August 11, 2010
PCA last month launched comprehensive, integrated marketing campaigns for the City of Riverside (California) and St. Mary Medical Center Long Beach, a member of Catholic Healthcare West (CHW). Both campaigns employ PCA’s integrated services and include regional print and online advertising programs, as well as innovative social media and public relations strategies.
Read a press release announcing the campaigns’ launch here or click below to learn more about the creative process. Read More
April 1, 2010
Brian (no last name), from Daily Conversations, a grass-roots marketing blog, noticed a panhandler in his neighborhood was getting few donors. So Brian applied his marketing skills. He rewrote the man’s confusing sign, created a clear call to action (“Help the homeless – Donate”), and added an incentive (“Free hand sanitizer”). Brian also moved the man’s donation cup from the down near his foot up to the sign itself, so that people wouldn’t have to stoop or feel uncomfortably close to the panhandler. (Brian equates this to making a website’s “buy” button obvious and attractive.) According to Brian, the man quickly drew a crowd and people were genuinely intrigued by a homeless man giving away free hand sanitizer for donations to help his family/medical bills. Brian reports: “This experiment improved this man’s earnings by over 100% over several days thanks to me, and on top of that I paid him to let me take pictures (which he was very happy about being featured in a blog article online.)” Brian says the lesson for online marketing is to continually tweak one’s home page to generate new interest.
January 22, 2010
The broken economy and the resulting mood of pubic bitterness are more and more evident in advertising. One of the industry’s truisms – positive messages are more motivating than negative – is losing ground to ad themes that are blunt, in your face, even caustic. New York Times advertising columnist Stuart Elliott looked at the trend as it appears in annual post-New-Year-resolution fitness ads, concluding, “The tone in many campaigns is less cheerful than in previous Januaries.” He cites the new Nicorette campaign that CNBC’s health-industry writer Mike Huckman has been blogging about. Its crude tagline – almost shocking hear in a broadcast commercial - is “Nicorette makes quitting suck less.” (Facing resistance to the crude language, Nicorette has euphemized the S-word in newer versions.) But if edginess sells these days, The New York Times’ Elliott quotes several executives advocating a more nuanced edginess. Wheaties’ very effective new tagline is “prepare to win.” It seems to say: expect to win, but also prepare well for the competition. But it says that without sounding rosy. As with much good advertising, it strikes a fine balance of messages.
December 14, 2009
This week in Riverside, California, marks the opening of the much anticipated Casey’s Cupcakes & Cappuccinos at The Mission Inn Hotel & Spa. The “confection boutique” is the vision of actress/model Casey Reinhardt, daughter of Duane and Kelly Roberts who own The Mission Inn Hotel & Spa.
Earlier this year, Roberts and Reinhardt called upon Paolucci Communication Arts (PCA) to create the brand identity for Casey’s Cupcakes & Cappuccinos. PCA started with a logo – a whimsical silhouette of Casey holding a cupcake – but far from ended there. After falling in love with initial creative platform for the store, Kelly and Casey allowed PCA to design everything from the interior space to the uniforms to all of the marketing materials and photography.
The best part is that the cupcakes taste as good as the store looks.
June 30, 2009
The Atlantic’s Derek Thompson writes this week about the latest spate of fast-food ads using sex. He includes Burger King’s new print campaign for the BK Seven Incher that is close to pornography. As well as new ads by Hardees and Carl’s Jr. (a company that has been targeting male eaters with sexy ads for years). The writer points out fundamental marketing mistakes here: “There’s this study that shows that overtly sexy ads don’t work on women. And these studies showing sexy ads drown out the product, diminish brand recall, and often don’t reap dividends even when the product is directed only at men.” So why do advertisers continue to push steamy commercials? The same reason why fast-food companies continue to push greasy new product: It’s just what they do.
June 19, 2009
By 2014, consumers will be deluged with more than 9,000 e-mail marketing messages annually, according to Forrester Research Inc. of Cambridge, Mass.
Wow, 9,000 e-mails? If you do the math, 9,000 e-mails per year works out to nearly one per hour – 24 hours a day, seven days per week for the entire year. Read More
April 21, 2009
Almost daily, this Hot Sheet poster gets asked, “Are you on Twitter?” No, I respond, “but I plan to sign up soon.” What a crock. I don’t even know how to begin and now I’m hearing that some experts feel companies must have Twitter in their marketing strategies to get a leg up. Read More
April 15, 2009
From the blog, Signals vs. Noise: “Brilliant move by a local BMW dealer in responding to a national Audi ad. Audi’s 2009 A4 ad on the left side of the street says “Your move, BMW.” Santa Monica BMW comes back with an M3 ad across the street that says “Checkmate.” Now that’s advertising.”
What do you do if you’re Audi?
April 14, 2009
The Times is thick with Twitter hype these days. The social networking site that limits messages to 140 characters gets a laundry list of present and future uses in a recent article by Claire Cain Miller. And marketing tops that list. Businesses large and small are using the diary-like entries to add customers, or at least take the pulse of their buying behavior. “Companies like Starbucks, Whole Foods and Dell can see what their customers are thinking as they use a product,” and adapt their marketing accordingly, while independent services such as masseuses twitter when they “have same-day openings in their schedules and offer discounts.”
Despite the excitable hype, it’s worth noting that Twitter has yet to make a profit. Also, Read More
April 7, 2009
A recent study by McPheters & Co. seems to rank television and magazine ads above online banner ads. The study measured recall techniques using complicated eye-tracking software to compare effectiveness among the three media.
The conclusion? In a half-hour period, magazines delivered more than twice as many ad impressions as TV, and more than six times those of online ads. Also, recall of TV ads was almost twice that of magazine ads; and magazine ad recall was almost three times that of Internet ads. No surprises there… except: The budget realities of today’s marketing world are totally absent within the study. Read More
