Gerry Tietz opened the meeting and offered the invocation.
 
Our guests today were Mary Jo McGuire, and prospective member Sean Kinsella (Jeff's guest), owner of Right at Home, a home care and assistance agency located in New Brighton.
 
President Margaret Johnson read a very nice thank you letter from "Can Do Canines", thanking us for our $250 donation to their service dog training organization.  A representative from the organization will speak to the club on July 28th.
 
Margaret noted that she will be in Taiwan for the next two Rotary Meetings so the next time we see her will be at her final meeting as president on June 30th.  President-elect Dana Rebelein will fill in during Margaret's absence so she should be all practiced-up for the first meeting of her tenure on July 7th.
 
Gerry Tietz reminded all committee chairs and directors that they are requested to attend a training session on using the "committee" module in our ClubRunner club management software.  The session will be held in the our normal meeting area at 11:00AM on July 7th.  Please bring your wi-fi enabled devices so you can get help actually accessing the functions of the software.
 
Mark your calendars now for the New Brighton Stockyard Days Celebration, August 2-10.  Make special note of the Stockyard Days Parade on August 6th, because we'll need your help to feed hot dogs to all the parade participants.  We'll start cooking at 4:30PM.
 
Gerry Tietz introduced our speaker, Samara Bilyeu-Anderson, from Lillie Suburban Newspapers, Inc.  Samara spoke to us about many ways to make make your advertising dollars go further.  For newspaper advertising, Samara advised to forego full-page ads in favor of multiple smaller ads on an ongoing basis.  This strategy keeps your message in front of potential customers or clients, promoting top-of-mind-awareness (TOMA, in advertising lingo), so that your business comes to mind no matter when the customer decides they need your product or service.  She stressed that, unless you've already got strong branding, you must include all the information the customer needs to make a decision to contact or visit your business.  Make no assumptions about what the customer already knows about your company.  Samara said that your newspaper advertising representative will be happy to help you design ads and ad programs for maximum effectiveness.  Even though Samara's job is newspaper advertising, she also offered that radio, TV, internet and direct mail advertising can, depending on your situation, be important elements of a comprehensive marketing strategy.  Regardless of the advertising media, however, frequency and consistency are the cornerstones of any effective advertising effort.  Gerry and Samara are shown below.