Advertising and Marketing Blog

Silver Anvil Award

Posted on 08/25/2011, by DMC

The Public Relations Society of America honored the industry’s best work in June. Regarded as “the pre-eminent achievement of public relations – the highest watermark of success for any practitioner or organization,” the Silver Anvils, as the awards are called, “…recognize complete public relations programs incorporating measurable and sound research, planning, execution and evaluation.”

Our work for Keep America Beautiful, in partnership with Hill & Knowlton, an international public relations firm, didn’t win a single award: it won TWO.

The trip to success began in 2009 with an idea for a fresh new approach on litter prevention that we pitched to Keep America Beautiful with Hill & Knowlton. With a client keen on creating a fresh, creative litter-prevention campaign, and with Hill & Knowlton’s penchant for communications strategy, market research, consumer insights and top-notch management of the entire process, we presented three campaigns we were very proud of, and, frankly, we knew had a great shot at standing out not only in the marketplace, but in glitzy NYC ballrooms filled with statuettes.

We’re actually kind of sheepish about touting this success, lest we sound boastful. Rather, it’s a validation of the promise the team sold to Keep America Beautiful; that if they actually bought what they said they wanted (so many clients talk the talk, but, well, limp, crawl and sputter when it comes time to walking the walk), that we’d get through to consumers. We’d get them talking. We’d shake them out of complacency and actually invite a dialog with them, using all of the tools at our disposal in this Information Age. Keep America Beautiful fully embraced the idea and the premise and based on the successful pilot that earned the Silver Anvils, has now made the campaign available to all of its affiliates around the country.

We’re not really much for awards, in and of themselves. We’d much rather feed the campaigns we create to the marketplace, and earn our just rewards as they actually make an impact. But, when “senior practitioners judge each entry,” and deem no other more effective, it’s a great dialog starter of its own with current and future DMC clients to ‘put it out there;’ to ‘ask for, and buy a campaign that actually makes your palms sweat. One that you might have to answer a lot of internal questions about in selling it through. One that, lo and behold, you might actually even get a phone call or two from a citizen so concerned with how “creative” and different the campaign is. THAT’S the kind of work that moves needles. That’s what improves bottom lines, or stakeholder perceptions or decreases litter  (or fills a sales pipeline or compels donors to give). Gone are the days of you telling your audiences what you want to say. They seek out information now. You have to know them, well. You have to resonate with them. You have to matter.

The two Silver Anvils won by Keep America Beautiful are a testament to those facets of communications today. They’re a testament to confident marketers like Keep America Beautiful who take chances (because the alternative simply isn’t viable). Getting lost in the marketplace with safe, me-too messaging is rife with many more unsavory consequences than a few phone calls about your provocative new campaign. Go for it; it’s your job. Good things happen to marketers who take well-calculated chances.

Think more. Design less.

Posted on 11/09/2010, by Jenn McLean

I came across this poster promoting a design workshop in Toronto. It reads:

Think more. Design less.

Many desperate acts of design (drop shadows, gradients and the gratuitous use of transparency) are committed in the void left by a strong concept. A good idea provides a framework for design decisions, guiding the work.

And what is good design? It depends. Sometimes it’s barely a design at all: I’ve seen very effective ads that are almost completely devoid of anything but the message itself. It works because the message is good. What good design is can also be expressed as what good design doesn’t do; it doesn’t get in the way of a strong message. Thankfully (for it keeps us in the profession true to our profession), good design can’t mask weak thinking, either. If what looks great on a wall in an art director’s office doesn’t resonate with its intended audience, there’s nothing great about it.

Why isn’t there more great thinking in a profession full of ‘experts’ and ‘professional communicators?’ Here are a few ruminations:

Not enough ‘sit with it’ time. Good things really do come to those who wait. It’s one thing to think you nailed an idea early on in the brainstorming process, but, in my experience, it’s in the next couple of days that it takes on new dimension, as you challenge the idea, preemptively answer the client’s inevitable questions, make it lawsuit-proof, and then make it fresh. “When will the consumer see this; what will be on her mind; what will her preconceptions about the product or company be; what will she have recently seen from our competition…” You have to at least try on the shoes of the consumer and other stakeholders (if not walk a mile in them) to get a lay of the land. And from that lay of the land, invest the additional thinking that resonates, engages, provokes.

Bad designers. Pay attention to billboards and posters these days. Is a human really laying out these messages, with black type on a dark blue background (as I recently spotted in a Honda dealer campaign recently). Or a URL on a backlit billboard that no one without binoculars could read. Or super-close-up photography that borders on abstract art, that adds nothing but distraction to the presentation. Hell, these may even have been strong thoughts, but bad design pulled them down into the mediocre mire. No drop shadow required.

Disdain for the medium. I’d put good money on the aforementioned poster in Honda dealerships all over the country that the junior art director simply didn’t put his/her heart into it. “It’s a poster, for God’s sake, I wanna do TV!” So, the black type ends up on a blue background that blends in, as if by design, to camouflage the message like invisible ink: except no one gave them the invisible ink pen to swipe over it and make it readable.

Strong-willed creatives forcing ‘award-winning’ off-strategy concepts down people’s throats. Puns are the bane of marketing communications’ existence. A great turn of phrase, and the writer (usually) sees Gold Pencils and Winged Awards and bonus checks for his/her supreme creativity… and wills it into existence. It may be a knee-jerk pun, or one you’d hear at an amateur comedy club with a three-drink minimum, but, it squeaks its way through and, boom, an ineffective, ill-thought-out piece of something adds to the media clutter of forgettable advertising.

Corporate lawyers/queasy clients. The result is the same with either. Palms start sweating when a truly brilliant execution is presented. And the client depends on the legal guys to ‘get them out of it,’ so they won’t lose their jobs because “no one’s ever done that before.’ Me-too advertising is safe advertising – messaging or design wise. So you see creatives have two hurdles to overcome in creating a great piece of communication. And as soon as lawyers, who are consumers like you and me, put on their legal hats, and look at things from the standpoint of getting sued, or offending some blue-hair with too much time other their hands, things go downhill quickly from there.

One of the best things we do as an agency is compelling our clients to live up to our claims to be smart thinkers. To expect more than a headline and the latest typeface/layout when we come to them with creative solutions. We set their expectations that we like to zig a bit when others zag. That our solutions may not be obvious (isn’t that why they came to us in the first place?). And when we bring strong, out-of-the-box thinking to them, it’s under this notion that it’s exactly what they agreed to and were expecting.

Think about the last really, really great piece of advertising you saw. Remember the affect it had on you? Did you pause the DVR, call in someone from the other room? Go to their website shortly thereafter? Tell someone about it? We’ve all seen stuff like this – but not nearly enough from an industry supposedly staffed with communications professionals. To our defense, there are lots of things in the way of a purely great solution and getting it in front of an audience. But it happens, which means it’s possible. And it should be the goal of every marketing director directing marketing. It’s the cost of doing business. Because if you’re not resonating with a strong idea, strongly designed, then you’re failing your company. It’s what they hired you to do. And if it was easy to do, the execs in the corner office would have had their Administrative Assistants doing it. 

Live (it up) At Eden

Posted on 05/21/2010, by DMC

We recently launched a new campaign for our client, luxury apartment building Eden Apartments, in downtown Baltimore’s stylish Harbor East. The client came to us wanting a way to connect with potential residents without getting into the commodity pricing wars that dominate their marketplace.

We told the client that Eden Apartments epitomizes luxury living. And convenience. And what it’s like to be 20- to 30-something living in a trend-o neighborhood and be, well, beautiful (no dogs allowed!). Don’t give that up. In fact, embrace it. Become the destination for downtown Baltimore living – or at least the pied piper for urbanite coolness. Show me why I can’t imagine living anywhere other than Harbor East and more people will . . . include places like Eden Apartments in their list of potential residences and end up living in Harbor East.

Of course, the traditional ways to reach these folks continues to evolve. Reaching the sought-after would-be-tenants is harder with newspapers failing and so many of them not watching TV commercials. So what do we do - hit ‘em where they live. On the streets (with mobile, scrolling ads and a 36-foot wide banner), online (with a cool new blog site) and in their favorite watering holes (with t-shirts and a coaster campaign at 13 bars) enticing them to text in to win a prize, and build our client’s database at the same time. New leads come in but also the client is armed to continue nurturing those leads so as leases come up Eden goes to the top of the wish list. See the rest of the work on our portfolio here.

Occupancy up. Client happiness up. Bottoms up!

You Don't Know Jacques!

Posted on 04/30/2010, by Jenn McLean

So it's always been somewhat entertaining to me how colors get their names...from the paint on the walls of our homes to the paint colors I chose for my nails.

"You Don't Know Jacques!" is my new favorite nail color from OPI...(I'm sure a lot of our female readers are nodding and "mmmm hmmm"-ing right now.)

So who is the person that sits around and comes up with these names? And where did they go to college and for what? And what's the philosophy behind the names? They aren't always relevant to the color itself. They don't evoke specific emotions. They're just superfluous and fun, right? Which is why whenever I find a new favorite color I can't wait to squint at the small type on the bottom of the bottle to read the new and ingenious name it bears.

This article was a fun read on how it's done and, as it turns out, there is a process to it, read it here.

Some other personal favorites are:

"Lincoln Park After Dark"...my go-to color all last winter.

"Ballet Slippers"...the safe, feminine color for weddings and stuff.

"Basket Case"...discovered last summer on the toes of a fabulous friend who later got me my very own bottle as a little treat. Thanks, Noey!

"e-nuff is e-nuff"...a hot color, to be sure...but what gives with the odd spelling? Am I missing something?

"Lady Godiva"...looks just like it sounds, in this case!

"Mini-How High"...huh? who talks like that?

So am I the only one who has ever wondered about this name game? I know I love it when I find "that color" I've been looking for and can't help but smile when another girl asks me "Hey, I love that nail color! What is it?"

It's always kinda fun to give the answer...even if someone else (whoever that is) came up with it first.

Colorfully yours,

“Jenn Mac”