Okay, a lot of the time.

So, who better to inaugurate the Straight Talk Speaker Series hosted by
Hoffman | Lewis than the ‘H’ in H|L?

No one was the answer we came up with. And on August 18th, Bob entertained and engaged the audience of more than thirty people with his speech entitled “The Three Most Annoying Trends in Advertising.”

For a sample of what Bob—author of the book The Ad Contrarian and his blog by the same title—had to say, click below.

The Straight Talk Speaker’s Series will be a quarterly event held at Maryland House in the Central West End. According to the invitation, it’s a “gathering of top marketing leaders to listen, learn, discuss and debate the most talked-about trends taking place in advertising today, and what it means for tomorrow.”
Stay tuned for an announcement about the next speaker.

And, yes, there were drinks.

Well, as obvious as it may seem, not all agencies maintain both standards.

You’ll see work on their website that sure looks pretty, but if you ask how it was received, you’ll get a shrug and a reminder that, well, it sure looks pretty.

Or, perhaps worse, they’ll pepper their presentations with ironclad case studies leading to . . . wait for it . . . wait . . . build-up . . . steady climb, then sharp drop off to mediocre work, leaving one to wonder whether they thought more about the creative process or the process of defending the “creative.”

This is not such an occurrence.

A year after launching Touchstone Energy’s Together We Save campaign, agency and client are both extremely pleased. In fact, Hoffman | Lewis is currently developing a second wave of materials for the campaign. Stay tuned.

In the meantime, check out the spots for a refresher. And read up on some of the analytics below to see how the campaign is working thus far.

- The Together We Save campaign for Touchstone Energy Cooperatives is the only national energy efficiency advertising campaign

- The site has averaged over 10,000 unique visitors a month

- Users have calculated nearly $19,000,000 in potential home energy savings

- The site’s message resonates globally, with regular visitors from all over the world, including Canada, India, United Kingdom, China, Malaysia, Mexico, Germany and Australia

- The greatest number of referrals to the site (next to organic search results) come from emails forwarded from friends after visiting the site

How often do you find yourself mired in a sea of numbers and ideas debating what to do tactically while pushing the long term strategic reason or “Big Picture” to the back burner and losing focus?  It’s very easy to do.  Hence the quote.

My son and I were making Duncan Hines brownies with the some sort of caramel swirl and nuts on top for a family function.  We jumped right in and started prepping the bowls, spoons, oven, counter space, pans and everything we thought we needed.  We had a deadline and were worried they wouldn’t be ready in time.  We pulled the pouches of ingredients out of the box and placed them on the counters with everything else.  Our stuff was everywhere.

Then, we stood there frozen with a vast array of brownie making materials everywhere.  We were a bit overwhelmed.  What were we doing again?

“We need the box Dad,” said my son.

The box.  The picture on the box is why we bought the brownies in the first place.  The back and sides of the box contained all the tactical information we needed to bring the image of the brownies on the front to life.  Both Duncan Hines and my son and I started with the big picture of the brownies.  That’s what they wanted to sell us and that’s what we wanted to buy…the big picture.

Every project should start with a big pretty picture for the front of your box in order to stay focused as you assemble the resources necessary to bring the picture to life.  Please don’t discard or set your box aside while you are assembling the ingredients.  You need to look at it frequently and show it to others.

By the way, the brownies did not look exactly like the picture.  But they were very good and no one knew except my son and I.

Original Creative Approach:

Agency personnel photographed folks in a restaurant after ordering a Whopper, then the photo was printed on a sticker and placed on the Whopper wrapper before giving it to the customer to reiterate it was made “just for them.” That’s great. Message served, right? Oh no…then some genius thought “let’s get their permission and use the the digital photo files for a banner.” You’ll see the results of the banner here.

Is it just me or does this seem really labor intensive and cumbersome for the restaurant staff? Not to mention, those photos are horrible! Who was the photographer? The Art Director’s blind cousin? I want to file this under epic fail.

Advertising needs to be smart. We kicked this around a bit and my team would have done it in reverse. Have web surfers upload their own photo to a rich media banner and the files then become part of the banner (upon approval). Been done already, right? Here is where it differentiates itself. The users who take part then are given a printable coupon for participating with their face appearing on said coupon. And yes. It could all take place in the banner in real time. The coupon is then downloaded or it is emailed to the user (I like the latter because the restaurant gains an email address for later communications) and the coupon is redeemed at the restaurant.

If you want to get really crazy the restaurant staff can cut out the image on the coupon and put it on the wrapper. Same result as the original creative concept without ad agency staff getting in the way of QSR employees during a lunch rush. I personally know what it’s like to get in the way, we really respect QSR staff. Which is why we created this and this.

But who knows, the agency probably was looking to burn hours at the end of the year…either way, I like our approach. It’s smart advertising.

Our interactive team loves a good challenge. Come to us with an idea and let’s kick it around. We’ll find a better way to wrap a burger.

Have a good week!

Jim Murphy, Director of Interactive Media
Hoffman | Lewis St. Louis

To commemorate the achievements of this institution and those who are enshrined within, the state of Missouri asked Hoffman | Lewis to place an ad in the 20th Anniversary museum program.

A simple, thoughtful tip of the cap was created. But there was a chance to do more. With a few conventions coming to Kansas City  in the coming months, a collector’s set of three posters was produced to tout this one-of-a-kind gem to visitors from out-of-state.

This microsite features webcams that let you try to spot said trolls, snap pictures of them, and submit them for entry into a contest to win trips and prizes.

It uses Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Flickr, and Spotify (music to listen to while you’re troll spotting of course).
And the site itself it sticky as hell because it makes you want to stare at your screen, waiting for that damn troll to appear.

Smart stuff, nice use of social media tools – go check it out.

And for another approach, go check this out, too.  Another microsite from Skane that I linked to from the troll site that features an animated British character traveling around Skane.  Great example of low budget production and another idea that brings together several new media tools – Twitter, Flickr, Google maps, YouTube, QR codes…

These Swedes are doing it right.  Just like we did for our Kidnapped Chicagoan campaign.  Only ours is much better… obviously.

Enjoy.

1. People appreciate the personal attention.

2. You can truly assess their tone on the phone.

3. You can explain yourself better than in an e-mail.

Basically you diffuse the situation or get to the bottom of it sooner so you can both move forward.

Tyler Martin
VP, Client Relations
Hoffman Lewis St. Louis

However, I have some concerns with the draft legislation about online privacy. Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for online privacy. But I look at it like the ‘no-call’ list. Tell me you don’t want it and I’m fine with that. I’ll leave you alone. The new bill has a target in site that takes the idea of the ‘no-call’ list a little further than necessary. I’m speaking in particular of a common digital marketing practice known as behavioral targeting.

What is behavioral targeting? Simply put, it is when a publisher or company places a cookie on your computer when you visit Site A. As you continue to browse the web, your viewing habits are loosely tracked, even though you are no longer on Site A. The cookie from Site A contains a loose profile about you and your online preferences, like what type of sites you visit and content you prefer. When ad placement opportunities on one of the sites you visit matches your ‘profile’ relevant ads are displayed rather than the annoying Refinance Your Home Dancing Aliens.

Used properly, I see behavioral targeting as beneficial to a consumer. You are getting advertising that a user like yourself finds valuable.

Behavioral targeting does not retain your SS#, Name, etc. If it did, I would have had my identity stolen a long time ago.

I know this technology sounds scary, and I’m sure there are people smart enough to use it for questionable purposes. But that would traditionally happen only on sites of a questionable nature in the first place.

In Ad Age you’ll find an article on this topic. You can find it here.

If really bored, you can download and read the legislation draft as well.

Let me give you my point of view why I’m against this legislation AND why businesses and their marketers should care.

Behavioral targeting allows us, as an advertising and marketing agency, to better spend our clients media budget by identifying a particular type of user. Like TV, by displaying online advertising to consumers who would have a greater propensity to purchase your products we are providing a better service to our clients by spending their money on ads where our heavy users reside. We use behavioral targeting extensively and see very positive results. The conversion rate traditionally netted out about 35-40% higher than non-behaviorally targeted online ads. 35-40% better results is a pretty compelling reason.

Anyway, enough of the soapbox. I’m not asking you to write your congressman, although it couldn’t hurt… Just know this technology is out there – at least for a while longer. And is threatened.

Have a great week!

Jim Murphy
Director of Interactive Services, Hoffman | Lewis St. Louis

When you start with a line like, “Don’t take less of a vacation, take a vacation for less in Missouri,” you’re bound to get dads pulling kids on skis behind lawn tractors and couples taking a spa day at the local public fountain, right? No? Okay, let’s back up.

Fact #1: Hilarity is not a natural byproduct of extensive research and focus group testing. Fact #2: Tourism ads must consist of wall-to-wall destination shots. Fact #3: Don’t trust facts.

Going into this campaign, team H/L delved deep into research, finding that although the recession had impacted traveler motivations, 70% of them still expected to take a vacation and that value was a top driver for making travel decisions. Armed with this knowledge, several different concepts were created, four of which went into testing. As the process unfolded, it became clear that not only was a value message important, but that humor more effectively drew people in and broke through the clutter.

So let’s recap… By following all the rules of conventional tourism marketing, we created a campaign that breaks all the rules of conventional tourism marketing. Funny how that works out.  Enjoy.