New. Improved. And all of that.
August 7, 2008
It’s been a while, but we think the wait is certainly worth it.
Introducing the new HenkinSchultz Web site - a new look, with easier navigation and prettier pictures of, say, yours truly. Copywriter extraordinaire. Guitar Hero champion. All around great guy. Etc.
We’ve freshened up, cleaned out the corners and given you what you’d need in an agency Web site - the people, the work, the ideas and the philosophy. In the immortal words of Outkast, We’re “so fresh and so clean. (Clean.)”
And, we’ve even given Post Haste a facelift. Hooray blogs!
If you’re new to the site, go ahead and click the RSS feed and get Post Haste updates whenever we make them. Or, enter your e-mail for e-mail updates. Whichever you prefer. The choice is up to you.
And if you’re a seasoned veteran of Post Haste and HenkinSchultz, well, we hope you like the new look.
Social Media in Plain English
May 30, 2008
We’re reaching a point in our industry where social media is starting to become more and more accepted by those Seth Godin classifies as the early majority - the people who are catching onto the trend because they’ve heard enough about it to put a little bit of trust into it. The value is at its highest. Everyone is scrambling to catch up.
But do newcomers really understand what the benefits of social media are?
If you find yourself needing to explain social media to the uninformed (or if you are still hazy on it yourself) CommonCraft has created an easy way to do it: Social Media in Plain English.
There. That was easy.
CommonCraft also has great videos explaining the relevance of blogs, social networking and, of course, my new favorite social networking tool, Twitter.
In Defense of Corporate Media’s Marketing…just this once
May 21, 2008
Is web 2.0 actually dividing us?
The Internet has provided us with an open market of ideas, contacts and experiences from around the globe. Or at least the opportunity to find them. But what was that saying about a horse to water?
Now, I love the idea of a global village. But there is a roadblock. It’s called “the constitutive other.”
Here’s one fine example of that being exploited. According to polls on voting habits and approval/disapproval ratings of incumbent representatives, Americas political rift has been splitting exponentially within the past few years.
Many scholars, media minds, politicos and culture watchers speculate that this fissure’s break really hit its speed with the establishment of the Fox News Channel. My argument to that would be perhaps NPR, or to a lesser degree, CNN were there first. The differences are political leanings and the tenacity at which they lean. But, before any of that there were AM radio pundits.
TV. Radio. That’s the old media. The new media is a wild stomping ground of opinions from the left, right and center (and some seemingly from outer space.) But how many people peruse the spectrum? Apparently, very few. As a Stanford study points out, the vast majority of people who follow old and new media get their news from few sources. Those sources being of one political bent or another. Furthermore, it seems that the bigger the issue, the more the source adherence.
So, who is to blame for people only wanting to hear one side of the story? Is it the corporations that own the media peddlers? I suppose one could say that, and many do.
But looking a little deeper points out why media venues go political. It makes marketing sense. So let’s string up the marketers!
Wait, one step deeper - if people weren’t buying, no one would sell. So, who do we direct our ire towards?
Ourselves, I guess. Dammit.
People like to hear what is within their view of the world.
Web 2.0, 3.0, etc, has a lot of promise ahead. It could be a road to a digital shangri-la. Now we just have to master our own nature.
If nothing else, we at least we have factcheck.org to help us sort things out.
We think.
May 15, 2008
Blogs, wikis, etc. They all allow us to participate in the sharing of ideas, a constant conversation that has proven to produce some pretty big results.
So what’s this century all about? Mass innovation. And this movie - promoting Charles Leadbeater’s new book We Think - sums it all up pretty nicely.
For those with their head in the clouds
May 7, 2008
Advertising is everywhere.
We see it on television and we hear it on radio. We page past it in our magazines and newspapers and we drive past it on our way to and from work.
But that’s just the typical. It’s in our video games. Our novels. Sprinkled throughout the Internet. On our mobile phone.
It’s on the conveyor belt at the grocery store. It’s in front of us as we’re relieving ourselves in the bathroom. It’s installed in public places, stenciled onto the sidewalk, hidden in images and piped into our elevators and bus stations.
It’s in the water. On the grass. In and around every natural landscaping element known to the human race.
And thanks to Flogos – branded logo clouds - it’s in the sky.
I wish I was making this up. But there it is – Flogos. Cloud advertising. (Check out the demo video.)
What’s left? Our own children?
(Oops.)
A banner achievement
January 4, 2008
Did you see that banner flying in the background during the Iowa Caucuses last night?
We did that. HenkinSchultz Communication Arts.
People around the country and the world saw the creative efforts of a Sioux Falls company during coverage of Thursday night’s Iowa caucus.
Marketing, advertising and public relations firm HenkinSchultz Communication Arts designed the Iowa Caucus Committee’s stage and backdrop for press events and to display Thursday’s caucus results.
The backdrop, designed by HenkinSchultz co-owner Kirby Schultz, measures 16 feet tall and 93 feet wide. It features an American flag that seems to wave in the breeze, three video projectors and a 22-foot LED screen.
The backdrop is similar to the one the company produced for the recent 2007 Sioux Falls Area Chamber of Commerce annual meeting. HenkinSchultz also worked with a Des Moines-based firm on the project.
It’s officially the biggest thing I’ve been even remotely associated with. Congrats, HS!
Where’s the link?
April 10, 2007
Your ad. Your identity in the marketplace. You have one spot – one creative piece – each year. You place it in every magazine, newspaper and media outlet in the area. This is your baby – the Raison d’être, the pinnacle of your marketing year.
Check it again. Everything is spelled right. Your message is sound – perfectly worded by a brilliant copywriter; maybe by me if you were incredibly lucky. The design is spot on.
Did you remember your web address?
No?
Oops.
Sure, this has been said before. But I’m still amazed at how many companies forget this one simple act – the addition of a web address.
So your message is sound. So your design is beautiful. You’re forgetting the most important part of marketing – giving the customer all of the tools needed to make a decision.
Your website is an online brochure, except better – it’s being viewed by people who are genuinely interested in your product. And people don’t want to search. They want the address.
Make sure it’s on there. Don’t make your work of art irrelevant.
Tomorrow Begins Today
December 29, 2006
Former Vice Presidential candidate John Edwards announces that he will run for President of the United States. And he does it on YouTube.
The question is — does this help legitimize YouTube as a next generation media outlet? Or does it downplay John Edwards’ campaign?
There can be a negative reaction to releasing this message via YouTube - that Edwards isn’t being serious enough about this, or that he’s using any trick in the book to get his message out. I find the opposite true - Edwards is connecting with an incredibly active and important demographic, and with YouTube’s capabilities, his announcement has been passed around so many times that it quickly became not just a national story, but a national story you could experience first hand.
John F. Kennedy won his election in large part because he was handsome and comfortable in front of a new medium: television. John Edwards, who was voted “sexiest politician alive” in a November 2000 issue of People Magazine, has a chance to recreate the media implications of that feat with a new medium - that of sharing and self-publication - YouTube.
Welcome to the new face of political advertising.
Engaging, with a Y.
September 29, 2006
What is youth marketing? More importantly, how do you obtain the attentions of kids who, presumably, have no attention span? How do we connect with the Grand Theft Auto/MySpace generation, when they skip commercials and ignore traditional advertising media?
Really, the question should be: are we giving today’s youth enough credit?
Clint! Runge, creator of Archrival, was in Sioux Falls on Thursday. He talked about youth marketing – a subject not new to the Internet, but new to many in attendance – and he laid it out simply, in a cozy package. What I came away with was the notion that we’re not giving today’s youth enough credit. We’re still trying to market to them like we were marketed to when we were younger. We’re preaching Generation X values to a Generation Y crowd. And the messages aren’t lining up.
To define the terms, we’ll say Generation X involves people aged 25-41. Generation Y spans a much younger audience (ages 5-24). The years might not mean much, the attitudes do.
Members of Generation X (myself included) came of age in a time of rebellion, of bucking trends and searching for individuality. It was about edgy products that your parents probably wouldn’t like. It was about Mountain Dew and Nirvana and Reality Bites. Pessimism and independence were the goals.
It’s different now. Gen X is a parental generation. We are raising our children in a way totally different than what our parents did for us. We’re raising them as optimistic, with feelings of empowerment and entitlement.
Because of this, there’s no need to be edgy. Instead, they want to be part of a team, embracing individuality in a group setting. The youth market today looks to their friends to help them make decisions, not to a brand or a company.
Instead of status, Generation Y values experiences. Their most cherished resource is time. They’ve grown up with and used technology for entertainment, not information. They have a great conscience, but they don’t want to put a lot of work into using it. They all have cell phones, and they all live incredibly connected lives.
What it adds up to is this: today’s youth wants a fully customizable, quick, entertaining message. Friendships are more important than brands, and so they look for peer responses to help them make choices. They want a smart humor. By valuing companies that support good causes, and by spending their money at those companies, they feel that they are participating in a real-life cause. Mountain Dew is out. Volkswagen is in.
Generation Y has a large purchasing power, and because of that they’re leading trends. As a business, you want their attention. And you want it now.
The hang up is that many companies – and many agencies, I’d guess – are filled with Generation X personalities. They write and create advertisements that are supposed to aim at today’s youth, but instead, they’re aiming them at themselves. At a rather small demographic. At the wrong demographic.
Gen Y kids – from kindergarteners to (more importantly) college students with money – want their content fast. Viral marketing through YouTube is working wonders. Adult Swim has taken this concept and ran with it — who has time for a 30 minute show when you can get a 10 minute, fractured, bite-sized cartoon filled with smart, subtle, intelligent humor?
Social networking sites are growing by leaps and bounds, and they’re allowing young people to customize their personal space. They can broadcast their image, they can create a message. We as advertisers aren’t doing a good enough job if we’re simply putting an ad out in front of them. We want the youth to be engaged.
As Runge said, Generation Y is creating its own brand through their blogs, MySpace accounts, and websites. They feel they have more of a political say through their purchases than their vote. Everything needs to be customizable, so they can show individuality while having the same group experience.
It seems so simple. How do you get the attention of today’s youth? You engage them, and you engage them quickly.
It can’t be tedious. It can’t be mind numbing. It needs to be original, funny, smart, engaging. Engaging.
To catch today’s youth market, you need something quick and fun that can be passed along to their friends. A website. A blog. A consumer-controlled aspect. A buzz. A way to become the pseudo-celebrity that they all expect to become through the Internet. You need to listen to them, and update your image accordingly – or better yet, let them update your image for you.
TV? Radio? No. Internet. Mobile Phones. MySpace. YouTube. Create your own media outlet, if you have to. You just need to get them talking. If you have a quality product, the youth market will do the rest for you.
Marketing to youth is less bludgeon, more finesse. You’re planting a seed that, if well planned and creatively done, will sprout into a brand awareness that becomes respected and wanted.
Generation Y expects to be entertained, but they don’t want to be treated like morons; like kids. You need to talk to the consumer like they expect to be talked to. Be funny. Be serious. But whatever you do, don’t underestimate them. If you dumb down your message, you’re going to get a dumbed down audience.
That worked with Generation X.
But this isn’t Generation X anymore.
GPS This!
August 16, 2006
Fully customizable advertising, changing its message based on the surroundings? It’s the future, sure. But for a search engine called Yell.com, it’s being realized today – AKQA, an enormous agency with branches all over the world, has created specialized, fully interactive and high tech bus-side advertisements for the local company.
From Adrants.com:
As part of a comprehensive, many million dollar campaign for local search engine Yell.com, AKQA, in a first they tell us, created bus sides on 25 buses that use GPS to change the advertising message based upon the bus’s location. The approach aligns perfectly with Yell.com’s business premise: to deliver local information relevant to one’s location.
The agency also created bus shelters which display a map of where you are and allow you to search for things such as cafes, shops, health club, etc. bas upon the location of the bus shelter. While this seems like a very logical use of technology to further a marketing strategy, AKQA was the first to do it which is, perhaps, why this agency wins so many new clients and awards.
The question is whether this is something incredibly brilliant – something that could only have been discovered by the greatest minds in the business – or something completely obvious, needing only the technological capacity to make it work.
Additionally, if this is the trend, what happens to the act of choosing a demographic to cater to? Does this make things more difficult, forcing us to create ideas for every conceivable target? Does this make things easier, cutting out the work involved in aiming the message in the right direction?
Your thoughts?