Entertainment is delightful and helps us pass the time. People find different things entertaining and remember different parts of an episode. How often have you seen a commercial that was really funny but you don’t know what it was for. Even if you can recall the logo that was slapped on the end you may have though of why are they related? Someone famous in the ad world once said something along the lines of - “don’t tell me my ads were entertaining, tell me there were effective.” That was from David Olgivy. He was right; it isn’t just about being funny or entertaining, people need to remember your ad and be compelled to make a purchase or other directed action. That is where the engagement comes in.

Engaging marketing gets the audience to take action.  It is something that is easier to measure now and becoming an element that all media’s are trying to incorporate. Whether it’s banner ads that get clicks online or an outdoor piece that can recognize a person looking at the ad; we all want to know if it was seen and then if action was taken.

So where do we end up? Well if you want to be entertaining you need to know what your in for-possiblity for creating something that is memorable to the audience but not creating the action you wanted. Or if you want to be engaging the information may need to be in a fact-forward format-the data and information is most important. Not necessarily memorable as a “wassup” campaign but it gets the job done, consumers are taking action.

Wal-Mart was the beginning, from what I remember, and then they decided to drop the - and add a *. That’s nice, it gives more style to the name. Now I am seeing Walmart as one word. In TV, print and web, the name has been amended to one word. Why would they change this seemingly insignificant factor? I’m sure it wasn’t done without some serious research and data backing up the decision.

Could it be the web factor? If you have ever done a search on the web you probably misspelled or entered what you thought was the correct name for a brand or company. Sometimes we don’t include the hyphens, spaces, or creative spellings of names. If you were searching the web for Wal-Mart would you add the hyphen? probably not. Google search data can show you what words people are searching to find your company. Wal-Mart could have seen that ‘walmart’ was a higher search and used that as the reasoning.

Or, is Wal-Mart too corporate looking? K-Mart has removed the - in most instances. The competition could have influenced the change as well. Target is a word, easy to type and looks good in a logo. Walmart looks like a nice name, easier to type and doesn’t have that intrusive hyphen in the middle.

Along with tweak to the name it looks like Wal-Mart is updating its visual image as well. Colors seem to have been changed slightly, the logo has been changed slightly, and the style of their ads has changed - slightly. I’m not sure what they are up to but something is going on - slightly.

Google runs the show right now for web searches and is devoted to provide the best results for any search entered on Internet. What makes Google successful is the way they calculate, search and organize the information on the web. They continually update and change the process of reviewing websites with their robots. They are so good at it that they don’t tell anyone how they do it or how to get yourself ranked higher. That is the secret of breaking into the Search Engine Optimization (SEO) fortress.

The goal of your site is to get ranked for the search terms that the customers are looking for; shoes, new cars, home loans, Halloween costumes; whatever it may be. The complicated part comes in dealing with the competition and your own logistics or geographical limitations. If someone is looking to get a Halloween costume tonight, he/she doesn’t need search results from 8 different states. The Internet is worldwide but many times people are looking for a local solution to a general question.

If you can’t compete against the big kahuna’s then be in control of what you can. If you are in one city or a specific geographical location, own that market of search. Include the city or area into the copy and meta tags of your site. Or be more specific with the description of what you offer; childrens Halloween costumes in Atlanta, designer mens shoes in Charleston, home loans in Nashville. You don’t need to talk to the billions of people searching the web, you just need to be in touch with the ones that can actually become customers.

There are a number of steps to get ranked on the first page of Google and Google is always changing the rules. It’s an ongoing project to keep up with Google and stay ahead of your competition. It’s something we work on every day.

Who’s making these type of statements; mostly the automakers who are trying to unload the large volume of trucks and SUV’s that are sitting around, taking up lot space at dealerships and, if you’ve been around Detroit, any vacant lot where they can put them.

But what kind of statement are they making. Typically car makers have always included the Miles Per Gallon (MPG) a vehicle gets as a feature. It’s the biggest type on the window sticker and something that the consumers are focusing on now even more. Stay focused. The new trick is to talk about Miles Per Fill-up (MPF) or Miles Per Tank (MPT), this way it sound like you can drive really far and fill up fewer times with an SUV or truck. “462 miles per fill-up” , or something close to that, was one quote I heard on TV. That sound good right? Well you better do some thinking and get a calculator.

Here is the problem with that statement; SUV’s, trucks, big cars, and every car to be accurate, have different gas tank sizes. That is what you are filling up, the whole tank. A small car that gets a high number of miles per gallon; a Toyota Corolla gets 35-36 miles per gallon and, as I can attest to, only takes about 11 gallons to fill-up. In the new language a Corolla only gets 385-396 Miles Per Fill-up. That must be bad because that SUV gets well over 400 gallons per fill-up! Truth be told any big SUV probably has twice the size tank of a Corolla, thus costing twice as much to fill. Let’s do the work backwards:

Said SUV gets: 462 miles per fill-up

Divided by: 22 gallon tank (complete guess but probably close)

Equals: 21 miles per gallon! That sound about right in most of the larger vehicles, could even be considered good in some cases.

Remember always look to Miles Per Gallon for an honest number to calculate costs. Filling up the tank all comes down to the cost of the fill. Those are the numbers you’re watching go higher and higher into that expansive tank in your SUV. Does it really make you feel better knowing you drove a little farther between fill-ups when it costs around $100?

It is a creative spin on how to make something sound better than it really is. Stay alert people, the ads are trying to distract you from the more important issue; Miles Per Gallon - Live by it, Drive by it, Fill by it.

Verizon Wireless has a new ad out for their LG Dare phone (watch it here) that shows a young man taking a chance, just to touch the new phone that is located in a junkyard being guarded by two pit-bulls who look like they want to bite his face off. Animal rights groups, including the ASPCA and PETA, are furious over the fact that the pit-bulls are shown in a bad light as aggressive dogs. Even though there are still major cities in this country of ours that don’t allow individuals to own the historically aggressive breed, Miami being one.

From what the complaints seem to be most upset about is that the dogs used in the ads were pit-bulls, so if they were dobermans or labs this wouldn’t have been a problem? The main message is that strange dogs, no matter where they are, could be dangerous. Many of us learned that we should stay away from a strange dog as a child because they could be dangerous. So that is what the ad seems to be implying, these are dangerous, junkyard dogs that could bite your face off, and Verizon dares you to touch the phone.

The people making these complaints just want to complain. There are individuals and small groups in our society that thinks it is their responsibility to protect everyone else. Give it a rest. This is one of the most annoying parts of working in any type of public creative medium. Someone will always be offended by everything; and people think they can go after advertisers because there is an idea of controlling the profitability and financial status of a company. If someone gets upset with a piece of art, the painter isn’t going to take it as bad as a company who could lose millions of dollars.

One thing that the complaints have done is drawn more attention to the ad; way to go. Your little, petty complaints have just added millions of dollars in exposure to Verizon and the basis of your complaint is weak at best. Get over yourself and stop ruining things for the rest of us.

I could be completely wrong though, is the ad “dispicable” in your opinion?

MTV runs information at the bottom of the screen. Information about the shows scheduled next and even information about the songs being played during the shows. When a song is played as the soundtrack for the show, MTV displays the artist and song title in a ticker at the bottom. TBS is actually interrupting shows to promote other shows. During Family Guy, TBS is running a promotion where comedian, Bill Engvall comes out and pauses Family Guy to tell the viewers about his new show. It may only be 5-10 seconds but it has started to make an impression on other networks.

Although most of the information embedded in the shows relates to the network or program; promotion information from companies like Ford, Coke, and Visa can’t be far behind. The networks want to ease the amount of commercial content presented to viewers because overwhelming them all at once will not be received well. How far off are the networks from turning our TV screen into an online page with banner ads, pop-ups and sponsor placements?

There is something to be said about how users on the web are accustomed to ad placements on web pages. Banner across the top and sponsors down the right side of the screen, alright, we have trained ourselves to focus on the important content area of the screen. Why couldn’t TV follow the same layout? Many stations already run tickers along the bottom of the screen for scores or headlines; they could throw a few ads in there, and make more money selling space that won’t be skipped by TiVo. Would we trade-off more in-program advertising to get rid of the long commercial breaks? Will standard TV commercials be replaced by in-program advertising that runs for the entire 30-minute program? The writers and producers would have to do more work because traditionally, a 30-minute show only has 22-minutes of actual programming content. The rest is for the advertisers and we already know how to ignore them.

Think about the web generation coming up now. Highly active web users, being presented more directed ads that are more and more focused to the individual user, it’s normal.  Someone who is under 18 right now won’t see it as a problem to have more advertising presented to them as someone who is in their 50’s. It’s about perception, what is excessive and how will the transition be made. Slow integration over a time will make it acceptable. Take a picture of the TV screen right now and then let’s see how it compares 5, 10, 15 years in the future.

In any situation: TV, print, online, direct, in-store… you should always find out what happened to figure out what can be done next time to make the next piece better, or find a better piece to create. Think of a football coach; he isn’t going to run the same play every time, he knows that from  watching film, observing the other team during the game and the abilities of his players, there are changes that will need to be made after each play to get a successful result.

So, you have a TV commercial, a website, some print advertising; what is it doing now, where is it going next? This doesn’t mean that you need to reinvent each piece it just means you should be continually refining and honing in on the next step. There is never an achievable end point, just one goal after another set farther and farther ahead of where you are right now.

Stonehenge exists but we really don’t know why it was built. Is your marketing just existing?

For some brands it is a great idea to develop mobile marketing strategies with high saturation on the web, but it’s not for everyone. Knowing where your marketing should go is more important than creating marketing pieces that don’t go where you need them. With some simple research you should be able to find out what pieces produce a reaction from customers.

This is nothing new in the business it is just overlooked by many companies. Making a TV commercial just to have a commercial is not the way to go with the market today. It is now possible to never advertise on TV, print or radio and still have a massive response from your customers.

Take a look at what you are producing to contact your market. Are you tracking the results of each piece? Is there a way to track the inquiries, calls, website visits,  and sales back to a communication piece? Yes there is.

There are a lot of ways to co-brand marketing efforts. Look at what you do or what you produce. Who is also involved with that product or service? If you are making car tires, look at partnering with a car brand, a tire cleaner or a wheel manufacturer. Chances are good that both of you (or all three) are in the same boat, looking for some help. This way you will be able to combine each of your smaller budgets and produce some really good marketing messages that are mutually beneficial.

When brand Zig partners with brand Zag they improve their perception in the mind of the consumer. “Wow, Zig says I should use Zag as well. And I trust the reputation of Zig, so Zag must be good.” - Consumer’s mind 

This is not a new idea but one that many people may not look for when they think they are on their own in a small marketing boat in the middle of the communication ocean. Put your thinking cap back on and find a way to make the most of the monies you have to spend, you could end up creating something that wouldn’t have been possible before. If you are having a problem thinking of who you can/should work with, leave us a note and we’ll help you out.

Here are three ways that RSS Feeds make it easy for you to stay informed and keep your email system clear of junk.

• Easy to sign up, easy to use. Aside from being free to download, after you have the reader set up you just click on the icons next to the topics you like. You don’t even have to submit an email address or any other personal information with FeedReader.
• Stories are organized by category or provider. The New York Times and Wall Street Journal have RSS feeds set up to send you news articles that are geared to your interests. All you have to do is open your RSS reader and look at the headlines under each provider. It’s like an organized Inbox just for news and announcements.
• Quick pop-up announcements. When a new story is posted to one of the sites that you requested, a small window show up with the latest headlines. This allows you the chance to take 3 seconds and see what is happening and then decide to continue on with what you are doing or check out the story. There is no wasted clicking by having to go through the homepage of the site and then find the article, it comes up right away.

So, keep your email clear of clutter and sign up for an RSS reader. It is a great way to get the news and distribute news if you have a list of customers or clients that need to stay informed of what is happening. RSS feeds are more convenient and personalized to each individual user. Many people think twice before sending out their email address because of the fear of clutter, junk mail and spam that is likely to follow.