New technology in the world of web-enabled devices is being developed daily, changing the way we communicate across the board. And, as marketers in digital advertising agencies, the way we reach our consumers.

In fact, while newspapers and magazines are busy losing circulation and TV advertising is being fast-forwarded with the latest DVR device – the world of digital is expanding and growing momentum.

The opportunities for digital advertising seem to be endless and changing on a daily basis. So much so, that many brands look at digital as a moving target that they either shy away from completely or add on as an afterthought to their already existing marketing strategy.

However, digital advertising should not just be an extension or an enhancement, it should be the core of a brand’s marketing strategy.

The old vs. the new marketing model

The old marketing model that puts buying in a funnel that progresses from awareness to consideration to purchase to loyalty is no more. Unfortunately, many brands and marketers continue to use this model because it’s straightforward and easy to track and measure.

However, in today’s digital age it’s important to remember that we are no longer just talking to consumers, instead we are having a conversation.

Successful brands are learning to have this conversation with their consumers and are using digital as the main hub or engagement platform that ties it all together.

To learn more about how your brand could benefit from a more digital-centric marketing strategy and digital advertising agencies, please feel free to contact us.

Don’t forget to join our digital conversations on Facebook and Twitter.

What is Facebook Open Graph?

Open Graph is Facebook’s extension of a social graph, bringing people together by allowing them to share their activities and connecting users via common interests. In the beginning, Open Graph simply shared basic activities, such as when a friend liked a brand page or became friends with another user.

Now, however, this functionality has expanded to allow brands to create their own actions and objects for users to share. For example, if you have recipes, you can allow your users to cook (a custom action) a recipe (a custom object) and then share that to their own Timeline, their news feed and the ticker of their friends.

The beauty of this protocol is that it can be integrated in a brand’s Facebook page, but also within a brand’s website. This helps create a seamless, highly sharable experience for the user, which can then extend a brand’s reach online exponentially. For the purposes of this blog, though, I’ll focus on how to use Open Graph within Facebook. We’ll talk about using Open Graph to build a social website in a later post.

How do I use Open Graph for my brand?

If you’re looking to use Open Graph, I assume you already have a brand page with a cover photo, profile picture, photo album, a key milestone or two and a few likes.

From there, the next step is to develop a Facebook Open Graph application to target and engage your audience. The easiest way to do this is to create a Facebook application that uses the Open Graph API, also known as a canvas page or canvas game.

For Spectracide, we created a canvas game that allows users to view side-by-side photos and click on the differences between them for a chance to win prizes from the brand, from coupons to $20,000.

The canvas page (or game) has a fluid width for flexible design, and allows easy engagement via Facebook. With an Open Graph application, brands can post notifications, create bookmarks, update to users’ news feeds and post to users’ timelines (in the activity section). All of this engagement can be customized to your brand with messaging and images.

Why should my brand consider using Open Graph?

As a brand or business, you want to get as much information about the user to enhance your marketing data and allow you to further fine-tune how you communicate and engage with your demographic. To get this data, Facebook allows brands to access user information through your game or application, so you can customize the experience.

When your users engage with your brand on either a Facebook fan page or a custom built canvas game, it augments the overall experience with one of social connectivity. If you can get your audience to share that activity, your reach expands exponentially. When users played the Spectracide photo comparison game, they could post scores to their Timeline and news feeds, which then allowed the brand exposure to each user’s friends as well.

For more information on developing with Open Graph, Facebook’s developer blog is a helpful asset. This site is quite informational as well. If you’d rather leave it to the pros, contact us and we’ll help you formulate a plan and develop a game or application that delivers the results your brand needs.

Here are a few targeting methods you should be aware of – techniques to help you aim your digital darts if you will.  Please keep in mind it’s not a one or the other sort of deal. You will typically want to mix and match your targeting to maximize your results.

• Direct purchasing – This is where you pay a site directly to display your banner ads. This will provide you with great reach into the site’s audience.  If you go this route, ensure the site is related by product or service or tightly aligned with the lifestyle of your product or service. Expect higher than average CPM costs ($3-$4 CPM).

• Contextual and Semantic Targeting – Advertising networks like DoubleClick (Google) analyze the pages to determine the subject matter of the content allowing the people who want to advertise to place their content on page with related content. The idea is that the viewer will be more interested in your banner ad because it is relevant to what they are viewing on the site with banner ad.

• Behavioral Targeting/Look-a-Like – Provides the ability to show ads to people who are visiting sites related to certain themes, but not just on those themed site.  An example would be someone who visits several car related sites but then visits a cooking site and see your ads for “Tire Shine.”  By utilizing tracking cookies we know that even that they are on a unrelated site, they have an interest in what you define in your behavioral targeting.

• Geo/Local Targeting – This allows us to target people just in a certain area.  When you have a local business, or a local event, or anything that local messaging would help amplify this should be a consideration.

• Demographic Targeting – This method of targeting allows you to target an audience with demographic factors that you define.  While this is not a perfect science, the networks who offer this type of targeting typically use third party data to define which sites have a demographic audience that match what you want to engage with.

• Retargeting – Retargeting is one of the most interesting targeting tactics for banner ads in my opinion. It goes for the big impact. Other targeting methods might be more focused on general awareness and getting eyes on the brand, while retargeting works to keep  eyes on the brand. To do this, the advertiser must first place a cookie in the visitor’s browser when they visit a website, landing page or blog post. Once that tracking cookie is placed, any time they visit a site that partners with your advertising network, you can show your ad, and show your ad again, and again. Essentially you follow them around and burn your brand in their brain. The good thing is it doesn’t have to be creepy. You can set limits on how many time they can see an ad.  You should also be aware of your service or products’ creepiness factor.  If you sell products that consumers don’t want to be reminded that they use or need, retargeting might not be a great idea.

While this post only covers the main targeting techniques for banner advertising there is still lot more to it.  If you have questions on the methods or tricks to share that you have used to maximize your results please let us know in the comments below. If you are looking for any assistance in planning your online advertising or brand strategy you should get into contact with us.

Somehow, similar lyrics seem to keep popping up for a number of situations (work and life-related), but the brand management and marketing game is ever changing.

The evolution of social media means brands are required to listen and respond to consumer sentiment more than ever. Consumers have also become more marketing-savvy, making brands work hard for their money and their love. Want to survive in this fast-paced social world? Read on, and discover three quick lessons for stepping up your online game.

(Feel free to recite and record them on your favorite old mixed tape if it helps.)

1. Brand love is a battlefield.  So your brand has a facebook page and over time has acquired 100k fans. That’s great! But it’s easy to get caught up in this vanity stat as a measure of your success. What’s more telling is how the fans are engaging with your brand. Are they liking posts? Commenting? Sharing? The best way to help this is to have a hearty editorial calendar of interesting and engaging content to keep your fans coming back. Be brutal and meticulous about it. Other brands already are.

2. Give consumers a reason to believe. One would like to think last year’s buzz around Juicy Fruit was due to the great taste, or how long it lasts. Not the serenading unicorn receiving countless posts on YouTube. Finding a unique platform that resonates with your target consumer will earn their trust and their acclaim much faster than lecturing them on why your brand is better than the competition. Giving them entertainment will give them reason to like, share and eventually buy. Check out MooseTracker for the latest digital tools and trends being used to engage and entertain consumers.

3. JD Power who? Yes, official ratings and accolades are important to giving credibility to your brand, but it’s important to recognize everyday critics as well. Creating or embracing a forum to share consumer reviews and ratings instills trust and transparency. In fact, 70% of consumers trust online peer reviews while only 14% trust advertising.

We feel your pain and we’re here to help. Post your questions about this and other brand management and marketing topics in the comments below, and continue the conversation with us!

But outside of designing an Indie-rock poster, a slick website or a handy infographic, package design has the harshest critics known to any professional designer: consumers.

But what gets a consumer to continually purchase iconic brands based solely on their package designs? 

This past holiday season, Coca-Cola released their annual holiday can decked out in white. Pretty, right? Apparently the American public didn’t think so. Consumers were so upset by the change to the timeless can, regardless of the product bubbling inside, that Coca-Cola immediately recalled the cans and quickly replaced the white with their iconic red. Could the timeless package design conundrum be answered with a simple “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it?”

Regardless of Coke’s misstep this past holiday, there is a plethora of great examples from brands that have embraced their timeless images through packaging. 

1. The Coca-Cola Bottle:
   Outside of their above-mentioned “uh-oh” moment, Coke has done a tremendous job in the timeless category. With powerful color choices (their iconic red) and familiar easy-grip shape, the Coke bottle has become so much of an American image that even Andy Warhol said, “Liz Taylor knows it, the President knows it, the bum knows it, and you know it.”
2. Tiffany & Co.:
   What woman doesn’t hope for the day to open up that tiny blue box and find a stellar piece of silver sitting on a plush bed of white cotton? The Tiffany & Company notable blue box has been a staple in the fashion industry since 1906 and continues to generate lots of excitement from New York to Tokyo.
3. TDK Discs:
   I will argue that this is one the of the most understated classic and timeless package designs in the electronic world. Outside of Apple, TDK has met the world’s needs with wonderfully utilitarian CD and DVD spindles and jewel cases.
4. Marlboro:
   Say what you will about smoking, Philip Morris U.S.A. has come to know their consumer’s sensibility to design incredibly well.  So well, in fact, that even with the growing regulations on cigarette packaging, simply saying the words red, gold, or silver to any gas station clerk will automatically get you the brand.
5. Barbie:
   Miss Barbie has graced the shelves of toy stores since March of 1959. With the notable pink and clear molded plastic of her seamless box, little girls all over the world have fallen out of strollers reaching for the doll.
6. Kellogg’s Cereals:
   Whether it be Corn Flakes or Rice Krispies, each cereal box that Kellogg’s Cereals has put out into the market since 1906 has driven consumer purchase. And not only in brand messaging, but in the overall character development that starts on the box. Where else was Tony the Tiger supposed to tell us that Frosted Flakes are “Grrrrreat!”
7. Wonder Bread:
   The wonder of Wonder Bread definitely lives in the brand’s color selection. The primary colors pop off of the stark white, giving the brand a history of over 90 years.
8. Budweiser Beer:
   The history of Anheuser-Busch’s timeless beer bottle actually began with placing the brand name on the bottle. Many bottles over 130 years ago simply used a plain, unbranded bottle for their lagers, but founder Adolphus Busch knew better, establishing the bottle and brand as icons in American minds.
9. Chanel No. 5:
   The government of France has reported that, on average, a bottle of Chanel No. 5 sells every thirty seconds. But that’s no surprise. Not only is the scent a signature in the fashion world, the bottle, rumored to be designed after a whiskey decanter, has maintained its crystalline shape since 1924.
10. The Starbucks Cup:
    With its iconic sleeve and lid, the Starbucks cup has become one of the world’s most recognizable and loved shapes. Although not the first in its realm, the coffee purveyor saw an opportunity to brand the sleeve and cup with life-affirming messages and notable quotes, allowing it to rise above their competitors.

If you’re wondering what it takes to create impactful and memorable package design, contact us today.

For this latest project, Capital One asked us to create a print campaign to drive awareness for their official partnership with the NCAA® and sponsorship of the Academic All-America Team. They specifically wanted to highlight how difficult it is to excel in both athletics and academics, and that is why earning a spot on the Academic All-America Team is such a great honor.

For this one, we focused on the academic dedication of student-athletes, even though they have a very active extracurricular schedule.

This was one of those simple print projects you love as an advertising and design agency, especially to complement all the digital work we’ve been doing.

Let us know what you think by adding a comment and be sure to check out our other branding and advertising work.

Of course, after a week or two of playing, they’ll be back up to date on the strengths and weaknesses of any new social platform.

Wait, did I just say playing?

To fully understand how a social platform can benefit your company or brand, it’s important that you have a good grasp on how it works – and why consumers find it appealing. The best way to do this? Create an account and play.

Think of it as your social media marketing playground. Each individual tool has its own purpose, but combined, it’s a complete area for you to learn and grow – all while having a little fun!

Let’s take a look at what we’ve learned from playing in the digital realm.

Facebook: As the number one social platform, we’ve all now heard that Facebook is best for business to consumer brands and the perfect place to start building a community. However, you need to understand what this means.

It’s a hub for:

·      sharing content your consumers want
·      starting and continuing conversations
·      addressing customer concerns

With too much of a brand-centric focus, consumers will be turned off and may seek validity and information elsewhere.

Twitter: This microblogging hub is perfect for showing your expertise. Whether you’re interacting with other companies or directly with consumers, it’s a place to gain authority over a subject and deliver a little personality.

By using social media management tools like those provided by Sprout Social, CoTweet and HootSuite, you can gain insight into who your consumers are and what they want, like:

·      age group that is interacting most with your brand
·      which tweets are getting the most engagement
·      info to help you provide consumers with relevant content

Pinterest: It’s common knowledge that Pinterest predominantly used by females, but that hasn’t stopped it from gaining popularity. Now the third most popular social network in the U.S. after Facebook and Twitter, Pinterest is beginning to see more traction from brands – like Better Homes & Gardens and Chobani.

To really succeed on Pinterest, it’s important to create boards that help you show who you are as a brand or company and that means going above and beyond posting images of your products.

Keep in mind, they recently revamped their Terms of Service – be sure to read over before starting to share and engage with other users.

Instagram: What began as an exclusive app for iPhone has grown into one of the most popular photo sharing apps available. Since Facebook began, photo sharing and viewing capabilities has been a cornerstone to its popularity. It’s no wonder that a completely photo-focused app has gained such a large following.

And with photos the basis of Facebook’s popularity, this may have been one of the reasons they were willing to pay $1 billion for Instagram.

Brands are still experimenting with how to best utilize Instagram. A few companies are giving consumers a voice by allowing account takeovers through influential followers or contests.

Keep Learning

The number one thing that we learned from our own social media marketing playground is that the education never stops. It’s our job to stay up to date on the latest changes, even if that means waking up to blogs every morning and checking our Facebook pages as often as a teenager.

Get started with this list of upcoming social networks to keep an eye on.

Be sure to like us on Facebook and follow on Twitter to see our social media marketing strategies in action!

What have you learned about social media marketing from self-promoting and playing? Leave us a comment!

Once you stop wracking your brain and thinking of all the ways you’d spend that hefty lump of cash, you may start to wonder – what’s next for Facebook + Instagram?

According to Facebook, Instagram will keep its own identity and act as their standalone app as they work to improve usability and functionality across both social media platforms.

Here at the Embassy, we’ve made our own predictions on what this really means and how this purchase will affect the next changes to roll out on Facebook and Instagram.

1)   Instagram Social Functionality

If it’s really true that Instagram will keep its own identity, we predict new functions will be implemented to the app to help make it even more social and easier to navigate.

The ability to simply tag followers, create albums and sort photos by interest are the first of many new features we plan to see.

2)   Facebook Mobile Photo Sharing

With photo sharing at the heart of Facebook’s platform, this feature on their mobile app is long overdue for an upgrade.

We expect them to immediately implement the option to capture photos directly from inside the Facebook app, edit as necessary and then effortlessly share.

3)   Facebook Photo Filters

Who’s ready for your high school girlfriend’s new baby’s photos to pop up on your newsfeed in a Walden filter?

We’ll be surprised if we don’t soon see across all Facebook platforms the option to edit and add filters to your photos.

What we’re really hoping for, though, are new and improved filters made specifically for Facebook.  Or even the ability to program and develop your own. The Zuckerberg filter, anyone? And don’t get us started on what that could mean for social media marketing – imagine brand-specific filters. You can already picture what the Nike filter would be, can’t you?

4)   Facebook Timeline Filters

Finally, as more and more users are adding milestones to their Timelines, we predict Facebook will soon give us era-specific filter suggestions for photos associated to milestones during certain decades.

Let’s really make your high school graduation photo look like it’s from the ‘90’s.

There you have it – we’re excited to see what will happen next.  Have anything to add or predictions of your own? Let us know in the comments!

As soon as any one of us step outside of our house the level of advertising vastly exceeds what we can, or even want to, digest. Naturally over time each one of us develops a mental filtration system that effectively weeds out that which we don’t perceive to offer value. It’s a human defense mechanism that has been very well honed over time. It’s also one of the largest hurdles to clear when attempting retail marketing.

The solution? Bake cookies.

Baking cookies before showing a house has been a long-standing technique employed by many a realtor. The sweet aromas of browning cookie batter is well known to be a comforting and disarming scent, transporting the potential buyer to a more open state of mind.

However, this blog entry is neither about cookies nor is it about real estate. It’s about marketing to multiple senses.

Please Consumers Visually

Every consumer is walking around with the aforementioned well-honed visual filter, only allowing what they see fit into the fertile grounds of their consciousness. Notice I said well honed visual filter. The human experience is incredibly layered, and with vision clearly being the preferred avenue of approach by marketers it is no surprise so many safeguards have been established.

Those same filters that are so adept at screening, seeking, then finding what they want to see are simultaneously porous to tailored input via the other senses.

For instance, when piping in music, fine dining establishments will opt for slower paced, melodic tunes. Whether the diners are aware of this or not, their subconscious is, as well as the restaurateur. Slower music translates to longer dining times and subsequently larger bills. Faster music will have the opposite effect, but if you are an establishment built on high turnover the AC/DCs of the world will better suit you. It’s all about defining, crafting, and tailoring the brand experience.

Use Sound to Grab Attention

Recently there have been some interesting emerging technologies that allow in-store marketing to engage consumers through unexpected channels.

The first is Audio Spotlight. Their website claims that their technology “creates a tight, narrow beam of sound that can be controlled with the same precision as light”.

After hearing this technology for myself at SXSW, and at risk of being labeled a shill, I can tell you it’s pretty impressive. It has the potential to offer tailored and individual experiences to consumers in a public setting. Free of noise pollution and cross messaging, and laden with pranking potential, here it is in action.

Scent for Memorability

Scent is said to be our oldest sense, and it is the only one that is hardwired directly into our brains. That is why scents are so evocative and so memorable to us.

But like scent, baking cookies to charm buyers is old school. Our digital experiences are all visual, and to a lesser degree aural. Anything beyond that may be too kitschy and go the way of Smell-O-Vision. Olly may be no different – or maybe it is.

Olly is a customizable scent machine that is aware of digital notifications. As it is currently configured whenever anyone you specify contacts you via social media it emits a prescribed scent. While its spectrum of scents is limited to the individual oils it’s loaded with, it can stack to house multiple scents (it can’t crank out a scents like a printer combines colors to make a million variants).

Look for it after it immerges from Kickstarter, or build your own in the meantime. Either way, once it grows beyond its infancy it could be a useful tool in shaping digital experiences.

The technology inherent in Olly could serve to further blur the line between the physical and digital, especially when considering retail marketing.

A Futuristic Outlook on Retail Marketing

On the horizon are applications that will react at shelf when your brand is mentioned in tweets. Simple monitoring and location-based systems will allow for real time causes and effects to take place in-store. A simple interaction with a brand online could result in a coupon to be printed at shelf – and that’s just a start.

At the heart of it is a change in the way that you engage consumers. The consumer experience should be seen holistically as just that: an experience. It’s not merely a transaction, it’s influenced by far more than just what we see. Non-visual brand cues are more powerful than we as consumers are aware, and it is through the other senses that one can usurp so many critical filters. If you are a brand be cognizant of if/how you are doing so and what the pure experience is that you desire a consumer to have.

Want to share your thoughts?
There is a plethora of ways to achieve multi-sensory marketing; I’d love to hear about your experiences – and how you would use an Audio Spotlight to mess with people! Leave us a comment!

When outlining your brand strategy for next year (or this year, in case you’re behind), keep these three considerations in mind to ensure that the copy and paste keys aren’t being hit and applied to this year’s brief.

1.     Is your brand strategy on board with your business goals?

Your strategy should align with the brand’s overall business and marketing goals. If those haven’t been established yet, definitely take the time to stop and define them. If those are the same as last year, take a step back and see why they’re the same and if there should be any adjustments made based on past year’s performances.

Once the business and marketing goals are hammered out, cross-check the brand strategy to make sure that it’s geared in the right direction to achieve those goals, and maybe even surpass them.

2.     What are key insights that guide this year’s brand strategy?

Don’t underestimate the insights that can be found from last year’s successes or failures. If something was done well, it doesn’t necessarily have to be done again, but discovering why it performed well can provide valuable insights into strategy development for the next year.

Whenever possible, allocate budget for in-depth research, to act as support in building brand strategy. Many times your gut reaction will be spot on, but there are very surprising insights that can be found that would go otherwise unknown without research. We’ve all been there – those focus groups when all hell breaks loose because the results indicate your strategy is completely off target. And that’s okay. Adjust, refocus and you’ll reap the benefits.

3.     Who cares?

At the end of the day, your brand strategy should resonate with the consumer target you’re looking to recruit and engage. If it doesn’t resonate with the people who are purchasing your product, it won’t matter if it makes sense to your brand management team.

Take previous year’s insights into account and perform research to learn more about your target. Don’t have the budget to get official? Leverage online resources and your internal teams to gather insights in specific categories. You’ll be surprised (or maybe not) by the guy in accounting that has a secret love of cat grooming.

That’s it for the headlines. Have any additional points to add? Leave a comment!