Category Archives: Marketing

Integrity in Advertising and Strat-O-Matic Baseball

By Chris Blair

We often get calls from clients who think they need a particular type of promotional product or service, be it a new website, an instructional video, a print brochure, a television campaign, or a new logo. But many times after meeting and discussing their needs, it becomes clear the client needs something entirely different.

We’ve even occasionally recommended services that we don’t provide because they better serve the client’s advertising needs. After all, our job is to help clients communicate to their customers…not just take their money for something they think they need.

Unfortunately, not all advertising and marketing companies are that honest with their clients. I’ve seen it time and again during the 25 years I’ve worked in this business. Advertising agencies, TV and radio stations, newspapers and internet companies selling products and services that have little chance of helping their clients promote themselves.

I’ve never understood this mentality. It’s like convincing someone to buy an overpriced, overhyped product that doesn’t actually work as advertised. When the customer gets home and realizes they’ve bought a crappy product, they’re not only angry it doesn’t work right, they also feel like they were duped by the hype! This type of selling virtually guarantees clients won’t come back.  Continue reading →

Building a brand doesn’t have to be complicated

By Chris Blair

The term branding is thrown around a lot in marketing and advertising, yet many companies struggle to consistently brand themselves.

One reason is that many advertising and marketing professionals make it so darn complicated. They use terms like: value propositions, brand equity, B2B, shelf shout, push marketing, ROI, and sonic branding. There are dozens more but you get the idea. I’ve worked in marketing for 26 years and I still get confused hearing jargon like that.

It doesn’t have to be that complicated. Branding on the most basic level is writing a concise story that defines an organization, company or product. That story should be the basis for all of a company’s marketing and should be relentlessly promoted to both employees and customers. It should be communicated across every point of contact, including all advertising, public relations, websites, blogs, even email signatures and telephone on-hold messages. The goal is a consistent, repeatable message that is unique and relevant to target audiences. Continue reading →

Learning from Dick Ebersol’s Resignation

Dick Ebersol resigned as head of NBC’s sports division on May 19th and just a few days later Joe Posnanski wrote a piece on Ebersol in Sports Illustrated’s May 30th Point After column. What struck me about the article wasn’t anything about Ebersol’s vast list of credits, or any claim about his influence on modern sports or entertainment programming. It was what Ebersol told Posnanski about the most influential thing he ever learned:

“The most important thing to me, was to tell stories.”

Ebersol said it was a lesson he learned from his first boss, the legendary sports producer Roone Arledge. Ebersol told Posnanski that television seems to be turning away from storytelling, with everything  becoming fragmented and announcers making radio calls shouting about every play.

I had to chuckle and agree. I turned 50 this year, and while I can probably pass for 10 years younger (on a good hair day), I can’t help but feel a little old sometimes when discussing content for marketing and promotional projects with many clients. The idea of storytelling seems unimportant to most. Yet I still believe that a good story trumps style and glitzy design every-time. Great production values certainly never hurt a project, but a non-existent or poorly written story can kill one. Continue reading →

A Guide to Advertising & Production Costs

How much will that cost? That’s a question I’m sure every business gets almost daily. With some products, like a television or computer, the answer is relatively easy. Go online, find the model you want, compare specs and prices, and choose your retailer.

But for most things, figuring out the cost is much more difficult. From buying a car to getting a fence installed, the price can vary wildly based on factors too numerous to even think about.

So what does advertising cost? How about getting a video produced? What about having a website designed…or an interactive kiosk created…or…well you get the idea. There are no quick and easy answers, but there are some guidelines you can use for many types of projects.

Let’s look at websites. If you’ve ever gotten estimates for having one designed, the differences in price can be cavernous. I’ve seen website estimates vary by tens of thousands of dollars based on the same specs. How can this be possible? Some of the disparity can be attributed to differences in turnaround time, differences in how the site is programmed and built, the experience level of the designer etc. But more often than not, if there’s a huge difference between the lowest bid and the highest bid, it’s a good bet you’re looking at one severely underbid estimate and another severely overbid one.

Certainly there are many types of websites with varying levels of complexity, not to mention the growing need to build separate mobile versions. But for most sites, you could use the following guidelines to figure a range of what it should cost. Continue reading →

The Dan Gilbert and Lebron James debacle

By Chris Blair

Ok, you’re probably wondering, “what the heck does Cleveland Cavaliers owner Dan Gilbert’s crazy comments about Lebron James spurning the Cavs have to do with marketing and advertising?” Well, not that much on the surface, except for the fact the whole affair has brought more attention to the NBA during the second week of July than it’s ever had in an entire summer.

July typically brings us Major League Baseball, Wimbledon, the British Open, the Tour de France and this year the World Cup. But the Lebron James free agency circus changed all that. And oh what a circus it was! Leave it to ESPN, creator of the dubious sports award show “The Espys” to bring us a live TV special with Lebron announcing his decision. Of course we have to remember the “E” in ESPN does stand for “entertainment!” But I digress. The real fun didn’t start until after the show, when Cavaliers owner Dan Gilbert published an “open letter” to Cleveland fans on the Cavaliers official website. If you haven’t read the letter, you can do so here:

(Editor’s note: the original letter was removed from the Cavs official website Tuesday morning July 13th, but you can read a transcript of it at the link below):

http://www.cleveland.com/cavs/index.ssf/2010/07/gilberts_letter_to_fans_james.html

 

And here’s a screen capture of part of the original page…a MUST see I might add: https://videomi.com/blog/gilbertletter.htm

Continue reading →