The myth of the great ad

November 15th, 2009

Top secret
Photo by daliborlev
You can do a great job constructing a badly designed house. But when you are through, you’ve still got a badly designed house. Right? It doesn’t matter how good you are with a hammer if the blueprints themselves are faulty. Ads are like houses.

It doesn’t matter how good you are with nouns or verbs when the core message is boring. There is no good way to tell a bad story. And ultimately, it’s the core message of your campaign that determines the success of your advertising.

Give a powerful core message to an average writer and the little business on the corner can leap from Main Street to Wall Street. But give an average message to a powerful writer and ….yeah, you get it.

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Already have an agency relationship?

November 10th, 2009

sanaa, zollverein kubus, 2003-2006
Photo by seier+seier+seier
A lot of people are looking for change right now. If you currently work with an advertising agency, spend just a few moments thinking about the following questions and your responses to them. We believe that any answer you may have that equals “less than exceeds most expectations” may be an opportunity for a new more productive relationship. A prospect we’d welcome exploring.

1) Overall how do you rate your agency’s creative team on your business?

2) Does your agency appoint sufficiently qualified creative talent to meet your needs in?

  • strategic creative direction
  • copywriting
  • art direction/design
  • broadcast production
  • print production

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Get Me In! Get Me Out!

November 5th, 2009

I love PR (public relations)
Photo by JerrySilfwer
These days, more and more clients are hiring us for one of two reasons—“Get me in the news!” or “Get me out of the news!” Advertising is what you buy from the sales department of the media. Public Relations (PR) is what you get from the news department—some of it good, some of it not so good.

How many ads do you suppose a good news story is worth?
Q: Which of the following statements is false?
1. Thomas Edison invented electric light.
2. Guglielmo Marconi invented radio.
3. Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone.

Regardless of which statement you think to be untrue, you’re exactly one-third correct; because all three statements are false. Read the rest of this entry »

Onederful! Using social media to generate real prospects for your business

November 1st, 2009

InsideOnederfulI was recently asked to make a presentation to a group of business owners regarding social media and its use in generating bona fide prospects. I used our project- http://marketinggrader.net as the focal point of my presentation as it has been an extremely successful tool at generating leads for us. Social media is not a fad, it’s here to stay and there are numerous ways to exploit it for your business gain. The presentation lacks notes and of course the extra’s and examples I gave out in the seminar. If you have any questions or would like for me to make this presentation in person or remotely, for you, your group or business, please let me know.

Our portfolio

October 25th, 2009

It’s hard to compress fifteen years of work into five minutes but I think my little Sunday afternoon project turned out well. Sorry to all my clients I didn’t include. Perhaps there will be a video #2. Enjoy and be sure to check out our new YouTube channel.