Business

We are excited to introduce The Arkansas 100: Corporate Gift Guide. In this issue, we’re exploring the best corporate gift ideas from around the state.

Arkansas has nearly 250,000 small businesses in the state, and just over 25,000 are retail stores. You can support local businesses by purchasing products made in Arkansas and by visiting local merchants throughout the holiday season, but especially during the annual Small Business Saturday, which falls on Nov. 24 this year.

Need a great gift for your favorite home cook? Arkansas-based Riceland Foods has a new look to its gift box and is also giving back to folks in need.

Looking for a gift to send your clients or business partners? How about sending something wicked? Wicked good, that is!

We discovered the perfect holiday present for the duck hunter in your life. Lifelong waterfowler and Arkansan, Brent Birch, creator and editor of Greenhead magazine, has published “The Grand Prairie: A History of Duck Hunting’s Hallowed Ground.”

Everyone has that one person (okay, maybe more than one) who’s hard to buy for come the holidays. Fortunately, if that person on your list happens to be a coffee connoisseur, we’ve got you covered.

Show extra holiday spirit and give back while you’re giving this season:

The holiday season can be a stressful time. Give the gift of self-care and indulgence to your hard-working team to increase productivity and overall well-being during the last few weeks of the year. Here are three unique wellness gift ideas to put on your office gift list:

You know what everyone loves during the holidays – treats. This year, provide the tasty gift of indulgence with these delicious Arkansas-based options:

Business owners are constantly on a journey of self-improvement, but sticking to a new regimen is hard. One of my favorite Christmas gifts was a journal specifically designed to help set one new intention for the New Year.

Besides verbal appreciation, the most common way to recognize a person or company is with a plaque. Here are some creative ways to show appreciation – beyond the plaque – this holiday season.

More and more, we hear about cybersecurity breaches where data is accessed by hackers. The most recent in the news include Facebook and Equifax. Sometimes these companies handle their crisis communications well. Sometimes they don’t … at all.

When you’re at the helm of a children’s hospital, being dubbed a champion for children may seem cliche. However, Arkansas Children’s Hospital CEO Marcy Doderer is anything but ordinary. Her fierce advocacy for our state’s children extends beyond the walls of hospitals and clinics.

An estimated 75% of people experience some degree of nervousness when it comes to public speaking. If you’re one of them, learning how to improve your skills can go a long way toward reducing anxiety. Here are a few tips:

End-of-year giving will kick off with #GivingTuesday, which falls on Nov. 27. It is time to make last-minute tax deductions to your favorite local nonprofit. To qualify for this calendar year, your gift must be received by Dec. 31.

Not only is augmented reality now mainstream, but it has been shown to capture people’s attention for over 85 seconds, increase interaction rates by 20 percent and improve click-through rates to purchase by 33 percent.

From the stress of pressing deadlines to hours sitting in front of a computer, heart health is not top priority in most workplaces. Heart disease is the leading cause of death in America making it important to incorporate cardiovascular wellness into your office culture. Here are five tips to protect your heart health while at work:

Snapchat announced the launch of its new desktop extension, called Snap Camera, which allows users to apply Snapchat lenses during broadcasts from desktop cameras through video-sharing platforms including Skype, YouTube and Google Hangouts. This free application, for Mac and Windows users, is a way for Snapchat to bolster awareness for its tools.

Going green in the office is a great way to help preserve our natural resources. Businesses have several opportunities to contribute to a better planet.

The city of Fayetteville, in an effort to combat challenges that can cause homelessness, has created Help a Neighbor Fund in partnership with HARK at the Center for Collaborative Care. The fund uses a text-to-give platform that allows the public to donate funds, which HARK will distribute to those in need within the community.

For many, it’s hard to imagine changing career paths. Much less careers vastly different from one another. That wasn’t the case for Bentonville-based lawyer turned fashion designer Nancy Martin.

Emotional support animals can bring calm to people who need them – and legal confusion to employers.

A great brainstorming session can fire up any team. But a lot of them can be real duds. Here are some tips to make yours more successful:

Have you heard of West Village, Little Rock’s newest neighborhood moniker? Merchants on and around Rodney Parham created the name to help unify and promote businesses in the area.

The Little Rock Chamber of Commerce is hosting its annual luncheon on Monday, Nov. 5, at the Statehouse Convention Center in downtown Little Rock. Speakers for this year’s event are Warren A. Stephens, chairman and president of Stephens Inc., and Ken Langone, founder and chairman of Invemed Associates and co-founder of Home Depot.

Continued education is something our agency values. These three marketing conferences are on our radar for 2019:

Manuals, procedures and common practice are not sacred tomes designed to cover the nuances of every single situation. As leaders, we must be willing to do what’s right when our guidelines fall short, even if that means we break a rule.

Bentonville plays host to the NWA Technology Summit, which will beheld at the John Q. Hammons Convention Center in Rogers on Oct. 22 and Oct. 23.

Companies are seeing that long-term investments in social, environmental and governmental initiatives are more beneficial than initiatives without sustainable practices or missions.

Feeling unmotivated and burned out? It happens to the best of us. With fall here and the days growing shorter, it’s important to do what we can to keep ourselves enthusiastic and engaged while doing what we love.