During the past few years, almost everyone has rediscovered the value of a dollar.  No bill goes unquestioned, costs are constantly compared with multiple price quotes, and pie-in-the-sky graphic design budgets have gone the way of the Saturn automobile. Fortunately, this is not all doom-and-gloom. Lean budgets are here to stay, but common sense has prevailed so that clients are able to get more bang for their buck with greater efficiencies and a more direct path to polished marketing materials that still hit their mark.

Ornament is a Crime. Tighter budgets mean fewer concepts, but this also leads to a leaner, cleaner, more direct, less-is-more approach that is perfectly in-tune with the times.  Because there is less time on the clock, some of the fancy details and extremes of idea exploration remain only as ideas in the designer’s head, tucked away until the roaring 2020’s arrive and we’re back to “less is a bore.”  (Full credit to Adolf Loos, Ludvig Mies van der Rohe and Robert Venturi for borrowing their phrases.)

Sketch Artist. Clients who are cutting costs have become more accepting of sketchier, more conceptual ideas upfront, where they can help to shape the first drafts to help overcome internal hurdles at an early stage.

Many hats. Leaner times has also added a few hats to the graphic designer’s wardrobe.  In addition to the backwards beret, today’s designer must also do some copywriting, be more engaged in sales, and even put on the accountant’s green visor to keep projects on track and within budget.

Fewer paper cuts.  The designer has to do a little more heavy lifting, now that expensive uncoated papers and elaborate finishing techniques like die-cutting, foil-stamping, embossing/debossing are reserved for only those with the deepest pockets. Proceed with caution here — cutting back on some of these features can lead to more design hours to try and get back some of the lost perceived value that occurs when these papers and techniques are scaled back.

Live a little.  Cutting back too much on design, paper and techniques can send your customers the wrong message.  These marketing materials are a quick first impression of who you are and they need to make an impact.  There is a balance that should be met to give you the impact you want at the price you deserve.

Even if you live under a large rock you’ve probably heard of the Old Spice Guy, the dashing, bare-chested spokesman in the Old Spice Body Wash television commercial. Wearing only a towel and a smile, the Old Spice Guy informs the women in the audience that although their men aren’t as handsome and suave as he is, their use of Old Spice will at least allow them to smell like him. And “anything is possible,” he says, “when a man smells like a man and not a lady.” The commercial’s simultaneous celebration and parody of machismo is funny and clever. And now, thanks to a new series of more than 220 very short YouTube videos, the Old Spice guy is a phenomenon.

Lots has already been written about the genius of that social media strategy, which encouraged fans to send the Old Spice Guy comments and questions via Twitter and Facebook for a chance at having him respond (bare-chested and in a towel, of course) in a personalized video. The results—the company’s Twitter followers jumped from 3,000 to 46,000 in less than 48 hours and the videos have received more than 21 million YouTube viewings—constitute further evidence that social media works for businesses.

But there’s a more basic lesson advertisers can learn from the Old Spice phenomenon. It’s about staying the course and sticking with the plan. Giving your advertising a chance to find its voice and gain momentum.

You’ll hear a lot about how the Old Spice Guy is advertising’s “overnight sensation.” But that’s not true. The company and its advertising agency began evolving toward the concept in 2007 with a series of commercials featuring “B” movie actor Bruce Campbell parodying traditional 1960s maleness. Those commercials got some viewer attention, won some awards, and helped elevate the product to number one in its category. But they didn’t achieve the word-of-mouth status of Old Spice Guy. The commercial that introduced him ran for the first time on Super Bowl Sunday of this year. Even then, and despite the approximately $30 million investment, the Old Spice Guy did not instantly become a phenomenon. It took six more months and a brilliant social media campaign for the idea to reach critical mass.

It’s natural to run an ad and expect your phone to start ringing the next day. But that’s not how advertising works. You have to give an idea a chance and continuously explore ways to exploit and extend it. If you don’t believe me, listen to the Old Spice Guy. He’s on a horse.

Steve Coss is a Creative Director at TMA+Peritus: A Strategic Interaction Agency. Find them online at www.tmaperitus.com, offline in their offices in Wausau and Madison, or follow them on Twitter@ twitter.com/tmaperitus.

When your marketing team or agency starts down the “best time to advertise is during a recession” road, ask them if the best time to buy a bathing suit is in the dead of winter?  Maybe it is, maybe it’s not.  The grim realities of operating a business when the economy is in the stinkpot is that all budgets need to be prepared for the carving knife; yet as marketers, we always feel our budget alone is sacred.  You slice the marketing budget and you can count on a sliced share of the market – oh, and by the way – it will take decades to reclaim the lost share points. Or, if you cut the budget now, cut down on your trade shows, your advertising spend and your digital presence, the competition is going to notice and they’ll increase their marketing budgets.  I speak from experience; I’d need an abacus to count the number of times I’ve said that.

No, the fact of the matter is this – the best time to market is when you have a product or service that meets an unmet need.  When the message and your supporting content is so compelling that your buying segment can’t wait to purchase, and can’t wait to tell a friend to make the same purchase.  And another friend, and another, and so it goes.

But let’s assume you’ve had your budget cut. When’s the best time to get back in the ring, and what are the best marketing punches to throw?  No two instances will ever be the same, but here are a few considerations.  Get back in the game when you’ve got game.  Random acts of marketing rarely result in returns that have a positive impact.  Resist the temptation to stretch the marketing budget by including more products and benefits in the message.  He who proves too much ends up proving nothing at all.  And by all means let the marketing money flow when you have a business case, complete with measurements and analytics, that can justify the expenditure.  Remember, you can’t manage it if you can’t measure it.

And when you ramp back up, what strategies should you begin with?  Make the cheapskates, skinflints and bean counters happy.  Start with the three most cost-effective initiatives you can implement: content marketing, increased web activities and social media.  That’ll get them talking.

 The hardest thing about creating an effective print ad, online ad, direct mail piece or commercial isn’t coming up with a great design, a great headline or great copy. It isn’t deciding where or how often to run it. And it isn’t deciding on the right size for your logo. 

All of those things matter—all except for the size of your logo, which doesn’t matter nearly as much as many advertisers believe it does. (More about that in a future column.) If you botch the design, writing or placement, you could ruin the effectiveness of a good ad. But none of those really makes an ad effective. 

The secret to an effective ad comes down to this: you’ve got to tell potential customers something they want to know, not what you really want to tell them. How you dress up the message doesn’t matter if the message isn’t worth hearing. The key is in understanding the difference between a feature and a benefit. Too often, marketing communications offer nothing but features—aspects of a product or service that are unique or better than what competitors have to offer. But people don’t buy features. They buy benefits. 

Admittedly, they’re connected. Generally it’s the features of a product or service that yield its benefits. Take heated seats in a car. They’re features—and here in Wisconsin they’re very nice features indeed. But an advertisement that does nothing more than say, “Our cars have heated seats and theirs don’t,” isn’t enough. Why not? Because you haven’t given me a reason why I should care. You might think it’s obvious why I should care, but if it was really that obvious I’d probably already have heated seats, wouldn’t I?

When you come up with the “why I should care,” you’re on your way to an effective piece of communication. People care about heated seats because the prospect of shivering on cold, hard seats makes it that much harder to drag yourself out of the house in the dead of winter. And when you’re reluctant to go out, cabin fever sets in. And everybody hates cabin fever. So there you have it: heated car seats cure cabin fever.

Look hard at what you have to offer and figure out how it translates into something people want. It’s the first and most important step in creating effective marketing communications.

From the amusing five word acceptance speeches to the controversy of its pay-to-play formula, the Webby Awards are now firmly rooted in the industry and in pop culture as the leading authority on excellence in websites and digital advertising.

Launched in 1996 by the now defunct “The Web Magazine,” the Webbys are backed by the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences, which mirrors the Academy Awards with celebrity judges like Arianna Huffington, Beck, Martha Stewart, David Bowie, Harvey Weinstein, Matt Groening and Sir Richard Branson.

The four main categories are websites, interactive advertising, online film & video and mobile web.  Awards may be earned by securing votes from The Academy and/or by online voters (over 500,000 participate) for the People’s Choice awards.  Work can be entered and can win under multiple subcategories such as: Best Welcome Page, Best Copywriting, Best Navigation Structure, Humor, Politics, etc.

While the 2010 awards have been announced, the ceremony will be taking place on June 14^th in New York City.  This year’s host is BJ Novak from The Office.

Now for the pay-to-play catch. To be considered for a Webby, you have to pay an entry fee per submission ranging from $150-$499 and you also have to agree to attend the awards event at your own expense, which tends to leave behind many small to medium size companies that are doing excellent work.

Check out the Webby award-winning work.

 Man: How much does a polar bear weigh?

Woman: How much?

Man: Enough to break the ice. Hi, my name is….

Pickup lines have been around as long as dating itself. And about ninety-nine percent of them are pretty terrible. The fact that guys (mostly) will resort to uttering such phrases as, “Are you from Tennessee? Because you’re the only ten I see.” proves how incredibly difficult it is to impress a complete stranger. (It also proves how unimaginative some guys are.) Say what you will about pickup lines, they serve a purpose. You have to start a relationship somewhere. And like the aforementioned polar bear, pickup lines break the ice.

 The headline of a print ad, direct mail piece, billboard or website is the equivalent of those first words to an attractive stranger. And like pickup lines, most headlines are pretty lame. It’s almost as difficult to write a really good headline as it is to say the right thing to someone you’d like to get to know, but have never met before. In fact, one way to know whether you’ve written a good headline is to put it to the pickup line test.

 Don’t make it too generic. Avoid the, “Nice weather we’re having” headline. Do your best not to say something expected and boring—something every other ad might say. Instead of writing “Quality Service,” think about something you do that makes your service better and make that the headline.

 Don’t make it only about you. We’ve all met the person whose idea of breaking the ice is a long monologue about his or her awesomeness. This doesn’t mean you have to make your headline a question. (Although you could.) But make sure what you say about yourself has some relevance to your audience—that it jibes with their values and interests.

 Make sure it fits your personality.  Some guys can get away with a line like, “If I could rearrange the alphabet, I would put ‘U’ and ‘I’ together.” Some can’t. Your headline should reflect your business’s personality. If you’re formal, it should be formal. If you’re easygoing, your headline should reflect that. It’s like they say in the dating world: be yourself.

 Finally, make sure you have something good to follow up with—facts, examples, etc. Because even after you’ve made a good first impression, you have to prove there’s more to you than a pretty headline.

My father was a preeminent food and drug marketer with Foote, Cone & Belding, and then later on in a solo consulting practice.  He was actually the man behind Orville Redenbacher’s Gourmet Popping Corn, but that’s another story for a different time. My father believed that the best ad written was from a farmer selling his horse.  The headline read Horse For Sale and under the headline there was a picture of the horse, and under the picture of the horse was the word Horse.  In other words, just get it all out there, go sell something, and don’t horse around. Times have really changed.

Two colleagues of mine in Madison, Doug Tangwall and Wendy Soucie, are taking a deep look into effective selling, and getting results, which is probably the basis for their company’s name – End Results Marketing. Their approach to generating sales leads is called Nurture Marketing, and although this strategy has been around since the mid-nineties, it’s a 180 from my father’s approach or those sales methods like the Ben Franklin and Bear Trap sales closes.

Doug defines Nurture Marketing as educational promotion designed to improve customer outcomes and cultivate affinity for a business. That makes sense, and it’s in complete lock step with the belief that we spend so much time trying to be understood and not enough time understanding. In other words, stop the hard sell and substitute that approach with a little hard listening. As Doug says, “Think of nurture marketing as the exact opposite of traditional marketing. Instead of ‘buy my stuff’, it’s ‘what information can I provide to help my customers succeed’?”

By all accounts the approach works. By combining research into a client’s business, including research into their target audiences, promotion, thought leadership and social conversation, Doug and Wendy have obtained 14-17 times the sales leads than traditional tactics.  Yes, it takes time to nurture these relationships, but being a trusted advisor is going to pay off more than merely being a product hawker. “The buying process has changed and our sales process needs to change accordingly. Most of us educate ourselves about products now before we ever call anyone. Sharing knowledge is increasingly important to differentiate your business. The concept of nurture goes hand in hand with social media outreach,” adds Wendy.

But don’t just think about that in terms of generating sales leads — continue the Nurture Marketing process all the way down the line. I have a friend who, in the interest of expediency, left home on a road trip and realized 40 minutes later – at the convenience store counter – that he was wallet-less.  A representative from his financial institution actually made the trek north to deliver him some cash.  Can anyone say, “customer for life?”  That’s nurturing the relationship.

So, here’s a little Nurture Marketing tip. Use social media to conduct some primary research about your prospect, then take some time and extrapolate some useful data from secondary sources.  Synthesize the information and develop a few critical insights that you can share with your future customer, but don’t share all of them – you might need to meet again.  They’ll see you as a thought leader, as a company who is genuinely interested in them, and as a person who is in it for the long haul.  No doubt the sales and marketing process has changed, now we need to make certain we change along with it.

A few years ago I hired a personal trainer to help me get back into shape. At our first meeting I made the mistake of telling him that although I wanted to look good and build some muscle, I didn’t want to get too muscular. I don’t remember exactly how he answered my concern, but I remember the look he gave me, which loosely translated said something like this: Steve, you’ve got a long way to go before you have to worry about that.

I feel a little like that trainer when I hear clients say that they want effective, high-impact advertising but they don’t want to trash the competition or seem too boastful. There’s nothing wrong with modesty. The world can probably do with a few less touchdown dances. But if you’re like most of the clients I’ve worked with, you have a long way to go before you have to worry about that.

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 True or false? The purpose of advertising your product or service is to tell people why they should buy it.

Like many “true or false” questions this is a trick question. It’s absolutely true that the only reason to spend money and time on advertising is to sell something. The biggest gripe clients have against advertising and marketing agencies is that agencies are too concerned with making something creative (which is to say something that sells their own capabilities) and not focused enough on selling the client’s product or service. And while that criticism sometimes reflects the client’s ignorance about how advertising works and unrealistic expectations for returns on investment, in other cases it’s absolutely valid. Advertising agencies and digital marketing firms exist to help companies sell things—and if they don’t succeed at that, they’ve failed.

So what’s false about the statement? It’s all contained in the words “tell” and “should.” Let’s start with “should.” You have a list of competitive features and benefits that you believe make your product superior to what your competition offers. The ladder your store sells is ten feet longer than the one the other guys sell and comes with a 20-year money-back warrantee compared to their 5-year warrantee. And it’s only ten bucks more. You see it’s better and you think your customers should, too.

But maybe your hardware store is in a Florida retirement community, where most of the homes are one story high and the customers average seventy-three years old and are on a fixed income. They don’t need the ten extra feet, they can use the ten extra bucks, and they’re not planning on climbing ladders for another 20 years. They don’t want what you tell them they “should” want. You “should” have been advertising what they need—safety features or free ladder delivery or maybe a window washing service so they don’t have to climb a ladder at all.

Which brings me to “tell.” As the above example illustrates, the key to effective advertising is listening to what customers need and responding. That’s different from telling them what they should buy. The notion of understanding who your customers are and customizing a relevant message is the basic idea behind content marketing, which usually gets discussed in relation to online media, but which applies to “old-fashioned” advertising, too. Don’t tell customers what they should want. Listen better. Sell more.

“A content marketer always has something interesting and meaningful to say because she truly understands what information appeals to her customers and prospects.”

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