So track Alex’s Gluten Free Spots down in the App Store and get your unique fingerprints all over it. Why is is so important that you add your favorite spots and your thoughts on gluten free places in your area?

The community counts on your feedback

As you may know from our beautiful infographic, the celiac community is growing fast. An estimated 3 million Americans suffer from it, and 30% of the United States population carries genes that make them susceptible to it.

Alex’s Gluten Free Spots has a long list of restaurants that talk the talk and say they’re gluten free, but we don’t know if they truly walk the walk until you publish your ratings and reviews. So whenever you’re eating out, help out your fellow GF diners and give your honest feedback on your meal. If the restaurant isn’t on the list, just plug in its information and then post your feedback. Easy peasy? Lemon squeezy.

Our promise to you

You are a valued contributor to Alex’s Gluten Free Spots, and we can’t thank you enough. It’s our pledge to you that we will not sell your email address or any other personal information. Creating an account within the app just lets us know that your reviews and locations are the real thing.

We welcome your feedback on the app, and we thank you for being a part of it!

Visit AlexsGlutenFreeSpots.com

Several different scripts were presented to Memorial Health System. Their marketing department, physicians, and staff chose the script you see in the video. It was a complex shoot, but efficiency allowed us to both shoot and edit into a final polished spot within one week. At Demi & Cooper, we take pride in using technology to our advantage. It used to be producing a spot that looked half has good took twice as long. No longer!

Wondering what Demi & Cooper can do for you? Drop us a line!

Charles Falls, our fearless leader, is very familiar with Celiac disease—his daughter was diagnosed just this past year. And she is not alone. 1 in 133 people in our country have Celiac disease. After watching his daughter struggle to eat out at restaurants (since Celiacs can’t even eat food that comes into contact with gluten), Charles came up with the idea for an app where those who eat gluten free can rate restaurants. We launched the app, Alex’s Gluten Free Spots, last month and it already has over 1,000 downloads.

This isn’t the first gluten free restaurant review app, but it is the first to offer Celiac-friendly ratings. Since Celiacs need to know the risks of cross-contamination, the app allows users to rate the knowledge of the staff, whether the restaurant is Celiac friendly, and of course, the taste of the food.

In honor of Celiac Awareness month, check out the graphic below! More people than you know probably have Celiac disease, especially considering that 85 percent of those with the disease are undiagnosed. This and more amazing stats in our infographic.

Image Courtesy of: AlexsGlutenFreeSpots.com

Why Gluten Free?

Not long ago, Charles Falls (our company president) had trouble finding out if gluten-free food offered at restaurants was safe for his daughter, Alex, 19, who was recently diagnosed with Celiac disease. “Existing apps showed that particular restaurants offered gluten-free food, but none offered a thorough rating system that said if the food was Celiac friendly, the risk of cross-contamination, or how well-versed staff members are in which items are gluten free,” he said.

Healthcare Impact

1 in 133 Americans are diagnosed with celiac disease, and on top of that, an estimated 85% who have it are undiagnosed. And despite the large number of undiagnosed, 5 times more people have been diagnosed with celiac disease today compared to a half century ago.

A gluten free diet is currently the only treatment for celiac disease. The number of people with gluten sensitivity is staggering, and more Americans express the desire to eat gluten free year after year. (Currently, 29% of adults say they want to cut back on gluten)

With gluten awareness and interest in eating gluten free on the rise, we’re excited to see just how far this new app can go.

About Alex’s Gluten Free Spots

Released for iPhone on April 14, 2013, Alex’s Gluten Free Spots is free to download. Offering the app free of charge will allow anyone with an iPhone and an interest in the app to download it, which will help build the database of gluten free spots.

Learn more about the app at AlexsGlutenFreeSpots.com. Find graphics and video for the press at AlexsGlutenFreeSpots.com/media.

Every business has competitors with more Facebook followers. After having clients approach us for creative ways to outpace their competitors on Facebook, we decided to create an app that would help them stand out from the rest. We are excited to finally announce the release of an exciting new app, Hostile Takeover, that allows businesses to anonymously take over their competitor’s Facebook accounts, and ultimately drive business away from competitors and to their own pages.

Hostile Takeover allows a user, in just a few clicks, to become an admin on any business account Facebook page. Once you are an admin, posts are up to your discretion. The takeover is completely anonymous, and other admins on the account are automatically boxed out. This allows you to take over the account until the competitor alerts Facebook to the takeover. “Most Hostile Takeovers will last up to 24 hours before Facebook can get the account straightened back out, which has proven to be enough time to do the necessary damage,” says Falls, President of DC Interactive Group.

You can also fully delete the competitor’s account. This is a good option if you want to be in and out, with no mess. This option also takes the competitor longer to recover the account, if they are able to at all.

For a limited time, Hostile Takeover is free for the first Takeover. Then the cost is $100 per Competitor.

Here are a few reviews from recent Hostile Takeover Users:

“We are a community hospital with a larger competitor a few miles away. Our Hostile Takeover allowed us to convince their followers that they had an outbreak of a rare disease and were under quarantine. That day our patient volume grew by 40 percent!”

“As a new restaurant, we were having trouble garnering business, likely due to repeat customers at nearby restaurants. After our Hostile Takeover of a few of their Facebook accounts, where we changed their hours to show they were closed on Fridays, our Friday night business has been booming! And the best part is, most of them didn’t even notice, so they are still shown as closed on Friday!”

As for what’s next, we may have a Twitter Hostile Takeover in the works. “People have asked us about the recent Burger King Twitter hack. We aren’t going to take credit, “says Falls. “We’ll just say, ‘We know a guy.’”

Some have questioned the ethics of a Hostile Takeover. To that, Falls simply responds: April Fool’s! If you have gotten this far without realizing this was an April Fool’s joke, we’ll just say, “Come on, people!” In all seriousness, though, we have created some cool apps for our clients that aren’t in any way questionable. Check out our branded ICE App for hospitals here, or sign up for the launch of our new Gluten free restaurant review app.

The infographic concludes that in the next three years, health app use will skyrocket. Now is a great time for hospitals and those in the health industry to get on board. Click the infographic for a larger view.
Learn more about creating a branded app for your hospital.

“Social media is a great way to present consumer-friendly health topics endorsed by local physicians,” said Tonya Lucchetti-Hudson, Director of Marketing and Public Relations at Sherman Health. “Our Healthy Heart campaign used interactive social media tools to educate patients on the importance of heart disease prevention and screenings. I feel it was extremely effective, and we are taking this same approach with other diseases.”

Goal

In recognition of Heart Month, Sherman Health came to us wanting one measurable outcome when the month was done: more Healthy Heart CT Scan signups in February 2013 than they had in February 2012.

Challenges

The first challenge: Educate the public on what the Healthy Heart CT does and why it’s beneficial. After a morning of shooting at one of Sherman’s Immediate Care locations, that challenge was met with a new video.

With the educational portion done, the ongoing challenge throughout February was keeping the audience dialed in to what, let’s face it, isn’t the most entertaining of outcomes. To keep the Healthy Heart CT scan interesting, we focused more on overall heart health.

For the Approach and Results of the campaign, head to dcinteractivegroup.com

In late 2011 Seigle’s introduced a granite and solid surface countertop program, which has been a tremendous success. They formed a partnership with one of the market’s largest and highest quality granite fabricators in order to offer customers the convenience of one supplier for cabinets and countertops.

With the success of this program, we recently created a microsite that focuses specifically on countertops and highlights the value of purchasing them through Seigle’s. We designed the Chicagoland Countertops by Seigle’s website with the original Seigle’s site in mind but gave it an updated look and feel.

Click over to dcinteractivegroup.com to see the full case study.

1. Like, everyone has a smartphone. In the past few years, the smartphone market has exploded. Over half of adults who own cellphones have smartphones. According to Strategy Analytics, from 2011 to 2012, smartphones in use jumped 47%, surpassing 1 billion.

2. Even more people will have smartphones tomorrow. Strategy Analytics predicts that the next billion smartphones are predicted to be in use by 2015. So over the next few years this hot trend will be even hotter.

3. People are increasingly use phones for health. Pew Research Center discovered that of cell phone owners, 1 in 3 have used it for health information, compared to only 17% in 2010. And when we narrow it to smartphone owners, a full 52% gather health information on their phones. So as smartphones grow in popularity, even more people are likely to be looking up health information on their phones. A survey by Price Waterhouse Cooper confirms consumer expectations: 6 in 10 patients expect mHealth will significantly change how they find information on health issues in the next 3 years.

4. Put your hospital in front of consumers every day. People with smartphones are hooked—a survey by Harris Interactive found that 63% of females and 73% of males don’t go an hour without checking their phones. And as the population ages, smartphones will become even more important—from a Cisco survey, 90% of those 18-30 years old check their smartphones as part of their morning routine. Creating a great app will allow consumers to wake up with your brand in the morning, and be in front of them throughout their day.

5. Position your brand as technology-forward. People expect their phones to help them with their health. According to Pew Research Center, 1 in 5 smartphone owners have at least one health app on their phone. If you can create a usable app, people will download it, and they will see you as high-tech and helpful.

6. Apps can be simple to create and highly usable. And now to clear the roadblocks. Think of a simple idea, and it can be simple to create. App developers and interactive agencies can hear about your idea and let you know what will and won’t work. Now for the usability roadblock—will people download it and never use it? This won’t happen if your idea begs for daily use. Consider an app several hospitals have branded for their own hospital called the ICE App. This app puts your hospital logo on a person’s home screen, along with an in-case-of-emergency phone number, so first responders can see who to contact. Once users download the app and set up the lock screen, you are the first thing they see when they turn on their phones. Learn more about getting the ICE App for your hospital.

The stats are screaming an argument for your hospital to release a branded app. What’s stopping you?

Sources:
“Mobile Health 2012″, Pew Internet and American Life Project, Pew Research Center
“Worldwide Smartphone Population Tops 1 Billion in Q3 2012″, Strategy Analytics
Harris Interactive, June 2012
“Generation Y: New Dawn for Work, Play, Identity”, Cisco 2012
“Emerging mHealth: Paths for growth”, PWC 2012