AdAge PR for Only In Houston Promoting Houston Creative Agencies

Only in Houston, an initiative from the Houston Advertising Federation (both are Tendenci clients), got some great coverage in AdAge today.  This effort is being driven by Lou Congelio of STANandLOU Advertising in Houston.

———from AdAge———-

Houston: We Have A Problem
A creative exodus has walloped the city; now a local ad consortium says it has the solution

Houston is the fourth-largest city in the U.S., with the Census Bureau pegging its population at slightly over 2 million.  But it’s the 18th largest ad market, much to the dismay of local marketing executives, who say companies looking for advertising and production support view Houston as little more than an afterthought – a quaint suburban hamlet in the shadow of creative metropolises like Miami or Portland, Ore.

Even though it headquarters more Fortune 500 companies than any city except New York, few of those tapped local agencies as their primary ad partner.  That’s caused an exodus of agencies – and talent.

"We’ve taken a major hit," Lou Congelio…

Hopefully the article will be posted in full on the OiH or AdAge sites soon!   

Bisley Advertisements – Remixing Elements of Icons

Via: adjab.com

"The ads are for Bisley, a company that makes storage units for offices. As you can see, each image (a barcode, a map of the Underground, etc) have all been broken down into their individual parts and neatly stacked together. The text reads, "Perfectly Organized.""

Dallas AMA Presentation on Web Marketing and SEO

In Dallas TX for a presentation for the Dallas Chapter of the American Marketing Association.  As a member of the AMA it is always an honor to present to the AMA!

AMA Web Marketing Made Simple – Maximizing Your Online ROI
Ed Schipul, Schipul – The Web Marketing Company
Fri 10-Feb-06 7:30 AM to Fri 10-Feb-06 9:30 AM

On the flip side, the main AMA site has unfortunately implemented an interstitial (read cheesy landing page a.la.flash.intro type page) http://www.marketingpower.com/welcome-interstitial.php

Why would the AMA have a splash landing page on the primary URL?  This is proven to reduce the conversion rate.  The wonders never cease.  Hopefully they will get back to marketing fundamentals and measure the response rates.

Update: AMA Dallas has multiple sites – this is the "real" version: http://www.dfwmarketing.org/ which has real content!

New but related marketing topic.  Whenever I travel, which is more frequently than I would like, I try to catch up on business podcasts.  For Immediate Release (On Podcast #110!) is a required podcast for me as well as The Advertising Show (TAS is a client as well, but I listened first – great stuff!)

GM Advertisements in Newlywed Section of the Houston Chronicle

General Motors "fun and games" with fake wedding listings in the Houston Chronicle today.  A bit early for April Fool’s and at first the announcements seem real and the ad placement very out of place.  But a quick reading of the text for the engaged couples reveals snarky text with a very ad copywriter sense of humor.

The copy starts:

The Chevy family is proud to announce the marriage of Fuel Efficiency and Power.  The ceremony took place in the Vortec V8 engine, where the couple first met.  They will be making their home in the all new 2007 Chevy Tahoe.  It is a first marriage for both.

Both the bride and groom are graduates of the full-size SUV class with Fuel Efficiency receiving honrs for getting EPA est. 22 MPG Highway.  Power’s achievements include 320 horsepower and 340 lb-ft of torque. <more – check images>

The above ad was at first, before catching the fact that everything was faked, surprising.  What remains funny is that in the same issue of the Chronicle there is an editorial from the Sierra Club (the Sierra Club???) advocating bailing out the big three automakers subject to fuel efficiency improvements.  Go figure.  First power marries fuel efficiency, although the latter can’t get it up past 22, and now the Sierra Club wants to marry GM.

Behavioral Insider on gameVertising

This weeks "Behavioral Insider" has an interesting interview on in-game advertising from a behavioral perspective.  The post by Kate Kayte interviews Ilya Vedrashko from MIT. 

Some excerpts:

BI: Do you have ideas for behavioral targeting that you’re not seeing
implemented?

Vedrashko: One thing I don’t see anybody looking at is
so-called "cluster visits." I’m sure somebody has built this out, but I haven’t
seen a discussion [about this] yet. When you go online each morning, how many
Web sites do you visit consistently? It’s probably no more than a dozen. So, for
me it would probably be CNN, The Drudge Report, the news sites I visit every
day. The way to serve advertising would be to look at these clusters and serve
advertising on Drudge Report, after [I] visit CNN, that would enhance the
experience that [I] got from CNN’s advertising. So, for example, if CNN serves
an ad for a car, then The Drudge Report would know [I've] already seen this ad
and they would serve the ad for the same car but with a different twist, knowing
my prior behavior.

followed up by this which, in my humble opinion, plays into the Gimore Gang’s obsession with attention.

BI: How do you foresee companies enabling that, without
having, say, those two Web sites–The Drudge Report and CNN–within the same ad
network?

Vedrashko: Every Webmaster already has all the
information necessary to make some sort of decision. The problem is this
information is not being shared across the board. So, The Drudge Report knows
its own statistics but it doesn’t know CNN’s.

BI: But what’s the incentive for Drudge Report to share
their information? Most of these sites are really proprietary and they don’t
want to share their information with anybody, and that’s definitely something
that behavioral targeting technology companies have been up against.

Vedrashko: Maybe the pricing model changes, and
advertisers realize they don’t have to pay for meaningless, wasted impressions;
they really want to pay for targeted impressions. That would put pressure on the
publishers to start cooperating.

The full post for MediaPost is here. (soul sucking reg required)