SIA News Blog

Spike Team Wins Gold, Silver and Bronze Summit Creative Awards | Hodgson/Meyers

The Hodgson/Meyers creative team has won three 2010 Summit Creative Awards. The Summit Creative Awards “recognize creative excellence in companies with billings under $30 million.” The 2010 competition featured entries from more than 50 countries around the globe.

The Winners:

Gold
Category: B2B Advertising Campaign
Client: WatchGuard Technologies
Entry: “Get Red”

As we reported in a November 2009 blog, this campaign was designed to give WatchGuard positioning presence and marketing personality in the crowded network security industry comprised of many competitors with “me-too” propositions. WatchGuard is known for its distinctive red hardware. We developed the campaign positioning platform expressed here.

“Get red. Get secured.”
Then we created the red animal ad campaign that WatchGuard is using in print, interactive, and trade show environments. The campaign is also running as backlit display ads in major airports around the world, such as the one below in the United terminal at San Francisco International Airport (thanks to Jason Frummet, our Senior Account Director for snapping this photo with his iPhone for us).

Silver
Category: B2B Advertising Campaign
Client: Applied Systems
Entry: “Epic Acts”

This creative advertising campaign ran in insurance publications introducing Applied Systems’ new Epic™ insurance agency management system. The three-ad series used unusual photo treatments to illustrate how “easy” it is achieve “Epic” acts and by inference how easy it is to run an insurance agency with Applied’s Epic technology. The metaphor comparisons showed an escalator on Mt. Everest, placing a footbridge across the Grand Canyon, and putting a superhighway across the pioneer covered wagon trail.

Bronze
Category: B2B Advertising Campaign
Client: HomeStreet Bank
Entry: “HomeStreet Gets Business”

Our objective with this campaign was to build awareness of HomeStreet’s business banking capabilities and to tout HomeStreet’s substantial lending power and position HomeStreet as a regional bank. The challenge was that research showed that most people thought of HomeStreet strictly as a consumer bank and home loan lender. Many people weren’t even aware that HomeStreet offered business banking.

The solution was “HomeStreet Gets Business”, an integrated campaign (print, interactive and radio) that targeted business owners. Tempered with a touch of humor, the ads salute business owners for the long hours they put in and the risks they take to make our economy go. The ads communicate that not only does HomeStreet understand what it takes to make a business succeed, it has the power to help.

Spike Team Wins Gold, Silver and Bronze Summit Creative Awards | Hodgson/Meyers.

New Business Practices among independent advertising agencies

Vale International Ltd., completed an in-depth analysis of new business practices among independent advertising agencies from a six continent study carried out in March 2010. “Almost 320 offices with 12,800 employees enabled us to compare 2009 versus 2008 practices and we were surprised at some of the findings” said Jorg Borgwardt, Managing Partner of Vale International.

One of the most interesting findings was that agencies which insist on being paid for the pitch average a 57.8% success rate. Those that did not ask for a fee had a success rate of slightly fewer than 10%.

Significant highlights from the study:

Increased pitching activity
Overall, agencies participated in 13 pitches in 2009 vs. 11 in 2008. This is an average drawn from 40% that pitched more (15) clients; 40% that pitched fewer (10) and the remaining 20% that held steady at 8. This increase could be conditioned by the economic downturn.
Lower budgets and shorter contracts
Budgets tendered in 2009 were 29% lower and most agencies reported a sharp increase in requests for project rather than campaign work. A substantial amount of contracts won were not executed and a new tendency emerged in pitches initiated to find a lower cost supplier rather than a novel creative concept.
Worsening quality of briefs
A consequence of increased pitching frequency is the deterioration of the briefing quality. Agencies blamed short-term client focus and suggested pitching is becoming a commodity habit with the strategic role of communications shrinking rapidly.

[more]

Sanford Shines at the Summit International Awards « The Launch Blog

We’re proud to announce that our work on the Prismacolor 2010 Calendar and Prismacolor Manga Campaign won gold. The Summit Creative Awards, part of the Summit International Awards, recognize only the top creative being generated by companies or individuals who bill less than 30 million a year. This year’s competition drew thousands of submissions from twenty four countries. Click to learn more about our award-winning work.

What better way to inspire creativity then with creativity itself? Launch created a poster-style 2010 calendar to celebrate the Primacolor art competition winners, inspire artists and demonstrate the versatility of Prismacolor’s art tools. The Prismacolor calendar was designed to be 3D to allow different content to be viewed from various angles and to literally jump off the wall. From the left side the calendar reveals each month as a column on a fold. From the right side the winning art pieces are revealed. The calendar folds to a compact shrink-wrapped piece, making for easy fulfillment and distribution to retailers and art schools. In the digital age, we show that low tech techniques can still be at the forefront of creativity.

[more]

SiliconRepublic.com: Offline marketing isn’t dead … – New Media

NEW MEDIA – http://www.siliconrepublic.com/

Offline marketing isn’t dead …

06.05.2010
We’re all getting a bit tired now with claims that offline advertising is dead, and it’s time to put to bed the rumours of its death as nothing more than great exaggerations. But why are so many happy to herald its demise?

It’s clear to everyone involved in the world of communications that we are experiencing consumer behaviour change at a staggering rate. Intuitively we know that things aren’t as they were.

On a technical level, intelligent mobile devices, faster internet access, cheaper hardware, an ever-improving web and the social media revolution have all been catalysts for change.

Societal upheaval has complemented this, as trust in big business has never been under greater threat, and traditional religious and class influences are weakening on a monthly basis.

Generation gap

This has led to a cynical, marketing-proof, knowledgeable consumer, confident and armed with independent thought. How have we as marketers reacted to this change? Therein lies the rub, as there has been no consistent response to the new opportunities brought about by changing consumer behaviour. Too quickly we have rushed to our comfort zones, too often (though not exclusively) along generational lines. It seems the new generation of marketing executives fresh out of college overvalue online communication, particularly social media, and are too quick to dismiss offline communications out of hand.

At the other end of the professional generational spectrum, groups of battle-hardened senior managers, who have been through too many fads to believe the latest one, have neither the patience nor the inclination to listen too carefully to the hyperbole-laden promises of online marketing. Evidently neither party is correct.

Companies who have grasped the opportunity this change brings have implemented a vision which ensures that the senior management are challenged to think about the power of digital marketing, and eager young executives are given clear guidelines and targets around how their online marketing activity fits wider marketing and commercial goals. In short, senior and junior staff are united, not divided, by a common language.

Used to its fullest potential, the ability to integrate online and offline marketing correctly is the most exciting opportunity we’ve had in years to influence consumers at all levels.

Example of M&S advert

Proof, were it needed, that offline marketing is alive and well, is the new 90-second M&S advert featuring the fabulous five – Dannii Minogue, Ana Beatriz Barros, VV Brown, Lisa Snowdon and Twiggy. It’s stylish, sassy, sexy, confident and dramatic; a good old-fashioned above-the-line campaign to influence consumer perceptions and challenge the notion of M&S as frumpy and dated.

Unsurprisingly it has generated a significant amount of comment online, particularly on social media and discussion forums, not all of which are commending its stylishness and fabulous production values. Ranking high in Google are forums and blogs containing comments such as “But these are not just clothes, these are M&S finest-quality cardies and slippers” and “This is not just a tank top, this is an M&S tank top”.

What a massive opportunity for M&S marketing people to listen, engage, respond to and challenge preconceptions online to complement the offline above the line showcase advert. When M&S, and others like them, embrace the huge opportunity this affords, we can put foolish talk of the death of offline marketing behind us, and look forward to a new, more integrated future.

Photo: Gareth Dunlop is managing director of the leading digital consultancy Ion. Its customers are in 15 countries and include Commonwealth Secretariat, Encyclopaedia Britannica, Macmillan Cancer, Oklahoma Publishing and The Patent Office

SiliconRepublic.com Ireland’s Technology News Service

Australian Creative: Best of Show Award for housemouse

http://www.australiancreative.com.au

Fluoro magazine by housemouse.

29 Apr 2010

Not only has Australian graphic design agency housemouse won a Gold Award for magazine design in the 2010 Summit Creative Award competition for design magazine Fluoro; judges also named the studio Best of Show Design.

“The studio is buzzing with the news of this international win,” says Nancy Bugeja, managing director of housemouse.

“When creating a design, our ultimate goal is for it to deliver the messages to the people it needs to reach. To win an award, well that’s a bonus,” Bugeja adds.

The Summit Creative Awards recognise and celebrate the creative accomplishments of small and
medium sized advertising agencies and other creative groups with annual billings of $30 million or less.

This year’s panel of international judges included: Roberto Pedroso, regional creative director, Saatchi & Saatchi; Normand Miron, president of Ogilvy 2B Internative in the United States; and, Chris Jones, principal and creative director, Stellar Debris Creative Studios in Japan.

The annual creative competition attracts entries from more than 26 countries including Australia.

Winners are selected in categories that include print, broadcast, emerging media, online advertising, marketing materials, direct mail, green marketing, political, corporate video, public service, best idea never produced, industry self-promotion, and brand redesign.

Australian Creative: Best of Show Award for housemouse.

International Summit Awards « natalie’s blog

International S ummit Awards « natalie’s blog.

In one of my advertising classes last semester, I made a couple of advertisements for my product Band-Aid. Anyways in the beginning of the semester my teacher sent them of to a regional competition. Well, at that competition I found out I won Gold, and if someone wins Gold they are automatically sent to a international competition called the Summit Awards. Yesterday I received an email from my teacher saying that I WON SILVER!. I am still speechless, I just can’t get over the shock that my career is taking off.

How to Survive Geolocation’s Looming Apocalypse – Advertising Age – DigitalNext

How to Survive Geolocation’s Looming Apocalypse

Why the Industry’s Most-Buzzed-About Tech Service Could Consume Us If We’re Not Careful

Posted by Dave Curry on 03.29.10 @ 04:23 PM

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you know that everyone is buzzing, blogging, tweeting, and talking about geolocation. Research firm Borrel forecasts that location-based mobile spending will hit $4 billion in 2015, an increase of nearly 12,000% from the $34 million spent in 2009. With highly anticipated location-centric announcements looming from both Facebook and Apple, the buzz over geolocation is not expected to diminish any time soon.

Leveraging location will drive the next wave of consumer marketing, but based on the current pace of services and apps going to market, we’re setting ourselves up for geolocation apocalypse. In this scenario consumers gorge themselves on a plethora of location-based services and spam, gut-busting data profusion and promotional push acid-reflux. If we’re not careful, the coming cataclysm could consume us with:

Swarms of Geolocation Services. Already in full swing, new services are appearing with an alarming frequency. Ranging from the more popular/mainstream (Foursquare, Gowalla, Twitter, Yelp, MyTown, Whrrl and Loopt) to the more obscure (PlacePop, BlockChalk, Bump, FoodSpotting and Graffiti), services are being piled high. Gauging by the more than 25 companies that made location-based announcements at SXSW, consumers will soon be choking on an overabundance of geolocation services.
Armies of Aimless Apps. Each service wants you to use their app, so can the marketplace sustain a massive rush of apps? Of course not. When I sit down for dinner at my favorite tapas place, how many apps can I “check-in” with before everyone else at the table starts throwing flatware at me? Most likely one, possibly two, if I snap a photo for upload when the entrees arrive. Check.in, by the team at Brightkite, is addressing this problem with their upcoming app (one checkin to rule them all). But how many apps (and features within each service) will they need to support to effectively fulfill consumer needs?
Drowning in a Deluge of Data. If you’ve seen SimpleGeo’s Vicarious.ly, or the visualization video of geolocated data they collected during SXSW, you can see the potential for massive floods of personal geolocated information that may or may not be relevant to your consumers. Bing recently added Foursquare data results to their maps. Now imagine them adding results from a dozen other services, or maybe four dozen other services. As a user, I just wanted directions to the post office, now obscured by thousands of user notes, to pick up my bacon-of-the-month. Does it help to know that 600 of my closest friends also hate going to the post office?
Spates of Vexing Spam. Why should marketers care? Consider the consumer. An innocent trip to the mall might trigger an avalanche of promotional push notifications. You check in at Macy’s, and because you just had tapas for dinner, Macy’s offers you 30% off paella cookware. The Gap sees you and sends an SMS about its sale on Spanish red sleepwear, while Barnes & Noble (a few doors down and a bit confused) pushes you a coupon for Macy Gray’s latest release. The consumer just turned off their phone…
Crime Cataclysm, Stalker Apps and Misrepresentation. With vase amounts of personal-location information being exposed, we’re bound to see a rise in potentially damaging behavior. Ages ago (in 2009) a man tweeted about a family trip to Kansas City, only to return to a burgled home. What did he do? He blamed Twitter. On the flip side, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention PleaseRobMe.com, a site that displayed Foursquare check-ins in real time, essentially listing “all those empty homes out there.” The site is no longer active, but it caused quite a stir and fueled much debate when it launched in February of 2010. That sound you hear is consumer confidence gasping about the dangers of geolocation.

It Doesn’t Have to Be That Way
This isn’t the first time marketers have embraced disruptive technologies, nor will it be the last. As long as we keep one foot in the shoes of our consumers and follow some basic rules of road, you’ll safely stay out of the wasteland:

Respect and Delight Your Consumer. Service creators, application developers and marketers alike should have undying respect for consumers and the desire to make them fall in love with their brand by providing them with something special. If you undervalue your consumer by creating less than magical apps, treat privacy with little or no consideration or abuse your knowledge of their whereabouts, consumers will turn their backs on you and won’t return.
Embrace Open APIs. Open APIs allow marketers and app developers to build on top of existing services. Facebook and Twitter owe no small portion of their success to having created open APIs early on. Remember reading about tweeting toasters, plants, dishwashers and even beds? Twitter’s open API was not only great for developers, it was phenomenal PR. Why has Gowalla lagged behind Foursquare, even though many users report preferring the Gowalla experience? Maybe because their API is currently read only.
Choose Wisely. As part of your strategic approach, building upon a proven favorite that will likely NOT end up in a geolocation landfill makes sense. All signs indicate that Foursquare will be around for some time, especially given it raised $1.35 million in venture capital last year. Also of note, following SXSW, Foursquare tweeted that they experienced “2.4 million checkins !& about 90,000 new users (!!!) in the past 7 days. Every week bigger than week before.”

We Can Prevent Geolocationitis
Geolocation isn’t going away — in fact, it may get a significant bump if Facebook turns location on for their 450 million+ users. Stay tuned; that news is expected to unfold at the upcoming F8 developer conference on April 21. In addition, Apple’s appreciation of the impact of geolocation was acknowledged with their patent application for a social-networking app (named iGroups in the patent) that would allow users to securely share data with one another using a service like MobileMe. Apple is also rumored to be rolling out iAd, a location-based advertising service that leverages technology from their recent purchase of Quattro Wireless.

We’ve already taken our first few leaps into the geolocation deep end, but it’s not too late to refine our approach. If we work hard to respect our consumers’ needs and privacy, while taking every opportunity to provide them with brand experiences brimming with value and delight, we could turn a looming apocalypse into a land of geolocation milk and honey.

Marketing: Being the Smartest One in the Room Gets Old – Advertising Age – CMO Strategy

Why Doesn’t Our Expertise in Communicating Extend to Those Closest to Us?

by Jonathan Salem Baskin
Published: March 01, 2010


Jonathan Salem Baskin

I had to talk a top marketer friend off the ledge last week when her CEO had come back after umpteen presentations, backgrounders and ROI models to ask for another explanation of a campaign’s goals.

“It’s like talking to a child sometimes,” she said.

“A well-paid one,” I added.

Much of the CMO’s lot is contending with the latest misunderstanding or nagging disbelief of our fellow C-suiters. It’s 2010, and we stand on the shoulders of marketing giants and a century’s worth of branding genius, yet the schnooks in the offices down the hall think it’s OK to not “get” what we’re doing or, worse, rip an article out of some magazine that makes the back of a cereal box seem like heavy reading and wonder why we’re not doing the exact same thing.

Being brilliant marketers that we are, we sure do a bad job of marketing ourselves to our fellows, don’t we?

Oh, I know there are exceptions, and you’ve probably got vivid memories of sharing some idea or a huddle on fourth and inches, but we’re out of sync with one another more often than not. The commonly accepted reason is that our work is just sublimely difficult to grasp, and that we need to constantly do a better job of educating everyone. Brands are like the subtle nuance of a painting that appears to outsiders like a brown smudge on canvas. Marketing is poetry when their appreciation of rhyme invariably starts with the words “there once was a lady from Kent.”

No other corporate function requires initiation or, conversely, the people running your supply chain or HR departments could never get away with such condescension. They don’t remind us that we don’t grasp Six Sigma methodology, or haven’t studied behavioral psychology and thus can’t fathom what they do. Granted, we also don’t tell them how to change the tolerances on some widget because our teenager told us something the night before. But I’d bet that many of the CMOs I know who feel chronically misunderstood are the same leaders who think non-marketers are incapable of understanding it in the first place. [more]

Ad Agencies: Are You Overpromising and Underdelivering? – Small Agency Diary – Advertising Age

Claiming Capabilities You Don’t Have Is Bad for You,
Your Clients and the Industry

In the dialogue that takes place on this site, we have persistently heard clients talk about agencies’ lack of differentiation. We ourselves have acknowledged that this challenge may be contributing to the “commoditization” of the industry.

Now, I agree wholeheartedly that each agency must work very hard to find what differentiates itself and to market itself with the same level of savvy and prowess we bring to our clients’ marketing challenges. To win, we must help customers understand what value we will bring to the engagement and how that value is better than another agency’s offering. I understand the passion that agencies have to grow and to win in a hyper-competitive marketplace. But this competitive drive seems to have created an unfortunate trend toward agencies holding out broader expertise than they can possibly muster, which contributes greatly to client cynicism and the commoditization of our industry.

I believe this occurs in many fields of expertise, but as the head of a digital agency, I see this primarily in the way that many agencies big and small are laying claim to impossible levels of technical competence. Many agency websites are so crammed with technology partner logos that they resemble a Nascar stock car. Often these sites feature a long list of programming languages they can engineer in, or the ambiguous “we built a site for …”

How do I know when an agency is holding out technical competency that they don’t have? Sometimes I know it through the grapevine, sometimes we’ve cleaned up after the agency, and sometimes we’ve been down the same path earlier in our history, so we know how much a solution costs and how unsustainable it is.

For instance, can a 25-person digital agency really do excellent deployments of five different content-management systems? You can be very good at one, maybe two and be profitable. Outsourcing is a hot option for these shops, I know, but buyer beware on that approach: I’ve seen many a rebuild in less than 18 months. [more]

Why Measurement Alone Will Not Lead to Better Marketing – Advertising Age – CMO Strategy

A Look at the Top Performance Success Factors

by Karl Gustafson and Rich Schreuer
Published: February 23, 2010