Deep Ad Thoughts

Welcome to our summer intern,Caity!

Sarah Irish — Fri, 14 Jun 2013 19:09:04 +0000

My name is Caitlyn but I go by Caity. I recently graduated from Anne Arundel Community College with an associates degree in Business Management and a certificate in marketing and advertising. I am thrilled to be the newest member of The Cyphers team. In the short time I have been here the staff has me feel so welcome. I am just starting off my career and have so much to learn, I couldn’t ask for a better group to learn and grow with. I have been an Annapolis native since I was a kid and loved this area so much that I stayed when my family moved away. I love being outside and active which makes this area my ideal place to do the things I love such as running, hiking, boating, and spending a lot of time with friends. I am also a huge fitness enthusiast spending a lot of my free time in the gym. Lets go O’s!!

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If Franchisees Need Marketing Tools, Give it to Them – or Else!

Dave Cyphers — Wed, 05 Jun 2013 18:44:18 +0000

It’s hard to say no to your owners. If they think they need a new brochure, email campaign, social approach – whatever – if you don’t answer their need, they will go off and do it themselves. Often the results make a mess of your efforts to build a cohesive brand, they usually look unprofessional and are likely not very effective. It’s amazing how many times a franchisor has started a project with us by sharing what several franchisees have attempted to execute on their own, saying “A number of our locations have this growing opportunity, looks like we need to create a campaign.” Then we find out that they have been striking out on their own for several years pursuing this new profit center or target audience before corporate really decided to take charge.

The point is, this is one of the easiest and most effective areas for corporate to provide support that can translate quickly to the bottom line. Yet this valuable marketing role tends to fall off our radar in the heat of everyday sales and operations:

Devote some time every month to identifying new profit centers, new target audiences, new ways to package or pitch products or services.
Facilitate and take credit for bringing your networks’ best ideas / best practices to the forefront.
Get enough input and feedback so you know you are creating marketing tools that will work in the real world – so the franchisee are not inclined to try to re-invent the wheel.
Shamelessly share success stories to reinforce the value of these tools and to encourage slow adopters.
When it’s time to renew, remind them of each new initiative you have championed!

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Creatively Leveraging Existing Interactive Technology and Frameworks

Lucas Hanyok — Fri, 31 May 2013 17:53:33 +0000

We in the creative world often ask ourselves, “Where do I begin?” We find inspiration through agency blogs or through stumbling on agency work through other outlets, like Twitter or Facebook. Then come sketches and brain storms and meetings and phone calls. The implementation slowly building through wireframes, sitemaps and further meetings with the minds. The implementation of interactive work is always building from an existing form of technology from the rudimentary wireframe to the latest front-end framework.

Leveraging these existing technologies (like the JQuery library and CSS frameworks) will always come down to a creative way to re-use what has already been done. Programmers, designers, builders, cooks and advertisers all re-use pieces of recipes and tools that have already been tested and proven. As a front-end web developer begins a project they want to use the latest technology and don’t want to completely re-invent the wheel. True creativity comes from knowing these existing tools and expanding on them or sometimes adding your own work to the framework, not always starting from scratch. Learning and building upon the basics is necessary for a short period of time, but we all should strive to grow into someone that can learn quickly and most importantly learn how to navigate new technologies to begin using them as soon as possible.

I came across a nice comparison chart to help you quickly get started using a CSS framework for web development here.

CSS Front end Frameworks with comparison By usabli.ca

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5-Minute Brand Gut Check

James Luparello — Fri, 24 May 2013 18:51:19 +0000

Much in the world of advertising has shifted over the years. The way we interact with customers is completely different from 5 years ago – not to mention the paradigm shifts from 40-50 years ago. As advertising professionals we have to think faster, more creatively and more strategically. We have to get messages across in a shorter time frame because consumers are always on the go. We have more technology at our finger tips than science fiction could have ever imagined. However, through the years, one thing still remains the same – the importance of a brand. As consumers, we are still surrounded (and at times, inundated) by the brands around us. We receive information from, and interact with brands on an almost minute by minute basis. We are exposed to brands in the mass marketplace, our company’s brand, our favorite brands that we choose to represent and even the personal brands of the individuals around us. Everything has a brand and every brand has a purpose.

Today, your company’s brand is the soul of who you are. Your brand dictates everything you do, down to the strategic way you think. Over the course of time things can shift and what you’re saying and what you’re doing are no longer aligned with who your brand says you are. Whether you find yourself in this situation or are proactively avoiding this situation, it’s time for a brand gut check. It’s time to answer one really important question: Am I who I said I was years ago? Take the next five minutes and introspectively look at your brand.

Challenge yourself to truly look at how you present your brand – Is what you’re saying, what you want to be heard? Is what you’re presenting, how you want to be perceived? Is what you’re thinking, pointing you in the direction you want to go? Is there a consistent and common thread tying what you say, think, feel and show together? Does your logo and corporate identity and tone match what you want to be seen? Does your tagline still define who you are?

If you can’t answer YES to all of those questions, it’s time to realign your brand to fit who you want to be. Your brand is who you are and if your brand is distorted so is the perception of you. Understand that a well-established brand should not be confused for market presence or brand awareness. You don’t have to be Nike or Apple to have a strong brand. At the end of the day when you are able to establish a strong brand, you have established a strong foundation for success. Although times have changed and will continue to evolve, a brand is still what a brand was – a vital tool that defines that very core of your business.

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Skin Care Case Study: Branded Packaging Gets Product on Shelves

Anna Forbes — Fri, 17 May 2013 14:40:45 +0000

Challenge

This revolutionary skin care line sought to break into the market and compete against well established, national brands. Armed with a truly effective product, a passionate leadership team and a modest budget, the brand’s management was seeking the most effective way to create retail partnerships for national distribution while connecting with consumers to create demand for the product line.

Strategy

With little to no mass advertising, the packaging was the primary means of communicating the brand’s distinction. Unfortunately, the old packaging was falling short of convincing retailers and consumers alike to try the product line. With no true brand message to stand on, a simple redesign wasn’t going to cut it. Thus the strategy was to go through the brand development process. After detailed secondary and primary research a new positioning strategy was developed that focused on the scientific formulation of the product line, which is what makes CoralActives both unique and effective.

The creative team then brought the new CoralActives brand to life with a new logo, tagline, colors, fonts and graphic elements that dramatized the unique selling proposition. The first order of business was to execute the new brand into strategic packaging designs. The new packaging would have to convince retailers to make room on their shelves for the product line while also popping off the shelves with a powerful brand message that would resonate with consumers and move them to try CoralActives.

Results

It’s clear that the brand development and new packaging has played a critical role in expanding retail distribution. Since the project was completed, the sales team has met with retailers and secured shelf space in hundreds of stores across the country including Wegmans, Kinney Drugs, Sears and Bartell Drugs. Most notably, retailers who previously declined the product line based on the appearance alone were happy to make a distribution deal once they saw the newly branded packaging.

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