Responding to increased regional, national and global marketing assignments, Hydrogen Advertising of Seattle has hired Mary Knight as vice president and executive creative director. Mary joins three former Draftfcb in Seattle colleagues – Rick Peterson, Tom Scherer and Deborah Taylor-Kasindorf – comprising the new management team for fast-growing Hydrogen.

Mary returns to Seattle after almost five years at Draftfcb in Chicago where, as executive vice president and group creative director, she developed award-winning campaigns for leading brands in a broad range of industries. Among her duties were management of global brand responsibilities for Boeing and Sharpie, U.S. brand efforts for Qwest Communications and DiGiorno Pizza, and key projects for Motorola USA.

Prior to moving to Chicago, Mary was executive creative director at Draftfcb in Seattle from 1996 to 2007 where she led development of high-impact, high-profile work for Group Health Cooperative, Noble House Hotels & Resorts, Hewlett Packard and Boeing. At Draftfcb in Seattle, Mary first worked with Rick Peterson and Tom Scherer, Hydrogen Advertising’s co-founders. While at Draftfcb in Seattle, Mary also had the opportunity to partner with Deborah Taylor-Kasindorf, who joined Hydrogen as vice president and director of account management in 2010.

“Mary is an outstanding creative leader with a proven track record of assembling great creative teams and delivering out-of-the-box advertising campaigns that do more than just win awards, but also boost sales,” said Rick Peterson, president, Hydrogen Advertising. “Tom, Deborah and I look forward to working with Mary again, expanding the Hydrogen leadership team, broadening agency capabilities, and boosting our ability to deliver great work for our clients.”

Mary’s work has been recognized by Cannes, Clio, National ADDYs, Luerzer’s Archive, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Ad Age and Adweek, and she has judged Communication Arts, AICP and the Effie awards. She will also judge this year’s National ADDY competition in May.

“It’s been an exhilarating start to 2012, with significant positive momentum resulting from a lot of planning and hard work throughout the course of last year,” said Rick Peterson, president, Hydrogen Advertising. “This year, our clients are asking us to partner with them on an increasing number of campaigns and in more sophisticated ways, allowing us to add some new members to the team.”

SEATTLE – July 26, 2011 – The financial meltdown is having lingering affects for Northwest businesses, including an overwhelming opinion – 82 percent – that businesses will “never trust financial institutions in the same way they did” prior to the 2008 financial crisis. This sentiment and other insights were discovered though a survey of senior Pacific Northwest executives responsible for business-banking decisions, conducted by Hydrogen Advertising of Seattle.

Other key findings include:

• A high number of Northwest business executives feel they are currently working with the wrong bank – only seven percent of respondents strongly agreed they were working with “the best possible bank for their business needs.”
• Despite a sense of being with the wrong bank, businesses don’t frequently switch banks – 55 percent of businesses have not changed banking partners in the past five years.
• An overwhelming majority of respondents were “not familiar at all” with a selection of regional banking brands Hydrogen Advertising highlighted in the survey.
• 75 percent of business leaders agreed that the “services and products of most banks are about the same.”
• Of the various commercial banking services assessed in the survey, businesses were most interested in banks providing a real person to answer phone calls instead of an automated system.
• 43 percent of businesses expressed that the ideal banking partner would have a dedicated representative assigned to their account.
• While many executives expressed an interest in partnering with a different financial institution, 63 percent of businesses have stayed with their current bank because of the “difficulties of switching banks.”
• There is ambivalence about the direction of the economy over the next 12 months with 62 percent of business leaders stating the economy will either “improve somewhat” or “remain about the same.”
• On a more positive note, zero percent of respondents were extremely fearful that their current banking partners were in jeopardy of “not being around for the long term.”

Hydrogen Advertising’s analysis of survey data indicates that national and regional banks in the Pacific Northwest are in the predicament of being less trusted than before and providers of undifferentiated products and services. While rates were certainly a consideration in choosing a bank, service-oriented and problem-solving offerings were more critical factors in differentiating banks in the eyes of business customers. Finally, regional banks may not be hemorrhaging customers, but this may be due to the fact most businesses consider the bank-switching-process as too arduous to be worth the effort.

“Regional business customers have, at worst, become increasingly distrustful of banks and, at best, are very ambivalent about banking partners, big or small,” said Rick Peterson, president, Hydrogen Advertising. “We view this predicament as an opportunity for forward-thinking regional banks to highlight their value-added service offerings, and to educate businesses that they do more than offer competitive rates – they understand their customers and function as in-the-trenches partners.”

The survey, conducted in June and July of 2011, was designed to mirror business size and number of employee trends in the Pacific Northwest. All survey respondents were senior executives responsible for banking decisions within their companies, across multiple industries located in Oregon, Idaho and Washington state.

About Hydrogen Advertising
Founded in 2001 by a group of Seattle’s most strategic and savvy advertising and marketing veterans, Hydrogen Advertising provides a full suite of marketing services. Collaboration is a hallmark of the agency’s approach and success—the Hydrogen team works as a seamless extension of its clients’ marketing departments. The agency’s forte is creating integrated marketing programs that deliver specific outcomes. Agency clients include The Polyclinic, Insight Schools, Kenworth Truck Company, eBay, Microsoft and Agilent Technologies. www.hydrogenadvertising.com

Contact:
Ray Vincenzo
Hydrogen Advertising
rayv@hydrogenadvertising.com
(206) 290-4431

Deborah Taylor
Hydrogen Advertising
deboraht@hydrogenadvertising.com
(206) 274-7808

Prior to joining Hydrogen, Danielle handled strategic marketing efforts at Callison, an international architecture and design firm. There, her responsibilities included managing multi-million dollar proposals, developing collateral materials, and coordinating business development strategies for a wide range of markets such as healthcare, corporate and commercial interiors.

Before Callison, Danielle served as an account manager at The Matale Line, a Seattle-based communications agency dedicated to working with nonprofits, foundations and Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs). She also completed internships at Parsons Public Relations and The Moyer Foundation. A native of the Pacific Northwest and graduate of the University of Washington, Danielle earned her bachelor’s degree in communications with an emphasis on public relations. Outside of work, she enjoys traveling, exploring her Ballard neighborhood, testing new recipes, hiking and snowboarding.

“Danielle has amassed extensive marketing knowledge in a broad cross-section of industries,” said Deborah Taylor, vice president and director of account management at Hydrogen. “This experience, along with her ebullient, high-energy work style, makes her a wonderful person for our clients to partner with, as well as a great Hydrogen teammate.”

In September, Seattle advertising agencies Hydrogen and WongDoody hosted the North America Region Meeting of Worldwide Partners Inc. (WPI) at the Hotel 1000. The two-day meeting was attended by marketers from dozens of agencies throughout North America, all members of WPI. The event takeaway: in a post-recession world there is plenty of opportunity for agencies that can identify the customer trends and insights that will drive results. Strategy is king regardless of the medium through which it is delivered.

Kenworth means quality and our ad for the new, ultra-versatile T440 makes that point with vigor.

Business and fleet owners seeking a lower weight, top-quality, versatile truck are now seeing our new trade ad for Kenworth’s new T440, the company’s latest addition to its medium-duty family of trucks. Filling an important niche between heavy-duty Class 8 trucks and medium-duty Class 7s, the T440 delivers efficiency, maneuverability and up to 380 horsepower to handle most any application with the quality, reliability and durability you’d expect from Kenworth.

As an advertising-agency executive, Deborah held senior account and strategic planning roles, at an extensive list of top-tier agencies including Landor Associates, DDB, McCann Erickson, Young & Rubicam and FCB. Her marquee clients included Nordstrom, Boeing, Chateau St. Michelle, Tully’s, Washington State Lottery, Alaska Seafood, The Clorox Company and Darigold.

Deborah’s deep experience on both the client side and agency side provide a unique perspective to leverage a multitude of marketing strategies and tools to achieve bottom-line business results. Her career endeavors have also made her uniquely adept at coordinating the efforts of large, cross-functional teams.

“Deborah has the rare ability to distill complex problems down to their essence, then finding ways to solve them,” said Rick Peterson, president, Hydrogen Advertising. “She’ll provide our clients with invaluable experience and insights that meld strategy and execution to drive superlative results.”

Deborah earned her bachelor’s degree in American History from Mills College in Oakland, Calif., including study abroad at Syracuse University in London.

Launching this week, The Polyclinic's new "Where You Come First" campaign confirms the benefits of having a health care provider that puts patients first. The physician-run Polyclinic—consisting of more than 150 primary and specialty care physicians in 14 Seattle area locations—offers a healthy dose of physician-independence that leads to better medicine, as showcased in the new work from Hydrogen.

Consisting of three 30-second TV spots, direct mail and outdoor advertising, the campaign illustrates that The Polyclinic is the right choice for people that seek and value collaboration in their family's health decisions and appreciate the relationship that physician independence delivers. The Polyclinic staff gets to know the person, not just the patient, which often leads to better diagnoses and superior outcomes.

"'Where You Come First' is more than a tagline, it's the embodiment of an organization-wide commitment to make 'you the person' as important as 'you the patient,'" said Tracy Corgiat, director of marketing at The Polyclinic. "Every aspect of The Polyclinic is built upon a culture of doing what's right for the patient and connecting each patient to the right care."

With 25 medical specialties in locations throughout the greater Seattle area, The Polyclinic emphasizes the importance of physician-patient communication and collaboration between doctors. Increased coordination between primary and specialty care, and the elimination of bureaucracy whenever possible, are the hallmarks of The Polyclinic's approach to personalized, comprehensive, top-quality health care.

"One of the most important relationships a family can form is with their health care provider, and The Polyclinic is there to open all the health care doors you and your family may need," said Tom Scherer, co-founder and executive creative director, Hydrogen Advertising. "With the new campaign, The Polyclinic is letting people throughout the Seattle region know that Polyclinic doctors have the independence they need to put patients first."

About The Polyclinic
The Polyclinic is one of the largest multi-specialty clinics in the Puget Sound area, with more than 150 primary care and specialty physicians in most areas of medicine. Established in 1917, The Polyclinic has a long tradition of delivering high quality, comprehensive, personalized care. www.polyclinic.com

With the current school year rapidly coming to a close, it’s not too early to start planning for the next. Starting in May, Insight Schools, Inc. is helping parents make education decisions for the upcoming school year with a new advertising campaign demonstrating that online high school may be the ideal option for some students.

The new work includes a 30-second TV spot and direct mail. While appealing to both parents and high school students, the campaign emphasizes to parents that it is possible to see their children enjoy, and even thrive in, high school. Students seeking a personalized learning experience or students with schedules that make attending traditional high schools challenging may benefit greatly by Insight Schools’ online, accredited and tuition-free public high schools.

The new campaign reveals a basic truth about traditional brick-and-mortar high schools—they don’t necessarily offer the best learning environment for each and every student. This message is clearly communicated in the TV spot, airing in Calif., Colo., Kan., Idaho, Minn. and Wash. The media buy in each state will primarily target the adults-with-kids demographic.

Creatively, Hydrogen took care to show students in real-life situations, such as social settings and after school jobs. The visuals demonstrate that students who enroll at Insight Schools continue to live normal lives while gaining an education where, when and how they learn best.

“In a fast-paced world chock full of distractions, having an online high school option is the perfect, tailor-made option for a growing number of our kids,” said Tom Scherer, executive creative director, Hydrogen Advertising. “Our new campaign for Insight Schools shows that online learning may be the perfect environment for students to excel and enjoy earning their diplomas.”

About Insight Schools, Inc.
With nine schools in eight states, Insight Schools, Inc. is one of the nation’s largest networks of tuition-free, diploma-granting, online public high schools. To learn more, call 800-975-8006 or visit www.insightschools.net.