Members and friends of the American Advertising Federation-Fort Worth volunteered at the Tarrant Area Food Bank with the mission of addressing a need and making a positive difference in the community. Volunteers worked to prepare non-perishable foods for distribution to a network of partner agencies in Fort Worth and 13 surrounding counties.
Blanchard Schaefer Advertising & Public Relations, a full-service integrated strategic marketing services firm, took home the top honor in the news writing category at the Texas Public Relations Association (TPRA) Best of Texas Awards. The agency was honored with a Best of Texas Silver Award for its campaign to promote ATC Logistics & Electronics’ vanpool initiative.
“This is a great honor to be recognized in a state-wide competition of this stature,” said Ken Schaefer, principal at Blanchard Schaefer. “While the goal is to produce results for our clients, it is great to be recognized in this way among our peers.”
The news-writing category focused on a news story, or press release, for external media. The vanpool press release garnered extensive DFW-market broadcast and print media coverage with WFAA-Ch. 8., KTVT-Ch. 11 and the Fort Worth Star Telegram.
Blanchard Schaefer was the only agency in Tarrant County to win a TPRA award this year. The award stems from logistics account work, which is one of the agency’s core specialties. The initiative was also related to social and environmental responsibility, which is an emerging area of expertise for Blanchard Schaefer.
The TPRA, founded in 1954 and Texas’ only statewide public relations organization, conducts the annual competition among public relations practitioners in corporate and agency settings. For more information about the TPRA, visit www.trpa.com.
About Blanchard Schaefer Advertising & Public Relations
Blanchard Schaefer Advertising & Public Relations, an award-winning strategic marketing services firm, offers a full array of advertising and public relations expertise and services with a focus in the healthcare, supply chain and logistics, health and beauty, multi-location/franchise, and technology verticals. Its client-tailored strategic marketing services include proficiency and innovation in research, identity/collateral development, branding, creative, media placement, news generation/dissemination, media relations and trade show and speaking engagement coordination. Based in Arlington, Texas, Blanchard Schaefer serves clients across the United States. For more information, visit www.bsapr.com.
The DFW American Marketing Association (DFW AMA) will be hosting the fourth annual Beyond Borders Global Marketing Summit. Beyond Borders is the premiere global marketing event in the DFW area delivering world class presentations by prominent leaders with extensive international marketing expertise.
When: Wednesday April 15, 2009
Where: Plano Conference Center
Registration: www.dfwama.com
The DFW American Marketing Association (AMA) is the number one source for marketers in the Dallas /Fort Worth Metroplex. With an impressive 700+ professional members and host to more than 50 informative and educational events annually, it is the ninth fastest growing chapter and the tenth largest in the nation. Recent keynote speakers include: Mary Kay, Frito-Lay, Texas Instruments, American Airlines, Xerox, JC Penney and La Quinta Hotels and Inns. For more information, go to: www.dfwama.com.
The American Marketing Association (AMA) is the largest professional association for marketers with more than 38,000 members worldwide in every area of marketing. For over six decades, the AMA has been the leading source for information, knowledge sharing and professional development for marketing professionals. To learn more about the AMA, go to: www.marketingpower.com.
About GfK Custom Research North America:
Headquartered in New York, GfK Custom Research North America is part of the GfK Group. With home offices in Nuremberg, Germany, the GfK Group is fourth largest market research organization in the world. Its activities cover three business sectors: Custom Research, Retail and Technology and Media. With 115 companies covering over 100 countries, GfK Group has approximately 10,000 employees (as of September 30, 2008), 80% of which are based outside Germany. For more information, visit www.gfkamerica.com
At ANA Conference, Majoras Says It's Time to Back Up Rhetoric With Facts
By Rupal Parekh
Published: March 10, 2009
NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- A top lawyer for Procter & Gamble called upon industry executives to work harder than ever to defend self-regulation of the ad business at a gathering of top advertisers today.
Speaking about the tough economic environment and increased government involvement in business affairs, Deborah Platt Majoras, VP-general counsel at P&G, said the ad business has to tout that it has been responsible and doesn't need additional oversight.
The current business environment -- one in which market failures have prompted government bailouts and heightened government oversight -- is leading to a more skeptical outlook from policymakers about self-regulation. '
"The road ahead is not going to be easy, but we are not helpless," said Ms. Majoras, who, prior to joining P&G served as chairman of the Federal Trade Commission from 2004 to 2008. "The industry has been far more responsible than we get credit for. It's time that we backed up rhetoric with facts," she said.
An optimistic start Ms. Majoras, the keynote speaker at the Association of National Advertisers' Advertising Law and Business Affairs Conference, kicked off the conference on an optimistic note this morning. As is the case with most events these days, attendance for the two-day affair in New York is down. Nearly 150 executives registered for the conference this year, a 25% drop-off from the 200 or so who registered in 2008, organizers said.
Ms. Majoras expressed confidence that the FTC, under new leadership in Jon Leibowitz, is willing to give self-regulation a chance. At the same time, the ball is in the industry's court, she said. Advertisers shouldn't wait for mandates to be handed down from regulators, but rather take it upon themselves to be more responsible.
Among other things, everyone must step up efforts to advertise at a high level of effectiveness, only make claims that can be substantiated, and ensure protection of consumers' privacy. Advertisers should be thinking about making disclosures about their marketing practices, regardless of whether or not the FTC requires them.
"We can't foster trust with consumers now if they feel like they've been had," Ms. Majoras said. The online space is one in which advertisers must be particularly cautious -- and transparent -- because consumers feel a unique sense of ownership over the internet.
Making the case Ms. Majoras, referencing Rance Crain's recent column in Ad Age, "Self-Regulation Shouldn't Be Advertising's Best-Kept Secret," stressed that steadfast believers in self-regulation must be prepared to "make the case," and should think about ways to better articulate and get the message out there.
She also reiterated a few talking points for the audience, including that the ad industry's system of regulation is flexible, prompt and responsive; it benefits from the accumulated judgment of industry experts; there is an inherent buy-in for the system, which makes it effective; and the cost burden falls upon industry participants rather than taxpayers.
As Best of Show, Balcom will assume the role of campaign creator for the 2009® Addy Awards. Concussion Advertising and Public Relations handled the previous two years’ creative. Balcom was among four Fort Worth advertising and public relations firms to clean up at the awards show of the American Advertising Federation of Fort Worth.
User-friendly website merges weather information and social content into Google map display
A Fort Worth advertising agency is raising the bar for website design and innovation with the launch of iMapWeather.com™, a new website that marries social networking with state-of-the-art weather information.
Balcom Agency, a leading creative services agency in the Southwest, designed the website using Google Maps, user-friendly navigation tools, global weather detection and forecasting technology, and social media features such as photo- and video-sharing.
Launching later this month, the website promises to be an entirely new way to experience the weather. Users will be able to connect with -- and through -– the weather by posting and sharing photo, videos, events, and Twitter-like text bursts, all localized inside the iMap.
“What makes iMapWeather revolutionary is the merging of geographic map technology, weather conditions and social media into one beautiful map display,” said Brian Blankenship, Balcom’s interactive creative director. “This has never been done.”
The Balcom Agency partnered with Weather Decision Technologies Inc. (WDT), a global leader in providing unique weather content and forecasting services, in a joint venture to create iMapWeather.com.
“iMapWeather is a completely new online phenomenon—a website that marries social networking with real-time weather data,” said Stuart Balcom, president of the Balcom Agency. “It’s a whole new way of accessing and sharing vital weather information for millions of people.”
Added Mike Eilts, president of WDT, “We are excited to partner with one of the United States’ leading creative services agencies to provide extremely accurate, global weather information directly to consumers as a terrific interactive weather map experience.”
iMapWeather’s design offers users the easiest, most enjoyable way to get weather conditions, view radar and satellite images, and see real-time lightning strikes. iMapWeather deploys a proprietary Flash application integrated with Google Maps API. It provides Doppler Radar, satellite imagery and the most sophisticated forecasting available anywhere.
Users share their content by sending it via e-mail from a computer or mobile device. Social media content will be displayed based on an algorithm that includes newness, popularity (views) and ranking.
The iMapWeather embed code can easily be copied and pasted onto any website. As such, iMapWeather.com™ is serving as a hub for a larger network of iMaps hosted by individuals and organizations on their websites, from ABC4 in Salt Lake City, Utah to SailingWorld.com, a magazine of the Bonnier Group.
About iMapWeather
iMapWeather is the easiest and most attractive and user-friendly way to get weather forecasts and current conditions, view radar and satellite images, and contribute and enjoy user-generated content like videos and photos. It will be the first website and widget (embeddable Flash application) to marry social networking with the weather.
iMapWeather is a joint venture between Balcom Agency, the leading creative services agency in Fort Worth, Texas, and Weather Decision Technologies, a global leader in providing state-of-the-science weather detection and forecasting systems and services based in Norman, Oklahoma.
Visit iMapWeather.com™ to experience the weather in a whole new way.
New media is changing the face of online advertising, for as content takes on new forms, such as mobile and video, so does advertising. Online advertising is a nascent area, but one thing is sure: Advertising will continue to grow and evolve online, where the audience and the metrics are better. There is much experimentation and creativity taking place as companies seek to optimize advertising in a world of new media.
Connecting the Dots
The more relevant the ad, the more it is perceived as content and welcomed by the consumer. Targeting online ads through location and context is growing. Placecast, an advertising service from San Francisco and New York-based 1020 Inc., combines location information with contextual information to "put audience in place," as its slogan says.
If you are at a hotel in Manhattan, Placecast's software can let advertisers know that you are attending a conference, that you are probably in a certain income bracket and that it is almost Valentine's Day, for example. Through Placecast, advertisers can recommend a shop near the hotel for purchasing a gift and send that ad, called a PlaceAd, to your mobile phone or laptop. Placecast gives anonymous location information context that can be converted into a revenue stream. It connects the dots to help advertisers target their audience.
Mobile ads, another form of targeting, are ads sent to you on a mobile device, customized to your location. If you are walking down the street past a department store, you might get an ad on your cellphone that jackets are on sale.
Advertisers are salivating at this form of advertising because they get much closer to the customer and the point of sale than if using mass advertising outlets like TV and newspapers. CBS Mobile is testing cellphone advertising in a partnership with the social network service Loopt, which lets families and friends keep track of each other on their cellphones. Members of Loopt who have GPS-equipped cellphones and have chosen to participate might receive an ad for a nearby restaurant or movie theater. There are privacy issues, of course, as people may find this form of advertising highly intrusive, so offering mobile ads on an opt-in basis will no doubt be required. Still, location-based mobile ads put advertisers a huge step closer to the customer purchase.
Online Ads Go Video
Like content on the Web, advertisements are evolving from text to images (banners) to video. Video ads take on a new look and feel as they are incorporated into video content in different ways:
--viral ads, which are appended to video
--geo-targeted overlays, which are additions to video ads that reflect your location (for example, what stores are nearby in your state)
--interactive overlays, which let you click to a Web site or video for more information
--branded video players, which frame the content on your screen with an advertiser's logo
As downloadable video content increases--whether TV shows, short clips or movies, and whether to laptops, cellphones or other mobile devices--dynamic video ads can be part of the downloaded content. On the belief that most people would rather have ad-supported content than pay for content, advertisers are gearing up for this and for being able to track these offline views for their ad metrics. Poddadies helps advertisers do that and has a system to change ads on the desktop once the video file has been downloaded. Adobe also has a system to change ads in its new Media Player.
Shop the Show
There may be ads aplenty, but there still lurks the age-old question: How effective is the ad? Especially in a world of time shifting and ad skipping? If advertisers fear their ads are being ignored, they can try an ad-less approach.
New technology lets people "shop the show" and buy products they see on a TV program right from their TV screen. If you like the shoes the actress is wearing, using technology from ICE Innovative Technologies, you can buy them instantly with a few clicks of your TV remote. The Internet-commerce-enabled technology provides a standard format for listing products, presented as a menu next to the show, that you navigate through to make a purchase. While it's not clear if clicking and shopping is a major distraction from watching the show, it's sure to satisfy impulse buying--and the product company is selling directly to the consumer at retail, not wholesale, prices.
The ICE technology works on standard TV (cable, satellite) and Internet protocol television (IPTV), and will be available for TV content on the Web. Further, producers can change the products in the show based on its sponsors. Technology from i3media, a consortium of media companies in Spain, lets you manipulate individual objects in a video frame. For instance, you could change a bottle of wine from a Monte Rosso Vineyard label to a Seven Springs Vineyard label if that grower is sponsoring the show. The proviewer can click on the wine bottle to obtain more information and purchase it.
New Ad Age
Though online advertising is in its infancy, it is clear that advertisers are moving from a scattershot approach to, ultimately, 1-to-1 marketing and buying direct from the ad itself (no more Web page redirects). The traditional (TV) ad network, with neatly delineated spots and breaks, has given way to a new ad network supporting Internet content that features wildly irregular spots and breaks, if any. Internet content is flexible and interactive, and advertising must follow suit.
Key questions are: Who is in charge of IPTV channel programming, and thus advertising? Will there be a bidding system for ad time, or will advertising follow an entirely different business model? How do we get IPTV, the Web and television to accept and display each other's ads when proprietary, incompatible video players and formats make integration--and therefore an effective overall ad strategy--difficult?
Stay tuned as industry, audience and technology work out these and other online ad issues. YuMe is one company offering these kinds of ad services;16 of its ad platforms will also power NBC Direct, the first site to offer free downloads of prime time TV shows.
Excerpted from the report,Digital Disruptions: Technology Innovations Powering 21st Century Business,developed byCSC, aglobal information technology services firm. Copyright: 2008 CSC. All Rights Reserved. Printed in USA. 10/08
It's More Than a Toy; It's a Business Tool
