The Super Bowl’s Advertising Score Card

admin — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 18:01:12 +0000

The Biggest Advertising Event of The Year Is Almost Here!

Despite the continuing increase in advertising costs, sponsors continue to dedicate a large chunk f their budget to capturing the world’s attention during the Super Bowl. Adweek just published some great stats on Super Bowl advertising and we thought it would be good information going into the big game this weekend.

What is your all-time favorite Super Bowl ad?Share your thoughts in the comment box below or on Facebook and Twitter.

Timmons&Company is a well-trained, fast-moving, strategically-oriented group of creative marketing professionals. We quickly assess our clients’ marketing objectives, create a strategic plan, recommend tactics, produce Madison Avenue quality creative, and implement the plan, on time and on budget.

Your Brand Is The Only…

admin — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 19:42:33 +0000

To be competitive, your brand HAS be the only something.

That statement of onliness can be as specific as you want but it needs to exist. “We are the only____ who offers ____ 24/7″ or “We are the only ______ who focusses on ____ rather than____.” This statement sets you apart from your competition and gives your customers a reason to rely on you.

So what’s your onliness?

Anyone in your company should be able to tell you what makes your brand different from at least some of the competitors but they need to be able to tell anyone what makes you different from all of them. Here are a few questions to ask to find your onliness.

1. What do your customer’s like most about your brand?

2. What are your competitors known for?

3. What are your competitor’s customers not getting from them that you can offer?

After these three questions you should have a pretty good idea of what your onliness is. Now all you have to do is make sure the world knows about it.

Share your thoughts in the comment box below or on Facebook and Twitter.

So You’re Not Using Youtube…

admin — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 19:36:01 +0000

It has already been established that video is king in the social world and if that’s the case, than you can consider Youtube the emperor. This video giant has been boasting about its girth since the beginning. Now they have a new milestone to promote, one hour of video is now being uploaded to YouTube every second. To celebrate they created lots of fun animation and loaded it up at OneHourPerSecond.com, where they visualize the relationship between real time and Youtube time.

In a blog post, YouTube also offers some viewing data: ”For all the hours of video you’re uploading—you’re watching more as well; we’ve now exceeded 4 billion video views globally every day. That’s up 25 percent in the last eight months and the equivalent of more than half the world’s population watching a video every day, the same number as there are U.S. $1 bills in circulation, the same as the number of years since there was water on Mars. … It’s a big number, and you’re making it bigger every day.”

The question then becomes, “Why aren’t you using Youtube?”

Share your thoughts in the comment box below or on Facebook and Twitter.

How To Get Your Fans To Talk About You

admin — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 21:45:56 +0000

Under-Promise and Over-Deliver

Your customers or fans expect you to give them at least what you tell you will and sometimes even more. You are better off assuming that your customers have high expectations from the start. Knowing that, you have a better idea of how to make your fans or customers fall in love and then tell the world about it.

It does take that little or lot extra to make someone happy enough that they will talk about it. The average satisfied customer won’t tell anyone about their experience unless asked. The happy customer may tell a few of their friends, but the customer who is truly impressed will tell the world.

It has become a business standard to over-promise and under-deliver. This makes your competitore reactive instead of proactive and also leaves them with several unhappy or unsatisfied customers. This is where the opportunity appears for your brand:

Make it a standard for your brand to over-deliver every time it has the chance to do so.

Your fans and customers will make a stronger connection to your brand. It also gives them reason to talk about you every time they hear about another competing brand. If you are the best it doesn’t matter how good the competitors are.

What are you doing to get people talking? Share your thoughts in the comment box below or on Facebook and Twitter.

The Twitter Champions of 2011 [Infographic]

admin — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 13:50:21 +0000

We found a recent post from Mashable that takes a look at the brands that really took advantage of Twitter in 2011. At this point Twitter has proved to be a lasting social network and it doesn’t look like it’s going anywhere soon. With a recent spike in successful advertising Twitter has businesses and users hooked. (See our recent post on advertising on Twitter. )

“As longtime Twitter addicts know, there’s little that people love to tweet about more than Twitter itself.

HootSuite, maker of its eponymous social media aggregation tool, offered some evidence of that when it compiled a list of top 15 brands on Twitter. The result: Twitter itself topped the list. HootSuite’s index isn’t based on followers, but on the amount of time the brand spent in the top 10 trending topics and its rank on that list.”

Who are the top brands you follow on Twitter? Share in the comment box below or on Facebook and Twitter.

Smart Thief Caught In The Act!

admin — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 21:41:43 +0000

How to you tell the world about an amazing new TV that’s so thin you can barely notice it? Well LG took the guerilla marketing approach with this one. With over 3.5 million views, we think they got the point across. Do you think guerilla marketing is worth the risk? What happens when a company puts resources into creating a “viral video” that never goes viral? Share your thoughts in the comment box below or on Facebook and Twitter.

The Importance Of Finding The Right Font

admin — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 17:49:32 +0000

Some people put little thought into the font they choose to represent their brand. Those people are off to a bad start. Every aspect of brand matters from the shape of the letters to the colors you use and every other little detail in between. Some people find it hard to believe that little changes can make a recognizable difference. Well, here’s our proof. Here are some epic brands turned sour by the always terrible Comic Sans.

What brands do you think have it figured out? Which ones don’t? Share in the comment box below or on Facebook and Twitter.

The Dawn Of The Relationship Era

admin — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 21:01:14 +0000

It’s time to acknowledge that we can no longer afford to put all of our efforts solely into the product and positioning. We have to invest our resources into what our customers are really looking for… a relationship. A recent article from Ad Age says goodbye to traditional marketing as we know it.

“This is about turning everything you understood about marketing upside down so that you can land right side up. This is about tapping into the Human Element.”

Here are the two big points to take away that change EVERYTHING.

1. People are no longer afraid to announce their love for a brand to the world. Not just people or pieces of art, for brands and they do so constantly. You know how people who genuinely care about a brand.

2. Your brand is being evaluated in the social world 24/7 and there’s nothing you can do to stop it and you don’t have the option to ignore it.

What have you done to focus more on the relationship with your customer? Share in the comment box below or on Facebook and Twitter.

Psychology In Advertising

admin — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 13:25:41 +0000

This video is modeled after an old TV commercial but it has a lot of great content. Truth being there is a lot of psychology behind advertising, especially successful advertising. One important thing is to know that just because YOU think the ad is a great representation of your product, doesn’t mean the ad will do anything to motivate your customer to buy your product. Check out the video for a few valuable tips for your advertising and marketing strategies.

What elements of psychology do you usually consider first in your marketing strategy or ad campaigns? Share in the comment box below or on Facebook and Twitter.

Social Media Predictions From The Social Media Gurus

admin — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 16:48:45 +0000

Social media has done nothing short of explode in the last year or two and by the looks of things it won’t be slowing down anytime soon. We found a great article on Entrepreneur with predictions from some of social media’s biggest names. A few of which we thought we should share to help give you an edge on the competition for the new year.

Gary Vaynerchuk – Gary predicts that the new bookmarking website Pinterest will explode and that some closed networks will also have the opportunity to grow. His predictions are based on the trend of everything becoming more open and the expectation that some people will oppose the openness and flock to the closed networks.

Chris Brogan - Thinks that because so many business are jumping in to social media there will be more noise to sort through. Companies will be challenged with putting more effort into offering value to their fans and customers to shine through all of the clutter.

Guy Kawasaki – Thinks that Google+ will have more users than Twitter in 2012.