Advertising... honestly!

Pasadena On The Brink

2012-01-22T20:55:00.000-08:00

Chris Leinberger addresses Pasadena stakeholders about General Plan slow growth dangers.

The City of Pasadena is at a tipping point. On one hand, it has the potential to set a standard for urban excellence for the nation as it did during the rehabilitation of Old Pasadena in the 70’s and 80’s. We worked together to turn a slum into one of the premiere destinations in Southern California. On the other, if we allow Pasadena to be smothered under any of the ill-thought out, growth-stifling General Plans being proposed, Pasadena could suffer a strangling stagnation for the next 20 years.

On the upside, our potential to excel is stunning. According to Christopher Leinberger, a Brookings Institute fellow, recognized as one of the top urban thinkers of all time, we can reverse the last decade of decline and decay in our City, if we just take the necessary steps to extend the walkable urban community of Old Pasadena throughout our central district. If we chose to move in that direction, we can reduce traffic, reduce pollution, increase revenues for our schools and city services, and accelerate our recovery from the recession.
What’s more, he adds, Pasadena has already done the hard part. A thriving walking urban community already exists. We can see the success of Transit oriented development centered around the Del Mar and Memorial Park stations. These developments are already reducing pollution and green house gasses by 50 to 80 % compared to the Drivable Suburban Communities that surround the city. And if we only continue this kind of development, we will achieve additional benefits: increased revenues to support our schools and city services and the creation of thousands of jobs.
This "teaser" video is based on a 1 hour and 45 minute video of Chris Leiberger's seminar to residents and business people of Pasadena. This edit was created by Michael Marks, a film student studying urban design at Cal State Monterey Bay, at Pasadena Advertising Marketing Design. Special thanks to Robert Montano for archival footage of Old Pasadena and Steve Mulheim for additional graphics and maps of Pasadena's Gold Line transit oriented development.

The San Gabriel Valley Sees the Future is On Track

2011-11-29T12:46:00.000-08:00

Lookie, lookie. Our interactive maps for the Foothill Extension Authority just went live.

The Azusa interactive map highlights Gold Line station locations and designs, connecting bus routes, bike routes and the walking radius from each station.

On November 29, the Metro Gold Line Foothill Extension Construction Authority posted six new interactive maps we created here at Pasadena Advertising Marketing Design. They all show how easy it is to use bus routes that serve local neighborhoods to connect to the Gold Line, and also display bike routes, local landmarks and attractions, and walking distances from each station.
Now residents of the next five cities on the Gold Line route can get a preview of the full potential that the Foothill Extension can have on their lives. They can visualize how they get to and from Gold Line stations or to their final destination, and how much more productive they can be using light rail over riding solo in their cars.
With a click or rollover, each city’s residents can see not only how the Gold Line connects to their neighborhood bus routes, but also how it connects their neighborhoods to the rest of the San Gabriel Valley – all the way to downtown Los Angeles.
The interactive maps that the Foothill Extension Construction Authority released today cover all six stations in the five corridor cities along the Foothill Extension from Arcadia to Azusa. The maps – located on the city pages of the Authority's website - highlight many of the important points of interest along the 11.5-mile segment currently under construction.
“The excitement in the Foothill Cities is growing, and we wanted to create maps that graphically displayed the promise of what is to come,” explains PAMD owner and President Suzanne Marks.
The maps are easily accessible by clicking on the interactive map links on the city pages of Arcadia, Monrovia, Duarte, Irwindale, and Azusa stations, at the foothillextension.org site.
Construction has already begun, and now the future is in sight.
A little background information:
PASADENA Advertising, Marketing & Design is an award-winning, woman-owned, creative advertising agency located at 51 W. Dayton St. in Old Pasadena. Owners Suzanne Marks (member WBE) and Tony Nino have a long history of public service including support of Public Education and the American Cancer Society. Tony currently serves on the Old Pasadena Management District board and Suzanne is the marketing chair of the Boy Scouts of LA board.

Scouting Got Game – and We Helped

2011-11-03T16:55:00.000-07:00

When you invite the commissioner of Baseball, Bud Selig, to be the main speaker at your fundraiser, you’ve got to kick things up a notch or two. We helped the Boy Scouts Los Angeles Area Council create a compelling campaign to fill the seats and an inspirational environment to capture the imaginations, and open the wallets, of 270 invited donors. Pasadena Advertising created all the graphic support from invitations and fund raising collateral, to table talkers and a set design made up entirely of banners.

Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig speaks against a backdrop of iconic Boy Scout Banners.

The banners for the set, designed by Pasadena’s David Ensz, an Eagle Scout himself, avoided the overly used red, white and blue for colors exclusively associated with Scouting. “Olive, khaki and crimson are the colors I remember most from Scout uniforms and badges,” explained David, “They are an intrinsic part of the memories Scouts hold onto from their meetings, scout camps and Jamborees.”

All our materials used the same color palette and vocabulary.

The graphic style was reinforced in all the support materials, from the Eagle "hero graphic" to the program, pamphlets and response cards. The Character Counts event was primarily a fundraiser to support Scouting and the youth of our community, but it was also an opportunity to raise awareness for Scouting, and recognize the support of deserving volunteers and benefactors. Honorees included Los Angeles Area Council Board members Don Crocker, Rita Illig Liebelt, Dave Meshulam and Robb Scoular. Charles E. Blake, Sr., the Presiding Bishop of The Church of God and Christ, was presented with the The Whitney M. Young Jr. Service Award

The Scouting program focuses on leadership, character, development, and important life skills. This event makes it possible for the "Friends of Scouting" campaign to fund programs that make it possible for youth living in poverty to gain the skills and citizenship they need to become assets to society.

We are proud to be a part of it.

Falling For Scouting

2011-10-14T19:01:00.000-07:00

Involvement or commitment? The difference is easy to see. Consider scrambled eggs and ham. The chicken was involved, the pig was committed. Here at Pasadena, our relationship to the Boy Scouts is a whole lot closer to commitment, but without the carving, curing and pan frying. One prime example of this is how we dealt with the Boy Scouts Los Angeles Area Council's "Over the Edge" fund raising event. We promoted the excitement and thrill of dropping 27 stories over the side of the Westin Bonaventure Hotel in Los Angeles, but we took the extra step – literally.

Pasadena Advertising Creative Director and Eagle Scout David Ensz strapped on the full-body industrial harness and rappelling gear for the 250 foot drop... then took the big step. He had his very own cheering section down below near the pool deck a safe distance away from the landing zone, shouting encouragement and taking pictures. Thanks to the The Los Angeles Fire, and Building and Safety Departments, every precaution was taken to preserve life and limb. And in the end, the Los Angeles Area Council of the Boy Scouts raised over $135,000 to support inner city youth through Scouting.

Celebrating, Old Pasadena

2011-10-07T17:08:00.000-07:00

Speaking as a totally unbiased Marketing Director at Old Pasadena Management District (OPMD), I have to say… Old Pas knows how to have a good time.

This month alone we’ve got the ongoing “Locals Only” Thursday specials with great savings throughout Old Pasadena for anyone who lives or works anywhere in Pasadena. And on Sunday the 16,th we are holding our annual Cultural Dance Festival from 1:00-6:00 p.m… Which oh by the way, is FREE… and everyone’s invited. And of course this is the first week of “DineLA,” and six of our restaurants are participating: La Grande Orange Café, POP Champagne & Dessert Bar, Quadrupel Brasserie, Sushi Roku – Pasadena, The Melting Pot on Colorado, Vertical Wine Bistro, Villa SORRISO and Yujean Kang's Gourmet Chinese Cuisine.

That not enough to celebrate? Let’s talk Halloween. From Saturday, October 22 through Monday, October 31, there are stunningly Spooktacular activities going on throughout the district: kids pumpkin decorating, store-to-store trick-or-treating, costumed characters “meet and greet,” and free outdoor screenings of Monsters Inc. and Corpse Bride. Still not satisfied? How about free haunted photos, a kid-friendly haunted house tour, and more!

There's a lot happening all over town, starting at One Colorado.

Halloween eve, Monday the 31st, features free store-to-store trick-or-treating at over 75 stores and restaurants in Old Pasadena starting at 4pm. There’ll be a variety of festive candy and confections for all the little ones. Free caramel apples will be given out on Colorado Blvd and at One Colorado Courtyard kids can get free haunted professional photos against a festive background among hundreds of pumpkins. One Colorado is also the site of free outdoor screenings of “Monsters Inc.” at 6pm and Tim Burton’s “Corpse Bride” at 8pm. And for a little variety, you can meet and greet various popular Halloween costumed characters who will be roaming Old Pasadena on Halloween evening.

And for those who love a little Halloween Horror, up-close-and-personal, the Old Town Haunt, Pasadena’s award-winning scary haunted house is back, dwelling in the basement of the historical Union Savings Bank Building where rumor has it, mysterious occurrences have taken place in the buildings’ deadly 109 year history Now the building is open to the public for chilling tours into the catacombs where ghosts and goblins meet from 7 pm-12 am. A lights-on, child friendly tour and walk-thru is also available from 12pm-4pm on Sunday, October 30.

So, celebrate the SPIRITS of the season with us in Old Pasadena. You’ll have a frightfully good time.

All Kirk Sellman wanted was to play with his 3-year old again

2011-09-11T21:28:00.001-07:00

For over a decade, Kirk had put up with numbness, first in his feet, then his legs and finally all of his lower organs. But for over a year, things were going south rapidly. He fell often and fell hard. He frightened his 3-year old, and was in fear for his life. When the neurologists and neurosurgeons at USC examined his CAT scan, they found a tumor that had compressed his spinal cord to the thickness of a ribbon.

Kirk relates this experience of facing the consequences of a thoracic vertebra 7 level schwannoma, and his treatment, a gross total resection of the tumor by neurosurgeon, Patrick Hsieh, M.D. Graphic scans show the extent of the damage done by the tumor and the relief that Doctor Hsieh and his team were able give Kirk. More than just the ability to stand, and walk and regain control of his body. He was able to rebuild his life and rejoin his family.

This is just one of thirteen videos that Pasadena Advertising Marketing and Design produced for the USC Keck School Of Medicine: true stories of normal, healthy people whose everyday lives were suddenly shattered by catastrophic medical emergencies no one could predict or prepare for. The patients themselves tell their stories of survival with the help of their doctors: the neurologists, neuroradiologists and neurosurgeons of the Keck School of Medicine at USC.
This is the kind of information my wife and I wished we'd had when our daughter’s life was nearly ended by a brain hemorrhage in Scotland in 2007. We spent hours pouring over the Internet scouring all the information we could find on aneurysms and the treatment, coil embolization. Most of what we found was so arcane and technical that we could not truly grasp what was happening. We created these videos for people like us – people who need immediate answers, to urgent questions, in idioms they can easily understand.
With these videos at their fingertips, patients, friends and families dealing with life threatening neurological threats will finally have a place to turn for practical answers that they can understand.

These videos were conceived and produced by Tony Nino and Suzanne Marks at Pasadena Advertising Marketing Design.
The director and DP was James OKeeffe and the editor was Peter Bayer.

Annie Nelson - Her World Changed in a Breath

2011-09-03T17:55:00.000-07:00

Annie remembers the day a blinding headache, vomiting and loss of balance sent her to the emergency room and began a day of terrifying revelations. Her doctors could not control her symptoms, and couldn't find a cause until CT scan revealed a massive acoustic neuroma, eighth cranial nerve brain tumor that was literally crushing her cerebellum. The doctors immediately scheduled surgery, and advised her to get prepped immediately. She said no.

Annie is a fighter, an activist and the founder of the American Soldiers Network dedicated to raising awareness for the needs of our veterans, our injured soldiers, their families and the challenges they all face during the reintegration process when they return from Iraq and Afghanistan. She takes nothing for granted. She tells how she immediately called on friends and colleagues and found one of the premiere neurosurgeons in the country, Steven Giannotta, M.D. at USC, and convinced him to see her right away.
Dr. Gianotta explains how her tumor, while benign, had grown so large, and was impinging on so many vital nerves and tissues, that only a surgical solution, a retrosigmoid craniotomy, was viable. His task at this point was not merely to save her life but spare her facial nerves
This is just one of thirteen videos that Pasadena Advertising Marketing and Design produced for the USC Keck School Of Medicine: true stories of normal, healthy people whose everyday lives were suddenly shattered by catastrophic medical emergencies no one could predict or prepare for. The patients themselves tell their stories of survival with the help of their doctors: the neurologists, neuroradiologists and neurosurgeons of the Keck School of Medicine at USC.
This is the kind of information my wife and I wished we'd had when our daughter’s life was nearly ended by a brain hemorrhage in Scotland in 2007. We spent hours pouring over the Internet scouring all the information we could find on aneurysms and the treatment, coil embolization. Most of what we found was so arcane and technical that we could not truly grasp what was happening. We created these videos for people like us – people who need immediate answers, to urgent questions, in idioms they can easily understand.
With these videos at their fingertips, patients, friends and families dealing with life threatening neurological threats will finally have a place to turn for practical answers that they can understand.

These videos were conceived and produced by Tony Nino and Suzanne Marks at Pasadena Advertising Marketing Design.
The director and DP was James OKeeffe and the editor was Peter Bayer.

Doing businesses good

2011-09-01T11:11:00.000-07:00

Over ten thousand visitors gathered for the wildly popular “Make MusicPasadena.”

On WednesdayAugust 17, at our OPMD first Marketing Committee meeting after measuring the success of “Make Music Pasadena,” we held an informal roundtable on the most effective waysto attract and retain customers. As the head of Marketing, I was specifically interested in how OPMD’sefforts were making the merchant's efforts easier. But we didn’t exactly ask that question.Thank goodness.

We asked, “What hasworked best to attract and retain customers for your business?” Theoverwhelming answer was “Customer Service.” All the merchants around the tableagreed. Everyone was eager to share what had worked, and, even moreemphatically, what had not worked for them in their own businesses. Thispromised to be much more interesting that what we had originally intended, so we listened and learned.

“Paying attentionto the little things,” was a common theme shared by business owners andmanagers from the diverse group at the table from The Melting Pot restaurant,Lula Mae boutique gift shop, Vertical Wine Bistro, Le Grand Orange Café and theOne Colorado development. Another common theme was rewarding locals, residentsand employees alike who spend time in Old Pasadena. The more personal theapproach, the better.

On the other hand,impersonal discount aggregators such as Groupon were roundly dismissed.Customers who came in to use their Groupon discounts were almost never seenagain. To make matters worse, the merchants only received 25% of the value ofthe service or merchandise and the 8 ½ x 11 computer print-out coupons wereperceived as tacky and awkward to use. According to OnlineMedia Daily, we weren’t the only people to notice.

Personal coupons,and targeted neighborhood discounts such as Lula Mae’s “Lula Bucks,” Le GrandOrange’s Monday and Tuesday Neighborhood Nights, Vertical Wine Bistro’s BurgerNight Thursday and Melting Pot’s Rewards Program paid off consistently with awealth of return customers. And unlike Groupon customers, local customers taking part in local restaurants' promotions tipped their waiters.

When we finallyasked our merchants if the OPMD events helped them, they were effusive with their praise.“Make Music Pasadena,” “Pasadena Restaurant Week,” “Summer Film Festival”“Happy Hour Week” and our “Art Night” entertainment had all positively affectedbusiness. Everyone was excited about the “Locals Only Thursday”promotion running in September and October. In fact over 50 Old Pasadena businesseshave signed on to be a part of it.

Personal touch.Customer Service. Catering to friends and neighbors. As much as we at OPMDwould like to believe that we are the driving force in Old Pasadena business,apparently doing good business is still what does businesses the most good.

Here Comes The Neighborhood!

2011-08-26T17:30:00.000-07:00

Open the doors and seize the day. That’s what they’re doing in Old Pasadena every Thursday for the months of September and October. Over 50 Old Pas merchants will offer special discounts and promotions to Pasadena residents as well as those who work in Pasadena during Old Pasadena’s Locals Only Thursdays.

From the home page of the website to signs throughout the district, locals are directed to savings

Due to the success of last year’s event, Locals Only Thursdays is being extended to two months this year beginning September 1. We fully expect to draw thousands of Pasadena residents, business people and employees to Old Pasadena to enjoy a wide range of in-store giveaways and promotions.

Restaurants; stores; coffee, tea and dessert shops; spas and beauty salons throughout Old Pasadena are offering special giveaways and exclusive savings including Banana Republic, Forever 21, The Body Shop, Verizon Wireless, Eileen Fisher, The Sofa Company, The Luggage Room Pizzeria, Stats Floral Display, Vertical Wine Bistro, Lula Mae, Distant Lands and Sushi Roku, among others. They are offering thousands of dollars in savings and many are offering free gifts to customers.

As head of the Old Pasadena Management District Marketing Committee, I get to congratulate Kershona Mayo for her excellent work in organizing this event, and Janet Swartz for her online marketing. I love how good they make me look. Wow times 2. But in truth, we really do have a lot of great stuff to work with.

Old Pasadena has always been a great place to live, work and shop, and now, it’s even better. For more information including a download of all the exclusive special offers, giveaways and promotions please visit www.oldpasadena.org/localsonly.

Pasadena Heritage Honors Us

2011-07-30T17:49:00.000-07:00

Tony Nino, Rhea Roberts, Steve Mulheim, Hanna Wood, Suzanne Marks, Marilyn Buchannan

After 40 years of friendly enmity, the Pasadena Heritage Society held a gala evening at the Green Hotel in Pasadena to honor the hundreds of builders, architects, developers, civic organizations, city leaders and volunteers who stood in the way of the wrecking ball, and saved Old Pasadena. They called us The Guardians of Old Pasadena, the people who managed to turn a desolate slum into one of the most popular downtown areas in Southern California in less than thirty years. As past chairs of the Old Pasadena Management District, Suzanne and I were proud to be a part of it.
Rebuilding was not an easy task, and things often got testy. In fact, all of us being honored had often disagreed with Pasadena Heritage, sometimes strenuously, over how much development was too much, and how much control property owners had over their properties. However, as one of the honorees, my friend and mentor, Jim Plotkin pointed out, “We never fought each other. No matter how much we might have disagreed, we always fought on the same side for the same vision: a vital, restored, reinvigorated Old Pasadena.”
It was a fight we nearly lost even before we ever began. As Donald Shoup and Douglas Kolozsvari wrote in “The High Cost of Free Parking,” Old Pasadena had turned into a classic skid row, “known mainly for its pawn shops, porn theaters, and tattoo parlors.”

From online archives of Old Pasadena

The City’s solution was draconian, tear it down and start anew… according to 1970’s standards.

From “The High Cost of Free Parking,” Donald Shoup and Douglas Kolozsvari

The Arroyo Group and some helpful friends at the City Council joined Pasadena Heritage to fight long and hard to bring that destructive effort to a stop, and they succeeded. But even after they’d won, and wrecking balls were safely stowed away, someone had to step up and physically build the vision they’d had. That’s when the property and building owners, developers and builders stepped up to restore the crumbling facades that had fallen into such sad disrepair. Their contribution was represented by Jim Plotkin, but also included Gene and Marilyn Buchanan, Francine Tolkin, John Wilson, Danny Mellinkoff and many others. Once the restoration of the faded architecture began to return to it’s former glory, there came the daunting task to make Old Pasadena profitable again.
A number of Old Pasadena business development organizations were formed to coordinate this Herculean effort, including today’s Old Pasadena Management District (OPMD). At first we met in the refurbished Chamber of Commerce building at Arroyo and Colorado, because there was no place for Old Pasadena advocates to meet. Of course, at the time, there wasn't really an Old Pasadena. But there was Bruce Ackerman, President of the Pasadena Chamber of Commerce. He not only let us meet there, he acted as referee when this contentious band he had invited in every month would ... disagree. Heatedly. Repeatedly. Somehow, he took our passion and turned it into action.
Within ten years, reconstruction was accompanied by revitalization. Events were organized to introduce new visitors to this brand new Old Pasadena. A movie theater was built to reinvigorate nightlife. A slumlord got kicked out of his building, and the last island of decay within our 22 blocks, was rebuilt. And in an epiphany of counter intuition, a parking plan was devised to bring more customers into the district, raise money for the district and encourage employees to park off of the main business streets to make room for shoppers. The secret? Parking meters. In combination with 90-minute free parking in parking structures, more visitors stopped, shopped, ate and played than ever before. The solution was so successful, it fills the pages of “The High Cost of Free Parking,” by Donald Shoup and Douglas Kolozsvari.
Five years ago, OPMD took over management of the parking structures from the City. We cleaned them up, made them safer, kept the prices low and offered 90-minutes free parking. In our first full year, we took the annual earnings from $5000 a year to $500,000 – yes, 100 times better. Last year, at the height of the worst recession in 60 years, we made $1.7 million. Our lots were so successful, some in the City tried to take them back. Instead, we are slated to take over two more structures. In Steve Mulheim's two minutes at the dinner, he didn't have time to mention that.
Today, as the economy rocks and reels, the same Old Pasadena that was born in adversity, continues to thrive. But now, OPMD can support our developers, building owners, merchants, and restaurants with a level of marketing that vastly exceeds our miniscule budget. Our events have grown so popular that sponsors stand in line to support them. Our web site gives all of our stakeholders their own unique page or provides links to their own sites. Our social media programs have proven so popular that now even referral sites like Yelp have joined our pool of sponsors whenever we hold an event.

OPMD Website supports our merchants and directs our visitors.

We thank Pasadena Heritage Society Executive Director Sue Mossman for a very special evening. And in turn, we thank them, and each and every one of our predecessors for helping to take these 22 blocks from the brink of obliteration to where it is today. Thank you for honoring us. Thank you for being a part of us. We look forward to working together for our future.

Sade Acosta, A Death Defied, Twice

2011-06-28T13:33:00.000-07:00

Sade was only 19-years old and pursuing her dream of being a singer, when she fell to the ground after a party and was unable to talk or even recognize her brothers and sisters. This was not due to any intoxicants, but rather an explosion of blood from a tiny arterial/venal malformation that threatened to destroy her brain. She tells the story of how she survived the two cerebral hemorrhages that almost ended her career, and her life, before she reached 20.

Her neurosurgeon, Charles Liu, M.D., explains how he removed the clot and saved her life. After her brain anatomy, which had been distorted by the hemorrhage, returned to normal, he then proceeded to monitor her progress with MRIs every two months to isolate the cause and prevent a recurrence. After her second hemorrhage, Dr. Liu found a minute AVM (arterio-venous malformation) and with the help of neuronavigation imaging, tracked it down and eliminated it.
This is just one of thirteen videos that Pasadena Advertising Marketing and Design produced for the USC Keck School Of Medicine: true stories of normal, healthy people whose everyday lives were suddenly shattered by catastrophic medical emergencies no one could predict or prepare for. The patients themselves tell their stories of survival with the help of their doctors: the neurologists, neuroradiologists and neurosurgeons of the Keck School of Medicine at USC.
This is the kind of information my wife and I wished we'd had when our daughter’s life was nearly ended by a brain hemorrhage in Scotland in 2007. We spent hours pouring over the Internet scouring all the information we could find on aneurysms and the treatment, coil embolization. Most of what we found was so arcane and technical that we could not truly grasp what was happening. We created these videos for people like us – people who need immediate answers, to urgent questions, in idioms they can easily understand.
With these videos at their fingertips, patients, friends and families dealing with life threatening neurological threats will finally have a place to turn for practical answers that they can understand.

These videos were conceived and produced by Tony Nino and Suzanne Marks at Pasadena Advertising Marketing Design.
The director and DP was James OKeeffe and the editor was Peter Bayer.

Mobile Commerce: HUGE or tiny. Yes!

2011-06-20T12:05:00.000-07:00

Two MediaPost articles caught my eye this morning. One on M-Commerce derided the minuscule $6 billion in sales that retailers can expect this year from mobile sales, and projected a paltry $31 billion by 2016. The other on SmartPhone data use, trumpeted that smartphones had almost doubled their data access over the last 12 months from 230 MB to 435 MB - and that's not counting tablets and e-readers.

On the face of it, those numbers don't seem to add up. While data use rises exponentially, mobile sales creep up arithmetically. You have to wonder if those two writers even speak to each other… until you notice that they are one in the same, Mark Walsh.

However, when you read further down in Mark's M-Commerce story, two paragraphs jump out at you:

Despite rising smartphone adoption and the burst to roll out new mobile payments, mobile "shopping" often isn't about buying. When consumers use their phones, it's usually to get product information or compare prices -- rather than actually completing a transaction. Shopping never ranks high on any list of Web activities.
Furthermore, retailers are not spending much to optimize their sites for mobile. They are also confused about the best way to approach the medium -- the mobile Web versus apps conundrum. While most retailers have not pursued apps, the potential for location-based services and other tools enabled by more sophisticated devices cannot be ignored.

So, it's not the technology or the adoption rate that is curtailing mobile commerce, but rather Retailers' inability to keep up with the technology. In fact, Marks writes, the "innovation is likely to drive paralysis" as retailers struggle to find vendors and partners who understand this rapidly changing landscape.

Part of the conundrum is that mobile commerce isn't as much about electronic purchasing as it is about in-store shopping. In lieu of those bygone days of knowledgeable human assistance, people use their phones to compare products and prices. Most retailers are singularly unprepared for the convergence of e-commerce and in-store interaction. And many consider their in-store and e-commerce (mainly web) departments as competition.

Ironically, in this economy, when retailers have the least time and money to spend straightening that out, those who spend the most, most wisely, will spring ahead of the others.

IMHO
Tony Nino
Pasadena Advertising Marketing Design

WINNNINGGGGG!

2011-06-08T18:59:00.000-07:00

No, really. We won!

Pasadena Advertising Marketing and Design, working with Green Street Ads, has won a yearlong contract with the Orange County Transportation Authority (OCTA) to get people to give up riding alone in their cars. Our silent partner is of course the oil companies whose 4-bucks-plus for a gallon of gas is an excellent motivator to get solo drivers to strongly consider alternatives.

In the spirit of full disclosure, I admit I’ve been into alternative transportation for well over a decade. It all started off with riding my bike to work one day every week, then two days, then three, four and finally five. Now I get in between 60 and 100 miles every workweek depending on the weather and whether or not I have time to take a loop around the Rose Bowl. In addition to staying in shape and looking smashing in Spandex (as long as you keep your eyes closed). And I figure I’ve saved between $2,500 and $3,000 a year in gas. Those alone are not bad motivators.

For this contract, we are working together with fellow biker and long-time cigar buddy John Espinoza and his crew at Green Street Ads. We’ve worked together before on projects for Old Pasadena Management District and the Pasadena Department of Transportation. OCTA promises to be even more interesting. They have a great story – beginning with a wealth of alternatives to driving solo: Standard bus and rail services, a robust “Share the Ride” ridesharing database, a vanpool program, very efficient carpool matching services, employer transportation plans, and an extensive network of bike paths, lanes and routes. And they’re open to having fun.

Fun is good. Fun is a key ingredient to success in many media, but social media most of all. With Facebook, Twitter, podcasts, blogs, and YouTube, the more fun, the more powerful the impact. If we make real fun an integral part of our events and promotions, that can play out in other media as well, and OCTA has set its sights on a broad media mix. We’ll be in traditional and electronic media ranging from print and broadcast to billboards and bus shelters, as well as in some pretty unconventional places. Drivers in Orange County are going to find our message in front of their eyes no matter who or where they are.

Our first meeting is July 1st. Can’t wait.

Phil Sands – Yo! You wanna go diggin' in MY brain?

2011-05-29T16:16:00.000-07:00

To call Phil Sands a character would elevate the definition of that word to dizzying heights. He's a force of nature. But when he was hit with an excruciating and debilitating headache, he bowed to his wife's wishes and got some serious imaging studies done, a CT scan, MRI and finally an angiogram. The doctors discovered an eight mm basilar tip aneurysm that not only caused his headache, but was in imminent danger of a crippling or deadly rupture. Suddenly, the worst headache of his life was the least of his problems.

But Phil was Brooklyn born and bred, and too hard headed to take anything or anyone at face value. He did his homework, and searched all over his adopted home town of Los Angeles to find the right place and the right people to make this problem go away for good. He checked out numerous hospitals. He grilled the doctors. He grilled the neurosurgeons, neuroradiologists, and their staffs. Only after he was completely satisfied that he had found the right place, did he decide to proceed.
Arun P. Amar M.D., from the USC Keck School of Medicine, explains how he and his Neurosurgical/neuroradiological team - Arun Amar, M.D., William Mack, M.D., and Medical Director, Donald Larsen, M.D., treated him using stenting and coil embolization. For all his bravado, Phil recognizes how close he was to disaster, and how much he owes to his wife, his family and friends and the doctor's and staff who became some of his biggest fans.
This is just one of thirteen videos: true stories of normal, healthy people whose everyday lives were suddenly shattered by catastrophic medical emergencies no one could predict or prepare for. The patients themselves tell their stories of survival with the help of their doctors: the neurologists, neuroradiologists and neurosurgeons of the Keck School of Medicine at USC.
This is the kind of information my wife and I wished we'd had when our daughter’s life was nearly ended by a brain hemorrhage in Scotland in 2007. We spent hours pouring over the Internet scouring all the information we could find on aneurysms and the treatment, coil embolization. Most of what we found was so arcane and technical that we could not truly grasp what was happening. We created these videos for people like us – people who need immediate answers, to urgent questions, in idioms they can easily understand.
With these videos at their fingertips, patients, friends and families dealing with life threatening neurological threats will finally have a place to turn for practical answers that they can understand.

These videos were conceived and produced by Tony Nino and Suzanne Marks at Pasadena Advertising Marketing Design.
The director and DP was James OKeeffe and the editor was Peter Bayer.

Stella Kuymjian, A Stolen Life, Restored

2011-05-22T17:59:00.000-07:00

Stella Kuyumjian was a teenager when her brain short circuited sending her into waves of debilitating, paralyzing seizures. They call it "status epilepticus," a state of persistant seizure that can last up to an hour. It is always life threatening, but for Stella, it was the only life she knew for eleven years.

After 11 years of massive seizures, and countless rounds of frustrating, failed treatments, Stella was finally taken to USC Keck School of Medicine's Neurosurgical Unit. At USC, she was diagnosed by neurologist Christianne Heck, M.D., and her team of epileptologists as a candidate for surgical solution, a temporal lobectomy to correct her intractable grand mal seizures.
However her particular form of epilepsy would not yield easily. Her neurosurgeon, Charles Liu, M.D., was unable to pinpoint the site of the temporal scarring. In fact the epidermal electrodes were unable to even identify which side of the brain was causing the seizures. Before Dr. Liu could proceed, he first had to pin point the location using cranial sub dural electrodes, placed on the surface of the brain itself and construct a composite neuro navigation map of her temporal lobe.
Now after 11 years of persistent, life threatening grand mal seizures, Stella is seizure free. Finally she can begin to tell her story of this living nightmare. Doctors Keck and Liu, USC Keck School of Medicine, explain the dizzying array of complications surrounding her condition and the exacting procedures necessary to find her cure.
This is just one of thirteen videos: true stories of normal, healthy people whose everyday lives were suddenly shattered by catastrophic medical emergencies no one could predict or prepare for. The patients themselves tell their stories of survival with the help of their doctors: the neurologists, neuroradiologists and neurosurgeons of the Keck School of Medicine at USC.
This is the kind of information my wife and I wished we'd had when our daughter’s life was nearly ended by a brain hemorrhage in Scotland in 2007. We spent hours pouring over the Internet scouring all the information we could find on aneurysms and the treatment, coil embolization. Most of what we found was so arcane and technical that we could not truly grasp what was happening. We created these videos for people like us – people who need immediate answers, to urgent questions, in idioms they can easily understand.
With these videos at their fingertips, patients, friends and families dealing with life threatening neurological threats will finally have a place to turn for practical answers that they can understand.

These videos were conceived and produced by Tony Nino and Suzanne Marks at Pasadena Advertising Marketing Design.
The director and DP was James OKeeffe and the editor was Peter Bayer.

The Story of Kelly Mitchell

2011-05-04T15:21:00.000-07:00

Every expectant mother has doubts. Will she be a good mother? Will she make the same mistakes her mother made? How can she protect her baby from harm? Never do expectant mothers ask what happens if an undiscovered brain tumor threatens both her life and the life of her baby, or whom does she turn to for help.

Well into her seventh month, Kelly Mitchell began experiencing symptoms that were way beyond anything her mother had ever warned her about. Beyond the nausea, daily milkshake cravings, and frequent bathroom visits, she began to encounter severe memory lapses and loss of vision. After visiting numerous doctors and specialists, an MRI revealed a terrifying development. She had a Craniopharyngioma, a benign brain tumor that, while not cancerous, was approximately the size of an avocado. She desperately needed a craniotomy, an hours-long, open brain surgery that would threaten the life of her unborn baby.
In this video, Kelly tells the story of her journey through this terrifying time. She felt her memory slipping away and her vision fading with each passing day. Her neurosurgeon, Dr. Charles Liu, USC Keck School of Medicine, explains the issues surrounding the precise timing necessary for the Pterional Craniotomy to save the lives and quality of life for both mother and baby. Setting the exact date was crucial, and there was virtually no room for error. He worked closely with her OB GYN to determine the earliest possible date to deliver her baby, and leave enough time for surgery before the ever-increasing pressure of the growing tumor caused irreparable brain damage.
This is just one of thirteen videos: true stories of normal, healthy people whose everyday lives were suddenly shattered by catastrophic medical emergencies no one could predict or prepare for. The patients themselves tell their stories of survival with the help of their doctors: the neurologists, neuroradiologists and neurosurgeons of the Keck School of Medicine at USC.
This is the kind of information my wife and I wished we'd had when our daughter’s life was nearly ended by a brain hemorrhage in Scotland in 2007. We spent hours pouring over the Internet scouring all the information we could find on aneurysms and the treatment, coil embolization. Most of what we found was so arcane and technical that we could not truly grasp what was happening. We created these videos for people like us – people who need immediate answers, to urgent questions, in idioms they can easily understand.
With these videos at their fingertips, patients, friends and families dealing with life threatening neurological threats will finally have a place to turn for practical answers that they can understand.
For more information contact USC Neurosurgery.

These videos were conceived and produced by Tony Nino and Suzanne Marks at Pasadena Advertising Marketing Design. The director and DP was James OKeeffe and the editor was Peter Bayer.

Attention Small Businesses

2011-05-04T10:33:00.000-07:00

Under the general heading of "Important Safety Tip," this falls right under "Don't cross the streams."
According to the Center For Media Research, 37% of small businesses are not planning to survive this year, they are planning to GROW. And they're exploiting social media to do it.
Good strategy? Signs point to a definite "maybe." But we are seeing other signs that this might be the right time, including an AP analysis that shows a dramatic lowering of economic stress.
Not advising anything rash, just pointing out things that are going on.
Don't we live in interesting times?

COMING SOON: Thirteen Stories

2011-04-19T12:20:00.000-07:00

It sounds just too, too theatrical.

Thirteen Stories
Everyday people face catastrophic attacks by invisible killers.

But that is exactly what we are about to post on YouTube. Except these horror stories aren’t epic cinematic attacks by aliens or terrorists or criminals or pod people, but simply normal people betrayed and under attack by their own bodies. A talented teenage girl has her budding singing career shattered by a mysterious and devastating, cerebral hemorrhage. A father collapses in front of his 3-year old daughter, the victim of a spinal tumor. Intractable epilepsy steals 11 years of life from an innocent young girl. An actress and writer has to face the imminent failure of her aneurysm treatment and subsequent loss of her language and memory.

Real survivors of life threatening conditions tell stories of that anyone can understand.

These are stories of normal, otherwise healthy people whose everyday lives were suddenly shattered by catastrophic attacks of conditions no one could predict or prepare for. The patients themselves tell their stories of survival with the help of their doctors: the neurologists, neuroradiologists and neurosurgeons of the USC Keck School of Medicine.
The inspiration for this series was derived from my own family’s experience when our daughter (the actress and writer above) was struck down by a burst aneurysm in Scotland in 2007. The resulting hemorrhage devastated her Brocca’s area and robbed her of her speech and ability to read. At that time, her mother and I were so ignorant of what exactly an aneurysm was that we actually asked the surgeon over the phone if it was serious. He answered with an unequivocal “Yes!” Nineteen hours later, we were by her bedside when she woke up from her 11-hour surgery in Edinburgh.
We spent hours pouring over the Internet scouring all the information we could find on aneurysms and the chosen treatment, coil embolization. Most of what we found was so arcane and technical that, even though we ourselves had long worked closely with doctors, we could not get a firm handle on the full implications of what was happening. We realized that if even we had trouble understanding, then there were an enormous number of others even more lost than we were. We set out to find a remedy for that.
In these videos, patients and doctors speak for themselves, in their own words, directly to other patients with similar conditions, and their friends and families. Every situation is personal. The fears, hopes and emotions are raw and crystal clear. There’s no jargon, no obscure, unexplained medical terminology. Viewers might not learn that a basilar tip aneurysm is a distal bifurcation of the basilar artery, but they’ll see how a man in searing pain and his family worked with a team of doctors to find a life saving treatment.
With these videos at their fingertips, families dealing with life threatening neurological threats will finally have a place to turn for practical answers that they can understand.

2011-03-08T12:08:00.000-08:00

This is a copy of the Powerpoint presentation that Suzanne Marks and Tony Nino gave to the Southern California Regional Rapid Response Roundtable in January. These are the people who corporations and laid-off workers turned to as the economy disintegrated. They helped the corporations survive during the economic meltdown, and helped their laid-off employees find new employment opportunities. Now that the economy is recovering, these are the same people who can help employers find the right applicants, as well as help job seekers find the perfect jobs.
When it comes to low-cost, high-impact ways to connect employers to job-seekers, few tools are more powerful than Social Networking. There is a virtual toolbox of applications that can the reach across a broad array of demographics with remarkable results. The meteoric rise of Facebook, Twitter, Linked-in, mobile apps and sites, blogs, YouTube, e-news distribution, SMS messaging and e-surveys has led to a kind of intense personal trust and involvement formerly only attributed to the all-powerful word-of-mouth advertising and personal references.
However, to reach the majority of decision makers and influencers, you’ve got to go Mobile. According to OnlineMedia Daily, this is the year that mobile-enabled and mobile-friendly websites have gone from merely useful to essential. Our client, FWIB, the Foothill Workforce Investment Board, is embracing both social media and mobile media. Before we attended this roundtable, I did not realize how advanced FWIB was.
After our presentation, we were approached by Workforce Investment Board and Rapid Response representatives from all over Southern and Central California who said they were not allowed to use any of these tools. They were prohibited. The single most effective methods of reaching workers and employers simultaneously… for FREE!... is Forbidden. And it’s not just Facebook, Twitter, Linked-in, YouTube, e-news and SMS messaging; at least half of the representatives complained they are not even allowed to use Google! Unbelievable, but true.
As our State and states around the nation struggle to recover from the worst recession in our lifetimes, there are rules in place that undeniably slow the pace of that recovery. It is beyond me. It baffles me, but it is happening. These social marketing and outreach tools may be new, but they are not evil. At least no more evil that the hammers and screw drivers that fill our toolboxes at home. Certainly, as any self-respecting sore thumb knows, hammers can do harm. That doesn’t mean we don’t use them, especially when something needs repair.
Our State economy needs repair, and it needs it now. We have the tools to help at our fingertips. They are numerous. They are effective. They are free.
Unfortunately, they are also forbidden.

Happy Hours abound in Old Pas

2011-02-28T10:51:00.000-08:00

Lookie, lookie what my favorite Management District has put together for our amusement and entertainment. Wow!
Thank you Janet, Kershona and the whole OPMD gang. I'm so proud to be a part of this.

LIVE MUSIC, DRINKS, FOOD AND FUN AT OLD PASADENA’S FIRST EVER
HAPPY HOUR WEEK, MARCH 1 TO MARCH 8, 2011

Old Pasadena's finest restaurants, bars and lounges offer extended food and drink specials all week long during Old Pasadena’s first ever Happy Hour Week, March 1 to March 8, 2011. From $1 martinis and $2 beers to $3 gourmet sushi and appetizers, Old Pasadena Happy Hour Week offers something for everyone. Attendees can also enjoy free live music at various venues including Jazz, world music, and eclectic pop performances.

Numerous award-winning Old Pasadena establishments will offer attendees the unique opportunity of enjoying their famous cuisine at bargain prices. Exquisite dishes prepared by the area’s most talented chefs include: chorizo Argentino at 1810 Argentinean Restaurant, calamari with garlic aioli at Bar Celona, baked mushrooms stuffed with chicken and spinach mousse in balsamic sauce at Café Bizou, potato frittata at Café Santorini, coquina dessert crepe with bananas, melted chocolate and coconut flakes at Crepe de la Crepe, chipotle chicken pizza at IX Tapa Cantina, portabella fries at Neomeze, Kobe beef sliders with blue cheese, lemon basil aioli at Point08 Bar, spicy yellowtail roll at Sushi Roku, truffled mac and cheese at Vertical Wine Bistro and many more! Popular wine, beers, and cocktails will be served at discounted prices. Old Pasadena Happy Hour Week is a great opportunity to get together with co-workers, friends and family to enjoy multiple experiences at Old Pasadena restaurants, bars and lounges without breaking the bank.

The uniquely talented Eliza Rickman and Jessica Fichot will perform.

Diners will not only marvel in the adventure of taste that Old Pasadena Happy Hour Week offers, but will also enjoy free live musical performances at various venues. Pop Champagne & Dessert Bar will host French singer-songwriter and multi instrumentalist Jessica Fichot, Sunday, March 6 as well as eclectic singer and pianist Eliza Rickman who will perform a very special intimate set. Crème de la Crepe will also host live Jazz Friday, Saturday and Sunday as part of Old Pasadena Happy Hour Week.
Old Pasadena Happy Hour Week is produced by Old Pasadena Management District. For more information including downloadable menus, visit www.oldpasadena.org/happyhourweek.

Look, Our New Gold Line Website Is On Track

2010-12-28T12:10:00.000-08:00

Pasadena Advertising Marketing & Design has created a new content managed website for Foothill Extension Authority.

Foothillextension.org homepage

After a month of testing, The new foothillextension.org website designed by Pasadena Advertising Marketing and Design (AMD), has gone live to answer visitor's questions and point out directions simply, directly and immediately.
The Foothill Extension Construction Authority is building an extension to the Gold Line light rail that is planned to connect downtown Los Angeles to the San Gabriel Valley foothill cities, eventually extending all the way to Ontario Airport. From the website’s compelling and easy-to-navigate front page, this new design lays out the planned rail route as well as the points of interest near every city’s station along the way.
“The excitement in the Foothill Cities is growing daily, and we wanted to create a site that would justify that excitement with a graphic, interactive representation of the promise of what is to come,” explains Pasadena AMD President Suzanne Marks. “We felt is was important to capture the full spirit of the project,” adds her partner Tony Nino, “not just to help our neighbors understand the construction schedule but also to visualize the full potential of a light rail line connection to a major airport.”

Construction phase pages connect to city/station designs and nearby attractions.

“The design concept,” according to Creative Director David Ensz, “was to frame the interactive elements of the site in the graphic tradition of Plein Air artistry in the style of classic orange crate art for which the region was known.” The challenge of programming designer Luke Gschwend was daunting, “I had to create a content management system which made navigation easy and intuitive for the site visitors, yet simple to understand and update for the in-house Foothill Extension personnel."
The final site, at http://www.foothillextension.org accomplishes all of the goals beautifully. Almost all of the information visitors could want is no more than two clicks away from the home page, and for more immediate results, a search feature is available from every page.

To look for work – and look for workers – Be Social!

2010-12-02T16:59:00.000-08:00

[A transcript of Suzanne Marks' presentation to the San Gabriel Valley Economic Outlook Conference]

Most businesses today have spent a good deal time and money branding their businesses. The have done it in their advertising, in their corporate communications, and in their corporate culture. The most successful companies created brands have made corporate image personal and attractive to consumers, investors and prospective employees.
That same branding ethic now extends to social marketing as an avenue for your company to recruit the best new hires. In fact, some businesses have reinforced their brand’s appeal to prospective employees by creating whole new sections of their websites, or entirely separate websites, exclusively to promote the quality of their working environment. Social media components such as Facebook, Myspace, LinkedIn and Twitter are also crucial pieces of marketing for recruits. It is an increasingly important way to search for new applicants. Companies that used to spend thousands on recruitment, can now run ads on Craigslist, Facebook and MySpace, and then lead their prospective employees to those ads by using Twitter.
Social Media is also a way for employers to more closely examine and applicants, especially those who may have revealed more about their personal lives than they should have. Employers can use that information to their benefit, however there may be downsides to that which you have to consider before using it indiscriminately to make hiring decisions. At first glance, Facebook, LinkedIn and MySpace (the top sites being screened) do appear to be a gold mine of personal applicant information. In fact, according to a recent CareerBuilder.com report, the number of companies using social networking Web sites to screen potential employees has doubled in the last year, and what they have found has killed the hire for more than a third of candidates. Currenty 1 in 5 hiring managers conduct background checks by using social media, primarily FaceBook.
Conversely, more and more network-savvy applicants have begun to use social media, blogs, and personal websites strategically to give them an advantage over other candidates. They are branding themselves the same way companies do. They position themselves not only as someone best fit for the job, but who is also eager to work for your company. And the best and brightest talent also uses the Internet to review their prospective new employers with a critical eye. What does this mean for your company?
First of all, Make sure your web site makes your company attractive to new hires. This encompasses everything from: the user friendliness of your site, the quality of your products or services, your customer relations, how you do business, in other words, your brand. However, this also should include information about your internal culture, training, your hiring philosophy, benefits, and the advantages of your location.
Reinforce that with a well-maintained presence on LinkedIn, FaceBook, and Twitter that drives people to your Web site. Some new talent may think your company is old and stodgy if you don't have a presence on these social networking sites, or they just won’t notice you at all. This is especially for people in their 20s who have grown up thinking that the Internet and social media have always existed.
Develop a social media strategy to entice quality talent and to screen applicants. Be patient and stick with it. Online marketing and recruiting takes time and constant attention to see results. However, if you can position your company in your target audience’s top-of-mind awareness, you will be miles ahead of your competition in finding the highest-quality talent. It will ensure that your business will thrive well into the future.
However, as with any tool, you have to be careful how you use it. Unlike traditional hiring tools such as team interviews, calling past employers, and background checks, social networking sites exist in a legal limbo of privacy concerns. Stories from recruiters show why these sites are so enticing.
It is all to easy to search for the candidate by name and refine the search by adding the terms: Facebook, LinkedIn or MySpace and there’s no telling what you might see. Depending on their privacy settings, the quality of information available on a social network site varies. But you don’t have to stop there; you can also search blog search engines, such as www.google.com/blogsearch and business sites such as Zoominfo.
One recruiter related how she had found “The Ideal Candidate” for her firm. But when, she ran the applicant’s phone number on a search engine, up popped some explicit ads for adult services she was apparently involved in. Uh oh. In another instance an intern being considered for a permanent position had demonized his firm, his boss and his coworkers in considerable detail and by name. Obviously neither of these Rhodes Scholars was “ideal” for any position these companies wanted to fill.
As valuable as this information can be, make certain you don’t rely exclusively on such sites for your information. At this point in the evolution of e-law, there are no published cases yet on point. Lawsuits take time to work their way through the courts. However, it is all but certain that some day an employer will land in court being sued on allegations of discrimination or a violation of privacy for making use of a social networking site in the hiring process.
The conventional wisdom, is that anything online is fair game because any reasonable person must understand that the whole world has access to the internet. However, younger workers, and their lawyers, may well regard invading their social network sites in the same way older worker may regard someone who crashes a private wedding party uninvited, a act that violates privacy.
That said, when used carefully, in addition to the tried-and-true traditional hiring tools – interviews, calling past employers, and background checks, social network sites can offer valuable information. Just use common sense. The bottom line is Social Media is simply being social thru new media, over the internet and mobile networks.
People are sharing their stories and experience with friends near and far. Likes and dislikes are also getting shared and businesses are just beginning to capitalize on that. There are many ways for employers, job seekers and business to use social media for their own purposes.
On a personal note, recently we were invited in to pitch a large retail company. I was told who was going to be in that meeting and immediately started my social media search. I found out where they lived, worked, went to school past employment etc. I contacted people on Linked In that were in both of our networks to put in a good word for us. I tailored our presentation to the people in that room.

Advertising Myopia Oopsia

2010-11-22T17:40:00.000-08:00

When I decided to write about what I call myopia in advertising and marketing, I was pretty cocky. I've been harping about this for years, and for good reason: Business owners are often so consumed with what they think their company is all about, that they neglect to question what their customer thinks. It is so common a problem, that I spend the majority of my marketing briefs describing how customer perceptions differ from those of business owners and operators. And how to capitalize on those customer's expectations.

Whereas a business might be incredibly proud of the accuracy of their wrist-mounted, certified-quartz banded chronometer, their customers don't care unless they are told why they should. In fact customers won't be interested in the least if they don't first know that the product in question is a watch. They have to understand what the product or service means to them personally before you can tell them that it's better than all the others. Or that it is worth paying more for. It is the classic case of “What have you done for me.”

But since I'd been dealing with this issue since I first began in advertising, more than 25 years ago, I thought I'd check to see if anyone else had ever noticed this phenomenon. And (BLAST YOU GOOGLE), it turns out somebody else had. A certain Theodore Levitt had written a paper on what he called "Marketing myopia" some 50 years ago. According to Wikipeda, "This paper was first published in 1960 in the Harvard Business Review; a journal of which he was an editor." So, I guess, I was not all that original after all.

Can you plagiarize before reading your source material... apparently...

Now, in my defense, I was not doing advertising in the 1960's. No character at Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce was based on me, not even one of Don Draper's kids. In fact, little Sally Draper was proficient at mixing drinks long before I ever could. I’ll bet, other than occasionally being kookoo for Cocoa Puffs, I was completely oblivious to advertising.

I encountered myopia in advertising and marketing quite independently when I came across clients blithely ignoring their customers, because, I supposed at the time, customers were too ignorant to matter. I came to realize later that it was simple pride. Pride of ownership. Pride of authorship. Pride of invention, development, execution and superiority, all of which are attributes worth being proud of. Just not to the exclusion of profits. Even the most ignorant customers have money.

So, thank you Mr. Levitt for validating my observations, um… before I was able to observe them. I guess (blushing) this would be a great time for me to finally read your paper.

Out of the Mouths of Ghouls

2010-10-27T17:07:00.000-07:00

Frightfully Good Times Take Time & Talent

While I was working on yesterday’s blog about Old Pasadena’s Halloween celebration, I happened to run across a volunteer from the Old Town Haunt, which has been a tradition of Halloween for years. I love giving people credit for what they do, and certainly the staff at Old Pasadena Management District play a huge role in the success of our district. But so do the merchants, and the guides, and the police, and our loyal customers. However, when I spoke to this volunteer, I remembered that one of the most essential elements in the success of Old Pasadena over the years has been its volunteers.

Volunteers sit on the board. They sit on our committees. They appear before city council. They take time out of their days, away from their businesses, to help improve the quality of life in Old Pasadena. Obviously, they don’t do it for the money, so why? Certainly donating their time is an investment in the success of the district, so you could call that self serving and all, but why do retirees volunteer their time? And teenagers? The answer is certainly more complex than any kind of profit motive, no matter how far removed. But allow me to introduce you to a young lady who began to volunteer her time to the Halloween Haunt three years ago, when she was only fourteen.

Ghoul-age zombies. Why do they do it?

"I was first introduced to the Old Town Haunt in Old Town Pasadena by a close friend named Micheal when I was 14 years old. He had already been a volunteer for several years himself. I am currently 17, and have committed myself to volunteering at the Haunt for the past three years. I don't plan on leaving this anytime soon.

I am thrilled whenever the month of September rolls in, because that is when we all get together with Ron Rogge (Owner) and Mark (Ron's Partner) and begin to set up the Haunt. We change it up every year, and we all work together on such things as repainting certain areas. It is such an adrenaline rush as every September day goes by, because we all know that October is just around the corner. We can't wait to scare the people who walk through and feel the excitement that comes with it.

I have tons of fun at the Old Town Haunt for various reasons, the first is that I have made some close friends there. In fact, most of the people there have known each other for years. Then of course, after we are done scaring, we are taken to either eat at Bella's Pizza, or at Barney's Beanery. Finally, we love the excitement and fear that we put into the people who come down. We love the screams. What could be more beautiful than a whole month spent at a haunted house where every square inch is stuffed with props and people ready to inject a little fright and feat into these people's experience.

When I first started here, I didn't have many friends at all, but once I started volunteering, I scared up a whole bunch of friends and I became a more social person. I gained a lot more self esteem which was another great benefit of being in an atmosphere filled with young people who just wanted to have fun.

If the Old Town Haunt ever disappeared for whatever reason, we would all be devastated! Nothing could compare to lying in wait, ready to pounce and scare up a terrified screech. Adrenaline just rushes through our bodies because we know these people are about to scream their heads off.

We are all thankful to Ron and Mark, because they put in a lot of hard work into the Haunt, and they have shared this experience with me, and with all of us. October Old Town Haunt is a labor of love that they work practically every day of the year to make a success. I am so grateful that they have allowed me to be a part of it."

– Sandy, the eloquent Ghoul

Not for the faint of heart, but for the rest of us... =)

From the Old Town Haunt to the Tournament of Roses. From the Old Pasadena Management District, to the Playhouse and South Lake districts, the unique character of the City of Pasadena rests in large part on the generosity and dedication of its volunteers. It starts early and lasts a lifetime. I am proud to be even a small part of this community, and prouder still of the youth already donating their time and talents to keep up the tradition.
Happy Halloween everyone, and
BOO!

Can Old Pasadena Handle Halloween? And Howl!

2010-10-26T12:06:00.000-07:00

Yes, this year Old Pasadena is not just out to celebrate Halloween, but to make this year’s Halloween celebration the best ever. For kids of course, that’s a simple task indeed. It’s one of the highest of the high holy days in kid-dom: The day of candyCandyCANDYCANDY CANDY! But for parents, especially in this economy, it can be a bit of a trial. Especially this year when Halloween falls on a weekend. How do you handle keeping the kids entertained, for two days, on a budget? That’s where Old Pasadena comes in. First create an event that makes both days really special, then let everyone know about it – with an advertising budget that is tiny at best.

Old Pasadena Home Page featuring the Halloween Celebration

First, and most important, to make any event work you have to make it special.

Kershona Mayo, our Director of Event Marketing & Production, worked hard to organize a district wide, Halloween celebration filled with treats on both Saturday and Sunday. And it’s Free! The focus is on fun and safe, with the emphasis on fun, encompassing activities throughout Old Pasadena.

On Saturday, October 30, Old Pasadena takes over Central Park, 260 S. Raymond Avenue. There’ll be Free caramel apples for the first 200 people to arrive, then a pumpkin hunt (little pumpkins filled with candy) from 1:00-2:00 pm, and from 1:00-5:00– There’s a Halloween moon bounce accompanied by live “ghoulish” music. At the Armory Center for the Arts, just a few blocks north, they’re holding a Halloween crafts center from 1:00-5:00 pm complete with a scary animal-and-bug show and tell.

The Old Town Haunt joins in the fun with a little kid-friendly tour.

On Sunday, October 31, Old Pasadena partners with One Colorado for free store-to-store trick-or-treating along with a special Meet-and-Greet with favorite Halloween characters from 4:00-9:00 pm. There will be free haunted photos of the kids and free screenings of Halloween cartoons in the Courtyard from 5:00-9:00. And to make even the littlest kids feel big, there will be a special youngster-friendly tour of the popular Old Town Haunt, with all the lights on and no scary screaming from12:00-4:00pm.
Pretty impressive, huh? But now that the event is in place, how do you promote it?

First of all, it’s newsworthy. So Kershona, even with limited print and absolutely no broadcast budget whatsoever, can generate millions of dollars in free airtime on TV and radio. She also fully exploits an array of social network sites from Twitter and Facebook to Yelp to generate buzz. Partnerships with our local Pasadena City College radio station KPCC, an NPR affiliate, further magnify the reach to parents.

Every participating merchant received a poster and matching postcards to hand out to customers.

Add to that select local newspaper advertising, posters all over town and free postcards for our merchants to hand out, and you have a powerful campaign indeed. Reinforcing that effort is the OPMD website. Janet Schwartz, OMPD’s Director of PR & Destination Marketing, has put not only the Old Pasadena website to work, she follows up with regular email blasts to merchants, visitors and friends of Old Pasadena. Last year, the Halloween celebration marketing effort resulted in an additional 2000 page views in the days leading up to the event.

So that’s the secret. A great event. Enthusiastic social marketing promotion. Partnerships with merchants and media outlets. And an audience of parents hungry for fun, free and safe entertainment, and of course, kids just hungry for candyCandyCANDYCANDY CANDY!

Happy Halloween everyone.

Never use Translations in Your Advertising

2010-10-16T18:18:00.000-07:00

And, on the other hand, ALWAYS translate your advertising.
Lemme splain.
The most effective kind of communication is idiomatic. Hence, the most effective advertising is idiomatic. Idioms are the connections that link a culture together, and they don't translate between cultures well. If you have a message that works well in English, you have to remember that it is working well in American English, not British English, Australian English or even Canadian English, eh? Or as George Bernhard Shaw so eloquently put it, "The English and the Americans are two peoples separated by a common language." What that means to an advertiser is: If you want to reach an new audience that speaks a different language, it is not enough to just translate the words of your message. Even if you get all the words right, the message itself will suffer mightily.

A couple of idioms from another culture, Max and Moritz. Read more and see original image:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Max_und_Moritz.JPG

One of the more amusing ways to demonstrate this is to take a common expression such as, "You can't teach an old dog new tricks." and use Bablefish to translate that into say German, which translates to: "Sie können einem alten Hund neue Tricks nicht unterrichten." Those words are basically correct, "hund" is dog, "underrichten" is teach, and "Tricks" is tricks. However if you try to translate that "German expression" back into English, you get, "They can an old dog new cheat not to inform." Um Gotteswillen! In fact, if you wanted to express that concept idiomatically to a German audience that grew up on Max and Moritz, you would say, "Was Hänschen nicht lernt, lernt Hans nimmermehr," which means, "What little Hans doesn't learn, grown up Hans will never learn." That might have absolutely nothing to do with dogs, but the idiom carries the same exact meaning to an entirely different culture. It is reminiscent of a tale told in intelligence circles about early attempts to use the super computers of the cold-war 60’s to translate Russian into English. When they put in “Out of sight, out of mind” using their algorithm, what they got back was: “invisible idiot.”
That said.
Always translate your product essentials (such as the NAME) into the language of your target audience to avoid embarrassment. If for instance you want to introduce your automobile into a new country south of our border, it would be instructive to know that the name NOVA is a colloquialism for “doesn’t run.” Then there’s Vicks cough drops which became popular in Germany, but before introducing them there, they had to change the name to “Wicks,” because they discovered that “vicks” is a rude name for a sex act. Much more recently Osco Drug Stores bought out Sav-On drugs in the predominantly Hispanic Southern California market. They were so proud of the name they had created for themselves over the decades, that they changed their store names, stationary, and advertising from Sav-On to Osco and watched their sales plummet, especially in predominantly Hispanic neighborhoods. Osco, it turned out, was an idiom usually associated with vomiting. When you’re sick, the last place anyone wants to go is Vomit Drugs.
After all is said and done, no matter what language it is said and done in, the most basic tenant of advertising applies. Know your audience. Speak their language. Whether your audience are juniors looking for fashion or governments looking for engineers, learn their jargon, their idioms and you can talk to them in their language, no matter what language they speak.

The Dangers of "Brilliants" in Advertising

2010-10-14T18:07:00.000-07:00

I remember the day like it was yesterday. My client abruptly overruled every marketing strategy, product name, logo design, identity package and ad campaign concept that he had approved only a few days before. He had decided to do his ad campaign himself. He knew the product better than anyone, and he was the smartest person he knew.
Both of those statements were true by the way. He had single handedly come up with an invention that had revolutionized his industry. He was a brilliant chemist and practitioner, and had built up a million dollar company that he had started in his garage. The only thing wrong was his reasoning. He decided to undo an entire campaign and design strategy, because his "daughter didn’t like it." She was eighteen at the time.
In his defense, she was the one who had come up with the name for his company when she was twelve. My client therefore reasoned that advertising was so easy even a child could do it. That said, however, she had not shown any inclination for marketing and advertising since that day. And for all his brilliance in his chosen fields, he himself had no concept of advertising, marketing, design, research, or packaging. And after all was said and done, to become known as the leader in his field, he needed to accomplish all of those in the worst way possible. By doing it himself that’s exactly what he got.
Within a few short years, every mistake he made was manipulated to its fullest by the competition. Soon he was just another player in an industry that he had almost single-handedly invented himself. And he is not alone by any stretch of the imagination.

Elisha Graves Otis, brilliant engineer, innovator and inventor. (image from biografiasyvidas.com)

Such is often the fate of "brilliants." Elisha Graves Otis, the father of the modern elevator, was a brilliant engineer and visionary. Unfortunately he neglected to trademark the name “elevator” leaving the door wide open to every competitor with a pulley system and wires, and they used it freely to take his business away. The landscape is littered with brilliant people who failed to achieve preeminence, because they tried to to something so easy a child could do it.
Advertising is in every respect like any other art form: painting, singing or playing a harmonica. If it's not easy, you can't do it. And if it's too easy, you're not doing it well enough. The Peter Principle, as first defined, is that employees will inevitably rise to their level of incompetence. The problem for any agencies working with people who are outstanding in their field is that those people tend to believe they are outstanding in every field. And they all too often find their level of incompetence in advertising.
Advertising, in every respect, is like any other art form: painting, singing or playing a harmonica: If it's not easy, you can't do it. And if it's too easy, you're not doing it well enough. The Peter Principle, as originally defined, is that in any hierarchy, employees will inevitably rise to their level of incompetence. The problem is Peter was an optimist. Any agency working with clients who are outstanding in their fields faces the possibility that those brilliant people will believe they are outstanding in every field. All to often, they attain their level of incompetence in advertising.
The truth is that the statement “I don’t know anything about advertising, but I know what I like,” is exactly six words too long. If you don’t know anything about advertising, then you need professional help. The same is true for plumbing, stone masonry, brain surgery and programming your DVR. If it’s not easy, you can’t do it. Call on professional help. Save time. Save money. Save your sanity and your business.
Or as David Ogilvy once wrote, “Why buy a dog and bark yourself,” or as it was first written by Brian Melbancke in 1583, "It is smal reason you should kepe a dog, and barke your selfe."
Apparently old David wasn't the first to say that; he was just right.

Pasadena Government Trips Over Numbskullduggery*

2010-09-15T13:24:00.000-07:00

Where have I been for so long? Fighting City Hall. Thank you for asking.

Along with writing advertising, I am currently the chair of the Old Pasadena Management District. As a matter of fact, I have been a part of this district since before there even was a district. Back in the late 80’s, a core group of merchants and building owners met in our freshly renovated Chamber building to figure out how to make our dream of “Old Pasadena” actually come alive. Of course, first we had to chase out the burglars and addicts hiding in the stairwells. At that time, the district was still rife with boarded up buildings and popularly referred to as Pasadena’s slum.
Through extraordinary efforts, we managed to turn the tide, building by building and block by block. In 2000, we voted to tax ourselves to clean up our streets and sidewalks, and improve the safety and security in our part of town. We formed the Old Pasadena Management District (OPMD).
In 2003, we partnered with the City to bring the district's three garages up to the same clean and safe standards that we demanded of the rest of our district. Before we took over, the districts parking structures, Schoolhouse, DeLacey and Marriott, were unsightly, unsafe, and unprofitable – not to mention the overpowering smell of vagrant excrement.

The look and smell of today’s city garages are unchanged since 2003.

Today the story of our accomplishments has brought recognition and representatives from cities and Business Improvement Districts nationwide to Pasadena to find ways to learn from our success. The story of the garage management in particular has inspired changes across the country. Yet suddenly and inexplicably, Fred Dock, the City’s Director of Transportation, recently announced they are going to take away management of the garages that have played such a vital role in our success. A management that has profited the city enormously.

OPMD Schoolhouse parking structure, Raymond Ave. entrance.

When OPMD took over management of the garages in 2003, their average net income (in the economic good times of 1996 – 2003) was $5,001. In 2003, the net revenue was an embarrassing $135,675 loss. City staff warned OPMD that the existing rates had to increase, and our 90-minute free parking program had to be eliminated. But we value our customers, so instead, we maintained the rates, and continued the free parking. Then we cleaned, painted, installed extra security, replaced worn and dangerous stair safety strips, and fully renovated the shabby facilities. Since 2005, the garages’ average annual net income has been over a hundred times theirs. After all expenses and debt service, our average net income has been over $500,000. For 2009, not a banner year for the economy, it was $1.8 million! Where did we go right?

City garage landscaping vs landscaping maintained by OPMD

It's simple really. Garages are a business, and OPMD is run by business people. The difference is evident to anyone who cares to look (or smell). In the two years that Mr. Dock has overseen city’s other parking structures, the sad and shabby condition he inherited has remained largely unchanged. Complaints about the city structures outside of our district pour into OPMD every month. Why? Because the Department of Transportation has given them our phone number, to answer complaints about their structures, even though they are clearly not our responsibility. Yet inexplicably, when OPMD President Steve Mulheim went to the department to get the answers those people were demanding, he was rudely informed that that information was NONE of his BUSINESS!
On the contrary, when it comes to the garages, it seems we are the only ones who do know the business. In addition to garage revenue, our 22 blocks are consistently one of the top providers tax revenue to the City. OPMD’s management of these garages has been a key component in the success and viability of this area. Yet the City of Pasadena is seriously considering allow others with an incredibly consistent, demonstrated lack of competence, cooperation and commitment to threaten the welfare of our entire district, not to mention the financial well being of the City as a whole.

City garage interiors vs OPMD's maintained with regular washing and painting.

UPDATE: At a City Council meeting last night, Monday, September 13, we learned that even members of the City Council were unaware of the ill-conceived plans of their Department of Transportation. The representative they sent in place of Fred Dock, who was conspicuous by his absence, didn’t even know how many garages the city had or how many of them were in Old Pasadena. At that meeting, City Council Members decided to examine the issue more thoroughly in two separate committees, make recommendations, and invite the entire city to comment.
Should be an interesting evening. One thing for sure, any attempt to steamroll this *numbskullduggery through the city without anyone being the wiser has run out of gas. There might actually be a possibility that we might be able to help reverse the sorry state of the rest of the garages city-wide.
Weeeeeelll seeeee.

*Yes. That is Numbskull Skullduggery =)

Ethics in Advertising

2010-06-10T11:49:00.000-07:00

No, no, no. That's not a contradiction in terms!
Although I'll be the first to admit that ethics are a tad less than obligatory in political advertising, in fact, the most successful political ad campaigns avoid them altogether. But what works in political advertising, doesn't work so well with any products or services that people can touch, judge and experience immediately for themselves.
Lying in politics, however, is such a time-honored tradition that Plato spoke of it as necessary to diplomacy. Today, lying politicians are the bread and butter of comedy. Stand-up comics could not exist without them.
Why do politicians envy ventriloquists?  They can lie without moving their lips. What do you call a politician who swears to tell the truth?  A liar. How can you tell when a politician is lying?  His lips are moving.
The list goes on.
But something remarkable happened Tuesday, June 8, 2010. Two remarkably well marketed bundles of bamboozlery bombed at the polling booths. Propositions 16 & 17, two corporate exercises in corporate greed, deception, half-truths, mistruths and home-spun charm, crashed and burned on impact.

Or as Greg Pruett, senior vice president of corporate affairs for PG&E reportedly explained in an article on baycitizen.org "While the election outcome hasn’t diminished our steadfast belief that citizens should have a vote in local government efforts to enter the electric utility business, we respect the decision voters made on this initiative." He failed to add that this initiative would have taken the right to majority rule away from those voters. Ironically, if PG&E had been able to play by the rules they were pushing, their 47.5 percent of the vote would have been enough to stifle the majority’s will. Too bad. So sad.
Surprisingly the effort that brought the $46 million PG&E juggernaut to its knees accomplished that miracle with a budget of barely $100,000. Similarly, the Mercury Insurance $16 million, attempt to reverse a 1988 consumer protection law, and allow them to manipulate premiums, was defeated with a tiny fraction of their bloated budget. So where did the corporations go wrong, or more importantly, where did the opposition go right?
First it seems the corporate troops went about a lie too far. They each used fake names, tried to hide behind populist rhetoric that they didn’t really understand, spent money like water or Meg Whitman (but I repeat myself). Then inexplicably, they defended their true goals openly in corporate stockholder documents accessible on the web. The opposition only had to point that out and make the truth even easier to find… not all that difficult in the digital “click-here” age. So even though voters (consumers) couldn’t actually touch, judge or experience products (arguments) with their own two hands, the bare facts were all-too-easy to find.
Lying is advertising is always a bad idea. That’s especially true if you have a product, and people are using it. There’s probably a reason they like it. Which means there’s enough good to say about it, that you don’t have to lie. If you don’t believe me, ask your happier customers. And if you still feel like you have to lie, be sure to give some friends or family a box or two of crayons and construction paper to make your “Going Out of Business Sale” signs. Your competition, their customers and their lawyers will be only too happy to help.
Ethics is advertising is just good business. And... sometimes, not a bad idea in politics either.

FINALLY! Voters Will Have to Pay for their Own Laziness!

2010-04-26T09:17:00.000-07:00

I love it when election marketers devise a whole new way to bamboozle the public, and California voters, no slouches in the overall bamboozle market, finally have a chance to actually pay for their ignorance and sloth personally, out of their own wallets. If successful, PG and E’s campaign to stifle competition could be an unparalleled accomplishment. That is truly saying something, because this has been a year of unprecedented babmoozlery, from the Birthers “victory” in Arizona (Damn You Hawaii) to California’s own multimillion campaign to pass Proposition 8 which defeated homosexuals right to marry because it would inexplicably destroy the fabric of the American family. Perhaps Lewis Black was right, and it would have unleashed attacks of Gay Banditos. But I digress.

Who is it that could possibly surpass these dizzying heights in inveiglery and babmoozlery? None other than Pacific Gas and Electric. Pardon me, I meant the “Taxpayers Right To Vote, Yes on 16.” You’ve seen their ads daily on the TV, and don’t they have a sexy website?

But take a look at that tiny type at the bottom. You know in all my time in advertising, I have NEVER had a client say to me, “can you make my name smaller, bordering on invisible? And while you’re at it, hide my logo altogether. The logo is forbidden!” Especially when they’re forking over $28.5 million (as of March 26). Nope. Never happened. Not once. If I were a cynical person (and I most assuredly am), I might presume that Pacific Gas and Electric had something to hide. Although in fairness, they are not hiding it from their shareholders for whom they defended their multimillion dollar campaign: “this is a good use of PG and E funds because otherwise, the company would have to spend ‘millions and millions of shareholder dollars to defend it repeatedly’ every time a municipality is thinking about going the CCA route. PG and E fights against municipalities forming CCAs because when local government agencies form their own local utility districts, PG and E loses customers, thus cutting into the corporation's long-term profitability.*”

While I applaud any company that feels that $1.22 billion profit in 2009 must be surpassed, I am amused that they are going to voters to vote against the very competition that would save the voters money. Of course they’re not really doing that. Competition is the American way, and voting against competition could be construed as UNAmerican. No, the good patriots of Pacific Gas and Electric are merely arguing that before their 1.22 billion dollar dominance of the market can be subject to competition, that an election must be held at taxpayer expense and an almost unheard of two thirds majority must approve it. But I repeat myself.

The fact that the right to vote is protected in the Constitution notwithstanding, there is nothing in this act that protects anyone but Pacific Gas and Electric, and they’re willing to spend up to $35 million dollars to do it. But who will really pay for this competition busting sham election… the very same voters who don’t ask questions, don’t research the PG and E connection and actually fall for the flimsy “personal freedom” argument. Not all of the voters will fall for it, just the lazy ones. In other words, if history is any guide, the majority. So get ready for less competition and higher rates from fewer providers.

Of course, if voters are unwilling to find out what they're voting about, maybe this will become the new American way.

Ready, Set, Recovery! We're pointing the way.

2010-04-07T16:11:00.000-07:00

Pasadena Advertising Marketing and Design (P-AMD) has been selected to create a new print, web and social networking campaign for the Foothill Workforce Investment Board (FWIB). FWIB provides workforce services that are invaluable in any economy and absolutely vital in today’s precarious environment. They offer a one-of-a-kind, employment lifeline that connects both sides of the workforce to what they need the most – for FREE. Until now, they have gone largely unnoticed by both the employers struggling to keep their businesses afloat, and by the great majority of unemployed desperate to find the right job.

This is a dream project for us, because the concept essentially sells itself. Everyone wants it; everyone needs it, and it is vital to the community and the economy as a whole. The only fundamental element lacking is awareness. If prospective employees don’t know that the keys to a better life are at their fingertips, they can’t ask for them. If business owners and managers don’t know they have access to essential business survival skills and to an unparalleled pool of highly qualified talent, they can’t use them. That all of this is free isn’t even an issue. Awareness is the key, not just for now but for the long term.

As a part of this coming year’s campaign, P-AMD will create and develop a new website for the Foothill Workforce Investment Board designed to reinforce their overall marketing plan. The site will be the center of a hub of social networking sites that appeals to employers, talented potential employees, city governments, business improvement districts and chambers of commerce that stretch from Duarte to South Pasadena.

This is not only an exciting project for all of us at P-AMD to undertake but a vital step in the revitalization of our region. A wave of recovery is coming. Nobody can tell when, but the signs are everywhere. However, the job seekers and employers of Arcadia, Monrovia, Duarte, Pasadena, Sierra Madre, and South Pasadena have to be ready for the wave when it arrives if they hope to ride it. If they jump on it too early or wait too long, they’ll miss it, and recovery and prosperity could be lost altogether.

Job seekers need to know not only how to get “a” job, but get “the” job they want and can do the best. Employers need to know that there is a viable resource, in their own backyard, where they can find sound business advice and a pool of local, highly qualified applicants at no charge.

That is now our task, and we can hardly wait to get started.

Pardon me while I rant about our schools

2010-03-30T10:52:00.000-07:00

Yet another battle for Pasadena Schools. Call it Measure CC, or the Pasadena Unified School District Parcel Tax, this is about more than just education or taxes or how wasteful or stingy our school administrators are. Detractors make it sound like the argument is all about waste (although that waste was not apparent to the outside management audit commissioned by the cities of Pasadena, Altadena and Sierra Madre). And if it were all about waste, certainly these concerned citizens would roll up their sleeves, volunteer in the district and eliminate that waste. But it’s not; they won’t, and I don’t want to waste ink.

No, measure CC is about community, and this community in particular. Pasadena has a long history of doing things our way. Making our own goals, raising our own funds and yes, rolling up our own sleeves to get things done. Even Measure CC’s most ardent detractors have to admit our schools are improving. They say it’s because we’re following the State’s lead, which is laughable on so many different levels. It’s because Pasadena parents fought long and hard to make them better!

Pasadenans won’t be told what we can and can’t do. When there’s an emergency we respond. When we’re told something is impossible, we do it anyway. In the ‘90’s when our libraries were in jeopardy, and in danger of closing, we rose up, taxed ourselves and kept them open. When Old Pasadena had fallen into decay so dire that you couldn’t walk down the street alone. Recovery was “impossible,” so we cantankerous band of business people got together and, yes, taxed ourselves to make things better. Anybody been to Old Pasadena lately? Even in this economy, the shops are lively; the streets and alleyways are clean and safe, and family fun can be found around every corner within our twenty-two block district.

If the whiners about waste really want to help, come on down. Everyone willing to roll up their sleeves and fix what’s broken is always welcome. However, until that unlikely day, here’s a reality check. Some things are worth working for. Some things are worth paying for. And our children and our future? There are two of them.

When is Free Advertising Worthless?

2010-03-20T16:01:00.000-07:00

In a word, never.

In fact, Word-of-Mouth (WOM) advertising is the most valuable kind of advertising, and it doesn’t cost a cent. That said, there are companies that spend millions in PR and social marketing trying to generate it. They have to, because bad word-of-mouth will kill a bad product or even the company that makes it. Think about the last movie campaign you saw. Previews in the theaters. Ads on TV. But if your best bud Ben says the movie sucked, you’ll avoid it like the plague. Hence movies can do millions on the first weekend and die the next.

Mom and pop businesses generally don’t have millions to spend on those kinds of campaigns, so they just struggle along providing good products, outstanding service, and great customer care. That’s how they generate word of mouth, and that’s a good thing. But they need more. They need basic, tell-prospective-customers-you-exist advertising. An invitation to the party if you will. If you don’t invite people to come, there won’t be any mouths to say a good word for you.

Which brings me back to the question of when is free advertising worthless. And to some people the answer can be “always.” Never and Always? How can that be? The answer is perception. Whenever a merchant thinks advertising is worthless, it is. Perception is reality.

Old Pasadena Management District (OPMD) offers its merchants thousands of dollars in advertising exposure for free. Not only does OPMD hold regular events to bring customers into the district, they send out newsletters and flyers informing merchants of what is happening, when it is happening, where it is happening, and even how they can benefit from it. But they don’t stop there. OPMD has a website that attracts tens of thousands of visitors, and our merchants are listed on the site for free. They can describe their business, their hours, their directions, their specials, and a link to their OWN website, for Free! Even if they don’t have a website of their own, OPMD will give them a page which can display their logo and photos of their businesses. Did I mention it was for free?

So why would anyone in their right mind ignore thousands of dollars worth of free advertising? More than likely, it is exactly because it’s free. Free has no worth. It takes time and trouble to send in information, take pictures, create special offers, write down hours, and why take valuable time for something that has no worth. They don’t see any reason to use it, and probably never will use it.

A case in point of perception. Last year, OPMD reacted to the depressed economy and drop in charitable donations with a first ever Restaurant Week Event. All of the participating restaurants were asked to create Restaurant Week specials, post their menus on the OPMD site for free, and feature the free Restaurant Week Posters in their windows and the “Special” menus at their entrances and on their tables. Those that did saw immediate increases in business. Business at Le Grand Orange and Elements Café nearly doubled! However, there were participating restaurants that failed to create specials, didn’t post their menus online or feature the menus or posters in their establishments. Most of them saw a drop in business. Go figure.

I think the perception of “free” as “worthless” did them in. However, this year our track record of success may well change that perception, and I fully expect participants will take note of what worked and what didn’t. Actually their perception of “free advertising” may not change, but the “simple equation for a profitable outcome” will certainly override any misgivings they might have.

So, in retrospect, maybe the answer to the question, “When is free advertising worthless,” is: whenever you don’t take advantage of it.

The Branding PowerPoint (as requested)

2010-03-08T14:07:00.000-08:00

After a very well received Branding and Positioning seminar in South Pasadena, we are posting the Powerpoint presentation. It is little more than a slide show for those who like a little side of tongue in cheek with their information. However, when I posted this on Youtube, I received a little criticism about the lack of sound. For those of you who attended the presentation (and their friends), this first video is for you... quiet though it might be.

However, I felt absolutely horrible that anyone could have felt so cheated by the lack of sound in the presentation. So I recreated it with the help of my very good friend* Boots Randolf. Please enjoy the "sound." :-)

Who ever said Branding and Positioning can't be fun?

*Never actually met my good friend Boots Randalf, but I love him (and Yakety Sax) all the same.

BRANDING A SMALL BUSINESS

2010-03-04T15:06:00.000-08:00

Suzanne Marks, Pasadena Advertising’s comely CEO, just gave a seminar on "Branding" to the South Pasadena Chamber of Commerce. The audience members, by and large, were small business owners. They were concerned that since the big stores spend so much money on branding, they had better learn about it too. However, branding and positioning efforts (for those who like semantic hair splitting) are usually reserved for large, impersonal corporations. Branding is what gives the company a face: a personal connection that clients and customers can hold onto.

The business owners’ concern is understandable, as John Costello of Procter & Gamble fame once famously explained, “A brand image signifies a relationship with the customer. It is the company’s most valuable asset. It’s also the main differentiator, the best defense against price competition and the key to customer loyalty. Competitors can copy your features and benefits, but they can’t steal your image.”

That said, giving a face to a small business is infinitely easier than creating a “face” for a corporation, because the business is, well, small enough to have a face built in, usually the owner's face. The salespeople's faces. And, the personal relationship is, more often than not, is actually personal – directly between people. So branding techniques are ... well, simpler. Take a shower. Dress for work. Open your shop for business. Smile and make your customers happy. Annnnnnnnnnd: Congratulations. Your branding is done.

Okay, not quite. You also have to know who your prospective customers are. You have to design your store (and your signage) to appeal to them, and they have to see your appeal from across the street.

You have to pick a location where your customers would likely be and would like to be. You have to make your shop their home. That’s all a part of your brand. And you have to give your current customers the best product or service possible to build up the most powerful, long lasting brand advertising possible – Word of Mouth.

Then there’s that other advertising – the kind outside your store. That's something you need to think about. You have to be consistent and reinforce the image of your store, yourself and thereby your "brand" in everything you do. However, with the advent of social marketing, your advertising just got a whole lot cheaper. With a web page, email, Twitter, Facebook and a blog, you can give directions, post hours, gain fans, thank old customers, entice new customers, post online coupons, showcase new products and services and reinforce your brand. And update it whenever you want.

All in all, a pretty hard working advertising medium that's worth all the work you put into it.

The Four Big Easy’s

2010-02-10T10:08:00.000-08:00

No, no, no. Don’t get me wrong. There is now, always was, and can forever only be one “Big Easy,” the happy home of joy, jazz and gin joints galore, New Orleans!

However, in honor of the Saints’ spectacular Super Bowl win, it seemed appropriate to turn their good fortune on its head - for a good cause: your bottom line. If you have a website, and you want it to work for you, especially if you want to do some business through it, there are four absolutely unbreakable “laws of easy” that you must obey at all times.
To be effective your site must be:
• Easy to find• Easy to navigate • Easy on the eyes• Easy to expand and edit

• Easy to find
Your keywords, tags and content must make it a snap for anyone searching for whatever you have to offer or they won’t know you offer it. Even if it’s a charity, once they get to your site, they have to know right away it’s you right away, or they’ll look for you somewhere else with a click of a button.

• Easy to navigate
Any site, especially a content-rich site must have intuitive, immediately accessible navigation. Busy visitors who need information need to it right away. If you have highly technical content, and “easy navigation” can’t cover all the possibilities, then you have to make “search” available on every page so your clients can get where they’re going immediately, directly.

• Easy on the eyes
Web designs not only have to be appealing, they also have to engage and direct visitors to find what they are looking for as quickly and efficiently as possible. Fastframe uses images that tell a story, and part of every story is how framed art and mirrors bring warmth to a home. First they appeal to their audiences, then let their “store services” and “location” links drive traffic into their stores.

• Easy to expand and edit
For years, Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) gave designers and programmers a consistent framework for site building and updating. But not everyone's a designer or programmer, and sites have to be updated constantly. Today, robust Content Management Systems (CMS) such as Joomla (above) and Expression Engine give anyone with basic word processing skills the ability to maintain even the most content rich websites. Not only does it allow you to add content, but also to add directories and subdirectories, new navigation elements, graphics (even graphic animation elements) which can be added, edited and deleted through any of the most popular web browsers, from any computer, virtually anywhere in the world.

Of course when it comes to web site visitors, everything has to be easy, because if it’s not, the next best site is just a click away. Something to think about during the coming seven months of horrific football deprivation. :-o

For more information contact Suzanne Marks at Pasadena Advertising Marketing Design.

How do you choose a person of the Century?

2010-01-31T14:05:00.000-08:00

Well if you're developing a fund raiser to celebrate the first century of Scouting, then first and foremost, you need an outstanding Scout. No problem there. You have an incredible abundance of folks to choose from. Eagle Scouts alone have become presidents, governors, war heroes, Supreme Court Justices, and astronauts including 11 of the 12 men who walked on the moon.

So the Boy Scouts Los Angeles Area Council tried to find a person who exemplified the spirit of scouting. Someone with a wide breadth of knowledge and experience in a variety of fields. How better to represent the many areas of achievement rewarded by Scouting with merit badges and advancement in rank.

The person they decided on was University of Southern California president Steven B. Sample. As our CEO and Boy Scouts Los Angeles Area Council Board member, Suzanne Marks explained, "He best personified the variety of skills that Scouting has taught for over a hundred years. Steven Sample is an inventor, an educator, a business leader, an author and a Boy Scout.”

To develop her campaign, a mix of traditional and electronic media, Suzanne relied on two of her own Scouts at Pasadena Advertising, Life Scout and V.P. Creative Tony Nino, and Eagle Scout, Creative Director, David Ensz. “I wanted a design a basic look with a balanced focus to honor Dr. Sample and also pay homage to the first century of Scouting,” explained David Ensz, “the muted earth tones were a reminder that camping is an essential part of the Scouting experience.” “Although crimson and gold seemed to be more prominently displayed among the USC alumni,” laughed Tony Nino.

Dr. Sample is the esteemed author of the Los Angeles Times Best selling book, “The Contrarian’s Guide to Leadership,” and a highly regarded professor of “The Art and Adventure of Leadership,” His extraordinary efforts in propelling academics at the University of Southern California are world-renowned; his incredible ability to generate contributions to that fine institution of higher learning has resulted in one of the most successful fundraising campaigns in the history of higher education.

Fittingly Dr. Sample’s Person of the Century celebration raised over $600,000 for Scouting in Los Angeles. In this economy, that was an achievement that more than exceeded expectations. The Los Angeles Area Council is honored and grateful for the contributions of all our supporters.

Success doesn’t take a miracle in Old Pasadena.

2010-01-25T16:35:00.000-08:00

In the spirit of full disclosure, I admit I am biased. I am a Pasadena Advertising owner and the chairman of the Old Pasadena Marketing District (OPMD). However, I’ve heard more than my share of comments about Old Pasadena leading a charmed life, and I think it’s time for a little reality check.
Times are hard, and doing business anywhere is a challenge, but as far as Old Pasadena is concerned, the rumors of the economy getting better seem to be true. Like anywhere else, to take full advantage of that, you not only have to work harder, you have to work smarter, and in Old Pas, we also work together. Cooperation is what gave Old Pasadena its start in the late ‘80s, and it’s what is keeping us ahead of the curve today.
This was a very good Holiday season for our 22-block district. Even though we don’t have all the figures in from all the stores, we can see that our garages were consistently at full capacity, unique visitors to our web site nearly doubled from last year, and merchants have come to us with thanks and stories.

Marci Christianson, proprietor of LulaMae, an award-winning Old Pasadena gift boutique saw a dramatic increase in profits over last year. She is not only a smart merchant but also an active marketer. Since OPMD research had predicted that virtually all our customers would be spending less, she changed her product line to take full advantage the situation. To attract more customers, she participated in all our holiday events beginning with the Halloween, Trick’’n’’Treat weekend. To maximize her visibility with limited ad funds, she developed a web site as fun and quirky as her store. She linked it to the OPMD site, offered on-line coupons from both sites, then gave the coupon discount to all her customers, whether they knew about them or not. “I see the look in their eyes when they get the added discount. I know they’ll visit my site now, and they’ll come back to the store.”

Andrea Auman, owner of Crowned Studio salon not only experienced a 35% increase in business, she did it overcoming an additional challenge. In the middle of the worst recession in anyone’s memory, she decided to move and start up her business all over again. “It was the best possiblee timing as far as I was concerned, “she remarks, “I knew my best customers would follow me, and with Pasadena rents at an all time low, I knew I could find a great place in a great city." Andrea not only took full advantage of the OPMD web connections and events to bring in customers, she started up networking and cross-promotional events of her own. To maximize her electronic presence Andrea links to her partners and fellow merchants from her home page and maintains Facebook and Twitter accounts and a blog.
As diverse, and sometimes eccentric, as the merchants of Old Pasadena are, all of our success stories share this aspect of working harder, working smarter and working together. No magic potions (that we know of), no lucky Leprechauns, and no behind-the-scenes buyouts or bailouts have been employed to give us the upper hand. Just Good research, good marketing and good business. The Old Pasadena Management District is proud to be the hub of this activity, and is working hard to keep giving our merchants and business owners ahead of the game.

To Dream The Practical Dream

2010-01-04T13:21:00.000-08:00

Every product is a dream. A car is a dream of freedom and power. Lipstick is glamour. Running shoes are fitness and health. A Mac is… better than a PC. But how do you show the Scouting dream? And how do you tell the world?

The answer to both questions: a float in the Tournament of Roses Parade.

The Boy Scouts of America faced a dilemma. It was their 100th anniversary – a time to celebrate a hundred years of building character and responsibility in citizens and leaders alike. It was a perfect time to kick off the next century of Scouting. But they had to be practical. The economy was down. Donations were down. Programs that kids depend on were threatened. Yet the right message could help alleviate that. It The Boy Scouts could show the promise of Scouting in just the right way, people might see the value of investing in it. More kids might join. The trick is to find a way to make the most impact on the maximum number of people in the least expensive way possible.

Participation in the Rose Parade was the perfect choice. Where else could you get three minutes of National Broadcast time on ALL the major networks for free? Sure it costs money to produce the float, upwards of a hundred thousand dollars, but that’s well less than half of the cost of most commercials on network television. And when you calculate placement costs of $250,000 per 30 second commercial, three minutes is equal to a million and a half dollars worth of airtime for free. Plus there are a multitude of other hidden benefits for contributors as well as Scouts themselves.

The float is decorated almost entirely by volunteers, and there’s a waiting list of people who want to volunteer. In many cases, the volunteers, or the companies who donate to Scouting, pay for the privilege. It is a meaningful way for companies to reward select employees, and corporate executives get an opportunity to participate in the many Rose Bowl activities, including prime seating for the parade and attendance at the Rose Bowl itself. Luckily, this year, that privilege extended to attendance at the BCS game Thursday, January 7th. It made "contributing" an even greater perceived value.
The boy scouts took this concept a step farther and used the opportunity to reward Eagle Scouts with the opportunity to march in the parade. The world wide audience not only got to see the symbolic representation of Scouting, they experience the pride of Scouts in their accomplishments. To make matters even better, the Boy Scouts' Centennial Celebration float won the Pasadena Tournament of Roses’ National Award.

The eagle scouts, even after 5 ¼ miles of marching, still stood tall as they carried the American Flags and flags of all 50 states in the precession. The proudly carried representations of all the merit badges that Scouts can earn. And the float itself symbolized the excitement that lies at the center of the tradition of Scouting. And the Scouts aboard the float, boys and girls alike, were excellent representatives, canoers smiled at waved at the cheering crowds. Riders pedaled their seed-encrusted bikes, and a scout still slid down a working zip line between two trees.

After almost a year after the Boy Scouts Board of Directors (including Marketing Committee head, Suzanne Marks, our CEO) had approved the initial designs, and almost 8 months of tireless fund raising, the Centennial Float had taken huge strides in accomplishing the Boy Scouts’ mission. New contributors had been brought into the Scouting organization, the centennial year celebration had gotten off to a memorable start, and Scouts all over Southern California had been given the memory of a lifetime.

For sheer advertising value, an award-winning symbol of Scouting excellence and adventure had been seen by over a million people along the parade route in Pasadena, and by over 40 million TV viewers in the US, and in more than 150 countries worldwide. The hundreds of volunteers and Scouts who worked on the project took home a special pride that they shared with family and friends. For Scouting it was a dream come true.

The next century of Scouting is off to a grand beginning.

Finding a Voice for Every Person

2009-12-08T09:35:00.000-08:00

When I was asked to write a congratulatory ad for a client being honored by The City of Hope, I was a bit dubious. I expected it to be one of those tired, boilerplate, “Congratulations. Job Well Done (insert name here)” pieces. Luckily, it didn’t quite turn out that way. My client was receiving The City of Hope's "Spirit of Life Award" for years of tireless fund raising efforts for this world-renowned cancer center. By all accounts, he had done a spectacular job.

More remarkably, in the middle of his tenure, his wife contracted a particularly virulent form of cancer and he was forced to discover first hand how skilled and caring these physicians were. His wife's treatment was long and painful, but together, family and doctors united to wrestle it into remission. Their story had a deep impact on family, co-workers and friends alike. They all wanted to express personal congratulations for his award along with intensely personal appreciation, admiration and affection. They had stories they had to tell. The more I was drawn into the story, the more I felt obliged to make each of the ads not only individual but also memorable and compelling. Clearly, boilerplate solutions were no longer even a consideration.

The inspiration for the tone of these ads came from a seminal statement by former City of Hope executive director Samuel Golter: "There is no profit in curing the body if in the process we destroy the soul."

City of Hope is a research, treatment and teaching center dedicated to defeating cancer. They talk about the disease as if it were a living, breathing enemy. They are painfullly aware that while cancer itself is deadly and debilitating, its very treatment wrecks havoc on the minds and bodies of patients. To alleviate that, the physicians here, have created a culture that strives to both save lives and preserve the spirits of their patients and families.

Not surprisingly, all of the individuals who asked me to help give them a voice wanted to say so much that they couldn’t fit it all into the few lines allowed by the constraints of a simple ad. What I had to do was distill all the stories and emotions down to the bare essence of their emotional connection to their husband, or father, or son, or friend, or coworker.

Of course, this is the essence of advertising, condensing the message of the client into a few powerful images, and it is a goal that any artist can relate to. It’s not unlike the task of Robert Russin, the creator of the Spirit of Life fountain that welcomes families and patients to the City of Hope. He had to find a way to express a sense of hope without any false promises of guaranteed cures. He chose a vision of joy.

As a writer, and as a son who lost a mother to cancer, I felt a special bond with these friends and family. I was also filled with a sense of obligation to make their sentiments powerful enough to reach out and touch their audience. I scheduled lengthy interviews to serve as the basis for each person’s ad. Their stories and emotions served as both inspiration and the foundation for the individual voice  for each ad.

At the celebratory dinner, virtually every family member and friend thanked me for being so true to their meaning. Some shook my hand. Some hugged me. But the face that I remember most was a co-worker who took me aside and said, “When we first read your copy in our office, the ads from his children and his brothers and sisters made us all laugh. The personal note from his wife to her doctor made us all silent. But when we read the ad from his wife to him, I had to leave the room to cry.” And she thanked me.

But that wasn’t me. That was them. They made her laugh. They made her think. And it was his wife who made her cry. All I did was help them find their voice. I was honored that they’d asked me. It was an assignment I will never forget.

What a Ride!

2009-11-23T16:22:00.000-08:00

Sunday the 22nd, offered up a beautiful morning for a bike ride. The air was clear and crisp. The traffic was light. The weather, gorgeous. It felt good to be on the road. Not to mention that at the end of the ride, I would get to see our billboard for the Metro Gold Line Foothill Extension.

The Foothill Extension, a section of light rail line bogged down in a bureaucratic morass for over six years, had finally gotten the go ahead. It had taken a lot of work and a lot of patience. The Foothill Extension Authority, mayors, communities up and down the foothills, and their allies had put in countless hours to make this dream a reality. Finally, the long-neglected San Gabriel Valley was about to get some relief from hours of infuriating, congestion-clogged freeways. Our agency had played a small role in those battles for relief, and had helped people in the valley make their voices heard.
Now Pasadena Advertising Marketing and Design had been chosen to make the long-awaited news public with a series of six billboards. We backed the boards up with souvenir packets of postcards featuring the artwork for each station’s billboards.

We designed one board for each of the six new locations along the route featuring architectural renderings of the site. The first to get it’s own board was the Monrovia station.
When I got to the site, the board sat all alone at the south end of a sprawling, virtually empty parking lot. The day before, the lot had been packed with people and politicians, reporters and dignitaries. Some were there to celebrate the prospect of relief from years of unyielding, bumper-to-bumper rush hours. Others were there to finally claim their role in a hard fought victory over substantial odds. Some were there to weasel out a little credit for which they had no right whatsoever. But, that’s politics.
I liked visiting the empty lot a whole lot better.
Off to the south east side of the lot, I saw the long forgotten Monrovia rail station that I had first seen over a decade ago, as it was being closed down and boarded up. Now it would have a second chance at life as a part of the new Monrovia Gold Line station complex. That made this one little victory all that much sweeter.

I can’t wait to see it restored, and I’m sure there are more than a few long-time Monrovia residents who will rejoice to see it come back into use again.
Every once in a while, advertising benefits people and whole communities. This is one of those times. We in Pasadena only played a small role in this battle, but once we had been invited to join in the fight, we hung on for the whole ride.
I couldn’t be prouder of the end result.
________________________

This is the first of two entries in my blog about a month that has been both exhausting and exhilarating. Being a part of the advertising effort in the Foothill Extension fight allowed our agency to make a lasting impact on the lives of hundreds of thousands of San Gabriel Valley residents. Advertisers are rarely offered that kind of chance, but after six years of wrangling, we have finally gotten a glimpse of a future we helped create.
Advertising is widely perceived as fun, and much of the time it is. And challenging, which it also is. And frustrating, which it is more often than any of us would care to admit. Yet very rarely, it can be deeply meaningful and rewarding. In the last few weeks, we have been lucky enough to have two such moments. This was only the first.

The Flies Have It

2009-10-29T21:18:00.000-07:00

I've been too busy this week to breath without an appointment, but I just had to share this.

In Frankfurt am Main, Germany, at the Frankfurt Book Fair, the crowds were stunned, and more than a bit amused when Jung von Matt unleashed an advertising air force comprised of 200 banner-carrying, marauding house flies. To promote the Eichborn publishing house, von Matt attached banners to the house flies with a bit of wax and set them free inside the Convention Center (Messe Frankfurt) to fly about at will.

Since the beginning of the year, von Matt has worked on relaunching the corporate identity of Eichborn - a literary publisher. They came up with a new branding vocabulary, a revised logo, color palette and redesigned book covers. The needed a breakthrough launch for the new ID, and the best place for that was at the Frankfurt Book Fair. But if that was the classic location, the promotion was most decidedly not: A house fly air force. Von Matt and his team meticulously applied microscopic amounts of wax onto 200 house flies, attached an ultralight banner and set their buzzing waxworks free at the fair.

The banners were only a few centimetres across, but they played havoc with the beleaguered flies piloting skills. The extra weight kept the flies at a lower altitude and forced them to land more often. Bad for the flies, great for the promotion. The encumbered flies were forced to spend most of their flying time at eye level. Of course whenever and wherever they were forced to land, the banner was clearly visible. Naturally, in the air their zig-zagging flight paths attracted attention because of the flies' rapid movements.

I have nothing but high praise for this innovative and eye-catching launch. However, as I have often explained to my clients: What is brilliant for one client, could well be disastrous for another. For Eichborn publishers, this was brilliant. For the Four Seasons restaurant, ... Wayall... maybe not so much.

A tip of the hat and flick of the swatter to Jung von Matt.

NEVER say “Yes” to a stranger.

2009-10-22T13:44:00.000-07:00

While this is not exactly about advertising or marketing, it does revolve around honesty in communication. Yesterday, I wasted an entire afternoon arguing with aggressive, obnoxious phone agents, all because one of my employees answered a question, “yes.” Avoid that, and you can save hours of hassles and/or hundreds, even thousands of dollars.

Before I begin, check your last phone bill. Really. Do it now. Right now. Seriously. Specifically page 6 or 7, listed under “OEM charges." I’ll wait. See that charge for $40? That’s bogus. You never authorized it.

Yet, there it is. Right there on your phone bill, and it’s probably been there for months. Just a small enough charge that you wouldn’t notice it at first, yet substantial enough to bring in hundreds of thousands of dollars in fraudulent charges from unsuspecting customers.

Lemme ‘splain.

Let’s say someone calls you one day (or has already called you) to “check on your address,” or ”update their directory” or see “who handles your phone service.” Sounds innocent enough. “Are you still at 601 main street,” the disembodied voice would ask. “Yes,” you would answer, because, what the hell, it is your company address. And that’s all it takes. It’s over. It’s done. Congratulations you just bought into a bucket of headaches, and expensive headaches at that. The caller probably went on with a number of Yes/No questions, because it’s less suspicious, and it provides them with a variety of intonations that they can use later.
“Use how?” Glad you asked.
They record your “yes.” And then they concoct a completely different conversation, record it and cast you as the star. Their recording is of a sales call. They insert your “yes” as proof of your authorization to charge you. They will even play it back to you should you call to complain about a service you never ordered. Their version of the call may sound something like this.

"Hi I’m calling from (for instance) More YellowPages Online, and AT&T has authorized us to provide your company with added visibility online. Are you authorized to make decisions about your phone service?
[Your voice] Yes.
For only $40 a month we can promote your company to web visitors around the world. Are you interested?
[Your voice] Yes.
Are you authorized to approve this charge?
[Your voice] Yes.
Congratulations. You have made a wise investment. Starting this month, we will charge your AT&T account for $40.00 per month. Do you understand?
[Your voice] Yes.
And you approve?
[Your voice] Yes.
Thank you very much."
They could have just as easily asked.
"Will you please bend over and grab your ankles.
[Your voice] Yes.
You understand, we will not either pull your hair or kiss you.
[Your voice] Yes.
Good bye."
Doesn’t that sound vaguely like fraud? Flagrant fraud? That’s because it is. And it is well known. If you were to Google “More YellowPages Online scam,” you would get 550,000 results, many of which you will recognize as your own experience.

Of course, if you have a couple of hours to spare, you can get all the charges reversed. But the hope of these online thieves is that you will not notice.
How do you avoid it. Simple, hang up. Or if you have time and want to have fun with them, answer their questions precisely without using the word “Yes.”
"Is this your address?
It is.
Is this your phone number?
My phone number is correct.
Is this your company?
That is the name my company does business by."
(or just keep giving them your web address… they hate that)
Save money. Save time. Save headaches. Save “yeses” for people you know.
Say “No” to fraud.
Never say “yes” to a stranger.

How Old Pasadena scares up customers in hard times

2009-10-16T19:06:00.000-07:00

FREE candy!

Well, that about covers it. G’night folks. I’ll be here all week.

O wait. Free candy isn’t enough. Not in this economy. Lemme ‘splain.

On Halloween night, our Old Pasadena merchants will continue their long-standing tradition of opening their doors to kids for the district’s Store-to-Store, Safe Trick-or-Treat Night. Every year, hundreds of handfuls of free candy are doled out to the costumed kids of Pasadena. However this year, the Old Pas marketing committee suggested that the merchants add a little twist. The scope of the Halloween festivities will be expanded to include a full month of specials leading up to Halloween, and on Halloween Day, our merchants will be adding special treats for the long-suffering, too-long ignored Trick-or-Treaters’ moms and dads.

This year, select Old Pasadena stores and restaurants will be treating Grown-ups to hundreds of dollars in savings. Plus, the streets and alleyways will be filled with wandering spooks, a free, haunted photo booth, and more. On October 31, participating merchants will beckon visitors with Trick-Or-Treat signs in store windows. A photographer will take free haunted pictures of the kids in costumes among hundreds of pumpkins in the One Colorado Courtyard. Throughout the celebration, guests will also enjoy a unique opportunity to meet and greet with various popular (and non-threatening) Halloween costumed characters.

Of course, this expansion of the traditional Old Pasadena Halloween festivities is a rather naked attempt to get the parents of those cute little characters to come back and shop here. Oddly, this is the first year that the Old Pas merchants have taken advantage of their Trick-or-Treat Night candy give-aways to promote themselves. Perhaps the abysmal economy has something to do with this epiphany, but ironically, today the MediaPost “Engage:Gen Y” blog advised marketers “Don't Be Afraid To Embrace The Potential Of Halloween.”

Blog author Jason Bakker, inspired by a memorable, late Halloween night “visit” of some unruly teen candy addicts, wrote, “The more I looked into it, the more I realized how much fun there is to be had out there. Youth marketers should know that Halloween for college students is always a bull market, and for a very small amount of time each year, they need look no further than the local haunts if they want to reach this demographic.”

Of course, his target audience is not the same one that the merchant’s of Old Pas are trying to attract. However, the fact remains that Halloween, along with being a high holy day of pre-teens and their dentists, has a substantial potential to bring returning traffic back to eager store owners and restaurateurs. If the spike in hits on the Old Pasadena web site is any indication, that potential is working its Halloween magic.

To the Old Pasadena Marketing District staff and my clever marketing committee members, allow me to say, BOO!

Just because you yell, don’t mean I have to listen.

2009-10-15T17:41:00.000-07:00

Dear broadcaster advertisers,
First of all, let me say I love broadcast advertising. I am especially fond of radio, because I can tap directly into the imagination of the listener. If I want to hold a world premiere with a cast of thousands on someone’s lawn, I can. With no need for "extras" or special effects.

Of course, even on TV, if I need to resurrect the dead to be my spokes-king, it’s not a problem. Broadcast advertising can be fun.

But really? Yelling, screaming, cranking up the volume? It’s not just annoying. It doesn’t really work that well, and it could work against you.
Anyone who has ever had children is already aware of this. Yelling doesn’t mean they hear you. In fact, with children of all ages, yelling seems to reduce their ability to hear exponentially. The louder you yell, the less they hear. Apparently, however, there are an overwhelming number of broadcast advertisers who either never had children, or are inexplicably unaware of this fact.
When programs pause to go into commercial, the volume seems to leap into the stratosphere. How many times have you been caught unaware when a commercial blared out, and you lunged for the remote to seek relief? We have all, at one time or another, said, “Thank God for the MUTE button,” but still the practice goes on. Is it possible, that someone has kept the existence of this sanity-saving button a secret from these advertisers? And if not why do they keep doing it?
I think there are two answers. Technology and desperation. While there are standards and practices in place prohibiting precipitous bumps in volume, recording engineers long ago figured out how to get around them. They just “equalize” the volume across all every available frequency, so that without violating any guidelines they can create a “wall of sound” without raising the volume. And as we all know, if you can do something, you do it.
The second component is desperation. “I want to sell this now. Right now. Right this twisty-legged second, and nobody’s gonna stop me.” The reason desperation works, is that motivated buyers sense the desperation like sharks sense blood in the water, and they pounce. It works so well, that some advertisers feign desperation, Crazy Gideon comes to mind.
But desperation only goes so far. Screaming ads rarely scream “quality.” And if your customers are not in the market to buy, or short of cash, or a bit desperate themselves, they don’t need to hear that. And they don’t have to.They turn it off and take a deep breath. Just like you do. The ads you like, listen to, or even look forward to, bear the product names that get under your skin and lie in wait until you are ready to buy. Those are the names that rise to the top of your mind or the tip of your tongue whenever you need them. No screaming necessary.
Now consumers have even more weapons in their arsenal to fight screaming (the infamous “mute” button, the DVR “skip” and “fast forward” buttons, and on-line viewing), so screamers not only don’t have to be heard, they don’t have to be seen.
Of course, if all you want to be is unseen and unheard, you can save a bundle on advertising!

Love, Tony

Now You’re Thinking Freely

2009-10-13T15:30:00.000-07:00

This weekend “CBS Sunday Morning” examined the burgeoning “Free” economy that is developing on the Internet. On the web, of course, “free content” is the norm. It’s expected, even demanded. Free searches, free email, free bargain hunting, free classified ads, free dictionaries, free encyclopedias. Everything online is either free or marginalized, shunned, avoided and diminished in importance. Certainly there are sites that charge a fee, or share a fee, but much of that content is available elsewhere, either independently or from a pirated source.

And piracy is theft, right? You put time and money into your intellectual property and someone enjoys it for free like music on the radio… Wait. No. That’s a bad example. Radio was good. On the radio, recording artists gained an audience who would come out to their concerts or buy their records or both. It was just great advertising. Record companies paid DJ’s in money, drugs and scotch to play their artists on the radio. Recording artists made money. Recording studios made money. Everyone was happy, and no one was stealing the content, except for the vast majority of listeners who recorded and shared it on cassettes… Damn. My train of thought seems to be derailing.

Or I’m being facetious.

Sunday morning guest commentator, Wired Magazine editor Chris Anderson showed how Google has mastered the art of profiting from the “Free” market. First of course is Google’s cash cow “free search,” which combines search results with highly targeted ads based on the user’s search term. As Anderson pointed out, searching for plants brings up ads for landscapers. Innovative, yet intuitive.

More interesting, the Monty Python gang, faced with a slew of “pirated” videos of favorite skits like the “Dead Parrot” and “Cheese Shop” on Youtube (owned by Google) chose not to sue or enjoin Youtube to cease, desist and remove their bits. No. Instead they started their own Monty Python channel which featured all these favorite skits. Then they used the channel to sell high quality DVD’s of the originals. As a result Monty Python DVD sales went up 23,000 percent. Free can be verrrrry profitable.

Another example of choosing to profit from “pirated” content appeared this morning in Media Post’s “Search Insider” blog. One of the most popular Youtube videos is the joyful explosion of wedding celebration, the “J K Wedding Entrance Dance.” That wild and raucous, devilish dance down the center isle to the alter is uplifting, moving and inspirational. But it could have subjected the happy couple to a devastating RIAA type lawsuit and cost them thousands of dollars in fines.

Sony's Jive label chose instead to link the video to Amazon and iTunes where users could download “Forever,” the song featured in the video which, oh by the way, “briefly climbed to the No. 3 and No. 4 most popular song on those two sites” and the official 'Forever' music video also had a spike in downloads. Now the video is being used to collect donations for violence prevention.

The choice, it seems, is make a profit or make a stink. The RIAA legal battles, which began with shutting down Napster, have resulted in horrible publicity and hundreds of thousands of dollars in uncollectible fines from students who can never pay them. Google’s “Free” market exploitation is resulting in hundreds of thousands of dollars in profits. Unless you’re a lawyer, the choice seems clear.

It’s a new world. It’s a new economic paradigm. The choice comes down to this: Get on board, or get left behind.

Stupid, Ugly, Stinky, Nasty, Dirty, Poopy, Words!

2009-10-09T17:05:00.000-07:00

In Kindergarten we were all carefully taught not to use bad words. Negative was bad, bad, bad. Positive was good. But as every advertiser knows, nobody in Kindergarten has to move products.
I will be the first to admit that negative advertising works. Anyone who ever saw Clarke Gable in “The Huxters,’ has to remember Sidney Greenstreet hawking up a juicy wad of mucus onto a conference table. As he wipes the table with his handkerchief, he explains that although what he did was disgusting, nobody at the table will ever forget it. It’s been 40 years since I saw the movie, so I tend to agree.
But just in case there was any doubt about the effectiveness of negative advertising, the UCL Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience did a study which “demonstrates conclusively” that “information of negative value is better detected than information of positive value.” However the Institute didn’t investigate what the effect of wildly overbearing, disturbing advertising might have on a brand.
The Republican party is currently experimenting with pushing the limits of negativity and adding the dubious element of easily-debunked, outright lies and occasional looney toon allegations of the coming of the antichrist. While a hardcore minority of Americans is desperately trying to believe, the brand is suffering mightily.
Not that the Democrats oddly disjointed muddle of “positive” messages is faring much better. There is no central theme or lattice of reinforcement to support a single unified brand. But this is not new. As Will Rogers said, "I'm not a member of any organized political party, I'm a Democrat!" At least the party is not making itself look ridiculous.
Negative advertising can of course be very, very good. And can be good for the brand. Apple ads come to mind, Justin Long & John Hodgeman are hilarious in the “I’m a Mac” ads. And in case no one noticed, they are blatantly ANTI PC. Brilliantly negative. And the PC campaign in response is as unfocused and mushy as the Democrats’ lame efforts to win credibility.
So, it’s not really a matter of negative or positive words and pictures, it’s the eternal quest for meaningful, memorable and effective. As ever, it is a simple choice of Badvertising versus good. Stupid versus smart.
If you’re going to go negative, be smart. And, apparently, if you’re going to go positive, be smarter.

How Old Pasadena Won a Food Fight with a Bad Economy

2009-10-06T16:12:00.000-07:00

At my day job, I create advertising at Pasadena Advertising, Marketing & Design. However, in my spare time, I’m also the Marketing Committee Chair of the Old Pasadena Management District (OPMD). We’re a small part of the economic engine that we call Old Pas… and in case you missed it, the economy sucks.
Even in Old Pasadena. The merchants are suffering, stores are closing and even donations to our local charities are drying up. It’s undeniably bad. Yet it was far worse when Old Pasadena first began its breakout from decay in the late 80’s.
That was a desperate time. Block after block of boarded up buildings, and crime defined Old Pasadena. There was no Crate and Barrel, Tiffany’s, Apple Store or Gap. The only stores on Colorado Boulevard that paid their rents on time were three pawnshops and a Sex Store. But we not only survived, we thrived. There were no government bailouts, not even from the city of Pasadena itself. Our own business people, building owners and developers took direction action, and we pulled ourselves up by our own bootstraps. We’re an ornery lot. We saw no reason why we couldn’t do it again this time.
OPMD decided to hit the doom-and-gloom despair head on. Economic collapse. Exploding unemployment. Homelessness. Helplessness. The end of the world as we knew it. We didn’t buy it. Our businesses needed customers. Our charities needed contributions. We decided to tackle both problems at once.

We soon realized that the two problems that seemed most basic weren’t our major concern. Yes, business was down. Yes, donations were down. But the central problem was “morale” was down. No one was having any fun. There seemed to be no relief. But one of Old Pasadena's greatest assets is an array of award-winning restaurants, and, as everyone knows, “food” equals fun. And that’s how the idea of “Old Pasadena Restaurant Week” began. The concept was similar to many other restaurant events. Restaurateurs would offer reduced price, prix-fixe, three-course lunches and dinners. Pretty standard event. The only real difference would be that 10% of the proceeds would be donated to Pasadena’s Union Station Homeless Services, celebrating 35 years of helping those in need.

The response from the district was amazing. Out of our 22-block district, more than 27 of Old Pasadena's finest restaurants offered to take part. Pasadena media gave us extraordinary support including magazines, newspapers and PCC, the local Public Broadcasting station, and soon even L.A.’s mainstream media joined in. We posted the special menus online and immediately noticed that our OldPasadena.org web traffic spiked to levels we hadn’t seen since the Christmas holidays.
Restaurant Week proved so successful that instead of just one week, OPMD extended the event for another week. Some owners reported increases of up to 80%, and many of the restaurants put their restaurant week specials on their menus permanently. Many non-restaurant merchants also noted a increase in business. However the real benchmark of success of that promotion came when OPMD presented Union Station with a check for $10,000.
Of course, the reality is that the economy still sucks. Business is still down. There are businesses that are still in trouble. But we’re not going away. Old Pasadena revived itself once, and we haven’t forgotten what we learned then. We‘ve found our bootstraps right where we left them. Now we’re just starting to pull.