Johnny Depp as the Mad Hatter. Can’t Wait for This One.
Posted by truecreek on June 23, 2009 under More Dam News | 
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Credit to Disney. Great shot.
An Improved Outlook and its Effect on the Mood of Your Customer.
Posted by truecreek on under Opinions. Everyone has them., Research | Be the First to Comment
Well, studies are starting to show that people are beginning to feel better about things and that’s a good thing for all kinds of businesses.
Just go to the mall and look at all the shopping bags people are lugging around. Traffic at car dealerships is up. My local Panera is busier than ever.
Are your customers starting to see the good side of life again?
Kodachrome. RIP.
Posted by truecreek on June 22, 2009 under More Dam News | Read the First Comment
By Ryan McCarthy.
Sorry, Paul Simon, Kodak is taking your Kodachrome away.
The Eastman Kodak Co. announced Monday it’s retiring its most senior film because of declining customer demand in an increasingly digital age.
The world’s first commercially successful color film, immortalized in song by Simon, spent 74 years in Kodak’s portfolio. It enjoyed its heyday in the 1950s and ’60s but in recent years has nudged closer to obscurity: Sales of Kodachrome are now just a fraction of 1 percent of the company’s total sales of still-picture films, and only one commercial lab in the world still processes it.
Those numbers and the unique materials needed to make it convinced Kodak to call its most recent manufacturing run the last, said Mary Jane Hellyar, the outgoing president of Kodak’s Film, Photofinishing and Entertainment Group.
“Kodachrome is particularly difficult (to retire) because it really has become kind of an icon,” Hellyar said.
The company now gets about 70 percent of its revenue from its digital business, but plans to stay in the film business “as far into the future as possible,” Hellyar said. She points to the seven new professional still films and several new motion picture films introduced in the last few years and to a strategy that emphasizes efficiency.
“Anywhere where we can have common components and common design and common chemistry that let us build multiple films off of those same components, then we’re in a much stronger position to be able to continue to meet customers’ needs,” she said.
Kodachrome, because of a unique formula, didn’t fit in with the philosophy and was made only about once a year.
Simon sang about it in 1973 in the aptly titled “Kodachrome.”
“They give us those nice bright colors. They give us the greens of summers. Makes you think all the world’s a sunny day,” he sang. “… So Mama don’t take my Kodachrome away.”
Indeed, Kodachrome was favored by still and motion picture photographers for its rich but realistic tones, vibrant colors and durability.
It was the basis not only for countless family slideshows on carousel projectors over the years but also for world-renowned images, including Abraham Zapruder’s 8 mm reel of President John F. Kennedy’s assassination on Nov. 22, 1963.
Photojournalist Steve McCurry’s widely recognized portrait of an Afghan refugee girl, shot on Kodachrome, appeared on the cover of National Geographic in 1985. At Kodak’s request, McCurry will shoot one of the last rolls of Kodachrome film and donate the images to the George Eastman House museum, which honors the company’s founder, in Rochester.
For McCurry, who after 25 years with Kodachrome moved on to digital photography and other films in the last few years, the project will close out an era.
“I want to take (the last roll) with me and somehow make every frame count … just as a way to honor the memory and always be able to look back with fond memories at how it capped and ended my shooting Kodachrome,” McCurry said last week from Singapore, where he has an exhibition at the Asian Civilizations Museum.
As a tribute to the film, Kodak has compiled on its Web site a gallery of iconic images, including McCurry’s Afghan girl and others from photographers Eric Meola and Peter Guttman.
Guttman used Kodachrome for 16 years, until about 1990, before switching to Kodak’s more modern Ektachrome film, and he calls it “the visual crib that I was nurtured in.” He used it to create a widely published image of a snowman beneath a solar eclipse, shot in the dead of winter in North Dakota.
“I was pretty much entranced by the incredibly realistic tones and really beautiful color,” Guttman said, “but it didn’t have that artificial Crayola coloration of some of the other products that were out there.”
Unlike any other color film, Kodachrome is purely black and white when exposed. The three primary colors that mix to form the spectrum are added in three development steps rather than built into its layers.
Because of the complexity, only Dwayne’s Photo, in Parsons, Kan., still processes Kodachrome film. The lab has agreed to continue through 2010, Kodak said.
Hellyar estimates the retail supply of Kodachrome will run out in the fall, though it could be sooner if devotees stockpile. In the U.S., Kodachrome film is available only through photo specialty dealers. In Europe, some retailers, including the Boots chain, carry it.
Does Your Cell Phone Have the Features You Want?
Posted by truecreek on under Opinions. Everyone has them. | Read the First Comment
In this day and age of more and more functionality in hand-held devices and the like, I thought this little bit of research from CNN was very telling. Most of the folks are like me. I just want the damn thing to ring.
While not the most profitable segment, I’m sure, with almost 50% of the base looking for the only the basics, the cell co’s need to market to that group as well.
Question: Does your cell phone have the features you want?
Yes, it’s perfect: 30% 76,933
No, I wish it had more stuff: 21% 54,065
I just want it to ring: 49% 127,040
The Deceptive Nature of this Campaign Demands Some Investigation.
Posted by truecreek on June 5, 2009 under Opinions. Everyone has them. | Be the First to Comment
The other day, I had the chance to see a new infomercial by one of those new debt consolidation companies. The spot was produced in such a fashion as to look like CNBC or some kind of financial program, complete with two crawls on the bottom of the screen.
But what I really have a problem with is the placement of video within the spot of the President speaking behind a lectern, as to insinuate some sort of endorsement. Now, the disclaimer is in a small, ghosted font across the bottom of the video, and it says the usual stuff, but that’s not enough.
The spot is a blatant attempt to position the product, which in this case is debt consolidation, as a government sponsored entity.
Where is the FTC?
While you’re at it, shut down the robocallers and the junk faxers, too.
Sometimes a Picture Tells a Thousand Words.
Posted by truecreek on June 3, 2009 under Opinions. Everyone has them. | Read the First Comment
Next Time, Check Into a Nicer Hotel.
Posted by truecreek on June 2, 2009 under Opinions. Everyone has them. | Read the First Comment
If you haven’t noticed yet, the rates are coming down at a lot of four and five star hotel properties. In some cases, way down.
Almost all of the finest hoteliers are offering discounts to their customers, with some at levels never seen before. Plus, many of them are packaging, with spa deals, food discounts and the like. Vegas is dirt cheap.
So the next time you are planning a trip, be sure you look into some of the properties you wouldn’t have considered, due to price. You might be pleasantly surprised.
The Not-So-Young Networkers.
Posted by truecreek on May 29, 2009 under More Dam News, Research | Be the First to Comment
Another article by Mark Dolliver. Essentially the same thing happened during the adoption of the internet. It took a while, but eventually the greatest amount of growth in use was coming from the older population. In some cases, much older.
Most growth at social networking sites comes from users 30 and older.
By Mark Dolliver
NEW YORK Though social networking still skews young, the practice has been gaining ground among Americans who are on the wrong side of age 30.
Indeed, while noting that use of such Internet sites remains most common among the young, a report on the subject by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press says that “nearly all of the recent growth in social networking has come among older people.”
The report, analyzing survey data gathered at the end of March and through much of April, shows 43 percent of 30-39-year-olds saying they use social-networking sites — about twice the proportion (21 percent) who said so in a December 2007 survey. The increase has been proportionally even steeper among 40-49-year-olds (from 11 percent then to 29 percent now) and 50-64-year-olds (from 6 percent to 16 percent). The current figure is highest, at 70 percent, among the 18-29-year-olds. But that’s nearly unchanged from the December 2007 poll, when 67 percent of respondents in that age bracket said they use such sites.
If you think the older folks join a social site and then seldom revisit it, think again. When people who use the sites were asked how often they check in on them, the 18-29-year-olds had the highest proportion (at 23 percent) saying they do so several times a day. But the number of respondents saying they do this was quite sizable among the 30-49s (15 percent), the 40-49s (16 percent) and those 50-plus (14 percent). When you combine the several-times-a-day tallies with those saying they check in on the sites “about once a day,” the gap between the 18-29s (48 percent fall into those two categories) and the 30-39s (41 percent) isn’t terribly wide. (The equivalent figure for social networking’s 40-49s is 36 percent, and it’s 34 percent for those 50 and older.)
The same survey inquired into respondents’ attitudes about the wisdom of sharing personal information online. The poll’s wired respondents split almost evenly between the 43 percent saying it’s “a good thing” and the 44 percent saying it’s “a bad thing” that the Internet “makes it possible for people to share pictures and personal things about themselves with others.”
Men were significantly more likely than women to say it’s a good thing (49 percent vs. 37 percent). And, as you’d expect, younger respondents were more apt than their elders to hold that opinion. The “good thing” vote was 62 percent among the 18-29s, 48 percent among the 30-49s, 35 percent among the 50-64s and 19 percent among those 65-plus.
Though 67 percent of the poll’s social-networking-site users came down on the “good thing” side of the debate, 23 percent said they regard such info-sharing as a bad thing.
When Will Marketers Boost Spending?
Posted by truecreek on under More Dam News | Be the First to Comment
We’ve been discussing this exact same thing with clients for several months now and it seems like we’re almost there. Brand advertising on TV will once again be back in vogue, with some nice budgets behind it.
By Mark Dolliver
Will ad agencies need to wait until the recession has certifiably ended before they see a rebound in their clients’ spending? A survey released today by the Association of National Advertisers gives a glimmer of hope that marketers’ expenditures will turn upward sooner than that.
In online polling last month among members of the ANA’s Brand Marketer Leadership Community panel, 68 percent of respondents said they plan boost their media budgets as the economy recovers; 41 percent said they’ll increase their spending on social networking/word of mouth. As for the timing, 73 percent said “they would ideally implement these increased marketing activities three to six months before the recession ends, and an additional 16 percent as soon as it ends.”
A renewed focus on long-term brand-building will represent a shift from what many marketers have been doing as the recession deepened. The ANA’s report of the findings says two-thirds of marketers “have shifted their emphasis to more short-term strategies in the last six months.” Such a shift is reflected in the answers respondents gave when asked to cite the areas in which they’ve cut back. Fifty-six percent said they’ve cut media budgets, and 41 percent said the same about sponsorship/events activities. The activity most likely to have been increased amid the recession: “pricing deals,” cited by 47 percent of respondents.
For all the flux in marketers’ use of media, TV remained atop the standings when respondents were asked to say which media are effective for building brand equity. Sixty-four percent cited TV. Though down from 80 percent in a similar February 2007 poll, that still put TV ahead of online (61 percent) and “guerrilla/word of mouth/buzz marketing” (57 percent). Lagging farther behind were magazines (51 percent, down from 67 percent in 2007), radio (30 percent, down from 36 percent), outdoor (26 percent, down from 35 percent) and newspapers (19 percent, down from 36 percent). Social media garnered the most mentions as “the media channel that marketers would like to use but have not yet been able to implement.”
Elsewhere in the survey (conducted in conjunction with marketing-services firm ‘mktg’), respondents were asked about the factors they watch most closely as indicators of “brand health” — i.e., the degree to which brand equity is increasing or declining. “Customer experience/satisfaction” was cited by 48 percent of respondents — up from 37 percent in the 2007 poll. “There is less focus on traditional metrics such as brand image and awareness, which tend to be lagging indicators of brand health,” says the ANA report of the findings.
Before Marketers Ask for Trust, Perhaps They Should Apologize.
Posted by truecreek on May 27, 2009 under More Dam News | Be the First to Comment
By Jonah Bloom
There are many ads today from our imperiled banks, insurance companies and automakers telling us that we can still trust them and should still buy their products. But there’s one word consumers haven’t heard much that might serve these companies better than their current dirges: sorry.
That thought came to mind as a rash of “We’re sorry” ads broke out recently across the pond in the U.K. As a native of Britain, I should note that being sorry is our national pastime. (My parents, who are always profoundly apologetic, often on my behalf, fondly recall the time I briefly knocked out my 10-year-old self by walking into a parking meter and came to fuzzily apologizing to said inanimate object.) I’ve often wondered whether this propensity has anything to do with some deep-seated national guilt at the many atrocities committed by our former empire.
Regardless of its origins, these days it manifests itself in nothing more serious than an underwear manufacturer apologizing for charging bigger-breasted women more for bigger bras. Yes, Marks & Spencer recently ran a national campaign apologizing for this. The headline, of course: “We boobed.”
This mea culpa hit more or less at the same time London’s Evening Standard newspaper, relaunching under new ownership, ran a major outdoor campaign saying sorry: “Sorry for Losing Touch,” “Sorry for Being Negative,” and so on.
Sunny Delight also decided to confess its sins. It’s running ads in a number of U.K. women’s weeklies, with the wording: “Britain’s mums told us where to stick the artificial ingredients. And it wasn’t in the bottle.” The drink has been relaunched as a healthful option.
Apologizing in ads isn’t new. Under fire, it’s crisis 101. In the auto industry, we’ve seen many variations, from Renault apologizing to the French people for its various missteps in the early ’90s to various apologies alongside product recalls to GM’s semi-apologetic “Road to Redemption” campaign.
Yet despite a mountain of evidence that American people feel they’ve been let down by car companies, banks, insurers and, indeed, corporate America as a whole, we haven’t heard a whole lot of sorry.
Doug Wojcieszak, author of an apology-strategy book called “Sorry Works!” and founder of a company by the same name, says it’s not a cultural thing, and that, in fact, sorry works in the U.S. “It works very well here because of our immigrant culture. Many of us screwed up elsewhere, that’s why we’re here. Americans get mistakes — they just don’t get or like coverups.”
Perhaps the problem is CEOs and lawyers don’t want to admit culpability for anything that’s gone wrong. But even that doesn’t stand up as an excuse, according to Mr. Wojcieszak. Most of his work has been in the litigation minefield of health care, where he’s building a growing body of evidence that failure to apologize is often a key factor in malpractice becoming a lawsuit, and, conversely, that apologies defuse more potential legal situations than they create. “Even senior health-care executives are starting to understand that apologizing actually takes away the urge to litigate,” he says.
Of course, as any savvy marketer, or properly-adjusted human being, knows, there are two conditions that have to be met for contrition to mean anything. You have to mean it, and you have to be able to show meaningful ways in which you’re changing whatever it was you’re apologizing for.
But assuming that many of the people at America’s bailed-out banks and automakers probably are pretty sorry about way they mismanaged their businesses about now, I can’t help thinking that it’d be a valuable start for a bunch of companies generally regarded as having been too arrogant to see the mistakes they were making to share their regrets with the public.
New Problem for Workers: Cubicle Graveyards.
Posted by truecreek on May 25, 2009 under More Dam News | Be the First to Comment
By Eve Tahmincioglu
The blogosphere has begun to chronicle a disturbing phenomenon in offices around the country — endless stretches of uninhabited desks and cubicles where friends and colleagues used to sit.
“I was wandering around the office, as I tend to do when I need to look busy but need a break, and I noticed that we have a lot of empty cubicles around,” writes Office Scribe in her Asleep Under My Desk blog recently. “… I think we need to start renting these empty cubicles out. I made a crack on my way back from lunch how we need a doctor who can see patients in one of the cubicles.”
Even though she’s trying to joke about it, Office Scribe admits she’s bummed out by the emptiness.
Office Scribe, who didn’t want her name used for fear of losing her job as a sales assistant for a major travel company in Chicago, has seen about 60 of her co-workers get the axe since December.
“When the economy tanked, we had two sets of layoffs, and the people we were sitting next to are gone,” she says. With so few people left, there are now large swathes of empty cubes between departments. “You have to go searching for people. It’s kind of like we have little tribes now.”
Alas, Office Scribe may feel lonely, but she’s far from alone.
Mass layoffs throughout corporate America have created cubicle and desk graveyards in office buildings from coast to coast. After years of shrinking office space for employees, the recession has brought about a new trend — more room for workers to stretch out.
The average square foot per office occupant has risen to 435 square feet so far this year, from 415 square feet in 2008, according to International Facility Management Association, or IFMA, in a soon-to-be released report.
“There is simply more space per person in the workplace, meaning there are fewer people occupying a greater amount of space, and this is just over the course of a year,” says George Deutsch, a spokesperson for the association. “We attribute this to the economic downturn and layoffs our nation is currently dealing with.”
It’s creating morale problems for employees, not to mention logistical nightmares for companies and the facilities maintenance staff.
TuneCore, Amazon Set to Unveil On-Demand CD Sales.
Posted by truecreek on May 22, 2009 under More Dam News | Be the First to Comment
By Eliot Van Buskirk
TuneCore is poised to partner with Amazon’s on-demand CD-printing-and-distribution service, Wired.com has learned. It’s a deal that could put powerful new physical publishing options in the hands of musicians, even as the world goes increasingly digital.
The service is expected to be announced Thursday, linking Amazon with TuneCore, a novel digital distribution startup that’s made waves signing the likes of Trent Reznor, Keith Richards and other stars seeking a way out of the label system, as well as slews of garage bands and hopefuls on their way up.
Tunecore will charge just $31 a year in upfront fees to handle a 10-track CD from pressing to delivery, passing all other costs through to the buyer. In other words, the service promises to remove nearly all of the risks of short-run CD manufacturing, which can cost musicians hundreds or even thousands of dollars for discs that rarely sell enough to cover expenses.
“As an artist, you have unlimited physical inventory, made on demand, with no upfront costs and worldwide distribution to anyone who orders it at Amazon.com,” said TuneCore CEO Jeff Price, formerly of indie label SpinArt Records (Pixies, KaitO, Apollo Sunshine).
The deal comes as physical music sales are tanking and as major CD distributors like Amazon seek to evolve to a digital model. Yet Price suggests that there may be life left in good old physical storage media, with a slight twist. Why would people buy music on CD if it’s also available in iTunes, Amazon MP3 and other digital stores?
“Why not?” responds Price, who says he believes the costs are so low it will makes sense for lots of bands to try it out. “Let the music fan decide how they want the music.”
In addition to competing with downloads and streaming, one obvious drawback to this model is that you can’t sell an on-demand CD at shows, where enthusiastic fans are most likely to pick one up. But Price says labels wondering why artists still need them now have yet another thing to worry about. When you can sell CDs on Amazon for 30 bucks, who needs a label? Certainly not Reznor, an early TuneCore adopter who once paid the service 38 bucks to distribute a quadruple-length album through Amazon MP3.
Amazon already offered on-demand CD printing through its CreateSpace acquisition, for a flat fee of $5 per disc. TuneCore’s massive footprint means far more bands will use that service, because it’s now just another checkbox in the system they already use.
For TuneCore, the deal expands its primary business helping indie artists get digital distribution through online outlets such as iTunes, Napster and Amazon MP3. TuneCore will now compete directly with CDBaby, the current leader in low-volume CD manufacturing and distribution. CDBaby charges $278 for 100 discs, although it recently lowered its minimum order to just five copies.
Brooklyn-based TuneCore gave us a peek inside its accounting system, which shows the most successful artists on the service regularly earning upwards of $20,000 per month. Chump change this is not.
As with its digital distribution service, TuneCore passes 100 percent of Amazon’s payout to the artist — about 40 percent of the retail price. If one of Amazon’s 80 million customers buys your 10-song CD on Amazon for $8.98, you’ll receive $3.59. After selling just nine discs, you’re in the black. TuneCore takes care of the UPC code, artwork, bar code, CD label design and so on, so that artists can concentrate on writing songs — and cashing checks.
The on-demand CD partnership with Amazon is just the latest in a long string of successes for the 2006 startup, whose distribution catalog dwarfs those of the labels.
“There’s more music released in one day on TuneCore than there is on a major [label] in the course of a year — in three days, more than all the majors combined, and within a month, all the majors and indies combined,” explained Price. “TuneCore artists have generated over $32 million in revenue from music sales over the past 22 months.
“Some of the artists, frankly, have been selling more than the Billboard Top 40 artists,” he added. “It’s just not being picked up by the mainstream places [like SoundScan] that track sales.”
As their label contracts expire, some fairly heavy hitters are signing up for TuneCore. In addition to Reznor and Richards, the service now handles distribution duties for Joan Jett and other luminaries. But unsigned bands are always found among TuneCore’s top sellers. For instance, Never Shout Never sold over 250,000 songs in 60 days, as well as 30,000 T-shirts (also handled by TuneCore).
Universal Music Group — the biggest record label in the world — has also partnered with TuneCore to offer additional services to its indie artists. For $50, Universal’s Grammy-winning producers will master your music for CD before it gets distributed. And for another as-yet undisclosed fee, Universal’s art department will also design the high-resolution PDF that iTunes now requires with each album submission — all they need is four images and the names of your songs.
Some Fun Stuff from Kyle Williams, a Member of The Creekbed.
Posted by truecreek on May 21, 2009 under The Work | Be the First to Comment
17 Ways to Use Twitter.
Posted by truecreek on under Opinions. Everyone has them. | Be the First to Comment
By Maki
I’ve signed up for a Twitter account a long time ago and used it sporadically because it never really did appeal to me. Last week I decided to give it another chance and installed Snitter, a desktop application for Twitter.
I started using it actively and gradually developed an avid interest. I think Twitter is a manageable process that can be adopted for all types of lifestyles, busy or inactive. You’ll just need to integrate it within your normal workflow. It’s addictive but once you understand how to use it, it’ll be a very effective tool indeed.
Having read a great deal of other articles on Twitter, I decided a do a quick summary of all the ways you can use Twitter for both your professional or personal life. Some of these methods go beyond the use of Twitter as a lifestreaming device:
1. Personal Branding. Twitter is a social media platform you can use to build your personal brand. It has the primary benefit of developing a casual persona and establishes you as a social personality that is connected and approachable. As Twitter adoption increases, new users will be drawn towards well established Twitter personas.
2. Get Feedback. Need an alternative perspective on how a website looks or the right course of action to take? Blast out a message asking for advice and you’ll receive replies from other users. This collective intelligence can be used as fodder for articles or projects.
3. Hire People. Need a good logo designer, marketer or programmer? Send out a message asking for recommendations. This is a very quick and easy way to hire freelancers or even companies based on familiar recommendations.
4. Direct traffic. Twitter can be used to get traffic to your websites or the sites of friends. If you ask your friends to tweet about it, the message will spread faster and further as other active users pick it up. There is a viral nature to all types of news, even on a site like Twitter.
5. Read News. Twitter users often link to useful sites or articles and can be a source of scoops and alternative news. You can also subscribe to Twitter feeds for specific websites/conferences, which allows you to receive and view content quickly. This is very useful for active social news participants.
6. Make New Friends. Like any other social network, Twitter has a built-in function for you to befriend and track the messages of other users. This is an easy way for you connect with people outside of your usual circle. Make an effort to add active users you find interesting. A Twitter acquaintance can be developed into a long lasting friendship.
7. Network for benefits. Twitter can be used as a socializing platform for you to interact with other like-minded people, especially those in the same industry. It can be used to establish consistent and deeper relationships for future benefits such as testimonials or peer recommendations.
8. Use it as a ToDo list. Use Twitter to record down what you need to do while you are away from the computer. Mark the tweet as a favorite to file it for referencing. Another alternative is to use an Online task management service that is synced with Twitter. One example is Remember The Milk.
9. Business Management. Twitter can be used as a company intranet that connects employees to one another. Workers can liaise with each other when working on group projects. Particularly useful when certain workers go out often in the field. Updates could be set to private for security reasons.
10. Notify Your Customers. Set up a Twitter feed for the specific purpose of notifying customers when new products come in. Customers can subscribe via mobile or RSS for instant notification. Twitter can also be used to provide mini-updates for one-on-one clients.
11. Take Notes. Twitter provides you with an easy way to record important ideas or concepts you want to explore further. Include links relevant to ideas you want to explore. Note taking can also be done offline via mobile applications.
12. Event Updates. Businesses can use Twitter as a means to inform event participants and latest event happenings/changes. This is a hassle-free way of disseminating information, especially when you don’t have the means to set up a direct mobile link between you and the audience
13. Find Prospects. Twitter can be used as a means to find potential customers or clients online. Do a search for keywords related to your product on Twitter Search and then follow users. Tweet about topics parallel to your product and close prospects away from public channels by using direct messages or offline communications. Discretion and skill is needed in this area.
14. Provide Live coverage. Twitter’s message size limit prevents detailed coverage of events but it can allow you to provide real-time commentary which may help to spark further discussion or interest on the event as other Twitter users spread the message. Very useful for citizen journalism.
15. Time Management and Analysis. Twitter can simply be used to keep a detailed record of what you are doing every daily. This might be boring for others but this type of usage is useful when you want to analyze how you spend and manage your time.
16. Set Up Meetings. Twitter can help you organize impromptu meetups. For example, you can twitter a message while at a cafe, event or art gallery and arrange to meet fellow users at a specific spot. It’s an informal and casual way of arranging a meeting.
17. Acquire Votes. Send a link to your stories you’ve submitted in other social news sites like Digg. Sometimes your followers will vote up the stories because they agree with it. This allows you to acquire more support for your efforts on other social media websites.
Daydreamer in a Green Swimsuit.
Posted by truecreek on May 19, 2009 under Opinions. Everyone has them. | Be the First to Comment
Another shot of my Mom, this time striking the pose in a moss-green lace and white broadcloth tank-top swimsuit and a beach coat with a zipper front. The fashion photo, by Leombruno-Bodi, appeared in the May 1954 Glamour.
Just amazing what you can find on the web, sometimes when you’re not even looking.
Comcast Medical Vertical Market Four Color Print.
Posted by truecreek on under The Work | Be the First to Comment
What Are You Packing Into Your (Creative) Briefs? Your Creatives Want Clear, Tightly Written Objectives.
Posted by truecreek on under Opinions. Everyone has them. | Be the First to Comment
By Howard Margulies
You are an advertiser, an account director, brand planner or an ad agency executive. And you have come to the conclusion that something is fundamentally wrong with your creative brief.
Your suspicion is confirmed by that gnawing sensation you feel in your gut when evaluating the advertising created in service of the deficient brief. The work feels indistinct or generic, crammed with information, yet devoid of a differentiating message; its tonality is either too quiet or patently overbearing in its desperate need for attention.
Blame must be assigned: It’s got to be the brief.
Changing an organization’s creative brief can be a politically charged, time-consuming ordeal; but that aside, choosing a new form is a fairly simple task. Put the words “creative brief” into Google, and with a little digging, you will encounter 117,000 links, many pitching their own idealized construct. Some forms are verbose, others elegantly concise. Choose one that feels right and run with it. Related: My doctor once observed that if a wide range of products exist to treat a medical condition, one might assume that none of them work notably better than another. What’s true for poison ivy is true for the creative brief. They will all sort of work, more or less.
Here are some guidelines for experimenting with a new, improved creative brief:
* Think simple. The more sophisticated the brief, the simpler it should be. The more glissandi and grace notes the piece has, the harder it is to play.
* More spaces to fill present a greater opportunity for bad poetry. Avoid theoretical definitions; keep the language at the 8th-grade level.
* Write in clear, declarative sentences.
* Test out the chosen version with products or services you know well. If you can get all the key ideas in, you’re good to go.
* Every fact or observation you add to the brief must be useful and actionable. If not, leave it out.
* Does the final brief say what you want it to mean?
* Write a couple of bad ads directly from your brief. What would the headline say? What would be the key visual? Is that the beating heart of your story?
The humbling reality is, regardless of the pedigree of the agency championing a particular style of creative brief, in practice it will fail to result in great advertising if the guidance it provides is merely factual, or unclear and unfocused. The format of your chosen creative brief may well be the least of your problems.
PROBLEM No. 1: Filling out the brief.
The very notion of “filling out” a creative brief should fill you with dread. Because if simply filling it out is the goal of the individual(s) tasked with its completion, it will not end well.
Too often, the creative brief is joylessly “filled out” as if it were the worksheet to an IRS 1040 Schedule C. Values are plugged into fields. Facts substituted for insights. Data dumped in a hierarchical, unfiltered lump. Keep in mind that at the end of this process, no matter how flawed or absent the thinking, it will look exactly like a creative brief.
When you write a creative brief, you’re not filling out a form. You’re crafting the story of your product and its reason to exist and thrive in the world. This is the first, and arguably the most important creative act of the entire process. And yet it’s often approached with all the delight of passing a kidney stone.
Believe it or not, your creatives want the freedom of a tightly written brief. They’re looking to you for inspiration. Man up. Make them care.
Peter Comber, creative director at Italy’s DWA, wants “clear objectives, and clear targets.” “Sell more,” he insists, is not an objective any more than “everyone” is a target audience.
Dallas Baker, creative director of Freed Advertising, wants a brief “to connect [him] with the target on a level [he] wouldn’t otherwise understand … to be taken into a brand and … the challenge that lies ahead.”
It all comes down to this: Are you telling the right story to the right audience? The right story is not merely true, but motivating to any given audience. Often inarguable, self-evident truths are ladled into a creative brief under the guise of insight. This will not go unnoticed.
Your creative teams may dress like slackers, but they have been genetically bred to sniff out a con job. Oh, they may not immediately realize that your core leverageable insight is not really very insightful or leverageable. But know this: After they work with the brief for a while, they will arrive at that conclusion.
The creatives will scour the brief for a declarative message (anything!) delivered with clarity, something they can sink their teeth into. Finding none, in utter desperation, they will reach into their advertising bag of tricks and their instinctive knowledge of consumer motivators to create a marginally interesting way of stating the painfully obvious.
But ultimately, the smoke will clear and the creative work will not stand up to scrutiny. They will come to you for clarification, and you will be frustrated by their inability to crack the code. Be gentle with them.
It’s not the format of the brief, but the story it tells.
PROBLEM No. 2: How will you know when you have written a good brief?
Brevity goes a long way to winning over some of your creative comrades. Creative legend Jackie End’s litmus test for a good brief is “when you can read it without missing lunch and dinner.”
Steve Capp, chief creative officer of Unit 7, has observed that if your brief is too long, “someone didn’t spend enough time on it.”
Surely, when your creatives begin to nod, rather than nod off, you know you’re on the right track. But how do you know you have nailed it?
It’s been suggested that you’ll know you’re onto something big when you can pitch the story in under 30 seconds. Can you deliver an elevator speech for your product? Are you writing it to be read?
Dave Dresden, director of International Promotions at Warner Bros., suggests that “actually speaking the words out loud … lets one sense the potential for an ‘a-ha’ insight.” Distance yourself from the brief, if you can. If you were hearing the ideas for the first time, would you buy in?
In a privately published 1998 monograph, “What’s A Good Brief? The Leo Burnett Way,” a “good creative brief” was defined as “brief and single minded … logical and rooted in a compelling truth … [incorporating] a powerful human insight.” That opinion was echoed by several ad veterans I polled for this article.
Rich Solomon, creative director at C2Creative, senses that a brief is leading into fertile territory “when concepts start to come immediately after reading a single-minded benefit statement.”
DWA’s Comber thinks the clearest evidence of a solid brief is that when he’s “reading it the first time, he reaches for a pen and paper.”
Greg DiNoto, CEO of DiNoto Inc., knows when he’s in good hands “when a brief is dense, when it commits … and [he] can immediately and intuitively sense the truth in it.”
DiNoto has it exactly right. When writing a brief, you must fully commit to an idea:
* This is the time to fall on the sword. Commit!
* Refrain from peppering the brief with ideas; a little bit of this or that. Layering ideas in a painterly way is dishonest. Commit!
* Say one thing, and say it clearly.
* Don’t try to outshine the creatives, don’t let your cleverness show; keep the language simple and clear.
* Anything resembling a tagline should be deleted.
* Support, amplify, clarify, stay on message.
If you have doubts that you have chosen the right path, find another. The universe has an infinite supply of paths; choose one.
It is a faulty assumption to believe that a killer ad campaign was the product of an unusually imaginative creative brief. Quite the opposite is more likely to be true. It is also not inevitable that any given campaign would result from any given brief. This is a deterministic function of the zeitgeist, the talents and disposition of the creative teams, the openness and receptivity of the target audience, and the ability of an agency and client to celebrate the power of a great idea and run with it.
The Goodby, Silverstein & Partners award-winning “Got Milk?” campaign was based on a powerful, single-minded insight: People wait until they’re out of milk to realize that they need to buy more. The campaign’s scenarios were highly entertaining, but the core message was: “Milk enhances the enjoyment of many foods. Don’t wait until you’re out. Buy some today.” In Goodby’s hands, advertising history was made. At another shop, the spots might’ve sounded like infomercials for the ShamWow!
A truly motivating insight is a secret bit of knowledge that you have about your target audience that you can exploit to make them do your bidding. Don’t squander it.
Study the great advertising of the world. Dissect and reverse engineer it. But don’t fall into the trap of equating the creativity or memorability of a campaign with the writing style found in the brief that got them there.
* Keep your creative briefs free of clever turns of phrase, taglines, or ad-speak.
* Fill your brief with brilliant market analysis and motivational insights into your target audience.
* And most of all, write with clarity.
10 Great Tips on How to Advertise During the Crisis.
Posted by truecreek on May 13, 2009 under Opinions. Everyone has them. | Be the First to Comment
By Addis Creson.
Great ads have one thing in common. They sell things. Things like products, services, ideas or lifestyles. If they don’t do this directly, they are memorable enough to influence a consumer at the time he or she makes a purchase.
Bad ads are brand poison. If you go public with a half-baked concept, a forgettable headline, or a me-too message, chances are the ad will have the opposite effect you intended. It will drive consumers away. Even worse, it will drive them to the competition.
Below are 10 principles to keep in mind when creating an ad. Read them before, during, and after you have created your ad. Make them your checklist. And remember, every ad represents not just a product or feature or price, but what your brand promises.
1. No one cares about your company.
You might be intimately familiar with your product or service. You might even love it. But your audience doesn’t. Your ad has to give them a reason to care. Consumers don’t think in terms of features and benefits. Those are marketing terms. Consumers want something that will make their lives easier or bring them success. How will your product or service do this? More importantly, how will your ad convince them it will?
2. Don’t let fear motivate you.
One of the biggest mistakes you can make is to second-guess your audience’s ability to understand. Think of Goodby, Silverstein & Partners’ “Got Milk?” campaign. The entire message is based on the absence of milk. Without picturing milk in a variety of scenarios, the agency created a world without milk. If somewhere along the line, the California Fluid Milk Processor Advisory Board (the client) had rejected the no-milk concept because it didn’t adequately promote the product or make milk “the hero,” the resulting campaign would have been very different. And probably far less memorable.
3. If it works on you, it will work on them.
You are a consumer. You read ads and buy things. If your ad doesn’t convince you, chances are it won’t convince your audience.
4. Talk about one thing.
Volkswagen once ran an ad whose headline read: “It makes your house look bigger.” The message was simple: VW Beetles are small. The headline didn’t mention the car’s gas mileage, price, or engineering. It didn’t even mention VW. It got people to think small is good.
5. Say it differently.
Take the one thing you want to communicate and come up with different ways to say it. In the VW example above, the headline didn’t say “VW Beetles are small.” Think of ways to state an ordinary message in an unusual way so that it gets attention.
6. Let your audience draw their own conclusions.
When Steven Spielberg first screened Jaws, the audience laughed at the shark. His solution? Remove the shark. In the end, you see the entire shark in only a few scenes. But the movie is still terrifying. The same principle applies to advertising. Don’t be afraid to let consumers draw their own conclusion about your company or product. The conclusions we make for ourselves are usually the most powerful.
7. Make design and copy work together.
The headline and image tell the story. Don’t let the visual design overpower the message. And don’t rely on copy alone to convey the entire idea. A headline should never tell you what is in the picture. And graphic design should never be used merely to fill space.
8. Create an emotion.
The worst thing an ad can do is be boring. A series of physiological events occurs when we’re happy, sad, entertained, or angered. Use this to your advantage. Make sure you generate a response in the person looking at your ad. Any response is better than no response.
9. Sell something, don’t just talk.
Imagine this: You’re looking for a new car. You have one in mind. You arrive at the dealership, see the perfect car on the lot, and go inside to inquire about it. Instead of answering your questions, the salesperson launches into a history of the car dealership. Do you care? In advertising, always stay focused on what you’re selling and anticipate the consumer’s needs.
10. Make them respond.
The best ads demand a response. They make consumers want to act. Always give your audience a reason to act and the means for doing so, whether that’s a phone number, fax number, or web address.
Some Nice Upmarket Design From a Member of The Creekbed.
Posted by truecreek on May 11, 2009 under The Work | Be the First to Comment
As a member of The Creekbed, True Creek’s very talented freelance creative team, Gabe has designed some nice work.
Increasing Marketing and Advertising Spend is a Good Thing. Trust Us.
Posted by truecreek on May 6, 2009 under Opinions. Everyone has them. | Be the First to Comment
Time and time again, we’ve heard the story: Increase your marketing and advertising spend. Now. Not only to keep your brand top of mind but to assure that when everything settles down and we’re back in business, you will be too. And in a big way.
Folks will remember you were there when the proverbial crap hit the fan. That you were strong enough to keep the fires burning so that when the time comes for them to need your company, you will be there. Better, stronger and leaner than ever.
Seize the opportunity now. Start thinking positive about things and get back in the game. Add weeks, don’t cut them. Print the entire quantity, not just a segment. Use better paper. Shoot in HD. Raise those production standards. Buy more media. Shoot, how about running some great print ads? The newspaper community needs your business.
Better yet. Hire a great Northern Virginia Ad Agency by the name of True Creek and we’ll help your company put it together.
A few months ago, Mike Matson wrote and article that merits another post.
MarketSense study during the 1989-91 recession demonstrated that brands such as Jif Peanut Butter and Kraft Salad Dressing increased their advertising and experienced sales growth of 57% to 70%. During this same period, most of the beer industry made cuts to their ad budgets, but Coors Light and Bud Light increased their budgets and saw sales jump 15% to 16%. Among fast food companies, Pizza Hut sales rose 61% and Taco Bell’s 40% due to strong advertising support, reducing McDonald’s sales by as much as 28%.
MarketSense concluded the study by reporting. “The best strategy for coping with a recession is balanced exploitation of ad spending for long-term consumer motivation, plus promotion for short term sales boosts.”
Strategies to help your business thrive in this economy.
• Don’t cut your ad budget, increase it. Let your competition cut their budgets. When you increase your spending, you increase your share of voice. If your competitors cut back, your message grows even stronger.
• Have a strategic marketing plan that is well thought out, so you don’t waste money advertising the wrong message in the wrong place to the wrong audience.
• Keep your loyal customers by keeping in touch with them and letting them know what you have to offer.
• Maintain your brand awareness. Advertising works cumulatively so you have to remind people frequently about your brand or they’ll forget you.
• Achieve greater media efficiency by taking advantage of more negotiable rates and special promotions.
• Don’t degrade your advertising by trying to save a few dollars on creative or production costs. Your customers will notice and will perceive lower quality not just in your advertising, but in your products and services.
This is one time to stress quality—and value. “All great enterprises move forward in a recession, and the weaklings move backward. The dumbbells cut back on advertising. The smart people don’t.” -Ed McCabe, founding partner of Scali, McCabe, Stoves advertising agency, a legendary Madison Avenue agency of years past.
VW Keeps Spending on Ads, Which Helps its Market Share.
Posted by truecreek on May 4, 2009 under More Dam News | Be the First to Comment
By Theresa Howard, USA TODAY
Car advertisers that maintain their ad spending can rev up market share in down times, gaining an edge to exploit in a recovery.
Sure, the auto industry is in the doldrums. Car sales through April this year are down 37%, to about 3 million vehicles from 4.8 million through April last year, according to Autodata’s latest sales report out Friday.
But while some brands all but stopped spending on marketing, others kept or increased their budgets, particularly for new or improved models. Among those for whom that paid off:
• Kia Motors increased U.S. ad spending 43% in 2008 vs. 2007, according to ad tracker TNS Media Intelligence. Its U.S. market share is up from 1.9% at the end of 2007 to 3.1% through April of this year, according to Autodata.
• Mercedes-Benz raised ad spending 39.8% in 2008 vs. 2007. Its U.S. market share is up from 1.6% at the end of 2007 to 1.8% through April this year.
• Volkswagen raised ad spending 45.7% in 2008 vs. 2007. Its U.S. market share is up from 1.4% at the end of 2007 to 1.9% through April of this year.
VW’s U.S. marketing chief, Tim Ellis, says that despite the tough sales year, 2009 ad expenditures will be held even with 2008.
“When we invest in marketing, things happen,” says Ellis. “We think it’s important to stick to our roots and stick to our value message. We’re getting a higher percentage of the dwindling marketplace. And when this crazy situation comes straight side up again, we’ll be positioned to increase our share even further.”
It All Starts With a Great Logo.
Posted by truecreek on February 12, 2009 under The Work | Be the First to Comment
When you’re thinking about starting a new company, don’t forget about the impact a great logo will have for your new brand. As we all know, your brand is much more than just a sweet logo, but it’s a great way to get things started.
From a creative standpoint, so much of what you will be doing in the future to communicate with your customers will flow right out of that design, so make the investment and be sure to get it right from the beginning.
Several years ago I met Pete, one of the designers in The Creekbed and owner of one of the finer design/brand studios here in DC. He’s one of the best in the business these days and I’m proud to say he’s part of the team. He’s produced award-winning logos for The Grammys, Rouge at the MGM Grand in Vegas, True Creek and so many more. Take a moment to look at some of his eye-catching work below.
Small Virginia Ad Agency Takes on Big Tobacco.
Posted by truecreek on February 9, 2009 under More Dam News, The Work | 2 Comments to Read
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
February 5, 2009
ALEXANDRIA, VIRGINIA – David may have slew Goliath, but can a small Virginia ad agency slay the state’s big tobacco industry?
Joseph Young, president of True Creek, Inc, an advertising agency in Alexandria, Virginia has created a series of ads in support of the legislation banning smoking in indoor restaurants and bars that is pending in Virginia.
“I am proud to have commissioned this wonderful artwork. I really want to make sure the message is sent to the voters of Virginia in a loud and clear way…that they still have time to contact their representatives to make sure the Indoor Clean Air Act is passed. Now is the time to act and make that call. As we say in the ad copy, it’s time to clear the air for the common health of the Commonwealth, “ Young said.
“On a personal note, my mother was stricken with esophageal cancer five years ago. Through her determination and upbeat spirit, she was able to beat the disease. It’s my hope that the voters in Virginia have that same level of determination in supporting this bill,” Young said.
Last Tuesday, Young presented his ads to the House bill sponsor, Delegate David Englin, his communication team, and others interested in the legislation. Thursday, the Virginia Senate approved four bills dealing with the issue. The legislation then went to the House, where revisions and compromises were made. It’s possible the legislation will be voted on either Monday or Tuesday.
The provocative ads feature headlines such as “Formaldehyde, cyanide, carbon monoxide and arsenic shouldn’t be on the menu anymore.” and “The Virginia house killed bills in recent years to restrict smoking. 1,700 Virginians were killed in each of those recent years by secondhand smoke.”
Lingo 4/c Direct Mail
Posted by truecreek on February 1, 2009 under The Work | Be the First to Comment
