While many look at this time of year as an opportunity to receive gifts, the folks here at Splinter Creative felt the need to dish out some goodies to our lovely clients and colleagues… And we couldn’t think of a better way to spread some of that holiday cheer, than with a gift set from Cruz Tequila. (See more pics of the Cruz Tequila gift sets here.)

In their first year of holiday promotions, the Cruz Crew put together quite the little gift set complete with a bottle of their new line, Cruz Silver, and some fancy margarita glasses as a nice accent. Needless to say, our colleagues were thrilled, and propositioned us to crack these bad boys open a few times during deliveries (we refrained of course as advocates of safe driving ).

In addition to dishing out some gifts this holiday season, the Splinter Creative team participated in the Holiday #buzzcation Bowling Tournament with a cause, benefiting the Crisis Nursery of Phoenix. The turnout was awesome as teams of news channel, public relations and advertising peeps filled nearly the entire bowling alley. Big props go out to @vettieroe for organizing this great event, and to team “Split Happens” (that’s us) for taking down the trophy. We’ll make sure to take good care of it until next year… To view more pictures from the event, check out HMA’s fan page here.

From our office to yours, Happy Holidays and we look forward to working/socializing with you in 2010!

With pre-season action coming to an end, and a hint of the NFL regular season in the air, Splinter decided it was time to take Agency Throwdown to a new level with a fantasy football challenge of epic proportions. The snag — We only have a few days to pull it off, but with the amount of awesome people scattered throughout agencies all over Phoenix, we’re not too worried about it.

As I write this post, I’m still working out all the details in my noggin, but here’s how I see the first ever Agency Fantasy Football league goin’ down…

1. We get 8-24 agencies to get involved, where each agency would represent their team collectively as a whole. Whether you have one person who’s interested or a group of people, make sure someone represents like this guy!  Any and all agencies are welcome, you just have to be within the wide scope that is Phoenix.
2. Fees would be $50 per team (get 5 people on board at your agency and it’s only a whopping $10 each. WOOT!).
3. What’s the $50 going towards? Great question… $40 will be donated to Twestival Local – Phoenix and their pursuit to support the St. Mary’s Food Bank. The remaining $10 will go towards food and drinks at the end of the season party (Location TBD. It will be an establishment with food, booze and wifi… Heck, maybe even Gangplank would work if they’re interested and could broadcast the games through the projector).
4. Amended: Tentative Draft Date: 6pm on Tuesday, September 8th or Wednesday, September 9th – and can be done remotely as we’ll be setting up the league on Yahoo’s free fantasy football site. Once more teams sign up, we’ll figure out a time that works best for most.
5. The draft will consist of 15 rounds to allow room for both starters and bench players.
6. Teams will consist of: QB, RB, RB, WR, WR, TE, R/W/T, K, DST and 6 bench players.
7. We’ll do a random draft order once everyone has signed up (I may or may not be accepting bribes for draft position )
8. Our regular season will consist of 13 games with the playoffs taking place during weeks 14, 15 and 16 of the NFL’s regular season.
9. Top 8 teams (assuming we get at least 12 to sign up) will make the playoffs.
10. Anyone who is interested, please get in touch with me by end of day on Thursday, September 3rd (I know, it’s short notice, but I just had an epiphany this morning) and we’ll work out the details from there.
11. Recommended you create a unique yahoo login so everyone who is part of the team in your agency has an opportunity to login and check updates as needed.
12. League scores, rankings, etc will be posted on the Agency Throwdown site every Tuesday as they change (Tentative. I still need to work this out).
13. The winner won’t receive any money (gambling is illegal in Arizona in case you didn’t know) but being the King of Fantasy Football amongst Phoenix agencies doesn’t seem like too bad of a consolation prize (or bragging right for that matter) if you ask me.

Sound like a plan? The way I see it, we’ll have about 4 months to “talk smack” and build relationships with our fellow creative/marketing/advertising/web peeps while enjoying the most popular sport in America. Competitors can feel free to meet up on a weekly basis to give each other the business in person, use the hashtag #phxffb to chat it up on Twitter, or wait for the end of the season when everyone convenes to watch the final game and enjoy food/libations at a local watering hole.

If you’re interested, feel free to drop a comment below, send an email to bhatfield at splintercreative dot com or hit me up on Twitter. Just don’t be that guy who drops a comment and leaves no way for me to track you down

I’m also directly calling out Phoenix Metro Area Agencies: McMurry, The Lavidge Company, Forty Agency, Sarkissian Mason, Keane Creative, Off Madison Ave, Moses Anshell, Cramer-Krasselt, E.B. Lane, Mullen Advertising, Reister, Martz Agency, Crosby Wright, Santy Integrated and Zion & Zion in hopes they have Google Alerts set that will get their attention. For the agencies I missed, my bad. Everyone is welcome to compete. You can take it out on me and the Splinter crew via the fantasy football field…  Bring it!

So let the games begin… And spread the word!  Here’s a short link to this post – http://bit.ly/eS8St

Confirmed Teams as of 4:03pm on Wenesday, September 9th

• Splinter Creative
• Sarkissian Mason
• Liquis Design
• Keane Creative
• Canyon Communications
• Amanda Vega Consulting
• Terralever
• @ousooner44