Do you have a “Creative Noggin”?

19 11 2010

OK , so I promise this is not a blog-writing cop-out. I just simply happened upon this article today and was jumping up in my cushioned ergonomic chair saying “YES! YES!”

My whole life people have always been telling me “You’re so creative.” But it’s also a compliment I subconsciously tend to brush off — like I don’t deserve it. I’ve always been confused about my creativity because my genes are comprised of a dual-MBA electrical engineer father that worked at Sprint for 25 years and a non-college educated, stay-at-home mother. I’m the youngest of 5. My oldest brother is a Gastro Doctor. My oldest sister holds an MBA in Urban Studies. My other brother is successful in the computer business. And my other sister worked her way up to a VP Executive at an internal marketing firm. Then there’s me. I went to art school. (I still to this day am marveled by the fact that my parents didn’t say “You want to do WHAT?”)

Thanks to this article, I now know it’s really less about genes and more about my education and nurture. It’s a way of approaching things. So looks like I need to go back and thank my teachers and parents for allowing me to explore; to draw—and think—”outside the lines.”

I’m also a big believer that kids need to learn from an early age to use their imagination, explore and learn to problem solve. Although my Dad was an engineer, he was incredibly creative in his problem solving.

Here’s the article. Enjoy!


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San Antonio Ad Agency Lands Demanding New Client

9 10 2009

Creative Noggin is proud to announce our newest, most demanding client ever. He’s a brand new start up and despite his apparent lack of communication skills and complete inability to understand the value we bring to the table, we’ve got to admit, he is definitely our cutest client!

We can already tell that he sees things from a completely different perspective, so there’s bound to be many sleepless nights, unnecessary temper tantrums and perhaps some reverse psychology in the works when trying to sell ideas. But we’ll do such a great job he’ll be, pardon the expression, peeing in his pants with excitement.

Introducing Hudson Everett Marlowe. Born October 5th weighing in at 8lbs 1oz and stretching 20″. Congratulations Tracy,  Mike and Maya (big sister)!

MAKE MY LOGO BIGGER!

MAKE MY LOGO BIGGER!

by Trish McCabe Rawls


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Do you truly understand your market?

24 06 2009

I know what you’re thinking.  Know your market?  Duh!  Of course I need to know my market!  I wasn’t born yesterday.

But I’m telling you, I am surprised every day at how many marketers out there know only the bare bones about who they are hoping will buy their services or products.  How can you hope to talk with these people if you don’t understand who they are?

Problem number two…companies who say their market is “everyone.”  There’s no such thing as having a market who is “everyone.”  Your market may be huge, but you still need to understand them and why they buy, or should buy, from  you.

Whenever an ad agency starts a creative project, a document called a creative brief is prepared by the account executive.  The purpose of the brief is to distill down all of the critical, project-specific information and weed through all of the superfluous data so that the creative team can execute a strategic piece that will help the client meet the goal they are trying to accomplish with said project. 

Each brief has a section dedicated to the market that this project is trying to reach.  I’ve seen hundreds of these briefs over the years and know that this is one of the key areas that really differentiates a strategic agency account executive from the typical order taking account executive.  Unfortunately, the order taker tends to be the norm at most agencies. 

The typical market section on a creative brief will have three basic areas filled out.  Here’s an example of what you might see:

Gender: 60% female; 40% male

Age: 35-65

Household income: $50,000-$75,000

Now what does this arm the creative team with about this market?  Basically, squat.

Our job as business owners, marketers and/or account executives is to really, TRULY understand our market and put together a killer brief before moving forward on a project.  As an agency, this is one of the services that we, of course, provide for our clients.  But most of our really adept clients already know this information when we first engage with them.  After all, how can you make certain that your product or service is meeting your client or customer’s needs if you don’t know who they are and what makes them tick.

Here’s what you should know about your market:

  1. Who are they?  This is the gender, age range and household income part.  Drill down as far as you can so that you don’t have just broad, meaningless ranges.  If you have a large range of ages, for instance, they may have different reasons for purchasing so you may want to break this market down further and segment them out. 
  2. Who are they, part two?  This is where you really dive into what really drives your market.  Why do they get out of bed each day?  What is their top of mind concern?  Describe your typical consumer?  Describe your ideal consumer?  You need to understand both and figure out who truly is your ideal target.  You can define multiple markets, but identify your primary, then secondary and tertiary markets.
  3. Why should they use your product?  What is the benefit to them?  What problem does it solve?
  4. What differentiates your product from other products?
  5. What appeals to them as a whole?  Are they primarily business owners looking to promote their business?  Are they moms of young children looking to keep their kids safe? 
  6. Where are they?  Is there a geographic nature to them?  Do they hang out at the mall?  Do they spend a large % of their work week in airports?
  7. When should you reach them?  If you understand the cycles that they go through on a daily basis, is there a point at which you can really capture their attention? 
  8. How should you reach them?  What is your ideal medium?
  9. And what voice should you use?  Professional?  Casual?  Empathetic mom?  You want your market to know that you really get them so it’s a good idea to use a voice that mirrors their own thoughts.

Okay, I know that’s a lot.  But if you keep these things in mind when you’re doing an exploration of your market you’ll end up with a much better executed and successful end result, I promise you. 

How do you find these things out?  Talk with your market!  Also, the Internet is a great tool.  Social media, such as blogs and Twitter, can offer invaluable insight into markets.  This ah-hah likely won’t come overnight and will take time.  Plus, things can change with your market so make certain you continue to stay abreast of market trends and updates.  You want to keep your finger on the pulse of what is top of mind.

Last, go ahead and ask your agency if you can approve their creative brief on your next project.  If all it has under target market is age, gender and HHI, then you may have your answer on why their marketing isn’t driving more sales.

by Tracy Marlowe


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Blogging for Business 101: San Antonio AMA Marketing Mastery Series

4 06 2009

Here are my slides from today’s talk on “Blogging for Business 101″ with the San Antonio chapter of the American Marketing Association, as part of their Marketing Mastery Series.

Hope you enjoyed it!    Blogging for Business 101

A quick update to this post (at 11:20am on Thursday, June 4th).  If you’re having any trouble downloading these slides, please feel free to email me at tracy@creativenoggin.com and I’ll be happy to email you a version of the presentation that may be more compatible with your computer (the one posted is from Microsoft Office ’97-’03 since I thought that would work with most systems, but I can also email you an Office/Power Point ’07 version if that works better).  Thanks!

PS.  If you were at the presentation, please feel free to leave your comments here.  I’d love your feedback!  And again, thanks for attending!


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Blogging for Business 101: from the San Antonio AMA

28 05 2009

I’m giving a talk next week, June 4th at 8:00 am, on blogging for your business, sponsored by the San Antonio chapter of the American Marketing Association (AMA).  It’s free to members and only $25 for non-members. 

Here’s the skinny on what I’ll be talking about…

Even in a floundering economy, internet marketing is experiencing tremendous growth.  After years of hesitancy by some, it is finally being embraced by mainstream marketers as an extremely high-value, low-cost channel for engaging our target markets. 

One facet of internet marketing that any business, large or small, can easily employ is blogging.  There are many ways that blogging can benefit your business:

  • Establish Credibility.  It positions you as the expert in your industry or on a specific topic relevant to your market.
  • Increase your SEO.  Search Engine marketing provides a phenomenal opportunity to get in front of potential customers who are actually out searching for you!  (Much different from traditional advertising.)  Strategic blogging can help you capture more of that traffic.
  • Build a Community.  A blog gives your company the chance to share your knowledge and perspectives with a large audience and to captivate individuals who share the same viewpoints.
  • Know your Market.  Reading and writing blogs, and engaging in the blog community, gives you a better opportunity to understand your customer and what it is that really makes them tick so that you can better address them with your products and/or services.
  • Low Cost.  Many blogging platforms are free and all it costs you to maintain a blog is time.  Compared to traditional advertising methods this is an extremely low cost with the potential for a much higher return on your investment.

In this one-hour class, we will learn:

  • How to get started.  We’ll explore blog services and what you’ll need to know to easily launch your blog.
  • Who should write your posts.  We’ll talk about who the best person is to write your posts, what “voice” they should use and how to develop a following.
  • What to write about.  Now that the blog is launched, what do you write about?  We’ll talk about how to come up with post ideas and keep the ideas flowing.
  • How to get traffic to your blog.  There are many tricks-of-the-trade that we’ll share on how to promote your blog and boost your traffic.

If you’re interested, you can RSVP by emailing rsvp@sa-ama.org by Monday, June 1st by 5 pm.  Hope to see you there!

by Tracy Marlowe


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Can you ever stop branding?

22 05 2009

At a meeting the other day, Tracy and I were asked a question we had never really been asked before.

“So, when can we stop ‘branding’?” the client asked.

This particular client had really stepped out of its comfort zone and ramped up branding efforts in order to make its public persona match the incredible level of its service. For companies that have never done a true branding exercise, this takes a great amount of trust in their marketing partner, not to mention a bit of money from their accounting department. So kudos to them!

When a company launches its first major branding campaign there is always a honeymoon phase—the time when the company, its employees, and the public is interested in this new look, attitude or personality. The “branding high” I like to call it. As this phase slows, the client is left wondering “what’s next.”

Tracy and I both looked at each other knowing he was was expecting us to give him a date—or at least a vague time frame—but we knew that he really knew the answer. And we almost simultaneously said:

“Never.”

That is the whole point of branding. You want to establish a consistent look and message—a personality, a promise that your customers can come to know. It describes you so perfectly that you can’t imagine presenting another side. Hence the definition of “brand”: to “indelibly mark something — meaning it never goes away.”

With further prodding we realized that what was really at the heart of the concern was making any future branding accountable to the number crunchers. While most branding work is measurable to a degree, it is not like a price and item direct mail piece for a widget that you can easily justify by the widget sales. But you can tell over time by pre and post research studies if your branding is working. And for this client, it has been.

I’ll segue for just a minute.  The purpose of branding is to create an emotional connection, establish a memorable and desirable image so when the time comes for a consumer to consider your product, they will have strong feelings about it.  Price and item advertising with NO brand, is meant to merely solicit a response and does NOT have any emotional connection.

Knowing the client was concerned about justifying further costs to the accounting team we explained that once a brand is established, (or well on its way) and especially in these economic times, there are ways to make your advertising vehicles work a little harder for you. For example, I’m sure all of these land developers would love to just have big ads touting the beauty of their development. But right now, they have got to leverage those ads with some strong call to action offers to get potential buyers in the door. Or you might see companies that previously ran beautiful TV spots now putting offers at the end. That’s okay — as long as the brand stays intact.

Part of the problem is the various definitions of branding. Branding is not the vehicle (ie. TV, national ads, radio, etc) — it’s the message and personality. A good marketing partner will always consider your needs, budget and goals while developing a marketing plan that doesn’t have to sacrifice your brand.

by Trish McCabe Rawls


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Five Interesting Questions Clients SHOULD Ask Their Marketing Agency—But Never Do.

7 04 2009

If you’re interviewing marketing agencies, be sure you ask the following questions.  It would also be wise to ask them of your current agency.  You may be surprised at the answers.  And the agency will likely be thrown off guard by the insightful questions!

5. Will the actual creatives that create the work be the ones presenting us the work or will it always be the Creative Boss that presents?
This is a hot button for me. Accountability. It’s something that can get lost in the plethora of layers in a creative department. If there’s one thing I’ve learned in my 18+ years as an art director, it’s that if the one that creates the work isn’t the one that has to present it, there’s less drive to really hit it out of the park. Knowing you will be the one standing up in front of the client representing the agency — and YOUR ideas– forces you to REALLY understand what the project needs to accomplish and fuels the desire to produce great work. It trains a creative to do what’s right for the client, not just what will please the boss.

4. Will the team we see at the initial pitch, still be our team six months later?
Most agencies present their senior team to pitch and close new business. Obviously, you want to present your A team; the ones with the most experience who can put on the best dog and pony show.  However, once a client is “sitting back in his chair” and things are going smoothly is about the time when work starts to get handed down to less tenured employees. And that senior team moves on to the next pitch. This less experienced team has a lower hourly rate, but you’ll still be charged the higher rate to cover the senior level people that have to approve/train/mentor the project back and forth. Although this is pretty standard procedure at most agencies, asking the question will let them know you are aware of the inner workings of the agency and will keep them on their toes. And if the quality of the work starts to change, you might inquire.

3. Can you explain how a job/project flows through your agency?
I worked at an agency once that created a flow chart to show how a project should flow through the agency. The team assigned to the task must have worked 6 months concocting this map. They printed it out and posted it down the hallway of the front lobby. Probably 20-30 sheets of letter-sized paper, at least, connected like Leggos standing as a testament to how muddied the process had become. The creators of this masterpiece stood before it like proud parents.  If you’re agency actually provides you something like that, run as fast as you can in the opposite direction. Just remember that every step in that kind of process represents many unnecessary hours billed to you.

2. Does the owner of your agency come from a creative background or an account service background?
Naturally, the owner of the agency will influence the aura of the agency, much like the alpha lion in the pride. If the owner comes from a creative background, odds are the emphasis will be on producing award-winning creative and the morale tends to be fun and loose—sometimes at the expense of efficiency. If the owner comes from an account background, odds are it will be focused on the bottom line and squeezing every penny at the expense of compelling creative. The best scenario is when you have both represented at the top working collaboratively.

And the number one question you should ask…..
1. How well do your creatives and account executives get along?
The two key players an any account will be the lead creative and the lead account executive. The stereotypical working style between these two is for them is to butt heads and cause enough friction to light fire upon eye contact. I don’t know why, but for some reason, most account service and creatives just don’t get along. At most agencies they are even physically separated with workspaces on opposite ends of the office. Admittedly, I have worked with some pretty backbone-less account executives that see their job as the client’s gum-chewing order-taker instead of discussing requests strategically and objectively. I have also seen some creative types that stood so high on a pedestal that they needed oxygen tanks to survive. Ask them to try an alternate font or color and you’d think you’d just asked them to run naked through the office. On the other hand, if the account executive and the creative have mutual respect for each other and share in the goal of creating a results-oriented creative product, everyone will benefit. I can’t even begin to explain the difference in how it reflects on the end product and the overall morale of your marketing team.


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San Antonio Advertising Agency hits the blogosphere!

29 01 2009

Hello readers!  We’re so thrilled to be posting our first entry into the new Creative Noggin blog.  It’s so cool that the blogosphere gives us the chance to reach out to our clients, colleagues and the San Antonio and South Texas Marketing Community, and to talk about the top-of-mind concerns that we are facing as marketers in today’s business climate. 

What will you find here?  We’ll be talking about branding, how to better reach your markets, cost effective means to leverage social marketing and advertising as a whole. 

We’ll also post updates on the happenings at the agency.  What we’re up to.  What we’re bragging about these days!  As well as challenges that we may be facing.

We look forward to seeing you!

And just so that we keep this content pertinent to what people are looking for, let us know what you would find useful.  Do you want to hear more about social marketing?  The evolution of marketing and advertising?  Direct marketing?  What would interest you?

by Tracy Marlowe and Trish McCabe


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