Timely Tidbits from Media II Advertising, Public Relations, Sales Promotion

In This Issue:

• Creativity that Hurts
• Easy Way to Make a Difference
• Easier Full Article Text Searching
• Industry Deck Deals a Hot Hand
• Overture Adds Marketing Console
• Volume Discounts Available for Webcast Services
• Quote of the Month

Creativity that Hurts

A good creative idea in an ad, mailer, brochure, etc. enhances your message by getting noticed, linking emotionally with the reader/viewer and helps build a favorable image of your company. A smartly worded headline, interesting photo/illustration and playful copy all rolled together in a seamless message will get noticed and responded to.

But some confuse good creative with gimmicks to get attention. For example, there is a company that makes very large fans for moving air in commercial and industrial spaces. The headline of their ad and company name? “Big A s s Fans.”  But would you submit a purchase requisition to your superior with Big A s s Fans on the vendor line?

Another gimmick is making overstatements in a headline. Think we have all seen headlines like, “We Do It All.” Of course, nobody does everything, and this headline doesn’t tell you if they do it well, do it poorly, or for that matter, what they do and why you should care.

Using themes that include babies, dogs and other borrowed interest crutches that don’t connect to the audience or the product/service are other ways marketers waste money. Remember, good creative relates to the reader’s needs emotionally and intellectually. Using an attention-getter, just for the sake of an attention-getter, may do more damage than good because the reader is challenged to understand how your offer relates to the attention-getter.

There are many other gimmicks like running ads upside down, boldfacing brand names in text, using too many fonts or colors, and more. Have a pet peeve about gimmicks you’ve seen? Send them to us to share with the rest of our readers.

Easy Way to Make a Difference this Holiday Season.

Campbell's Soup is donating a can of soup to the needy for every person that goes to their site and votes for their favorite NFL team. Go to the site: http://www.chunky.com/chunky_home.asp and then click on "Tackling Hunger" to select your NFL team and donate a can of soup, very easy to do.

It will only take a few seconds of your time to fill some empty tummies with warm soup this winter.

Please forward this message to everyone in your address book too.

Easier Full Article Text Searching

LookSmart has thrown its hat into the field of full-text article searching. It has launched a service that allows Internet users to search more than 700 publications to find 3.5 million articles. It replaces LookSmart's former FindArticles publication database.

The content is free and includes magazines such as Variety and Sunset, along with Vegetarian Journal, Shape and the Journal of Respiratory Diseases, as well as other medical journals. The content starts in 1998 and LookSmart said it's often not available at the web sites put together by the publications themselves.

Search starts at LookSmart's Articles tab, which can be used to check a magazine title by issue or within a publication.

"With these helpful features, users will be able to find anything from medical papers to travel profiles, and from literary journals to celebrity biographies quickly and easily," said Peter Adams, chief technology officer at LookSmart.

Industry Deck Deals a Hot Hand

Industry Deck from New Equipment Digest magazine is using some patent-pending technology that seems to appeal to advertisers and buyers alike.  This electronic deck of cards is emailed to over 65,000 opt-in subscribers and enables the recipient to flip through the deck in their email window, not by switching to their browser as other systems require. Recipients can quickly flip through the cards and click on links to go to the advertiser’s site.

Benefits include a lower cost, space rates range from $1,530 to $2,095 USD, fast response, no incoming postage costs. Probably the biggest benefit is just the uniqueness of this deck. For more information, go to http://demg.penton.com/industrydeck, or contact Media II.

Overture Adds Marketing Console

Overture, the search engine placement advertising service, has launched a Marketing Console. It is an online integrated marketing intelligence product that enables advertisers to measure the performance of their marketing campaigns across all online channels. The console allows advertisers to measure Web-wide campaign effectiveness by tracking which campaigns, channels, and creative are generating the most cost-effective leads and conversions on their web sites. Users can also monitor the performance of all of their online advertising relative to standard marketing metrics, along with integrating campaign cost data.

For more information, go to www.overture.com

Volume Discounts Available for Webcast Services

One of the questions we’ve been repeatedly asked is if there are volume discounts for Applause! presentation webcasting services. The answer is absolutely yes! Discounts up to 40 percent are available for monthly webcast subscribers. Contact us for more information. Like to see an archived webcast? Go to www.mediaii.com.

Quote of the Month

“Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm.”

- Sir Winston Churchill

The Public Bath?

In ancient times, public baths were places that men of learning and curiosity gathered to exchange ideas. Today those places no longer exist (unless you count hot tubs), so we've tried to adapt the bath's open freewheeling tone into a newsletter. We hope you'll read our Public Bath in just that spirit.

The Public Bath is not "first-thing-on-Monday" reading. Rather, it is more like "fifteen-minutes-till lunch on Friday" or, "on hold" reading. Some material is amusing, some sociological, some newsy and we hope -- all thought-provoking.

We also want to answer your questions and hear your reactions. Have a topic you would like us to explore? Let us know that too. After all, public baths are places for both listening and talking.

About Media II, Inc. – Media II is a full-service marketing communications firm that specializes in serving business-to-business marketers in a wide variety of industries. We offer marketing communications planning, print and email advertising, public relations, sales literature development, graphic design, direct mail, web site development, webcasting, database publishing, and search engine placement services. Like to know more? Visit our web site www.mediaii.com

Media II, Inc. / 34900 Chardon Road / Willoughby Hills, OH 44094 / 440-975-8201 / www.mediaii.com

If you have a topic you would like to see us address or if you would prefer not to receive this newsletter, please let us know. Email roy@mediaii.com