Every year we choose a number of causes for pro bono work. As it happens, every year one of those causes is unchanged: the Ride for Missing Children. It started as a 43-person bike ride from Albany to Utica to raise awareness for abducted children, inspired by a local girl’s tragedy. It’s now an annual event with over 400 riders making their way through Central New York with police escort, passing through towns and stopping at schools to spread the word. My father, the founder of our agency, was on the committee that conceived the original Ride, and I have been a rider 4 times. Other members of our agency have also been riders many times over the years, and we have always provided our services to promote the cause: raising awareness and working to return missing children to their families. Visit Central New York this Friday and you will be stunned by the commitment of this small community. We always are.

Watch below as Bernie Freytag (who designed the original logo for the Ride) and Katie Ullman talk about their experiences in participating and helping to promote this amazing event.

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Miracles, and great ideas, often come in small packages.

image courtesy of WKTV.com

As we work to inspire others, we are often inspired ourselves. We’re celebrating a local family that has taken adversity and turned it into a positive experience for others. Jason and Kristy Nole found a way to give back to a community and organization that helped their daughter in their time of need, the Children’s Miracle Network (CMN) at Faxton-St. Luke’s Healthcare in Utica. The CMN provides programs, services and life-saving equipment for children and families in Central New York. Their month-long “Dining for Miracles” event will be hosted at their family-owned restaurant, ANCORA!, and include other local restaurants as well.

“Children’s Miracle Network is an organization that positively impacts so many members of our local community,” said Jason Nole. “I wanted to give back in some way. I thought, what better way than through Dining for Miracles.” We couldn’t agree more. Read the whole news article here.

Also interesting: Jason’s newest restaurant, Simmer, was branded and named in collaboration with Romanelli Communications. We couldn’t be prouder to work with so generous a client and friend.

Wondering how to sell product using social media? We suggest you take a page from Nike’s playbook, as our agency begins a little friendly competition by using Nike+ to train for Utica’s Boilermaker 15K Road Race.

Here is some data from recent runs. If you want to train with us or just spectate, you can track our progress on our Nike+ pages.
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This week, Katie Ullman who is our PR Director / Account Manager was honored by the Mohawk Valley Ad Club as the 2010 Ad Person of the year. She is actually the 5th person with ties to Romanelli Communications to be honored in this way over the club’s 30+ year history. We’re all very proud of Katie’s work not only within our office but also of the work she does for the Mohawk Valley Ad Club and the Ride For Missing Children.

This was an evening of cheers and short jokes, as we toasted and roasted Katie.  But we’re really proud of her.  During the evening’s presentation (which you can watch in its entirety here), we also showed a “short” documentary we produced about Katie. We’d like to share that with you below. Enjoy!

Photos:

More photos of the evening’s events can be found at the Mohawk Valley Ad Club’s Photostream.

Bernie and Ryan share 5 big ideas reinforced at the SXSW interactive conference.