Why was I banned? Because I was a critic and upset a favored few. Or at least my criticism of the posts made by a pool of supposed experts exasperated them. SAD, apt acronym for Small Agency Diary, and it is perhaps the greatest aggriever, for me anyway on that website. Big Tent can get strange too at times. I couldn't always buy in to some of the most outrageous nonsense I have ever read concerning Advertising. Thus prompting my comments. But generally I tried to be helpful by dispelling ignorance, and outright error.
Misleading people as to what Advertising does through SAD makes no sense to me. And then to have critical comments or statements that are indirectly advocated and endorsed by Advertising Age is absolute nonsense - but far worse, eliminate critics. Silencing critics works in China, but here? The truth will find its way out.
I have owned two Advertising Agencies: AdWorks, in San Francisco and Viking Creative Concepts, Inc. in Minneapolis. I subscribed to AdAge for over a decade. The ability to interact through the comments and blogs sections appealed to me. I hate AdWeek because they have on several occasions panned my work. The Critiques so off the mark, I just stopped reading the rag. There I go again, being critical.
So with AdAge I commented, using my many years of Marketing Communications experience with a broad range of service and product marketers and marketing: as an Advertising Agency, an Advertiser, and as a Professor of Public Relations and Advertising.
So this is a new start. With everyone in several different blogs insisting I start a blog, well, here we are. Go ahead, this is an uncensored blog.
Having had a wide range of experiences, have no problem discussing just about any facet of Communication, and enjoy a wide variety of opinions. Hearing them helps one learn, and or firm up one's own resolve that they have found the right path.
I thought to begin with, posting Banned AdAge blogs written by me, which were first edited, and then eliminated altogether would be a fun way to start here.
I am open to ideas from anywhere and anyone.
www.blendsicecream.com/viking/VCCppt.htm
ReplyDeleteAd Age – SAD Blog – Podcasts
ReplyDeleteDoug,
It seems to me you already have all of the pieces, if you add video to your radio mix - to produce Podcasts for Website Enhancement by giving everyone's site 'Content.'
The purpose of a Strategic-Communications-Plan is to integrate all the organization's resources, public relations, promotion and marketing efforts and direct them against competitors, having an overall objective to achieve – and Iterative Strategic Communications where a continuous and frequent communications strategy is employed so that branding and positioning are repeatedly reiterated and promotion is reintegrated thus crystallizing public opinion. That is what you do.
By planning a long-term strategy for the organization's (this is your clients, not you) marketing and promotion efforts, you position them to be more proactive and strategic, rather than reactive – responding to ongoing and consistent competitive threats from the existing market environment (your-podcasts-on-their-site). The organization's strategic plan will help it to deploy resources more effectively and strategically by focusing the synergies and shared opportunities in the organization's various programs and work areas directed at the organizational goals, objectives and mission. Your podcasts can assist any organization to do just this.
The creation and adoption of a 'Strategic-Communications-Plan' represents a significant step for any organization and is a product you produce for them - and then your Podcasts are ongoing fulfilling the plan. For many organizations, the adoption of such a plan represents a cultural shift toward communications and a clear recognition that all the organization's efforts have a communications element - your audio and video podcasts enhance any website by doing that--and then you are providing FRESH content to help make sites "Sticky." Instead-of-the-stayed-sites-of-yesteryear, you offer a dynamic-communication-solution: and-most-importantly-Content.
Public education, grassroots organizing, research, public advocacy, direct service, fundraising, product and service promotion, are all, at their core, communications tasks vital to the health and success of any organization. This is what you offer to clients - strategic content for their websites.
A Strategic-Communications-Plan has the power to transform an organization: both in terms of your credibility and status in your marketplace, and in terms of the way the organization works together as a team to achieve mission and vision for your product or service within any product or service category.
Doug, you make content for tired websites to help them better communicate with their publics.
Your business plan needs no more sophistication then to-get-out-there-in-front-of-potential-clients and tell them how you can add content to their sites, how it would benefit them (above) and listen - then make Audio and Video Podcasts for their sites. Who knows, it could turn into a promotional campaign too.
So make a Strategic-Communications-Plan first for you. Then go out and sell them to everyone else - along with the creative content you produce. Both the plan and content is dynamic-meaning you do-it-again-and-again. Website-content in the form of Audio-and-Video-Podcasts is a growing business. But it is the 'Strategic Communications Plan' that gives everything you do form, you need to sell it-customizing-it-for-individual-clients-and-their-particular-communications-needs. daryl orris | Minnetonka
To Bart Cleveland – comment to 42 sec spots
ReplyDeleteBoth my former partners were at BBDO prior to WWII and drafted. Both did radio pre-war, and then shifted to TV after WWII. When Radio shifted to TV they brought their rate cards along too. Kind of what is happening today with Television shifting to New Media - they understand convergence and two-way versus one-way communications. They would understand the ultimate reality that TV is transforming as radio did when TV came. The metrics and three-screen convergence are next.
So TV inherited radio's rate card. Blame the spot times on Radio. Radio, blames Newspapers who measured picas. Radio exchanged picas for seconds. They laid-out their program times just like a newspaper laid-out the paper, measuring content to ads and created a formula where the content carried advertisements – and learned to rate programs and then tie it to the rate card: highest ratings, higher ad cost.
The first radio commercial, and broadcast commercial of any kind is accredited to a New York station, WEAF, on August 28, 1922, ten-minute live commercial with the station's voice talent HM Blackwell, for the Queensboro real estate corporation. In the Golden Age of radio, advertisers often sponsored entire programs or program segments, typically airing their commercials as a lead, within in short 60-90 second spots, and the final close telling listeners to come back for next week's program.
My partners said Lord & Thomas in Chicago was the first to begin buying radio for clients and producing spots, blaming it on the agency owner Lasker, who used his copywriters and they added music and sound effects and his big Chicago and Eastern clients who wanted in. They both liked Ben Duffy at BBDO and said he was the big radio guy and an innovator for TV.
One spot did stand out this Superbowl and everyone overlooked it – the CASH 4 GOLD spot. Because everyone was expecting to be entertained, all of a sudden this old-fashioned "Telling and Selling Spot" appears. I am sure every adman's mouth dropped. The spot wanted gold and used two identifiable characters to endorse it, they resonated with the primary consumers: Seniors and Afro-Americans. Ed McMahon and MC Hammer - they did not humiliate themselves before 100 million appalled eyewitnesses as many said, but spoke loud and clear to the intended audience. All the while spoofing advertising and the exalted venue. The Cash4Gold spot was almost tongue and cheek bad, making fun of advertising, spoofing it, while communicating directly with its target consumers.
So Bart, the ads you longed for were there. You didn't see them because you played consumer, the wrong consumer, and forgot about speaking to the target consumer when creating an advertisement to create mindset associations with the intended target – so that your brand gains a place in the consumer's brain.
I also commented on Phil Johnson's blog about Kellogg and Michael Phelps.
ReplyDeleteIt went something like this:
Kellogg's was right, Phelps was wrong.
Wrong not because of the bong, but wrong because he didn't throw himself down to his knees and beg forgiveness from the American Public. They love sinners, and repenters. Had his apology been sincere, he would have been forgiven by not only the public but by Kellogg as well. They would not have kicked a guy when he was down - they would have picked him up.
So, Kellogg right, Phelps wrong. But wrong because he didn't do a good enough job apologizing.