Geico wins points for creative advertising in the past. From the gecko to the money pile with googly eyes. I also really like this Speed Racer commercial. It’s classic.
One of the best ways to help your corporate cash flow is to advertise. If you have a catchy commercial or other type of advertisement, you can actually bring in more business. It is true: You have to spend money to make money. This is a fact even during a recession. It may be tempting to cut back your advertising and marketing budgets, but that might prove detrimental to you in the …read more

Following a $100 million investment in a global advertising campaign, Internet search giant Yahoo has recently unveiled a new and improved web portal in an attempt to attract more traffic and revenue. Yahoo’s upgraded web portal incorporates many new features that will hopefully increase interest in Yahoo’s website as a homepage.
One of the new features of Yahoo’s web portal allows users to embed third-party web services into their individual portals, letting users access their Facebook and Hotmail accounts directly from their Yahoo homepage. The move comes as Yahoo continues to struggle with profitability despite the fact that Yahoo.com is the …read more

Social networking is all about having contacts (friends, followers, whatever). There’s a fine line, though. If you’d too “exclusive,” your social networking attempt won’t really matter. Your contacts will probably already be supporting everything you do. There’s nothing to gain by being a social snob.
On the other hand, if you’re too friendly, your social networking attempts can go south quickly. Of course, you want as many contacts as possible…but there’s a catch. You want quality contacts, not just everyone and their mom. If you just accept everyone who crosses your path, half of your contacts will be spam sites, people …read more

I really like this MasterCard commercial. It’s a good one: Short, simple, memorable. Oh, and adorable. And it’s on a timely topic — back to school.
It occurs to me that advertising ought to be targeted. You want to approach people from a place they can recognize. And right now, that place is back to school. Especially for the women that make up a large portion of the consumer public. So it’s smart to emphasize the back to school theme, without pushing it too much. A nice balance between reminding you, and hitting you over the head with it. MasterCard’s “priceless” …read more

The massively popular video service website YouTube has signed a deal with media company Time Warner Inc. that will allow YouTube to feature exclusive program clips from several of Time Warner’s cable networks. The move will allow YouTube to increase the number of clips beside which the website can sell advertising in an effort to become profitable.
 
Currently, many potential advertisers shy away from YouTube because of a fear of placing their ads alongside user-generated content, seeing as videos posted by everyday users could have inappropriate content or feature unprofessional production. By making a deal with Time Warner, YouTube can sell …read more

After a rigorous volley of cost-cutting measures, newspaper giant The Washington Post Co. managed to avoid losses in its first quarter and post a profit in its second quarter. According to a report released today, the Washington Post experienced a net income of $11.4 million after taking in $1.13 billion in revenue its second quarter.
Just last year, the Washington Post had a loss of $2.7 million after taking in $1.11 billion, so this year marks a 2 percent overall increase in revenue. While the Post Co. is probably most closely associated with its newspaper division, its Kaplan education unit actually …read more

Walt Disney Co. has not managed to avoid being ravaged by the recession, as the global media giant had posted a third-quarter profit drop of 26 percent. Thanks to the recession, less and less people are able to visit Disney’s massively popular theme parks and fewer advertisers are able to spend money.
 
Due to Disney’s significant drop in profits, the company’s film studio has posted a loss for the third quarter, while the main company’s net income has fallen to $954 million from $1.28 billion a year earlier. Sales also declined 7 percent to $8.6 billion, significantly missing the $8.81 billion …read more

Small business owners are sticking to the “tried and true” marketing strategies in this tough economic year.  An October 2008 Small Business Marketing Outlook report by Adology shows that small businesses continue to be optimistic about marketing, but that they are not venturing out into new marketing efforts.
According to the Adology survey, small businesses say they will spend money for online advertising (69%), Yellow Pages (54%), newspapers (51%), and direct mail (51%).  This is pretty typical, standard marketing; nothing new and exciting here.  Even online marketing has been around for almost 15 years.
Top of the list. Most small businesses …read more

Writing a creative brief can help you plan your advertising by helping you to focus and providing a good basis for your ad (or other collateral). It should provide your basic purpose for the ad, list some supporting information, and set the tone for your brainstorming.
A basic brief can start with these three things:

Objective
Support
Tone

Here’s what they should generally include.
Objective
What is this ad or other marketing item supposed to accomplish? Think about your SMART goals and make this measurable and specific. Include a brief outline of your target customer here.
Support
What are you promising or claiming and how are you going to …read more

For those in the internet advertising business, the news must be strange to hear: internet ad sales, which have never been in decline since recovering from 2002’s dot-com burst, have finally slumped 5 percent in the first quarter. This means that the recession, which seemed to be mercifully sparing this sector of the Internet industry.
Much of the money to be made on the Internet comes from advertising, which means that this development is potentially concerning for both website developers and advertisers. Those who rely on Internet advertisement, though, are faring much better than newspapers and broadcasters. A decline in advertising in …read more