Thursday, April 2, 2009

NY Times Cover – pretty cool

Well, not exactly the photo my friend Ben Olk had last year capturing him shaking then candidate Obama’s hand at a rally, but still pretty cool anyways.

First a plug for Ben: Ben has a great story of how he maneuvered himself within a handshake range at the Xcel Energy Center in St Paul last year – maybe his luck as Ben is President of another St Paul instituition, 100+ year old National Checking Company. National Checking makes those ubiquitous green “GuestChecks” (shown at left). Those are the pads that a waitperson writes on so that they can be more accurate and efficient. I’ve seen them at coffeeshops and recently at a Buffalo Wild Wings – I always make a point of complimenting the use of GuestChecks!

Now, on to the Hedberg Maps NY Times experience… a small photo, but still on page 1. On March 31 about an inch and a half square photo included the cover of our U.S. College and Unviersity Reference Map. The version shown was a custom print run for the Independent Educational Consultants Association (IECA). We’ve long been told by educational counselors and consultants that this map is one of the most used counseling tools, so I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that it showed up on the top of the stack of materials in the photo, but I was still thrilled.

The article focused on the financial end of the college search process. Frequently quoted was Diane Geller, current president of IECA. IECA members are a great way to go for a family to work through the daunting college search process. They have completed extensive training and are well versed in all aspects of the college search. We were fortunate that they chose to utilize our map with IECA branding and included a number of the benefits of working with one of their consultants.

2 comments:

Ben3 said...

Tom,

Front page of the NYT is a great spot see those Hedberg Maps! We used the College map on both of our college-seeking excursions last year, and they were enormously helpful!

Regarding the Obama story, it really boils down to being willing to change seats 4 times, have an animated conversation in sign language and survive a mild threat of divorce/murder.

Thanks for the GuestCheck plug. They really do help resterauteuers increase their bottom line by enhancing the customer's dining experience. We always say, "Write it down. Get it right!" Someday, I will give you the low-down on all the places that our ubiquitus little product has appeared in the media -- from the splash page on google, to the critical scene in a Scorse thriller, to the centerfold of Playboy (I promise that I only looked at the GuestCheck in her hand!)

Ben Olk
President
NCC

Tom Hedberg said...

Interesting Ben - great to hear about all the places the GuestCheck has appeared.. I guess we have something more in common: Hedberg Maps may be the only map publisher that has had a map featured in Playboy... about 8 years ago, our Santa Map had a nice write-up (Playboy is famous for great articles!) - I still have some of the tear-sheets and occasionally enjoying re-reading the article (I make sure to close my eyes when looking at the rest of the page).