Top 10 Finalists Named for 2013 Johnny Unitas Golden Arm Award

Narrowed from an original field of 30 of the country’s top college quarterbacks, there are now 10 candidates remaining for the 2013 Johnny Unitas Golden Arm AwardÒ.

The 10 finalists for this year’s Golden Arm Award are:

• Tajh Boyd, Clemson
• Derek Carr, Fresno State
• Taylor Kelly, Arizona State
• Jordan Lynch, Northern Illinois
• Sean Mannion, Oregon State
• AJ McCarron, Alabama
• Aaron Murray, Georgia
• Keith Price, Washington
• Connor Shaw, South Carolina
• Keith Wenning, Ball State

Named after the man many refer to as the greatest quarterback ever to play the game of football, the prestigious Golden Arm Award is presented annually by the Johnny Unitas Golden Arm Educational Foundation, Inc. and TransamericaÒ.

Candidates for the Golden Arm Award – which has been presented at the end of each college football season since 1987 – must be college seniors or fourth-year juniors on schedule to graduate with their class. In addition to the accomplishments on the field, candidates are judged on their character, citizenship, scholastic achievement, and leadership qualities.

The 2013 Johnny Unitas Golden Arm AwardÒ will be presented at a ceremony on Friday, December 13, in Baltimore, MD. For the 2013 Golden Arm Award ceremony, The Johnny Unitas Golden Arm Educational Foundation, Inc. and TransamericaÒ will be returning to The Embassy Suites Baltimore Inner Harbor & Grand Historic Venue (formerly The Tremont Grand), where the ceremony was held from 2006 until 2010.

Previous winners of the Golden Arm Award include: Peyton Manning (Tennessee, 1997); Carson Palmer (USC, 2002); Eli Manning (Ole Miss, 2003); Matt Ryan (Boston College, 2007); Colt McCoy (Texas, 2009); and Andrew Luck (Stanford, 2011). Last year’s winner, Collin Klein of Kanas State, was a Second Team All-American (AP) and the 2012 Big 12 Offensive Player of the Year (AP).

Proceeds from the Golden Arm Award help to support the Johnny Unitas Golden Arm Educational Foundation. The Foundation provides financial assistance to underprivileged and deserving young scholar-athletes throughout Maryland and Kentucky.

 

The namesake of the Golden Arm Award has a storied history. Johnny Unitas was an 18-year veteran of the NFL, who played his collegiate career at the University of Louisville before joining the Baltimore Colts in 1958. His career passing figures include 2,830 pass completions for 40,239 yards, 290 touchdowns and throwing a touchdown pass in 47 consecutive games.

 

Unitas was inducted into Pro Football’s Hall of Fame in 1979. The Hall of Fame, in commemorations of the NFL’s 25th, 50th, and 75th anniversaries selected Unitas as the top quarterback of all-time. In turn-of-the-century listings, he was named to Sports Illustrated’s list of top 10 athletes, Time Magazine’s list of 10 most influential athletes, and ESPN’s series on the 50 greatest athletes of the century

 

“Despite my Dad’s outstanding on-field accomplishments, he never forgot his humble beginnings and that won him a permanent place in the hearts of everyone who ever knew him,” says John C. Unitas, Jr., President of the Johnny Unitas Golden Arm Educational Foundation, Inc. “Giving life to his commitment to ‘give back,’ the Golden Arm Foundation was established to promote football on all levels by providing financial aid to deserving young athletes.”

 

In addition to TransamericaÒ, sponsors of the Golden Arm Award include: Andretti Sports Marketing, Athlon Sports, The Babe Ruth and Sports Legends Museum, Baltimore Sun Media Group, Bloomberg Television, Century Engineering, Coach for America, Comcast, Dunbar Armored and Dunbar Digital Armor, The Embassy Suites Baltimore Inner Harbor & Grand Historic Venue, GEICO, Haddock Investments, HMS Insurance Associates, Inc., Metropolis Funding, Panini, Tray Inc., The Scott Garceau Show, MedStar Union Memorial Sports Medicine, VAE Visual Aid Electronics Corp, VPC Inc., Weiss PR, Woodberry Kitchen, Wilson Sporting Goods, and ZBest Executive & Global Transportation Services.

 

To learn more about the Johnny Unitas Golden Arm AwardÒ, visit:

http://www.transamerica.com/about_us/johnny_unitas_golden_arm_award.asp 

http://www.goldenarmfoundation.com/

Four Reasons Why Direct Mail is Still the Undefeated Hero

Some people are under the impression that direct mail is last year’s marketing plan.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

Direct mail is practically the class and quintessential modern marketing plan (and integrating social media and digital marketing only makes a marketing plan exponentially better).

In this post, we will examine exactly why direct mail is so powerful and still so relevant.

Direct mail has shelf-life

Not all advertising mail is discarded and thrown away. Coupons, special promotions, and “save the date” mailings are often placed on the refrigerator or coffee table to be used in the near future.

We can’t send tracking devices with each individual mailing to know and understand exactly what happens to it once it lands in a prospective client’s mailbox, but it is common for these people to arrive, mailing in hand, and ready to make a purchase.

Monitor direct mail response

Coupons are an excellent way of knowing if your direct mail campaign is working.

As you already probably aware, a unique call to action on the mailing can be directly linked to its mailing campaign. Source codes and priority codes are effective ways to see which lists are providing the best responses.

One of the most effective ways of measuring a direct mail campaign’s success is by looking at the bottom line – when business increases there is a way to know the direct mail campaign is working.

Deliver consumers to your website and Facebook page

Some skeptics today say that the internet will eventually phase out direct mail. In the past, we have already discussed why direct mail and social media are not just not enemies, but that they actually complement each other in highly successful ways.

Of course, people do go online to find the information they are looking for.

Websites and Facebook pages have largely become the “store front” for many businesses by giving access to consumers about everything from store hours to store inventory. However, there has to be a reason for someone to visit your website, and direct mail can be the catalyst that sends them there.

Effective advertising

On the first day of marketing school you learned this tip: Anything you can do to keep your name in front of your customers is important to retention of those customers.

Whether a business is just starting off building brand name awareness or they are reminding existing clients that they are ready to serve them, direct mail campaigns makes it happen

Compared to radio, television or newsprint, direct mail is still the best value in advertising.

When are you going to start your next direct mail campaign?

From social to print, we are going to take you places. Contact us to get started today.

Accomplishing Effective and Successful Email Marketing Plans

If you’ve seen our Facebook page lately, you know we’ve been sharing articles on the popularity and importance of email marketing – and how to do it right.

This blog post will serve to help those of you who are excited about this marketing strategy but from a unique angle: let’s take a look at some of the mistakes we can make as email marketers so we know to avoid them in the future.

Without any further ado, what are some mistakes you can make in your email marketing plans?

Just do the following:

Be too focused on incremental tactics 

Sure you can tweak the subject lines all you want, but it won't improve your overall program. Focus most of your time on the big support efforts that will drive major revenue growth. It sounds obvious once we verbalize it, but remember: Taking care of the big things should always be done before the small thing.

Forget to integrate

Remember our blog post about integrating social with print?

Good, because the same is true with email marketing. Email drives subscribers to visit your website, visit your stores, phone your call center, and engage with your social media pages. It also pulls in web and mobile behavior, consumer reviews, catalog assets, and so much more.

Don’t test your tactics

What should you really be doing? Rather than organizing testing as an alternating tactic, use it as a strategic process. Take a progressive approach by testing types of variables that you can leverage and build on for successive testing. But if you want your plan to fail, of course you won’t do this.

Miss the easy stuff 

This is a big one. There are a lot of great avenues to go down, but if you’re looking to have an ineffective campaign, then definitely forget where they are.

See, a "Happy Birthday" email is would have been great and yet too many B2C marketers don't send these messages. "We don't have subscribers' birth dates" is a common excuse. Our solution? Start capturing them. Get a program that helps you capture them so you can start generating revenue.

Avoid the big picture 

Jump straight into redoing your email templates with a responsive design even though your website is not mobile friendly, especially if most of your conversions are happening on desktops, and you ignore the fact that mobile is really about context and content.

From social to print, we are going to take you places. Contact us to get started today.