YouTube
Posted by jhernandez on 6/27/2008
We have all had those moments where we sit around and reminisce about childhood and how much fun the good ole days were. I did that last night in a very geeky Y2K type fashion. I was sitting in my living room with my closest friend and had a virtual stroll down memory lane.
As we tried to sing theme songs to each other and tested each other’s memory about a time; when we had a fantastic idea. We thought, “let’s YouTube!” So we sat in front of my computer and took a walk down memory lane. We looked up all the shows that we could remember, and watch the intros and opening credits. It was a great experience and made me realize how much better TV was when I was a kid. I’m a youngin, I have to admit, but watching the shows again that we grew up on made me realize how big the generational gap is between myself and let’s say a 7 year old. His advantage in this technological era has equipped him with the tools we couldn’t have fathomed. PBS was in its heyday and its programming was phenomenal. We will never get those days back. It’s sad. Another amazing realization I had was how important video is and can be to marketing campaigns. The visual elements capture your audience if it is done well and done right. It encapsulates your attention, sends your message, and converts prospects at a higher rate. So why don’t we use more of it. Probably production costs and the like which are a very valid concern, but in an age of technology like we are in now, we can definitely take advantage of the deflation of these costs. We should get together sometime and talk about this. ANY SUGGESTIONS?
For those of you who are curious as to what I was watching on television. Here are a few examples:
Square One,
3.2.1. Contact,
Reading Rainbow,
You Can’t Do That on Television….Etc. You get the idea!
So til next time, too-da-loo, see ya in a few.
Cross-Media / Text Messaging / Acronimia
Posted by jhernandez on 5/13/2008
Funny thing happened to me yesterday!
In the process of a residential move, many changes have to be made in order to restore the normalcy that you once so naively took for granted. In the midst of this fight against chaos is where I reside right now. Fun - Fun. It’s refreshing and new, but there are so many minor details that have to be coordinated that it can sometimes be overwhelming and daunting to realize the light at the end of the tunnel. Anyway, long story short. The pictures are hung, the furniture in place, normalcy abounds minus the most necessary of necessities, INTERNET!
So we made the appointment for the local ISP to come by and make the magic happen. We got all the equipment we needed, the welcome packet, and a thank you for your business. Everything all set without a hitch. Off to Al Gore land we go!
Meat and potatoes: inside the welcome packet was a 4 panel newsletter for parents, warning them about the dangers surrounding instant messaging. Very informative, well organized and more information than I think any parent would ever have known. Having a 7 year old around the house made me more than realize how sensitive this information can really be to parents. The most interesting almost comical section of the newsletter was a dictionary of acronyms. Hilarious right? Wrong! Completely wrong. I went through these acronyms with the love of my life and realized that not only are our kids smarter now than we will ever be; they have also come up with a completely new language, Acronimia! I felt like Christopher Columbus landing in the West Indies when I read this newsletter, and they are like astronauts already living on Mars! They are so far ahead of us it is not even funny. Dangerously far ahead of us.
So that got me thinking about one of the aspects of cross-media and how we market to younger generations here at Reynolds DeWalt. We are currently in the midst of developing programming to target universities that can take full advantage of this technological application. Much like your eMail blasts that your spam filters tell to go away, our SMS messaging system can send out personalized SMS text messages that are relevant and pertinent to the end user, much like an instant message. The messages will speak specifically to this generation. But you can also get your message into every crackberry, iPhone, Razor, and the like in no time, with relevancy unheard of, regardless of generation.
Through cross-media campaigns that encompass different media, capture data, and grow databases east to west rather than north to south, you can speak on many different levels to many different people in many different ways. That gets me back to the language barrier I have now established with my Hieroglyphics AKA acronym guru seven year old. I realized that not only does he speak a different language, but every generation in between does as well. To be an effective linguist you have to master many languages. To be an effective marketer you have to adopt the technology that translates your message appropriately to whomever you are speaking to. We can do that. We are the linguist to your audience’s world and can help you speak whatever language you need to speak.
As the guru himself would put it. Tyfrmb, iayr. Bw. (Thank you for reading my blog, I appreciate your readership. Be Well.)
Bread & Butter
Posted by jhernandez on 5/2/2008
Phrase=Bread & Butter
-adjective
1. providing a livelihood or basic source of income; supplying the basic needs of life or business:
We can't deny the history and legacy of our wonderful company.
Here is an anecdote about sustenance. If white bread and
just some plain old butter sustains you, then so be it. But if you’re like me,
you’re going to want some nice hearty whole grain bread loaded with dried
cranberries and walnuts, with a warm slow churned sweet butter that coats your
tongue with every bite. You want to crunch into a nice crust that elevates your
senses. The smell of the bread fills your nose with the aroma of nut and grain.
But in the end it is still just bread and butter. That doesn’t change. It is
still just the basic flour, water, yeast, salt and whatever else you’d like in
there. But then you decide that just plain ole bread isn’t good enough anymore;
you wake up get into the kitchen, test a few recipes and find a whole new
meaning to bread and butter. This is what has happened with me here at Reynolds
DeWalt.
When I started here many, many, many hours ago, I thought
white bread and country crock, and now I have a different opinion and think
more like bread and circus and beurre d’isigny! We are not only a printer. We
are not only ink on paper. We are what we eat. We went back into the kitchen
and explored our ancillary maximizing, recipe bulking, and have become the performance
enhancer to the print service provider world. So much so, that we can call
ourselves leaders in marketing effectiveness. We have added and excel at
services not offered by “printers.” We
have mastered the art of taking the brochure and turning it into campaign. We
have accepted with open arms the changes in the industry and not only stayed
ahead of the curve we are setting it. The curve exemplifies the forward
thinking I have come to realize as the norm around the office.
Featured on the Adobe website, partners with all major
industry leaders and the representatives of revolution to our sheet fed
brethren. Join us in the industry kitchen as we Choose Imagination. Expect
Results.™ from the delicious offerings we have. We are your leader. You need
us. Lets COOK!
Calling All Designers
Posted by jhernandez on 4/30/2008
Call me uneducated, ignorant, dumb, whatever you’d like; but
never call me 4 color process again! Have you seen IndiChrome? HP’s answer to
quality unseen in the digital press world has revealed itself to me in a real
way. I was walking through the office recently and saw the most beautiful
eye-catching piece I’ve seen in a long time. It was an 8 page brochure printed
on a gloss stock utilizing IndiChrome technology with an overall gloss UV
coating. For those of you outside the print world, that meant it was bright and
shiny and glossy all over. And it was beautiful. All the colors seemed as if
they were jumping off the page. IndiChrome’s color configuration is CMYK+OV!
That is an added 2 colors (Orange and Violet) that increase the gamut of color
you can achieve exponentially. The images were of these life-like tropical fish
and seemingly neon coral. I was moved by the piece so much that I had to learn
more.
I went to our digital prepress guru and asked for his
infinite wisdom to be divulged on such a fledgling as myself. He prompted me to
a quick tutorial as to achieve the best results when designing for this
particular application. Apparently if I were a designer the information he was
spewing would have sunk in, but what I took from it is two things. First - the
files you build to apply the IndiChrome coloration must begin, whether in Quark
or any Adobe Native product, in RGB. This is atypical of the design process as
most begin projects in CMYK and proceed from there. Beginning the process in
RGB sets your file up for the most success to be as beautiful as the one that
caught my eye today. Of course not every project you have needs to be printed
this way. It definitely serves a purpose to those few projects that need to be
taken to another level.
I think you’ll enjoy the results, and I would love to offer
you more knowledge on this particular issue, but you’re going to have to dial
me up for that one. I am hitting the books to learn what you need to know. That’s
what we do at Reynolds DeWalt.
So til next time, too-da-loo, see ya in a few.
Sixty Three Dollars & Forty Six Cents
Posted by jhernandez on 4/25/2008
“That will be sixty-three dollars and forty six cents of
your hard earned money please” is what the Digital Nancy at my local grocery
store has said to me thus far. I thought wow that was pleasant, she asked me
all the right questions, made sure I scanned my coupons, and facilitated smiles
where I would otherwise find a snot-nosed teen handing out frowns wishing they
were at a keg party. Digital Nancy doesn’t even need a 15 minute break, I LOVE
HER! I think the grocery store caught on, so they’ve implemented a tag along Digital
Nancy that calculates your shopping and increases your efficiency even before you
hit the register. AMAZING! I almost feel like I’m living in the year 2000.
So now you ask yourself
why is an integrated marketing services firm talking groceries? Well because
the system is flawed and we can increase sales in a grocery store by marketing
better. How you say? Well, as I was picking up my finely ground espresso from
the foothills of Bogota, Columbia my handheld Digital Nancy prompted with a
cash register, “$CHING$” and told me that 8 aisles away the canned oysters were
on sale! I thought canned oysters??? Why is it telling me canned oysters are on
sale? I thought it was ingenious that Nancy was suggesting anything to me at
all, I actually felt kind of special. After about 4 “$CHINGs$” later my mind
shut out that sound because the products being suggested were completely
irrelevant. The oysters had no bearing on my shopping experience and neither
did the corned beef hash and neither did the Meow Mix. Nancy betrayed me! I was
upset by this. Not only am I bombarded by 5,000 ads a day somehow or another,
but now I am bombarded in my sanctuary, THE GROCERY STORE!
Variable Data and Marketing go hand in hand, we know this. Variable
Data Publishing happens across all media and can be applied effectively to this
situation. It can also be applied in print, eMail, web, and anything else you
may think of, even text messaging! It is essential as a marketer to make touch
points across multi-channels that matter to your audience in a more effective
way; a way that can be measured accurately, so that you know that your dollars
spent are returned with customer loyalty, prospect conversion, and boosted
profits. Why then has it not been applied to make this Digital Nancy more
efficient? I don’t know. Shouldn’t my handheld know my name? Shouldn’t my
positioning in the store determine what “$CHING$” come up? Shouldn’t my past
purchasing habits be considered in what products are featured on my handheld?
YES IT SHOULD! Because making my shopping experience more personal is going to
earn my loyalty quicker and longer. If Digital Nancy suggested a competitor’s
product that was just as good a quality with much the same ingredients at a
discounted price, I would be so appreciative. What if digital Nancy actually
told me that Cheerios were on sale as I picked up the Fruity Pebbles? I might
actually purchase the sale item that the grocer is going to receive a kickback
from. It works for the grocer and it works for me, what a deal! Maybe it’s a
little bit to Minority Report for most, and I understand that some would rather
walk in and walk out of a grocery store. But for me, whom I consider an average
super market shopper, it is ingenious and should live up to my expectations.
Please smarten up Mr. Grocer, we would love to see that you
not only care about what we think, but it may actually make you a couple extra
bucks in the end! Please call me Mr. Grocer, I want your business, and can make
everyone’s shopping experience a better more effective, more measurable experience.
Let’s make your data work for you.
Too-da-loo see ya in a few.
Like the old saying goes.....
Posted by jhernandez on 4/23/2008
Like the old saying goes, “When life hands you a lemon,
BLOG!!!” “When the going gets tough, the
tough get blogging!!!” Or something like that. Anyway, in any slowdown, smart
marketers spend smart money marketing. This takes a combination of two very key
elements; brain power and rainy day cash! Neither of which are prevalent in
most companies today. Forward thinkers are pushed to the wayside by brick and
mortar fundamentals that don’t allow for the development of the future. It’s
kind of like taking a naturally big fish when it is just a guppy and raising it
in a bottle of water. IT WILL NEVER GROW!
There is a big pond out there somewhere for thinkers to swim
and be free, someone has to be willing to dump the bottled water into the pond,
it’s the only way to make it happen. The rain will come eventually so avoid
guarding yourself under an umbrella of the past. Here is a new idea, rain never
hurt anyone, so chuck the coverall and allow new, fresh and innovative to soak
your pockets and fund the future rather than living under the umbrella and
never seeing what life is like when you’re all wet! Blogging is meant to stir
the pot and get ideas out of your mind and into this sphere of thought provocation,
so let’s provoke some thought and swim in the big pond.
We know times are tight and life is short but let’s not
limit the future by stagnating the present. Discomfort is good. It is ok to
breath heavy. Take a chance. Think a little, and find a new way to make it all
happen harmoniously with what has built the foundation of your business. “This
Old House,” and Bob Villa love to make old things new and innovate the workings
of time gone past, while retaining the footprint of what used to be. We have
entered a new era in this game, so keep the foundation, the backbone, and the
ingenuity strong and create something new and beautiful and conscious of the
goals before you. We can still build houses, but let’s be smarter about it. Let’s
renovate the mind. We can do it. Keep up with the RD blogosphere as we journey
into uncharted territory and venture into new horizons trying to figure out
rainmaking.
If you see a cloud, send it our way. Too-da-loo See ya in a
few.
What's The Lucky Number?
Posted by jhernandez on 4/22/2008
5000 is the lucky number. That’s how many ads we are exposed to on a
daily basis, researchers tell us. Across all mediums electronic, print,
and anything else they can stick a label on, bombardment is the trial
tested advertising niche. How many of these are in actuality relevant
to me a 20something male. Not many. I’m not that atypical. Cookie
cutters most are not, so how do you tailor your marketing to achieve
the best return on investment? The customer is a demanding dictator,
whose hunger for new, smart, and focused marketing is voracious.
“Unconventional marketing is intended to get maximum results for
minimal resources” says Jay Conrad Levenson. Is pointed, focused,
witty, smart, and meaningful marketing unconventional? In my humble
opinion, yes it is.
So how do we maximize our return without
typically spending half our budget on meaningless ads that hope to
maybe tap someone on the shoulder? We get smäht! Our ability to
capitalize on this lies in technology. Being smarter, learning more
about your target audience can better allow you to achieve, capture,
and invest in something meaningful. Our industry just graduated to a
new level of intelligence. 4.2 seconds is all you have before your mail
ends up in the circular file. You’re only a catchy email subject head
away from a delete. You’re a channel flick away from missing you best
client. So make better choices. Be smarter than your competition.
Achieve this with help from marketing campaigns that best use
technology to your advantage.
The rookie realized this week that
outside the box thought leads to amazing personal, intellectual, and
industry growth. If your looking for a box to grow out of, let us know.
We can think you out of it. You need us! So til next time, toodaloo,
see ya in a few.
Evolution
Posted by jhernandez on 11/10/2007
There are times in any industry when necessity calls for invention or evolution. As a recent hire at Reynolds DeWalt, my experience thus far has introduced me to an industry in the midst of an evolution. Cro-Magnon becomes Homo-Erectus. Two sticks become fire. The drawn buggies become Model A’s. The printing industry becomes….??? This is the competition saturated industry I’ve chosen to jump head first into: one with no clear definition in the middle of its own industrial revolution. Some ideas are still the same, ink on paper, right? Wrong. Ink on paper is just the tip of this massive iceberg. The variables are endless, the imagination has never had as much power, and our ability to make it all happen has never been greater than now. Stay tuned while we redefine what we do and how we do it. For this rookies point of view on our ever-changing, creation driven, smile selling business check in weekly to read the snippets of transformation I experience.
Until next time, too-da-loo see ya in a few.