We’re All Connected
March 31, 2010
We’re all connected to our customers. Our clients. Maybe not in person, but by name and organization, through the chains of command and channels of communication. And the things we do in the name of our customers will, in fact, stick with us – and with them – for good or for bad.
I was reminded of this through a simple postcard.
As a board member for the South Dakota Humanities Council, I play a small part to help allocate grant funding. Our grants are designed to promote the humanities throughout South Dakota – especially in areas that may otherwise be underserved – and are focused on education, media and other programs that highlight history, literature and culture.
Often, I think about these grants for a few days out of the year – the days leading up to a board meeting and the day of the board meeting itself. Then, after the money has been distributed, the entire process escapes my mind. I forget about it. My part is over.
Which is why I was so surprised to receive a thank you card in the mail, expressing gratitude for my recent part in allocating funds for an art installation in Pierre.
While my interactive connection to the grant had long passed, the grant itself – the funds, the projects connected to those funds, and the people connected to those projects – was just beginning to blossom. And, through my part in voting allocation, I am forever connected to it.
It’s the same with everything in life.
When our businesses make a major change, we are forever connected to it. Six months from now, people will continue to discover the change, despite the fact that we’ve long moved on.
When our product fails, we are forever connected to it. When it succeeds, we are forever connected to it.
The words we use to affect policy, to sell a product, to cover up a scandal, to explain a feature, to direct attention and to make real marketing happen through word of mouth and broadcast and web – we are forever connected to them.
No matter where we are, our decisions and communication will touch people down the chain and into the consumer world. And months from now, someone will be finding that decision or communication for the first time.
Our names will be connected to it.
I mean, talk about pressure, right? In the end, it helps if we think twice about what we’re going to say and the policies we’re enacting. Because no matter what, we’re connected to them.
The Internet of Things
March 17, 2010
ReadWriteWeb has been spending a healthy amount of time researching and discussing The Internet of Things, a concept that describes how, in the future, there will be more things on the Internet – sensors, devices, automated systems – than people.
A new video from IBM’s Smarter Planet group illustrates what The Internet of Things will mean to our future, specifically the social and cultural change that will occur as a result.
Our place as marketers in The Internet of Things is still being developed, and because of this there’s a propensity for fear. The technology is adapting far faster than we can keep up with, which leads to brash and unseemly forays into interruption marketing. We fight to be a part of the answer, and in doing so we bypass working with the system by working in spite of the system.
So what’s our responsibility?
As The Internet of Things becomes more automated, it will also seek out better ways to become more monetized. Which will lead to more opportunities for marketing. Which will lead to more ways in which a person is interrupted during their life.
It’s a slippery slope, and this is where our part will come in – our responsibility to understand, both for our clients and for the customers they serve, that not every channel needs to be interrupted.
That, by choosing the right channels, standing by permission marketing and understanding which options will help a brand (rather than hurt it in ways we may not even understand), we can continue to lead our clients to effective marketing.
All without taking advantage of society and its quickly fracturing attention.
(Via: ReadWriteWeb)
HenkinSchultz: Official Google Advertising Professionals
March 11, 2010
It’s about Analytics and Ad Ranking and CPC and Quality Score.
It’s about CTR and Keywords and Region Targeting and Content Bids.
It’s about CPM and Impressions and Ad Groups and ROI.
But really, it’s about understanding the basics - and the subtle (and sometimes complicated) nuances - of search engine marketing as it pertains to Google AdWords. And, furthermore, about presenting our clients with added opportunities for promotion and awareness outside the traditional printed and broadcast mediums.
So we finally got around to taking the test. And here we are: official Google Advertising Professionals. (And we’re pretty stoked, by the way.)
We get to show off the badge. But our clients get the real prize: an added level of knowledge and awesomeness from their chosen marketing partner.
Where Is the Line? (On Advertorials and Front Page Ads)
March 9, 2010
No one would claim that the garden variety advertorial is a journalistic endeavor. Situated alongside a publication’s content, however, it can often be mistaken as real – especially if designers have taken great pains to replicate font, layout and details.
Advertorials happen. They happen all the time. Whether you think they’re effective or misleading, you probably rarely give them a second thought.
That is, until they begin appearing on your front page.
Alice In Wonderland
Historically, newspapers and magazines have held the front page as an Advertising Free Zone. It only makes sense. No one buys a publication because of the ads on the front; they look to the cover as a de facto table of contents. That’s where the impulse to purchase is created.
But with the decline in advertising revenues, publications have begun allowing more and more leeway. Small banner ads appear near the bottom of the front page. Plastic covers promote wireless services. Post-it notes offer coupons. Ads are creeping into that valuable space, precisely because it’s valuable. Precisely because magazines and newspapers can’t sell the insides as much as they once could.
So, you can imagine, if you offer a newspaper $700,000 to print a full front-page wrap, there’s a good chance they’re going to take it.
That’s what Disney did with the Los Angeles Times. The ad – a four-page wrap that mimicked the Times’ front page – was designed to “create buzz, and to extend the film’s already brilliant marketing campaign,” said John Conroy, spokesman for the Times. It also pushed the day’s headlines to a second page.
It’s not the first time the Times has slipped advertising in under the radar. Last April, an ad for NBC’s Southland gave only minimal indication that it was, indeed, an advertisement – and that was long after the “article” would have been read.
Newspapers: a Vehicle for Journalism or Advertising?
Which begs the question: where is the line? When does journalism begin and advertising end?
According to the American Society of Magazine Editors, ads and editorial content require a clear separation, and front-page ads not allowed. But when faced with the decision between selling a lucrative front cover ad and the ASME’s minimal repercussions (a letter or reprimand and exclusion from the National Magazine Awards), there’s often no more than the approval of a publisher standing in the way.
More than anything, newspaper and magazine readers place their trust in the publications they’re consuming. When ads are placed in a way that blurs the line between editorial and advertising – when advertisers seek to gain attention through deception by designing an ad that looks like real content - that trust is taken advantage of.
In other words, the content of the ads should be considered – not the location.
The Times ad reaches the news outlets because it’s on the front page. But it’s clearly an ad. It steers clear of deception simply because it’s too big to be believable. No one read that and thought, “this is a Los Angeles Times article about the movie.”
However, an advertorial clearly wants to be seen as content. Its entire premise is dependent upon a reader seeing it as an article. Posing as something it’s not, the advertorial plays upon the trust of the reader.
In other words, outrage seems to be misguided because the definition is so hazy. The line is smudged. Possibly irreparably. And it’s up to us – as advertisers and publishers – to, once and for all, redraw the line. Clean it up. Set some standards.
The balance, really, stands between editorial honor and the need to keep the lights on. We can take sides, fighting against either the stuffiness of journalistic integrity or the demons of advertising greed. But both sides have their arguments. Because without determining where that line is – the line between honorable content and the advertising that helps pay for it – we may lose the trust of our readership.
- Wishing for the Attainable
- Let Your Voice Be Your Guide
- Penn and Misspeller
- Eat Your Brussels Sprouts
- Rhymes With Rice
- Embrace Losing, Embrace a Tree
- Buses Attract Attention, and Most Recently, Awards
- From the Mouths of Babes
- Needed: One Awesomewriter.
- To Inform and Delight
- Joe: Your building is one of the coolest things I’ve ever seen –I’m more thinking the kid is going...
- Joe: Your building is one of the coolest things I’ve ever seen –I’m more thinking the kid is going...
- Joe: Your building is one of the coolest things I’ve ever seen –I’m more thinking the kid is going...
- Corey V.: That kid’ll surely be better than the one that just left.
- Mark Cummins: Here’s my awesome copywriter resume: Mark Cummins 6007 S Cliff Ave #204 Sioux Falls, SD 57108...
- September 2010
- August 2010
- July 2010
- June 2010
- May 2010
- April 2010
- March 2010
- February 2010
- January 2010
- December 2009
- November 2009
- October 2009
- September 2009
- August 2009
- July 2009
- June 2009
- May 2009
- April 2009
- March 2009
- February 2009
- January 2009
- December 2008
- November 2008
- October 2008
- August 2008
- July 2008
- June 2008
- May 2008
- April 2008
- January 2008
- July 2007
- June 2007
- May 2007
- April 2007
- March 2007
- February 2007
- January 2007
- December 2006
- November 2006
- October 2006
- September 2006
- August 2006
About HenkinSchultz
HenkinSchultz is an agency. An advertising and marketing and branding and design and production agency. All of those things, and then some.
But, underneath all that, we're really a bunch of thinkers. As in, we think about stuff, both pertinent and not, with and without boundaries, as if our lives depended on it. And this right here, Post Haste, is where we write about it.
Visit us at http://www.henkinschultz.com.