Insights

There's no "customer" in "SWOT."

Recently we worked with a client who presented us with their historical advertising and marketing efforts, including a 30-page SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats). SWOT is a strong tool that has worked for many companies over the years, but we were instantly skeptical of this particular document. Conspicuously absent was the most important element of marketing: the target. The very people who need to act in order for you to succeed.

And therein lies the real danger of reliance on a SWOT analysis. It can be a little too easy to forget the customers who make any marketing and advertising effort work. Here is how people generally complete one of these documents:

Strengths: A list of how our product or service is superior.

Weaknesses: A list of our product or service downfalls.

Opportunities: A list of how we’ll turn our weaknesses into strengths.

Threats: Generally a list of competitors.

It’s not that we dislike this model. But with a little tweaking, the people who will choose your product or service can be added back in. Just add these questions to your list:

Strengths: How is our product relevant to people? Is this something they would talk about? Why?

Weaknesses: Do people care about us? Are we fitting into their lives? Could we make ourselves more relevant to them?

Opportunities: Is there something about our product that would be more meaningful to people? How can we make it more meaningful?

Threats: Are there reasons more people aren’t using us/buying us? Can we change our product or service fast enough to meet people’s needs and stay relevant?

It all comes back to the very simple idea that as a customer-based business,

you can’t lose sight of the customer. (And this happens every day in every business.) You will live or die by them and their use and perceived value of your product.

The age of designvertising.

Just in case the division still exists, we'd like to put an end to the false separation of design and advertising. In our minds, the two are inseparable. Advertising is design. And all design is, in a way, advertising.

These days, designers are just as involved in concept as any other department of an agency, including media. The best designers are no longer perceived as cake decorators who come in at the end of a campaign execution to make something look pretty. And on the advertising side of the equation, art directors and writers should be expected to have a certain aesthetic knowledge of what a brand should look and feel like, beyond the conventional advertising deliverables of print, TV, collateral and interactive.

Advertising vs. design is dead. Long live designvertising. Or, if you prefer, adversigning.

When guerrilla goes gack.

We're always trying to one-up our clients’ competitors with guerrilla tactics that surprise and reward, with the goal of introducing our clients to those we

are targeting. But we are often struck by the lack of separation in people's minds between fresh new tactics and gack - the annoying advertising for advertising sake - or what some have called “ad creep.”

So, these are a few guidelines we use to determine if an idea is worthy of pursuit:

If it annoys people, it's gack. If it entertains, it's fresh.

If it's just pasting a logo on something (escalators, elevator buttons, cups, etc.), it's probably gack. If people stop and look at it, it's fresh.

If it adds to people's loathing of advertising in general, it's gack. If they don't even think of it as advertising, it's fresh.

If the audience is captive and can’t escape the message, it might be gack. If the audience feels like they are stumbling upon it, it’s fresh.

If the guerrilla message isn’t customized for the location, it could be gack. If the message couldn’t work without the location, it’s fresh.

It's all in the name.

At some point in the past decade, advertising agencies stopped wanting to be advertising agencies. Is it because, as an industry, we’re embarrassed? Maybe it’s the bad connotation people associate with “ad people” being slick or self-serving. Perhaps it’s the self-perception that because “advertising” is changing, clients will think advertising agencies are limited to traditional advertising. Who knows. But whatever the reason, ad agencies have taken to calling themselves “brand consultants” or some other euphemism meant to imply greater credibility.

To us, a good ad agency is a good ad agency and should be able to handle anything. The solid agencies adapt, adjust, understand new media, create their own media for clients and help their clients rock and roll through the constant changes in communications.

We’re an ad agency. Hi.

Hey, it's our new site.

We decided to make our place as simple (but as nice) as possible so anyone could view it. No freaky downloads here. You'll notice we adopted a blog format for much of the site. It makes it easier to see the work without having to click your way from here to Hades just to view some ads.

Besides the requisite blog, we've added a Toybox feature where, from time to time, we'll show you some of the dorky stuff that happens around here. And there's the "thing of the week" which is, well, the "thing of the week."

That's all for now. Thanks for stopping by.

Eleven months ago

Eleven months ago we did something that was borderline crazy. We quit our nice jobs with established agencies and started our own place from scratch. No firmed-up clients. No big loans to tide us over. Just a gut feeling we could do something special and attract good, smart clients and great employees.

So we scraped together our own money, found an office space and remodeled it ourselves. We started getting phone calls. Then we did some work. And some more. Then we moved the needle for some clients and picked up a few awards along the way. And then we realized we had an even better perspective about the very clients we work with; that succeeding in business is about making borderline crazy decisions every day.

Pat Fallon said it best: “Courage is a process, not an event.” Thanks to our friends and clients who make us feel not-so-crazy eleven months later.

< Previous
4
5