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Communications Team Wins Top ACCE Award
Chamber's Communications Team Wins Top ACCE Award
A wise-cracking locomotive engine (Der Choo Choo) offers a friendly spoof of Volkswagen’s comic classic Beetle (Das Auto) in a VW recruitment presentation that earned the Chamber’s marketing team top honors this year from the American Chamber of Commerce Executives (ACCE). J.Ed. Marston, Chamber vice president of marketing and communications, and graphic artist Jeremy Henderson accepted the Best of Show Award for Communications Excellence at the ACCE annual meeting in Raleigh. The award honored Das book of what the company wants, a Chamber booklet and PowerPoint presentation that played off VW’s marketing opus, Das book of what the people want.
“The Chamber booklet was designed to demonstrate the values Chattanooga shares with Volkswagen,” Marston said. “Echoing Volkswagen’s current advertising campaign, we delivered the message of similarities between Chattanooga and VW, including a focus on environmental stewardship and a commitment to 21st Century manufacturing.” A pivotal player in the Chamber’s wooing of VW, Marston has been publicizing the Chattanooga region as a business destination and marketing Enterprise South Industrial Park and the Chamber since 2002. The global public relations campaign he directs reached 215 million people last year, with placements in the Wall Street Journal, BusinessWeek and a host of foreign-based media.
Marston, who graduated magna cum laude from Spring Hill College in Mobile, led the community processes which created the Chattanooga CAN DO business brand and the Choose Chattanooga relocation brand. He is a founding member of the committee that initiated the STAND visioning process and serves on the boards of the Chattanooga Technology Council, Manager of the Year Steering Committee and the History Center. “When my wife Tabitha and I visited Chattanooga several years ago, we immediately fell in love with the city,” Marston says. “We knew it would be a great place to raise our children and we wanted to be a part of the city’s next stages of development.”
Henderson came to the Chamber two years ago from Lifetouch Photography Studio. The Cohutta native is in charge of all art for Chamber print materials. A graduate of the Savannah College of Art and Design, Henderson says he has been drawing since he could pick up a pencil. “I drive my friends crazy because we’ll be at a restaurant or some place and I’ll spend half my time doodling on the napkins,” he says.
Last year Henderson served on the Committee for the American Cancer Society’s Relay for Life fundraiser and on the board of the Tennessee Valley Canoe Club (TVCC). An avid outdoorsman who enjoys kayaking, camping and hiking, he participated on the TVCC paddling team in the Chattanooga Dragon Boat Race this year and helped his crew raise the most money for T.C. Thompson Children’s Hospital.
The newest member of the communications staff, web content administrator Stratton Tingle, moved here from Cape Girardeau, MO, to attend Southern Adventist University. In 2002, Tingle traded his cozy Collegedale apartment for a garage with no running water in Africa, where he served as a student missionary working for the World Food program. Southern Adventist’s film production program inspired him to try his hand at filmmaking, which he pursued for four years following graduation.
Tingle, who has been playing guitar and singing since the age of 14, is now in charge of vocals and controls a computer in his electronic group, Prophets & Kings, which recently received a MakeWork grant from CreateHere. Tingle formats and distributes the Chamber’s email newsletter and updates the Chamber’s website and database. “I like the interaction with interesting and motivated business people in the community and I really enjoy my co-workers,” he says. “I had previously worked alone doing freelance filmmaking so it’s cool now working with a team.”
Publications Director Carolyn Mitchell, who edits the Chamber’s Trend magazine and writes media releases, rounds out the department. A Chattanooga Times reporter for almost 20 years, she won two Associated Press awards, one for her coverage of Linn Yann, the Cambodian refugee whose academic success in the U.S. led to a Disney film, The Girl Who Spelled Freedom.
Mitchell, who holds a graduate degree from Vanderbilt, served as an AmeriCorps volunteer at Clifton Hills Elementary and worked in the communications office of a Utah animal sanctuary before joining the Chamber in 2002. She is publicity director for the Fellowship of Southern Writers and serves on the marketing committee of the Chattanooga Girls Leadership Academy. “It’s a pleasure to help promote businesses that offer first-rate products and services and that share their success through local philanthropy,” Mitchell says. “I’ve also enjoyed broadening the Chamber’s recycling program and introducing an internship program for our department.” |
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