It’s the time of year for New Year’s resolutions. Lose weight. Straighten up. Fly right. Stop this. Stop that. But why not decide to START some things this year? The Association can help.

Our purpose, here at The Association, is to increase marketing results for our clients with an effective marketing plan. We have a broad spectrum of “results-oriented” specialists available for your marketing campaigns – Social Networking, Pay Per Click, Web Videos, Animations, TV commercials, corporate video production services… But will a new campaign work? Should you risk your money? The Ogilvy & Mather website says, “Creating an emotional connection is one of the hardest things to do in marketing.” We agree. That’s why we use Optimized Market Research prior to executing a client campaign. Optimized Market Research nails down the “golden” data that guides our creative team to come up with campaigns that make the phone ring.

For example, one of our marketing campaigns for a heart doctor was initially going to feature the world-renowned doctor himself in the direct response TV ads.  However, the Optimized Market Research indicated that heart patients don’t trust their doctors. They only trust other heart patients! So our TV spots featured heart patients instead of the doctor.

Similarly, the research for an attorney’s campaign revealed that people don’t trust lawyers. So we repositioned our attorney client to be a “consumer advocate” (which was actually more accurate anyway). Both campaigns drove in hundreds of leads in just a few days. We later created a video for the same law firm which continued to position them as consumer advocates:

By using Optimized Market Research, we have also increased Internet PPC (Pay Per Click) conversions by 4X the industry average. A conversion is when a prospect clicks on the pay per click ad to go to a “landing page.” On that page, they either fill out a form (convert) or they don’t. If they don’t convert, your money’s wasted. It’s also important that the people who click and “arrive” at the landing page are actually interested in what’s being sold! Part of Optimized Market Research is determining how to appeal only to the right audience. How much money would you save if the all the “wrong” prospects for your product or service avoided your ad?

A well research and executed campaigns is an investment. It should generate revenue, build a strong customer base and make a great future. Bottom line: We make the phone ring. Call us and we can get you on your way to a nice 2012. That’s our purpose. Go, baby, go!

*Ogilvy & Mather – an international advertising, marketing, and public relations agency based in New York City and owned by the WPP Group.

Have you ever said, “I’ll use Twitter the day Clint Eastwood takes up knitting!”?

You’re not alone. A lot of business people still aren’t sure Twitter is of value to them in business. In fact, they’re unclear about this whole corporate social media and social networking on the web. I was dragging my heels as well, probably because I didn’t understand what it was.

So, what is a social network?

Wikipedia says, “A social network is a social structure made of individuals (or organizations) called “nodes,” which are tied (connected) by one or more specific types of interdependency, such as friendship, kinship, financial exchange, dislike, sexual relationships, or relationships of beliefs, knowledge or prestige.” From this definition you can see that social networking isn’t something new. I’ve got a social network and so do you. In fact, social networks have been around since the caveman days.

Cavemen were “tweeting” to alert each other of danger or perhaps just to check in with the wife. Caveman Ralph would stand on a hill and let out a scream that meant (roughly translated), “Leaving work, now, honey. Want me to pick up a pig on the way home?” As we’ve evolved, we’ve adopted innovative software to help us do caveman tasks. Take PowerPoint, for example. Before the big wooly mammoth hunt, the tribe leader, Tor the Merciless, would have his “creative artist”, Larry, paint “slides” on the cave so he could show his cross-eyed but well-meaning warriors what to do when the mammoth comes.

Tor would then “present” to the group to get their buy-in on his strategy for the hunt. (Tor tried to keep it down to less that twelve words per slide.) We’ve adopted PowerPoint to help me accomplish this age-old task of getting group buy-in. Surely we can adopt innovations to help us with our social networking.

If you’re having trouble adopting social networking it may be that you don’t understand the innovation. According to Wikipedia, Everett Rogers, in his studies of innovation, says that your “willingness and ability to adopt an innovation depends on your awareness, interest, evaluation, trial and adoption”.

And it’s true. I have been an early adopter of many things, if I understood them (understanding), they apply to me (interest) and they had value to me (evaluation) and worked well (trial). I did drag my feet and only bought the “Clapper” when the price came down. That’s because I didn’t place the value on it (evaluation) that they were selling it for originally. In summary, these new social networking web tools will make it much easier to stay in touch with the people in our social network in this time-shifted, virtual office world we live in.

And it’s so much better than screaming from the hilltop.

You could say that understanding enterprise social media is not such a mammoth task after all. Trevor, our social media strategist will explain it to you and how you can use it. If you’d like to understand Social Networking and social media marketing better, we heartily recommend a book called Social Media Marketing On One Hour a Day by Dave Evans. Wiley Publishing, available on Google at this link

In 1985 when we made our first custom video production for Princess Cruises, video was just beginning to come in to corporate use.  The standard medium in the then fledgling Cruise Industry was a 16mm film which would be shown at a “Cruise Night”. These were events organized by travel agents where thirty or forty potential travelers would watch two or three films from the various Cruise Lines and hopefully be persuaded to go on a cruise. So our first film was shot, edited and shown in 16mm film. To show how relatively new the video medium was in that day, when I asked Princess if they wanted to make some VHS copies of the film they asked me why!!

The success of that first film was evidenced by the fact that Princess used it as their main sales and promotional piece for nearly 10 years! (They eventually saw the wisdom of video as a more exportable medium and had me make thousands of copies.) It also was the first of over 150 films and videos that we produced for Princess over the next 24 years.

Those years have seen sweeping changes beyond just the ascension of video as a recording and delivery medium. The dizzying rise of the Internet as a driving force behind the marketing, promotion and sales of cruises has caused a mad rush on the part of all the Cruise Lines to get their share.

But the Internet is just another delivery medium, like those original VHS tapes. Even in this Youtube, Twitter driven day, when it comes to content certain classic truths remain. Foremost is story. Every film or video has to have one to be any good. Second is that people are more interested in other people rather than things. Third is that, when you are dealing with visual media, you need to show what it is you are talking about. These may seem elementary, but you would be surprised how often they are violated.

When we produced “A World Apart” in 1985 we knew from talking to agents and potential passengers that the single biggest obstacle in convincing a person to take a cruise was a lack of data of what the experience would be about. This was in a day when not that many people had taken a cruise. So we set out to capture the experience.

We did this by filming various crew members from the Captain on down to waiters and room stewards and got them to tell us what they did. We then showed them going about their daily routines while we heard them describe what they enjoyed about their jobs. By showing actual crew members (somewhat handpicked of course) in actual cruise situations, as well as happy passengers and what they enjoyed about cruising, we were able to successfully convey the fun and adventure of an ocean cruise.

We also made the experience much more real to the viewer and dispelled some misgivings.

But that was then. How does this relate to today’s world of instant media gratification? Well, oddly enough, the more things change the more they stay the same. Princess Cruises recently moved from an old guard agency, Grey, to a virtual unknown boutique called Ignite. The reason was that Ignite deals almost exclusively with online advertising. And what did Ignite come up for their main marketing thrust?

Pretty much just what we had done with “A World Apart”! As you surf the web you might come across a pretty banner ad with a Princess Cruises Vessel sailing along in some beautiful far away sea. The ad says, “Click to see what it means to Escape Completely (Princess’ new tag line)”. When you do you are treated to an array of video snippets of passengers and crew, pretty much just like what we did in “A World Apart”. It happens quicker and the videos are shorter, to accommodate the Internet attention span, but the purpose and performances are exactly the same. The Internet is just a medium to convey information. The basics of what influences, entertains and moves people are still the same.

Compare Cruise Director Jim with the (more sophisticated but the same idea)  Princess Cruises Internet Campaign twenty four years later.

Lisa Tanzer has been a supervising producer for reality tv shows such as “Amish in the City,” “Deadliest Catch,” and “Triple Rush.” Lisa is currently the VP for Current Programming for Warm Springs Productions, and just became a Canon Boot Camp Survivor.

“What I liked about the boot camp was that it was very hands-on. It made me feel more comfortable with the camera. I’m sure I’d want to take pro level ll so I can become even more comfortable with it. I would absolutely recommend this workshop. I was literally trying to think of people I could recommend it to!”

Our attidtude towards training people in the Canon HDSLR 5D and other cameras, is that we assume you have a job the following week that requires use of the Canon HDSLR. It’s not just talk, it’s hands-on.  To find out more about our current and upcoming classes, visit www.canonbootcamp.com

It’s hard to remember back over twenty five years when the last original episode of The Love Boat aired. Of course, that show has been in heavy syndication since then and the mythology has it that an episode is constantly playing somewhere in the world. But back in 1985 it was considered to have ‘jumped the shark’ and network execs felt justified in pulling the plug. Little did they know, however, that the lame little show would have a huge impact far beyond the entertainment world. It can reasonably be stated that The Love Boat launched a multi-billion dollar Cruise Industry that services over 13 million people a year and continues to grow. But The Love Boat had help. Enter, The Association!

In 1985 Princess Cruises asked us to make a promotional film to convince people to forsake a land-base vacation for the pleasures of a Princess Cruise. At the time, the industry served less than a million people and Princess had four ships, including the Island and Pacific Princesses, the original “Love Boats”. It was truly an unbelievable assignment and, realizing how fortunate we were, we set out to make the World’s Greatest Cruise Line Promotional Film. The success of our film was evidenced by the fact that Princess used it as their main sales and promotional piece for nearly ten years! It was also the first of over 150 films and videos we produced for Princess over the next twenty-four years. There are now 12 ships in the fleet with a capacity twenty times greater than when we signed on. Coincidence? We think not.

Although, we really can’t take total credit for the success of Princess Cruises and the greater Cruise Industry, there is no question that our original film was extremely successful both from an artistic and a business point of view. Why? Well, it wasn’t because we were such creative or experienced filmmakers. We weren’t. The real reason this film did so well was because we did the primary and secondary research on the potential audience really, really well. We asked dozens of travel agents about their clients’ views on cruising. Why they would or wouldn’t, what they expected, what they feared. We took a cruise and asked everyone on board why they were there, why they chose Princess, what they liked and didn’t like, etc. etc. We finally developed a crystal clear view of exactly what potential cruise passengers thought and what they would respond to. Then we went out and made a film that played to just those points. We knew it would be successful before we even started editing, simply because it addressed the audiences expectations.

Over the years we have employed this simple technique numerous times. In fact, we never make commercial productions without at least some survey of the prospective audience and their viewpoints. These days we utilize Optimized Market Research with one of our professional survey partners to do an in depth study so we can really get a handle on the viewing audience. It is probably the single most important activity of all of the many actions that result in a completed film. We are amazed when others in our industry don’t do this. It can almost guarantee success. This is just as true now as it was twenty-four years ago.

So if you want a successful commercial, promo or marketing video, regardless of the medium in which it’s shot or ultimately shown or displayed, never forget the market research data collection. Research your audience. Don’t shoot a frame before you really feel comfortable that you know exactly what that audience will respond to.As we say, “Know before you go.”

Michael Brewer has worked for ABC-TV, Good Morning America, ESPN, VH-1 and other broadcast outlets. His work has taken him to international locations including South Africa, Hong Kong, Cuba, and most recently Namibia.

“I had never worked with DSLR and wanted to get a solid background in it,” says director/cinematographer and Pro Level ll Graduate, Michael Brewer.

“I wanted to learn from people who really knew a lot about cameras, and [The Association] really know their stuff.

“I had researched workshops and I came upon a workshop done by [other organizations]. It was $1500. I ended up asking a few of my friends and colleagues about good workshops that were affordable. A couple of people recommended the boot camp at The Association. They told me it was great, and that it was only about $400. One guy told me, ‘After you take this class, all your questions will be answered’ and they were!” 

The Association is a direct response advertising agency that has been providing Canon Certification on the Canon’s HDSLR 1D, 5D and 7D cameras for nearly 2 years. With over 28 years of background in corporate video production services, we thrill in teaching newbies and skilled industry experts alike in today’s cutting edge digital technologies. For more information about our Canon certification classes, contact us or visit www.canonbootcamp.com.

(Thanks to our Association Time Transporter, we’ve been able to bring Sherlock Holmes and his steadfast companion, Dr. Watson, up to present day to address the issue of Web 2.0.)

“First of all, Watson, let’s define our terms,” said the lanky man with the pipe and the funny hat. “What, Watson, is Web Two Point OH?,” Mr. Holmes asked.

Watson’s eyes traveled back and forth across the floor, as if he would find the answer walking across the floor on the back of an ill-fated mouse.

“Falling asleep, old friend?” Sherlock remarked, snapping Watson out of his swamp of confusion. “Web Two Point Zero, according to Wikipedia,” Holmes began, “is commonly associated with web development and web design that facilitates interactive information sharing, interoperability, user-centered design and collaboration on the World Wide Web. Examples of Web 2.0 include communities,    hosted services, web applications, social-networking sites, video-sharing sites, wikis, blogs, mashups and folksonomies. A Web 2.0 site allows its users to interact with other users or to change website content, in contrast to non-interactive websites where users are limited to the passive viewing of information that is provided to them.

The term is closely associated with Tim O’Reilly because of the O’Reilly Media Web 2.0 conference in 2004.’ I’ve drawn up a simple slide that conveys this concept.”

Holmes lit the candle in the lamp of an early day, slide projector.  A slide (below) appeared on the screen.

Watson snored quietly in the corner as Sherlock  continued.

“What this means, Watson, is that Web 2.0 has enabled all of us to become article publishers,  blographers, videographers, public relations people…all exchanging viewpoints and media and….”

Watson’s snoring came to a choking halt as Holmes kicked his foot.

“Do you not realize, Watson, the tremendous communication capability at your fingertips and the size of the potential network you can create?”

Watson shirked. “But, I’ve got nothing interesting to say.”

“Then, we must find out what people think is interesting, and write about that,” Holmes concluded. Watson looked exasperated. Watson’s problem is shared by many.

What do you say that will be interesting?  What do you communicate that will be relevant? If your communication is not “relevant” then you’re just wasting your time and your money. The promise of Web 2.0 is to have followers and friends and fans gathering around, intrigued by the media you’re sending out.  Waiting for your ‘tweets’.

Wouldn’t it be great to know just what to say, what pictures to show? So, how do you create an effective social media marketing plan that is relevant to your target audiences as part of an market development strategy?

Well, as Holmes said, it starts with some detective work.  We have a team.  We do market research data collection and surveys before we start the creative design of social media. In fact, we do it before any marketing campaign.

Our market research director, has done thousands of surveys and uncovers the most fascinating data. Her primary and secondary research has helped us create campaigns that were right on target, saving our clients hundreds of thousands of dollars. Here’s a quick case study. An Attorney wanted to reach prospects who had been abused by debt collectors. We surveyed his target audience and specifically asked them, “If you had a valid case of debt collector abuse, would you turn to an attorney for help?”

Over 60% said ‘No’.  We asked why.

The answer? “I don’t trust attorneys.”

So our campaign didn’t show an attorney, sitting at his desk shot with law books in a bookcase behind him.Instead, we showed a group of ’consumer advocates’.

The strategy worked. 343 reaches in first 3 days in a two-prong campaign on the web and on TV.

But if we’d neglected to get professional marketing research done, our attorney friend would have thrown a lot of money into a “standard” attorney marketing concept that wasn’t relevant to his target audience. Not only that, when the market for debt collection services changed, we applied the same research to a new spot highlighting the company’s lemon law services, as shown in the video below:

So, if you want to be “relevant” to your target audience, you need good, professional Market Research data collection. Elementary.

Like to know a secret to improving your email marketing effectiveness? Try including a link to an interesting video. Here’s the lowdown. The Association uses an email service, Constant Contact, to do our email marketing and PR. These marketing/PR emails always include a link to a video.  According to Constant Contact, 23.7% of the people who open our email click the link to play the video. (see BLUE below).

So how does our conversion rate compare to others business sectors who don’t necessarily use video? Our Conversion Rate (in blue above) is 4 times higher than the industry average –(in red above), and 10x higher than Marketing/PR businesses (in yellow above).

How does all this help you?

We create custom video productions that make your email marketing more effective.  People love video.  They’d rather click “PLAY” than read. So, if you want to improve your Marketing/PR email conversion rate, call us. We’re ready to PLAY.

One of the perks of being in the TV Commercials production business is lunch. Sometimes this can be a hurried sandwich-grab and some chips, but not usually. Not if you time your shooting script right. Everyone has heard stories of fabulous wrap parties where tables full of food and drink get consumed and everyone has a real good time. Well, some of those stories are true. I always used to give my crew the best wrap dinner I could, and since we were often in some exotic port or city there were usually plenty of choices. Once I treated them to a “wrap spa” overnight experience in Nagasaki, Japan, including twenty-course gourmet dinner, bottomless Sake cups, massages by blind people and soaking in the natural hot springs of a three-hundred year old resort. But that was just taking our reward for a job well done. Easy to pull off. A great lunch in the middle of a shoot in the middle of the day is a much more subtle and refined art. Possibly the best one ever was the Thousand-Dollar Lunch in Venice, Italy.

Our video production crew and I were in Venice shooting the Maiden Voyage of the Grand Princess and we had a cute model couple who tootled around with us while we videoed their every move. The way I had come by this couple was a story in itself. The girl, Lisa, was an ex-model and was working in a top talent agency in Miami. I had used her to cast several models I used on a Caribbean Cruise for Celebrity Cruises and in the course of the casting I had gotten to know her quite well. Lisa had told me she was getting married shortly and the honeymoon was all set for somewhere in Mexico.

She was marrying one of the models in her company’s stable named David. When I finished with the Celebrity shoot, Princess called and wanted us to cover the Grand Princess Inaugural Cruise in the Mediterranean (See my other article titled “Midnight Express-Oh!”). They wanted to cast two models to be the focus couple. I called up Lisa and started her casting for this couple. I asked her how her wedding went and she said it was great but the Honeymoon fell through due to something or other with the resort.

That’s when I got this great idea.“How about a two week honeymoon on a luxury cruise in the Med, I said, all expenses paid!” Well that wasn’t too difficult to sell. She and David were thrilled with the idea. I knew they would be a good addition to the crew. (Not always the case. See previous article  “Smooth Shooting on Rough Seas”). The fact that I would be saving lots of money on models fees didn’t hurt. So off we went to Europe, and to this day David and Lisa get out the video we made of the trip and play it on their anniversary. Probably the best Honeymoon Video ever made.
And that brings us back to the Thousand-Dollar Lunch.

Venice is probably the most photogenic city in the world and we “shot the sh@t out of it” as they say. We shot David and Lisa in a gondola, David and Lisa in St. Mark’s Square, David and Lisa in a vaporetto on the Grand Canal. We were being escorted around in a beautiful vintage motorboat with a lovely Italian guide, all courtesy of Princess Cruises. When it came time for lunch, the driver of the boat said he knew just the spot. Yes he did.

We tied up at a picture perfect Italian Trattorria right on the Grand Canal. Grape vines were hanging over the trellises, the waiters were all dressed up, it was something right out of a promotional video. Hey, wait, we’re shooting a promotional video! So we just kept rolling. The Maitre’ D graciously opened the gate leading to the patio for our couple. They were given a romantic table right on the canal, they had pasta and wine and desert all served by the waiters straight out of Central Casting and we rolled on the whole thing. Of course, we all had lunch right next to them, just out of camera view. And what a lunch!

Unbelievable pasta, seafood and wine – it just kept coming. I’m sure we were there for nearly three hours. When we finally got the bill, it came to a few million Italian Lira. We really couldn’t figure out exactly how much it was, but we knew it wasn’t going to be cheap. When we finally did the math it came in at just over a grand. But we were in high spirits (not to mention the wine consumption) and we had gotten some absolutely gorgeous shots of the couple having a romantic lunch on the Grand Canal in Venice. “Come on”, I said to Jack, our Princess chaparone, “look at it as a location fee.” And that’s just how it appeared on his expense account. To be honest, shooting a similar scene in Venice, California would have cost twice as much and we wouldn’t have gotten lunch!! And really, if you are going to set a record for most expensive location lunch ever (this was just a crew of five) what better place to do it than Venetia! Molto Bene!  Here is a video clip of David and Lisa in Venice.

When shooting custom video productions on location, always be open to the serendipitous event. (This applies to any vacation as well as filming on location.)

By this I mean: have a definite plan, but be alert for those golden opportunities that might present themselves along the way. The key to this openness is to be absolutely locked down in your prep. Only in this way can you have the freedom to know how much leeway you have for “audibles”, those deviations from the plan that sometimes yield the best shots in the film that fit perfectly into the clients marketing development strategy. This prep often includes a scout. I do this whenever possible. If there is one thing I’ve learned about locations, it’s that nothing is ever what you expected it to be. The idea is to be prepared down to the last detail and then be completely flexible. I learned about these two seemingly contradictory things on my very first major film shoot. This was a custom video production to create a promotional film for Princess Cruises, to be shot mostly in the Caribbean, starting with the major port city of Charlotte Amalie on the island of St. Thomas.

We arranged to scout this island and arrived looking for a place to rent a vehicle. As we walked off the ship, we were greeted by the usual mob of tee shirt-selling, wildly gesticulating locals all vying for our tourist dollars. One guy separated himself from the pack and somehow got our attention. “What you need, mon?” he asked. I tentatively muttered something about a place to rent a scout vehicle but all the while I was craning my neck trying to find the “authorized” Princess tram into town. “No problem,” the guy said gesturing to his vehicle, “get in the Jeep.” Wondering how much this was going to cost and exactly where we would be taken I stalled, looking around for something a little more conservative. But this was Cha-Cha (we learned later) and he didn’t suffer foolish tourists well. “Get in the F—ing Jeep!” he commanded, and we had to obey.

Riding into town we explained to Cha-Cha why we were there. He turned out to be a goldmine of information and, as promised, took us right to the best Jeep rental place in town. Cha-Cha pointed out some of the better spots to shoot on the island and told us about some of the pitfalls to avoid. He turned out to be a very cool and intelligent guy who aspired to be a standup comedian and worked the comedy clubs in town at night. He was also no stranger to film production. I arranged with him to help us when we came back to shoot and to transport us around St. Thomas at that time. He promised to meet us with his cousins and plenty of vehicles.

Three weeks later I and our video production crew were back in St. Thomas with a couple of models and a full shooting crew. Sure enough, Cha-Cha and his cousins met us at the dock and we were off on a very full schedule of filming all around the island. Thanks to our previous scouting, we knew exactly where to go and in what sequence to shoot in order to maximize our time. By early afternoon we had captured all our necessary shots and even had time for a nice Caribbean lunch. (See a similar article, “The Thousand Dollar Lunch”.) Since I had the leeway, I could shoot an unscripted idea I had to utilize Cha-Cha and his unique bartering skills to start off our film. If I could capture on film my own fears when Cha-Cha first approached us, I could effectively contrast this with the comfort and security of a Princess Cruise. If it worked, great. If not, nothing ventured nothing gained.

The final result was actually better than I expected. Using his innate acting skills, Cha-Cha terrorized our dazed and confused model couple and whisked them off to a broken down motel in the middle of nowhere. This dramatized the danger and uncertainty of a “land based” vacation in a very funny way. When contrasted in the film with the same couple enjoying the luxury and ease of a Princess Cruise, the comparison was easily and humorously made, and the audience put in just the right mood. Cha-Cha turned out to be the best thing about the whole experience (if not the film!) and for years travel agents referred to that Princess film as “the one with the laughing cabdriver”, even if they remembered nothing else about it. So thanks, Cha-Cha, wherever you are, for helping jump-start my career. I hope people are still getting in your F—ing Jeep. I’m sure glad I did! Below is the video of Cha-Cha doing his thing.