Are you tuned in? Do you hear it? That sound? My guess is you don’t because you’re staring at a computer screen and thrusting your creativity into whitepaper digital groupthink trying to figure out what it will take to drive numbers. I have an idea for you but you’ll brush it off ‘cause conventional wisdom says it’s not “sexy”. I think results are sexy. Don’t you? Curious?

Good. Now, unhook from the cyborg grip and check it out: classic radio.

Radio drives MORE traffic to websites than any other medium. Are you really tuning in here? Let me say it again: exposure to radio advertising can boost online brand browsing by an average of 52%! Radio is one of the most powerful tools digital advertising has EVER seen in its toolbox, but for some reason “Creatives”, like yourself, don’t even consider radio and focus on “trendy” rather than using the most effective behavior driving medium in history. Pathetic isn’t it? In a world where everyone (EVERYONE) has a Radio, TOP Agencies aren’t even coming close to utilizing its power to populate websites and social media pages. What gives?

Really, what gives? If a “sexy” campaign is what you want for your portfolio use radio with digital. Bam! Sound. Sight. Action.

Facts about radio:

• Its audience has increased steadily since its introduction.
• It is the only medium that calls people to use their imagination.
• It uses oral tradition, song, and sound (Historically, the most effective mode of communication.) to unify many around a common experience.
• It is a sound force that pulls an audience into a world that involves their whole body - Listeners can feel the beat of a drum or the cry of a baby.
• It uses the most powerful sense we have for activating emotions and driving behavior: the power of the ear.
• It is the only medium that produces recall in both passive and active mental states.
• It is the number one trusted communication tool people count on for information for emergencies or disasters.
• It bonds Americans with a common national experience and yet provides a vocal niche for small tribes to identify themselves as sub-cultures like “Diddo heads or Alternative Rockers.”
• It reaches 92% of the general population weekly and 71% daily.
• It everywhere and accessible 365 days, 7 days a week, 24 hours a day.
• It is free.
• It is hyper-local and can have a national/world audience.
• It is on average 4x more cost-effective at stimulating brand browsing online.
• Just 10% of its use in a media mix can increase traffic to a unique URL by 52%.
• It is still the number one place youth use to discover new music.

So what’s your excuse? I’m sick of people telling me all the lame reasons they don’t use local radio. None of which have anything to do with facts or effectiveness. If a radio campaign failed it was not because of the medium. You don’t blame the megaphone when people fail to relate to the guy screaming in the streets.

Great radio advertising comes down to this: EXCELLENT CREATIVE and a schedule that says your committed to the audience.

Excellent radio creative requires a passion for understanding how human beings hear, process, and interact with sound and story. Superior radio creative is art and it is art that produces results.
Radio is the superpower of sound and story…maybe that doesn’t interest you but it is the ultimate megaphone with the power to unite and move people through emotion and a common experience.

I don’t know if any of this will break through to the assimilated many who only believe in the seduction of eye candy (digital or not) but its my hope that just one of you will break-a-way from the barriers of misperceptions and bias and explore how the sweet sound of Radio can make your digital and social media campaign a crowd roaring success.

Melissa Kunde
Executive Director, Portland Area Radio Council

Much has been written on this subject. There is no doubt that, at worst, the advertising award show is insular, self-serving and wildly in need of change. I’m not sure, however, that it’s the exclusive domain of dyed-in-the-wool boomer Mad Men and their beloved thirty-second TV spot as some would have it, but I do enjoy listening to these kinds of acid review.

I do think the award show still matters. It is a useful tool to determine the competitive bar, for recruiting the best and brightest, and it actually does matter to some clients (perhaps the ones you’d like to have…). It’s also a great way to promote community and celebrate our industry. While it makes sense for us to turn up our 2010 noses at the self-indulgent, champagne-soaked excess on the Cote D’Azur (although I’m bummed I never got to go), I do think there’s room for a celebration of the best in our industry. It just needs to change.

I absolutely don’t believe, as some have argued, that what we need is a fragmented, multi-category candy-sharing event, where everyone gets a pat on the back. There is simply no need for a newspaper category vs. email vs. public service vs. banner ad and so on. And there’s no reason why a truly captivating and effective email should not be judged alongside truly captivating and effective TV (for example). Along the same lines, I recently heard, to my abject dismay, some cohorts refer to ”performance” work as separate to ”creative” work. They’re all the same, for ****’s sake! We do this to sell stuff. The fundamentals of the job involve using creativity to perform.

So we’re all in the same game and if we do an award show at all, I think it has to be about celebrating the groundbreaking and the impactful. Did the work change the game? Did it exceed its goals by an extraordinary margin?

Competition is not democratic. Not everybody wins. You source the best judges and, in theory, the best work gets its just deserts. For the most part that actually happens (seriously, you can’t deny Wieden & Kennedy’s Old Spice work.) And not just because one idea had a bigger budget than another or because the judges value creativity for creativity’s sake.

This year, the Portland Advertising Federation’s Rosey Award Show will attempt to throw out the old bathwater without losing the baby. It won’t be perfect. But it will be different, inclusive and relevant. And next years’ will need to be different again. Ditto the year after. If we’ve learned one thing from these times, it’s that there are no formulae and we need to be constantly examining and re-examining our work, its effectiveness and, by extension, how we celebrate it at its best.

We’ll see you on December 2nd at Portland’s premier celebration of creativity: the all-new, all-happening Rosey Award Show.

Rebecca M Armstrong
Managing Partner, NORTH
Board Member, Portland Advertising Federation

* With apologies to our more sensitive British readers.

This originally appeared as an email letter circulated to PAF members and others associated with the Portand Creative Community.

Many of you have questioned why the PAF chose to disparage other cities in this year’s Rosey call to entries. The answer is that while some of us fervently believe that Portland is a creative hot spot, it is more in the nature of our creative culture to be humble and soft spoken about our talents.

So what if we suddenly awakened in this current competitive environment and showed a little more chutzpah and brio? What if we started bragging and ultimately, what if we started out and out trash talking like they do on the basketball court? That was the premise the PAF started with for the Rosey Awards; let’s let those other cities know who the heck we are.

And it worked, the campaign is being noticed by you, in Adweek and in other cities. Ironically, the execution seems to have bruised the sensibilities of a few of us in the community who would rather remain modest.

Personally I enjoyed the fun of the concept and know that at the end of the day, it isn’t the trash talking that matters, it’s that you win the game or in this case, a Rosey. So enter the Rosey Awards and show us what you got. The trash talking is optional.

Jerry Ketel
President
Portland Advertising Federation

Alcoa presents (sorry, that’s the beginning of a TV commercial of “The Catch” in the 1982 NFL NFC Championship flashback when Dwight Clark levitated to grab a perfect pass from Joe Montana to lift the 49ers over the Cowboys). But, I digress. My mind faded to the dramatic music to Monday Night Football, but it’s now back on the prize - bragging rights to the Third Annual PAF Battle of the Bands at Someday Lounge in Old Town / Chinatown, Portland, Oregon where the creatives show their true colors after dark.  If you want to take a look at videos from prior year’s Battle of the Band, now is your time to really soak in some entertaining video for 2008.  It’s going to be almost impossible for eROI to win it for yet a third year in a row, but we’re going to bring our “A” Game.  Check it (this is PAF’s main event email and all the info is below):

BATTLE OF THE BANDS

DATE:
Wednesday June 17, 2009

TIME:
6:00 pm

PLACE:
Someday Lounge
224 NW 5th Avenue
Portland, OR

COST:
$300 per band

Register your Band!
Contact Mike Terry at mterry@magnetoworks.com

(more…)

Anvil Media, Inc., a search engine marketing (SEM) services agency, announced today strong financial growth in 2008, continuing in 2009. The combination of a growing team, expanded services and new business led to an 20 percent increase in revenue over 2007. Anvil expects continued growth in 2009 through a new set of SEM audits and the trend to focus advertising dollars into more measurable marketing channels during a recession.

“Client demand for Anvil’s social media marketing services was greater than expected,” stated Kent Lewis, President of Anvil Media, Inc. “While we’ve seen early success with social media marketing efforts for clients like Animation Mentor and Hungry Man Entertainment, we believe it’s a long-term commitment and payoff. We’re bullish about the benefits of social media marketing moving forward.”

In addition to social media marketing, Anvil announced a new set of audit and planning services targeted at Fortune 1000 companies looking to evaluate or validate the effectiveness of their current SEM efforts. Current SEM audits include search engine optimization (SEO) audits, pay-per-click (PPC) audits and online reputation management (ORM) audits. Anvil will also offer strategic consulting retainers and staff training for companies with existing SEM resources interested in taking their SEM campaigns to the next level.

“Since a majority of Fortune 1000 companies already have SEM agencies or dedicated in-house teams, the audits are a cost-effective way to fine-tune SEM efforts,” stated Hallie Janssen, Vice President of Anvil Media, Inc. “We’re committed to providing our clients with valuable insights that will result in a measurable improvement on the return-on-investment for their SEM programs.”

In 2008, Anvil has helped more than 100 companies increase awareness, leads or sales through SEM. A partial list of new SEM clients includes: AboutUs, Animation Mentor, Daily Journal of Commerce, DoneRight, ExpressJet, gDiapers, Grand America Hotels & Resorts, HorsepowerFreaks, Nautilus, PeopleFinders, Point6, Sterling Trucks, Tea Collection, Travel Tacoma and World Class Driving.

Anvil also received local and industry recognition in 2008 for its financial performance and work with the local community. The Portland Business Journal ranked Anvil Media as the 10^th Fastest Growing Private Companies in 2007. Anvil also continues to take on pro bono charity client projects, most recently Ronald McDonald House Charities and FORGE. Lastly, Anvil continues to stay involved in the SEM community, through support of SEMpdx and helping incubate local SEM agency, Formic Media.

To help meet the growing demand for search engine marketing and social media marketing and optimization services, Anvil added seven new employees. Nick Herinckx, Eric King and Heather Schwartz were added as Account Coordinators; Kurtis Alward, Mike Nierengarten and John Robbins were added as Account Executives and Yael Livneh as Office Manager.

About Anvil Media

Headquartered in Portland, Oregon, Anvil Media, Inc. is a search engine marketing (SEM) consulting agency specializing in search engine optimization (SEO), pay-per-click (PPC) management, social media marketing (SMM), SEM PR and online reputation management (ORM) auditing and ongoing services. Anvil helps Fortune 1000 clients generate a return-on-investment (ROI) on their online marketing programs by auditing existing agencies, programs or managing SEM efforts. Current clients include Concordia University, Extensis, Flowerbud, GolfNow, Jive Software, Lucy, Oregon State University, PC World Magazine, Planar Systems, Provenance Hotels, Travel Portland, Tumbleweed and Yesmail. For more information, visit www.anvilmediainc.com.

@jerryketel can you weigh in on the whopper virgins campaign? http://www.whoppervirgins.com/

Dear @Ibautist,

The Whopper Virgins campaign is pure artful propaganda. The filmmaking—as seen on the microsite—is as good as any of the best documentaries I’ve ever seen. It was nicely photographed, the choice of music propelled the story, the subjects were treated with warmth and dignity. The story itself had an element of suspense to it and it rewarded the viewer by being both surprising and intelligent. It made me think. And that is where the piece failed. Because it made me think how manipulative the pseudo-documentary was. It made me think how unscientific the survey was and how the tasters were being polite hosts when asked how they liked the Whopper being grilled in their homeland before their eyes. Of course they said it was good! But most of all it made me think of how the documentary has been used recently as propaganda, thanks to the likes of Michael Moore and Errol Morris. And now, the documentary, a category unto itself in the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is being used to shill an industrial American hamburger. How far the art form has fallen.

It is really good propaganda. It just made me think too much.

Jerry Ketel

Once again we had a amazing Rosey Awards night. Thank you to all the agencies that submitted great work, all of those that volunteered to help put it on, the glorious and sadly now missed Livengood/Nowack for producing the media and collateral, the Newmark Theater for having us, Comedy Sportz for the showmanship, Jamie Sexton for pulling it all together and of course all of you that attended the show.

Here is the list of winners. Congrats to all.

I was able to shoot some video from my seat of some of the Awards, highlights, and out takes to share with all of you. They are not “Rosey” worth but none the less for those of you that did not make it this year, have never been but want to know what it is all about, or some of you that put that the term “happy hour” to the test and are having trouble remembering where you were last night, these videos are for you.

I have also found that there are some photos already posted up for you to view.

I look forward to hearing from all of you how you felt about the format this year (we tried to shorten the length of the overall program… happy hour was longer than the event) as well as hear what you might like to see next year. We would love your feedback. I see that we already have some props on the event blogged out there.

And to all of you that continue to support the Portland Advertising Federation and make it a great organization to belong to… Thank you.

By the way, please make sure to watch Part Five, it is a classic.

From Jerry Ketel, the PAF President, comes his first decree:

The Sexton Law

Whilst sitting on the Couch on Couch, Dylan Boyd’s (of eROI) den of emarketing excellence*, Jamie Sexton blurted out what was, at the time, a seemingly innocuous comment. She said, “Brands need to reinvent themselves every 18 months or so, don’t you think?”.  At the time, I remember Dylan and I looking at each other and nodding in approval. But later, the phrase stuck with me because it had a burning truth to it. And now I believe it to be a singular reality that needs to be called out as a genuine law of marketing, here forever to be known as the Sexton Law. That All brands, to be relevant, must reinvent themselves at least every 18 months, in many cases, sooner. Amen.

*Not to mention Ryan Buchanan and Maureen Pimley and if I’ve forgotten any others, my apologies.

Despite the economic slowdown, Anvil Media has managed to continue measured growth in 2008. In September alone, Anvil brought six new clients on board, including Amy Sacks Eyewear, BOORA Architects, Dapper Frog, PGE’s Green Power Oregon, Milgard and Point6. In addition, Anvil expanded its engagements with Nautilus Bowflex and Horsepower Freaks. Note: Anvil’s SEO Audit for Horsepower Freaks increased organic search traffic by over 1,000 percent in the first two months after implementation.

For agencies out there that are struggling through the economic downturn, I encourage you to shore up your client relationships by taking a deeper look at online marketing strategies, and how they integrate into the traditional marketing mix. Highly measurable, low-cost marketing campaigns are in great demand, and search engine and social media marketing are a natural solution. I encourage agency and client-side marketers to review their overall strategies and ensure all ad dollars are being measured and are generating a meaningful return-on-investment.

If you’re looking for more insight into how search and social media marketing can help you or your clients market more effectively, visit Anvil’s Resources section for helpful articles and our Clients section for illustrative case studies. In down economies, direct and online marketing pick up brand advertising and PR budgets, so it’s important to “stay close to the money,” as my uncle always says.

Congrats to PAF Member company Koopman Ostbo on great new client news.KOOPMAN OSTBO EXPAND ITS ROSTER OF FOOD AND BEVERAGE CLIENTSBoyd Coffee Company and Glutenfreeda Foods, Inc. have selected local integrated marketing communications agency Koopman Ostbo (KO) to support their public relations programs. With the addition of these two clients, KO continues to expand its food and beverage industries portfolio.

Boyd Coffee Company, headquartered in Portland, Ore. is a provider of specialty coffees, espresso, rare estate coffees and teas, and related equipment for restaurants and other foodservice operations nationwide and abroad. The 108-year-old company is a privately-held company managed by the third and fourth generations of the Boyd family. Boyds offers more than 650 coffee and food items, and counts renowned establishments such as Wolfgang Puck Fine Dining Group, the Luxor Hotel in Las Vegas, Metropolitan Grill and the Old Spaghetti Factory among its clientele.

Boyd Coffee Company sought KO’s expertise and strategic counsel to develop a public relations program and raise awareness of the company, its products and services. KO is also working with Boyd on tradeshow support and launching new products.

Glutenfreeda Foods, Inc., based out of Burlington, Wash., is a unique wheat/gluten-free food manufacturer producing gourmet gluten-free products. They initially launched a popular line of pre-formed frozen gluten-free cookies. The mother and daughter owned company also created the first online gluten-free cooking magazine in 1999, called Glutenfreeda.com. This Web site has more than 20,000 subscribers who are mostly gluten-intolerant customers, and offers a wealth of new and archived information featuring more than 5,000 gluten-free/wheat-free recipes.

This gluten-free food company, which recently achieved national distribution, tapped KO to create a public relations program to build awareness of their line of gluten-free cookies and resource website, as well as support launching future products.

“Our expertise in the food and beverage industries has allowed us to continue to make an impression on the media landscape for both clients and at the same time help them grow their business,” said Ken Koopman, Principal of Koopman Ostbo. “Boyds and Glutenfreeda are a great addition to our roster and we look forward to continuing our proven track record in our PR efforts.”