To benefit from the attention economy, you first have to understand it.

/0 Comments/in /by

To sustain sales, lead generation and brand identity, creating quality content in all forms is required. If marketers don’t constantly refresh available content, they run the risk of capturing an audience but not having anything relevant to say to them. That’s where we come in.

It has become a requirement to create content in all forms to sustain reputation, lead generation and findability.

The new reality is having endless media options vying for people’s attention.

There is no lack of attention span in your target audience. If anything, they are paying more attention than ever before. What has changed is their zero tolerance for wasting time. Attention is available, but the bar has been raised. If you really want someone’s attention, you have to earn it.

How can marketers be relevant? By creating content that adds value to someone’s viewing experience rather than subtracting from it. That starts by understanding why your audience turns to particular platforms for content in the first place. You can increase attention among your viewers by making your content on each platform as relevant to each viewer as possible.

People still pay attention, but with more content out there than ever before, the quality bar has been raised. Once you have captured their attention, hold onto it by making your brand relevant: to each platform, each person and each context.

At BLAIRCOMM, it is our job to help clients benefit from this new attention economy by creating valuable, relevant content. Contact us now to find out what what we can do for you.

One good communication can make a customer for life.

/0 Comments/in /by

Today everyone can create marketing communications, but not everyone is listening.

Marketing communications are a big investment, so consider this.

There are over 130 trillion pages in Google’s index–and well over 1-billion websites growing daily. Add to these hundreds of millions of blogs, over 6.5 billion searches daily, more than 2 billion active Facebook pages and as of this writing around 500 million tweets a day—that’s over 6,000 per second! In addition, Nielsen data shows that consumers’ time with TV, Internet and Mobile video continues to increase. Everyone is trying to create a brand.

The average American adult is exposed to over 4000 messages in a day, yet the 5 percent of Americans with the highest income now account for 37% of all consumer purchases. The business-to-business market is even more targeted.

All of these people are creating messages and optimizing all their web pages and content. So, ask yourself how many thousands of websites can fit on the first page of Google’s search results? There’s a lot of spin in the digital ecosystem that can cost you money. So, how do you talk to the right people with the right message so that they will respond?

Companies, agencies and the media are still scrambling to find relevancy and sense in the chaos of the digital ecosystem. Some approach it like Dell in the early days of social media who developed a 50-person team dedicated to social media in response to one lone blogger, (the infamous “Dell hell” blog about bad customer service.) Others desperately try every new venue helping Google to post record profits without a viable return on their investment. Missteps in the digital ecosystem can be very expensive. Clearly many of the old rules don’t apply in the evolving Web 4.x world with shifting reference points, or do they?

In this self-publishing era everyone is essentially a brand–so what distinguishes professional communicators from everyone else? Brands keep trying to join and be part of a conversation when they should be creating something unique that the conversation is about. Brands create the economy not the other way around. In the new world, an old rule still applies and is more vital than ever. You still have to stand out with a unique voice to distinguish yourself from your competitors. It takes extraordinary commitment to creative development.

Marketing communications have always been a social media because they are governed by customer’s needs and responses. We believe effective marketing communications forge customer relationships that continue long after the sale. These bonds are fortified by communicating a unified brand message that manifests itself in every consumer touch point. This takes expertise, experience and talent that not everybody has.

For example, we’ve helped launch cars for Nissan, resorts for Westin Hotels and motorcycles for Suzuki. We have also developed marketing communication for financial products from Bank of America and SunAmerica and helped make Sunkist the biggest selling pistachio in America. These, along with the many, many smaller companies we have worked with, give us a deep understanding of what it takes to succeed.

So the question isn’t so much how do you talk to the right people, it’s how can you do it effectively?

Not everyone is a potential customer. Your customer is not just a target. Not a generality. They have individual needs and want particular things. They have families, get problems, go on vacation, have bosses and make mortgage payments. In short, they’re very much like you and I. How do you engage these people so that they will listen?

In the cauldron of free speech in our market economy, amidst the barrage of multi-device communications each individual is subjected to daily, it only takes one isolated moment to create a customer for life.

Good communications are more important to success than ever before.

It takes more than a few tech geeks for a website to drive business.

/0 Comments/in /by

It takes seasoned marketing intelligence to develop a branded website for business, a deep understanding of the competitive environment and how it works, experience in branding and marketing communications, and breakout creative backed by bulletproof web technology. We create websites that are frontline strategy against the competition.

We employ complex technology with one goal in mind. Simplicity.

Web development can be done in dozens of ways. We utilize leading edge standards to handle issues before they become issues. And, offer ongoing maintenance programs with an easy to use content management system for clients. Our ability to dovetail into corporate IT departments is a result of better in-house technological capabilities than other agencies our size.

We believe a company must have a unique online brand personality to survive. We utilize leading-edge media for the increasingly sophisticated audiences our clients need to influence. Our office is also experienced in collaboration and cooperation with corporate IT teams so we can dovetail seamlessly into your operation.

  • Responsive website design and development for business
  • User Interface and User Experience development
  • Email and newsletter marketing campaigns
  • Banner, search, listing and other Internet advertising
  • Native advertising & content placement
  • Interactive presentations and website enhancements

View our WEBSITES & DIGITAL page for detailed information.

Flying saucers over London show that communication and technology are different.

/0 Comments/in /by

Technology changes so rapidly that if you don’t focus on the message you’re behind before you start. For example Pepsi Max has surprised commuters with their “unbelievable” augmented reality installation at a bus shelter on New Oxford Street in London. The intervention locates a special real-time display on the exterior face of a billboard wall, which visualizes a realistic augmented live stream of exaggerated events from the inside.  Unsuspecting bus passengers are terrified by a glass screen showing the street scene overlaid with apolcalyptic scenes of mayhem and destruction. From a giant robot crashing through the road’s brickwork to a passerby being abducted by flying saucers, the interactive experience creates unusual scenarios on the street, engaging the public for a publicity stunt. But will it make people drink Pepsi?

esqA past issue of Esquire featured the latest digital technology to dazzle advertisers and consumers alike, “augmented reality.” Its cover displayed a code designed to interact with PC-connected video cameras. The “augmented reality” offering features video clips, a music track and even an interactive marketing section. You can visit www.esquire.com/the-side/augmented-reality and experience the fusing of print and interactive and judge for yourself whether this will save print as we know it.

I love this technology. It’s new and fun and geeky—and like the James Cameron film, “Avatar”, which changed the way films are made—it’s amazing. However, for some reason it makes me think of 19th Century author Victor Hugo who probably never used the word “technology” in his life. He wrote his massive tomes, such as “Les Miserables”, by hand many times before publication; but somehow he communicated with such insight and power and relevance that when he died more than two million people took to the streets of Paris in a spontaneous show of respect. We all will have to decide what the difference between technology and communication is for ourselves before all human ideas become lost in the digital ecosystem.