February means soup time at Simantel. This year, the annual Simantel Soup cook-off brought us many delights, but Patty Moye’s Italian Sausage Soup with Tortellini stood out from the competition. Patty claimed a cash prize of $40 and a free night stay in the lodges at Wildlife Prairie Park! Check out the recipe and more photos after the jump.
Simantel has added three new staff members to start off 2010. Jeff Segneri, a 2009 graduate of Bradley University, has been hired to support Simantel’s business development efforts. Stacy Barr will support Simantel’s growing media department and help support development and execution of clients’ media campaigns. Lynn Ann Boon, a Senior Account Manager, will be leading Simantel account teams and client projects in her new role.
Jeff Segneri (left) Stacy Barr (right)
Lynn Ann Boon
Students from Princeville and Dunlap high schools got a taste of what working for a marketing and communications firm is really like! On February 24th Simantel hosted job shadows that spent the day sitting side by side with our creative team. The students had the opportunity to ask questions and gain understanding of what it takes to make it in the design field. After a full morning of working hard the students got to kick back and have pizza with the staff of Simantel!
Simantel job shadows
Sometimes the blog updates get bumped for “real work,” and over the last few months it happened a lot. Here’s a gallery of stuff we never got around to posting. Fast-forward to 2010!
Way back in September, Rhonda Pelka took over the controls at the front desk. If you haven't met her yet, this is what she looks like.
More stuff after the jump.
Not long ago, nobody had ever heard of Bud Select 55, the super-low-calorie beer from Anheuser-Busch. Because Peoria was chosen as a test market, the local distributor came to us for some ideas about how to make a splash with the new beer. We got to work and came up with a few creative concepts and a whole barrel-full of fun tactics to get the word out.
Long story short, due to a variety of circumstances the distributor didn’t use any of these ideas. Nevertheless, we had so much fun making them we thought we’d share them on our blog. These videos were each just one small part of much larger proposed campaigns, but they’ll give you a taste of what we were thinking. Tell us which is your favorite in the comments.
Lots more video after the jump…
When the November birthday/anniversary cake arrived, these people showed up and said they were celebrating something. So we took a picture.
They are (l to r):
Wendy Wheatley, November birthday and six years with Simantel
Patty Moye, four years with Simantel
Tim Leesman, November birthday
Chris Moehn, 22 years with Simantel (!)
Caryn Hinkson, November birthday and one year with Simantel
Andrew Tuma, two years with Simantel
Seconds after this photo was taken, this small group of people dispersed.
The Simantel Blood Drive took place last week and raised (gathered? harvested?) a very respectable 16 pints of Simantel blood for the Red Cross. And while most of us walked away from the BloodMobile unscathed, intern Tracy Blasiak - an enthusiastic first-time donor - was scathed slightly. But don’t worry, she’s fine. So is Account Manager Carol Molinari, who is pictured alongside Tracy in the “After” photo.
Tracy...before
Tracy (resting) and Carol...after
