Fastspot recently formalized a collaborative partnership with Neustadt Creative Marketing with the creation of a second company, Door No. 2. Over the past 18 months, Fastspot and Neustadt Creative Marketing have been working together on a series of exciting projects with higher education clients. Door No. 2 will deliver these integrated marketing solutions to a targeted client base of colleges, universities and schools who are seeking an agency to address strategy and research, print and Web, social media and mobile marketing solutions. Door No. 2 will provide the best of both worlds, previously divided between differing approaches and methodologies. Combining our efforts ensures continued focus and expertise in these unique areas of importance, with all the pieces becoming critical parts of an integrated strategy and execution.

Fastspot will continue doing what we have been doing over the past decade, creating and producing outstanding interactive work and delivering unparalleled client service, which is the foundation of our success. However, as the world of higher education marketing undergoes major shifts which require an integrated and progressive approach, we are fortunate to have formed a fruitful relationship with one of the leaders in the industry, Neustadt Creative Marketing. This partnership is generating exciting work for our current clients, and we look forward to Door No. 2 making it even easier for our friends out there in higher education to make the right choice, which as we all know, is always behind Door No. 2.

We are happy to present our newly updated reel, including a nice new soundtrack compliments of the Ting Tings. For any of you who remember our last reel, you will undoubtedly notice the change in tone. We wanted our new reel to really convey not only our passion for creating beautiful and engaging interactive experiences, but also our sense of “fun”. We worked with Sawmill PR in ‘09 to learn more about what our clients thought of us, and we were all pleasantly surprised to hear that the word “fun” was used by almost every client they interviewed when they described what it was like to work with Fastspot. What a compliment! Any of you who have gone through a web redesign project know how grueling it can get, and how tempers can wear thin. Well, we are happy to report that here at Fastspot, we keep the love alive - no matter how long the project or relationship stretches on! So, enjoy the new reel and the new work showcased within it, and remember, just because its business doesn’t mean we can’t have fun doing it.

Fastspot Reel - 2009 from TraceyHalvorsen on Vimeo.

One evening, while sitting around visiting with friends, a comment was made which became the inspiration for fly-post.com - a Website dedicated to the art and utility of the promotional flyer. The comment was, “I miss the good ole days when you could walk outside, look at the telephone pole, and know what was going on.” The resulting discussion honed in on one important element missing from the plethora of event based Websites which have become so ubiquitous in the recent years - they aren’t any fun to look at!

Of course, I am biased. I went to art school at the Cleveland Institute of Art in the early 90s, pre-Internet, and where every occasion from house parties, to yard sales to impromptu gorilla art exhibits warranted a flyer bordering on fine art. Around that same time, bands like Nine Inch Nails were emerging and working with talented artists like Derek Hess to turn the promotional flyer from utility to collector’s piece.

We conceived of fly-post as something in between the local city paper, the bulletin board found inside an art school or other visually inclined location, the neighborhood telephone pole and an invitation service like Evite. We wanted to provide tools to help the flyer makers promote their event or service, provide ways for the community to easily find and peruse these visual artvertisements, and celebrate the art of the flyer by allowing users to rate and comment. Lofty goals indeed, but after many months of brainstorming, designing, programming and testing, fly-post.com (beta) has launched!

We have been letting the beta site gain traction organically while we evaluate user interaction, gather feedback, make improvements, and slowly leak the word out via Twitter and Craigs List. While we want to blast it out to every blog and tech magazine out there, we are also cognizant of the power of growing slowly and being flexible enough to make improvements based on our community and user requests. So far, so good.

Fly-post has already had over 6,500 visits, with users spending an average of 3:09 on the site since it launched in beta last October. Word of mouth has served to help grow the user base, with many local businesses and organizations located in our home town of Baltimore being some of the most active early adopters. Regular posts from The Walters Art Museum, Atomic Books, and crowd favorites Dr. Sketchy (figure drawing class meets burlesque) and local band We Read Minds. As of this blog posting, fly-post flyers cover over 140 cities nationwide.

The site offers users many tools to help them share and promote their event, or an event they are interested in. Easy links allow users to post flyers to Facebook, insert into their MySpace pages, or email to a friend. Soon we will be including Craigs List friendly code snippets, and additional sharing tools for Twitter, Digg, etc. Comments and ratings will soon notify the flyer poster via email, and we hope to offer analytics for flyer creators to track their traffic. We also have plans to significantly enhance the RSVP system. We are in discussions with “green” printers, so we can enable flyer makers to place print orders at the same time as they are uploading to fly-post, if they are so inclined. And yes, an iPhone app is in the works - for those flyer fans who spot good ones out in the wild.

While we quietly work away in the background, focusing on improvements and enhancements, we welcome the growing community that will turn fly-post into the Web’s very own local telephone pole. So, looking for something going on in your neighborhood or city this weekend? Check fly-post.com, now you know.

Baltimore, Md (March 4, 2009)—Fastspot, a national interactive agency headquartered in Baltimore, has been selected by Dickinson College and the University of Puget Sound to redesign each institution’s Web sites, according to Tracey Halvorsen, creative director and co-founder of the firm.

“The critical role that Web sites have in the overall communications activities of colleges and universities has changed dramatically since most of them created their initial sites,” commented Halvorsen. “For example, potential applicants to colleges and universities now typically first experience a school through its Web site. Therefore, it’s really important that the site engages, excites and informs these applicants as well as establishes a foundation of trust.”

Fastspot is creating each site in collaboration with other marketing and communications efforts currently underway by each institution. “This team approach will ensure that their brand attributes are integrated through visual and message consistency,” emphasized Halvorsen.
Dickinson College, a four-year liberal arts institution founded in 1783 in Carlisle, Pa , has an enrollment of approximately 2,400 students. “We’ve been quite pleased in our work with Fastspot,” said Paul Dempsey, director of electronic communication at Dickinson. “They’ve provided a number of strong design options and have been very flexible with making things fit our unique needs. It’s been a very effective collaboration.”

“We’ve been pleased in our work with Fastspot,” said Paul Dempsey, director of electronic communication at Dickinson. “They’ve provided a number of strong design options and have been flexible with making things fit our unique needs. It’s been an effective collaboration.”
The University of Puget Sound, with an enrollment of about 2,600 students, was founded in 1888 in Tacoma, Wa.
Fastspot, with a recognized expertise in interactive communications for higher education institutions, recently completed a comprehensive interactive project for Bucknell University, Lewisburg, Pa.

About Fastspot
Fastspot is a premiere interactive agency, widely recognized for its strategic award-winning work, collaborative approach with its clients and its ability to deliver successful, long-lasting solutions. Headquartered in Baltimore, the firm works with clients across the country who seek to develop highly creative and complex marketing, advertising or business solutions. The firm has a particular expertise working with associations, colleges and universities, museums and cultural organizations, architectural and technology firms. For more information, visit http://www.fastspot.com.

The William G. Baker, Jr. Memorial Fund, a Baltimore foundation with an arts focused philanthropy, contacted the Greater Baltimore Cultural Alliance about helping the Fund develop an annual awards program for individual artists of the region. GBCA suggested thinking about approaching Fastspot about how they might build on the concept of the People’s Design Award Website, created by Fastspot for the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum and National Design Week. A collaboration quickly commenced on how this concept might translate for the William G. Baker, Jr. Memorial Fund. We knew we wanted to make the nominating process for this particular foundation program much more transparent and community focused, but we had no idea how the artists and community would react. Obviously, we had little reason for concern. It is clear from the numbers, this type of awards program and online nomination process was something the arts community had long been hoping for, not to mention the success we saw from integrating a “People’s Choice” into the mix. We hope to see other cities and artists’ communities throughout the world adopt and build upon what the Baker Artist Awards Website has established for the Baltimore arts community. Here’s what we ended up with.

Nominees, Registered Users and Votes

656 Artists nominated themselves and uploaded their work and info, including painters, dancers, musicians, filmmakers, crafts people, performance artists, experimental artists, designers, sculptors, photographers, you name it.
10,372 people not only came to the site, they created accounts and registered to vote for their favorite artists or artwork.
8,531 total votes were cast (this includes people who found ways to unlock extra votes by browsing and becoming more active in the site.)

Pageviews, Visitors, Time on Site and Geographical Info

688,520 Pageviews (spanning from early October 2008 to Feb. 1, 2009) The site will remain online for people to browse and enjoy the vast amount of art that was uploaded, so we expect to see this number continue to grow.
66,252 Visits
34,976 Absolute Unique Visitors
7:44 Avg. Time on Site - this is a very long time for the average time spent on any Website.
Most visitors were from the US, but we had 530 visitors from Canada, 447 from the United Kingdom, 232 from France, 182 from Germany, 133 from Australia, 132 from Italy, 127 from Spain and 88 from the Netherlands. They spent on average between 2:12 to 14:30 on the site.

Who Was Browsing?

If we dive deeper into the analytics, we can see to some degree who was browsing. As expected, there was lots of traffic from local universities and educational institutions, including Johns Hopkins, University of Maryland, Catonsville Community College, Loyola, Towson State University, Villa Julie, Goucher and Morgan State. However, more interestingly, and probably of great interest to the artists who have their bodies of work on the site, we saw heavy site viewing from these organizations and entities:

National Gallery of Art - 86 visits
Museum of Modern Art - The MOMA spent 42 minutes surfing the site
Smithsonian Institution - 56 visits
The Baltimore Museum of Art - 50 visits
Standford University - 31 visits
Rochester Institute of Technology - 25 visits
Cornell University - 24 visits
WYPR (National Public Radio) - 17 visits
Discovery Communications - 16 visits
CBS Corporation - 15 visits
Duke University - 13 visits
Black & Decker - 12 visits
Apple Computer - 10 visits
Bank of America - 10 visits
Diamond Comics - 10 visits
Pratt Institute - 10 visits
Yale University - 10 visits

Other Visitors of Importance

Eli Whitney Museum
Metropolitan Museum of Art
Museum of Fine Art
Museum of Fine Arts Houston
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
The New York Times
Corcoran
Brooklyn Museum of Art
Walker Art Center
Fuller Craft Museum
Harvard University
National Geographic Society
Tulane University
University of Southern California
California Institute of the Arts
The Kennedy Center
Boston University
Carnegie Mellon University
Intercontinental Hotels Group
Princeton University
Under Armour
Cooper Union
Dartmouth College
School of Visual Arts
Hunter College
Nike, Inc.
Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts
The Washington Post
Electronic Arts Inc.
Herman Miller Inc.
Liz Claiborne Inc.
Art Gallery of Ontario
Lucas Film

There were over 4,500 network locations logged, and while we don’t know exactly “whom” was looking, we can assume this kind of visibility is extremely valuable to artists who may have limited opportunity for exposure. Additionally, we feel the quality and volume of work entered into the Baker Artist Awards will bring national awareness to Baltimore as a creative city that nurtures and cherishes its artistic community.

Referring Traffic

Another important element contributing to the huge success of the site was the amount of traffic driven to it by artists’ self promoting in hopes of winning the People’s Choice award. While the primary grants will be decided upon by a select jury, the people’s favorites will also win smaller cash awards and recognition. This angle helped spread the word, by encouraging artists to get over their shyness and get busy marketing themselves. There were over 1,200 referring links logged, meaning that over 1,200 outside sources sent visitors clicking into Baker Artist Awards Website from a link on a blog, in an email, or somewhere else online. Here are a few referring links of note:

Facebook sent over 5,000 visits
Notcot.org sent over 1,500 visits
Commarts.com sent 1,366 visits when it featured the Website as its pick of the day
Bmoreart.blogspot.com sent 445 visits
Fastspot was happy to send 426 visits from our Website
Flickr.com sent 322 visits
Twitter sent 220 visits
Baltimoreclayworks.org sent 168 visits
Delicious sent 159
Baltimoreculture.org sent 142

Over 50 blogs linked up to Baker Artist Awards, sending a tremendous amount of virally generated traffic (traffic that wasn’t paid for or generated through direct PR efforts). That is the best kind of traffic you can get because it’s usually very targeted to the audiences most interested in the content.

What’s Next?

Well, the site will stay online as a virtual museum of sorts, and after the winners are announced, we will be working to make enhancements and improvements for next year’s competition and awards.

We would love to know if the site has helped your artistic career or helped you network with collectors, curators, etc.. We are also happy to hear any feedback regarding usability, functionality or features you would like to see incorporated into the site for next year. We can’t promise everything will make it, but our goal is to make the site even better every year, so your feedback is extremely valuable. So share your stories or feedback with us!

I was fortunate (or lucky) enough to sit down via Skype with the charming hosts of Lucky Startups the other day (Aronando Placencia and Dennis Lankes), and chat about Fly-Post. Fly-Post is a project that started over a year ago, born out of a conversation about missing the “good old days” of looking at telephone poles to find out what was going on in the hood, via the flyer. It just kept nagging at us, the flyer, how the flyer wasn’t being accurately represented anywhere online, it needed a place to love and cherish it. Enter Fly-Post.com.

We worked on this site for about a year and finally launched it in beta a few weeks ago. We now look forward to seeing it grow and flourish and help promote the art and utility of the flyer, hopefully for your home town. Enough from me, check out the interview, and go post a flyer!

BALTIMORE, Md. (January 5, 2009) — Fastspot, an interactive agency headquartered in Baltimore, Md., has launched a second awards Web site that features social media tools, according to Tracey Halvorsen, creative director and principal.

The Baker Artists Awards, a competition established in 2008 by the William G. Baker, Jr. Memorial Fund, is open to artists working in a variety of disciplines and media such as painters, writers, musicians and sculptors and who reside in the city of Baltimore as well as the five surrounding counties.

In addition to social media tools such as online voting, a comment area for each nominated artist, and e-mail alerts, the site features a gallery format similar to that found in a museum.

The artists are vying for several cash prizes of at least $20,000 each as the result of a private juried process. Additionally the general public is voting on the Baker Artists Award site for their favorite artists to receive one of two Baltimore Choice awards with cash prizes totaling $5,000.

“We designed the site to make it easy for artists to nominate themselves,” Halvorsen said. “They simply hit a button and upload their portfolio along with descriptions of their work and their bios. They can also add new work to their online portfolio. And we made voting just as easy.”

For example, people can vote for more than one artist as well as track votes. Additionally, they can receive e-mail alerts when artists have added new work to their online portfolio.

“An exciting by-product of the concept and design of the site is the exposure that the general public and the artists have to the amazing talent we are fortunate to have in the greater Baltimore area,”Halvorsen said.

Nominations continue to be accepted until February 1 and winners will be announced in March.

In 2006, Fastspot pioneered the use of social media tools for awards programs when it conceived, designed and programmed the Web site for the People’s Design Award for the Smithsonian’s Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum in New York City.

Early in the first year of this award, the site was mentioned on the home page of Yahoo.com resulting in 4 million unique visitors in a single day. Now in its third year, the site continues to receive thousands of nominations and tens of thousands of votes.

About Fastspot
Fastspot is a premiere interactive agency, widely recognized for its strategic award-winning work, collaborative approach with its clients and its ability to deliver successful, long-lasting solutions. Headquartered in Baltimore, the firm works with clients across the country who seek to develop highly creative and complex marketing, advertising or business solutions. The firm has a particular expertise working with associations, colleges and universities, museums and cultural organizations, architectural and technology firms. For more information, visit http://www.fastspot.com.

Fastspot is proud to announce our work has recently won three W3 awards and been nominated for a Pixel Award! It takes great clients with vision and perseverance to assist in these creations, and we thank our clients for their trust in our work - the results speak for themselves.

The W³ Awards are sanctioned by the International Academy of Visual Arts and are the first major web competition to be accessible to the biggest agencies, the smallest firms, and everyone in between. We are thrilled to win 3 of these coveted awards! Baltimore Area Convention and Visitor’s Bureau’s Baltimore.org won a gold award for the “Interactive Maps”, American Beverage Association’s Issue Sites brought home yet another award with a silver win, and Discovery Communications / Animal Planet’s “Pimp Your Pooch” also won a silver.

After 1000 submissions, the Pixel Awards has narrowed it down to the top one hundred nominated sites, and the American Beverage Issues sites are a finalist for the Green category!http://www.pixelawards.com/webawards/top5.php Make sure you vote for us for the People’s Choice!

Key people involved in these projects and deserving much acclaim and fanfare and a few beers next time you see them:

Curt Kotula - Art & Technology Director
Amber Shriver - Interactive Design Director
Yianni Mathioudakis - Design & Motion Graphics
Tim Buckingham - Senior Programmer
Zach Waugh - Programmer and Developer
Stacy Spakowsky - Agency Manager

BALTIMORE, Md. (October 9, 2008) — Fastspot, an interactive design agency, has created a new Web site for Bucknell University, according to Tracey Halvorsen, creative director and principal of the firm. The new site is a key element of the university’s communications strategy to increase national awareness of its academic and intellectual stature.

Bucknell University Home Page

The Web site, www.bucknell.edu, targets primarily prospective students and their parents using a creative approach highlighting the Lewisburg, Pa. school’s strong academic programs and resources, its Division I athletic programs, small class size and intimate and classic campus environment.

“Our conceptual approach for the site focused on accurately conveying these key attributes of the Bucknell brand: intellectual and academic achievement and creating world leaders. For example, we developed ‘Pathways’ as an editorial and creative vehicle to tell specific ‘big picture’ stories about the university,” Halvorsen explained. “Overall, we believe the site now conveys a more sophisticated, worldlier impression of Bucknell,” she added.

“Among our favorite features of the site is ‘Pathways’ located on the landing page where we’ve integrated video, compelling photography and content to tell stories that have become ‘pathways’ for students during their time at Bucknell. We’re also proud of the clean and crisp layout of the interior pages as well as the site’s overall intuitive and easy-to-use navigation,” she added.

Fastspot was selected for the re-design following a national search of interactive design agencies, and the re-design process began more than a year ago involving all sectors of the campus community, according to Roberta Sims, associate director of digital communications for Bucknell.

The new site is the culmination of focus groups, an analysis of peer school Web sites, a review of the site’s architecture, usability testing as well as testing the overall impression of the final design with prospective students and parents, a content audit and technical and programming work to implement the design into Bucknell’s content management system.

Last year, the Web site, one of the University’s primary communications tools, received more than 21 million hits from visitors located around the globe, or more than an average of 404,000 page views each week.

Fastspot has a growing national reputation for its expertise in interactive design with colleges and universities, such as its work for the Maryland Institute College of Art, Albany Law School and the Cleveland Institute of Art. The firm is currently working with Indiana University and Dickinson College.

About Fastspot
Fastspot is a premiere interactive design agency, widely recognized for its strategic award-winning work, collaborative approach with its clients and its ability to deliver successful, long-lasting solutions. Headquartered in Baltimore, the firm works with clients across the country who seek to develop highly creative and complex marketing, advertising or business solutions. The firm has a particular expertise working with associations, colleges and universities, museums and cultural organizations, architectural and technology firms. For more information, visit http://www.fastspot.com.

BALTIMORE, Md. (September 26, 2008) – Interactive design agency Fastspot announces that Kim Koenig, project manager, and Zach Waugh, programmer and developer, have recently joined the firm. The announcement was made by Tracey Halvorsen, Fastspot creative director and principal.

A 1999 communications and business graduate of Ashland University, Ashland, Ohio, Koenig has a depth of experience in marketing and sales and project management. She previously worked in the mortgage industry. Currently, she is managing all aspects of Fastspot clients, including Albany Law School, Berry Plastics Corporation, Cecil County Library and Indiana University. In her spare time, she volunteers with Mid-Atlantic Pug Rescue.

Waugh, previously an IT manager and system engineer in the automotive industry, is involved in a variety of Fastspot projects including Greater Baltimore Cultural Alliance. He is a 2004 graduate of the University of Delaware where he received a bachelor of science degree in computer science and minored in philosophy.

About Fastspot
Fastspot is a premiere interactive design agency, widely recognized for its strategic award-winning work, collaborative approach with its clients and its ability to deliver successful, long-lasting solutions. Headquartered in Baltimore, the firm works with clients across the country who seek to develop highly creative and complex marketing, advertising or business solutions. The firm has a particular expertise working with associations, colleges and universities, museums and cultural organizations, architectural and technology firms. For more information, visit http://www.fastspot.com.