As everyone in marketing knows, you can’t swing a dead cat without hitting a social media plan these days. Everyone is hawking them, and clients are begging for them. Our shop used social media extensively last year to help get the VoteYes campaign on the radar, and ultimately passed with 60% of the vote. See some of that work here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=14Y08ZS4Txk. Or take a look at the Facebook bling below. Or find some of it on Facebook here. http://www.facebook.com/pages/Vote-YES-Minnesota/26184259037?v=photos&viewas=0

Even with great success like this, we still face the same questions: How do I make it work for me? Simple. You get some solid marketing brains in a room to crank out some great ideas. Same old great tactic that smart clients like Nike, Coke and Apple have used for years. What people fail to understand is that even though Twitterbookspaceoogletube is cool, shiny, new and fancy, they’re still just channels. They’re still just media and message consumption stops in people’s busy lives. You can’t force your way into them any more than you can on their tv, radio or mailbox. You have to break through and get their attention. How do you do that? Good ideas that are interesting. So give it a try. Better yet, give us a call and we’ll figure it out for you. Good luck!

Okay, not a full blog, but worth posting:

“i have a chipotle hunger but Taco Bell schedule.”

That’s funny.

It’s a question that comes up a lot in the ad biz. With client budgets cut, with resources tapped and then some, everyone is working harder and doing more with less. People panic. People worry. All rightly so. These ARE hard times. The hardest in a generation. But all is not lost, friends. We are simply experiencing what our friends in the ag business have dealt with since farming began. Drought. Smart farmers plan for a total loss of crop every seven years. An entire year’s work poof, gone. No profit, no payroll, no nothing. Farmers know it’s coming, it’s inevitable. Are we so different? Though we don’t deal in milk, corn, soybeans or pork, are we not susceptible to drought? Of course we are. Everyone is. If you accept this, and embrace it as a harsh reality, then hopefully you’ll get the feeling that things will be okay. It wont pay your debt. It won’t patch the unfortunate realities of layoffs and other deep cuts. But there is hope here. Adopt the idea that this does and will happen frequently, then you’ll learn the what keeps farmers hopes alive. The good ones simply work through it. It’s hard. Tough decisions have to be made. There is loss. But all you can do is work your way through it. Scrimp, save and work your way through. On the other side of it, you’ll come out better for it. In more ways than one.

Metrics rule.

Summer, 2008. The advertising world is clipping along. Creative is made. Media is bought. All seems calm and peaceful in the world. Fast forward to November. The stock market crashes. Misery ensues. And now we are all in a slow, painful, clunky climb back up. If we’re smart, we take a moment to look back at it and see what we can learn from it. What mistakes should we not repeat? What opportunities have revealed themselves? In our mind, the lesson of November is loud and clear, and something our group has advocated long before that miserable day.

Never, ever spend dollars on advertising without accountability.

Most people think this means getting a call center and popping a dedicated number in your ads. This is merely dipping one toe in the water. In today’s world, with the technology we have, metrics can inform every aspect of your advertising. From how to design a website to how to write pay per click ads to how to design a direct mail piece that sells.

So let’s talk about what sells. In our world, this is dedicated landing pages. It’s reviewing google analytics before designing a new website. It’s PPC that’s A/B tested. It’s direct mail, print ads and radio that is A/B tested. All of this is reviewed and optimized along the way. This is just a small taste, as every tactic has it’s own metric. The point is when you go in thinking metrics from the word go, it’s this very way of thinking that sets you up for successful marketing.

The quantification of ad effectiveness has always been a hot topic. Clients and agencies, the good ones anyway, always want to know how their work is performing. Our message to our clients and our people: embrace metrics. Love them, they are good strategy and good creative’s best friend. As a creative my gut is always telling me that funny, dramatic, and otherwise interesting work is what draws a crowd. Sales spikes have done a good job of proving this in the past. But never before has our work been attached to such an instant metric as the tools of quantification provide us now. It’s great to know that the campaign is working three months into it. But now we can see how it’s working three minutes into it. The guesswork is gone thanks to cookies, 301 redirects, Google analytics and helpful sites such as quantcast and compete.

We have all heard creatives grumble that metrics are just a buch of hogwash. Well, hogwash. If your creative is good, and your strategy strong, the metrics will be your best friend. Integrate them into your thinking, and you’ll find a new level of success with your clients.

Good luck.

Times are tough. No doubt about it. The economy hasn’t been this bad in decades. It’s times like these that really makes a person feel for the less fortunate. People who can’t afford to pay their heat in this cold winter. Families who can’t feed their kids a real meal. Senior citizens who are forced to choose between their medications and food. Of course, we have no idea who these people are, because all we hear about is rich executives flying in private jets to ask Washington for our tax money. The very

dollars the hungry, cold and sick kids, families and seniors pay to the tax man every year. What’s wrong with this picture? Everything.

Somehow, it’s been forced into our heads that handing over tax dollars to people who are neither sick, cold or hungry is the solution. Somehow, we’re led to believe that the people in $3000 suits with homes in Aspen and the Hamptons have our best interests in mind. If we hand them our money, they’ll make it all better. That’s not what will fix this mess. But I know what will. And so do you. The American spirit.

You’ve seen the American spirit. We all have. The American spirit is a hardworking soul who puts their shoulder to the wheel and works their way out of a mess. It’s the person who works harder when times are tough. It’s the person who helps out the less fortunate, not because they have so much, but because others have so very little. It’s the person who doesn’t think of themselves first. You can explain away the Bailout to the rich all you want. I don’t see a single ounce of American spirit in any of the cowards looking for a bailout. Nor the cowards handing them out. But I know it’s there. For every executive looking for a bailout, there are ten working night and day to get their company back on track on their own. For every committee member signing off on another giant freebie, there are a thousand hardworking Americans sucking it up and working harder to make things better. This is what will put America back on its feet.

When times are tough, America should bail out the less fortunate.There are millions who really, really need it. They’re sick, cold and hungry. For some reason, this time, we’re bailing out the fortunate first. They are not sick. They are not cold. And the only hunger they have is for money that isn’t theirs.

So no thank you, bailout committee. Wingnut, my little ad agency in humble Minneapolis, will continue to suck it up and work hard on our own, thank you very much. It’s the American way.