After MCM threw out a Tarantino like taunt video for the upcoming match, we had no choice but to hold a press smack conference and let the team speak their minds.

Our rebuttal: The Smack Conference…

Feel like witnessing the carnage? All our welcome to come cheer on, make fun of, laugh at, and laugh with the Splinter Creative and MCM crews.

What: Agency Throwdown

Who: Splinter Creative vs. Maggiore Consulting & Marketing

Where: Tempe Village Lanes

When: Wednesday, June 23, 2010 @ 7pm

Why: More like why not? A little healthy competition between Arizona agencies never hurt anyone. See you there!

On the new Dos Gringos website, you’ll find it’s easier than ever to find exactly what you’re looking for. Trying to find directions to the closest Dos Gringos location? Curious if they’re pouring your favorite drink specials this evening? In the mood for some late night grub? Want to scope out the menu with your co-workers before lunch? Or perhaps you need to setup a party for Larry’s 30th birthday after work on Friday? All this and more can be accessed with just a couple clicks and a few minutes of your time.

Complete with a super easy, “my Grandmother could do it” content management system, Dos Gringos can now access their site and update it from any computer, anywhere. This permits both the marketing personnel as well as the owners to make changes to specials, the menus, photos, and more, all with a simple internet connection. A huge asset indeed for such a fast-paced company.

The biggest hurdle with this project was determining the best way to organize the content. While every Dos Gringos has a happy hour, serves food, and pours tasty beverages, every location doesn’t offer the exact same specials at the exact same times. After doing some research and beating up a few layouts in house, we determined it would be most effective to post an all-inclusive specials page, along with some location specific tidbits that went into more detail… And judging by the analytics over the first couple weeks, it seems patrons are now easily navigating through the site to find the content they want.

All in all, we were able to have some fun with the design and content, and it was a pleasure bringing the new site to life. The hardest part was fighting off the day-dreams of being on the patio at Dos, munching some nachos, and sipping on some coronas. Damn distractions, no wonder it took an extra week to complete

Let us know your thoughts on the design and navigation in the comments below. We’re always open for a good rogering.

Incase you aren’t privvy, we’ve been working our magic on the programs and signage dating back to Ignite Phoenix 3. (Woah. Seriously? Ignite 7 is really on the way?) It’s been a blast to help the brand grow, and even more fun to have creative leeway with the printed pieces. Having free reign isn’t something to take for granted, and for this we’ll be eternally grateful. Check out our most recent program pictured here ==>

Being that we were so (in)kind with our donations, we had the privilege of putting together a 30 second video to be shown at the beginning of the night. After toiling with several ideas for a number of days, we decided it was time to put together a sample of our work that highlighted a handful of favorite projects. If you missed Ignite Phoenix 6, you can check it out here (make sure to turn up your volume).

Now it’s time to get back to work and start dreaming about the next big idea for Ignite Phoenix 7. More good things to come from Splinter Creative… Stay tuned

This year, Twestival is aiming to highlight eight areas which are preventing some of our poorest youth around the world from going to school and getting the education they need and deserve. Events hosted on the same night around the world will be selecting a specific area to donate to, and Phoenix has put its best foot forward to aid in the building of schools to help those less fortunate.

As part of our sponsorship, we whipped up a couple new snazzy t-shirt designs that Brand X will be printing and delivering to the event. Big thanks to Charles for setting up the online shopping cart so attendees can “pimp” out their shirts with a custom Twitter handle.

Along with the shirt designs, we’ll also be hooking up some signage for the event to show the sponsors some love, and a large and in charge step and repeat banner to capture the moment for attendees.

Twestival is a 100% volunteer organized event, and wouldn’t be possible without great folks like Chris Lee, Wesley Novak, Heather Lee, Jenny Carnie and many more. Everyone has really chipped in once again to help with the logistics of the event as well as raising donations. We’re slowly inching our way towards the goal of $7,500, and hope to beat out Twestival San Francisco after the night of the event. It’s going to be a close one, so all the help we can get is greatly appreciated!

I mean, could you think of a better way to use social media for social good? I sure can’t

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!

If you need to get a hold of us over the next few days, please email info@splintercreative.com — We should have our phone system back up and running by Wednesday, December 2nd at the latest.

If you’ve visited our key players page, you know that I rocked one mean tuxedo during my childhood days.  What can I say, I was a born lady killer.  While many of you have gotten a kick out of our childhood portraits (as you should), humor was only a small factor in why we chose to display ourselves in such a manner.  In our minds, it was important to show current and potential clients our youthful imaginations, and demonstrate that while we’ve grown up, we still like to think big and achieve things others only dream about.  I mean, that’s what being a kid is all about, right?

Albeit the childhood pictures are great (thanks everyone for your feedback) we felt it was time for a mini photo shoot.  Sure, we’ll need a serious corporate head shot for this, that or the other thing, but most importantly, we needed to have some sharp looking avatars for our social networking accounts (I’ve almost got everyone at the office on the facebook, twitter and linkedin bandwagons woot!)  So we got with our creative director, Steve Clark, and asked him to dig up some lighting and other goodies from his old photog days.

It turned out to be a super rad time Tuesday morning at the office.  Not only did we have a blast putting everyone on the spot to come up with an “O” face (or in my case, the People’s eyebrow) we were able to capture more of the personality that is Splinter Creative.  So while the childhood portraits aren’t coming down anytime soon, we figured it was time to supplement them with some current day goodness.  After all, a picture can tell you an awful lot about someone…

To see all the pics, check out our facebook fan page here.

Looking to get whisked away on a Friday night? Lucky for you, the Active 20-30 Club of Phoenix has just the ticket to start your weekend in style. They’ve hooked up with the Make-A-Wish Foundation of Arizona, and are set to host quite the little shindig this evening.

Friday, May 8^th will mark the 1^st Annual Phoenix Suitcase Party, and it’s going down at the Deer Valley Airport in north Phoenix. Beginning at 6:30pm, party-goers will eagerly await their chance to board a private jet and enjoy a fun-filled, luxurious weekend in Sonoma Valley.

How does it work you ask? Attendees will bring a packed suitcase, strut their way down the red carpet, and enjoy an evening of drinks, dancing and live entertainment while awaiting their chance to hit the big raffle. At around 9pm, a private jet will arrive at the Atlantic Aviation luxury hangar, and one lucky winner and a guest will be immediately swept away for an amazing weekend.

Sounds pretty killer, no? I’d never heard of this type of party before, and as a sponsor for the event, I’m pretty fired up to see how everything goes down. Plus, all proceeds from the raffle and silent auction go to the Make-A-Wish Foundation of Arizona as well as the Children in Need Foundation. I don’t know about you, but anytime I can support a good cause and have a good time doing it, I chalk it up as a victory in my book.

For complete details on the event, check out the Active 20-30 Club website by clicking here… And make sure to drop us a comment if you’ll be heading that way!

For starters, the Arizona chapter of “Water for People” needed assistance with the design of a flyer and entry form. I mean, you gotta have the basics in order to get groups interested and signed up for a fun filled day of golfing, drinking and eating, right? Needless to say, they weren’t too picky about the free help, and gave our designers the freedom to do something awesome when putting together the flyer. To the right is what @patty_cake came up with… Pretty killer, no?

The ladies and gents over at Water for People were stoked. Now they had the initial marketing piece that would allow them to start hustling and make the 13^th Annual Tourney one to remember. The only things left were to finalize the sponsors and get some golfers signed up. If you are interested in becoming a part of the event as either a sponsor or golfer, please contact Queenie Tsui by clicking here.

According to their website, Water for People helps those in developing countries improve their quality of life by supporting and developing locally sustainable drinking water resources, sanitation facilities and health and hygiene education programs. You know, the stuff we all take for granted on a daily basis.

What came as a shock to me, is the over 800 million people across the world who don’t have access to the clean nectar of Mother Nature, and more than 2.5 billion that don’t have a sanitized place to take care of business. Add those together, and you’ve got about 6,000 people per day that are losing their lives to water-related illnesses… most of them being children. Pretty sad, terrible and unacceptable if you ask me

So without giving you the hard sell, if you’re looking to take some co-workers out for a day of fun in the sun, or you want to schmooze/impress some clients, look at this as the perfect opportunity to help others, escape the office and support a great cause in the 13^th Annual Water for People Golf Tourney.

If nothing else, you get one of these super cool t-shirts to sport around town letting others know you’re down with helping those in need. Seems like a good enough reason, no?

Tommy: Let’s think about this for a sec, Ted, why would somebody put a guarantee on a box? Hmmm, very interesting.
Ted Nelson, Customer: Go on, I’m listening.
Tommy: Here’s the way I see it, Ted. Guy puts a fancy guarantee on a box ’cause he wants you to feel all warm and toasty inside.
Ted Nelson, Customer: Yeah, makes a man feel good.
Tommy: ‘Course it does. Why shouldn’t it? Ya figure you put that little box under your pillow at night, the Guarantee Fairy might come by and leave a quarter, am I right, Ted?
[chuckles until he sees that Ted is not laughing too]
Ted Nelson, Customer: [impatiently] What’s your point?
Tommy: The point is, how do you know the fairy isn’t a crazy glue sniffer? “Building model airplanes” says the little fairy; well, we’re not buying it. He sneaks into your house once, that’s all it takes. The next thing you know, there’s money missing off the dresser, and your daughter’s knocked up. I seen it a hundred times.
Ted Nelson, Customer: But why do they put a guarantee on the box? 
Tommy: Because they know all they sold ya was a guaranteed piece of shit. That’s all it is, isn’t it? Hey, if you want me to take a dump in a box and mark it guaranteed, I will. I got spare time. But for now, for your customer’s sake, for your daughter’s sake, ya might wanna think about buying a quality product from me. 
Ted Nelson, Customer: [pause] Okay, I’ll buy from you.

As this may be the case with some companies (guaranteeing a poor product simply to make the consumer feel all warm and fuzzy) it is most certainly not the case with 3M. In case you didn’t know, 3M is THE fabricator of the finest over laminates and adhesive vinyls in all the land. I refer to them as THE fabricator of such materials because they aren’t just slapping a guarantee on a box. They warranty their products to the fullest extent to make sure each and every client is completely satisfied with their materials.

For example, about 9 months back we wrapped 2 SUV’s for a local client. The wrap designs turned out absolutely killer, the quality of printing was phenomenal and the installation was flawless. Needless to say, a few months went by and the client began to see a few issues with the vehicle graphics peeling up in various crevices on both vehicles. As both sets of vehicle graphics were printed from the same roll of material, it wasn’t hard to believe that they were experiencing the same issue.

The crazy part… In the over 400 vehicles Splinter has wrapped, we’ve never seen material from 3M act this way. Luckily, our local 3M rep took the time to come down and examine the vehicles to see what was happening. The determination was made the material was faulty (when you’re producing millions of square feet of vinyl, this is going to happen once or twice) and our 3M rep gladly supplied us with a new roll of material to print on and re-wrap the vehicles. His level of service was second to none, and it saved us a few thousand dollars by not having to reproduce the graphics on our dime.

The moral of the story? You get what you pay for when it comes to a guarantee. The extra few bucks spent on 3M materials were well worth it just knowing the 3M crew has got your back. Adam, if you’re reading this, thanks for making our lives that much easier and standing by your quality products.