Spot On

My agency has an annual tradition of debating our most (and least) favorite commercials on the Monday after the Super Bowl.  And the votes are in!  MORE’s Top 5 favorite Super Bowl Ads of 2017, starting with the four runners up, include (drumroll, please): “Roger that!” – Okay, call us homers, but this spot for Shields…

Second that Emotion

(With apologies to Smokey Robinson) Okay, you guys, show of hands. Who among you would connect the National Football League with love? No, we’re not asking if you “love” pro football. We’re talking about passionate, person-to-person, romance and true friendship.  Doesn’t seem likely that the manly-man world of the NFL would ever use love and…

Coming to You Live!

Just when the entire world had pretty much mastered Facebook, the king of social media just had to come up with another thing, Facebook Live. Not surprisingly, soon after Facebook Live launched in April 2016, brands were quick to the party. As HubSpot put it, companies began embracing Facebook Live in droves, using it as…

Do you have an ‘innie’ … or an Audi?

Audi’s Super Bowl ad shows how a brand can “rub off” on the consumer. Watch the kid head to the prom all alone … make a bold move … and come out ‘shining.’ While the story arc is the stuff of advertising fiction, the fact is, Audi isn’t entirely full o’ gas. Neuromarketing.com reports that our brand…

Doing Just Vine, Thank You.

Twitter has recently introduced Vine, which is essentially the video equivalent of the 140-character tweet. It lets you post 6-second video clips, and is available as a free iOS app for your iPhone or iPod. I wasn’t entirely sure at first what you could do with video in only six seconds (or less). Then I…

Content Marketing: Real or Rubbish?

A friend of mine offers some choice words for the lexicon of modern marketing: Nonsense, Rubbish, Crap and, well, a few other salty descriptors. (I’m adhering to the principle of not posting anything that I couldn’t say to my parents, wife or kids.) But I happen to share my friend’s opinions on the matter. We’re both…

If you’re not mobile, you’re not responsive.

Not mobile? Then don’t call yourself responsive. That’s pretty much the marketing mantra of 2013. Companies that haven’t added mobile devices to their media mix are going to be left in the digital marketing dust. Today, do yourself a big favor. See how your website performs on smartphones or tablets.  If it’s chopped up, incomplete,…

Does Social Media Make Sense for Every Company?

Some small to medium size companies are doing quite well, thank you, without social media. So says a post that originally appeared on the American Express OPEN Forum and was later reposted in Mashable. The author looks at 10 small to medium size companies that have been very successful without social media marketing. For some, like pharma and medical firms,…

Marketers, We Have a Problem.

As marketers and advertisers, our credibility among potential customers — i.e., the percent of people who deem advertising as “very accurate” is down to (are you ready?) three percent. Also, according to a report from Market research firm Lab42, 76% think that advertising claims are exaggerated. I’m a bit amazed that the numbers aren’t actually worse. Marketers,…

Cabbage

The article, “Words of 2012,” appeared in the NY Times Sunday Review, Dec. 23. In what I guess is an annual, end-of-year wrap-up column, writer Grant Barrett served up this year’s batch of freshly minted words, acronyms, and trendy lexicon. (In deference to the Mayans’ dire forecast, the Times could’ve easily run an “All-Time End-of-All-Time”…