Who’s afraid of Big Bad Social Media? Take our Poll.

So the kids these days are all up in arms about their different social media channels.  It’s not uncommon to find individuals with accounts for BlogsTwitter, FaceBook, Flickr, YouTube, LinkedIn, etc. (Did I miss any of the biggies?)  But it’s a different story when it comes to businesses.  There’s a lot of buzz surrounding social channels and how they can help build communities followers, drive traffic and create leads, but many of the clients we talk to aren’t ready to take the plunge.  Some people feel they don’t have the personnel they would need to manage the account.  Some don’t understand what kind of content they need to push out.  Some have taken half-hearted stabs at using one or two flavors of social media, been discouraged with results that fell short of overinflated projections and condemned the entire category as ineffective.

Here at Strategic Insights, we feel that a Social Media campaign, when correctly organized and managed and used as a part of a larger ongoing marketing campaign, can be highly beneficial to an organization – generating interest and awareness, improving visibility and SEO for your corporate site, building a loyal community with ongoing dialogues and, yes, driving leads and making sales.

So why aren’t you using Social Media for your business or product?  Take our brief poll and see what others are thinking.  Or leave a comment below if you need more room to vent or rant or rebuke.

Chris Griffin
Assoc Creative Director
Strategic Insights

Learning From T-Mobile: Don’t Let Your Insecurities Run the Show

pink-handcuffs

This morning I read a fascinating article on the shrinking color palette available to us designers. The short version is that it is virtually impossible to separate a brand from its color. This means designers must be mindful of color choices not only in terms of what works best for a brand’s message and industry, but what hasn’t already been “claimed” by a competitor to best avoid confusion.

Or, in the case of the color magenta, so T-Mobile doesn’t sue you.

Yes, T-Mobile has gone so far as to copyright the use of the color magenta—something they have previously enforced with one lawsuit in 2001 and a second just last year.

In actuality what T-Mobile “owns” is the right to a specific shade of magenta used in specific circumstances for a specific market. Their actions on the other hand, certainly speak more to their apparent insecurity over whether or not magenta is truly as integral a part of the T-Mobile brand as they hope it is.

While other companies suffice to trademark and copyright their tagline, logo, or even a color to protect their own brand’s integrity from identity thieves, T-Mobile seems to have gone on the offensive side. Marking their territory around the color magenta, T-Mobile clearly feels their brand doesn’t speak strongly enough for itself to just be quietly protected by the copyright. They need to seek out and destroy anyone who comes close to them—even if the copyright “infringement” is more of a stretch than an actuality.

While, yes, there are other trademarks and copyrights concerning brands—it’s a part of responsibly protecting your identity—T-Mobile seems to be more or less waving around their “ownership” over the color magenta at anyone who dares cross them. Neither lawsuit was against a defendant who actually violated the copyright, a fact which is painfully obvious to everyone. Everyone, it seems, but T-Mobile.

Copyright infringement is a serious issue for companies, and one that should definitely be enforced when it comes to preserving the value of your brand. Just make sure that the person you are about to sue has, at the very least, actually stolen something from you.
Jennifer Soloway [follow me on Twitter]
Art Director
Strategic Insights

What do you bring to the table?

For every Butterball nailing the entreethanksgiving_turkey, there’s a Pepperidge Farm acing the side dish.

While meeting with a business development resource the other day, we got into a discussion of my agency’s strengths. As most of you know, what you set out to be and what you become aren’t necessarily the same thing. As one of my restaurant clients discovered a while back, you are what your customers want you to be. So while we got into the business hoping to leverage one set of core skills, another emerged.

Some would say being a client’s “second” agency implies a lack of status in the client’s eyes. Often, we found the opposite to be true. Over the years, we’ve worked with clients who would overwhelm us if they dropped their whole account in our lap. However, we carved out a niche for ourselves by serving as a local resource for mid-sized to large clients who had primary agencies elsewhere in the country. This frustrated them. Communication was sporadic or slow. Meetings were few and far between. Prices were high. Projects were sneered at or ignored.

We picked up the slack. We were available for meetings, we responded quickly, we gave the projects the respect they deserved (after all, to us, they were a large client). Sometimes this meant working within the parameters of a campaign established by the primary agency, but if it was good, solid work, we didn’t mind. Being good stewards of a brand is brand-building itself. Other times we had complete freedom. Overall, a win-win.

I’ve been in this business long enough to see the pendulum swing back and forth a few times: from “full service” agencies to “specialty boutiques.” Integrated marketing! Decentralized disciplines! Bundles! Bottom line–how can we make it easier for the client? Something to consider: consolidate your “big stuff” with a national agency to satisfy the egos in the C-suite, then use a nimble, local resource for projects–to work in tandem against tight deadlines and more modest budgets. Not a “production shop,” mind you, but someone who understands your objectives and believes in your brand.

Just a roundabout way of saying we like being the turkey, but we’ll happily play the cranberry sauce.

Bill Cokas
Creative Director
Strategic Insights

Showcase: Buffalo Film Festival 2009 Promotional Materials

While we honestly love what we do (hey, we wouldn’t do it if we didn’t), it’s still safe to say that some projects have a bit more fun sprinkled in them than others. The recent posters, landing page, and YouTube channel update we did for the Buffalo Film Festival was exactly one of those projects. Not only was it a true group effort on the part of the SI design team, it was fantastic to work on a light-hearted campaign rife with geographic stereotypes.

But it’s OK, one of our own is a Buffalo native.

Let us know what you think of the campaign in the comments:

Buffalo International Film Festival poster campaign - click to view larger.

Buffalo International Film Festival poster campaign - click to view larger.

Buffalo International Film Festival Landing Page Concept

Buffalo International Film Festival Landing Page Concept

Buffalo International Film Festival YouTube Channel

Buffalo International Film Festival YouTube Channel

Jennifer Soloway [follow me on Twitter]
Art Director
Strategic Insights

Maybe it’s a mission from God.

220px-John_landisThe man who directed Animal House, Trading Places, An American Werewolf in London (personal favorite), Thriller and yes, The Blues Brothers is now available to shoot the storyboard for your client’s anti-fungal toe cream.

Although it came to my attention only recently, apparently John Landis has been directing commercials for a while now, albeit mostly overseas.

Of course, he also directed Spies Like Us. It’s a slippery slope, folks.

Bill Cokas
Creative Director
Strategic Insights

Vibrant Brand Personality–and on-air personality!

reid-headshotSeveral months ago, President/CEO Reid Overcash was asked by “A Pirate’s Life for Me,” an Greenville-based, ECU Alumni-oriented radio show, to share his thoughts on Strategic Insights’ unique approach, Vibrant Brand Personality, or VBP. In the process, he was able to talk about other SI-related matters, our sister company SharedVue and, of course, ECU and his involvement on the Board of Visitors and beyond. You can listen to the entire program here.

Swimming With the Fish

Stingray seen during my trial run snorkel trip at Discovery Cove in Florida.

Part of my preparation included a trial run snorkel with domesticated sea life.

It’s no secret around the office that my biggest fear lives in the ocean. No, I’m not talking about sharks, stingrays, barracuda—not exclusively, anyway. A dolphin, up until recent experience, has always been just as terrifying as a great white.

My fear is not of the animals themselves—though their menacing teeth or prehistoric size doesn’t exactly help—but of the fact that, given a battle to the death scenario, I would not have the upper hand.

Swimming with the fish, for me, is far outside the scope of my comfort zone.

While this fear doesn’t affect my day-to-day life (though, I can see the enormous fish swimming in the fountain pond outside my window), it is an extreme example of the fear that lives inside of all of us over something. For some, it may be the fear of taking their business into the waves of social media; others may tremble at the thought of replacing that rotating globe that has been the hallmark of their website since 1998; yet more stay up all night in agony over the prospect of needing your agency to conceive a new campaign, even if it is long overdue.

These fears are more like the ones that we encounter on a regular basis when working with our clients. And it’s not surprising. Just like swimming in the ocean, revisiting design decisions made a decade ago will often take those used to working with them out of their comfort zone, even if change is obvious to them that is necessary.

While stepping (or swimming) out may be paralyzing at first—I was literally given a small shove off the boat when I finally did snorkel in open sea a mere 2 weeks ago—it soon becomes evident that our fear ends by taking that initial plunge.

The real deal! Snorkeling in open sea off the coast of Curacao.

The real deal! Snorkeling in open sea off the coast of Curacao.

What helped me get there was preparation. No, I didn’t set out to become an expert on marine life, that would have been unreasonable. What I did do, however, was arm myself with available facts. I talked with those local to the area I was planning to snorkel, looked up statistics on shark attacks in general, and sought out any known survival techniques to prevent myself from becoming a target in the first place (incidentally, I learned that sharks are 13 times more likely to attack males, and even then when they are swimming alone and in a state of physical distress).

Preparation—regardless of what your fear—eases your mind as you head into the process because you are no longer blindly diving into the black hole of the unknown. While you may not be completely relaxed in the open water, you do feel a sense of calm in being informed about what to expect.

And, unlike the fish, we as the design team are here to help with that preparation, both prior to jumping off the boat and during your excursion. =D

Jennifer Soloway [follow me on Twitter]
Art Director
Strategic Insights

Search Engine Friendliness vs. Search Engine Optimization

SEO-SEF

Often times clients come to us and say they want their website to be "search engine optimized". The site in question may have a lot of flash elements or image based text or bad markup. Which usually prompts me to give my long-winded spiel about how they might want to make their site "search engine friendly" first. This almost always raises the question, aren’t they the same thing? No, making a site SEF is not the same thing as optimizing a site for search engine performance.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the volume or quality of traffic to a web site from search engines via "natural" or un-paid ("organic" or "algorithmic") search results. SEO is typically a long-term task that normally involves an ongoing commitment or contract carried out in the form of an "SEO Campaign".

A site is Search Engine Friendly (SEF) when its design, coding, menus/links, images, and other elements have been geared towards the express purpose of search engine exposure and/or indexing. Making a site SEF should be included in the cost of initially designing and building a site. For an existing site, it should be quoted as a one time project fee. As long as SEF guidelines are followed with regards to any subsequent general maintenance to a site, no other tasks or fees should be required.

Think of making a site SEF as the preparation before running a long race. Then the race itself would be the SEO campaign.

So despite being different they are obviously tied together. Many of the features which make a website SEF (using clean markup, using the proper tags for optimal indexing etc.) make a site more accessible to search engine bots which will then ultimately enhance any long term SEO undertaking.

At Strategic Insights we build all our sites to be SEF from inception and have no problem retrofitting older sites with more SEF technology. If your site is currently behaving unfriendly toward search engines… come see us and we’ll sort it out! Once it is SEF, then we’ll discuss SEO.

Why Johnny Can’t Read: not enough time in Food Lion.

toc_inv_4

When I think of all that time I wasted watching Sesame Street when I all I had to do was pay more attention as my mom wheeled me around the supermarket. Guess I was too focused on my Barnum’s Animal Crackers.

Along the lines of Andy Warhol, artist Heidi Cody has assembled an intriguing piece of pop art called American Alphabet. While I had fun trying to guess the letters associated with the brands, I came away with an unintended lesson. The logos the alphabet owes its letters to are at least 20 years old (correct me if I’m wrong, but Bubblicious is the new kid on the block, and that emerged in the late 70s, if memory–and dental work–serves).

Lesson? Pick a logo and stick with it. You don’t even need a great logo (that’s right, Uncle Ben, I’m talking to you), you just need to commit to it. As a manufacturer, you will get tired of it long before your customers ever will. Customers like familiarity, comfort, reassurance. Ever-changing logos do not provide this. The same goes for taglines, or spokespeople, or strategies in general.

For the record, I nailed an impressive (or depressing, depending on your view of American consumerism) 22 out of 26 without consulting the key.

Test your Logo Quotient (LQ) and see how you fare.

Bill Cokas
Creative Director
Strategic Insights

Can art solve…anything?

100_0726“You’re not an artist. You solve problems.”

I didn’t say it. Don Draper did, to Peggy. He was just reminding her that advertising is a business, like any other. But unlike most others, words and pictures are the tools of our trade. Words and pictures! That’s so close to…literature and art! Some advertising does transcend its original purpose–eventually. Instant classics are rare in this gig. Still, that won’t stop me–or countless others before and after me–from trying to make a difference on another level. I’ll solve the client’s problem, all right, but I’m going to do it in the most compelling verbal and visual way I can. Sometimes that means touching an emotion. Kinda like art.

A few weeks ago, the manager of my kids’ elementary school cafeteria succeeded in obtaining permission to adorn its blank walls with positive character traits. Since my wife is a tireless volunteer at the school, and I’ve got a not-so-secret hobby of cartooning, one thing led to another and I was offered up for the job.

I was emailed a list of traits. No sketches, no suggestions–a blank slate. Hearkening back to the style of my youth (both artistically and that of the kids’ clothes) at Aspen Hill Elementary, I chose to show the traits wherever possible. Writing is always more effective when you can show vs. tell, and what parent doesn’t know the power of setting a positive example? And speaking of examples, one of my sons asked if he could contribute his own drawing to the mural. How could I refuse?

Over the course of two weekends, several other families and teachers pitched in to transfer the drawings to the walls, then completed them with an assortment of semi-gloss paint. Everyone’s been very happy with the results so far. More importantly, the kids were actually talking about it to their parents. Who knows if it will make a difference? Will just seeing an illustration of “Kindness” day after day make a kid kinder in the long run? By itself, no. But it certainly couldn’t hurt. And it’s sure more stimulating and inspiring than a big wall of nothing. It wasn’t my idea, but I’m glad I was a part of it.

Bottom line: the cafeteria is prettier now. I used art to solve a problem. Does that make me an artist?

Maybe the two aren’t mutually exclusive after all, Don.

Bill Cokas
Creative Director
Strategic Insights

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