Posted by Susie Mehring on Wed, Jul 28, 2010 @ 10:10 AM
By, Andres Aguirre
The media landscape today is evolving at an extraordinary rate. The ways in which we create, perceive, process, and interact with information are fundamentally altered almost faster than we can realize. Whether it’s the new mobile computer technology such as tablet computers, or discovering a brand new use for an old apparatus, technology itself and the vast amounts of content that it brings are able to be structured, purposed, and formatted in virtually limitless styles.
The way in which the content is structured has much to do with the way in which the information can be used. Sometimes content on the web can be very broad and open-sourced, enabling cooperation and expanding creativity. It can also be streamlined and dispersed for a wide audience, or vice versa, funneled or filtered, and personalized to match a specific user or viewer depending on the intended purpose of the information itself.
The truth is whatever the intent, there’s an absurd amount of information out there, and because of this, getting your information into the right hands is quite complicated. If the intention is to sell, then simply placing your message ‘out there’ is not going to cut it. The chances of someone coming across your ad, clicking through, and then deciding to purchase are extremely slim, so as a result content structuring has become user-centered and highly personalized. People are constantly searching for ways to organize and simplify the content that they care about. The internet learns a lot about you and what you like, so it can filter and display relevant content based on your previous browsing patterns. Some examples of this are applications such as Flipboard for the iPad. It takes content that you and your close circles of friends are interested in, and it arranges and presents it to you in a coherent magazine-like format. Facebook and YouTube also feature algorithms for filtering and displaying only the content that is similar to the content that you have previously engaged in.
For advertisers, this user-centered tendency of organizing content means that you can have enhanced targeting online. You now have a better guarantee that your message will be relevant and more effective online. Yet, users will also become wary of this fact and you still have no guarantee that the user will engage in what you have to say and that it will transform into some sort of interaction with your business.
This is where Structural Graphics comes in. A highly engaging and interactive piece is hard to ignore. People will remember that 3D book cube with lights that popped out from a holographic folder, and the morphing roller with sound. Chances are highly likely that they will keep it, show it to friends and thoroughly digest that content because it’s not online, and it’s not competing for their attention in cyberspace. Instead, it’s completely demolishing those competing envelopes containing bills.
Posted by Susie Mehring on Wed, Jul 21, 2010 @ 11:10 AM
By, Andres Aguirre
In today’s increasingly competitive marketplace, many companies and businesses are relying more on their brands to stand out and to differentiate themselves among their competitors. The necessity of a strong customer relationship with the brand has never been more important, and a mixed multimedia presence is required in order to create and maintain such relationships. The economic recession heavily impacted many businesses and the most direct result was usually a slice to their ad spend. And while most companies dropped advertising and marketing from the top of their lists, the ones who saw the most success and a faster recovery were the ones who were able to sustain a consistent branded presence throughout several communication channels - including direct mail.
Direct mail marketing has the advantage of being easily targeted in a very accurate manner, delivering extremely efficient campaigns and high returns on investment as opposed to a radio ad or TV ad, or online banners for example. However, some industry experts have expressed concern over the future of direct mail advertising, and reasonably so. With today’s constantly evolving and diversifying media landscape made possible by mobile broadband internet, it’s no wonder why more and more people are reading their mail, newspapers, and magazines online. After all, it costs less and it’s much easier to deliver content over the web.
Yet, there are some things that simply cannot be translated; some sort of immutable and irreplaceable properties of the medium itself that are somehow lost in translation. Paper is something tangible that you can feel, pick up, turn, fold, and manipulate in ways that are simply impossible with a pdf file. There is no way to translate these aspects into the digitized format – it’s fundamentally different. A computer can help you collect, organize, and visualize complex data into a coherent and apparently similar form, but it also has the ability to malfunction and to distort information. You can’t feel, taste, or smell the internet, and you don’t get nearly as much junk mail as you do junk e-mail. On the internet it is easy to get lost in the virtually limitless amounts of information, infinite numbers of web pages, and vast quantities of user-generated content, whereas traditional print is strictly bound to what is transcribed. No hyperlinks or pop-up ads to take you away to another dimension.
My point is- there are some very elemental differences between our digital worlds of new media and ‘traditional’ media formats. A new emulation or digital incarnation of a preexistent medium should by no means be taken as a substitution for it. This should never happen. Instead it should be seen as an additional communicative tool, another channel by which to reach prospective clients and customers, and obtain feedback, information, and research.
So don’t be in a huge rush to move all your ads to Facebook. Instead of assuming that one medium can perfectly replace another, pursue the creative, interactive, and integrated use of all media. The key to a long and prosperous brand life is taking advantage of the multiple communication channels that are available, and using them to their full potential in order to introduce your brand message and personality - or in short - a consistent integrated multimedia presence.
Posted by Susie Mehring on Wed, Jul 14, 2010 @ 12:04 PM
Not to boast or anything, but we were so very excited to find out this morning that we won 2 "Awards of Excellence" at the 16th Annual Communicator Awards that we just had to share the news! The winning pieces were the FlapJack media kit we produced for Cartoon Network and the self-promotional pharmaceutical mailer we produced titled "Tell us where it hurts!".
The Communicator Awards is the leading international awards program honoring creative excellence for Communications Professionals. This awards event has been around for a decade. Communicator Awards receives over 9,000 entries from companies and agencies of all sizes, making it one of the largest awards of its kind in the world.
Categories include print, video, integrated campaigns and audio. Click here to learn more about this event.
Posted by on Wed, Jul 07, 2010 @ 11:45 AM
I have a special folder (digital and snail mail) where I collect interesting marketing pieces I receive. Of course, I like to save those that are amusing for one reason or another. The coupons aren’t bad either, but I never seem to use them. How does a nice iced mocha latte for $.99 sound? Oh sorry, that coupon expired last year.
My all time favorites are the personalization gaffes. I don’t mind that you bought or stole a list that didn’t include my name, but for crying out loud, why does your default title have to be so cheesy?
These are the top five most frequently used default-salutations.
#5. Dear Marketing Professional: Believe me I am flattered that you consider me a professional and that you know I am in marketing, that’s impressive data quality.
#4. Dear Professional: Okay, this is a little less impressive because you didn’t know I was in marketing, but heck, you consider me a professional. I thank you for that because I have been called much worse.
#3. Dear Sirs: Okay, I am a male and occasionally someone calls me sir; but I am only one sir, not two or three, so no need to make that salutation plural. I see this frequently for some reason. It makes me wonder under what circumstance this would be correct. Perhaps if me, and a few of my colleagues (who were male) happened to all open the same piece of mail together. In that case, this would be dead on.
#2. Dear Communicator: Well now this is just plain lazy. You don’t know my name so you have to put something. Technically, I do communicate, so you do get points for that. But so do birds and monkeys, so I am not feeling too warm and fuzzy about this one.
#1. Dear Sir or Madam: This is my favorite and the all time most used by spammers and lazy marketers alike. Somehow you got my email or mailing address but you were not supplied with my name or anything else about me that would indicate my gender. However, you are pretty sure I am either a male or a female. Well, I can’t argue with that logic.
So that’s my top five. I was going to do a top ten but these are really the most frequently used salutations I have seen. I think the moral of the story is, be sure to personalize with a name, at the very least. Besides, if you don’t know my name than the odds are you got my information from a terrible list broker, skimmed it off an article or website, or obtained it through some other unethical manner. Either way, if I am not that important to you, your message isn’t going to be that important to me.
Surely, you have seen some funny salutations in your day. I would encourage you to share them with us below in the comments section.