When asked why she is interested in online instruction, Amy explains, “Two things attracted me to teaching online for IADT. One was curiosity about how online learning takes place. Through an excellent and intensive training program, I now understand some of the unique challenges faced by the online learner and instructor. Additionally, teaching a course such as Advertising Concepts is mutually beneficial. Students gain insight from an employed creative who practices in the real world, while I benefit from theoretical exposure, which keeps my own work at the agency fresh.”

The International Academy of Design & Technology comprises 11 campus locations throughout the U.S. and Canada. The Academy in Tampa launched the Academy Online in 2007, which now serves close to 3,000 students worldwide through its Virtual Campus.

PeakBiety branding + advertising® services local, regional and national clients in a variety of business sectors. The agency focuses on adding value for its clients by improving customer perceptions. This commitment is summed up in the agency’s promise, “the power of perception®.”

PeakBiety is one of the few agencies in Tampa Bay to meet the strict requirements for membership in the prestigious American Association of Advertising Agencies (4As). For more information, call Glen Peak at PeakBiety branding + advertising, 813-227-8006, extension 114, e-mail gpeak@peakbiety.com or visit peakbiety.com.

Peak, co-founder and President of PeakBiety branding+advertising in Tampa, has been a staple of the Tampa Bay advertising world since his agency’s founding in 1990. The agency has survived economic downturns and client losses, and still continues to create award-winning, effective advertising for his clients. Peak is respected by his staff as someone who leads by example, and he promotes the industry while providing opportunities to young people via internship programs with USF, the University of Tampa and the Academy of Design and Technology. Peak has been a member of the Board of Directors of the Greater Tampa Bay Chamber of Commerce, a Tampa Downtown Rotary member, and a member of the American Association of Advertising Agencies.

AAF-TB President Angie Howard stated “Glen Peak represents the best of what the advertising industry can offer, both in terms of supporting the industry and in serving the local community. We are proud to present this award to such a distinguished individual.”

For many local clubs, awarding the AAF Silver Medal is the highlight of their year. It enhances the image of advertising by recognizing a locally well-known person for their advertising and community involvement.

About AAF – Tampa Bay
The American Advertising Federation—Tampa Bay exists to support its members, the community and the advertising industry. Its mission is to promote fellowship, education and career enhancement among members of the advertising community; foster and recognize excellence in advertising; champion public service causes; build an understanding of the role and benefits of advertising at all levels; and encourage advertising self-regulation and continuous improvement to raise industry benchmarks. For additional information on the American Advertising Federation—Tampa Bay, The Silver Medal Award or the ADDY Awards, please visit www.aaf-tampabay.org or contact Sarah Jeffcoat at sarah@aaf-tampabay.org.

About The Silver Medal Award
Silver Medal recipients are selected by a panel of judges consisting of past Silver Medal winners and past presidents from each local club of the American Advertising Federation. Judges use the following criteria when making their selections: contribution to the community, creative ability, contribution to the advancement of advertising, betterment of his/her own company. More information on the Silver Medal award is available at http://www.aaf.org/default.asp?id=110.

A. Undercapitalization

B. Marketing myopia

C. Lack of branding

D. Failure to diversify

A recent article by Steve Strauss, one of the world’s leading small business experts, posed this question.

Based on his experience, Strauss concluded that the answer was C, bad branding. “To understand why, try this little experiment: Think about a major street that you drive down every day, and think about the row upon row of businesses you see on that street. OK, now, quick, which ones do you actually specifically remember?

If you are like most of us, the answer is zero, or maybe one or two, and that is sad, sad, sad. While every one of these small businesses represents someone’s dream, very few of them are actually businesses worth remembering.”

Finding a real difference that resonates with your target audience is hard work. Most businesses never do it—even many larger ones.

Strauss goes on in the article to talk about the importance of a unique value proposition, or what we like to call, a brand promise. It’s what gives your potential customers a clearly defined reason to choose you over the competition. A big part of that is owning a word or value in the consumers mind.

So how do you determine what your brand promise should be? Often, talking to current customers can provide important clues. You also need to understand what prospects are looking for, and study competitors positions to see what, if anything, they have aligned themselves with.

Small businesses can get bigger… the key is managing perceptions.

Josue Franco is a senior in Graphic Design at the Art Institute of Tampa, and compares himself to an octopus: “Ever changing, shifting and wafting in accordance to its environment, the octopus has a great ability to adapt to its surroundings meticulously. My designs are flexible and adaptable to various approaches, media and styles.”

Alejandro Valdivia is also a senior in Graphic Design at the Art Institute. Alejandro describes himself as a creative problem solver, decision maker and team player, and has several years of freelance experience. He says “I’m a firm believer that simplicity is key. The attention span of the target audience is limited and finding a way through the maze of advertising that is already out there is challenging to say the least. That is why, usually, less is more.”

Nick Brower graduated from Savannah College of Art and Design with a BFA in Advertising Design in November. He is eager to gain real-world industry experience and strives to create ads that not only solve problems but are also works of art.

“We have enjoyed a very pleasant partnership with Tampa Bay Water for the past three years,” said Glen Peak, president of PeakBiety. “We hope to continue to assist Tampa Bay Water in whatever ways we can, as they work to meet their on-going commitment of providing high-quality drinking water to the Tampa Bay region.”

Tampa Bay Water was developed as an agency to serve six different governments in west-central Florida to help manage, allocate and improve drinking water resources in the region. The agency, created in 1998, serves Hillsborough, Pasco and Pinellas counties and the cities of New Port Richey, St. Petersburg and Tampa.

PeakBiety is one of the few agencies in Tampa Bay to meet the strict requirements for membership in the prestigious American Association of Advertising Agencies (4As). For more information, call Glen Peak at PeakBiety branding + advertising, 813-227-8006, extension 114, e-mail gpeak@peakbiety.com or visit PeakBiety.com.

It can be said that creative advertising is like brain surgery. When advertising is artfully done it cures people of the status quo by activating neural circuitry.

To be creative artfully requires a dynamic mix of imagination and understanding of how the world might work. This is not a matter of being correct, but rather a matter of making the audience wonder, provoking a self-referring reverie that elicits an expanded idea of ones-self and how the world works. As a result, we see anew.

This, of course, flies in the face of traditional methods of measuring advertising effectiveness. It also runs counter to today’s corporate metric-mania and near incapacity to conceive bold strategies and innovations.

Insight is the coin of business success. While numbers can provide a means for measurement they cannot “embody,” or suggest, meaningful insights into the human experience. At worst, numbers provide an excuse to abdicate decision-making responsibility while placating executives desirous of propagating ‘business-as-usual’.

What’s Needed for Creativity?

Creativity requires two things: focused subjectivity and doubt. One needs the ability to focus on something long enough to conjure possibilities not overtly manifest in the moment, along with an acknowledgement that not everything is known.

The unknown is fertile soil from which a world of wonders can be conjured. Here mere facts and data are circumvented in a non-linear, symbolic, not wholly rational way. The mind plays a cognitive trick on itself by creating metaphor. “I call what I don’t know by name something that I do know.”

This mental leap-frogging allows the creative impulse to extrapolate unknown scenarios. It moves from the past, which instigates an inkling that lays the basis for the beginning of a new narrative, to a springboard that weaves a web of new patterns and associations, to an insinuation of the future kicked up by metaphor.

This process produces, from the outside-objective point of view, what can be perceived as seemingly off-topic meanderings. But nothing could be farther from the truth.

An Open Playfulness without NO

What is in operation is a kind of playfulness with ideas that is essential for creativity. This toying around contains a bunch of NOs—NO analyzing (yet), NO doubts. NO pressure to conform. NO pretense. NO restrictions. NO judgment.

Those who are playfully creative possess a curiosity given backbone by their expectation that they will find what they seek even though they don’t know what exactly that is.

People from many walks of life actually live this way: writer, designer, scientist, parent, small business owner. All share a belief in a beautiful human quality—Directed Serendipity.

Just listen to them, “I have a plan which allows me to begin to move forward, and in doing so I learn about myself such that when other doors open I sometimes walk in. But you have to have a plan to switch from the plan.”

Another version, “You go down a path and things evolve. By adapting to randomness you shape, but do not control, your end point. You define your end point by your own reaction to it: Ah, ha! I like this. This is for me. This is me.”

Buffeted by a Directed Serendipity

People who allow themselves to be buffeted by directed serendipity live at the creative point of becoming—who they are and what they do are the same. They don’t know—and don’t need to know—the end. They are open to the process as process, and are gregarious with their fledgling notions. They share ideas before they are fully formed. They want camaraderie. They want feedback. They’re excited.

In a state of directed serendipity you first focus on problem structuring rather than problem solving, seeking to understand rather than to explain. You try to comprehend meaning from the inside out, in its unfolding. You are not approaching the world from an intellectual stance.

Einstein, in a 1945 speech at Princeton, gave elegant voice to this perspective:

“Words or data, as they are logically written or spoken, do not seem to play any role in my primary mechanism of thought. The psychical entities that do seem to serve as elements of thought are certain signs and images. These elements themselves are visual and muscular in type, originating in the intuition of the body.”

The creative communicator is an alchemist of thought, attending to the reasoning of emotion. That’s what they should get paid for. That’s what they need to have time to do. In their natural habitat, they are artful image-gatherers, whose only enemies are cynicism, number crunchers and arbitrary tinkering.

Corporate executives should embrace their creatives and let them attack the status quo. Then CEO, CMO and their courtiers can sit back and count the profits.

In a recent blog article, What Kind of Agency Are You, an ad agency owner observed his struggle with how to “categorize” his agency, e.g. digital, creative, branding, etc. Lots of varied services and talent no doubt led him to describe such a struggle.

I was struck by the author’s observation that they never use the word “traditional” to describe the agency and wondered aloud if even “traditional” agencies use the word. Well…we don’t currently put the word “traditional” in the descriptors of our 4A’s advertising agency but this discussion prompts me to think that we should proudly include this word in our messaging. Perhaps someone would actually ask: what does the “traditional” descriptor mean?

I don’t believe that many of today’s clients understand that ad agencies were once considered to be true marketing partners (a term that has since been beat to death and misused). Better agencies were involved in high level marketing strategy, new product development, market research, package design, media planning and buying, collateral material (yes… even that stuff), promotional programs and, oh yes, advertising that worked. In short, the agency was viewed as a business-building partner and expected to bring ideas to the table that could make a difference regardless of the medium. To achieve that, agencies had to have the marketing capability and passion to understand the client’s business as well as examine trends.

If “traditional” is about being generally recognized, customary and even long-standing, I really want to incorporate this label into the characterization of our agency.

Good brand management is supported by a strong and strategic brand identity. For a brand to stand out in its field, a brand’s online identity is becoming increasingly important. One of the most essential support systems for strong online brand identity is good search engine optimization (SEO).

To examine a brand online, the obvious first place to start is the brand’s Web site. An optimized site, with page titles, clean URLs, good content, headers, descriptions, alt tags and navigation will help with SEO. A very comprehensive checklist can be found here. But is that enough?

For high search engine ranking, the answer is no.

Paid advertising with media such as Pay-Per-Click through services such as Google AdWords, Yahoo Search Marketing and Microsoft adCenter, is helpful but can be expensive. Organic SEO costs nothing but the time to build and maintain it. Some knowledge of the ever-changing search engine criteria for ranking algorithms helps.

But are an optimized site and paid advertising enough?

Many organic (as opposed to paid) SEO strategies today call for only 25% of effort given to “on-page” (the website) as opposed to 75% for “off-page” efforts (in-bound links and social media).

Social Media, according to Wikipedia, is composed of three things:

• Concept (art, information, or meme).

• Media (physical, electronic, or verbal).

• Social interface (intimate direct, community engagement, social viral, electronic broadcast or syndication, or other physical media such as print).

If social media is to be used to help SEO, all “concepts” must be strategic and brand-reinforcing. Anything else could actually be damaging. So, a brand’s social media presence with outlets such as Twitter, Facebook and YouTube among others, needs to be carefully crafted, controlled and monitored. Never underestimate the power of perception.®

The social interface component of social media presents the most challenges. What does it entail? Meeting people and talking. Asking questions and answering them. Engaging to add value. So how does a “brand” do this successfully?

The first place to start is to create a voice. A company needs to decide whether to set up separate Twitter accounts or one company account. How do you determine the right voice? For the pros and cons of all to consider, check out “The Right Voice for Your Brand is…”

Once your company’s voice is established, make sure that it is consistent from brand image to brand experience. Make sure that expectations are aligned. Create a strategy. Have a plan. Make goals and create timelines. Involve your advertising agency. Outside consultants can give valuable advice from a “fresh” perspective. Consider an integrated advertising campaign. You can’t pay for the publicity of something that goes viral. The more publicity your brand receives, the higher its search engine ranking is, organically.

click to open

We already knew that adding personalization would increase responses. But would people view a simple text email as more personable? Or would the color and design of a newsletter-type email help it stand out in crowded inboxes?

We divided our list in half, sending out a total of 1200 emails. We sent them out at the same time, with the same subject line and the same content—the only difference was the design of the email itself.

Designed email

Plain email

The results? We had more than twice as many people respond to the designed email, and 200% more forwarded it to a friend compared to the plain version.

Results

Overall, click-throughs from the eblast were responsible for a 387% increase in traffic to our site.

In Leo, a compilation of famous speeches, we find timeless words of wisdom, amazingly relevant today.  In about 1950, Burnett wrote about “the brand” in a speech called, “The power of frequency.” He almost sounds like a modern branding guru when he explains, “Whether it is an impulse purchase like a candy bar or a package of cigarettes or an infrequent and highly deliberated purchase like a washing machine, a refrigerator, a vacuum cleaner or a mattress, the biggest single thing that advertising can contribute is a friendly predisposition toward the brand—a whole complex of thoughts and emotions which give the purchaser peace of mind in the choice he [or she] makes. We shun the unknown. We are naturally drawn to the familiar. You might call this simply ‘friendship for the product.’ Your best friends are people whose qualities you like and admire and whom you enjoy being with—but they are usually people you see frequently. The principle of frequency in advertising has long been recognized. Several great brands have been built around rigid adherence to this principle rather than through the content or power of any single advertisement.”

The idea of a “whole complex of thoughts and emotions” about a brand sounds like modern branding building, doesn’t it? And, Burnett’s emphasis on the power of “friends” seems almost prophetic in this era of social networking.

Although the concept of brand friendship and loyalty hasn’t changed much over the past 60 years, media choices dramatically have. As marketing experts today, we ask ourselves. how much advertising is too much? How much is too little? The battle between reach and frequency is going through seismic shifts in perspective and is altering everything we do.

In light of the changes occurring almost daily, it is beneficial to review some basic concepts in media strategy and examine how those concepts are evolving. To read more about our perspectives on media planning, click here to request our White Paper 3.

Hemi (pronounced emmy), attends the International Academy of Design and Technology in Tampa and is majoring in graphic design. Hemi considers herself not only a graphic designer, but a diverse, persistent and creative illustrator. In the future, she plans to work at targeting Hispanic markets as well as the general market. Diversity not only runs in Hemi’s designs, but in her family, too. Her father is Japanese, her mother is Venezuelan and her husband is American.

Meghan Buchanan, a student at the Art Institute of Tampa, comes with freelance design experience and is a member of AIGA and Ad 2 Tampa Bay. She has worked on numerous projects, including rebranding, advertising campaigns and web site development. Her work was featured in the Design Futures Showcase of 2009. Megan has always had a passion for creative thinking. She strives to be a citizen designer, concerned for the betterment of society and is focusing on the necessity of design.

Both Hemi and Meghan have hit the ground running and have participated in branding research and conceptual illustrations. We are looking forward to what they will bring to the table in the coming months.