Most popular

    Promotion

    More Cut. More Paste.

    By
    Steve Poppe
    -
    0

    Check out this video of the Cut and Paste digital design competition in NYC in October. It is the best single promotional video I’ve seen for getting high school and college kids to get into commercial web design.  The beats, the fashion, the story all serve up the craft of digital design brilliantly.  If you don’t like rap and you don’t like the city and you don’t like brew, you can still get into this vibe.  It’s real and it’s tomorrow. I’m not sure that this Cut and Paste competition was tasked as a recruitment tool and frankly before the recession there were a lot more these type of digital throw down parties but, hey, R/GA, Razorfish and Rockfish, forget the recruiting tents, beer cozie circuit at campuses and get behind Cut and Paste because this is the haps.

     Look into these kids eyes.  This isn’t staged “Put your hands in the air!” crap.

    If you read the comments on Agency Spy, Adweek or Ad Age, you’ll know many agency people are jealous, angry, envious and delusional.  Even before online comment pages, the business was infected by malcontents. (And with many out of work, the business they love to hate is filled with even more vitriol.)  But Cut and Paste gives me hope. The next gen of beanie-wearing, skinny jeaned design acolytes are pretty excited and pumped.

    We need more of this.  Give people something they love and the won’t work a day in their lives.  Coding at 2 A.M.by the light of a Red Bull machine may not be glamorous, but this vid points toward the prize. And as my chillens used to say “I yike it.”  Peace. 

    Writing An Effective NRP Billboard.

    By
    Steve Poppe
    -
    0

    I’m getting ready to do my first ever paid billboard ad promoting What’s The Idea? on NPR. Though I’ve written over 2,600 blog posts about branding and marketing, I’ve never actually done an ad for this business. Nor have I written for it a brand strategy. Clearly some cobbler’s children shit going on here.

    An NPR billboard these days is anywhere from 10-15 seconds of copy read on the radio by an NPR announcer. Recorded but sans any overt production value. Just words. If they are still holding to form, NPR will not allow any superlatives or overly salesy copy.

    This is going to be a wonderful exercise. Boiling down What’s The Idea? and its value proposition to a scarce few words.

    Here’s what copy must do:

    • Explain what the business is. (Brand consultancy.)
    • Establish what the business does. (Brand strategy.)
    • Explain what brand strategy is. (Organizing   principle.)
    • Explain why prospective clients need a brand strategy.
    • Lastly, establish why What’s The Idea? is a good choice.

    And all this must be accomplished with panache in less than 15 seconds.

    It could be worse. I could be writing an actual roadside billboard, where you are limited to 5 words and a picture.

    For the next few days, I’ll be putting my thinking cap on and drafting a billboard. Stay tuned.

    Peace!

     

    © Newsmag WordPress Theme by TagDiv