All Aboard the Welcome Wagon

The Sells Agency has recently welcomed several new faces to our rapidly expanding team. As we told you in our last post, one of our summer interns will be making her time with us permanent. Sarah Kurrus, a very bright and talented recent graduate of Vanderbilt University, has taken on a new position as Public Relations Account Coordinator and will assist our clients with their diverse PR needs.

Because the additional help over the summer was such a relief, we realized that it’s time to open our doors to even more staff. Two new associates – Suzanne Hill, who joins our media department, and Kati Wessinger, an in-house freelance artist – are quickly settling in.

Suzanne is a recent graduate of the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville and has just completed a summer internship at another local agency. She will be a key part in the media planning and buying process. As a journalism major, Suzanne was very involved in campus leadership through the advertising club, student ambassadors and other organizations. She also has experience in leading large groups of spirited high school students as a head instructor for Universal Cheerleaders Association. We could always use the help corralling some of the more spirited characters around this office.

Kati will assist the art directors for the next few months, helping them tackle an increasingly busy workload. She, too, is a recent graduate from the U of A and is multi-talented in that not only does she excel at her agency projects, but she moonlights as a very talented baker, cake decorator and blogger. We promise, that the latter skill set had no influence on our decision to bring her on board, but those cupcakes she made last week were delicious!

Needless to say, we’re thrilled to have such an exceptional group of new employees. And we have a feeling we’ll be welcoming more soon.

A send-off for our interns

It is with both a sad heart and a sense of pride that we say 'good-bye' to our summer interns. While we're not happy to see the Class of 2010 leave, we are also very proud of what they have accomplished this summer.

They've broadened their knowledge of the advertising industry, not only seeing first-hand how an ad agency works, but also touring vendors. From television production to printers, Lauren has coordinated trips that exposed them to the many facets of our industry. If we have only proven to them that life is not exactly 'Mad Men' then we have done our jobs.

The interns have been involved with campaigns for almost all of our clients, but their primary project has been for Safe Places. This non-profit organization has been mentioned in an earlier blog entry and we'll show you the fruits of their labor in a week or two, but we've seen a peek at what they've done…and it's impressive.

Thanks to Robert Haynes and John Cater. They'll be returning to their schools (UCA and UALR, respectively) for their final semester before graduating. We hope to see them here at the Sells Agency sometime in the future. Sarah Kurrus, however, won't be leaving us. She is now working for us, full-time, as a Public Relations Account Coordinator. Congratulations to Sarah on proving herself this summer and showing us how foolish we'd be to let her get away.

To celebrate their last day, we'll be chowing down on pizza at lunch. That's one thing we know they've learned – we at the Sells Agency like to eat. Almost as much as we've liked having the interns here for the summer!