Vegas, Baby

“Vegas Right Now” is coming to a city near you. Las Vegas is hoping to drum up tourism by sending its showgirls on the road to visit other big-city sporting events and attractions, and giving away a few free flights to Sin city along the way. New York City’s “Just Ask the Locals” uses star power to boost visits, while Philadelphia’s “More Summer Fun” plays to the pain at the pump by providing gas cards. I’m a sucker for deals, but all this promotional talk conjured memories of Atlanta’s unsuccessful $15 million “Every Day is an Opening Day” campaign.

Brand Atlanta, a conglomerate of the city's advertising and marketing specialists, is planning a new campaign -- one that will target young professionals and empty nesters who live a short flight from Atlanta, according to Brand Atlanta’s executive director Melinda Ennis-Roughton. The campaign will be promoted via event sponsorship, blogging and social networking. The major downfalls of the original campaign, cited in a September 2007 Atlanta Business Chronicle story, include an unmemorable tagline, an unclear distinction between branding and advertising, and surveying public opinion on the ad campaign after it was launched. These mistakes are evidence of Brand Atlanta’s disregard of three of c21’s golden rules, which we follow to garner Remarkable Results for our work – from branding and marketing PR plan development to media relations and special events.

Know your audience: Who will benefit from your product or service, and how can you best reach them? Consider multiple touch points appropriate for your audience by researching its behavior, desires, purchase patterns, etc. To those of us in Atlanta, it was unclear who the "Opening Day" campaign was trying to reach, and thus generated more confusion than action.

Nail your message: Design can only go so far. Involve your stakeholders, employees and customers in generating ideas – and be sure to include the “why.” “Every Day is an Opening Day” didn’t communicate “why” tourists should visit Atlanta, or why metro Atlantans should make the trip into the city.

Measure, measure, measure: Conduct a situational analysis. Measure milestones along the way. Measure your end results. Too often we concentrate on the finish line and miss opportunities to make adjustments along the way that could have a great impact on the success of the campaign. The year after Brand Atlanta was launched, the organization spent $1 million to survey tourists in other states to determine the effectiveness of the campaign. The results? Brand Atlanta did not increase desire to visit Atlanta, and only three percent recalled the “Everyday is an Opening Day” tagline. Aggressive focus group testing pre-launch and at predetermined milestones throughout the launch, as well as the involvement of Atlanta residents and out-of-state tourists in developing the “why” of the campaign, are just two check points that may have allowed the Brand Atlanta to change direction and become a success.

Marketing in Tough Times

Sharon Goldmacher, c21's president & CEO, was recently interviewed by DM News for an article about how real estate-related businesses should strategically market during an economic downturn.

Click here for the article and Sharon's insights into building brand awareness and generating sales leads with e-mail and direct mail marketing.

"Spellcheck didn't catch it"

"Spellcheck didn't catch it" is a common phrase heard for mispelled words in e-mails and documents. In fact, I'll probably use it a great deal in this blog. I mean, who has time to actually read what you're writing? Especially communications professionals or college students learning to become communications professionals (please note the sarcasm).


So, every once in awhile, I'll share some real-life, sometimes funny misspellings that have come across my desk and desktop. Of course, these misspellings were not committed by anyone at c21. Mainly they're gathered from a friend of mine who teaches business communications and public relations classes at a metro Atlanta university. She's trying to rectify the "spellcheck" problem, but there is only so much one person can do.


A recent example she provided to me ... Felling. Used in a sentence, "I'm felling this class. What should I do?" Keep in mind, Atlanta is in the South, but I'm not sure if she even answered this student.


There are many resources available for the spelling and/or grammar challenged. A good one in book form and online is Paul Brian's Common Errors in English Usage. And, of course, there are numerous online dictionary resources.


For a little chuckle about software spelling checkers, check out Jerrold Zar's poem "Owed to the Spelling Checker."

Design - Just because you can, doesn't mean you should

After conducting a communications audit for a client - reviewing more than 100 documents, brochures, Web sites and more - I had one very clear revelation. Similar to the joke of "why does a dog lick his balls? Because he can" - I learned that just because designers can use a range of special effects, doesn't mean they should.

In-house designers like to experiment. Experimentation is great - and when done well, can be quite successful. But more times than not, it falls flat on its face.

Our recommendation for clients is to create a brand standards manual to ensure consistency, professionalism and the end goal of reinforcing who you are, and what you're about with every communications piece created. Brand standards do not need to be complex. My favorite page in brand standard manuals is usually the one with Word art, shadow boxes and picture edging - all that have red x's or circle's with lines through them indicating that these effects should be used - never. I mean, you never see Coca-Cola's logo in pink, do you?

Nonprofits, especially start-ups, often have design donated by those desiring to be designers. As a result, colors, fonts and more importantly messaging is inconsistent. Gwinnett Children's Shelter tackled this problem by acquiring grant money to create new materials to reach their growing marketplace. We worked together with a cause marketing firm and a professional designer - all of us working at deeply discounted rates - to create a new logo, tag line, color palette and design standards. Since that first grant, we have created three professionally designed brochures, all with distinctly different color uses, but still within the brand standards set more than a year ago. More importantly, they have seen their awareness in the community rise, and the funding dollars grow.

Why It's Called the C-Word

Welcome to communications 21's blog, The C-Word, where c21's integrated marketing public relations experts will enlighten and -hopefully - entertain you with news, views and bugaboos from the industry and beyond. No topic is off-topic if it relates to the art of communication and creating real business results. We'll try to keep the shameless self-promotion to a minimum, but we will highlight cool things our clients and industry colleagues are doing.

You may be wondering why we chose to call our blog The C-Word. Obviously, it fits the company name and our other communications tools. But we also have to thank our very own Atlanta resident Jane Fonda for the inspiration. Her recent communications "oops" on a major network morning show sent us into hysterics and reminded us again of the power of the spoken word. We're also an irreverant bunch, and get a kick out of almost using one of the seven deadly words.

Welcome aboard!