The Hammock spelling bee team swapped paint with 10 other great teams in the 15th Annual NALC Spelling Bee on Sept. 9, and, after sustaining some sheet metal damage, finished out of the money for the first time in 4 years.

The evening’s theme was NASCAR, so the track was littered with racing terms. Hammock ran into trouble on the word “monocoque,” literally “single shell,” which is a term used in auto and other kinds of design. We overcorrected by spelling it “monococque,” and spun out in the “chicane,” another racing word we heard last night.

A non-racing word that quickly became the most-uttered term of the evening was “Pshaw,” a somewhat archaic interjection that was more polite to say as teams fell by the wayside than what most of us were thinking.

The winner of the evening was the law firm of Neal & Harwell, who ran neck and neck with Davis-Kidd Booksellers until nosing ahead on the word “inchoate.” They sealed their victory by correctly spelling “shibboleth.”

Beemasters were author Ann Patchett and her husband, Karl Vandevender. Both of them struggled at times with pronunciations and joshed with each other throughout the event, which was entertaining—when it wasn’t distracting.

Hammock congratulates Neal & Harwell on their victory, but cautions them not to get too attached to the traveling trophy. We’ll be back next year to reclaim it.

It’s spelling bee time again, and Bill, Jamie and I are gearing up to reprise our roles from last year on Hammock’s winning team. The 15th Annual Nashville Area Literacy Council’s Spelling Bee takes place Tuesday, Sept. 9, at the Nashville Public Library, so if you’re in the area stop by to cheer us on!

This year’s theme is NASCAR, so I’m guessing we’ll see some dueling No. 8 and No. 24 t-shirts—and hopefully some stick-on mustaches, too. But besides planning our costumes, Bill, Jamie and I (ok, mostly I) have some studying to do to ensure the checkered flag is lowered first for us. Because if we win, Jamie has promised to take a victory lap around the library garage.

But I bet we could convince her to do a burnout, too.

Jon Henshaw, the SEO guru (among many other things) at the web-development firm Sitening, says some very nice things about the online strategy displayed on Hammock.com. Thanks, Jon. We feel like Sally Field receiving an Oscar.

We’ve found that organizations seek the help of a custom media partner like ours for lots of different reasons. Some have internal communications departments, but don’t have the editorial, design or production expertise to accomplish their goals. Others recognize the cost savings and predictability of working with a partner rather than keeping the resources necessary to produce media in-house; while others have expertise in one type of media, but look to us for help creating and integrating new media. Our relationships with our clients are all unique, but here are some of the more common reasons we have found for organizations to hire a custom media company:

Last week, Hammock launched a special multimedia e-magazine of MyBusiness for our client, the National Federation of Independent Business. The issue will reach over 1 million small business owners across the country. MyBusiness is a bimonthly magazine for the members of NFIB, the leading and most influential advocacy organization representing small and independent business.
The special e-magazine focuses on the 2008 National Small Business Summit, held in Washington, D.C., in June and organized by NFIB and eBay. The biannual Summit is an event that brings together America’s most politically active entrepreneurs and key congressional, administrative and business leaders.

We were delighted to see ourselves mentioned recently in a column in the Tennessean about companies using blogs well. David Bohan, CEO of Bohan Ideas, shares several tips for blogging well, corporately speaking.
Thanks for the kind words!

I’m back in the office. Rested and relaxed from a week at the wonderful John Campbell Folk School in Brasstown, N.C. It may not sound “restful” to spend about ten hours a day for seven days making a loopback Windsor chair, but to me, it was enjoyable and, at times, inspiring. And, as usual when I have time to experience something completely new, I see the connections I never imagined before. While the trip was completely personal and off-duty (I even joked that my going offline was an experiment in being NeoAmish), Jamie Roberts assigned me a writing assignment related to it for an upcoming American Spirit. I also took plenty of photos and video. In fact, here is a set of photos on Flickr that follow the progress of the chair I made.

Hammock’s work with the Marine Corps League is featured in the latest issue of the Custom Publishing Council’s magazine Content. The article “Across a Crowded Room, ” focuses on how marketers and custom publishers are finding new ways to target specific audiences with custom content. In the case of our client the Marine Corps League, the association wanted to reposition its magazine for a number of reasons—one of which was to recruit younger Marines.
Read the article from Content here to learn how we redesigned, refocused and repositioned Marine Corps League magazine (newly named Semper Fi) to accomplish the goals of the League. “In the two and a half years since the redesign,” says MCL executive director Mike Blum, “membership in the Marine Corps league has increased 25 percent. Between 15 and 20 percent of that increase can be attributed to the magazine.”

A report recently released by Junta42 and BtoB magazine reveals that business marketers spend on average 29.42 percent of their budgets on custom content. This is slightly higher than that the 2007 studies by the Custom Publishing Council and Publications Management, which found marketers spending 27 percent on average for B2B and B2C. Spending on custom products is on the rise, too. In 2008, 42 percent of business marketers increased their spending on customized content marketing.

Find the full list of custom products used by marketers responding to the study here.

Most of us at Hammock Inc. read voraciously. Recently some of us talked about our favorite books.
Editor Megan Pacella is spending the summer with the classics:

…. I’m working on books that most people had to read in high school or college, but I never did. Right now I’m working my way through 1984. After that it’s Catch-22, and then Walden.

IT Guy Patrick Ragsdale is undecided about summer reading, but he knows his favorite of all time, Isaac Asimov:

I haven’t decided what to read during my summer vacation this year. Since I won’t be vacation until September I still have some time to decide. I may choose something based on what people say here.
My favorite all time books go way, way back to The Foundation Series by Isaac Asimov. Not exactly Pulitzer Prize stock, but at age 12 this stuff really got me going. I’ve read the series several times since then. Actually led me to name my son Isaac. More recently I’d say that I’m prone to more technical reading. Books on system administration are pretty exciting. They’re just like Guy Noir Private Eye pulp fiction.