Tag Archives: Creative Director

Dec20

How to write a marketing plan

Posted on December 20, 2011 by Lois Geller

“A one-page marketing plan from 1955
envisioned a future for Jack Daniel’s
based on its heritage as a whiskey
made by real people in Lynchburg, Tenn.”

From a book review in Fortune magazine 12/26/11

There are two versions of every plan, the big picture version and the detail version. Assuming the big picture version is realistic and carefully thought out, the detail version should come together nicely.

Try as I might, I can almost never get through a presentation of the big picture without someone interrupting to ask about a detail. Our creative director, Mike, who isn’t known for beating around the bush, says this is like asking a construction foreman about the color of the bathroom wallpaper in a house that doesn’t have a foundation yet.

People like details. They’re as important in advertising and direct marketing as they are in selling a house. They’re just not all that important to the people who are building the house. If the foundation, structure and utilities are right, you can have any color wallpaper you want.

So let the builders work.

We’ve gone through some of this in previous posts, but, just in case you missed them, here’s a summary.

All plans begin with Background. There are different terms for this but they all mean Background. Somewhere in the Background, there’s a simple rationale for why you’re involved in this effort in the first place.

Backgrounds are deceptively easy in that anyone intelligent and knowledgeable can write them. But they’re hard work. Think of spilling a 5 pound bag of sugar on the kitchen floor. Anyone can clean it up, but it’s hard work. Backgrounds are deceptive in another way, too, because, although they’re part of the big picture, they’re full of relevant detail.

Out of the Background comes the Objective, ONE Objective. Then comes the hard part: Strategy.

The next hardest part is simply a matter of discipline on fourcounts : staying on budget, staying real – guided by the Background, staying on target according to the Objective, linking every element of the execution to the Strategy. Finally, comes the hardest part of all: handing the big picture version of the plan, your baby, over to the detail people (even if you’re your own detail team).

Some details will be irrelevant to the plan and that’s fine as long as they don’t conflict with the already existing brand strategy. Other details will deviate from the core components of the big picture. Squash them.

Test, fine tune, roll out. Get and keep customers. Make money.

The Power of Positive in a Recession

Posted on August 25, 2011 by Lois Geller

The Power of Positive in a Recession

I know, I know. It’s not officially a recession. But it sure feels like it when the stock market graphs look like my latest EKG.

In times like these I remember when I was a little girl and my mother took me to Manhattan’s Marble Collegiate Church to hear the Reverend Norman Vincent Peale talk about The Power of Positive Thinking.

He was amazing but I hadn’t thought of him in years, not until we all began to feel the pinch of a terrible economy.

Small business owners, like me, blanch at the word Recession. Some of us panic. Some cut prices, cut staff. Thanks to Reverend Peale, I prefer to think about positive approaches. I start by remembering that we have a choice:

1. We can pack up our tents and go home, or

2. We can try something new.

We always pick #2.

1. I’m making myself accountable first, accountable myself to work on my next book, be more creative (in all elements of their business) for our clients and learn new things.

2. As soon as I find myself working on a new creative program, I start having fun. For some odd reason, I think about Tom Dixon, the Blendtec CEO whose “Will it blend?” videos usually go viral. In this one, he purees an iPad and it’s had over 12 millions views

Great storytelling and that’s always made for effective marketing.

3. Your network can be golden for you. If you’re on LinkedIn, keep in touch with people you’ve worked with in the past, former clients, friends, relatives and people in your groups. I reach out to several people every day to see if I can be a resource for them. I help people find new positions, mention them in a post, or ask about their families. Networking is easy on Facebook and Twitter, too. It helps if you remember this: Don’t just ask for something, offer something. Read the rest of this entry →

Lemar Scott’s First Guest Post

Posted on June 17, 2011 by Lois Geller

Lemar Scott’s First Guest Post

Hi! I am an intern at Lois Geller Marketing Group and it is my second week here. Lois asked me to do a guest post on her blog so I sought the advice of our Creative Director, His most regal majesty- Mike. He suggested that since I have little experience and only a small (but rapidly growing) knowledge base, I might consider writing about something that I know.
So here goes….

I signed up as a “Guess List” member along with a group of other shoppers who agreed to receive texts about special offers and new products.

Today, I got a text and what a mess!

It was too long; way too long to hold anyone’s attention. The main point was on page two. Page Two! Texting operates on an entirely different level than direct mail copy which is fine if it’s long, even very long. How do I know this? Well, there’s common sense, of course, but I’m a near-addicted texter. Just ask my friends.

So I decided to tell you about Mobile Marketing: My Experience.
Messages to-on-the-go mobile devices can wield a lot of marketing power, assuming they’re messages that people want to read. Most texters are like me, average Joes with smart phones, tablets, navigation systems, e-readers, and MP3s. We’re not known for long attention spans and We wrt lk ths (we write like this).

So, using common sense, I developed The Intern’s Short List of four points for effective commercial text messages:
1) Texts under 160 characters. For one thing, 160 is the max set by phone companies. And readers like messages that are that quick, at-a-glance easy and right-to-the-point. Plus, we don’t want to pay for several pages of texts just to get to your promotion! We’re big fans of direct marketing … and we’re looking forward to location based real-time marketing.

2) Wandering off topic is annoying. It’s OK to be inspired by an approaching holiday or current event, but a lot of marketing texters seem to get carried away. Readers can get uninterested and even disoriented trying to follow their thoughts.

3) Texts should look interesting, don’t you think? Consider the differences between these two versions of the same message:
a) Come in tonight for an exclusive release party at eight.
b) Come in TONIGHT for an *exclusive* release party @ 8!!!
You know that b) is texter-style, right?

4) And I do wish they wouldn’t harass us! Prospects are wary of deals because it seems that every other offer is not real. Unless we specifically ask for more, I suggest that texts be limited to perhaps four or five a month. We like to see message inboxes filled with texts from buddies — not businesses!
So please comment and tell me about your mobile marketing ideas. I beg you!

Your friend,
Lemar Scott: The Intern

Pushing the Envelope

Posted on September 2, 2010 by Lois Geller

Pushing the Envelope

Pushing_the_Envelope

Every day we come home, get our mail and sort through for the bills and any letters from friends and family. It’s pretty much a routine we have…you already know what you’re looking for. So what makes a direct mail piece stand out so that we don’t rule them out and throw them in the trash?

standoutinacrowd

The envelope is the first thing we see. If it doesn’t immediately catch your eye or looks questionable, 9 out of 10 times it goes “bye-bye”.

Now the question is: how do we draw them in? We all know the old saying don’t judge a book by its cover, but in this case, you have to! The envelope is the first impression, so you have to hook that fish and reel it in. The idea is to at least get them to read the letter inside.

Some great ideas to boost your envelope appeal:

1. Use unique colors for the envelope itself. Depending on your product or service, use colors that pop. Colors can captivate and stir emotion. For example, when promoting to teenage girls, test using colors like hot pink.

2. Create urgency by using a call to action like “Limited-time only” and “Look inside for FREE _______”.

3. Experiment with different size envelopes and test which one works better.

Here’s an example of a successful mail piece that we created.

philzoo copy

The objective of this direct mail piece for the Philadelphia zoo was to increase memberships. The strategy was to create multi-format mailings featuring the benefits of membership. The end the results, we were able to increase response rates, because of new creative and new list selection.

Funny enough Mike our VP and Creative Director, STILL wears the “I Belong in the Zoo” t-shirt that was featured on the piece.

Nothing we do is Off the Shelf

Posted on August 30, 2010 by Lois Geller

Nothing we do is Off the Shelf

Apple2Oranges

I want a lot of products/services customized for me, especially services. Who doesn’t?

The Lillian Vernon Catalog would personalize things from business card cases to leather desk sets to, well, just about everything. And you could always return them, no questions asked. Personalized means more than just your name on something, though.

For instance, I need a new couch, the just-right-for-me personalized couch, not too modern, not too plush, not too austere. The smart salesman at a Decorator Showroom listened and then showed me diagrams in a catalog where I picked the arms, legs, backing and pillows I wanted. Done! When I got home, I had a moment to relax, picked up the Wall Street Journal and, ta da, there was an article: “ ‘Custom’ is Customary. Entrepreneurs see rise in demand for Made-to-Order goods”.

This reminded me of the work we do in advertising/marketing agencies.

Years ago when I was President of Vickers & Benson Direct up in Toronto, the head and creative director of Vickers & Benson Advertising, our parent company, was a wonderful man named Terry O’Malley. Everyone who ever worked for or with him would follow Terry into the jaws of hell.

His mantra for the agency’s work was simple: Everything tailor-made, nothing off the shelf.

I shortened that to “Nothing off the shelf” and made it my mantra when I opened my own agency in New York and now here in Miami. It’s the only thing we’ve ever espoused that we took from someone else. Here’s the (very) shorthand version of how Nothing off the Shelf works:

1. Prospective clients tell us what they want to accomplish. (“Incremental sales from 1,000 new bank openings”)

2. They brief us on past programs and results.

3. We familiarize ourselves with the products(s) and market(s).

4. We develop a new plan to test against the previous one.

5. Then we execute and measure results.

Perhaps the most interesting aspect of our business is that when we do lift response, it is almost never due just to the creative. Yes, it looks good and reads very well, but the real lifts usually come from all kinds of ideas: great new offers, new lists (and new segments and selects), perhaps a compelling Subject line on an email that begs to be opened. The most dramatic wins are in the dozens of details we test.

Yet a new client will be in this week who will ask to see other bank “creatives” we’ve done. Sigh.

Humor in advertising?

Posted on October 7, 2009 by Lois Geller

Humor in advertising?

Sometimes I use humor in my speeches!

Friday morning I was on the Jim Blasingame radio show, and was talking about humor (Click Here To Hear The Show). So does humor work in advertising, in the social media?

It depends. A pretty good rule of thumb is that humor doesn’t work but that’s because you have to be really, really good and have a great client to make it work.

Most lesser talents think humor is jokes and vice versa and that’s simply not true. As David Ogilvy famously said, quoting Claude Hopkins, “People don’t buy from clowns.”

Humor works when it’s right, (often) self-deprecating and woven (seemingly) effortlessly into a USP.

When I was working in Canada and we had Tourism Canada as a client, we learned that US visitors came from everywhere but Texas. Could we do something about Texas? Our Creative Director, put a huge close-cut photo of a moose on the face of a white 9” x 12” envelope with the headline “Got any of these in Texas?” Bingo, Texas problem solved for Canada Tourism.

When I was head of Geller Direct at TBWA in New York, we worked on the Absolut Vodka business. The client, Michel Roux, told the creative team they could show the bottle profile with two words and one of the words had to be Absolut. The other could be anything.
They looked at each other. What? Then they came up with one of the most humorous and effective ad campaigns of all time.

One of the reasons jokes, visual or verbal, don’t do well in ads is that people often don’t get them or even notice them. And when they do get the joke, they remember the joke and not the product.

The funny Super Bowl ads (the reason I watch the game) get a laugh, once, and then all those millions of dollars are gone. Maybe they help the brand, maybe not.

I think I remember two over the years. One was back in the dot com craze when some idiots thought it would be funny to shot gerbils from a cannon (it wasn’t) and the other had a guy in a clown suit with the suit – including the clown head – upside down. He ordered a Bud and … well, never mind where he put the bottle. Two ladies in the commercial had the vapors. Ever saw the spot again.

Older readers (as old as, say 40) probably remember Mr. Whipple, the supermarket who nagged his customers with “please don’t squeeze the Charmin”. He wasn’t funny, at least not at first but over a 21 year campaign and 500 spots, Mr. Whipple (Dick Wilson appeared in al 500 spots) developed a hokey homespun kitchiness that I still think of when I buy toilet paper.

In 1984, Wendy’s hired 81-year old Clara Peller to look askance at a competitor’s puny hamburger and blurt “Where’s the beef”? Wendy’s started to take off. Humor can work, gentle humor that integrates the product and will continue over time to amuse middle America, not wiseacre agency kids.

So here are a few things you might consider about using humor in today’s climate:

1. Humor cheers people up. I got a postcard about a “hot copywriter” with a photo of a handsome young guy who writes great copy. It was fun. In mice type it said “appearance of some copywriters may vary.” Funny and focused.
2. Don’t “knock-knock” it until you’ve tried it; test a humorous approach vs. straight creative. Do a 50 – 50 split if it’s email or direct mail.
3. Play to your target audience. When using humor don’t use toilet funnies, unless you’re a plumber. The New Yorker keeps its circulation because of the cartoons, and they’re often earthy and sometimes sophisticated. Consider your own audience, and how you might laugh with them.
4. Brevity is important in this time of Twitter messages, IM and sound bites. Brevity is also the soul of wit, if you believe Polonius in Hamlet. If you use humor, begin with it and make it short and sweet to make your point.
5. Consider radio. In one commercial I heard recently an announcer called a healthcare company and had a hard time talking because a lobster had clamped onto his tongue – so the listener actually focused on his message.

Humor works if it’s relevant. If you just want to be funny, try Caroline’s.

Missed out on $4500, but learned a lot anyway.

Posted on August 27, 2009 by Lois Geller

Missed out on $4500, but learned a lot anyway.

My Creative Director and friend Michael McCormick (Guts of a Burglar blogster) needs a new car (at least I think so). His Ford Explorer is 12 years old, runs like a top and still looks pretty good … on the outside.

The inside is a different matter entirely. Passengers have to fly their legs over the Sirius antenna wire; the spots and stains are, well, spots and stains. The A/C in the back doesn’t work anymore and the vehicle is almost ready for its confirmation or bar mitzvah.

When Michael got this Explorer back in the late ‘90s (it’s his second one), I went with him to the dealership in Queens. He told the saleslady what he wanted, and she asked him what color he liked.

Anything you have is fine, he said. She and I looked at each other in disbelief.

Anyway, I thought the Cash for Clunkers program was a heaven sent opportunity for Michael to get a new ride. He disagreed. He thinks his Chuck (the Truck) is barely broken in. The tires are new, the brakes are new, the oil’s been changed and fluids checked every 3,000 miles. Yada yada.

It took me a while to understand his real reason.

For weeks I encouraged him to go to see the new cars. He wants an Explorer but the closest Ford dealership closed and they don’t make Explorers anymore, anyway.

So, I went to tweetdeck and started asking around. @ScottMonty, Ford’s Twitter spokesperson, gave me some recommendations. Another friend suggested the Flex and sent me photos. No buying action. I asked Michael why he wasn’t moving on this.

Turns out he really and truly doesn’t think taxpayers should be subsidizing his new car. Hmm. Hadn’t thought of that. And, he pointed out, a new vehicle cost a lot more than $4,500, perhaps around $25,000 more for what he wants. Why spend all that dough when he doesn’t need a new car? Men are soooo logical. It’s frustrating. But I already knew that. The new insights this whole episode provided got me thinking.

Not too long ago, the only way Ford could show its cars was in print or television advertising. Now that’s all changed.

What we see on TV or in ads is one-way communication, the company talking at us and controlling the flow of information.

Now we control the flow of information and we can find what we want, when we want it and consult with friends and family and experts along the way. I’ve known all this in theory and in making smaller purchasers for quite a while, but it’s a different matter to experience the whole process for a big ticket item (like a new SUV) in the real world of actually buying it.

In the meantime, people haven’t stopped looking for authenticity. And marketers are paying serious attention to what’s going on in Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn. On the web, customers can find anything, competitive prices, colors, and visit a website and buy anything in a NY minute.

Except, of course, Michael. He’ll be driving that car and me – and, horrors, clients – into the ground. Eventually, he’ll chat with a few friends and head off and buy a Flex or Edge or, who knows, a Club Cab F-250 – purple with a yellow interior, that some dealer happens to have on the lot and ready to roll.

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