As Barnhart’s new account executive Luu brings six years of experience to the firm and will service various Barnhart clients including: Wyoming Suicide Prevention, History Colorado and Wyoming Tourism. He most recently served as a Senior Accounts Manager at Moxie Sozo in Boulder, working with clients such as the Aspen Music Festival, Bonzini, CatEye Electronics, PROBAR and Colorado Ski Country USA. He also has extensive graphic design knowledge having taught visual communication at Arizona State University, and as the founder and head designer at Luu Fu Creative.

A gradate of Arizona State University in Tempe, Ariz., Luu lives in Boulder, Colo.

“We’re pleased to officially welcome Phil, Adam and Lynda to the team to help us meet growing client demands,” said Bill Schumacher, President and CEO of Barnhart. “Their collective talent and experience supports our mission to be the most vital marketing partner for our clients and to create great work that works.”

Account Director Phil Metz also serves as Barnhart’s Director of Digital Services with more than 10 years of experience creating and managing innovative marketing campaigns in the real estate, resort, hospitality and marine industries. He recently returned to Denver after spending six and a half years in Tampa, Fla. as Vice President and Interactive Department Manager at United Landmark Associates.

Adam Nelson is an award-winning art director who also returned to his native home of Colorado after spending six years at GSD&M in Austin, Texas; David and Goliath in El Segundo, Calif.; and Abend and Moore in Atlanta, Ga. His credits include work for AARP, Ace Hardware, Horseshoe Casino, Kia Motors, Mammoth Mountain and Zales, among others.

Lynda Pfaff brings more than 25 years of experience in marketing and media to Barnhart, having most recently led marketing efforts for Papa Murphy’s central region, spanning 360 stores across 23 markets. Prior to Papa Murphy’s, she held media director positions at Modern Media, Inline Media and Kelley/Dexter Advertising & Marketing. Over the years, she has been responsible for media planning for ski resorts, homebuilders, restaurants, banks and HMOs, among many more agency accounts.

My co-worker walked in this morning talking about her new workout regimen, and I about my re-focused eating habits. Everyone probably has personal goals that sometimes need to be dusted off and renewed. But what about professional goals? I’m officially declaring mine here, in public view on the Barnhart blog, to put that extra kick in me to remain accountable.

1. For each goal, make a plan with measureable objectives. Everything I do during my workday should help me achieve at least one of the agency’s or my clients’ goals. If it doesn’t, then it’s a waste of time. A crucial aspect of a plan is ensuring that you know when you’ve found success, or when you need to adjust your tactics. This requires measureable objectives.

2. Make time for things that should be a priority. It’s all too easy to let things slip to the backburner because other important tasks need to be completed. No one (be it a potential client, co-worker, current client) will be impressed with so-so.

3. Share awesome. This is especially true for social media marketing, but is applicable to just about any and all messaging.

Now let’s see how I can walk the walk, too.

Note: I also attribute this inspiration to attending Explore & Engage with Jason Falls and Brian Solis last week. I highly recommend these two influencers and future Social:IRL events.

A look at the following statistics should help light a fire:
• According to eMarketer, consumers now spend 23.5% of their time each day online, second only to TV at 40%

• According to GfK MRI, eReader ownership is expected to triple in less than two years from 2.1 to 5.9 million units
• iPad sales will more than double in 2011 from 8.5 million units to 19.4 million units and will almost double again in 2012 to 30.1 million units (eMarketer)
• eMarketer predicts there will be 49.4 million mobile social network users by the end of this year and 79.1 million by 2015

• U.S. mobile phone users will top 250 million in 2011, over 80% of the population (eMarketer)
• Social network advertising will reach almost $4 billion (yes, billion with a B) in 2012

So what does all this mean? It means that your customers are reading, writing and communicating on mobile devices more than ever before, and they are not looking back. Sorry, newspaper…

Now don’t get me wrong, I am still a big advocate of traditional media as part of your media mix because let’s face it, it still works, and still gets noticed. However, balance is the key. The more ways you can reach your customer, the better, and the recent explosion of digital media offers us yet more alternatives to do just that. Everyone consumes media differently, so you need to have as much variety as possible in the way(s) you try to reach people, because you never know which touch point will be the one that resonates with someone on any given day, or hour, or minute.

As technology continues to advance, the way we consume media will change and we agency folk need to keep on top of things, as difficult as that can be given the rapid pace of adoption these days. Mobile apps and advertising aren’t right for everyone, and I caution against shoehorning something into your media mix just because you read somewhere that someone did something “cool”. Like anything, make sure you know where you are going, and have a strategy in place, before you make the new media leap.

A recent study published by USC Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism has proclaimed public relations pros the winners of the online social media fight when it comes to budgetary appropriations. (Pause for all the marketing specialists to gasp in horror and outrage.)

Agency budgeting for social media is ever increasing as its popularity and vitality continues to boom. Sure, marketing and public relations professionals alike do warrant some of the control over social media, but it’s all in response to the general public. We must keep up with the ebb and flow of the social media world, and ensure we are providing our clients, and by extension the public, what they want.

So as much as I would like to gloat as a PR person that we are the top dogs, I’m afraid it isn’t so. Just for kicks, though, the study did conclude these findings:

“When asked to define, in percentile terms, how much budgetary control PR/Communications exerted over digital/social media in their organizations, 25.4 percent of corporate participants said that PR/Communication has 81 to 100 percent of budgetary control. Only half as many – 12.6 percent – said that Marketing had that much control.”

Where there’s action, there’s money. And he who controls the action gets all the money. So naturally, the online tug-o-war for social media control will likely continue to be a battlefield. Until then, it looks like dinner’s on us PR people.

Where do you stand on this ever-changing topic? Who, in your eyes, should or does control social media? PR or marketing folks?