Sitegeist

Sitegeist has Moved!

2010-04-30T14:40:00.000-04:00

April has been a busy month at Splat Productions, most notably because we have launched our new site, which features Wordpress hosted blogging built in. Henceforth, Sitegeist entries, including the Tweet Martini Lunch question will be posted The SitegeistCome visit us!

Anecdotal Thoughts on Selling in the Recession: Know When to Fold' Em

2010-04-25T11:58:00.001-04:00

As a small business owner, I am both blessed or cursed with the perspective of seeing the problems of selling in a down market from both the perspective of sales lead and salesperson. As the owner of Splat, I'm regularly approached by salespeople for various types of equipment or services. As a business owner and now principal salesperson for the company, I too am faced with the challenges of identifying leads and selling in this still-slower market we all face.

This column briefly explores some of these challenges and draws some completely anecdotal conclusions about identifying leads and brining in new business in a constantly changing sales landscape.

First, some observations from the perspective of the sales lead...

My phone rings constantly from salespeople trying to get my business. Of course, many of the folks calling are trying to sell me stuff I don't need and, frankly, those calls (or emails) either don't get answered or I immediately put the salesperson off. However, a certain number of calls we get are from folks trying to sell us stuff which, frankly, we'd consider buying. Maybe the call is for a piece of equipment we'd like to buy or maybe the call is for an interesting benefits or insurance product. But, the bottom line for us right now is that, as much as we're "future-oriented" and as much as we still dream about what we need to grow our business ultimately we, for the most part, are not in a position to really buy anything discretionary right now. This, I've noticed has created a sort of "trap" for salespeople which, I'm guessing, is not unique to the business of selling in any industry segment these days.

The challenge, I think, for salespeople these days is knowing who really is a legitimate prospect and who, like us, might be unable to say "no" at this particular moment because, in the abstract, we're legitimately interested in your product but just can't buy right now. Which brings me to my counter-intuitive, counter-cultural conclusion about selling in this market. In my experience, salespeople are taught to doggedly pursue prospects like us. The thinking, I believe, is that through a full-court press of persuasion or sheer attrition, you will wear down a prospect like us and eventually get us to say yes.

I beg to differ. Clients like us are in that quandary of not wanting to give up on the long term goals of their business but, if we're smart at all, are way too focused on day to day economic performance to allow ourselves to spend beyond our means. My advice to salespeople is this: stop the relentless calling and hitching yourself to the delusional prospect that the eighteenth call you make to that prospect who won't say "yes" but who won't definitively say "no" will finally land yourself a sale. Concentrate, instead, on looking for clients in industry sectors that are beginning to recover or other clients within the same industry sector who might be expanding.

Recovery is happening. Selling is relationship-building. Good relationship strategy involves knowing when to move on and identify others who might be better suited to beginning a relationship with. I know that, for myself, I've had to "move on" beyond some of the traditional industry sectors we've served because so many of our clients in these areas are still struggling. For Splat, I believe we're better served by identifying other, less recession-plagued businesses who will value from our services and thinking.

One good thing about recessions is that they do force businesses to reevaluate and rethink flawed or outdated ways of doing business. I'm going to try and remember that blessing the next time I'm turning down an offer to purchase a service or product we just can't afford right now.

Tweet Martini Lunch Question April 23, 2010

2010-04-23T14:25:00.000-04:00

This fetching maiden from the era of our Founding Fathers was one of the country's most fashionable early First Ladies. Many of you will have no trouble recognizing her by this portrait alone, but this week's question is looking for some more esoteric knowledge about her particular accomplishments as first lady.

This week's question: who is the woman portrayed above and what dessert did she introduce into the White House, for the first time? Finally, what flavor was that dessert?

Remember to post your answers on Facebook, Tweet me or leave a comment on one of the two locations where Sitegeist is published....

Tweet Martini Lunch Question, April 16, 2010

2010-04-16T15:17:00.000-04:00

This week's "Tweet Martini Lunch" question refers to an iconographic moment in American architecture. The image shown above, slightly altered to avoid making this question ridiculously easy, is a signature building which contributes to the skyline of a major East Coast American city. Can you name the building and describe the building's significance in American Architectural History?

How to Talk Your Client Out of a Tree and Other Unsavory Tasks

2010-04-16T12:46:00.000-04:00

As an advertising and design professional, I've struggled with many different types of difficult client situations over the years. Here's two from my sample of Greatest Hits:

There's Bob, the client that hasn't paid you his required deposit up front, or signed his contract but who, nevertheless, keeps calling to know "what kind of progress have you made on our web site?"

Or there's Mary who, after having been given a list of required base materials for a project, including photography requirements, copy documents, corporate timelines, etc -- keeps calling and wondering "what's holding this project up?"

Advertising professionals know the pain of working through these difficulties. Financial and "project management" issues, though, are actually some of the easier problems to address. Bob needs to be reminded to pay his bill and Mary needs to be reminded that the agency needs further base resources in order to proceed.

Some of the thornier issues to address are issues related to a client's questionable taste of lack of good critical thinking about their brand identity. In my next series of blog article, I'm going to be addressing a number of these difficult client situations. This week we're starting with one of my favorites, The Copycat Client.

We've all had them. The client that seeks you out, with a printout from a web site they've seen and like and exclaims, "We'd like you to design our site so that it looks like this... we LOVE this..."

Within the spectrum of Copycat Clients, there are different gradations of challenges. In a "not so bad" situation, the client has studied another web site and their reasons to use it for inspiration are well-founded. If, for instance, the site makes visual sense for the identity of the client's brand and the site isn't from a direct competitor, it might make sense to use it as inspiration. Borrowing heavily from a competitor in one's industry sector, though is bound to lead to brand confusion.

More often, unfortunately, the source of the client's desire to duplicate someone else's work stems from either an insecurity in their own ability to create a unique brand presence for their product of an insecurity in the designer's skill to do the same. So, what does a competent design professional do when faced with a Copycat Client? Do what you'd do with any jittery kitty:

Talk them out of the tree they've trapped themselves in.

I usually begin by having a frank discussion about what it is they like about the site they've brought to our attention. Sometimes, you'll find that they actually don't want the entire look of the site duplicated, rather they're fixated on a couple of "likes" which are pretty easy to duplicate in a new, unique web presence. Other times, I go straight to the heart of the matter and express my concerns that, in duplicating the work of (especially) a competitor, the client is really weakening their own brand through lack of differentiation. And, finally, if I detect some insecurity in our ability to create a unique web site for them, I basically restart the sales process. I ask them why they came to us in the first place and take the time to review with them portfolio projects which I know will appeal. I basically try to reestablish the trust that is necessary to successfully move forward.

Copycat clients can be a challenge but, if you understand that, at the root of their insistence on "borrowing" from others' work is a sense of insecurity, you can help talk them through that insecurity and move them to a place where they feel more comfortable letting you do what you know you do best: designing unique, well-positioned and functional web sites for them.

Second Tweet Martini Lunch Question

2010-04-09T12:23:00.000-04:00

(Note: Sitegeist is blog written by the folks at Splat Productions, Inc. Images shown above courtesty of IMDB.com and Warner Home Video...)

Released in 1939, this film classic is an exercise in class, bitchiness and extramarital sabotage. Revolving around a plotline of marriage, affairs, divorce and high society, the film is remarkable for its intentional omission of any male character, prop or pet. This all estrogen comedy/melodrama featured many well-known starlets from the Golden Age of Cinema. This week's question: name the film and the three stars shown above...

Remember, winners can either post a comment here, on our Facebook Fan page or direct message me on Twitter at Daaveey. First correct answer wins; full contest details in the Notes section of our Facebook Fan page...

First Tweet Martini Lunch Question...

2010-04-02T12:11:00.001-04:00

Out of respect for the holiday weekend, the inaugural launch of our Tweet Martini Lunch promotion starts with a whimper and not a loud bark...

Our first week's question is this: the attached image is of a lesser known dog breed with ancient origins. Name what sort of pooch is pictured above AND name the year in which this pooch took home the biggest honors in the world's largest dog show, Crufts...

Does Facebook's Privacy Policy Presage a New Era of Virtual Civil Rights?

2010-03-31T10:38:00.004-04:00

(Sitegeist is written by David Hitt, Chief Creative Officer at Splat Productions, a Philadelphia based interactive design and multimedia studio...)

I had yet another either wacky or, maybe, prophetic revelation this morning. I was reading a post on "Augie Ray's Blog For Interactive Marketing Professionals" which details the flap that recent suggested privacy changes on Facebook are creating within the Facebook user community. Essentially, Facebook is floating the idea by its users that would authorize Facebook to share user profile information with other websites, but only when FB users are signed in and browsing the internet. So, in other words, if I happen to log into Facebook and, while I'm using it simultaneously log into another website, FB might share information it has on file for me with that other site, so they can offer me a "more customized" experience.

Reaction to Facebook's idea has been swift and pretty universally negative. Turns out that there are lots of folks out there that are resentful that, now that Facebook has created a desirable online environment for them and collected a lot of (valuable) demographic information, they might actually want to sell that information and make some cashola.

All of this has gotten me thinking about much larger political and cultural issues. This dilemma Facebook finds itself in is fed by the obvious yearning by many for some sort of "universal" public space on the internet. These desires, currently, are at odds with the legitimate commercial interests of that space's creator.

Facebook, it seems, is finally realizing one of the earliest promises of the early dot.com era. They've created a single forum on the Internet where virtually everyone and their grandmother hangs out. (I knew this universality was real when I get a friend invite from my nearly 80 year old Mom two weeks ago...) Their success, though, might prove to be their undoing.

The problem with individuals or companies creating a wildly successful, "game changing" paradigm for the way we live our lives is that sometimes folks start thinking that it's their right to indulge in that new paradigm, absent the commercial aspirations of its creators.

I guess what I'm driving at is: suppose we begin to take the idea of a universal "virtual world" as not a privilege but an actual right? So much of our lives now revolve around our worlds online. I spend my day checking email, Tweeting, writing a blog and checking out CNN.com. At night I play an online multiplayer game for a couple of hours, which is basically like spending my evening in a Virtual World. My experience is more the norm than the exception these days.

So, much in the way that we, as a society, decided that there needed to be public spaces, marketplaces, parks, etc, in the actual world, might we not decide that such places online are also universal rights that everyone should be afforded?

I dunno, maybe it's a wacky thought...

Get ready for the Tweet Martini Lunch!

2010-03-26T15:34:00.010-04:00

Hey all --

Next week we're rolling out our homage to the way Old School Advertising used to be done -- with closed doors, some puffy stogies and a couple of Martinis to lubricate the dealmaking...

Here's how it works:

Every Friday we'll be posting a trivia question or contest to our fan page on Facebook. (We'll also be tweeting from Daaveey...) Questions will be posted sometime between noon and 1 p.m. each week. Questions and contests will range in content. The winner of each week's contest will be the first responder to either post the answer on our fan wall, at Sitegeist, or send a direct message to my twitter account at Daaveey. Winners will receive a $25 gift certificate (which oughtta buy you about three martinis!) from either a Philadelphia restaurant or, if the winner is not local, we'll send you a certificate to the national chain of your choice.

Current or past employees or their relatives are not eligible for the contest and winners must sit the bench for six months before they can compete again.

So, roll up your sleeves, square away your paste-ups and join us for a Power Lunch!

A Little Unsolicited Advice to Facebook

2010-03-24T12:02:00.004-04:00

So I had an epiphany of sorts today... As I was walking to the gym, I was coming to grips with a challenge that's been troubling me in business for the last few months. Basically, our company, like many of our clients, is attempting to develop a comprehensive approach to integrating social media with our business blog and website maintenance. The strategy pretty much exists in my mind...

On the one hand we are about to roll out our new website, which we've built from a Wordpress platform which supports not only blogging but makes the site search-engine-ready. We created a business fan page on Facebook and I'm regularly updating it. Finally, I've been tweeting for months now and, yesterday, was at last able to get my Twitter app (Tweetdeck) to feed directly into our Facebook fan page.

This morning, on my way to the gym, I began banging myself over the head over my lack of blog-writing discipline, when a thought occured to me. Facebook should build a blogging platform
directly within the application. Here's why this would be a good idea:

Businesses, as well as individuals, are already using FB everyday to both market, position and interact with their clients. Blogs are, of course, both a personal and professional means of reaching out and engaging clients or friends.
Social media interactions, it seems to me, fall into three distinct content ranges currently. The first, most transient and sparest in range are the micro-blogging platforms such as Twitter or SMS. The second would be mostly anecdotal or conversational interaction -- longer than what SMS or Twitter allows but often spontaneous and unscripted in nature. This would be the sort of interaction which make up the bulk of communication on Facebook currently. The last piece in the Social Media puzzle is blogging, which represents longer-format communication which, often, is more premeditated and planned. Facebook already has a lock on the second "content level" and is the unchallenged place where this sort of communication takes place. With the easy integration of Twitter feeds into Facebook, it also makes integrating microblog content into fan or personal pages a breeze. If Facebook is interested in getting more businesses to advertise and interact on their platform, which it clearly is, why not go the final mile and build in a blogging platform?

This sure would make my life a lot easier, as I could use FB as a pretty complete portal to the outside world for my business. Customers could still visit www.splatworld.tv when they need detailed information about Splat Productions but, by and large, our FB presence alone would give a pretty complete overview of who we are and what we do. This seems like such an obvious observation on my part that, surely, someone out there must be
working on this...

Better Late Than Never...

2009-12-15T09:37:00.006-05:00

(Note: Sitegeist is a regular blog focused on issues related to design and marketing and is written by David Hitt, a principal at Splat Productions.)

The great thing about the blogosphere is that, despite the common perception that everything web-related is ephemeral, blog articles actually live for what seems like a relative eternity. Because of the catalog-oriented nature of blogs, a simple reference to an article someone wrote two years ago can instantly resuscitate an idea or discussion.

This happened to me this morning while I was reading a Twitter feed... I came across a blog post written by Jay Ehret from The Marketing Spot. He was talking about a recent facelift he gave his business and was talking about the development of his new logo. He then referenced this blog post he had earlier written, about the relative unimportance of logos for new brands. Having just written an article for the Philadelphia Ad Club about ugly brands, my curiosity was aroused.

Jay's earlier post begins:

"I hate to be the one to break the news, but the importance of logos in branding is overblown. Don't get me wrong, they have their use...somewhat. But when it comes to branding, logos have nothing to do with the establishment of your brand. If you're about to spend some money having a logo designed, you may want to wait."

He then goes on to illustrate a number of well known logos -- Coca Cola, Starbucks, Microsoft, Wal Mart & McDonalds -- and asserts that, essentially, their logos do little to maintain or acknowledge the brands they are paired with. Really, he notes, most logos have little meaning and are only important "after you establish your brand."

He has a point. Certainly the marketing landscape is clogged with big name brands featuring visual slop for identity. (I wrote about those in a previous post...)

But that doesn't mean visual identity isn't important or doesn't play a role in the way your business is perceived by your clients or consumers. In my previous post, I used Google as an example of a business that paid a price for the sloppiness of its visual identity. When I saw the Google homepage for the first time I remember thinking it looked, well, pretty amateurish. I get spareness but, frankly, the designers of that UI looked like they just didn't really care what it looked like. Which, as their customer is, for me, somewhat insulting. (I applaud the simplicity and functionality, though. Functionality and attractive design, though, are not mutually exclusive. ) The brand succeeded in spite of its amateurish mark and look. Imagine if its founders had spent only a few thousand bucks paying a competent design firm to create a memorable mark and finessed their UI a bit.

Which brings me to my last point...

Jay makes the reasonable observation that logos are only important "after you establish your brand." But, if I'm starting a small business, wouldn't my money be better spent if I allocate a small amount of it upfront to get a visual identity for my brand that I don't feel like I have to retroactively fix two years down the road?

In the end, getting it right the first time might be less costly than fixing something at a later time.

Kudos to Kristine Wirth for Some Basic Website SEO Tips

2009-11-24T10:17:00.004-05:00

(Note: Sitegeist is a regular blog focused on issues related to interactive design, marketing and computer graphics, written by David Hitt. David is principal and founder of Splat Productions...)

This is a very short post, which I also retweeted. Kristine Wirth posted a really concise blog post about "must do" Search Engine Optimization steps that website designers often overlook. The entire article is here, but, in her closing, she lists a few "don't ever do this" no-nos which relate to meta tags (or H1 tags). For those of you that don't know, meta tags are the descriptive phrases or keywords buried in the code of each page of your website. The viewer can't see these but the crawlers that ultimately see and help determine search engine rank can. Kristine's list of meta no-nos include:

Missing, empty or duplicate title tags. (Note the duplicate title tags especially). What Bing is saying is that you should not use the same title on more than one of your site’s pages (sage advice).
Missing, empty or duplicate meta description tags.
Missing, empty or duplicate H1 tags.

These are really basic issues which can be fixed quickly by someone with only limited coding or Dreamweaver knowledge. If you'd like us to do a quick assessment of your site's search engine readiness, send me an email...

Has Web 2.0 Killed Good Design?

2009-11-12T13:38:00.003-05:00

Recently, I’ve been giving a lot of thought to the ascendency of Web 2.0 driven companies and the conversation-starting technologies they’re based on. It seems like I can’t go to a professional event anymore without watching a speaker evangelize about social media or search engine optimization. (Okay, I know, SEO isn't really a Web 2.0 thing, but the social media is usually placed within the context of search engine optimization, so the two are virtually inseparable these days...)

“Here’s How to Integrate Facebook Into Your Business’ Marketing Plan...” might be the title of one talk.

or

“Strategies for Content Generation for Long Tail Search in SEO...” might be the title of another.

As someone who straddles the world of both marketing and design, I’ve watched the rise of Web 2.0 and -- unless my forty-something eyes are suffering from more than just midlife farsightedness -- I’ve noticed something. The internet -- and the brands it has spawned -- is becoming an uglier place.

Consider the extinction of the all-Flash website. Four years ago, at the height of the real estate boom, nearly every developer client of ours wanted us to design these luscious, all-Flash web sites for their projects. Flash, as many of you probably know, allows for the creation of truly immersive web experiences. You can have musical underscores, overscores and lots of pretty, moving pictures and type. But Flash has a big downside. Namely - for a lot of technical reasons I won’t bore you with - it's pretty stinky from the standpoint of search engine optimization. So, in the last couple of years, we in interactive design have witnessed the virtual extinction of websites authored exclusively in Flash. And, although it's true that diehard design devotees (like the folks at webcreme.com) are still out there, championing beautiful design, we've found that, these days, aesthetics are having to take a back seat to a whole range of other Web 2.0 generated concerns. (Try designing a site which - besides having to feature the usual navigation bar - also needs to feature link buttons to Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, Digg, Delicious, LinkedIn, StumbleUpon... you get the picture. Making something like that look pretty and uncluttered is a challenge.)

Then there's the accompanying rise of what I call the "visually brandless" companies of the internet universe. Let's start with the biggest Gorilla on the web, Google. Do you remember when the search engine phase first took hold and you logged onto Google for the first time? I do. And, boy, I remember being confused about what all the hype was about. (That barren screen, with only the centered logo and search window drawing your eye's attention...) I can appreciate the simple functionality of the interface and I think that's a good thing but -- if the only visual element you plan to feature in your user interface is your logo and the technology behind your product is next generation -- wouldn't you want that logo to be at least a little edgy or visually provocative? I mean seriously, from the standpoint of design, that logo is suspect. From a designer's point of view its use of off-the-shelf typography seems lazy. And the embossing and drop shadows are Photoshop cliches which young designers are cautioned to avoid.

Which brings me to my final observation. As I was researching this article, I discovered that Google's original logo which -- essentially -- is the visual ancestor of the current logo, was designed by none other than one of Google's founders, Sergey Brin. His technical and entrepreneurial brilliance aside, Brin's professional training is in mathematics and computer science. Frankly, his lack of formal design training is evident. Why he didn't "get" that the mark he was creating would have far ranging impacts on his business for years is a point of puzzlement.

All of this "geeks driving design decisions" makes me realize that, in the entire 30 year span of time dating back to the dawn of the personal computer, not much has changed. With the noteworthy exception of Apple, tech brands have often overlooked or even devalued design. For decades now, the Microsoft vs. Apple competitive feud seems to express the ambivalence technology companies have about design and brand. On the one side, Apple has embraced sleek, straightforward design and married that sleekness to intentionally spare interfaces. Design is integral to the brand. Microsoft (and other tech companies, like Google or Flickr, for example), have been more reluctant to embrace design as significant components of their identity, though. Apple's commitment to design has served them well, because it has created such a strong identity for the brand that -- even through down times -- people understood what the brand stood for and steadfast loyalists stood by it.

I wonder if brands who place less of an emphasis on design as a core value earn this loyalty? If Google falters in the next couple of years or starts losing market share to an upstart, will its fans rally around its corporate standard? Or are Google users simply "information mercenaries" who will change sides at the slightest suggestion of a technology shift?

Technology companies -- including all the current Web 2.0 companies -- are at the mercy of the winds of change. And the winds of change are as predictable as the Santa Anas in the world of high tech. Buffering their reputations with thoughtful, well designed brand identities would serve more than couple high tech companies well.

Preview of Upcoming Column

2009-09-09T10:18:00.002-04:00

(Sitegeist is a regularly updated blog written by the staff at Splat Productions...)

I thought I'd just give a teaser of an article I'm working on for the magazine of the Philadelphia Ad Club.

I'm calling the column "Has the Internet Killed Good Interactive Design?", and here's the outline:

Recent shifts in technology and the rise of visually "brandless" companies like Google and Flickr have left designers and ad professionals asking the question: "Is good branding and design an endangered species on the Internet?"

Consider these trends and brands:

Google's logo which -- with its simple emboss and drop shadows -- invokes all the visual cliches designers have been ridiculing since Photoshop's inception.
Flickr -- which may own the brand for photo-sharing on the Internet -- but, strangely, has almost no definable visual identity. (I know, its the absence of identity that gives it its unique identity. I'll look at that argument, too...)
The SEO driven phenomena which makes web copywriters afraid to use metaphors and, instead, has them writing the same stale keywords again. And again. And again.
The near complete disappearance of Flash driven "experiential" web site which, though often beautiful, have been discarded in favor of searchable content.

In this article, I'll look at the "absence of design" phenomena which seems to have swept over the interactive landscape in the last few months. Are these new brands and trends -- with their blandness and simplicity -- representative of the honesty brands must now possess in the Social Media dominated world of open conversations? Or are they just examples of bad design
run amok?

---------

If anybody has any thoughts on content I might want to cover or reactions to some of the observations outlined above, drop me a line...

dave

The Internet Must Really Be All Grown Up: Digital Parochialism, Social Media and Old School Advertising

2009-09-01T11:10:00.005-04:00

(Sitegeist is a regularly update blog written by David Hitt and the staff of Splat Productions.)

I got a post feed through the Philadelphia Interactive Marketing Association yesterday for a column written by online media expert & Philly Ex-Pat, Greg Satell. Greg was actually commenting on another post, written by Eric Qualmann on his Socialnomics blog.

In the Socialnomics piece, Qualmann glibly questions the decision of The Boeing Company to embed a recurring ad for its aircraft in each one of several recent podcasts of Meet The Press. Besides running the same ad in multiple podcasts (which he finds tiresome), Qualmann ponders:

Is a television or iTunes media buy really the best way to target the airplane buyer? As my wife shouts every time the commercial plays – 'Honey can we buy a Boeing Today?' There are only a handful of airplane buyers, why would you spend $100,000 plus on producing a commercial and then 10x that on the media buy in the hopes of reaching one of 50 buyers? This commercial screams of someone in marketing at Boeing wanting a fancy commercial, and why not, it’s fun and easy. After all, what’s easier than producing one commercial over the course of a year and then having your agency buy media spots? Unfortunately, this is called marketing to yourself my friend.

Hmmm... So Qualmann thinks Boeing was making this ad to reach out and grab the one potential customer that might be watching a "Meet the Press" podcast? I'm not so sure about that. His suggestion underscores some reservations I have about new age digeratis who promote the idea that social media and the internet "change all the rules of Old School Marketing."

Boeing, undoubtedly, didn't produce this ad nor buy spot time for it on national television in an effort to reach their potential single customer. (Although, I'm sure they would welcome this unintended occurrence and, frankly, if you look at how much revenue one sale would generate -- I mean, people usually buy airplanes in quantity -- it might still make sense financially.) Rather they fell back on an "Old School" principle of advertising which is still relevant, even in the Facebook and Twitter-driven world we live in. Namely, by running the ad, they were building or shoring up existing brand awareness. It was a pure "brand awareness" sort of ad of the sort that Madison Avenue has been pumping out for decades.

Here are some reasons why these ads still make sense:

Not everyone knows about Boeing. At first blush, this might seem preposterous. Most educated adults surely know the Boeing brand well. However, all of us start out in this world uneducated. Brand ads often serve as our first introductions to brands which later become part of our collective cultural DNA. True, "Meet The Press" might not be where the brand-ignorant hang out, but it still makes sense to advertise there within the context of the next two bullet points.
Boeing is a publicly traded company. Brand awareness is essential for publicly traded companies because, in a sense, every potential investor represents a new customer of sorts. Boeing may derive much of its capitol from its revenues but working capitol is also acquired by selling more stock. Putting the brand in front of well-monied general investors and making them feel warm and fuzzy about that brand is a smart, necessary component of an overall brand strategy.
Postitioning your brand in a positive light protects it when things go wrong. Think a little about Boeing's core business and you'll understand this last point. Boeing knows that, at any given moment, one of its big passenger jets might fall out of the sky, with inevitably disastrous consequences. It is a fundamental and unpleasant reality of the business they're in. Managing the PR cataclysm that results from such rare circumstances is easier if the public is inclined favorably towards your brand, at the moment calamity strikes. By keeping positive messages in front of the public's eye about all the great things Boeing does, they insulate themselves, somewhat, from the negative feelings that result in such circumstances. (I call this situation "prophylactic advertising.")

One last thought about Qualmann's post which again illustrates some of the limitations of Social Networking. In his closing incitement to "get on Social Media channels," Qualmann says, "The biggest advice I can give Boeing is to start having conversations with your buyers, engineers and passengers both online and offline, rather than hoping to reach one of the few buyers with a fancy :30 second commercial."

Now, I'm not in the airplane business but, I'm guessing that not a single purchasing deal to buy a new fleet of airplanes has ever been transacted over Facebook or Twitter. Here, once again, is a situation where "Old School" marketing practices are surely alive and well. Negotiations for such purchases most certainly still take place over many steak dinners and, perhaps, a week's worth of working vacation at an exclusive Aspen resort. If I'm selling a few hundred million dollars worth of product, surely I'm aware that my buyers want to be feted and cajoled. In person. And that's a reality that is unlikely to be changed by the next nifty Social Networking App.

If You're a Realtor or Developer Using Social Media, I Need Your Help...

2009-08-27T09:42:00.004-04:00

(Sitegeist is a regularly update blog written by David Hitt and the staff of Splat Productions.)

Hey readers --

I'm giving a ninety minute seminar for realtors, developers and other real estate professionals in Philadelphia in a few weeks. I'll be talking about trends in interactive marketing, namely the rise of social media and its impact on brands. I'm trying to find great case study examples of real estate professionals who have implemented any sort of Web 2.0 plan in their marketing and had success. So, then, if you're using Twitter to communicate with prospects or have integrated Facebook, blogs or video into your marketing channels, I'd like to hear about it.

If you think you qualify -- and would like to help me out -- leave me a comment below or drop me an email.

Of Mice and Tweets

2009-08-21T12:36:00.003-04:00

I'm conducting a completely non-scientific experiment in my professional life right now.

About a year ago, I attended a series of seminars given by marketing gurus on the use of Web 2.0 tools -- social networking sites, blogs, video, etc -- within a professional context. At that time, the phenomena was still relatively new. Twitter had not quite taken off and Facebook had yet to replace MySpace as the all-around social networking site of choice. In real estate (historically the largest client base we serve) sites like Zillow, ActiveRain and Inman News were beginning to host large communities of likeminded real estate, banking and marketing professionals.

It was only a few months earlier when I had started to write this blog, along with some help periodically, from some of the best people I've ever worked with.

In the intervening year, a lot has changed. For one thing, the recession changed our business completely. For a period of several months, we "hunkered down" internally and focused on our core competencies, while attempting to direct the business in directions which seemed to respond to industry trends. Our sites became more web savvy -- we began designing with search in mind, we included widget links to sites like Facebook and realized that our role had changed from a real estate centric design firm that did web site design, video and animation to that of an internet strategy and design firm with other specialized skill sets.

One effect the recession had on me is that I became rather irregular posting to this blog. Doing so, of course, represented a violation of a Cardinal rule of blogging. By not offering topical content, not only was I not going to be generating much cross traffic to our site, but I was also losing credibility. For me, the blog was usually a "vision" thing, ie, it offered the opportunity for me to share great new ideas or trends with likeminded people and clients. The problem for me, personally, was that I've been feeling decidedly less than visionary these last few months. Essentially, the industry we've been tied to historically (new construction) almost disappeared there for a couple of years. I let a touch of professional despondency affect the self-discipline blogging requires.

However, I think I'm back. And, the good news is, we've actually broadened our scope and expertise as web strategists so I can actually write with greater authority on these matters.

Now here's my ongoing experiment.

Twitter interests me. It interests me in so much as I don't think I understand what it's about. And there are all these guys out there telling me my clients can make money using it as a marketing tool. I got a Twitter account a year ago. I must confess: I used it for about a week and then let it languish. A couple of weeks ago, though, I reinvigorated my account. And, since I noticed that all these marketing-types keep putting their twitter addresses on their business cards, I've decided to start following every person whose Twitter address is on their card. And, my Twitter window is open all the time on my desktop

Why am I doing this now? Two reasons. The first is that I really want to see if I can understand a paradigm which, quite frankly, has eluded me thus far. I think I'm a reasonably smart guy and, frankly, my pride is wounded over not getting this whole Twitter thing. Plus, if I'm going to recommend it to our clients as a business tool, I actually think I should be a master -- or at least skilled -- in its use.

The second reason, frankly, is to see if all those guys who pitch themselves as Twitterphiles really walk the walk. I'm following them and waiting for the snippets of inspiration they promise. (One guy out there incidentally, who really DOES seem to walk the walk is this fellow we met a few weeks back, Glenn Gabe. Glenn is this amazingly smart SEO/SEM fellow we've been working with. He tweets interesting stuff all the time. And he writes a blog. You can read it here...)

That's all for now, folks. I'll keep you updated on all my adventures in Twitterland, LinkedIn, ActiveRain, Zillow, YouTube, MySpace and everyplace else my promiscuous little mouse happens to find itself in.

Oh, and did I mention? We're web designers, strategists and content creators, too. We'll design a new web site for you (or create 3D animation or design/plan an interactive ad campaign) if that's what you need. You can reach us here.

When we're not tweeting, we actually get a little work done.

Advertising Is Dead Again...

2009-07-31T15:58:00.004-04:00

(Editor's Note: Sitegeist is a semi-regularly posted to blog written by the staff at Splat Productions...)

I walked by someone's desk earlier this week and noticed that they had a browser window open and were chuckling. Stepping closer to take a look, I saw that they were looking at the home page of a well known Ad & PR firm, which was loudly asserting that, "Advertising, as we know it, no longer works."

"Hmmmm," I thought to myself, "...guess I better find me a new profession."

"Advertising, as we know it, no longer works." Is there truth in this bold proclamation?

A History Primer

Somewhere in the latter part of the Paleolithic era of human development --- say, after family bands had progressed from nomadic cavedwellers to housebound farmers and hunters -- some clever stone age entrepreneur invented a new tool. In those days, meat was scarce and the staple of the day was a delicious hot porridge made from "locally and organically grown" grains. (Funny, though, they didn't call them that yet...) A challenge of the time, however, was separating the inner, fleshy part of the grain from its outer hull. Those chewy hulls would somehow or another make their way into the porridge and play hell with Stone Age dental bridges and what not. At about this time, though, along comes a gal with an idea. We'll call her Oumquohoka. Using the technology of the time, she invented a stone implement that -- when applied with the appropriate technique and force -- neatly separated the grain from its hull. It was a pure stroke of genius and she knew other cooks in both her village and neighboring villages would wanna get their hands on this revolutionary device. "And," she thought to herself, "maybe I can trade these tools to cooks in other villages, for some of the ingredients which seem sparse in our village..."

It was a great idea but, of course, no one else in any of the other neighboring villages had ever heard of our inventor's new device. And, even if they had, it was so revolutionary that it was unlikely they would have believed in its usefulness right off the bat.

Luckily, Oumquohoka had an ally in a neighbor hunter friend who had an idea. Because his line of work took him far afield from their home village, he offered to take samples of Oumquohoka's tool to other villages and introduce it to other cooks and millers. As he travelled, the other villagers began seeing the virtues of this miraculous tool. They began telling their friends about its usefulness. And then those friends told more friends. And so on and so forth. Thus, in this preliterate, prebroadcast media, preinternet era, the first -- and still the most successful form of advertising -- was born. Word of Mouth advertising. Praise and recommendation from trusted personal sources.

When someone makes the statement "Advertising, as we know it, no longer works," I cringe. One reason I cringe is because advertising and PR literature is filled with "paradigm changing" hyperbole which -- for as long as I've been reading it -- has been telling me (every six months or so) that everything about anything has completely changed. As professionals, we demean our credibility by continually making such overreaching statements. (Remember Chicken Little?) And, as far as I can tell, the fundamentals governing consumer decision making really haven't changed and won't change until we evolve into a species with a different set of needs and concerns. We still value good, cheap food. We still crave sex. We still need to put a roof over our family's heads. And we still crave the companionship of our friends.

What has changed, of course, and what, I think, people mean when they make sweeping statements such as the one above, are the different opportunities our digital era empowers us with to reach our clients, friends and family. Twitter, Facebook, blogging and all the other "Web 2.0" technologies offer unique chances to connect with others. As advertising professionals, it is our responsibility to understand how these opportunities can enable our clients to reach out to their customers and future customers. Having said that though, traditional "paradigms" are still alive and healthy, thank you. It's still easier to sell products which have a unique "revolutionary" quality about them. (Just ask Oumquohoka.) And the fastest way to ensure a huge spike in sales is to get people on the outside -- your customers -- to start recommending your product to their friends, who will recommend it to their friends. And so on, and so forth.

And that, my friends, is what advertising is, and always has been, all about.

Splat Productions Announces SEO PreFlight...

2009-07-23T13:55:00.004-04:00

I talked last week about some of the dilemmas facing agencies when smaller clients come in the door and -- with limited budgets -- expect us to both design a site for them and make that same site easily found through organic search such as Google or Yahoo. Despite the additional costs associated with priming a site for search, though, we have increasingly come to the conclusion that to not design with SEO in mind is shortsighted.

In a typical scenario, SEO is often applied to a site post-creation by a third party SEO vendor who gets a hold of a marketing manager or webmaster and convinces them of the value that SEO offers. However, retroactively making a site SEO friendly is like adding an after market air conditioner to a new car. The resulting addon usually costs more money and doesn't work as well as one installed in the factory. Designing for SEO involves more than applying invisible code to the back end of a web site. It impacts all the significant messaging elements -- copy, video, images and links. Designing with SEO in mind from the outset then, offers the opportunity to marry message with searchability right up front.

For this reason, we've developed suite of services which we're offering to our new and existing web clients. Called SEO Preflight ® these services are all designed to ensure that your site will attract traffic initially and -- with ongoing maintenance by one of our partner SEO professionals -- keep pulling visitors to your site.

SEO Preflight services will vary somewhat, according to the needs of every customer, but minimally include the following services:

Research and develop likely search strings using
client input and keyword research/discovery tools
Write Keyword embedded copy for all meta tags
Integrate keywords into all copy for visible portions of web site
Pay careful attention to tagging all images with relevant text tags
Make sure all sites have Privacy Statements and Company Information
pages.
Create and submit a site map to all relevant search engines
Ensure that site creation is consistent with Google Webmaster Guidelines
Install analytics monitoring tools to site

Choosing SEO Preflight ® for your new site will give our clients the comfort of knowing that, not only will their new or redesigned site be attention getting... it will also get attention on the web.

Some Thoughts About SEO

2009-07-17T13:01:00.003-04:00

As the principal of a small agency which specializes in interactive, we've designed and built dozens of web sites for a variety of clients. These days, clients are obviously interested in getting as much out of the money they're spending on interactive advertising as possible and SEO is a particular concern. With that end in mind, over the next few entries, I'm going to be touching on critical issues agencies and clients need to think about, as they sit down together to discuss web site design and interactive search strategies....

First Let's Talk About SEO

We have designed countless web sites. At the beginning of our process with clients, it is customary for us to have a discussion about how important searchability is. Many clients don't understand that web sites are not necessarily designed with organic search in mind and that there are no "best practices" for web site creation which all designers adhere to. The reason for this is that preparing a site for SEO costs considerable extra time and money. These days, clients are especially cost conscious and we are constantly finding ourselves cutting one or several thousand dollars out of web budgets which formerly would have been more robust. Trying to pad these already skinny budgets with (sometimes) several thousand dollars worth of SEO services, then, is not feasible. Our practice now is to try and have a discussion upfront with our clients about how important, ultimately, organic searchability is and -- if it's a particular concern of theirs -- we work with them to implent and additional package of SEO "Pre Flight" services. In my next entry, I'll discuss, precisely, what these services comprise...

Getting the Most From Your Advertising in a Challenging Marketplace

2008-09-28T13:38:00.002-04:00

(Note from Dave: This is the outline of a presentation I was invited to give to a number of realtors, at a seminar sponsored by Friendly Mortgage, here in Philadelphia...)

-----------------

Advertising real estate in a down market reveals a set of contradictions which make the job of a marketing professional doubly challenging. At the same time that there are fewer interested buyers for your properties, there are often restrictions placed on marketing budgets, owing to shortages in cash flow. In a recession, marketers are asked to work harder, often with lower budgets.

With those concerns in mind, we usually advise our clients to step back and do some “big picture” auditing of their product and brand. Get them back to basics.

We begin by asking the question, “How much of our slow sales are due to the economy, weaknesses in our product or brand, or shortcomings in our advertising strategy?” A thorough audit addressing all aspects of your product and marketing strategy often yields results which can bring a clearer marketing message, with fewer financial outlays. We’ll talk about the economy later; for now let’s address the latter two topics...

Analyze Your Brand’s Strength

Back in the heady years of 2004 and 2005, real estate inventory was flying off the shelf. On top of the availability of easy money and a speculative spirit, Center City real estate was impacted by a genuine demographic shift which had more and more suburbanites taking a renewed interest in downtown living. Product at this time sold easily, owing almost exclusively to market conditions.

In a more challenging real estate sales environment, only superior product draws the smaller pool of buyers to your doorstep. In this climate, marketers and developers must ask themselves, “Is my real estate distinctly branded and does this brand have a unique voice in the marketplace?” Specific points to assess include:

What are the real advantages my property has in the marketplace? Is it location? Price? Features and amenities?
Is my brand making empty promises? Beware of the hollow, overly adjectivized copy that most real estate advertising uses. You should be especially mindful of tossing around words like “luxury” and “exclusive” unless you’re sure your product walks the walk. We’re not always sure what luxury is in the new construction real estate market, but sheet goods, Formica and wall-to-wall carpeting don’t qualify.
Are these distinct selling virtues expressed in thematically consistent ways in all your advertising, i.e., does your brand speak in a consistent voice?
Have you acknowledged the value of “lifestyle marketing” in your advertising, i.e., does your advertising tell a consistent narrative of the benefits of your product, rather than just listing a matrix of features? Concentrate on creating the image of a lifestyle which is greater than the sum of a list of features.

If, after analyzing your product, you determine there is a lack of distinction in the product itself, this needs to be corrected in one of two ways. Either the product itself needs changing or pricing needs to give...

Analyze the State of Your Marketing and Advertising

One good thing a recession does is that it forces you to reconsider spending decisions you’ve probably taken for granted for years. As part of the “wholistic audit” I earlier alluded to, we ask our clients to make a list of all their marketing expenditures. By figuring out how you’re spending your current marketing, you might think of cheaper, nearly-as-effective alternatives...

Below are some customary “big ticket” items developers spend money on, with some suggestions for increasing ROI and decreasing overall cost...

Print Advertising. Probably still the most expensive advertising developers do (unless they’re doing broadcast or radio,) print advertising is essential but pricey. Only you can know how well your print is performing but there are things you can do to either enhance the value of your print ads or validate their worth. Constantly scrutinizing for the basics is one way to do a quick “audit” on your print ads. Is there a call to action? Is it clear and obvious where the project is located? Is a central “value proposition” communicated in the ad? Finally, is there a lifestyle narrative or message? Finally, are you developing messaging which speaks to the unique circumstances (increased choices and lower pricing) which a recession presents?
Project Web Site. The central task of your project’s web site is to get the phone to ring and for prospects to make appointments to see your offering. As a sales tool, it has the unique ability to satisfy both the left and right brain goals of your advertising, namely, communicating specifics and details related to your project, as well as communicating -- through layout, photos and renderings, sound and animation -- the mood and lifestyle your project evokes. From a critical standpoint, the web site can be evaluated from the criteria offered earlier in my presentation. Over the long haul, your project’s web site is actually one of the least expensive of your marketing costs (exclusive of any search engine marketing you might undertake...)
Online Marketing and Communications. One thing we find our clients are increasingly interested in is leveraging the power of their web site and internet communications. Email blasts are inexpensive and can offer alternatives to a heavy reliance on print advertising. Develop a mailing list of every broker in the area in which your project is located. Hire us to design templates for you, so you can speak to this audience on a regular basis. Watch the value of your broker communications go up and your expenses go down.... Another tool our clients use increasingly is by using their web site or a special micro-site we design to augment your print advertising. Running a promotion in the paper this week? Direct your customers to a sub-page within your web site. That way, all traffic from the ad will be logged, giving you immediate feedback on your advertising return-on-investment...

Do Some Thinking About Economic Issues

We’re not financial guys, but we do have some thoughts about pricing and incentives strategies you might develop, in direct response to the overall sluggishness of the economy. Some of these are:

Pricing. If your brand is all about luxury, be very careful about responding to market conditions by dropping pricing, and, if you do it, do it quietly. Part of the mystique of luxury brands is that they don’t go on sale. Besides compromising brand integrity, sales on luxury properties make buyers suspicious and cynical. “If the developer can cut his pricing 35% on this 2.5 million dollar condo, what does that say about the profits he was making prior to his sale?”

Try upgrades over price reductions. Nobody likes to know their neighbor just paid twenty percent less than they did for the same condo. Rather than taking money right off the top of a new construction sale, try sweetening the deal with more amenities or incentivized financing.

The Franklin Institute, De-Institutionalized

2008-07-30T16:40:00.001-04:00

Love it or hate it, The Franklin Institute has a new public face, even a new (shorter name): The Franklin. Founded in 1824, the Philadelphia science museum has been a popular tourist attraction, despite its on-again-off-again reputation as a dusty and dated destination for reluctant field-trippers. Hoping to attract larger audiences and improve its public appearance, the museum has booked blockbuster traveling exhibits, including the recent King Tut, Titanic and Body Worlds exhibits, which in my opinion are more spectacle than science.

The re-branding of the museum underlies the shift in The Franklin's public programming. What was once a dated and dusty science museum is now a major touring venue of glitzy 'edutainment.' Removing "Institute" from its name, The Franklin now positions itself as a contemporary, hip, and accessible attraction. Karen Heller of the Philadelphia Inquirer considers this shift to be a "dumbing down of science," which I think is a harsh judgment. Having worked for years at a competing museum in the Philadelphia area, I think their intentions are admirable; it's difficult to convince hundreds of people to take a risk, especially when everyone in the room is a PhD expert of something.

The execution of the rebranding, however, is a bit disappointing. Swayed by viral marketing trends (read: "cheap," in the non-profit world), The Franklin chose to spread the word about its facelift via Flash mobs bearing signs that say "curious?" accompanied by a cryptic URL. The URL, is pure fluff: random video clips with no explanation, all positioned beneath The Franklin's logo. I'm all for non-traditional advertising and innovating methods of communication, but only if there's some actual substance being conveyed. Go to http://www.curioustf.org/ and judge for yourself.

The lesson to be learned here is that content is key. You've got their attention now, but what do you do with it?

Sure, start a blog, put your company on Facebook, post low-budget videos on YouTube, but do it with a clear intention, not simpy for novelty's sake. Say something (something relevant), give your audience a reason to come back, initiate an dialogue with your audience. Don't do it just because everyone else, and don't do it because your competitor ISN'T. Do it because you have something to say that is said best via non-traditional methods.

Pumping Up Housing Hysteria in the Press

2008-07-25T11:14:00.003-04:00

I’m sometimes not sympathetic when homebuilders complain to the press that they unfair press coverage, but consider this:

Yesterday, MSNBC ran a story that new home sales were down 2.6 percent in the month of June. Today’s front page headline story about housing is entitled “Still slumping: New-home Sales Drop Again.” If you actually read that article, you’ll discover that the figures quoted yesterday were actually revised significantly downward, from 2.6% to .6%! Yet, still the article depicts an environment of gloom and doom. Finally, if you read the last paragraph of the article, they break the figures down by geography and, lo and behold, the Northeast actually experienced a 5.3% new sales increase. (Good news for those of us in Philadelphia...)

It just goes to show that trusting national news outlets to gain a snapshot of regional real estate markets is risky business…

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25848138/

More Thoughts on Online Marketing

2008-07-23T12:47:00.006-04:00

(I've been reading alot about online marketing strategies lately. Turns out it is really complicated stuff! I can say that with authority because, after all, I'm an industry professional...)

Seriously, though. We've been advising our clients for quite some time that getting noticed on the web takes a trifle more than hiring us to design a site for you and calling it a day. Bearing this in mind here is (yet another) two item list of important dos and don'ts fer gettin' yourself noticed on the web.

1. Don't ask us to design a web site for you all in Flash and then, months later, ask us to optimize it for SEO.

This seems like a simple one for folks in the industry, but the scenario has recurred so many times in our client histories that we can't seem to mention it often enough. Many times we're asked to design a site for a project where a real-world example that the client likes is referenced. Often that site is a beautifully executed Flash web site with soundtracks, animation, video, etc. At this point, we usually sit down with our clients and explain that the site they're in love with was entirely authored in Flash. Flash is a web authoring application which can create visually lavish work but which, historically, has not allowed the site to index well on Google's search engines. (All this, however, is changing, as Google recently announced that it has started to index Flash content. See this post...)

Now -- don't get me wrong -- we LOVE Flash in our office. Most of our sexiest sites were designed in Flash. However, they do have their drawbacks from an SEO perspective. Despite our best efforts at apprising our clients of these drawbacks, though, it has happened three times in the last year that we've been asked, after the fact, to offer SEO advice on web sites we've designed entirely in Flash. If SEO is a principal concern of a client's, then that client is probably best to stay away from an all-Flash web site.

So, again, before you hire us to design your site, think about what your SEO goals might be for the site, not just now but several months from now....

2. Do understand that designing a site is only the first step in getting noticed online. And SEO is great, too, but it's only part of an online web presence strategy...

I've talked about this in previous posts, but again, these are such critical issues for our clients these days, that I'll harp on a few issues again. First, let me begin by saying that we believe in SEO at Splat Productions. And, although we leave hardcore SEO services to the experts we partner with, we do offer an "SEO Pre-Flight" package for all our web clients, which ensures that your site has been prepared, submitted and cataloged according to Google's protocol for webmasters. (Ask us about this and we'll tell you more...)

Having said all this, though, we think SEO is only part of the solution to getting your site noticed on the web. As mentioned in previous posts, site owners really need to be thinking of a comprehensive marketing strategy, in order to increase the chances of more (and better) prospects getting to their site. Remember, the ultimate goal is to push people to your site from as many places as possible. So, then, besides hiring an SEO guy, web clients should also consider the following:

Increase traffic through reciprocal linking. Suppose you have a document transcription service for lawyers. And suppose you use a courier service to pick those documents up from your clients. Get that professional associate to link to your site from theirs and you do the same for them. Got a business blog? The blogosphere is built on the concept of reciprocal linking. Just look along the lefthand side of this or many other blogs.
Develop an opt-in email list and blast to it. Regularly. Direct marketing on the web isn't so different from print. Developing an electronic mailing list and reaching out to your customers and prospects with well-written news and promotions is a surefire way to increase hits to your site.
Make a video and post it on YouTube. Get a MySpace page. Social networking sites like MySpace offer cheap ways to publicize your business without spending much cashola. As always, though, content is king. People won't talk about your business if you don't have something interesting to say...
Do some cheap PR. Or hire a pro to do PR for you... Did you know that there are PR services which businesses can employ to distribute web-based press releases really inexpensively? We've written a couple in-house and, whenever we do it, we see our site traffic go up. Pricing for online press release distribution is quite reasonable. We've used PrimeZone in the past...

So, there you have it: a short list of dos and don'ts for internet publicity hounds. I'm sure we'll be talking about these issues some more in future posts...

Our monthly sweepstakes is paying big bucks...

2008-07-17T12:59:00.003-04:00

I'm not sure if all our Sitegeist readers have joined our mailing list but, in case you haven't, I urge you to check out www.splatworld.tv and sign up. Every month, we draw a new list member's name at random and give away a $75 gift certificate to Amazon. If you're not on our list already, now is the time to join us. Frankly, the odds have been pretty decent you'll win, as the promotion just began running a couple of months back and we haven't promoted it enough. June's winner, by the way, was Michelle Galindez, of the engineering firm Flack + Kurtz in New York. Congratulations, Michelle.

Another Architectural Illustration...

2008-07-16T16:22:00.004-04:00

We're very proud of the architectural rendering we do for our clients at Splat Productions. A couple of months back, we added a very talented artist to our staff. Mike Johnson is completely self-taught as a visualization artist. When he first applied to work with us, his work was so stunning and his professional preparation so untraditional that we wondered whether he had actually produced some of the great work he showed us. Within days of interning for us, though, we came to realize that he's the real deal. Mike produced both the image above and the previously blogged skyscraper image.

You can see a larger sized version of this image here...

If you build it, they probably won’t come… (Unless you tell them about it...)

2008-07-14T13:23:00.001-04:00

An interesting client meeting of a few weeks back got me thinking about the differences between web site design services, interactive strategy and the confusion both clients and firms have about where one stops and one begins.

This particular client is a web-based business start up. Their business model involves gathering timely information from around the world about issues relating to consumer products. This information is then distributed in articles and RSS feeds and is accompanied by a significant amount of original editorial content. The web site has a serious, but conversational “magazine” style format.

Several months into their venture, the client is faced with readership levels which were not as high as originally hoped for. As a result, they’re having difficulty attracting paid sponsors and advertisers. We sat down with the client to review the site and we both agreed that a few content and functionality tweaks should be made to the site. However, both parties also agreed that the site did have valuable content and its overall functionality made sense. In other words, the web site "works."

Why, then, was the site not attracting more visitors?

These days, the interactive marketing world is abuzz with “Web 2.0” tools. The idea behind Web 2.0 is that, if you build interactive features such as blogs or social networking components into your web site, the web site is more likely to grow organically. Blog entries will spawn page references on search engines. Word of mouth marketing will result from the social networking components. Your web site will be a fabulous success, without having to spend a dime on traditional advertising.

There are, however, factors at work here which don’t ensure the instant success. There are also fundamental shortcomings to this approach which can only be overcome by using some very un-Web 2.0 strategies.

Some of the shortcomings relate directly to content. Businesses these days are being talked into blogs by every marketing consultant on the block. However, Blogs take work. They really only succeed when the content is fresh and updated continually. It’s one thing to advise your clients to start a blog. But the rubber hits the road when that same client must muster the resources to maintain the dialogue which blogs necessarily begin.

The larger issues at work relate back to the design vs. strategy discussion I mentioned in the beginning of the post.

It used to be that, when a product was introduced to the consumer public, a raft of activities accompanied the roll out. PR consultants were retained to get press placement and generate press releases. Ad agencies were hired to create campaigns designed to introduce the product and its brand. In short, there was a coordinated effort intended to generate awareness of the new product and get people to buy.

The rise of the internet also gave rise to the myth that traditional strategies have no place in this web-driven world. Somehow or another, we’ve been duped into believing that a well-designed web site will draw its own audience. The world has changed. Build a good web site and the customers will come.

But, really, the internet hasn’t changed the fundamentals of advertising and PR much at all. Effective advertising and PR had always been about getting your message out to as many folks as possible and trying to get them to listen to it. When the web site (in our client’s case) is the product, that product still needs a launch. Old School methods like strategic PR, ad campaigns and direct (electronic, maybe) mail, still give a new product the necessary boosts it needs to generate an initial critical mass of users. Once this critical mass is reached, then all the other bells and whistles you’ve built into the web site – the blogs, the RSS feeds, the editorial content, etc – can help sustain the site and make it vibrant.

Sure, the methods we advertisers have to get the word out about our clients’ products do change. But the idea that anything about the internet has changed the essential need to publicize a new product or to do many of the same tasks advertisers and PR firms have been doing for decades is, well, silly…

Unconventional selling strategies for unconventional times...

2008-06-24T15:31:00.003-04:00

I recently lead a round table discussion on viral marketing strategies and that brought to mind two recent, seemingly unorthodox real estate marketing tactics – ‘Buy One (House) Get One Free’ and ‘Up For Auction’… one more viral than the other, both likely promoted through traditional PR channels.

In San Diego, Michael Crews Development is offering to give away a row home valued at $400,000, if the buyer purchases one of their luxury estate homes, in nearby Escondido. "We thought, 'Why… (do these sorts of promotions)… just have to be on Pop Tarts and restaurants? Why not buy one home, get one free,'" Dawn Berry of Michael Crews Development told 10 News in San Diego.

Hmm…I immediately questioned the quality of the row home construction and the location. Why would a developer opt to market their luxury homes the same way they would market Pop Tarts? After scouring the web a bit, though, I was intrigued by the viral status the promotion had acquired.

A quick glance at some of the major new outlets – Reuters, Yahoo News, The Street, US News, MSNBC, and The Wall Street Journal Online – revealed that nearly every major news outlet had picked up the story of the developer’s wacky marketing ploy. Additionally, independent stories started to show up in my Google searches, as well as links to YouTube videos. Finally, bloggers – including this one – are commenting on the strategy and seeing it is a ‘sign of the times’ (or zeitgeist, if you will…)

To date, I believe only ONE individual has made an offer on a Royal View estate home, but the exposure has been impressive. I wouldn’t be surprised if Michael Crews Development seeks to extend the offer beyond the original May 31st deadline. So, the ‘Buy One (House) Get One’ approach is not yet a case study in successful marketing strategy, but it certainly got a lot of publicity and achieved viral status. And, when the Southern California real estate market picks up again, the strategy may just achieve its original goal of closing more sales.

Locally, Westrum Development, in an attempt to gain traction for their stalled ‘Hilltop at Falls Ridge’ development in East Falls, Philadelphia, opted to auction their remaining 11 Phase I units. Many saw the ploy as a risky strategy or a sad commentary on market conditions. However, all 11 units sold and – at least for now -- their lender has been silenced. And, although the auction, which is more common than ‘Buy One (House) Get One’ didn’t reach online viral status, there were a number of local threads and articles pertaining to the event. Good old-fashioned word-of-mouth also helped, contributing to the sizeable turnout at the auction. On to Phase II!

A little Eye Candy...

2008-06-18T12:04:00.004-04:00

Het Strijkijzer, the largest residential tower in Den Haag, Netherlands, stands 132m tall and has 41 floors. The building was awarded the 2007 Gold Emporis Skyscraper Award, with Emporis citing "its elegant reinterpretation of classic high-rise architecture, its contextual approach to a limited site, and its efficient program for accommodating new entrants to the housing market."[1]

We thought the building was beautiful, elegant and would lend itself to rendering. We've added it to our portfolio, which we're recently filling up with more urban imagery, as we expand our market reach into New York and Washington. And, speaking of the Big Apple, it was interesting for us to learn that a partial inspiration for the building was the Flatiron building in Manhattan.

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References

1. ^ Emporis Award 2007. emporis.com. Emporis (February 2008). Retrieved on 2008-06-03.

Branding Alert: Your marketing does the walking, but does your sales team do the talking?

2008-05-01T10:12:00.001-04:00

(Editor's note. Once again, we thank Rob Armstrong, from Matador Creative, for contributing this week's article...)

We all know how crucial establishing a consistent brand image is. And during the branding process, a great deal of research, strategic and creative resources are devoted to produce that identity. Then that all-powerful brand image is made public through a spectrum of communication channels—over the Web, through the mail, e-mail, and in magazines and newspapers. Sometimes, when it fits the budget and the target audience, it’s relayed via radio and television.

Despite how extensively these marketing vehicles can saturate your target buyers’ minds with meaningful, convincing messages, all of it can be undermined, undone and defeated by a small yet crucial faction beyond the influence of your marketing communications team. That renegade element, my friends, is your sales force. If prospects don’t get the same vibe from the salespeople that they do from the marketing, their belief in your brand promise may be irreparably shaken.

Take, for example, a destination property in Florida whose brand identity I helped to build as a writer and creative strategist. Its brand image evoked a British West Indies style ambiance. The main clubhouse featured the décor and architecture of a late 19th century English manor surrounded by swaying palms and pineapple trees. At its grand opening, calypso music played, cool tropical drinks flowed and an island-style barbecue had hungry prospects lined up at the door. About 1,200 qualified buyers eager to tour furnished model homes were snatching up brochures, maps and inventory listings over a single weekend. Yet the two-day event only produced a handful of reservations and even fewer sales. The culprit couldn’t be the marketing—it did its job remarkably well. It got more than a thousand qualified buyers to the property on one sunny Florida weekend. No… the blame for this debacle had to be elsewhere.

When I popped my head into the sales center, it didn’t feel very… cool, relaxed, British West Indies to me. “You want golf? We got golf.” boomed above the din of buyers. No dulcet, soothing voices discussing Hurdzan-Fry, the world-renowned designers of the golf course or any articulate mention of the developers’ efforts to recreate the ambiance of a turn-of-the-century island plantation. Of course not. All I heard was the coarse, throaty, staccato rattling of sales people who sounded more like they should be working the floor of the stock exchange. “Yeah we got golf. That’s in this neighborhood. We have another neighborhood with no golf.” My first instinct was to slap the salesperson and demand to know if she had even read the brochure I took great care to write. I didn’t.

I don’t know anyone who’d respond positively to the way the brand messages were communicated by the sales team. Had no one explained the brand strategy to them? Did they even know what they should emphasize about the property? Were they listening carefully to buyers, so that they could contribute valuable feedback to us, the marketing team, so that post-event ads could address any points of hesitation floating around out there?

Sadly, no. Lost opportunity big time. I don’t know how many sales are lost on a daily basis because the sales team is never indoctrinated in the brand. They should be selling with cult-like adherence to brand messages. If that takes brainwashing and reprogramming—so be it. The most bewildering part of the scenario I described was that everyone on the sales team was an employee of the development company—not a third-party realty agency. Yet they still were never held accountable for their lack of eloquence and brand awareness at a time when every sale was precious.

There is a definite dividing line between marketing and sales. Marketing drives leads. Sales closes sales. When voluminous leads don’t produce sales, poke your head in the sales center. You may find the reason as grating to your eardrums as I did.

Craig's Virtual List is an Actual Goldmine...

2008-04-11T11:58:00.002-04:00

Ahhhhhh.... Craigslist. That crunchy granola commune-on-the-web. Source of slightly-used steal-of-a-deal large screen TVs, purebred puppies and new employees. One part yard sale, one part classified job site and one part hook-up site. I used to think of CL as embodying an updated zeitgeist from the sixties. Everything should be free and everyone should share. Then I stumbled across this headline from Inman News. "Craigslist Revenue May Reach $81 Million This Year."

Wow. Who knew? Turns out that those teeny-weeny $25 and $10 charges CL hits up its employee seekers and property sellers -- in just a few urban markets -- really add up. Imagine if they charged everyone everywhere ten bucks to post a job ad? They'd be rich, I tell ya, rich. Oh, I mean richer.

The article is here.

Reality Check 101: Mortgage Counseling in a Down Market

2008-04-11T11:02:00.002-04:00

Now that the subprime mortgage crisis has left all of us in the industry with quite the morning after hangover, fellow blogger Helen A. at Bankaholic sent us this link intended for those finding themselves looking for property in this buyers' market. Helen reminds us that subprime lending was a historic exception in the history of residential lending and offers sound advice for buyers. Namely, she writes that buyers should have their finances in order and not buy more of a house than they can afford. By doing so, buyers can take advantage of the large inventory of price-depressed housing on the market now and benefit from what are still historically low interest rates. The entire article is here...

Dorothy, We're Not in Lower Manhattan Anymore

2008-04-03T09:32:00.003-04:00

PhillySkyline.com ran a well-written story the other day about Philadelphia's proposed new addition to its skyline, the American Commerce Center. With a floor to top-of-spire height of 1500', the building would be significantly higher than its Center City brethren and bring a sense of renewed urban cache to our fair city. I'm not going to write at length, because the PhillySkyline article is thorough. I will however, note, visually, the project's uncanny resemblance to another noteworthy project originally slated to be built about 100 miles north of here...

The PhillySkyline article is here.

Commercials...on Google???

2008-03-27T14:52:00.005-04:00

A while back, I read that Google would soon be offering advertisers an additional option: including a video (read: commercial) with their paid listing. Google's video ad program is now in effect, although from what I can tell on a very small scale. When I first heard about this advertising opportunity, I immediately thought, " commercials...on GOOGLE?" But let's face it, Google has "gone public" and now has to answer to its shareholders by offering additional services that result in income.

Some analysts claim that Google's income from paid advertisements has plateaued and has not reached the numbers that investors originally anticipated. In my opinion, the addition of video will help Google more than it will help the advertisers, if only for the sheer novelty of it. Technogeeks everywhere are now flocking to Google, searching for "smart phone" and watching the video, more to see how the program works, rather than to learn about what's new in Blackberryland.

Kudos, however, to Google for controlling the visual intrusiveness of the ads. To view a video ad, one must click on a plus-sign button that reads "watch video" or "view demonstration."

On the flipside, many of our clients who may already be paying for AdWords already have sales videos that may easily be manipulated for use in this advertising opportunity. If not, it's another reason to give Splat a call and get yourself a sexy marketing reel.

In semi-related news...it was once the trendy thing to create a MySpace page for your product/property. Then, as that became passé, businesses and developers began creating YouTube accounts, posting their videos and broadcast news clips. If you are considering this, but are unsure of the perks, YouTube, purchased by Google in 2006, is offering analytics similar to Google's html analytics. YouTube Insight, an add-on feature, allows account holders to view general statistics that you may not be able to gather if you post your videos elsewhere, depending on your host: how often videos are viewed in various geographic locations; which videos appear to be more popular; how visitors came to find your video.

A Philadelphia Realtor's Brave New Brokerage Experiment

2008-03-21T16:09:00.003-04:00

Earlier this week, I sent an announcement about this blog to about 1000 area Philadelphia Real Estate Professionals. Initially, when we began writing Sitegeist, my hope was that the local real estate community might -- well -- actually take an interest in us and began sending us news about local projects. For the most part, that hasn't happened. Yesterday, though, in response to my mass mailing, a local broker did get back to me with an interesting initiative he's started.

This blog is, among other things, supposed to address itself with the intersection between brands and buildings. Namely, we started writing it to focus on the marketing of real estate and how marketers try (or don't try) to set their projects apart from their competition. In his message to me yesterday, Philly-based broker/developer/designer, Steven Nebel, told me about his brokerage's new branded subdivision, the "Boutique Collection." You can check out their emerging site here.

I really like the fact that someone out there is thinking about brands in the residential market in Philadelphia. I think many of the points Steven raises, in the quote that follows, are right on the mark:

"The broader mission of the boutique collection is differentiation... My biggest issue with the brokerage community has always been its indifference. Most of the most successful people in the city rely upon social connections over understanding of the product and the market. In a changing cityscape, I think the time is right for a more informed brokerage.

Of the three initial members of the Boutique Collection team... all have substantial design and development backgrounds. In pooling our efforts on the listing side, we aim to be a valuable resource for builders and developers in helping them to create turn-key projects of the highest quality. We work with developers from identifying ground, to suggesting civil engineering moves, to helping with supply chain management, and providing interior design services. For buyers, we aim to provide a critical approach to buying premier properties. I very much believe that the real estate in Philadelphia will begin stratifying rapidly and that most brokers are completely unaware of shifting values...

Another exciting aspect of our group at the moment is our 'boot camp' program. We are currently working to identify great, but misunderstood projects currently languishing on the market and bringing them into the light, so to speak. Our first project is The Essex in Old City. In terms of the building itself, it's one of the best projects out there. Yet the presentation, marketing, and final touches were so mishandled that it languished on the market. We are working to accentuate the building's strengths, reposition its feel, and reintroduce it to the buying public in the coming month..."

I appreciate the fact the Steven is creating an entirely new brand devoted to the creation and marketing of "luxury" real estate. Of course, the devil is always in the details with these sorts of things and -- as the business matures -- I'm very curious to see how, precisely, this brand of luxury is defined. At any rate, though, it's refreshing to see the amount of thoughtfulness being offered here. We need more innovators like Steven in Philly.

Advertising online is a no-brainer. But what sites? That's tricky -- but a fun question to answer. Here are a few ideas.

2008-03-17T10:48:00.004-04:00

(Note: Sitegeist has invited Rob Armstrong, owner of Matador Creative, to be a regular contributor to the blog. Rob does most of the writing at Splat Productions and, additionally, takes on clients of his own, under the Matador name.)

Not long ago, my friend David Hitt brought up an interesting aspect of online advertising. Specifically, just how does one determine where to do it? Once you’ve created banner ads, what websites should you post them on? Not being a media specialist, I can only hypothesize based on my experience as the guy who writes the ads that find their way into the daily papers, monthly glossies and yes, the Internet.

I won’t waste time discussing real estate sites. Nobody needs me to tell them to post ads on their local paper’s website, local Realtors’ websites and national sites like wallstreetjournal.com or REALTOR.com. And despite how unglamorous it is, the good ol’ MLS should be on a must-post list as well. Those are easy choices. It’s obvious they get scanned by people actively looking for homes—that is, when those people are actually making the effort to look.

Hit them when they're NOT really looking.

Homebuyers don’t just comb real estate sites all day looking at pictures of pretty condominiums. They’re real people with busy lives. They’re checking their bank balances, shopping on eBay, searching for the meaning of life on Google… People in homebuying mode will go a lot of places online. The trick is to figure out where. You have to start thinking like a grocer. It’s no accident they put the raisins in the same aisle as the oatmeal and the peanut butter with the jelly and bread.

One place to start might be sites about home-related stuff. Furniture, interior design and even home improvement websites. “Hey, why fix that roof again? Buy a new condo already!” Then there are the more esoteric choices. Think about music sites like rhapsody.com or the iTunes section of apple.com. I mean, why not listen to that new Alicia Keys mp3 file (or the latest from Paul McCartney for you Boomers) in the comfort of the living room in your brand new home? Liberty Mutual and Logitech were hitting customers there on my recent visit.

Think about what your prospects enjoy doing.

If you advertise where homebuyers are buying music, why not where they’re buying food—or at least getting recipes and tips on entertaining like marthastewart.com? By advertising on specialty sites, you can customize the message and make the connection between your new condo high-rise and, say, those freshly baked sticky buns from Williams-Sonoma—they’ll taste even more delicious in your new home’s designer kitchen.
More food for thought—newlyweds! They’re part of many developers’ target demographic. Young, and some not-so-young, professional couples seeking digs that suit their lifestyles. How interesting then that on theknot.com, a wedding planning site, I found a link to thenest.com, its sibling site all about setting up house together. And smack dab in the upper right, a prominently placed banner ad for the Dodge Journey crossover, PERFECT for small or growing families. Just like your new building in Center City.

Another way to show you “get” your target audience’s needs and interests—YouTube. One of the most popular sites on the Internet. Why not put your two-or-three-minute virtual tour or “commercial” on YouTube and send a link to your whole e-mail distribution list? Then link them from YouTube to your site. You could continue adding videos like footage of the building in progress there, or shorts on the neighborhood, the lifestyle… Most developers limit their distribution to the property’s website. The whole world could be seeing them! And you won’t spend one extra dime to do it.

Go green—if you’ve got the guts.

My last idea (for now) would be on a site related to environmentally conscious products and services, like green.msn.com. Chevrolet is doing it with their hybrid vehicles. You can do it, too—provided you are a genuinely green company building a genuinely green residential destination with earth-friendly products and building practices.

I’m working with such a client here in Naples, Florida. Still in the planning stages, São Grato promises to be a Brazilian-inspired mixed-use destination with eco-sensitive features in place. Beyond building materials and practices, the community will have recycling programs as well as incentives to donate towards rain forest conservation. Be warned—going the green route is like running for public office. Absolutely everything about your company will be scrutinized for its innate greenness, and if any fatal flaws are exposed, you’ll be vilified by the media and granola-crunching tree-huggers alike. This is not one for the faint of heart.

The best thing about advertising on the Internet is that you can change your mind on a whim, adapt your placement almost immediately and adjust your strategy based on the results you get in a very cost-effective way. So just do it—experiment. Put your property out there where few, if any, competitors are. You’ll be the sharpest developer on your block if you get it right.

Is the New York Luxury Real Estate Market Recession Proof?

2008-03-12T10:32:00.002-04:00

As real estate markets around the country reel from the bursting of the housing bubble and mortgage crisis, local pockets of strength still remain. Residential housing in New York City, for example, has weathered the storm better than most and, particularly, the luxury residential sector has appeared surprisingly robust. This article from The Real Deal, looks at the factors responsible for this resilience but, simultaneously, questions how much longer the party can last. Noting that luxury units were up 28.4% at the end of 2007 from the previous year, the authors go on to note some cautionary conditions that might signal a slowdown, namely:

The predicted national recession will result in fewer Wall Street bonuses and, probably, layoffs.
Current market strength is somewhat dependent on the weakness of the dollar and the resulting influx of foreign money. Foreign investment money, though, often represents discretionary spending. (Buyers don't HAVE to purchase a residential unit. They're simply acting on what they think might be a wise investment.) This places these buyers in a privileged position, allowing them greater negotiating strength.

Again, the entire article is here.

How Healthy is Your Brand...

2008-03-10T15:52:00.003-04:00

The Branding Strategy Insider, a well-written Branding Blog I read on occasion, has put together a "Top Ten" list for determining the relative state of your company's brand. While I'm not usually a huge fan of Top Ten lists, this one has some solid, basic advice for nurturing your brand's health. I especially liked the multi-part section on loyalty (number six on the list), which touches upon the importance of keeping clients or consumers coming back. The author writes:

"6. Loyalty – The lifetime value of loyal customers is often not fully appreciated. The rule of thumb is that it is 7 to 10 times more costly to gain a new customer than to keep an existing one. The primary measures of this are:

a. Actual loyalty as measured by ‘share of requirements’ or ‘share of purchases’ and the following attitudinal measures:

b. Willingness to recommend the brand to a friend,

c. Repurchase intent (willingness to repurchase the brand considering all of the experiences the customer has had with the brand), and

d. Switching propensity given different competitive price discount scenarios or brand out-of-stock situations."

The entire article can be found here.

Online advertising is more than just Pay-Per-Clicks and SEO tricks...

2008-03-04T15:27:00.004-05:00

As the world of internet marketing evolves, clients and their ad consultants are getting savvier in the strategies they develop to drive traffic to their web sites and increase brand awareness. As recently as two years ago, we were frequently called upon to design new sites for clients, without any real corresponding discussion about how the new site would fit into the client's online advertising strategy. The relationship would begin something like "We really like what you did for Client XYZ, can we get something similar?" Only later would the client begin to ponder precisely how they were actually going to get noticed on the web.

Shame on our clients for their shortsightedness and shame on us for not advising them better.

As things progressed, the stock-in-trade solutions for an online ad plan relied on organic search optimization and Google pay-per-click. As a firm which frequently builds websites for new construction real estate projects, the concept of organic optimization is a thorny one for us. Most larger scale developers desire -- and the market benchmarks these days demand -- the enhanced entertainment platform that only Flash websites can deliver. The problem with this is that, as web developers know, Flash websites are tough to make "search engine friendly."

After having worked with scores of real estate developers, though, we've become skeptical that optimization is really critical for the average new construction housing development. Buying a new condo or house is a very intentional act and the traditional portals people use to survey the market are still viable. If I'm shopping for a new hard drive for my computer, I might very well start my search and buy from a vendor that floats to the top of a Google search. However, if I'm searching for a new condominium in Philadelphia, it's highly unlikely that I am going to be swayed by the first listing that comes up through an organic search. There are many local
and national portals on the web people can use to begin surveying properties on the market and, frankly, most folks still rely on the "call a well-known realtor" approach to getting the lay of the local real estate landscape.

Beyond organic search optimization, Google Adwords or "pay-per-click" was the next ad strategy frequently mentioned by our clients as being attractive. Pay-per-click works well in partnership with Flash web sites, as it allows the client to compensate for their "optimization-challenged" natures, by allowing paid advertisements for their projects to show up when predefined search criteria are entered into Google. So, for instance, our clients can choose a search string in Google ("Philadelphia Skyscraper Living," for example) and an ad and link will float to the first page of the resulting search page.

As the internet matures, though, much more sophisticated marketing strategies are being developed. In the recently published, "Online Advertising Playbook," authors, Plummer, Rappaport, Hall and Barocci discuss some of these. Many borrow traditional strategies and apply them to the interactive realm. For instance, Google now places their "sponsored links" (which are essentially Adwords messages) on contextually relevant sites for a given demographic. So, for example, if I'm on an automobile site, there's a good chance that I'll see auto-related Google adwords somewhere within the site. Besides, Google Adwords, though, similar strategies are being employed to place all manners of ads on sites deemed contextually relevant. Other strategies, many borrowed from the world of broadcast advertising, are being employed successfully on the web. For instance, the authors cite Kentucky Fried Chicken's successful rollout of their "popcorn chicken" product, which was promoted through the use of "daypart advertising" on popular general interest web sites, such as msn.com. Daypart advertising
basically relies on the idea that you run an ad at a particular time of the day when either your target market is expected to be online and/or is in a buying mood for your product. In the case of KFC, the ad was run between the hours of 11:00 AM and 2:00 PM, when a large percentage of the online audience is contemplating their lunch choices.

For those of you interested in learning more about the strategies shared in "The Online Advertising Playbook," I urge you to click here...

More Nifty Web Tools...

2008-01-15T13:51:00.000-05:00

Now this story from Inman News... There is truly a dizzying array of online tools available to real estate marketers. From Zillow to Trulia, the internet is awash with companies trying to capitalize on "Web 2.0" technologies to create a more instantaneous and interactive real estate sales environment. In the following video, shot recently at the New York event, "Real Estate Connect: New York City," panelists share some (lengthy) thoughts about what Web 2.0 tools are and how they can be employed within the context of real estate marketing. The linke is here...

Tenets of Online Ad Design

2008-01-09T11:07:00.000-05:00

Falling into the "from the vaults" category, I happened upon an interesting blog entry written by Alex Kirtland, an information architect who writes about web-related design issues.

One of the issues we find ourselves increasingly concerned with is moving beyond thinking of ourselves simply as website designers and broadening our scope of expertise to create "complete" online presences for our clients. For instance, our clients usually want to market or advertise on the web and, as a result, we've created online newsletters, email blasts, designed online ads and, generally, tried to develop the expertise necessary to counsel them about the best use of their marketing dollars.

In the following blog article, Alex addressed the issue of the design of online ads. Always a challenge for designers, we must constantly balance the level of intrusion which any online ad places on the content of the reader versus the advertisers need to "be heard." In the article, Alex offers several summary design suggestions for artists, including: wrapping ads in borders to distinguish them from their surrounding content, clustering the ads in one location, and using "leaderboards" (full width ads running at the top of the web space) to best effect. In the end, the win - win proposition for advertisers to both be heard but also to not intrude on the reader's experience of web content. At any rate, the article's worthy of a peek...

Some Belated Holiday Cheer

2008-01-02T11:25:00.001-05:00

The holidays have come and gone but, in the spirit of holiday cheer and in an effort to begin the New Year on an optimistic note, I thought I'd share some "let's put some things in perspective" news I found in the December issue of The Real Deal.

True, housing starts are down nationally and, in fact, many regions of the country have experienced price declines over the last several months. However, Ken Harney, notes several reasons for optimism in his December Real Deal column. Consider, for example:

Despite the recent fall in both prices and sales, (in some markets) the overall upside of five years' worth of boom has been a positive one for the American homeowner. Harney, notes that, overall, the total equity owned by American homeowners is still at near-record levels, topping out at almost $11 trillion. (Total equity holdings, he notes, refers to the difference between the market value of the entire residential market, which is $21 trillion and outstanding mortgage debt, which is approximately $10 trillion.) So, then, American homeowners have more money tied up in their homes than (almost) ever before.
Even in hard hit areas such as South Florida, most homeowners and homebuyers through most of the boom are still way ahead of the game. In South Florida alone, for instance, home values increased a whopping 130 percent between 2001 and 2006. Thus, even accounting for the double digit drops in prices over the last year, the net out for most homeowners in the region remains robust.

The sub-prime lending crisis is, of course, throwing the emergency brake on a train that was already slowing down, but, with the exception of those that bought late in the cycle, Harney counsels American homeowners to look at the bust within the light of the overall (significant) gains which were made in the first part of the decade.

And if that news doesn't perk you up, there's always that leftover egg nog in the fridge...

NAHB/BIA Marketing Awards for Philadelphia Real Estate

2007-10-10T10:05:00.000-04:00

The 2007 William Penn Awards are given annually to recognize outstanding Philadelphia-area development projects and the marketing efforts behind them. The BIA chapter held an event in September, at which this year's winners were announced. This year's winners, listed categorically, are:

2007 William Penn Awards of Excellence Winners

Rookie of The Year
Gina Spaziano - The National, K. Hovnanian
Sales Manager of Year
John Kriza - The Residences at Dockside, The DePaul Group
Best Sales Team
Locust Point - J.A. Reinhold
Best Project Manager
Joe Saturno - The Residences at Dockside, The DePaul Group
Best Community Logo
The Residences at Dockside, The DePaul Group
Most Creative B/W Print Ad
Locust Point, J.A. Reinhold
Most Creative Color Print Ad
Combo Ad, Westrum Development
Most Creative Brochure Under $7
Locust Point, J.A. Reinhold
Most Creative Brochure Over $7
Hilltop at Falls Ridge, Westrum
Most Creative Marketing Campaign
Hilltop at Falls Ridge, Westrum
Best Website Under $10,000
Locust Point, J.A. Reinhold
Best Website Over $10,000
Splat Productions for Residences at Two Liberty, The Falcone Group, LLC
Best Sales Center
Hilltop at Falls Ridge, Westrum
Best Architectural Design Condo
Waterfront Square, Isle Of Capri
runner up - The Residences at Dockside, The DePaul Group
Best Architectural Design Townhome
Hilltop at Falls Ridge, Westrum
Best Conversion Under $500,000
Locust Point, J.A. Reinhold
Best Conversion Between $500k-$799,999
The Phoenix, Keating Development Co.
Best Adaptive Re-Use
Residences at Two Liberty, The Falcone Group, LLC
Best Interior Merchandising Under $500k
Locust Point, J.A. Reinhold
Townhome of the Year $500k-$799,999
Hilltop at Falls Ridge Society Hill Model, Westrum Development
Best Condo Under $500k
Locust Point, J.A. Reinhold
Best Condo Between $500k-$799,999
The Phoenix, Keating Development Co.
Best Condo Between $800k-$1.5m
Residences at Two Liberty, The Falcone Group, LLC
Best Condo Over $1.5m
Residences at Two Liberty, The Falcone Group, LLC
Community of the Year under $500k
Locust Point, J.A. Reinhold
Community of the Year between $500k-$799,999
The Phoenix, Keating Development Co.
Community of the Year between $800k-$1.5m
The Residences at Dockside, The DePaul Group
Community of the Year Over $1.5m
The Residences at Two Liberty, The Falcone Group, LLC

I thought it was praiseworthy to recognize this year's winners. Even in down markets, builders and marketers use all the resources at their disposal to create and market innovative product which will appeal to urban homebuyers.

The Beaver Has Been Banished...

2007-09-07T10:16:00.001-04:00

When I first began writing "Sitegeist" a couple of months ago, one of the first stories I ran dealt with the very risk-taking and risque branding completed in Manhattan for the new construction project "The William Beaver House." The Beaver House used a fictional mascot (a beaver, of course) who was emblematic of the quintessential Beaver House resident. He was a globe-trotting successful entrepreneur who liked to spend time with the ladies. The entire site was suffused with cheeky irreverance and, to read it, one got the sense that the project was built for a very well defined demographic.

A week and a half ago, I was meeting with a Manhattan sales prospect and we logged on to the Beaver's website and -- gasp -- the entire branding for the project had been reworked (see homepage above.) Gone is the fictional mascot (except for an iconographic representation in the lower left corner of the homepage) and gone is the messaging targeting the jetsetting, swinger demographic. The website now has this pristine "precious metal" look and is much more traditional in selling the value of the project.

All this begs the question: How seriously do developers really take this whole notion of "branded architecture?" If one buys into the current thinking, projects are being developed these days with the notion of creating distinct and definable brands. Thus, if a project was aimed towards a young successful set of globetrotters, one would include amenities that spoke to that demographic. How then, is it possible to just change the branding of a project without changing the design or the amenities? This seems to be what the Beaver House is doing. I guess the market will decide if any of this really matters...

This is Probably a Good Book, But The Guy Recommending It Is a Bit of a Fraud

2007-08-28T10:55:00.000-04:00

I guess my headlines this morning are somewhat revealing of the glib sort of mood I seem to be in...

Reading the back story in The Real Deal last week, I happened upon a reference from the doyenne of residential real estate marketing herself,Louise Sunshine. Asked what book she was currently reading, she responded with Anna Klingmann's recently released book, "Brandscapes: Architecture in the Experience Economy."

The book is about, well, what this blog is supposed to be concerned with. Namely, buildings and brands. Quoting the inside front cover,

"In the twenty-first century, we must learn to look at cities not as skylines but as brandscapes and at buildings not as objects but as advertisements and destinations. In the experience economy, experience itself has become the product; we're no longer consuming objects but sensations, even lifestyles. In the new environment of brandscapes, buildings are not about where we work and live but who we imagine ourselves to be. In "Brandscapes," Anna Klingmann looks critically at the controversial practice of branding by examining its benefits and considering the damage it may do..."

You can order a copy of "Brandscapes" from Amazon here...

And, by the way, if you're wondering who the "Fraud" referred to above is: "c'est moi..." Why am I a fraud? Well, truth be told, I haven't actually read "Brandscapes" yet.

But, in all fairness, I just got my copy yesterday...

I'm Not a Blogging Guru, But These Guys Are...

2007-08-28T10:38:00.000-04:00

It's a curious thing, writing a real estate blog in Philadelphia. I follow "emerging trends" in real estate marketing a fair amount and, almost without exception, alot of the innovation seems to be driven from Seattle and San Francisco. Recently, there was an entire conference for real estate bloggers in San Francisco. This post is from a video seminar, created as part of this conference. It features leading real estate professionals who maintain blogs, talking about how blogging has helped their businesses...

Real Estate Print Advertising Rule of Thumb Number 10: It's a Good Idea to Tell Your Readers Where Your Project is Located

2007-08-19T18:26:00.001-04:00

Reading the Sunday Paper this morning, I happened upon a quarter-page six-panel layout featuring a number of different new construction offerings of various sizes. My friend, Tom, studied the ad above for "101" and quizzically looked at me and asked "Where the heck IS that project?" I'm passingly familiar with it and knew it was located in downtown Philadelphia, but, I'm wondering, how many people looked at it and had now clue where the project is located?

I'm guessing the lack of address is either an oversight or there's an underlying assumption that readers will know the project is in downtown. (But, even if that were the case, WHERE in downtown is still an important question to answer...) But, even if that was the rationale at work, both Tom and I noted that four of the six projects (three of which are highrises) are nowhere near Philadelphia.

Admittedly, there's no room to spare in a 3" X 3" ad but, one would think, project address is one "detail" that shouldn't be absent from that expensive little swatch of ad space...

Renderings: They Aren't Just for New Construction Anymore...

2007-08-18T09:47:00.000-04:00

Yet another article in The Real Deal this month talks about a subject central to our business at Splat. Writing in the August issue, Lauren Elkies notes that the use of renderings to promote existing properties is increasing. There are several circumstances which have led brokers to commission renderings for existing spaces. Sometimes, the property in question is "raw space;" space which is open to custom configuration by the purchaser. In other situations, the unit suffers from poor layout decisions and the rendering is used to demonstrate how slight alterations to the floorplan will result in a more liveable space. Often though, the rendering is simply commissioned because the raw space is, well, just plain not very attractive. Elkies quotes Sharon Held, a Sr. VP at Corcoran, who notes, "I don't know why it hasn't caught on,..." "When it's empty, your eye goes to the worst wart..."

You can catch the entire article here...

Phinally, Philly Winning More Phavor in the Big Apple...

2007-08-17T08:48:00.000-04:00

Can't afford to buy a Manhattan Manse but still want the big city resources that Long Island just can't offer? This article in the August issue of The Real Deal, notes that a partnership has been formed between New York based brokerage, DG Neary Realty and the Greater Philadelphia Tourism and Marketing Corporation with the intention of promoting Center City properties to those working in Manhattan. Recently, a number of Center City projects, (such as Splat's client, The Residences at Two Liberty Place, have been introduced to the marketplace which offer amenities, luxury and lifestyle suggestive of what one might find in Manhattan. Obviously, some New York based "Phillyphiles" think our story is worth telling, which can only be a good thing for real estate in the City of Brotherly Love...

Can a Joke Without a Punchline Still Be Funny?

2007-08-13T13:48:00.001-04:00

I'm going to depart from the customary "buildings, buildings, buildings" emphasis of Sitegeist today to talk about a local branding campaign that has gotten much buzz over the last couple of years locally.

I started thinking about the "I Hate Steven Singer" campaign when a branding newsletter passed across my desk. Steven Singer is a local jewelry store in the Philadelphia area, which has targeted its branding efforts to the 21 - 30 year old male demographic. The article extolled the success of the campaign, noting that the messaging spoke particularly well to its core audience and noting that annual revenues at Steven Singer have appreciated a healthy 15 - 20 percent since the introduction of the campaign.

Here's how the campaign has progressed, in a nutshell... According to this
Wall Street Journal online article. The campaign began "..with a radio spot featuring a man's voice saying, "I hate Steven Singer" and inviting listeners to find out why by visiting the store. Next came the billboards, followed by graffiti-style "I hate Steven Singer" stickers on store windows. The phrase also is still plastered on an array of promotions."

The official "byline of success" of the campaign is that, upon reading "I Hate Steven Singer," viewers have been compelled to go into the store to satisfy their curiosity or go online to learn more about the campaign and the store's offerings. Once at the website or in the store one learns that the "I" in the tagline is, in fact, a prototypical Steven Singer customer and the reason he hates Steven is because his girlfriend/fiance has made him spend lots of money there or the jewelry was an inadvertant cause of marriage and fatherhood.

It's all very cheeky, irreverent and sometimes sexual. If you buy into the popular wisdom the campaign succeeds because it cleverly reaches the "guy" demographic who, truth be told, would probably rather be spending a few grand on any number of other things besides jewelry for the missus. And, although you can't argue with Singer's claims of great ROI on his advertising dollar, I've always had a few issues with the campaign.

Just out of curiosity, for instance, I stood outside Steven Singer's store this morning and asked ten randomly chosen folks if they knew what the slogan meant. My responses basically broke down into three categories. Six people had absolutely no clue what the slogan meant. Three folks told me that the slogan refers to the fact that "the competition hates Steven Singer." And, lastly, one was able to correctly explain the tagline.

The lack of understanding about the meaning of the slogan is one of the problems with the campaign, perhaps. I asked Jami Slotnick, a partner at the Philadelphia/New York Marketing Firm, Munroe Creative Partners what she thought of the campaign and she expressed a couple of concerns. The first concern raised was, at the time of the campaign's rollout, there may not have been enough brand penetration for the client. In other words, instead of asking "WHY is Steven Singer hated," folks were asking "WHO is Steven Singer?" Secondly, there seems to be a "delivery failure" issue with the question itself. None of the non-billboard print signage that one sees around town tells people how they can find out "who" hates Steven Singer and why. The billboard signage does have the web address listed, but it's questionably legible at sixty miles an hour.

The net result of this is that there are a whole bunch of folks around Philadelphia who have heard the ubiquitous slogan but don't have a clue what it means and, possibly, who Steven Singer is. One has to wonder if the initial "teaser" campaign asking the question could have been followed with a campaign that gave a more clearly expressed "call to action," telling people what they could do to find out who Steven Singer is and why is so loathed.

In the end, of course, the client's net happiness and perceived return on investment is really all that matters. In that regard, the buzz on the street is that the healthy growth in sales over the last couple of years is a clear indicator of success. Of course, that healthy growth has probably come with a pretty big price tag. The most prominent media outlet for the store's advertising is the Sirius-based "Howard Stern" show. I can't back this up with facts but, I'm guessing, that advertising on Howard don't come on the cheap.

A Plug for Inman News...

2007-08-08T16:21:00.000-04:00

I'm not sure how many real estate marketing people are subscribers to the Inman News site, but, after spending many hours on their site, I've decided to give them a plug. Inman is a clearinghouse of articles and information related to real estate marketing and technology. Earlier this year, they ran a series of articles on the embrace of various "social media" techniques -- blogs and online social networking sites -- and how these communications methods are being used professionally by real estate agents or marketers. Although there have been no empirical studies done, one well-recognized positive consequence of an agent or development writing their own blog is the increased exposure the entries give to search engines. In other words, the more you blog, the higher your page rank on Google or Yahoo searches. The entire series of articles is here, but you'll need to be a paid subscriber to read them...

Oh Condo, You're So Fine; You're So Fine You Blow My Mind...

2007-08-08T13:14:00.000-04:00

A friend sent me this article, which appeared in the New York Times this past weekend...The article talks about the efforts in many new real estate projects to tie the identity of a project directly to a "theme song." As someone that has creative directed a number of web and video projects that were soundtracked, I can attest that choosing music is one of the thorniest and most scrutinized aspects of rounding out the identity for a new development. At any rate, I thought the attached was thoughtful and might be of interest...

Hey Baby, wanna go back to my POD and...

2007-08-06T15:06:00.001-04:00

Manhattan is a funny real estate market. Usually ahead of the curve on real estate phenomena that later become standard in smaller markets, the New York market is currently spearheading a trend in kitchens that, in many ways, seems to reverse another longstanding trend in kitchen design (that also probably started in New York...)

I'm talking about the "high-end-everything," "industrial-Thermador-this" and "Viking-Range-that" phenonmenon. Ya know, the one that allows the six and seven figure dual-income households (who seldom cook) to rest assured knowing that -- when the caterers come -- they can make it look like the Gazpacho and Branzino were whipped up right in the couple's kitchen.

For years, the industrial aesthetic that these appliances featured -- usually coupled with exotic granites and Italian glass tiles -- heralded that the kitchen was a place of honor and beauty. But a recent trend in New York seems to be closing the door (quite literally) on the developer's love affair with the kitchen.

Recent projects in Manhattan, most notably Jade Jagger's "Jade" project in Chelsea, have taken the attitude that dishwashers, ranges and sinks are not items whose presence should be celebrated in the Manhattan condo. In fact, they should be hidden from view, when guests arrive. To that end, kitchens and (many) bathrooms at Jade are built back to back and feature wraparound doors, which -- when closed -- box both rooms off in smooth, lacquered panels. These core elements, called "Pods" at Jade, are reminiscent of the jewelry boxes for which Jade is well known. As she notes, "The beauty... (of the pod)... is that, when you close it, it is clean and finished. It is quite a beautiful object in the center of the room, ..."

Jade is not the only project in Manhattan that's boxing up the kitchen, though. Previously, I wrote about The William Beaver House, which -- similar to the Pods at Jade -- feature "attache kitchens," which have panelized systems covering the kitchen from view. Just last week, as well, I toured Core Development's Legacy project on the Upper East Side and -- in their model condominium -- they too had boxed out the kitchen as a discrete, cubist mass with retractable sliding door elements. Not literally a "pod" but a first cousin,in terms of spatial form. (The model at The Legacy, by the way, was gorgeous...)

So, will New York "pods" be showing up in other urban markets anytime soon? (Or, have they already?) I'm not aware of any making their way to Philadelphia yet, but, it does seem to complement the modernist "luxe loft" concept that champions clean lines in (sometimes) tight living spaces...

Hi-Tech Roundup

2007-07-30T14:28:00.000-04:00

This link, pulled from The Inman Blog offers more insight into the novel and (maybe) revolutionary uses realtors are finding for web based searches and property information tracking using mobile devices. From automated information beamed to your phone or PDA via a text message to information retrieval systems using voice recognition, this post give a quick rundown of emerging real estate tech tools...

Does your Neighborhood Walk the Walk?

2007-07-25T16:02:00.000-04:00

For all you urban evangelists out there, there's a new tool out there which allows you to graphically emphasize the convenience of downtown or neighborhood living. The site, called Walk Score allows users to see a given neighborhood's "walkability" ranking. Repurposing information fed to it by Google Maps, Walk Score, according to its makers "...helps people find walkable places to live. Walk Score calculates the walkability of an address by locating nearby stores, restaurants, schools, parks, etc."

With a 92 ranking, my neighborhood in Philadelphia should be a "Walkers' Paradise," where "Most errands can be accomplished on foot and many people get by without owning a car."

True enough, I know many of my neighbors live sans automobile. (But they usually tell me that's because of the high price for auto insurance and the parking problems in Center City, Philadelphia...)

Philly Finally Feelin the Heat of the Housing Slump...

2007-07-25T13:39:00.000-04:00

Well, it's official. After months of guarded reassurances that this region has been somewhat immune to the effects of the tumbling housing market, this article in the South Jersey CourierPost confirms our darker suspicions. It seems that, though it may be less traumatic than places like Florida, the market in the Mid-Atlantic is indeed faltering. Southern New Jersey seems to be the hardest hit, with sales falling 13 percent in the first half of this year.

This skeptic was always unswayed by the numerous predictions made by industry luminaries which spoke of a "rebound" late this year. Usually the luminaries cited are executives within businesses who have a direct interest in the rebound itself, namely, lenders or home builders. Now many industry leaders aren't predicting an uptick until 2009. Unfortunately, for those of us in the field, historic real estate cycles feature mult-year downturns, as well as robust, multi-year gains. Sounds like the 2009 prediction, itself, might be a little optimistic. But, I'm keeping my fingers crossed...

When your client creates their own marketing challenges...

2007-07-23T13:34:00.000-04:00

This blog is not principally concerned with the nuts-and-bolts daily challenges faced by real estate agents, but this story from New York Magazine's website had me smiling. From time to time, my staff and I regret the unfortunate (in our humble view) marketing or branding decisions our clients make, but, thankfully, we've never had to deal with these kinds of problems. Read the story here...

"The times they are a changin'.."

2007-07-20T12:24:00.000-04:00

...
I came across this story in an interesting London real estate blog, The Rat and Mouse. The story actually references something which appeared on this side of the pond, in a Sixty Minutes story of earlier this spring.

The story chronicles the struggle of online real estate brokerage mavericks Redfin with the "establishment" real estate community. Essentially, Redfin's model offers brokerage services at a substantial discount below the traditional six percent commission rate. They use a flat seller's fee of $3000 and -- in a move that must be peeving a number of folks -- they refund two-thirds of the standard buyer's commission back to the purchaser of the home. You can watch the entire Sixty Minutes story here...

Leaving the Beaver...

2007-07-19T16:44:00.000-04:00

As I was browsing this month's "The Real Deal" yesterday, an article caught my eye. "Musical Chairs for Condo Marketing Firms" notes that the development team behind the William Beaver House condo in lower Manhattan has changed marketing agents. That, in and of itself is not especially noteworthy; developers change brokers and marketers with some regularity,particularly in tightening markets. However, the fact that the project in question was the William Beaver did make the story newsworthy. "The Beave", so named for its location at William and Beaver Streets in Lower Manhattan, had one of the most ambitious and racy identity campaigns I've yet to see. (Okay, so I am usually holed up here in Philly, which, admittedly, is not known for risk-taking real estate marketing...) Andre Belazs, the brains behind the project, had pulled out all the stops for its marketing. The campaign's centerpiece is a fictional cartoon beaver who is also the project's namesake. William Beaver (or, as his French friends call him "Le Beaver") appears in various illustrations and videos on the project's website. The well-groomed (if somewhat hirsute) dam-builder also embodies many of the qualities that the young-bucks-of-Wall-Street target demographic for the project admire. He's fabulously successful, hardworking and, apparently, a Player. Sex appeal was skillfully used in the marketing of the project. Bathrooms, for instance, are advertised as being "big enough for three" and many of the original renderings for the project featured barely-dressed Manga babes. Behind all the identity work though, is a smartly conceived project, which seems tailor made to the lifestyle of the Financial District's up-and-comers. "Attache Kitchens" feature sliding door and counter elements that allow virtually all appliances -- sink, cooktop, etc -- to be concealed, creating extra temporary counter space in the process. A similar idea lies behind the "Murphy Offices" featured in many of the units. Small office spaces within the units are designed to be easily hidden from view by simply closing a pair of doors, allowing residents to entertain on the fly. Building amenities are likewise oriented to a younger, more active and aspirational crowd and feature a glass-enclosed Jacuzzi, a lap pool, basketball courts... the list goes on and on.

So why the change in sales agents for a project this well conceived? Surely, dear readers you don't actually expect to find the answer to that weighty question on a blog, do you? Scoring the real scoop on that one, after all, would require some primary research and, well, we all know that's not what bloggers are known for. Recent changes to the project's website however, do point to some sanitizing taking place in the formerly-racy illustrations that once appeared there. Gone are the barely-dressed babes and their undressed beaus. Most renderings now are simply absent those naughty revelers or their denizens are more discretely attired. (I'm not sure, but
John Ashcroft's bodice covering skills may have been put into service...) Whatever the reasons for the change in sales agents, it is clear that someone within the project's inner circle decided that the project's brand was too much "Animal House" and not enough "William Beaver House."