 1960s. You know, "M-C-C rider, well now see-ee what you have done. ..."

After blank stares from the rest of the staff, we moved on.

How about a super hero? Save the day, bring the American Dream to young folks sitting on the home ownership fence? That's how Max was born -- MAX $2,000, that is.

Derek Olson, our gifted graphic artist, animator and wallyball champ, created SDHDA's new hunky hero. In this animated video, the couple is literally sitting on the fence. MAX carries them to home ownership -- literally.

You'll be seeing more of MAX. He's a big part of the MCC campaign that we are rolling out this spring.

-- DAN DALY

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Nothing Makes an Impact Quite Like Clever Advertising

Of the many things I appreciate in my line of work, a truly clever advertisement might be one of the best. I appreciate advertisers who prefer to make their audience think rather than simply trying to beat someone over the head with their message. Because, from where I’m standing, if you can get your audience to notice your ad, take the time to understand your ad and actually be impressed by the message and creative, the chance of them remembering your brand is infinitely greater.

Here are two examples to help explain what I mean that I came across while doing research for a medical client. I’m not going to explain what they are or who they are for, because that would defeat the purpose of this whole post. But, I hope you appreciate the thought that went into these ads as much as I do.

So, here’s to you clever advertisers. Job well done!

-Chad