In a social media-saturated world, companies sometimes try too hard, think too little, and fall on their faces. Last year saw a wide variety of examples of companies committing PR blunders as they tweeted, hash tagged, and self-promoted their way onto a wall of PR shame. But you can learn from their mistakes, and avoid becoming the punchline of a PR joke in 2015.
Just because it’s trending doesn’t mean you should jump on board.
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Sometimes, it’s a good idea to create an ad that resembles another company’s well-known ad. But only if you use the viewer’s expectations as a way to totally surprise the audience—and create an ad that will be noticed because of its shock value.
Last spring, I wrote about a new promotion by a Swedish pharmacy to promote hair care products. The ad agency Akestam Holst from Stockholm, used a digital billboard in the subway to draw attention to their hair care products.
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It takes a combination of media to reach busy, working adults. And if you’re trying to encourage them to reach a goal many of them have given up on, you need to find a way to talk to your audience so that you motivate them and give them hope.
At DeLaune and Associates, we’ve just finished a new state-wide campaign to encourage adults to go back and complete their college degrees.
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This is hard for someone in advertising to say: it doesn’t matter how great the ad is or how thoroughly researched the media buy if the customer’s experience with the company is really bad. But in our internet/social media driven world, businesses who do remember the importance of customer service sometimes forget that customer service in today’s marketplace is delivered through a variety of channels.
A recent column by Micah Solomon on Forbes online served as a good reminder of how excellence is in the details—and how those details extend beyond the physical place where you do business.
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by Sara Rider
Sometimes in the world of marketing, we search long and hard for a promotional idea that we think will be truly remarkable for our clients. This can lead to lengthy brainstorming sessions—and sometimes frayed tempers (remember: there is no bad idea in a brainstorming session!) But great ideas are out there—you just have to find them.
In many of our client promotions, we’ve found that a strong visual can be the key to an outstanding promotional idea.
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by Sara Rider
Sometimes email or snail mail is full of things you don’t want to know about. But last week, a large package showed up at our office with some things we very much did want to know about—four awards from the national Service Industry Advertising Awards (SIAA) for our work for EVB, a community bank in Virginia. One gold, one silver, and two bronze awards. That’s a nice surprise when you open the mail!
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Over the last several years, we’ve had lots of discussions with clients about what role social media should play in their marketing. Some companies are avid social media followers and participants—others still aren’t comfortable with social media in their marketing mix. Sometimes this reluctance seems to be based in a “how would my company benefit from that?” type of mentality.
At the end of 2013, the The New York Times took a look at how the twitter side of its social media efforts was going,
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