SBJ hires advertising manager

Felin has been named Springfield Business Journal’s director of advertising and marketing after five years as director of communications at the Springfield Convention & Visitors Bureau.

The Ozarks native will start at SBJ on July 30. Felin’s last day at the CVB was July 20; CVB promoted Laura Whisler to succeed Felin, beginning July 23.

Felin will fill a management post left vacant when Mike Noggle was promoted in May to director of business development. Noggle also is general manager of Joplin Tri-State Business, SBJ’s sister publication.

“We all feel really good about this addition, because we’re not losing anybody good to gain somebody good,” said Jennifer Jackson, SBJ’s chief operating officer. “We’re getting the best of both worlds.”

Felin will manage six account executives and two graphic designers at SBJ, and her job responsibilities will include ad sales, printing negotiations, trade-out and sponsorships, said Jackson, who worked with Felin at Ozarks Technical Community College.

Felin said she would rely on a “breadth of knowledge in all mediums” that encompasses copywriting, graphic design and Web site development. While at the CVB, Felin developed advertising and marketing plans aimed at drawing tourists and conventioneers to Springfield. She worked on 15 different marketing products, including a visitor’s guide, display advertising and the bureau’s Web site, www.springfieldmo.org.

“I think that there’s just a great deal of opportunity with Internet-based news and, along with that, are Internet-based advertising opportunities,” she said.

That’s in line with SBJ’s plans for its Web site, www.sbj.net, relaunched in 2005. There are now about 3,100 Daily Update e-newsletter subscribers and monthly traffic has increased approximately 39 percent this year.

Felin also had a hand in the bureau’s “We’ll Buy Your Gas” promotional campaign, which won a 2007 Hospitality and Sales Management Association International Silver Adrian Award. The program, which offers $40 Visa gift cards to travelers who visit Springfield, exceeded expectations. In 2006, CVB distributed more than 1,000 of the gift cards.

Once on board, Felin said she would look at ways to improve and expand SBJ’s special publications and annual events, which include Economic Impact Awards, Most Influential Women and Best Places to Work, among others.

Prior to joining the CVB, Felin was a public information officer for OTC. In her seven years there, Felin performed an array of public relations duties, from handling media interviews to assisting the school’s foundation with fund-raising activities.

Felin, who was born in Springfield and grew up in Republic, said she comes from a “very education-driven” family. Her mother was a high school business teacher in Ash Grove, and her father – who died of cancer 15 years ago – was a Missouri highway designer who emphasized education because he never earned a college degree.

Felin earned a Bachelor of Science in business with an advertising emphasis from Missouri State University in 1993, but she originally wanted to be a foreign war correspondent. The romanticized idea of circling the globe to cover dangerous conflicts wore off when the life-threatening nature of the job sunk in.

“When it dawned on me that to cover war, you have to go to war (and) to go to war, you might die, I went that afternoon to change my major to marketing,” she said. “I haven’t put my life on the line yet for advertising.”

Her first job was with Schilling/Sellmeyer and Associates advertising agency. She was the home-based firm’s first employee. “I was there when it was (Don) Schilling, (Matt) Sellmeyer and me in Sellmeyer’s basement,” Felin said.

Today, the 36-year-old is pursuing a Master of Arts in communications from MSU – a degree she hopes to obtain some time next year. She said the academic pursuit has made her a “better-rounded marketer.”

Outside the office, Felin volunteers for the American Cancer Society – a nonprofit she developed an affinity for after her father’s death. Her husband, David, works an industrial maintenance instructor at OTC.[[In-content Ad]]