Dubbed “The Year of the Phoenix,” 2024 brought to life some of our most ambitious and dangerously delightful ideas yet. Here’s a month-by-month recap of everything we did to celebrate Fresh Produce and Ipso Gallery this past year.
January Pickfresh.com Pancake Feed
We kicked off 2024 with a new website and celebrated with a pancake feed. Guests sipped their choice of coffee or juice while enjoying a rotating slideshow of our updated web pages. We even had website designer
Alex Duncan working the griddle. Plus, everyone got to take home their own brown mug as a keepsake.
March Fresh World Internet Radio Program
Flowerman and the NTMD8R returned to the airwaves with the launch of Fresh World. The radio show, which aired every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday throughout March, covered a variety of topics, from knick-knack apps to Appalachian trail names. True to their roots, Mike and Ted recorded the whole show in Ted’s basement.
April Gratitude Month
Around 12 years ago, we learned that NBA teams who engage more in physical touch have more success. Chest bumps, tush taps—that sort of thing. It’s the kind of anecdote that inspires you to get together once a month to send over 9,000 yellow-lined notes to “high five” people around the world.
In April, we printed a special run of “high fives” and custom postcards to send an extra boost of energy to our friends and clients.
Prompts were divided among three teams, each with a writer, producer, and voice talent. We relied heavily on our creative process and “I just love it” intuition to get each ad over the finish line.
In total, we produced 20 ads, most of which we feel pretty great about.
July Differentiated Business Podcast
Not all business podcasts are no-nonsense. Since July, the
Differentiated Business Podcast with Michael J Hart the Fourth and Theodore J Heeren the First has provided a glimpse at what it’s like to work at a one-of-a-kind ad business that specializes in differentiation strategy.
August Motivational Speaker
Some of our favorite ideas don’t feel all that brilliant, strategic, or necessary.
“Motivational Speaker” is one of those—a guerrilla stunt we’d pitched several times but never got the green light. So, we made it happen ourselves.
Local artist Steve Bormes helped us create the downtown installation, and our friend Jonathan Burns brought it to life with encouraging commentary.
September Sports Month
Everyone enjoys a good personal growth goal—whether that’s walking 100,000 steps in one day, coaching your kids at monkey bars, or scuba diving in the Missouri River.
For Sports Month, we each challenged ourselves by setting a sports-related goal to achieve by the end of September. Since the Get Fresh Crew represents a wide range of athletic abilities, we kept our definition of “sports” pretty loose.
October Mystic Hollow
Turning our sunroom into a birdcage was a first for Ipso.
We also placed a few owl-themed billboards around Sioux Falls, but those weren’t directly related to the show; we just had birds on the brain.
December Phoenix is the Big Time
Technically, the 14th installment of the
Differentiated Business Podcast didn’t debut until January; however, this episode ties a nice, neat bow on 2024 at Fresh Produce. In this episode, Theodore J. Heeren and Michael J. Hart IV trace the evolution of our Mystic Truth, “Phoenix is the Big Time,” from an inside joke to a metaphor for our wildest dreams.
“I think that’s the essence of ‘Phoenix is the Big Time;’ it’s letting yourself get swept up in an idea.”