advertising

Social Media Reset

/ Bailey Burk / Leave a comment
When did I sign up to be sold?

Well, it’s finally happened – social media networks are being forced to come clean about how and where they make their vast fortunes.  To most of us, these networks started as benign play things where we could post pictures and inflate our digital persona to make us look cooler than we actually were. As with most technology platforms, investors became involved and what started as a noble endeavor to make the world a better place was replaced with “how can this be scaled and monetized?”

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How Social Media Is Losing Sociability

/ Bailey Burk / 1 Comment
The utopian promise of social media was founded on the sharing of ideas and respect for the individual.

In the not too distant past, social media was embraced by brands as a conduit to engage with users in hopes of creating a personal relationship. Diaper brands embraced mommy bloggers, food brands created recipe sharing websites, Facebook created the wall where users posted enhanced digital profiles of their exploits and lives. Titans of corporations envisioned social media as a way to reduce advertising costs because in their view, social media was free. Free in the sense of no media expenditures, content was provided by the users and as a bonus it came with a rudimentary form of ROI based on likes, opens and click-through rates.

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Back to Advertising Basics

/ Bailey Burk / Leave a comment
7 decades of successful advertising has relied on this advertising model

It seems that the entire advertising ecosphere has become infected with the cheaper/better virus.

Startups think that agile marketing can introduce their idea/App/product exclusively through social media. Thinking that social media can be scaled and user comments controlled to reach and influence the intended target audience with enough impressions to influence the next round of investor backing is naive.

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Courage to Change

/ Bailey Burk / Leave a comment
There are very few things that are as profound as the act of change. In our personal and business lives, we, for the most part are creatures of habit.

Routine make us feel secure and brings order to our lives. Staying within our own daily grind gives us a sense of security. It’s only when change is thrust upon us that we wake up and see the possibilities that are right in front of our eyes.

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The importance of the creative brief

/ Bailey Burk / Leave a comment
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Advertising that connects and differentiates starts with the creative brief

Advertising that persuades and connects with the target audience is a strategic investment. It’s the only medium that the advertiser can control the placement, content, and frequency of message. Therefore, it’s important to make sure the creative development of the ad is on target to achieve the business objective and inform the potential new customer of how and why the product offering will improve their lot in life. Continue reading →

Mobile marketing: Shiny object or game changer?

/ Bailey Burk / Leave a comment

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There is considerable content being generated on the topic of mobile marketing. Data suggests that by 2016 there will be over 196 million smart phone users (60% of the population) in North America. eMarketer is predicting $67 billion in digital ad spending, of which $40 billion will go towards mobile internet ad spending. Obviously these are sizable numbers but we should not lose sight of the total ad spend which is close to $200 billion, with traditional (broadcast and print) representing $132 billion. Continue reading →

How website analytics can help sharpen your advertising placement

/ Bailey Burk / Leave a comment
Knowing where your website traffic originates allows you to redirect your advertising to new territories.

The internet is the undisputed king when it comes to assisting us in researching and identifying items we are interested in or want to purchase immediately.

This can be attributed to the basic architecture of internet search. Keywords drive search. Therefore, when we enter a search query, in return we get thousands of potential websites that may or may not provide the immediate gratification of finding the items we are searching for.

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The myth of the “full service” advertising agency

/ Bailey Burk / Leave a comment
The advertising/marketing ecosystem is too large and complex to offer all services in-house

It’s an old illusion in the advertising business that agencies wanted to look larger then they actually were. The thinking behind this was that the more services you claimed to offer, the better chance you had of reeling in new accounts. It was this mindset that coined the phrase “full service” agency.

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