November 4, 2015

The #1 YouTube Mistake Advertisers Make

I’m constantly amazed at the number of established brands that treat YouTube as an on-demand form of broadcast television. Spend any time browsing YouTube, and you’ll see their mistake repeatedly.

Your TV ad may be killer: beautifully shot, with witty copy and great music. But on YouTube, that matters only if your first five seconds are effective. Experienced YouTubers know why.

After the first five seconds, the link to “skip” becomes active. More often than not, I, and the majority of YouTubers, do exactly that and never give second thought to the ad we just left behind.

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October 15, 2015

If You Want to be Successful in the Ad Business…Part One

It’s almost impossible to go it alone in advertising. It is, after all, a collaborative business.

Part one focuses on developing partnerships that evolve into friendships. Let me illustrate a game of six-degrees-of-separation for a moment.

If I asked you who John Orr Young was, the response, most likely, would be a head scratch. But if I tell you he was an agency account guy who partnered with a talented writer named Raymond Rubicam? Well, you’d most likely get Young & Rubicam.

McCann had Erickson. Weiden, of course, is inextricably linked to Kennedy. The list goes on and on. Would they have succeeded on their own? Maybe. Would they have created such lasting legacies? Maybe not.

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October 3, 2015

The Importance of the IDEA FACTORY

Ideas are the lifeblood of our business.

I learned in my first year at a Washington, D.C., public and government relations shop that ideas generated from credible, insightful information and translated into creative, measurable strategy separated the pretenders from the ladder climbers. That is still the case!

I was fortunate 25 years ago when I moved from Capitol Hill public servant to communications and lobbying. My first boss was masterful at conceptualizing strategic tactics to advance clients’ priorities. One day he handed out T-shirts with the words “The Idea Factory” and a graphic featuring a large golden light bulb being pulled out of a factory by many smaller light bulbs, excited by their collaboration. Our company logo was featured on the large light bulb.

Since then I continue to strive to offer my clients the “big idea” that will help catapult them forward. Every consultant should focus on connecting the dots for clients and generating ideas that inspire, persuade and build lasting relationships.

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August 21, 2015

Use Twitter to Tighten Up Your Writing

A consultant once told me that “tighter is righter.” A handful of well-chosen words provides so much more power than paragraphs that endlessly spool on and on and dilute themselves.

As a guy who writes advertising slogans and headlines, I’ll tell you right away that a powerful one-line headline trumps anything I can do in the descriptive copy to follow. If I can’t punch through the clutter and noise and commandeer your attention with a three-word statement, then whatever wonderful language I employ in describing the product is moot, because you’ve already moved on. Luckily for me (and the many others who make a living by churning out words) modern social media is a perfect whetstone to sharpen our verbal tools.

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August 5, 2015

The Future of Innovation is Customer Co-Creation

I’ve always believed in the idiom “two heads are better than one,” but what happens when a company adopts that mantra and expands on it? What happens when a company involves not only two people, not only their entire company, but outside consumers in their decision-making? If done right, it can transform your business into an efficient, innovative, and profitable machine.

This process in which companies involve consumers in the design and development of their business’s offerings is called customer co-creation. Customer co-creation focuses on understanding and meeting consumers’ needs and if a business is willing to listen, there are many benefits to this tactic.

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