Marketing, the economy, and the web
We’re running late on getting our newsletter out, but you’ve all heard the saying that the cobbler’s kids are the last to get new shoes. We’ve been busy working on fun things for our clients, so our own promotional efforts sometimes take a back seat. We’ve been fortunate to be busy—we know a lot of advertising agencies have seen a downturn with a lot of businesses cutting back on their marketing expenditures. This next year will be interesting, to say the least. One bright spot is that it should be a good time to get some deals on media placement after the elections are over.
There are a lot of theories about whether you should spend more on marketing during a recession or cut back. Most marketing people will tell you that cutting back is the absolute wrong thing to do! The common argument is that this is a time to pick up market share while your competitors are cutting back.
I think the main thing that we want to emphasize with our clients is to really be smart about your spending. I’ve given speeches to marketing and business groups about getting more bang for your marketing dollar, and today it is more important than ever to stretch your budget. Smart strategies, especially in media selection, are the first step in lowering costs. We’re also helping our clients save money with our ability to do a lot of work in-house, especially HD video projects (and translating them to the web.) This one-stop approach by bundling creative and production together saves time and money.
If you haven’t heard my talk before, I’m going to be doing a new version of the presentation to the Fond du Lac Chamber of Commerce’s “AC University” in January. (I don’t think there is anything listed yet, but you can go to www.fdlac.com for more information as we get closer to the event.)
In today’s economy, your web presence is probably even more critical now than ever. People are spending more time online researching before making a purchase. So your website should be in top shape. Which leads to the obvious question, when was the last time you updated your website?
Speaking of the web, have you been to our site lately? We’ve made a few changes, but we’re still doing more. That’s the beauty of the web, you can change it in steps. Our newer version reflects the change in our look to the “petroglyphs” design. Our library includes our agency brochure in pdf form which is getting quite a few downloads.
Randy Gunter
Tell me about...
Jay Conaway of Yamaha of Cucamonga was featured on one of the direct mail pieces for Charter Business.We believe in testimonials. (If you download our brochure from our website, you can see we have incorporated some testimonials from some important people.) Recently, we’ve been using testimonials for a couple of our clients.
The first is Charter Business, this direct mail program incorporates real Charter Business customers telling how they’ve saved money using Charter’s bundled packages and how they appreciate the quality of the service. We recently learned from our contact at Charter that the first direct mail piece we did for them received their best response of any direct mail they’ve done since he’s been on board.
The second is for Erdman, a leading design-build company that specializes in hospitals and medical facilities. For Erdman, we videotaped their clients and subcontractors telling about their relationship with the company. We then posted them to specialized websites that were actually used for their presentations. (Sorry, these websites are password protected and we can’t share them.)
Since they’re presented on a website, it gives the participants a chance to review the materials later. (And gives us a chance to track whether they did or not, with a huge majority later reviewing the site and watching the testimonials again.) This way of presenting helped Erdman land their biggest contract ever.
So what makes for a good testimonial?
- First of all, we believe that a testimonial has to come from a real person. That means a real, verifiable name (including last name) is associated with the testimonial. “Bill R. from Illinois” just isn’t going to cut it. Even if it is real, it doesn’t look like it is. Use a real person.
- Use their own words. We don’t believe in writing something and then asking if we can put their name to it. Most writers have their own style, if they’re also writing copy (for a brochure, ad, or wherever you are using the testimonial), and then also writing the testimonial, it probably will become apparent to others. Plus, when you use the real words, you will probably get something better anyway. (Like with Jay from Yamaha from Cucamonga, he just had a fun way of expressing himself!)
- Use the real people, not models. Put the people in their environment. Shoot your photos or your video in the world where they are from. It helps make the story come alive and more believable.
GB celebrates 75 years with a special night
US Olympic gold medal winner, and former NHL hockey star Mark Johnson talked to the GB audience about teamwork.This is our sixth year creating the General Beverage annual awards banquet. This year was something special as GB is celebrating its 75th year in business. The event was held at Monona Terrace in Madison and over 700 people attended.
It started out with a video we created of Windell Middlebrooks calling attention that the show was going to start, you couldn’t miss it on the six big screens around the room. If you’re not familiar with the name, Windell is the “un-delivery person” in the humorous Miller High Life commercials. Windell reappeared throughout the night in our video segments to introduce different people and portions of the banquet. (The video was shot by UW alumni Michael Felbinger.)
The evening then proceeded with a historical video we created tracing the family business from its roots as Max Weinstein came to America in 1908, to the company’s start in 1933, and following it through the generations to today, a company with locations throughout the state of Wisconsin and with over 700 employees.
Bucky Badger made an appearance during dinner leading up to our surprise special guest, the leading scorer of the 1980 “Miracle” US Hockey Olympic Gold Medal winning team and current UW Women’s Hockey coach, Mark Johnson. Mark gave an impassioned talk on teamwork and reaching your goals. After the show, Mark was gracious to share his gold medal and meet individually with all the fans in the room, who lined up for the chance to meet him.
Special thanks to Dan Weinstein, Bob Royko, Kathy Wilcynski, Joel Minkoff, and the entire GB organization for allowing us again to work on this project. Another special thanks to Miller/Coors for providing Windell, he was absolutely great! And kudos to Judy Schrieber for coordinating the event.
Windell clips
As mentioned above, we used Miller High Life’s irrepressible Windell Middlebrooks to star in video clips for the GB annual awards presentation. We think you’ll agree that Windell can get an audience fired up.
Watch some clips from the show:
Link » http://www.gunteragency.com/newsletter/08v1/windell-clips.html
Gunter Agency wins national PR award, regional Best of Show, local Judge’s Choice, along with a Telly award
In April, The Gunter Agency was awarded their third national NAMA award, this time for PR. (These recognitions are made for the previous year’s work.)Our public relations program for the Childhood Agricultural Safety Network (CASN) was deemed the Best of Show for the Midwest NAMA Region IV (Illinois, Wisconsin, Indiana, and Michigan) and also won an award at the national level. The National Agri-Marketing Association (NAMA) recognizes the best in agricultural marketing, advertising and public relations. This is the second national NAMA award the Gunter Agency has won in the last three years, and third overall.
Other recognitions for the agency (at least since the last newsletter) includes a Judge’s Choice ADDY Award for a radio commercial for Kiwanis. The Judge’s Choice is a special recognition where an individual judge deems one piece to be exemplory. In the last five years, The Gunter Agency has received three Judge’s Choice Awards, one Best of Show award and one Best of Category award from the Madison ADDYs and a Best of Category award at the ADDY regional level.
To round out the awards, the television commercial created for CASN won a national Telly award. Although we don’t think a Telly is that impressive (heck, everybody seems to have one), it still is a very cool looking award.
What’s in a name?
The Gunter Agency came up with the name
and logo for Proganics.Over the years, we’ve been able to create names for several brands and products, but now we’ve actually named a company. Proganics™ is a company that works with farmers providing seed and services for organic farms. It’s a combination of Professional and Organics, since the company takes a professional approach to raising these crops. A farmer can more than double their price per bushel because of the demand for organic foods.
Coming up with a good name for a business or brand is important to its ultimate success. We strive to come up with names that are relevant, easy to recall, and becomes part of the branding message.
If you go into Aldi® stores and pick up a 12-pack of NorthStar™ beer, that’s another Gunter Agency naming/logo project. For Quality Technology International, Inc., we’ve named their Solaris™ and Puriden™ brands, along with PureBran™ and Energia™ products.
Some recent work...
A poster for World Council of Credit Unions. The globe is made up of hundreds of small portraits of people.
Ad for QTI Animal Health.
A video we shot for Brent Gunter’s tour.
Link » http://www.gunteragency.com/newsletter/08v1/brent-voyage.html
Live Action Lures has a new lure, and it’s bigger than the Big Joe. The name? Mo Joe, of course! That’s Live Action Lure’s president Craig Eversoll that caught that monster Muskie.
A direct-mail piece for Furst-McNess and Alltech.
Posters for Proganics, featured at the Farm Progress Show.
White Paper – The Point of PowerPoint®
The white paper for this issue of the newsletter is about PowerPoint presentations, what works and what doesn’t.
Link » http://www.gunteragency.com/newsletter/08v1/wpPP.pdf
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