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creative briefs |
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If you aren't learning something new, you're wasting space. Digital technology makes it easy to pick up some new skills or knowledge.
Books and lots of them can be found free and online. There is a blog that lists a variety of sites which offer access to online books, including some audio ones. Discover more here.
I also found the Online Education Database recently and it has 100 free podcasts from the world's best universities. So, if you want to brush up on your quantum mechanics, learn about the historical Jesus or Hannibal, this site is for you. There's also a list of 200 free online courses.
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Old school ad agencies are having their troubles. They need to evolve, or they won't survive the upheaval in the market. Valeria Maltoni at Conversation Agent has a good piece about the top ten sins of ad agencies.
Here's a big sin: signing up for one thing and wanting all the client's business before delivering on the original project. |
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Today, I'm sharing a secret with you. If you have read Think for a while you know I use and like StumbleUpon. Did you know you can advertise using this social network platform?
For five cents per visit, you can drive tons of traffic to your website or blog. You need to be careful to select the right pages to advertise. Problogger explains how to do it right.
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Hello. Advertising is not dead, but it is on life support. Let's see if we can revive it. Let's get going.
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Creatively yours,
Harry Hoover
harry@my-creativeteam.com |
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Advertising On Life Support  |
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By Harry Hoover
Advertising is on life support but it is not dead. Although it seems that advertisers and their agencies are trying to kill it.
When done correctly, it still has its place in the marketing mix. The problem with advertising, as in so many marketing tactics, is that companies launch ads before they really think their program through.
First, let's think about what we want our advertising to achieve. You should tie your advertising objectives to the objectives you have for your business. Ask yourself what benefits advertising can help bring to the business.
Are you looking for new customers who don't know you? Are you trying to get a share of your competition's customers who know a little about you? Or, are you trying to get your own customers to buy more from you?
The answers to these questions will help you establish what type message is needed because one ad cannot address all carbon-based life forms. Ads need to be aimed at specific audiences. And media dollars, if you're fortunate enough to have them, are precious, so let's target the ad message as we'll need to target that media spending.
Prospects need to have their interest aroused, while you might need a "make a change" message aimed at competitors' customers, and your own customers may respond best to a loyalty message.
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To Market, To Market  |
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By Harry Hoover
"To market, to market to buy a fat pig." - Mother Goose
What does buying a fat pig have to do with your business? Stick with me and all will be revealed.
Does your business have a tactical and a strategic way to go to market? Let's go down to Mr. Hoover's butcher shop to see how it's done.
Mr. Hoover has been selling bacon and other pig products for years. That's pretty tactical, but can result in a good continuing income stream. A lot of customers come in week after week to buy their bacon and ham and pork loin, after all.
But Mr. Hoover wants to develop another income stream. What, he wonders, if he could get people to buy the whole pig ahead of time. And, maybe, he also could get customers to pay for a pig on the installment plan.
Then, Mr. Hoover could afford to buy more pigs basically for nothing. Customers would be paying for the upkeep. And, Mr. Hoover could even own a stud pig that he "rents" to other pig farmers. Yet another income stream. Sweet!
My tactical tool - or bacon - is project-related marketing: websites, email newsletters and other marketing programs aimed at customer retention and loyalty. Once I'm in the door, I can develop a client relationship that later allows me to sell the whole pig.
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