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Fuel Lines is a blog for ad agency new business, and every month it features the best ad agency blog. Each month’s winner is featured on Fuel Lines throughout the following month and is included in the voting for ad agency blog of the year. So click here and vote for AB&C’s blog as the best for October — and spread the word!

Creating demand for Paranormal Activity.

Have you heard about Paranormal Activity, the low-budget horror movie that has been terrifying audiences over the past few weeks? It was reportedly produced for $15,000! But the very strategic marketing paid off as well as a multimillion-dollar campaign.

First came very scary trailers, followed by updated trailers with footage of terrified moviegoers at a sneak preview of the film. This was followed by a limited release in a handful of college towns around the country.

Then came the really clever part: what appeared to be a grassroots campaign to get the movie distributed nationwide. By teasing us, the filmmakers created a public demand for the movie. They drove us — both in commercials and online — to eventful.com, where we could demand that the movie open in our hometown theaters. The site had a real-time running tally of votes and bragged that Paranormal Activity is the first movie to ever be “demanded” by “we the people.” We could also show friends and associates that we supported the “movement” by spreading the word via Twitter, Facebook, a MySpace widget or links in emails.

The best part? It worked — whether or not they ever needed the votes to obtain a national release. How’s that for creating artificial demand? I wonder how future marketing campaigns will incorporate Paranormal Activity’s grassroots web marketing.

Getting creative with billboard design.

Yeah, yeah — we know all about Facebook, Twitter and all the other types of social media. But where does that leave traditional media? Where does that leave the billboard?

It’s hard not to feel bad for traditional media trying to keep up with all of the new technology. But you don’t have to worry about the billboard — some very creative people (not as creative as us) came up with some very clever ways to breathe new life into these oft-maligned road signs. In fact, they may be too eye-catching — it’s easy to imagine drivers so distracted by these works of marketing art that they sail off the overpass.

Check out 50 mind-bending billboards from 10Steps.SG for yourself — but keep your eyes on the road if you drive by them.

The emerging trend of Nowism.

Instant gratification is nothing new. For years, we’ve had instant coffee, microwave ovens and FedEx. Today’s attention-deficit-disordered generation has taken this institutionalized impatience even further with iPhones and BlackBerrys — the information superhighway is right at our fingertips. With iTunes we can find any song, movie or TV show as soon as we want it — then put it on our iPhone to take wherever we go. And digital cameras — remember film?

Now comes a social movement called Nowism. According to trendwatching.com:

Consumers’ ingrained lust for instant gratification is being satisfied by a host of novel, important (offline and online) real-time products, services and experiences. Consumers are also feverishly contributing to the real-time content avalanche that’s building as we speak. As a result, expect your brand and company to have no choice but to finally mirror and join the ‘now’, in all its splendid chaos, realness and excitement.Read full post...

Medical Marketing Becomes an Origami Crane.

Authors: Kathleen Dunn and Peter Gordon

Part III. Origami marketing – folding the messages

It is not critical to understand how all of these scientific disciplines function. However, it is necessary to know where the hinges are — those areas of convergence that connect you with the disciplines that will further the efforts of all.

The challenges may be biggest for pharmaceutical marketers. Accustomed to communicating with prescribing physicians and pharmacists, these marketing professionals must set their sights on a much wider audience, and probably a smaller patient population. They must craft new messages and be able to understand and communicate with other healthcare disciplines: radiology and molecular imaging, pathology and laboratory medicine, oncology, cardiology, even genetic counseling.

The challenge now is folding the messages into an integrated whole that is both creatively compelling and scientifically supported. It’s a lot like Air Traffic Control, in which managers are evaluating a host of vehicles in three dimensions, in every conceivable vector — often extremely close to one another. And of course everything must be done on time, regardless of the weather.

In Part IV we’ll talk about approaching the “Crane State.”

Social media is here to stay.

It’s all the buzz. Social media has exploded. It’s everywhere. Some might say there is a revolution going on. Have you seen the YouTube video about this very topic? It has some very interesting statistics, such as:

• By 2010 Gen Y will outnumber Baby Boomers.
• 96% of them have joined a social network.
• Social Media has overtaken porn as the #1 activity on the Web.
• 1 out of 8 couples married in the U.S. last year met via social media.
• Facebook added 200 million users in less than 9 months.
• 80% of companies are using LinkedIn as their primary tool to find employees.

Check it out for yourself.

Did you notice the change in tune?

We’ve all seen the Geico commercials with people being stalked by the little stack of money with eyes, reminding them of the money they could have saved by switching to Geico. Have you noticed a certain change in the reception that “Kash” has received from the person being followed? I have and, frankly, I’m not sure what to make of it.

When this campaign launched, people seemed to be a little leery of the creepy money as it snuck up on them. Here’s one of the original ads.Read full post...

Medical Marketing Becomes an Origami Crane.

Authors: Kathleen Dunn and Peter Gordon.

Part II. From quantum leap to fold change.

Diagnostic and genomic tests are now being applied to pharmaceutical decisions. Today, the use of genomic data can optimize the ability to identify discrete subpopulations in clinical trials, leading to the development of highly targeted drug therapies, such as Her-2/Neu measurements to optimize the therapy decision-making for a breast cancer patient. In fact, 10% of pharmaceuticals now have pharmacogenomic data in their labeling.

What are the implications for marketers? There are no longer simple boundaries, but intersections where several disciplines are folding back on one another. Your marketing challenge is now a kind of origami puzzle, with different shapes meeting others at odd angles, with small or large junctions and hinges connecting them. What at first seems like oddly configured folds on a piece of paper eventually emerges a beautiful bird, like the classic origami crane.

Part III takes on Origami Marketing itself.

Newspaper advertising will recover.

There’s going to be an ad revenue recovery for the beleaguered industry, and it’s coming soon. Yes, the decline is about to end, according to a new forecast that projects print ad revenue will actually rebound 2.4% next year.

Beyond 2010, ad research firm Borrell Associates forecasts that by 2014 newspaper income will be up 8.7% over 2009 and that newspapers’ share of total ad revenue will jump from 14.4% to 15.9%.Read full post...

Which occupation do you trust?

When I’m at a social gathering, and people ask what I do for a living, I say I’m in advertising. And the standard response is, “Oh, really? Have you done anything I may have seen?” It’s tough knowing how to answer that one. But I’ve never felt ashamed of my chosen profession — until now.

A recent survey by GfK Custom Research revealed we advertising types are not to be trusted. People were asked how much they trust various professionals. As you could probably guess, firemen finished first (95 percent), followed by military personnel (85 percent), doctors (83 percent) and schoolteachers (83 percent). Bankers took the biggest hit in this year’s trustworthy tally, falling from 63 percent last year to 44 percent today.

But even sadder to me is the paltry number of folks who trust advertising people — 24 percent — or marketers — 27 percent. Of little consolation, politicians finished even lower on the trust totem pole at a dismal 21 percent. Casual research indicates that this distrust of advertising practitioners is a continuing trend. So what can we ad people do to polish up our eternally tarnished image? I’m thinking of starting an agency staffed entirely by firemen.

Medical Marketing Becomes an Origami Crane.

Authors: Kathleen Dunn and Peter Gordon

Part 1. A head-on collision.

Over the last several years, marketing the Life Sciences has meant different things to different people, encompassing pharmaceuticals, diagnostics, molecular diagnostics, molecular imaging, medical devices, bioinformatics, genomics and proteomics, to name the major players.

Ironically, as the disciplines named above have become more defined, they have started occupying the same space. As developments in many of these fields begin to integrate, they also begin to collide. These disciplines are now affecting each other — and affecting each other’s developments.

Marketers of these products are now faced with having to think outside their own discipline — outside their own box. It means they have to start thinking inside someone else’s box (maybe a lot of them at once).

In Part II we’ll see where these collisions are happening.

A great alternative for out-of-home spending.

According to Media Life, digital out-of-home spending will leap 13.2% from 2008 to 2013 — total spending will reach $4.53 billion, up from $2.6 billion this year. Video ad networks (screens in office buildings, health clubs, fast food chains and gas stations) will make up the largest portion, but the fastest growth in the category will come from digital billboards.

Digital billboards are currently available in the Philadelphia market on the I-95 corridor, but there’s also good news for our Delaware-based clients: The first digital billboard in Delaware will launch mid-September on I-95 near Newark. Digital billboards allow for unlimited design executions with no associated production costs and can be purchased on a weekly, every-four-week or annual basis. Yet another outlet to keep in mind as we search for the most effective ways to get our message out there.

Tourism and economic development

Tourism. It’s vital for many countries and many island nations. It’s also important for the economic development of the State of Delaware and its neighboring states. Millions of dollars are brought into these states through businesses that serve both tourists and locals, and thousands of jobs are created in service industries associated with tourism.

Whether it’s trips to nearby attractions (25% of the population of the United States is located within a four-hour drive of Delaware) or weekly visits to the lovely beach communities that line the eastern coast of New Jersey and the Delmarva Peninsula, tourism is key to this area’s economic development.Read full post...

Am I too old for Facebook?

So it’s no secret — I’m well into my 50s. I learned the basics using pencils with portable erasers that were the size of small Volkswagens. Eventually I graduated to relying on secretaries who used carbon paper. These same secretarial resources also made my thoughtful presentations come to life using some low-cost overhead projections. Then life got fancy and we all started using slides! The fax machine really changed the whole mindset though — I was suddenly able to “do my own faxes” (well, usually). Read full post...

Don't mix texting and driving!

Of all the new media, texting has exploded in the last year and, together with its sibling, twittering, it may now come with a caution label attached. While many of us are accustomed to listening to the radio in the car, very few of us watch television in the driver’s seat. The logic is obvious, and yet many of us engage in texting behavior that defies that same logic.

According to The New York Times (7-18-09; 7-28-09), two studies have shown that this new media and driving don’t mix. A study conducted by Virginia Tech showed texting truckers (on actual runs) were 23 times more likely to have a crash, and a University of Utah study showed that college students (in simulators) were eight times more likely to crash.Read full post...