Wilmington, DE – AB&C, a full-service marketing communications firm, took home gold and silver at the 2013 ADDY Awards in Philadelphia. With more than 600 of the region’s top creative professionals on hand, the agency won gold in the public service “non-traditional advertising” category for its My7Minutes unicorn t-shirt. My7Minutes is a youth tobacco prevention campaign conducted for the Delaware Department of Public Health. In the category “fractional page newspaper advertising in color,” the agency hoisted a silver ADDY for its MedStar Good Samaritan Hospital Gilligan colonoscopy print ad.Read full post...

Where are our mobile manners?

I worked in an advertising agency back in the early ‘90s when a new business win mushroomed into half of our agency business—cell phone advertising. I still remember a creative director asking me what it would take to get me to purchase a cell phone. He was looking for ad concept ideas. The big selling point at the time was “safety.” And I recall saying, “Why would I need one? I have AAA.”

It was the “in” thing then to have a cell phone. Now, 20 years later, it has become a necessity. According to a Synovate survey in 2011, “82% of Americans never leave home without their phones.”Read full post...

Hospital food is going gourmet. Yum!

I’ve recently become obsessed with where my food comes from. And I don’t think I’m alone. There are farmers’ markets and Whole Foods popping up all over the place. Whole Foods’ labels don’t just give you the “Best Before” date on your New York strip, they tell you where the cow lived, his name and what he generally liked to do on the weekends. Restaurants are at it, too. I went to my first all-raw vegan organic café the other day. It’s a trend that’s picking up speed. And people are voting at the cash register. I have a friend who likes to call Whole Foods “Whole Paycheck.” But like thousands, I’m willing to pay more for a better product, which is presumably healthier, too.Read full post...

Held annually before St. Patrick’s Day, the breakfast has raised nearly $2,000,000 for St. Patrick’s Center.

Wilmington, DE – The St. Patrick’s Day Society will host its 20^th annual communion breakfast on March 14 at the DoubleTree Hotel on King Street. With more than 1,000 people expected, the mass, parade and breakfast are now a Wilmington St. Patrick’s Day tradition. The breakfast features headliner Joe Conklin, renowned impressionist and Philadelphia radio personality.

“We are thrilled to welcome Joe Conklin to Wilmington to entertain our supporters, many of whom have been with us since day one,” says Joe Farley, Sr., event founder and emcee. “The event is truly remarkable because it both unites Delaware’s Irish-American community and ensures St. Patrick’s Center is equipped to serve those in Wilmington who need our help the most.”Read full post...

I’m all for target marketing, but this is a little invasive.

To anyone who’s faced with a cable bill in excess of $200 every month, news that Intel is planning on “blowing up the cable industry” with its own set-top box and unbundled cable service is big stuff. Instead of paying a fortune for 500 channels you rarely watch, Intel says they’ll allow you to subscribe to specific channels of your choosing. According to Intel, the set-top box will offer cable channels delivered “over the top” to televisions anywhere there is an Internet connection, regardless of provider. Consumers can subscribe to content per channel – maybe even by show. They even plan to enable consumers to use “Cloud DVR,” which would allow users to watch any past TV show at any time.Read full post...

Poorly researched concepts are one of the main causes of failed campaigns.

You’re in a concept meeting. Your client, a skin cancer organization, has asked you to come up with an advertisement that will convince young women to stop using tanning beds. Your coworker, the mother of a teenage daughter, speaks up. “My daughter Kelly had no idea that tanning beds can cause cancer until I told her recently,” she says, “so the ad should probably focus on melanoma.” Her idea is received with nods of approval, the creative team is informed, and out goes the fear-appeal ad. How easy was that?

Easy, perhaps, but at what cost is such a strategy used by adverting agencies? According to the experts, great cost. Read full post...

Google Analytics is a data source powerhouse. It can measure almost everything, so it can be pretty overwhelming. Here are a few key metrics any small business, blogger or marketer just starting out should focus on.

Where is my target audience?

In Google Analytics, if you look at your demographics by location, you can get a picture-perfect view of where in the world your audience is coming from. You can break this down by country, state, region and even city.Read full post...

Philadelphia master impressionist and radio personality Joe Conklin

Wilmington, DE – As part of its 20^th annual St. Patrick’s Day fundraiser, the St. Patrick’s Day Society will present Joe Conklin, Philadelphia master impressionist and radio personality. Conklin, known for his dead-on impressions of Barack Obama, Charles Barkley, and a litany of politicians, athletes and film stars, will headline the March 14 communion breakfast.

To date, the Wilmington-based event has raised nearly $2,000,000 for St. Patrick’s Center, a respite for people in need on Wilmington’s East Side. The mass and breakfast were the brainchild of some influential Delawareans, including Joe Farley, Sr. The former chairman of the Delaware State Democratic Party is proud that the event still embodies its original tradition and mission, despite its tremendous growth over the past two decades.Read full post...

Waiting an entire week to watch the next episode of your favorite TV show is beginning to seem as outdated as watching a show in real time. The DVR liberated millions of people from having to be in front of the television at a certain time on a certain day of the week. And now in an unprecedented move, Netflix recently released all 13 commercial-free episodes of its original show House of Cards – at the same time.Read full post...

It can sometimes be intimidating to come up with the perfect blog post. Here are 5 tips for creating a blog post that will leave ‘em wanting more:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x5ymk61BzNA

Doesn’t seem fair for an advertiser to pay for an ad that wasn't viewable, now does it?

For as long as I’ve been in the business of planning and purchasing digital media, we have been buying display ads by impressions served. That means that when the server serving up the banner ad to the site records that an impression has been served, it is counted as an impression. When you buy display ads, oftentimes you pay by impression, and part of my job is to ensure my client’s ad has received the number of impressions I have purchased.Read full post...

The rise of social media and nontraditional marketing techniques has also strengthened this brand-youth connection.

The Internet is everywhere — seeping into conversations, bulging out of jean pockets and trembling in the hands of nearly half of the American population. Never in history has access to information been so readily available; never has the information itself been so torrential. One side effect of all this interconnectivity: It has left the youth of first-world countries with ADD. Their attention spans have been cut in half and their efforts to find something engaging usually leave them numb.

Given this bleak reality, how can an advertiser or brand get the attention of the Millennials?Read full post...

Valerie Cole, Digital Media Analyst

Wilmington, DE – Valerie Cole has joined AB&C as a Digital Media Analyst. She will analyze online media programs, develop campaign performance reports, incorporate measurement into current marketing initiatives and report on clients’ brand presence across social media channels.Read full post...

After a slew of recent halftime scandals, network execs now bite their nails and hope the performer sticks to his or her script to avoid a PR nightmare!

Come Sunday, I — along with millions of other Americans — will be sitting on my couch surrounded by good friends, ice-cold beer and wings. My eyes will be glued to the nearest flat-screen to watch (and criticize) the Super Bowl halftime show. Aside from the advertisements, this spectacle is one of the main reasons many people even watch the Super Bowl. So it’s safe to say that the stakes are high.

Read full post...

Before long, everyone will own a tablet. This means new opportunities as well as new challenges for marketers.

I’m not an early adopter. I let other folks experience first-generation electronics to pave the way for me. I wait to hear a little more, watch the products and read reviews to make completely sure of any new purchase.

But this past Christmas, I was starting to feel left behind. Young children were walking around with iPads. So we added not one, but two tablets to the Qualls household. And we’re not alone; lower-priced tablets further fueled tablet adoption at the end of 2012. More than half of the students in my daughter’s first-grade class received a tablet for Christmas.Read full post...