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When it comes to energy and creativity, Kay Mize has no shortage of either. Kay is Advertising Director at the Greensheet, a weekly shopper with 21 editions in Texas and Arizona. We recently interviewed Kay to find out more about some of the innovative things she's doing at the Greensheet.

Can you tell us a little about the Greensheet?
We're a weekly shopping publication. We publish 12 editions in Houston, seven in Dallas/Ft. Worth, one in Austin and our newest is in Phoenix.

We have a large volume. In an average week we will publish 10,500 display ads and 19-20,00 classified liners.

We are zoned so that makes us affordable for small to medium sized businesses. We have a large service business. We reach a very broad demographic audience of readers and advertisers.

We run employment and a lot of real estate and automotive. The automotive runs a lot of display. Real estate runs a lot of liners, and employment runs a lot of display and liners. People pick us up to get a good buy or find value in their purchase. We bring buyers and sellers together, and we have been doing that for 36 years. We are very proud of our associates and of our products.

Is it true that the first time you met John Barry you were in bathrobe and curlers?
I'm responsible for a call center with 40 agents, and we do all kinds of stuff because the nature of a call center can be very repetitious. We want to make the experience for the customer fast, fun and easy, and we know that in order to make that happen the agents have to feel really good about what they are doing. We need to have a positive, energizing atmosphere, so we do a lot of things to make it fun. We run a lot of contests and we do a lot of training. We train on diction. We train on how to turn an angry customer into a "happy camper."

We handle all of our liner operation for all of our markets out of one call center in Houston, so in that particular department we do a lot of crazy stuff. We have slumber parties, so that explains the robe and curlers. During the holiday season we will run a daily contest and have cumulative points at the end with top prizes like television sets and furniture. When we launched and went live with Brainworks we worked almost round the clock all weekend to re-enter our ads because we wanted to go with a clean system. The supervisors and I dressed like flight attendants and served tea and coffee and sodas.

I am very fortunate in that I have three Coaches and a Trainer/Coach who oversee that department. One of the ways they describe me is when I have an idea either get on board or get out of the way. They do an outstanding job with the call center teams and with keeping me focused.

What's the most successful thing you've done?
One of the most exciting things we did was an incentive program to meet a certain revenue goal. I approached our publisher and said, "I want to do something really big if we meet this goal." It was really a stretch goal and she said, "Great. Go for it." So we asked the agents what they would you like to do if we met the goal?

Well, here in Texas we have an ice cream factory called Blue Bell Creamery. Blue Bell is a famous ice cream in Texas. It's kind of a phenomenon here, so the reps said they wanted to tour the creamery and study the culture at Blue Bell to see how they operate.

As I said, it was a stretch goal, and the night before we were several thousand dollars short. So we had a spirit drive, and what you had to do was make a hat out of an ice cream carton. We had a contest and people came down and cheered, and we made that stretch goal.

The day of the trip, people from other departments manned our phones and we chartered a bus. We served breakfast on the bus and had a huge luncheon catered in when we got back. Then from about 4:00 in the afternoon until about 8:00 at night, we entered all of our ads for that day.

What are you doing to promote the Greensheet externally?
We used to rely heavily on radio. Over the past couple of years we've gone strictly to Internet advertising. We also do grassroots promotions where we get out and we work events. In Phoenix we got our circulation to 35,000 with no outside advertising. We also fund a nonprofit organization called Youth Scoop, where our people go into schools and do workshops with kids about writing, publishing and printing. And we actually publish a page called Youth Scoop in the paper.

Another program that's been very successful is our "Free Ad Fridays" promotion. Recently, I see that many of the dailies and a lot of online sites offer free classified liners. We've been giving away free classified liners since 2001.

With our Free Ad Fridays you can call in and place certain items in certain categories. For example, pets are a huge reader draw, and you can place pet ads with us for free on Fridays. On a typical Friday, we'll take 2500 calls between 8:00 and 5:00.

You have to go through the call center in order to get the ad for free. You can place it online, but it won't be free. That way our agents have an opportunity to upsell. Right now you get 15 words or less for free. But anything extra we charge for.

Is there anything exciting on the horizon for The Greensheet?
We recently bought new presses as an investment for our future. We want to add a new product with commercial printing. Last December we began printing the New York Times for the South Texas area.

Right now, we're still printing our product on our old presses. So when we make the switch over to the new presses we expect that our images will be sharper. We'll also have more color capabilities. We'll be able to do some fun things with the liner ads. We're constantly trying to make our product better to meet the needs of both our readers and our advertisers. We set goals and we measure our results. We make things happen.