Advertising « VLG Dialog Marketing

VLG lands on Inc. 5000

August 30 2011

While most advertising agencies experienced negative growth and layoffs over the past three years, we grew revenue 42% and had a 43% increase in new hires. That’s not bad for a company that never took a penny from investors, but even more impressive because it was done during the worst recession in a generation.

See boys and girls, hard work does pay off and good guys and gals do finish first. Well, in this case we finished 334 among ad agencies and 94 among Dallas businesses in our debut appearance on Inc. magazine’s prestigous list. We’re finding it hard to contain our excitement.

However, it’s a humbling experience when you realize you’re no longer a start up. You’ve cleared a hurdle and built a company that provides a quality service at a fair price.

If it weren’t for a stellar client roster VLG wouldn’t have made the list. We appreciate every single one of you and will continue to deliver very un-boring marketing programs for you now and in the future. Although we can’t name all our customers, visit this website for a partial list.

There is a lot of fist bumping at the VLG office today as we celebrate this achievement. This isn’t the last you’ve heard of VLG. We continue to innovate to secure our place on the list next year, but we will pause, reflect and enjoy this moment. Again, thanks to all for helping make this dream come true.

Read more about the list and get quotable nuggets from our team here.

Oh, and don’t forget to check out our latest invention, JumpSpark.

Hotel for Sale

October 14 2010

If you know anyone in the hospitality industry looking for a steal, boy do we have the hotel for you! Name your price.

For two years Crescent Bluffs has been the destination for weary marketers. It is just the place to relax, recharge and renew your commitment and passion for good, un-boring direct marketing.

However, for us, the honeymoon is over. We’re ready for new challenges and new adventure. We want to risk more, push the envelope and skirt the laws [hint, hint] that typically govern B2B direct marketing. We want to stay true to our mantra. We fight boredom!

Backstory: We broke ground in 2008 and opened Crescent Bluffs by invitation only in January 2009. Crescent Bluffs was a figment of our imagination, an internal marketing campaign meant to show our customers the power of intriguing, personalized marketing programs. Over the past 2 years we mailed over 26,000 people, had 20% of those visit the “hotel”. Seventy percent of respondents answered our questions and witnessed the brand reveal. Over the past 22 months the campaign generated a 705% return on investment even though 2009 was a terrible year for ad agencies. It is the bar by which we measure all campaigns built for our customers. It is a very high bar by industry standards, but we are anything but standard. Crescent Bluffs is a new genre, a fresh approach to direct marketing. We call it Dialog Marketing.

We mailed 26,000 people a hotel key and bar napkin. Fifty-two hundred visit our micro-site. Ten percent of those were and many still are VLG customers today. It’s quite a story. If you’d like a Dialog Marketing program please contact us today. 214.299.8688.

California License Plates May Become Ad Apace

July 6 2010

An Associated Press article states that California’s legislature is considering a bill that could potentially lower state debt. The bill allows the state to begin researching digital license plates. Ad placement on the digital plate would generate a revenue stream for the debt riddled state. Smart Plate, a San Francisco-based company, is developing electronic license plates, but has not put them production quite yet.

traffic

On one hand, this may boost the state’s economy, but there is the question of driver safety. Although the automobile ads would only appear when a car stops for at least four seconds, there are several other factors to consider. Theft, personal property rights and media buying all come to mind. Do the benefits of economic growth outweigh the possible safety hazards, or is it the other way around?

Battle of the Sponsors

June 28 2010

It has been two weeks since the World Cup has begun. Chances are, like many people around the world, you have been trying to catch every game and by now have a pretty good idea of the sponsors and as well as have many of the commercials memorized.

Well, the ongoing battle between Nike and Adidas is one to be watched. Adidas, the official sponsor of the World Cup, is at center stage providing the game balls as well as outfitting the game officials. But don’t let their status fool you, Nike is answering with a strong force, and studies have shown that between social media, blogs and message boards, Nike is talked about twice as much as its German rival. What has caused all of this success? Much praise is going to Nike’s, “Write the Future” ad.

Nike has also gone sky high, installing a LED display on a Johannesburg skyscraper in South Africa, which projects short messages that can be sent via social networking sites from avid soccer fans. Eric Dobson, a Nike spokeswoman says, “It allows people to feel like they’re part of World Cup no matter where they are in the world… The whole campaign is about engagement.”

So does having the title “official sponsor” always guarantee the greatest bang for your buck? Nike gives that question a run for its money.

Making sense of the census

June 25 2010

What does the government do with all that census data?

Advertising Age’s own Bradley Johnson recently released information about what the census means to marketers. Johnson states, “The 2010 Census is expected to find that 309 million people live in the United States. But one person will be missing: the average American.”

He explains that the ‘average American’ is increasing “multi-dimensional,” making it more and more challenging to adapt to shifting and often difficult to contain consumer wants and needs.

Peter Francese, demographic trends analyst at WPP’s Ogilvy & Mather, predicts three major findings. He suggests only 22% of Americans live in an “iconic American household” consisting of a married couple with children. This slipped behind the now popular Dinks (Double Income; No Kids). Two incomes and no kids makes for a very attractive consumer. The Cleaver’s are even a distant third behind single-person households.

Secondly, he describes, “minorities are the new majority,” emphasizing the expanding diversities of our nation. Finally, Francese describes how “our nation will be older and more diverse, and consumer markets more complex.” So what does all of this mean for marketers? Understanding and adapting to these changes and consumers is necessary when considering where the consumer marketplace is moving and how we must adjust when targeting our growing country.

Not So Slimy Advertising

June 23 2010

The advertising industry is taking a step in the right direction towards ethical standards. Ad Age reported that the American Advertising Foundation and the University of Missouri’s Reynolds Journalism Institute are teaming up to create the Institute for Advertising Ethics.

This may not completely change society’s perception of advertisers, but it’s a start. It’s astonishing to think that in the early days of advertising, the industry professionals were one of the most well respected people in the business society. Over the years, the public perception that advertisers exaggerate the facts is now accepted as, well, a fact.

ethics

Could the Institute for Advertising Ethics be a turning point for the ad business, or is this just another sales tactic? Is advertising even measured by ethical standards outside academia, or by hits on YouTube?

Taking stock

March 8 2010

My name is Michael, and I’m an addict. From social media to web-based and iPhone apps I am guilty of a leap-then-look mentality. If you tell me you found a smoking hot iPhone app for 80’s trivia I will download it without giving it a second thought. Tell me about a great new time management application online, I’m there. Yes, I’ll register for inclusion in the industry specific directory of advertising movers and shakers.

Now I find myself in the ugly position of having no earthly idea what I’ve signed up for, how, why or when. What good are all these time management, SEO friendly, networking savvy applications if I don’t use them?

So many apps, so little brand loyalty

This post would be really awesome if provided a link applications that keep track of everything. I know the apps are out there, but if I sign up it’s just another login ID and password and URL I have to remember. Yep, I have a problem. Admitting the problem is the first step.

The Whole Enchilada

June 26 2009

Branding agencies are good at what they do, packaged goods at what they do, marketing consultants at what they do, and interactive shops at what they do. So, why would a customer go to one agency for the whole enchilada, for everything.

A whole plate of enchiladas is not what the client is asking for today. They want Fajitas; they want the sizzle. With our customers’ best interests in mind, let’s focus on complementing product and service solutions with something that gets seared into the minds of the consumers without bogging down the brand. We suggest micro-campaigns, because they are less expensive to execute, high impact, memorable, viral, sticky. But they are not permanent. As the life cycle of a marketing campaign shortens, so does the need to shorten the sales cycle.

In the crazy, mixed-up world that is marketing and advertising today there appears to be a trend that has fractured the idea and execution of marketing campaigns across all media. Once you have a brand the need for marketing support evaporates. Companies bring maintenance of the brand in-house and the agency loses. Once you build a website with a CMS the need for design and development services dwindles. I could go on, but you get it.

Down economies only increase a company’s desire to keep money in-house by sacrificing good-to-great advertising for good-enough advertising. And so the advertising industry finds itself in a period of transformation. As an agency we can’t put a retainer in front of a customer, because they don’t want to sign an annual contract and won’t. They want point solutions and better control of their budgets, which is fine with us.

The agency of the future, which we like to think we are, should prepare itself for this new customer/agency relationship. When your customer can take a power point presentation, convert it to Flash, add voice over and click “Go”, it’s time to think about your business model. Self-serve marketing has arrived. The question for our agency becomes, “How do I empower my customer?”, not “How do I trap them into a longer-term contract?”

Schooner Tuna

June 22 2009

The parallels between 1983’s Mr. Mom and today’s automotive woes are scary. Jack Butler (Michael Keaton) loses his auto plant job due to layoffs. Caroline (Teri Garr) is forced to return to advertising to support the family.

Hijinks ensue. Jack can’t handle the kids. Caroline handles a sexist boss. Jack is hit on by his wife’s friend. Caroline strikes gold with one of the best tag lines in movie history. “Schooner Tuna, the tuna with a heart.” Classic. [If you have the full transcript of this commercial, please share.]

The point of the commercial shouldn’t be lost on marketers today. It is really easy to turn to price drops to increase demand for products and services in a down economy, but at what cost? If you positioned your brand as the high-end, quality solution, a price cut may do more harm than good.

Car makers, phone companies, clothing stores and more have turned to the Schooner Tuna approach. Schooner dropped prices, temporarily, to lend a hand to working moms (and dads) with the promise that it would raise prices when the economy turned upwards. America was coming out of the 1970s slump at the time, so the movie made sense.

Virgin offers pink-slip protection, Saturn, Hyundai and others have car payment assurance plans. If you get fired no worries they say, we’ll take the car back or let you keep it. What are dealers going to do with inventory on the lot anyway?

Will this approach work? Only time will tell.

As for VLG, our customers and prospects continue to ask us to slash prices citing tighter budgets. We positioned ourselves as a quality alternative to HTML landing pages and junk mail. We offer ourselves as much margin as makes sense in this ecoomy, but can’t go giving away the store to win or keep business. Instead we’ve chosen to vary our offering.

Multiple branches, custom actionscript, .Net manipulation of our application used in the past give way to smaller sites that deliver the slightly less functionality. This way we get to focus on delivering the best creative. Steady development and execution keep us from losing money on smaller deals where our margins are thin.

We obviously believe it does make sense for some of our clients to build robust sites. If you’re going to extend this program to your channel partners it makes sense to build a larger, more complicated microsite. Our quality, even on a small scale, beats the pants of traditional junk mail and static lead qual, form submit landing pages.

VLG stands for quality and effectiveness. We offer creative solutions to blunt the impact of this economy and recommend our customers do the same. Don’t sacrifice yourself on the alter of low prices. It could have far reaching consequences.

Don’t Get Carded

February 27 2009

April Dunford is one of our (new) favorites on the web. If you’re a fan of the beautiful game, or at least pretend to tolerate soccer (Joey) in certain company, you’ll appreciate this little piece.

Just like a foul in a soccer match, bad marketing decisions can be put in two buckets, says Ms Dunford. Sneaky, verbose, meaningless, unsegmented marketing will certainly get you booked. Now that you have a yellow card don’t push your luck. Repeat the same mistakes and you’ll end up with a second yellow that’ll get you tossed. Worse still, lie or cheat or spam and it’s a red card straight away. You won’t do your team any good if you’ve been sent off. Shame, shame.

VLG Dialog Marketing

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