Oddball Update

At work, we recently started doing some advertising in print magazines — a first for us. Our company is pretty small, so the director of marketing is really just our most outgoing salesperson. He came up with an idea for our print ad campaign that was definitely out of the box, and actually seemed a little risque. My advertising experience is limited to the standard “corporate” type fare — you know, conservative and professional — but I was willing to give the new idea a try. Hell, it was certainly a lot more interesting to design.

There were some nay-sayers at the company, including one who called the campaign “tacky,” and others who were quietly asking for my opinion behind the marketing director’s back. I was honest — telling them I wasn’t sure it was the best way to go, either, but we have so little experience in doing advertising — and so little of it turned out to be effective — that I thought a radical new approach was worth a try. What we needed to do, I said, was run the ad for a few months and gauge the reaction.

Well, it looks like this advertising idea has proven itself effective. Since the magazines we’re running in started hitting mailboxes, we’ve been getting tons of calls and emails that specifically reference the new ads. Even better, that reaction has been overwhelmingly positive. One guy even emailed to say his company was looking to partner with an advertising agency, and asked if we would share the name of the agency we used to create our ad. Heh — no agency here, just the marketing guy, little old me and Photoshop! It’s pretty flattering that corporations are assuming we had to hire an ad agency to create something as good as this.

Another guy wrote in to say that he initially thought our ad would appeal mostly to men. (It features a picture of a rather attractive woman.) But, he says, he asked his wife to look through the magazine and point out the most interesting thing in it, and she picked our ad. So hey, even if we don’t necessarily appeal, at least we’re interesting — which is all advertising really needs to be.

I’m stoked that my design work has gotten some more exposure — particularly in a field where I don’t really have any exposure. As for the director of marketing, who recently feared his job was on the chopping block, it seems that his worth has been proven.

Tonight, we’re launching our brand new websites, online store, discussion forums, and CRM services to help us better reach and manage customers both new and old. Together with our new advertising initiative, plus the new wave of products we’re currently working on, it looks like 2008 could stand to be a pretty good year indeed.

Tagged as advertising, business, design, marketing + Categorized as Life, Life/Work