As spring approaches, mittens and cozy Christmas songs, once cheery now seem irrelevant and leery. The time’s arrived to clean the house, book the parks, and plant the beds. So, dust off your cobwebbed attire and see Peppershock for new ad trends!

Seasonal marketing is mainly about patterns and where you are as a business. No matter what your business, there are two main objectives to consider:

1) Your consumer, and
2) Your consumer’s trends

The critical purpose is to understand your consumer and depending on where you are as a business depends on what you know about your consumer and their patterns. For example, a new business may not have enough information built up to know the trends of their customers whereas a more seasoned business has the information but doesn’t know how to apply it to their marketing. Peppershock appeals to both.

If you’re a new business, starting can be a scary process. We can help you learn about your consumer and exercise possible future trends. With an established business, we help apply prior knowledge to future goals and projects.

As consumers change, marketing conditions evolve. Don’t be afraid to pluck, pull, or prune your old advertisement. We can’t all be like Cadbury selling a thirty year old chocolate caramel egg with a thirty year old bunny commercial. Most of us don’t have the stability of a 10 year reputation, let alone a 90 year old one. Instead, we must meet the demands of the ever-changing consumer and evolve with the times while staying true to the original focus. Peppershock can help you create a long-lasting product while maintaining its consistency, such as a brand.

Remember: Spring is around the corner which means Earth Day, Mother’s Day, Memorial Day and many others aren’t far off. How seasonal is your business?

Come into Peppershock for our free one-hour consultation and replant old ideas into new strategies!

Lauryn is a California girl who is currently attending the College of Idaho, majoring in art with a minor in music. Though there are no film production classes on campus, Lauryn happily continues with her favorite hobbies by making short films for Campus Ministries. Before leaving for college, she attended Freestyle Academy in Mountain View, CA, where she got to explore some of her favorite passions, including illustration, music composition and filmmaking. During her free time, Lauryn enjoys drawing, reading, watching movies, playing piano and drums, and traveling.

Peppershock co-owner, producer Drew Allen to evaluate student work at the Business Professionals of America Secondary State Conference, March 11th-13th, at Boise State University. Drew will be judging student’s Digital Media Productions.

What a wonderful whirl. The Day of the Dude was a rousing (or perhaps, calming) success and the Dudely avatar, Jeff Bridges won the Academy Award for best actor. If it hadn\'t been for all those white russians and oat sodas we drank, It truly would have been a weekend to remember. Is this a…what day is this?

via The Weekend of Living Duderously.

Due to the slushy wet snow storm of last Wednesday, our Wunch was postponed and renamed Thunch for the week.
We should have known something was awry when Mark suggested we make our trek across the overpass to the “other” side of the tracks.
I’ll let the pictures speak for themselves.  BTW, if you happen upon a Gomez, let me know.  Simple case of mistaken identity.  Or were we set up?

By Lauryn Medeiros

When preparing to produce a film, it is hard not to think of the phrase that all filmmakers dread: everything that can go wrong, will go wrong.  Just when you think you have it all planned out and perfect, something unexpected happens that can sometimes delay a whole shoot.  However, there are a few things to keep in mind that may help boost your confidence in the planning process.  One significant idea is storyboarding.

Storyboarding is something that is crucial when planning a film.  Though you may say, “I’m no artist” or, “I probably won’t even look at that during the shoot,” it can provide you with a constant to depend on when all else fails.  If everything else becomes off-balance, those storyboards can certainly help keep a filmmaker on track.  Let’s face it, filmmaking can be the most stressful thing in the world sometimes, and so having images that tell you exactly what to do and allow you to visualize your dream on camera can keep you sane, for the most part.  Take it from me, an intern at Peppershock Media Productions who has certainly gone through a filmmaking experience that was saved by storyboarding.

During my senior year in high school, I was working on a narrative film project with a group of other film students.  Not only did I work on the screenplay, but I also was a part of the whole planning process.  In other words, this film meant the world to me, and I did not want anything to hinder the final product.  Sure enough, on the only day we could shoot, that phrase that my professor had drilled into every student’s head came back to haunt me: everything that can go wrong, will go wrong.  Two of our main actors bailed, the wind picked up, and the daylight started fading on the beautiful beach location we were at.  Luckily, we had our scripts and enough actors (last minute people we had found after calling almost everyone we knew).  Don’t forget those storyboards, of course.  We carried those with us, the ones that we had all slaved away on and did not think we needed.  Our professor had required them, so of course we had no choice but to complete them and bring them along.

Those storyboards ended up saving the film from complete chaos; they contributed in quickening the shoot as well as making it more organized.  Though the wind was extreme, our actors were new, and the day was ending, we still had that important constant we needed to get us through this shoot: the visuals drawn on the storyboards that directed each shot, each camera angle.

I highly recommend storyboarding.  Not only will it help you visualize your film, it also creates a more efficient environment on set.  Drew Allen, the production manager and co-owner of Peppershock Media Productions, explains that it correlates with your script and your shotlist, helping to bring everything together better.  It also helps when you are blocking out shots with the actors.  Though storyboarding is not always typical for every type of film, such as documentaries or 30-second spots, it has its definite advantages in other aspects of film.  According to Allen, “Storyboarding is even helpful in selling a concept to a client.”  It is nice to have a “visual blueprint”, as Allen describes it, in showing the client what is being planned.  Allen also points out, “When you are on set and your actors are all standing around waiting for direction, if you have a good visual, it saves you a lot of time on set, as well as money.”  In short, when in doubt, try storyboarding, and have fun with it.  Those sketches most certainly will have a good impact on your film, one way or another.

The Meridian Mayor’s Anti-Drug Coalition (MADC) is working to educate students, parents and teachers on how to talk about drugs and what can be done to keep children safe from the harmful and costly effects drugs have on a community.  This video has been used throughout the Treasure Valley to recruit and educate volunteers.
Learn more.

Congrats to Angie on her first design submission to Threadless!  Her design reflects the theme, “It’s hard without shoes.”  Submitted as an entry in the TOMS Shoes contest.  Keep up the great work Ang!
Please visit the link below and rate Angie’s design.

Enjoy a beautiful night in Italy at the College of Idaho.
Dinner – Silent Auction – Live Auction

All proceeds will go to support the Caldwell Mayor’s Youth Advisory Council.

Tickets:
$20 each in advance/$25 at the door
$35 per couple in advance/$40 at the door
$300 for a Table Sponsor (includes 8 tickets)
Dress: Black tie (optional)
More information available on the event’s Facebook page

Please contact the ICB Caldwell Branch to purchase tickets in advance. 208-454-2800

Sponsored by Caldwell Mayor’s Youth Advisory Council, The College of Idaho & Intermountain Community Bank

The term Wunch is a combination of the words, Wednesday Walking Lunch. Each week, our Wunch Leader Angie, takes the Peppershock crew on an adventurous tour through the streets of Nampa, Idaho. This weekly ritual serves two purposes; first, to de-numb our butts and second, to explore the vast richness of culture and random artifacts Nampa has to offer (as narrated by Mark).

We were especially excited about this particular Wunch because we had just received our new Canon 7D camera. This short documentation of our adventure was shot with the 7D as a test drive. I give the camera a Gold Star, A+ rating. There will definitely be much more to come with this little beauty of an invention. Thank you Canon.