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July 18th, 2008
An interesting blog about beer, vintage advertising, and supporting local businesses in Rochester. They seem to like what we’ve been doing with Dundee and Genny. Especially I Tagged Genny.
Blip is the official blog of Martino Flynn, an advertising, public relations, and online marketing firm located in the Paris of the Finger Lakes region: Rochester, New York. Blip chronicles our discoveries, insights, and occasionally over-the-top rants about the ever-changing world of online and traditional media, content, design, marketing, public relations, and persuasion.
An interesting blog about beer, vintage advertising, and supporting local businesses in Rochester. They seem to like what we’ve been doing with Dundee and Genny. Especially I Tagged Genny.
It started as research. Newly assigned to the Monroe Community College account here at Martino Flynn, I was looking for ways to immerse myself in the high school and college environment. I needed to connect with this audience. And to try to understand what this whole business of “social networking” was all about.
So I joined Facebook. Being over 30—at least, that’s the most I’ll admit to—I wasn’t even sure if I was allowed on Facebook. So I just dove in and did my profile. (It’s a very lame profile, by the way, so let me know if you have any suggestions).
The fun started when a couple of high school classmates found me, followed by a number of current and former MFers. Then I took the plunge and asked my 18-year-old daughter if she’d be my “friend.” I promised I wouldn’t use the network to spy on her, so she accepted (but honestly, what’s to stop me from keeping tabs on her through Facebook?!).
Suddenly, a bunch of teenagers that are her friends asked to become my friends. It was the kind of popularity I’d always dreamed about in high school—back when John Marianetti and Tim Downs were classmates, not work colleagues. And the effect keeps snowballing. I’m up to 27 friends after only a few days!
Great fun, except for all of the work. First, there are those friend notifications sent and received via email. I had to switch my Facebook account from my MF email to my home one—the email alerts were distracting me from my real work. And while I’ve accepted everyone who has asked, I sometimes wonder if I should be more selective in my friends? Or is that rude and just not done? It almost feels like the goal is to get as many friends as possible. But once you have them, what are you supposed to do with them? (I hope they aren’t all expecting birthday gifts or Christmas cards.)
As I get new friends, I feel like I need to look at each of their profiles—even if I just saw them in the office, or at my kid’s karate dojo, or wherever. I’ve learned some fascinating things in the process. Like that Scott, an MF interactive designer, is an Eagle Scout. My high school friend Phil is a math teacher in Brockport. And, while I’m excited to have a couple dozen “friends,” Danielle from the account team has 475!
And what are the rules of etiquette here? What would Dear Abby or Miss Manners have to say about some of things people post about themselves, or messages they receive from friends for all to read? I’ve always harped on my daughter not to share anything she wouldn’t want a potential employer or her mother to see. Now that’s not just an idle threat! But it certainly hasn’t stopped others.
First, we lost our ability to communicate in complete sentences due to email. Then, text messaging degraded us to a series of silly acronyms that warrant their own dictionary (online, of course). Now social networking is removing all of our inhibitions while sucking up what little free time we have left.
And look at me—now I’m blogging! Quick, someone throw me a line, before I completely slip into communication overload.
A week ago, the nation’s largest retailer, Walmart, quietly rolled out a new company logo, which features a more friendly and humanized type treatment set in initial caps, and a six-pointed yellow burst-like mark set to the right. The company name is also no longer hyphenated, but one single word.
Any time a company as large as this drops a new logo or refreshed branding efforts, I feel obligated to offer scathing criticism my honest opinion. I’m sure the objective here was to shed their generally invasive and unfavorable image for something more comforting, and they certainly did land in that direction. But the logo just looks a little weak. Specifically the yellow asterisk. Or daisy. Or is it half an orange? Or a combination sun and star? Or is it a spinning preloader that’s supposed to be loading the real mark if I’d just be patient for one more minute?
Whatever it is, I’d ditch it for just a logotype. That actually doesn’t look half bad. The fact that I can’t immediately identify the typeface leads me to believe it was custom-made, which is good in my book. Not sure how long it will be until this logo makes its way into and onto their thousands of stores, or in their advertising, but it has made its way onto Walmart’s website, which doesn’t necessarily mean it’s going to be around for good. It’s pretty simple to change out a logo on a website. And actually, the mark has been around for some time now. It appears by itself in the bottom corner of recent TV spots as well as spots from 2007.
So with that said, anyone like it? Anyone else dislike it? Anyone have theories as to what the mark means?
If you’re looking for more info, check out what Brand New has to say.
Recently, we received an award for the most “attention-getting” ad in a Readex Research ad perception study of the publication Homeland Security Today. The ad was for Harris RF Communications: our Talk as One, Work as One campaign. For those of you not familiar with Harris, they are an international communications and information technology company that provides tactical communications (basically, radios) to the Department of Defense and other international agencies. We teamed up with them to help launch a new product to a new market.
Some quick background: think about how our federal, state, and local agencies work together. Agencies like the DEA, FEMA, National Guard, Coast Guard—plus your neighborhood police and fire departments. They all obviously carry some form of radio for communication, but what you may not know is that they have to carry multiple radios with different frequency bands so they can communicate with each other.
What Harris RF Communications offers is one radio that covers multiple frequencies (as well as many other benefits). The idea of different organizations being able to universally communicate is referred to as interoperability. The need for interoperability has gained more and more attention because of events like Hurricane Katrina and 9/11, when agencies trying to assist those already in the trenches couldn’t communicate. Obviously, that’s a problem that someone needed to solve.
This campaign was a ton of work, but a lot of fun. And a great partnership. I think both teams would agree this was one awesome project to help create. The award was a great win for our egos, but, more importantly, a great win for our client. And, hopefully, for the people using the product.
Even though the timelines were incredibly challenging, this campaign should really be a model for any marketing manager looking to get the most from his or her agency partner.
This was a true collaboration. “Collabo,” as one MFer calls it.
RF Communications did their homework—and then some. They gave a full-on presentation of the new market they were breaking into: the public safety market. AND they covered all the benefits of what they were offering from the customer perspective— including helping us to identify the USP (unique selling point).
They also included management from the get-go. We were able to develop a campaign that included the input and strategic thinking from all of the key stakeholders. With this early management buy-in, approvals were easier and faster. It’s amazing how much this step helped us stay on track with our timeline, and the budget.
The other amazing thing RF Communications did was explain the problem—not just the solution. So we were able to put on our strategic thinking caps to come back with some great solutions they hadn’t thought of before. All of this led to a great outcome.
A strong, compelling, in-your-face (no pun intended) ad campaign that got noticed. And met its communication objectives. It delivered. We delivered. That’s the way it should be.
I recently moved to Rochester from New York City (a.k.a., “the city”) where I lived for the past four years to advance my career in PR. The transition was relatively seamless, as I grew up in a comparable area nestled in the foothills of the Berkshires and state forest of northwestern Connecticut. In looking back at my “city” experience, one word comes to mind: radical.
Everything was fresh and exciting when I landed in the mecca of communications—I absorbed the flashiness of it all like a sponge. More importantly, it was a privilege working directly with senior executives at my first big PR agency in the heart of Times Square, representing some of the leading companies in their respective industries. We had immediate access to top-tier media based there, and conveniently organized publicity stunts and events in an iconic intersection that attracts countless tourists each day.
Although I had adapted to the state of mind over time without realizing it, I distinctly recall moments when: I was not distracted by the flashing ads on the LED Toshiba jumbotron straight across from my desk window…or when I continued past the Naked Cowboy who was being filmed from MTV’s infamous window…and when I wasn’t surprised after seeing a cabbie drive on the sidewalk to bypass a demolition truck in his way (thankfully he didn’t hit anyone). Would you know I even saw a large cardboard box falling a few hundred feet from the sky? I suppose Patti LuPone made a valid point when she sang “Anything Goes” in the eponymous Broadway show revival.
So maybe it took a crane crash to wipe out an entire block in my former neighborhood to grab my attention. But as thrilling – and sometimes scary – as the Big Apple can be, nothing compares to the serene “country” life. Being in Rochester the past few months has made me realize just how much I missed having fresh air to breathe and living in a playground of wilderness (not to mention paying less for an apartment with a closet that is about the size of my previous city studio).
And much to my friends’ surprise, I have far from sacrificed exposure to the quality of work that is pumped out of a NYC agency. I am thoroughly impressed with the caliber of professionals, and enjoy the diversity of clients I now work with at Martino Flynn. (Hey, New York: these agencies have big things going on too!) For instance, we’re working with CooperVision, a leading contact lens manufacturer, to bring awareness to a prevalent vision condition that will inevitably affect most of us by the age of 40 – and yet 83% of U.S. adults are unaware of it.
All in all, New York has now become a place for me just to visit. I love it here in Rochester, and am happy to be in a place where I can finally begin to call “home.”
