Agent-X » advertising

Finding the Inner Beauty.

Andrew — Fri, 17 Jun 2011 19:45:03 +0000

Stopping to smell the roses isn’t a new concept. In fact, it’s almost an overused expression. We rarely stop to smell the roses, let alone to stop to contemplate the power this phrase has over our lives.

In marketing, our consumers walk past flowers every day. They rarely will stop and smell the roses. Who can blame them? They’re over communicated. We all are.

As communicators, our industry has a responsibility to assure that consumers will stop and smell what we have produced. Ideally, of course, it would be a pleasant smell. Maybe an experiential event for the local sewage plant – actually, never mind. That’s just a bad idea.

So often, communicators do indeed make a rose. But they spend so much time painting their white roses red, they lose the beauty behind what was already there. Michelangelo said: “The best artist has that thought alone which is contained within the marble shell; the sculptor’s hand can only break the spell to free the figures slumbering in the stone”. He spoke to the inner beauty that most people ignore, while they assume they have to change something that is already beautiful.

It’s this respect communicators need to consider. Stop pushing messages that are bland and reused, try to find what really matters to your audience and go for it. Stop painting the roses red, chances are it took far too long to grow them in the first place.

Only once we start respecting the views of the audience and creating content that’s worth ‘smelling’, have we served our duty as communicators. It’s a big responsibility after all. Just…keep that smell pleasant.

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Passion for Advertising is Becoming Passion for Social Media

Andrew — Fri, 18 Jun 2010 14:34:08 +0000

I want to begin by greeting our readers, as this will be the first post I have had the honor of contributing to our company’s blog since I came to Steketee Greiner and Company (SGC) almost six months ago. It’s been an amazing journey and I’ve been thrilled to be a member of such a dedicated team of professionals.

In my professional development, before being an employee with SGC, I joined a local organization called Ad 2 West Michigan; in a year I was elected to the role of Chair of Public Service, where I have worked with my friend and professional club associate Ray Cashbaugh (Chair of Creative), as well as the handful of dedicated, to build our charity campaign for the Wealthy Theatre (located in East Grand Rapids).

Ad 2, a division of the AAF (National), is a club for young professionals in Advertising, Marketing, and Public Relations between the ages of 18 and 32. In light of my involvement, I had planned to join the AAF and Ad 2 for their National Conference in Orlando, Florida, as a representative of Ad 2 West Michigan even before my employment with Steketee Greiner; imagine my pride to represent not only Ad 2 West Michigan, but also a rapidly growing company driven by an innovative spirit. The passion I have for my relationship to SGC allowed me to network with professionals in the Advertising industry with a vigor that perhaps Seth Godin would be proud of.

At the conference, my already deep respect for the AAF’s role in my industry grew as I saw the number of clubs that had come to represent not only their industry, but also their hometowns, in an effort to learn, network and most importantly, have fun! On the young professional side, I was awed that leadership flew in from cities such as Denver; Washington DC; San Francisco; Madison and even as far away as Honolulu, Hawaii to support the conference for Ad 2.

During the week, one speaking engagement stuck out as specifically motivating. Gary Ware, an Ad 2 member and professional from the San Diego area (Ad 2 SD) led a workshop on how to use Social Media effectively for a club and graciously allowed me to attend (I even offered to Live Tweet with the #aafconference Hashtags). As a professional engaged in the emerging industries related to digital communications and Social Media I found that Gary and I had much in common with our views of Social Media. What interested me most from this talk was that Gary had inspired a room of ‘traditional’ Advertising professionals to engage both him and their peers in an attempt to learn and share successes.

Knowing the times I’ve seen advertising and thought “hey, Social Media could really help out here…” it’s fantastic to see traditional professionals looking to merge industries – even if the cutting edge hasn’t been their primary focus so far in their career.

So special thanks to Gary as well as the AAF National Conference, for reminding me that it’s not just about advertising, and it’s not just about Social Media – it’s about getting the consumer engaged with brands we promote to the extent that they are willing to not only purchase a product, but spread positive Word of Mouth (WOM) across their social channels (both offline and online). The added benefit of Social Media to a traditional advertising campaign comes from the ability to measure this WOM and determine ROI faster, and more affordably than traditional surveying alone.

For example: Tampax produced a very unusual (or is it revolutionary?) campaign about an adolescent named man named Zach who struggled with getting a period won best of show at the Addy’s; I can’t help but think that ‘Zach’s’ engagement through Social Media led him to not only win Best of Show but the loyalty of the consumers he engaged with in the digital landscape. You can view the official clip from the AAF [Here].

All in all, I’ve returned more passionate about my industry; it’s a pretty amazing world out there, and I hope to continue to share my passions around Social Media strategy, emerging technologies and Advertising (AAF/Ad 2 specifically!) in the near future.

In the meantime, don’t hold back. Love us or hate us – find us on Twitter: @stekteeegreiner.

And as always, if you’re looking to talk to us about our innovative views in this market, contact us through www.steketeegreiner.com.

Additional Links:

You can follow Gary on Twitter: @GaryWare

His Presentation is loaded [On SlideShare]

Credits for the Tampax Campaign:

Tampax “Zack Johnson”

Agency: Leo Burnett, Chicago
WW Chief Creative Officer: Mark Tutssel
Chief Creative Officer: John Condon
Executive Creative Director: Becky Swanson
Creative Director: Dave Loew, Jon Wyville
Copywriter: Dave Loew
Art Director: Jon Wyville

Post by: Andrew Rushmore

Consumers LOVE the word “free.”

Jill — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 20:30:35 +0000

Consumers LOVE the word “free.” Even more so in recent years. We love it so much that we go out of our way to get some freebie that we don’t even need. Free pen? Yes please. Free t-shirt? Sure! Free dessert? I’m full from dinner and really don’t need… well okay, it’s FREE!

On the flip side, someone has to pick up the tab; when paying for the free ‘swag’ companies often find it difficult to see the value in giving things away for free (rightfully so). In the past, we could only assume that our message would get out there to increase brand awareness and visibility. What if you were able to measure the number of impressions you gained to truly gauge the value of the campaign? With the addition of online forums, social venues and blogs, it’s now easier than ever to measure success and ROI even when you’re giving it away for free.

An insightful article from Event Marketer: “The ROI of Free” http://www.eventmarketer.com/article/roi-free, points out a few examples of companies who were able to get a tangible return from their “free campaign.”

You remember Denny’s Grand Slam give-away during the Super Bowl, right? Last year they gave away 2 million Grand Slam breakfasts in 8 hours, and in return they received “$50 million in news coverage, 47 million hits on their website and thousands of emails.” Little Debbie gave away one million cupcakes and in three weeks their fan base on Facebook grew from 5,000 to 50,000!

Before you just start handing stuff out, there are a couple things you need to do first:

Define your overall goal of the campaign as well as what will make it a success
Make sure the appropriate channels (website, social, etc.) are set up and monitor and track the numbers!

Now, anyone know of any good freebies out there? Post them in comments!

jill

New Strategies for Managing Social Relationships – SRM

Jeff Ambs — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 17:05:21 +0000

Back in 2002, when we were trying to get our new catalog company off the ground, we quickly learned the value of a customer. The old saying “it is easier to keep a customer than get a new one” came to life when we were buying names of prospects and less than 1.2% of them became customers. The house list was our bread and butter and we learned how to squeeze every last drop of value out of it. We quickly became experts in segmenting our list using the RFM model: Recency, Frequency and Monetary value. It worked well. A new customer was a live customer and we did everything we could to let them know they were valued and keep them engaged. We incentivized heavily to increase purchase frequency and treated our best customers like royalty. Now, segmentation goes much deeper and CRM models have become much more sophisticated, but the same fundamental principles still apply. Today, with brands engaging customers through social channels, how are these relationships managed? What are the rules in a world driven by return on engagement not return on investment? Social Media is changing the brand-to-consumer relationship driving the need for new strategies to take advantage. We call this new strategic approach Social Relationship Management (SRM).

SRM focuses on three areas: Engagement, Crowdsourcing and Monetization. Social Networks offer so many fantastic features it naturally creates an engaging experience. Brand-to-fan dialogue, photos, videos, polls, custom content, etc. It is a rich tool kit for brand managers. And, as fanbases grow, they can be mined for valuable insights. Which name do you prefer for our new granola bar? What feature would you like to see on our next video game? Your fans have opinions and they want to be heard. For most brands, the numbers are not there to be statistically significant, but it is a fast and free way to get a quick read and supplement your market research. The real question is how do we leverage our fans to increase sales? Certainly there are tried and true options: special offers, promotions, discounts, sweepstakes, gwps, etc. However, the risk lies in breaking the brand-to-consumer unwritten social code. “Do not heavy sell me on my social network” or at least too much. Social networks are not advertising channels, and fans are very leery of brands that sell rather than engage. An exclusive offer every now and then is welcome and keeps the site valuable to the fans, but excessive promotion, especially those found in other channels, is just advertising.

So what is an ideal SRM ratio? Certainly there are no clear rules on this, but the 80/20 rule is a great place to start. 80% of communication should be engaging content revealing more brand insights and drawing the fans in closer. The remaining 20% should align with the brand value. I’ve seen a large discount retailer provide numerous promotions and offers on their site and judging by the extensive comments, it is very well received. It aligns with the low-cost value offering and it is what their fans expect. Obviously premium brands would take a different approach. To start, I recommend an 80/10/10 content platform then let the testing begin.

Social media is evolving so quickly, the industry is still determining the best practices to take advantage. We take what we know and evolve, test and mold into actionable strategies for today’s social business environment. If you don’t have a clear SRM strategy for your brand’s social presence the 80/10/10 Engagement, Crowdsourcing, Monetization ratio is a good place to start.

Digital Marketing Taken to a Whole New Level with Google.

brian — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 20:25:07 +0000

This year at Advertising Week 2009, Andy Berndt (MD of Google Creative Lab) and Tom Uglow (Creative Lead for Google) gave a presentation introducing “87 cool things, even a few from us.” In the presentation, they highlight some of the more recent achievements to come about in the interactive world using a combination of Google tools.

Google shows some of the most creative campaigns and projects that help expand our knowledge of what is possible, while inspiring us to create a more meaningful experience for the consumer.

Check it out.

87 cool things, even a few from us