Lani Jordan | Senior Counsel

After nearly six years as a trusted strategic partner, Lani has officially joined Tunheim as Senior Counsel. With a wealth of experience and leadership, Lani will continue to shape and strengthen the impactful work we deliver for our clients.

Ben Hill | Senior Counsel

Ben joins the Tunheim team as Senior Counsel. With his many years working with governmental leaders, Ben brings a unique public affairs lens, and exposure to senior communications challenges and perspectives that will be a great benefit to our clients.

Tim Nafstad | EVP, Finance

Bringing extensive experience in finance, accounting, and operations management, Tim joins Tunheim as Executive Vice President of Finance. Tim’s leadership will help guide the company’s financial strategy and ensure we’re poised for sustainable growth.

Liana Kuruvilla | Capitol Pathways Intern

Liana, a third-year student at the University of St. Thomas, joins Tunheim as our Capitol Pathways Intern. Majoring in Political Science with a minor in Public Health, she brings a strong passion for supporting individuals facing fewer opportunities, striving to make a positive impact and open new doors for them. Known for her writing, organization, and problem-solving skills, Liana is eager to take on new challenges and contribute to our team.

Have you ever wondered what to do during Fall in MN? Look no further, our team shared some personal favorites, ranging from local apple orchards, national state parks to wineries:

Tunheim’s Top 20 Fall Faves

1. Aamodt’s Apple Orchard (Home of Honeycrisp Apples) 
2. Afton State Park
3. Apple House 
4. Arboretum
5. Betty’s Pies in Two Harbors 
6. Candyland (Caramel Apples)
7. Country Sun Farm 
8. Dead End Hayride near Wyoming, MN
9. Fort Snelling State Park
10. Gunflint Trail 
11. Hyland Hills (Fall Foliage) 
12. Jack-O-Lantern Spectacular 
13. Lebanon Hills Park in Eagan 
14. MN Largest Candy Store 
15. Pine Tree Apple Orchard in White Bear Lake
16. Scream Town in Chaska! 
17. St. Croix Vineyards
18. Taylor’s Falls 
19. The Bean and Bear Lake Trail in North Shore
20. William O’Brien Park 

We hope everyone can take time to experience Minnesota during this beautiful time of year. Our list of fun and memorable activities will hopefully bring forth all the fall vibes!

Are one of these challenges familiar:

• Is your team short staffed?
• Are you handling new projects with no bandwidth?
• Are you working on a rollout or expansion realizing it is beyond your team’s capacity?
• Are you in need of someone to keep the train running during a parental or medical leave, or during a crisis?

We can help! At Tunheim, we provide talent and expertise to fill staffing, capacity or employee leave gaps for our clients.

Over the years we have helped corporate and non-profit communications teams extend their capacity and bandwidth by providing communications experts that can function much like a member of your internal team.

We take on priority projects that an internal team may not have the capacity or skillset to deliver without support. In the past, that has included an on-site and/or longer-term assignment. In today’s virtual world, we can help our clients maximize their opportunities and effectiveness from afar.

Tunheim staffing assignments have included a range of opportunities – from running a corporate United Way program, to providing additional resources for issues management, to leading a team during a leadership change, to communicating a corporate expansion into a new country and IT rollouts.

We have the benefit of having worked in many corporate environments and developed best practices that can quickly assist your team.

Whether you need a writer who knows AP style, an expert in executive leadership communications, a team that understands how to navigate with internal and external stakeholders (including media), or emergency support managing an issue, our agency has the talent that can support these needs.

Our team can quickly jump in and begin providing results from day one. By helping develop and establish new communication tools that the team can then make their own, Tunheim is able to support clients through any internal communications needs they may have.

Contact us to learn more about our onsite and virtual team support.

Like many companies, Tunheim has spent countless hours over the years formulating and declaring a core set of values – the cultural cornerstones – that have served as the basis for our collective, as well as individual, behavior for doing the work we do every day. Well intended and meaningful, the values we set forth have served us well and very much influenced who the team is today.

But like a lot of companies, we’ve had challenges over the years in ensuring that our employees felt connected to our values day in and day out. The changing dynamic of our work assignments, the need to grow and expand our services as well as the influx of young, smart, aggressive professionals forced us to regularly reexamine and communicate our company values so that they didn’t become meaningless words written on a piece of paper.

Then 2020 happened. The pandemic not only forced us to change how we do our work, but the virtual workplace altered the cultural dynamics our values sought to establish. More importantly though, the murder of George Floyd triggered a cultural reckoning for our community at large and gave us the opportunity to view our company values through a different lens; one that had us examine our own beliefs and behaviors and asking whether our company needed to redefine our core values to explicitly reflect how we intend to operate and behave consistently with awakened cultural awareness.

So, the management team went to work, listening to and learning from our DEI team. We asked for input from our colleagues through surveys and discussions and had thoughtful conversations amongst ourselves to establish a set of company values that reflect a shared sense of commitment to our work, our communities, our diversity and to each other. We start with a simple declaration, We Value;

What we do is connected to the outcomes in our community and around the world. We are committed to moving the world forward.

We value equity, inclusion, and dignity for all. We strive for excellence and recognize that our differences make us stronger. We respect and seek out inclusion of differences, realizing we can learn from each other. We insist on a culture of respect and recognize that words and actions matter.

Our clients are the lifeblood for why we exist. We seek to be part of their team. Their goals become our own. We celebrate their success and help them advance their mission.

We believe that no one individual is as good as our collective best. We learn from and listen to each other’s ideas, which improves our product. Together we are stronger; better.

Each person is of equal value. We will treat each person as they want to be treated.

In the ensuing weeks and months, members of our team will be sharing their individual connection to our values and what is means to them on the Tunheim social media platforms. This work is intended to intentionally connect our behaviors to the work we do. Our values reflect who we are as a company and at Tunheim we are a company deeply committed to improving the world in which we live and work.

Our communications agency was founded in 1990 to create opportunities for talented people to do interesting work. And we’ve done some very interesting work this year! Take a look at our reflection on an unusual time:

We partnered with the Minnesota Homeownership Center to drive Minnesotans facing financial hardship to their foreclosure prevention services. Our campaign included social, Google, streaming and radio ads, as well as public affairs tactics. The center point of the campaign was a video translated into four total languages (English, Spanish, Somali and Hmong.) In total we reached about 10% of the Minnesota population with our message.

Last winter, we partnered with the Minnesota Hospital Association on the critical issue of rural mental health. We visited mental health centers in southwest Minnesota to film a video and partnered with an influencer in the community – Minnesota Millennial Farmer – to spread the message of the importance of reducing the mental health stigma and increasing resources. We were thrilled to find out this fall that our work had been awarded Minnesota Technology Association’s Tekne award for Digital Marketing.

Right as the pandemic hit Minnesota, we partnered with the office of Governor Walz and Lt. Governor Flanagan on the launch of the #StayHomeMN campaign, highlighting the importance of social distancing to slow the spread of COVID-19. This campaign and our outreach to local influencers resulted in nearly 200 million impressions of the #StayHomeMN hashtag on Twitter, 12,000+ organic mentions on Instagram and a placement in the Star Tribune.

Homecare client, Accra, has been an important solution for many families in 2020. Older individuals and those with disabilities have been disproportionately disadvantaged by COVID-19, and many don’t feel safe living in assisted living facilities. As people are looking for homecare options, Tunheim helped Accra refresh their brand and launch a new website that makes it easy to find the appropriate help.

Long-term client Boston Harbor Cruises was recently acquired by Hornblower Cruises and Events. With several locations on both coasts, this acquisition provided the opportunity to introduce our clients to new media markets. Now our pitching and influencer outreach results in coast-to-coast coverage from Boston to San Diego!

Affordable housing developer Dominium focuses on providing value in the communities they serve. This year, this came to life by creating a scholarship program, Opportunities Front Door, for their residents and employees, to break down financial barriers to education. We supported the launch of this program by producing a video and providing PR and public affairs strategies.

Sun-protective swimwear brand Mott50 is a new client to Tunheim this year, and we supported their first collection launch this fall with their new resort line, Honey Plum. We introduced new digital strategies and supported the launch with PR tactics, ultimately leading to a successful launch during a challenging time to sell swimwear!

It was more important than ever this year to give back to our communities, so it was important to Tunheim to get involved. We were proud to celebrate Juneteenth with a donation to Northside Achievement Zone, Pride Month with a donation to ARISE, and Latinx Heritage Month with a donation to COPAL. These are all organizations we found to align closely with our values, and we plan to continue our tradition of giving in the next years to come.

The year 2020 was far from what Tunheim had in store. We planned for a year-long birthday party, not a pandemic. Although the festivities were cancelled, we took time to focus on how Tunheim has grown over 30 years, what has been achieved, and how we can apply what we’ve learned toward our future. Onto the next 30!

In 2020, we were proud to celebrate CEO/Principal Kathy Tunheim’s induction into the Minnesota Business Hall of Fame, highlighted by Twin Cities Magazine, and Chief Marketing Officer Liz Tunheim Sheet’s inclusion in Minneapolis/ St. Paul Business Journal’s 40 Under 40.

Tunheim was lucky to have a smooth transition to remote work. Thanks to the hard work of Tunheim’s Macie Paynter, we were all set up on Zoom before the transition. Even typically in-person offerings like media trainings have been adapted for the virtual world. Client service and teamwork are at the heart of what we do, and that hasn’t changed. Zoom meetings are frequent, as are check-ins on wellness, just-for-fun happy hours, and game nights. Going virtual has kept us safe but a culture of community has powered us through a tough year.

Hennepin County and the Minneapolis Regional Chamber created Elevate Business HC to uplift businesses impacted by the pandemic. This program offers pro-bono services including peer-to-peer roundtables, topic driven webinars and technical assistance, all to help the local business economy recover. We’re proud to be a partner in this initiative by amplifying their message to our audiences.

With COVID-19 community needs mounting, FOX 9 (KMSP-TV) set out to produce a broadcast to unite Minnesotans for the community. In just one month’s time, FOX 9, in partnership with MPR, teamed up with Tunheim to build the two-hour broadcast event featuring Minnesota talent spanning genres and interests. The broadcast aired May 10 featuring local talent like Soul Asylum, Yam Haus, Dessa and more, and raised more than $140,000 for Second Harvest Heartland, Springboard for the Arts and MN Central Kitchen.

Tunheim teamed up with Brother Justus Whiskey Co. as they prepared to announce their new distillery and cocktail room and the release of the world’s first-ever Cold-Peated American Single Malt. When new COVID-19 restrictions were announced, we switched our strategy and garnered stories about curbside offerings across local media including FOX 9, Minneapolis-St. Paul Business Journal, Star Tribune and more, and social media by inviting local influencers to taste the whiskey and see the space. Let Justus Flow!

In 2019, Tunheim developed the idea to align TGI Fridays frozen beef patties line with a cause marketing support to honor “Bold Heroes” – firefighters – and build key community relationships. In 2020, Tunheim and the TGI Fridays beef patties team developed a broader Bold Heroes program during summer grilling months to deliver grill kits to fire stations. Since its inception, the Bold Heroes program has delivered grill packs to more than 934 fire stations across 17 states, supported 13 fire organizations with more than $50,000 in community donations, engaged about eight million consumers on social media channels and built storytelling in five articles across trade media outlets.

Tunheim partnered with Nature’s Way to assist in the launch of exciting new health and wellness supplements into the marketplace. We helped Nature’s Way introduce their Alive! Gummy Multivitamins for Teens, a product that included ingredients to lessen the effects of blue light on eyes. A few months later, we strategized and executed a strategic media campaign for their new Nature’s Way KiDS line and Nature’s Way Sambucus products – results included placements in WholeFoods Magazine, Vitamin Retailer, Star Tribune and more!

Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, The Dayton’s Project team has continued to move the building renovation project forward and deliver on the promises of top-notch amenities and tenant suites. To showcase the building progress and premium amenities, Tunheim partnered with The Dayton’s Project to invite local media in for sneak peeks and interviews to show the progress and COVID-19 safety precautions built into the space for future tenants. In September, at a social distance, local media including WCCO-TV, WCCO-AM, KARE 11, Twin Cities Business Magazine and more were able to preview the space and show Minnesotans the amazing progress and community investment that has been made throughout the pandemic.

We were proud to continue long-term client relationships through this year as well as adding new clients to our roster. Over the course of 2020 we added 28 new accounts to our roster including Minnesota Sports and Events, Revel Health, Special Olympics Minnesota, Minnetonka School District and The Energy Foundation.

We were proud to have the opportunity to support Lake Street Council after an estimated 250 businesses were damaged and 33 destroyed in civil unrest following the murder of George Floyd. Many of the businesses belonged to low-income entrepreneurs, individuals who are Black, Indigenous or People of Color, by immigrant business owners and by others who have overcome tremendous difficulties to support their families and communities. We offered pro-bono communications support to the Lake Street Council as they navigated an outpouring of donations to help the businesses in their community.

As soon as we went virtual, we knew we needed to change our tactics to effectively reach our audiences and our clients’. We created a service offering for virtual panels and webinars which has helped our clients tell their stories in a virtual world. We hosted some panels of our own featuring journalists and marketing pros sharing their insights on how to navigate their industries in 2020.

We are breaking down what to watch to make the selection process that much simpler on Halloween night. From cult classics to terrifying films, we’ve got you covered. We’ve even included our own team’s favorite go-to Halloween movies. You will definitely find something for your spooky evening!

Classic Halloween movies we can watch year after year and never tire of. Everyone has their favorite and I hope their favorite is Hocus Pocus.

Spooky vibes to get you in the Halloween spirit. Perfect to enjoy with the family or a nostalgic time with your friends.

A rare full moon will be present this Halloween…pair that with a movie filled with jump scares, horror and paranormal activity and you might end up sleeping with a light on.

Here are some TV shows and movies we are currently talking about, watching and hearing about.

If you were curious what our team’s go-to movies are during the spooky season. Here you go!