Using one screen, advertisers will have to conjure a fully immersive visual, virtual and social experience for consumers.

Advertising optimism is on the rise again, and for good reason. Industry segments are hiring again, advertisers and their agencies are regaining budgets, consumer confidence is growing, and the mass adoption of advanced television and entertainment consoles may very well yield the next great surge of creative advertising and media marketing.

We’re heading into uncharted territory, where new mediums will finally marry the benefits of web and broadcast television advertising and revolutionize the kind of creative content we can provide for our clients. This new generation of technology, such as Smart TVs and next-generation gaming/entertainment consoles, should signal a golden age for marketers — particularly strategic- and creative-focused agencies such as ours.Read full post...

Now that we’ve gone over some basics in Part 1, let’s look at how the Agile methodology can work in your agency.

Assemble your team of T-shaped people.

As with any project, your team members are your most important assets. Agile doesn’t call for the smartest, fastest or most specialized team members available. Instead, it works best with T-shaped people. I know what you’re thinking: Great, let’s add another piece of jargon to the mix! An uppercase T has two parts: the horizontal top bar and the vertical stem. The top bar represents a broad range of skills from left to right, and the stem represents the depth of knowledge in a specific skill. T-shaped people — those who specialize in a specific skill but have a broad range of knowledge across multiple disciplines — understand how all of the different skills work together to ensure the project is compatible across all specialties.Read full post...

HubSpot: Companies that blog 15 or more times per month get 5X more traffic than companies that don’t blog at all.

The short answer is yes. According to a recent article in Social Media Today:

• 81% of U.S. consumers trust advice and information from blogs.
• Small businesses with blogs generate 126% more leads.
• 61% of U.S. consumers have made a purchase based on a blog post.

So how do you write a good one?Read full post...

Agile is pretty new in relation to other methodologies.

Agile marketing is a relatively new term being thrown around by marketers and project managers to help us adapt to the ever-changing landscape of marketing. In the late 1990s, software developers created agile methodology, which focuses on iterative and incremental goals when developing large programs, to help streamline the development process. Agile is pretty new in relation to other methodologies such as waterfall, which is what most project managers use on a daily basis.

OK, now that you have some background, let’s jump in with both feet. Read full post...

Have goals — and make them SMART goals: Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, Timely.

I’m a gym rat. I love lifting weights, yoga, you name it. The days when I leave feeling less than exhausted, I realize it’s because I didn’t have a plan walking into the gym. So I always try to enter the gym with a specific goal — is it a cardio day or a weight day? What muscle groups am I going to work on? Am I going to use heavy weights with limited reps or just the opposite? With a plan in mind, I start seeing results after a few weeks. If I don’t, I know I need to change something.

The same idea holds true in business. For example, at AB&C, we just finished reworking our sales and marketing plan for 2014, and we learned a lot. First, we looked at this past year — what worked, what didn’t, what can we add to our marketing mix, how did our online data analytics look, etc. Then we gathered all our department heads together and had a brainstorming lunch to decide where we needed to head in 2014. As a result, we re-aimed our focus at a national and regional level, and plotted out the tactics to reach our goals.

Don’t have a marketing plan yet? Don’t fret — here is an easy way to get a plan together.Read full post...

Despite massive success in 2012, Red Frog Events wanted to keep things fresh when promoting their 2^nd annual Firefly Music Festival in Dover, Delaware.

To reach their core audience, social media was a must. What evolved was one of the most successful Twitter campaigns I’ve seen to date (not counting Oreo’s brilliant moment with a “super” power outage).

They created a virtual scavenger hunt. And the prize was VIP passes to the three-day festival. Here’s how it worked (they can certainly explain it better than I can):Read full post...

Using science to get into the customer’s brain

One of the most interesting new business pitches I was ever involved in was when a prospective B2B client, a large and well-known electronics company, was trying to introduce a new product line. The problem was, these new products were very different from those that the company was well known for.

The client had spent considerable sums introducing the new line, yet had made little headway in the market. So they opened this assignment to other agencies.

We were briefed, we developed creative, and we took it to a focus group. The creative bombed, badly. But why it bombed was the same reason the product line was getting so little traction — in the mind of the customer, these new products just didn’t fit with the way they perceived the company.

Well, we quickly regrouped and developed new creative. But this time, rather than just introduce the new products, we built a connection between them and the products the company was known for. The new creative worked well, helping to create an “aha” moment with people in the second focus group.

In our final presentation to the client, we took them through our experience, even showing the creative that bombed. Not only did we win the work for the new product line, we became agency-of-record for the entire account. We also learned a valuable lesson in the art of persuasion.

We called it, “meeting the audience at its mindset.” Read full post...

Point the finger at poor implementation of the technology and too many companies scrambling to get a piece of the niche pie.

Have you ever said, “Wow! I just had an amazing experience with this here QR code!”

It’s safe to say you’ve come across many “Quick Response” codes over the past few years, whether you knew what they were at the time or not. And if you’re in the marketing business, you’ve been asked, “Do you think we should add a QR code?” on more than one occasion.

In 1994, Denso Wave, a subsidiary of a Japanese automotive manufacturer, invented the QR code to track the company’s production process. The idea behind altering the technology for smartphones came soon thereafter — and presto!  People could connect the offline world to the online world by simply scanning a code with their handheld device. Since more than half the country owns a smartphone, you might assume that QR codes are all the rage.

Well, they’re not.

They’re everywhere — some placements are better than others: T-shirts, license plates, metro boards, billboards, websites, gas pumps, buses, TV commercials, etc. Sure, consumers are scanning QR codes here and there, but not regularly.Read full post...

It would be like arming your company with a state-of-the-art fish finder that not only locates fish, but will lead you to those most likely to bite.

Boosting your success up to 40% via predictive modeling

With traditional and electronic media costs constantly on the rise, casting a wide net to reach B-to-B prospects can become prohibitively expensive. Though these media do reach many people, using them to find the right people — your best prospects — is often inefficient.

But what if you could identify and target only your best prospects — those whose profiles precisely match those of your current best customers? It would be like arming your company with a state-of-the-art fish finder that not only locates fish, but will lead you to those most likely to bite.

That’s what’s behind the concept of predictive modeling. AB&C has successfully used this cutting-edge prospecting tool for clients to deliver 20% to 40% higher response than with traditional media — at a fraction of the cost.Read full post...

The next time you want to see what the general public thinks about your new logo…don’t.

The list of brands that have gone through a massive rebranding effort — only to cave into online peer pressure and revert back to their old identities (Tropicana, The Gap, University of California) — continues to grow.

As someone who makes a living rebranding companies, this troubles me.

Foremost, people who comment on Internet threads usually aren’t professional marketers or branding experts. They’re the same people who take half-naked pictures of themselves making duck faces in the mirror, then film a video of their buddy eating a tablespoon of cinnamon.

They don’t understand the hundreds of nuances that go into building a brand.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...

Paul Pomeroy weighs in on a couple of car ads.

As a guy who works in advertising I often get asked by family, friends, acquaintances and perfect strangers to offer my opinion on current ads in the marketplace. I find this funny because, unlike most people, when I meet doctors, lawyers and auto mechanics, I don’t find a way to wedge questions related to lumps on my back, clauses in my will or an incessant knocking noise coming from under the hood of my car into the course of casual conversation. But whatever. Most advertising people are raving narcissistic know-it-alls who are more than happy to share their opinions on just about anything — especially good ads vs. sucky ads.

OK, that really just describes me. And that brings me to the point of this post.Read full post...

Are you feeding both brains adequately?

What makes someone choose to work in life sciences marketing? Maybe it’s a case of feeding the two brains we’re blessed with — our left and right brains. Almost 30 years ago, I read Robert Ornstein’s The Psychology of Consciousness. Ever since, I’ve been fascinated by how we can approach the world on different planes, from different perspectives — due to the differences in our “two” brains. So how does this relate to life sciences marketing? With apologies to Dr. Ornstein, I will use his framework to explain our own.Read full post...

"Cyberspace Rules of the Road" PSA

OK, I’m not embarrassed to admit it. I enjoy watching Disney Channel’s Phineas and Ferb with my 7- and 10-year-old. There, I said it. I’m a grown woman and I still like watching cartoons.Read full post...

Become involved (and strategic) with social media.

Fear is a terrible thing. Especially when it causes healthcare systems to back away from using a potentially powerful communications tool. When it comes to using social networking sites such as Facebook or Twitter, healthcare systems tend to fall into two categories. The first suffers from significant fear regarding negative feedback that may come from using such tools. This group also struggles with how much time it will take to make this a successful venture. The second group is “gung-ho” and jump into the pool before they check to make sure it’s been filled with water.  This group tends to throw every possible press release, article and “approved” message they can find onto their social media channels, only to realize they’ve created a one-way conversation.

There is a better way.Read full post...