If you haven’t heard, Toyota has recently been hard at work cleaning up the mess of its 2.3 million vehicle recall. While it is potentially devastating for Toyota, whose entire brand image has been based on vehicle reliability, it led for some pretty opportunistic moments for others in the auto industry.

Hardly anyone took advantage, but GM stepped up to the plate with an awesome incentive program that helped capture what would otherwise be some pretty loyal Toyota consumers. The best part about GM’s plan is that they didn’t alter their positioning at all. They haven’t made any new promises or changed their advertising. They simply allow Toyota owners (who terminate their Toyota lease, of course) to get up to $1,000 off a new or leased GM vehicle: a pretty good incentive for making the switch. Toyota’s fumble couldn’t have come at a better time for a company like GM; it has allowed them to really push their own promises of reliability and quality to a very tuned in audience with a specific set of needs. So whether or not Toyota is handling their recall the right way is almost beside the point; GM has stepped in at exactly the right time to take advantage of their competitor’s weakness.

As far as any business goes, it is important for your company to be able to handle problems and crises with foresight and grace, but it is just as important to know what is going on beyond your company. Keeping tabs on your industry and your competitors can bring advantageous opportunities to really reach your audience.

At any advertising agency, there are many parts. There is usually some mix of creatives, account service, word of mouth/social media, traffic, and PR professionals. (Hint – if you want to see the people behind The Cyphers Agency, click on some of the links in this blog post)

We thought it would be a good idea to let you know what all of these people do, and why, when you put us all together, we come up with such great ideas.

Account Service – The people in account service at The Cyphers Agency are constantly making sure that our clients objectives are being accomplished. They oversee all projects and campaigns, and provide strategic and planning insight throughout the process. Communication (to keep clients happy, and keep the agency “account”-able) is essential with account service personnel.

Creative Department – These groovy folks aren’t just the ones creating ideas, websites, building facebook and iPhone apps, designing print ads, and filming television ads. Yeah, they do all that, but their most important job is conveying ad messages and accomplishing strategic objectives in unique and memorable ways. If you can see it, these people did it. And they put a lot of thought behind the idea.

Word of Mouth / Social Media (we call it “Push-N-Pull” here at Cyphers) – This department spreads the word for our clients. Whether our clients want to increase awareness, increase web traffic, improve customer service, search engine optimization, increase customer reviews, (BREATH….) perform market research, distribute promotions, handle a crisis, or just start “Facebook-ing” and “Twittering”, this is the department that will be getting your message to the people that want to hear it.

Traffic – This department handles the behind-the-scenes management of all the jobs. Who needs what? Where does that job need to go next? Traffic handles the who, what, when, where, and why for all of our clients. Most importantly, our traffic department ensures that all of our jobs are out the door to clients on time.

So hopefully you now have a greater understanding of how advertising agencies work. Why does ours work so well? Because we don’t just do our jobs separately. From brainstorms to our open office to staff meetings to following each other on social networks, there is a lot of communication here at The Cyphers Agency. That way, when something important happens, we all know about it quickly. Or when someone has an idea, we can all build on it quickly. This is just one of the reasons that The Cyphers Agency is greater than the sum of it’s parts.

We recently noticed a campaign that was truly integrated, and we wanted to point out how powerful complete integration can be.

Giveitaponder is a microsite created by mobile-phone-maker LG. The campaign is designed to motivate cell phone users to “give it a ponder” before sending that text message that they might later regret.

LOL!

We like the campaign because of it’s high-quality content (James Lipton!), integration with social networks, and strategic messaging. They have a YouTube, Flickr, Twitter, and Facebook page, and also link to a Wikipedia page.

At first glance, we thought the campaign might have been weak (albeit funny) because the LG brand isn’t featured prominently in the ads. But we realized that the ads may be doing that for a reason. Most people don’t buy a phone based on the brand, they usually focus on the features and benefits. Consumers walk into the phone store and walk to the phone with the coolest features or that look neat-o. There isn’t a whole lot of brand loyalty with cell-phones (except for the iPhone!). The ads showcase the flip phones and full keyboards and also do a good job of identifying with their target audience.

Either way, the campaign is certainly integrated, with clear branding and content tailored to each social network.

brb getting a peanut muffin

Of course, we’re ad people, so maybe we’re overthinking it. What do you think of the campaign?

Check out our latest web creations. We recently launched two very different new sites for A & G Management and Kane X-ray. These two companies needed to revamp their web presence and contacted us for help.

Kane X-Ray has offered x-ray and medical equipment to the mid-atlantic medical community for over three generations. Their new site shows the full scope of their offerings to the veterinary, chiropractic, orthopedic, urgent/primary care and radiology imaging centers. A full content management system allows for easy site updates. Check out Kane X-ray’s new site here. You can watch a demo, request a quote or get service for your equipment.

A & G Management offers apartment rental communities in Anne Arundel, Baltimore and Howard Counties. The new site has detailed floor plans, photos and loads of information about each of their apartment communities. Visit the new site here.

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