Tessa Carroll

In its purest form, ambient advertising is essentially the placement of ads in unusual, high traffic places. These ads can range from large scale placements on elevator doors to full, graphic wraps on city busses and enormous, artistic installations in interesting places.

A form of guerilla marketing, this medium has taken on a new life outside of simple, non-traditional advertising in the form of giant coffee cups spilling over near Madison Square Garden in NYC and tiny cars secured with enormous bicycle locks in downtown Toronto. Even McDonald’s has entered the game lighting the Chicago area night sky with their world-famous fries.

What this medium does is give agencies large and small just one more way to stretch our creative muscles. Ambient advertising has given us license to explore the deepest reaches of our imaginations and implement creative that’s sure to be seen and create buzz at the same time – Whether it’s in a bathroom stall, embedded in the bar at your favorite pub or literally spilling onto a crowded street.

The best part of ambient advertising? It doesn’t take a huge budget to make an impact. Most major installations are designed for short periods of time and, since ambient isn’t limited to just large-scale attention grabbers, essentially if you can dream it, you can do it.

Want to use ambient advertising to market your new microbrew on a limited budget? Why not affix your logo to pool cues that you can give to bars with billiard tables? With ambient advertising, the options are endless. Get creative, think outside the box. More often than not, the payoff will be more than worth it.

You can check out some more of our favorite ambient campaigns here.

We all need an escape. For me and probably 85% of the people I know that escape has quickly become Panem, the post-apocalyptic setting of the Hunger Games trilogy.

Whether you’re Team Peeta or Team Gale, if you’ve picked up one of these books you know what I’m talking about. “Love” doesn’t even begin to describe how we feel about this story – Mild to moderate obsession is more like it. It’s got everything we want in a book: Action! Adventure! Love! And the icing on the cake? The Powers that Be have decided to turn this trilogy into a movie!

The first movie premieres on March 23^rd so if you haven’t read the book yet, do yourself a favor and start now. Or, if you’re a nerd like me, re-read book 1 so that every last detail is fresh in your memory when you hit that midnight showing.

Welcome to the Hunger Games. And may the odds be ever in your favor.

“Good to the last drop.” We’ve all heard it, or read it, many times in our lives. But did you know that these five little words have been Maxwell House’s slogan for more than 90 years? Which begs the question, what’s required if you’re going to create a slogan that your audience will remember?

The basic rules of marketing tell us that a slogan is one of the most public pieces of a brand’s positioning. Because of this, a slogan needs to stand for something with a little higher purpose – For instance, Nike’s slogan “Just Do It” has spoken to athletes the world over for nearly 20 years. Why? Because, deep-down, it gives us all permission to go for it rather than think about it.

Unfortunately, the majority of slogans will not stand the test of time. For years, companies like McDonald’s, Allstate and FedEx have tinkered with their slogans over and over again as their audiences and industries changed. Ultimately, a brand’s slogan and subsequent positioning need to tap into the motivations and desires of the target audience and grow as they grow while not promising more than you’re able to deliver. Otherwise, you’re missing the point.

Once you’ve established a slogan though, it can be difficult to replace it even if circumstances change. In Maxwell House’s case, several attempts to update the slogan were unsuccessful and the company continued to go back to the original “Good to the last drop.” In the end, slogan-writing isn’t an exact science. The science of the slogan is more like trial and error with a little bit of strategy mixed in and once you find those golden words, don’t mess with perfection.

About a year ago we began hearing some unsettling stories about our favorite fast food franchise, McDonalds. Specifically, that the chain was setting us back about 50 years by charging African-American customers an extra $1.50 as “an insurance policy due in part to a recent string of robberies.” Despite the fact that we eventually learned it was a hoax, this photo circulated the interwebs for a while. And then the whole thing just sort of died.

However, that wasn’t the last time this scandal would rear its ugly head.

About a week ago, this ridiculous meme began making the rounds again. Thistime, accompanied by the Twitter hashtag #SeriouslyMcDonalds. The whole thing seems to have died down now and McDonalds did respond from their official Twitter account, but the question remains – How does a brand keep a hoax like this from coming back?

As a brand, it’s important to surround yourself with a network of influencers and ambassadors. This way, at the first sign of trouble, you can reach out to them for support in squashing even the most vicious of rumors. While it’s imperative that you respond to your entire network “officially,” it’s equally important that you deploy your ambassadors as well.

Jonha over at I Just Did suggests controlling the bleeding with an alternate campaign – In this case, the use of the hashtag #SincerelyMcDonalds. An alternate campaign that you can get your ambassadors and other influential connections behind can go a long way. Especially when that alternate campaign focuses on the good you do as a brand.

As we’ve seen in the McDonalds case, no brand is safe from an Internet-based, viral hoax. However, all brands have the ability to protect themselves while keeping the integrity of the brand intact. In the end, a carefully crafted network of influencers and ambassadors and a well thought-out crisis communication plan can help save your brand online.

Here at the Cyphers Agency, we tend to get excited about the little things – Like cupcakes. We also tend to laugh really hard at our own silliness and we know you like it too.

So without further ado, we present to you the latest edition of our fabulous QUOTES!

-I just don’t like sweating and getting in the car and having my butt stick to the seat.

-Running is one of my biggest fears.

-I like your zipper. If it weren’t on your boob I’d zip it.

-That was my mouth that made the fart noise, not my butt.

-You guys are squeaky a lot.

-It changed my life, I don’t know what I’ve been doing for the past two years.

-Do you like the wienies?

-Choking is allowed.

-It’s not like a retarded hand or anything.

-It was skinny and white and flailing about.

-When you walk in on wang it’s no big deal.

-I feel like we should be in a barn.

-Everyone wants to touch my butt. It’s juicy!