The founders of two top marketing agencies in Arizona, Bigfish Creative Group and Lucid Agency, launched a new larger company last week to take the concept of full-service to a higher level.������������

The company — Highnoon — is bringing a “holistic” approach to marketing for today’s new generation of customers, said the three behind the award-winning agencies: Ken Bonham and Scott Kaufmann of Lucid and Joe Pizzimenti of Bigfish.

Lucid and Bigfish boasted clients like Cisco, Oregano’s, Take Charge America and the Better Business Bureau. But in the past few years, clients are asking for more help in reaching across different channels to consumers.��

“A lot of our clients have been asking us to solve holistic business problems that intersect with marketing, communications and technology in different ways,” Kaufmann said.����

Shift in how customers interact with brands��

They began to envision a new kind of full-service agency. One that would directly address consumers’ shifting interactions with brands, he said.��

“There is this kind of democratization of ways that consumers are interacting with their favorite brands now. They can tweet the CEO directly, they get in touch with the shipping department, they look at the packaging design and tweet pictures of it when they’re opening a package for the first time, maybe communicate it on social media,” Kaufmann said.

“We had to be able to service all of these areas, from communication to technology to marketing to strategy.”��

All under one roof����

Instead of the traditional full-service approach of offering two or three services such as public relations, advertising and technology, Highnoon incorporates everything under one roof: creative, technology, performance, data, analytics, public relations, online and offline marketing, and consulting.

Analytics compares data and vendors

For analytics, they built an analytics and reporting platform, Monocle, that allows large organizations to compare their data across a gamut of different channels in social media and traditional advertising. The platform also allows clients to compare different agencies, vendors or other providers.

Home is downtown Tempe��

Headquartered in Tempe, Bonham, Kaufmann and Pizzimenti launched the company in the city that brought them together as alumni of Arizona State University. Through the years, the three have won dozens of awards in their respective companies, including the Community Impact award from the Phoenix Business Journal’s Corporate Philanthropy Awards and AzCentral’s Top Companies to Work for in Arizona.��

For more information about Highnoon, visit .��

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This piece was originally published in the Arizona Capitol Times on January 24th. You can find the original piece .

As we embark upon a new decade, it’s hard to miss the technological advances happening all around us. Arizona in 2020 is a state ripe with investment in cutting-edge technology, one where entrepreneurship is thriving and the breakthroughs of tomorrow are happening right in our own backyard.

Arizona’s autonomous vehicle sector is a prime example of how our state has positioned itself to be on the leading edge of the future. After all, it’s where��The New York Times��said “self-driving cars go to learn.”

While it’s easy to imagine a future zipping around the state in driverless cars, what hasn’t been simple is measuring the actual economic impact of this future for our state. But economist Jim Rounds crunched the numbers and recently released a report for the Arizona �������� Foundation on the various models and assumptions for Arizona. One thing they all point to? By leading other states, Arizona is poised to reap a disproportionate share of the billions in economic growth and investment this new industry will bring.

Rounds estimates – conservatively – that a $6.1 billion investment in autonomous vehicle research and development would lead to over 75,000 new Arizona jobs across the industry itself and in supporting industries by 2026. To put this in perspective, the growth alone in autonomous vehicle-related work in the next few years will employ more than double the number of Arizonans working in state government.

Much of this growth can be attributed to the way Arizona has uniquely positioned itself among the states to provide a welcoming environment to innovators. For example, thanks to an executive order from Gov. Doug Ducey, the Arizona Commerce Authority now houses the Institute of Automated Mobility, a team that bridges government, innovating companies, and higher education institutions to facilitate the safe development of these technologies.

Higher education is actually a critical part of this consortium. By training students for a high-tech industry poised to grow here at home, Arizona’s colleges and universities are simultaneously meeting the industry’s demand and retaining Arizona’s best and brightest.

We are investing in a workforce designed to grow with the autonomous-vehicle industry, positioning our state as the top location for additional investments by companies working in this space.

In fact, Arizona’s universities are partnering with the firms pioneering this technology to graduate engineers and software developers. That means the students we are investing in at our state universities are staying here, working here, and keeping their economic contributions here in Arizona.

But it’s not just our universities. Community colleges in Phoenix’s East Valley and Pima Community College in Tucson have developed training programs in cyber-security and autonomous truck operation that are training Arizonans directly for high-demand jobs in the workforce.

With more Arizonans taking jobs in this promising, high tech field, and companies like Waymo and Intel – which in 2017 purchased Israel-based autonomous tech firm Mobileye – expanding their research, development, and manufacturing footprints to support that growth, there is also substantial benefit to the state and local governments in tax collection over the next decade.

If we continue to support the growth of autonomous-vehicle technology in Arizona, it will yield significant resources to state and local governments that can be re-invested in priorities like education and public safety. Rounds estimates that an additional $250-350 million in taxes could be collected by 2026 in autonomous-vehicle sector growth alone, using a conservative approach to modeling the calculations. Those are substantial resources for reinvesting in our state’s priorities.

Rounds’ calculations give us a clear vision for Arizona’s economic future if we continue on the path of welcoming the forward-thinking industry. It’s an Arizona with 75,000 more people working in good-paying jobs, an Arizona training our students for the jobs of the future, and an Arizona that’s reaping the benefits of a growing, successful tax base.

But perhaps more important than any of the economic growth that Arizona will gain by being a leader is the potential impact to road safety we stand to gain. Over 800 people die in fatal car crashes in Arizona each year. Autonomous vehicle technology has the potential to bring that number down dramatically by reducing the human error that is the cause of so many accidents. It’s why groups like Mothers Against Drunk Driving and the National Safety Council have partnered with Waymo here in Arizona. We owe it to ourselves in Arizona to welcome technologies that have potential to keep our roads safer and save lives.

As this new analysis methodically predicts, Arizona can anticipate a bright, safe, and economically prosperous future if we continue to welcome innovation and resist overregulation.

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The CEO of the largest business advocacy group in America, the United States �������� of Commerce, outlined a plan to spur half a million new startups and hundreds of new initial public offerings in 2020 at his annual State of Business Address in Washington, D.C. last week.

“If we want to create more wealth and opportunity for all Americans, the answer is more business, not less,” longtime CEO Tom Donohue said. “We need a wakeup call in this country that disincentivizing growth and disparaging corporations is no way to generate collective prosperity.”

Donohue called on “bipartisan” leaders across business and government at all levels to “reinvigorate the American innovation machine” by promoting measures like new technology and industry to address climate change, immigration reform and the “side gig” economy.

These are just a few of hundreds of challenges the �������� is taking on this year to push the nation forward in reaching a goal to surpass 500,000 business creations and 250 new initial public offerings (IPOs) annually, he said.

Startup revival for “collective prosperity”

Business growth is not just about corporate profits, he said. It’s about trillions of new dollars for employee wages and local, state and federal taxes for schools, social programs, government operations and highways and infrastructure, he said.

New business growth reduces “income inequality,” Donohue said. But instead of growing in America, startups are declining, according to U.S. Census data, Donohue said.

“We should all be troubled that we have 20 percent fewer startups than we did three decades ago, when we were a smaller country,” he said. “We should all be worried that there are half as many public companies today as in 1996.”

Arizona haven for startups

Meanwhile, Arizona is in a better position than many states in startup creation.

The state’s two largest universities spin out a steady stream of startups in bioscience, technology, water conservation and other industries annually.

Last year, University of Arizona startups alone pumped $585 million into the economy, according to a report released last month by the university’s McGuire Center for Entrepreneurship.

Arizona and metro Phoenix consistently rank among the top places to start a business by various publications and organizations. A released last month by content and comparison platform Comparisun named Arizona the fifth-best state in which to launch a startup.

Challenges ahead

During his speech last week, Donohue highlighted a number of challenges it will embark on addressing this year, including threats to the gig economy, harmful isolationist trade policy and climate change.

Threats to the “side gig” economy

One battle this year will be to stand up against recent attacks at the state level that are eroding opportunities in the gig economy and other business sectors, Donohue said.

Of concern is one law just passed in California that alters the definition of private contractors and freelancers. Employers will now be required to provide benefits to a new class of worker.

“Under such proposals, Lyft and Uber drivers would be deemed employees and not independent contractors,” Donohue said. “The result? The business model that has revolutionized entire sectors of the economy will screech to a halt. The same is true for the innovation we are seeing in everything from home repair tasks to grocery delivery.

“At stake is the flexibility and independence that have made “side gigs” or second jobs an important part of how millions of Americans support themselves and their families,” he said.

Such regulations impact not only drivers for ride-hailing services but other industries as well.

The U.S. �������� released a�� detailing how new state regulations of the gig economy will suppress business opportunities and limit consumer choice and services.

States’ adopting costly data privacy rules

Another initiative will be to fight encroaching states’ regulations over data privacy.

As federal lawmakers have failed to adopt a national policy for data privacy, states are stepping in. That’s proving costly for businesses, Donohue said.

He cited California’s new Consumer Privacy Act and said the initial price tag of compliance is $55 billion in the state, with small businesses facing up-front costs of $50,000 each.

“Washington’s inability to make progress on data privacy is resulting in a patchwork of state rules and regulations that will stifle the free flow of goods and services across state borders,”�� he said. “Can you imagine effectively running a company when you have 50 different sets of standards to comply with? This would create conflict for businesses, confusion for consumers, and increase costs for everyone.”

Other goals and challenges for 2020 include:

Global competitiveness and free trade

Donahue said America must show proactive leadership around the world to foster U.S. businesses.

“Engaging with the world is our best strategy for strong national security and lasting prosperity,” Donohue said. “Embracing free trade doesn’t mean ignoring unfair practices aimed at us. It means leading the way in setting the rules and enforcing them, based on the simple propositions that more trade is better than less trade, more customers are better than fewer customers, and expanding markets globally will benefit everyone.”

He lauded the U.S. House passage of the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) and raised the need for trade agreements with the United Kingdom, the European Union, Japan, Brazil and markets in Africa. He stressed the importance of U.S. engagement in the booming Asia-Pacific.

Immigration reform

Donahue said action is needed to update cumbersome immigration practices to make it more efficient for businesses to hire qualified foreign workers of all skill levels.��

Climate change innovation

Donahue said he wants to see research and development of new technology and industry to tackle climate issues. Currently, there are 35 bipartisan bills in Congress designed to help address climate change through innovation and investment.

Passage of a comprehensive infrastructure package

As the nation’s highways, bridges, water and sewer systems and other infrastructure continue to deteriorate, Congress must step up, Donahue said.

Abusive class action lawyers

States are increasingly fertile ground for business opponents to advance questionable agendas, Donohue said, including the class action trial bar’s sweeping new focus on municipality litigation targeting businesses under the public nuisance law.

Bipartisan politicians

Real change will require bipartisan politicians, Donohue said.

“The business community must not, and will not, stand on the sidelines of these debates,” Donohue said. “While the �������� never engages in presidential politics, we will praise or criticize proposals by presidential candidates from both parties. We will lead the opposition to the policies that undermine the job creators, that penalize the innovators and that target the wealth creators and investors that allow Americans to provide for their families and plan for their futures.”

To read more about Donohue’s address, go to:

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