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by Liz Maimone
Ways you can help end hunger:
1. Donate to your local food bank
2. Volunteer at a soup kitchen
3. Doodle a pants-wearing flamingo on a piece of toast
Oh, Booktoberfest. You came into our lives last fall and have brought us nothing but good news ever since. First a handful of ADDYs, now a spot in the 9/10 Graphis Poster Annual. When will you stop, you cute little book who looks like a beer?
Matt Low may not be very good at bobbing for apples or giving ponies haircuts. But he’s really good at his job, which is why he’s been promoted to vice president/associate creative director. Matt actually started out at Crowley Webb as an intern, while finishing his degree in Communications Studies at Canisus College. Mr. Low was then hired as copywriter in 2000, promoted to senior copywriter in 2003, and became copy supervisor in ’05. That’s the stuff Lifetime movies are made of, people.
Matt certainly brings a lot to the table, including more ADDYs then your seven-year-old cousin can count. But at the end of the day, he’s just a nice guy. Which, next to being an uber-talented creative, is the most important thing in our book.
Okay, prior to this week, Crowely Webb’s contact with Russians has been limited to cursing Max Afinogenov on the ice and waving to Phil, our Russian parking attendant. Yet here we are again, being shown love from our brethren halfway around the world. Truly our agency is benefiting the most from the end of the Cold War.
(Once again, for your enjoyment, a fantastic Google translation.)
Even the Russians dig our minimalistichnom style.
(Google translation is so awesome.)
by Erin Haskell
Doesn’t it seem as though the agency crowd is frantically running in one direction toward social media, quite the same the way it did during the dot-com boom? Remember everyone believing the internet was going to change everything about the world as we knew it?
For instance, do you remember online grocery stores? People believed that these would replace traditional stores we visit once or twice a week. Peapod.com had an overly hyped debut (I remember learning about it in college), followed by an overly hyped downturn. Well, surprise – they’re still around. They’re just not the giant that had been originally anticipated.
To be fair, the online space has, in fact, changed the shopping model for a lot of products. It’s changed how we shop for cars, shoes, homes, and deals. It’s made comparison shopping a breeze. But it hasn’t necessarily killed brick and mortar the way dot-com experts predicted it would.
So, now are we looking at online media in the same frantic way? “social media,” “web 2.0,” “engagement,” and “conversation” are the new buzzwords being sprinkled into marketing discussions and agency lingo. Things are changing, and the consumer has found a new medium that pulls their attention from other areas in their lives. But is this going to kill every other form of media? Are television and radio doomed?
Or are marketers blindly following the crowd and getting caught up in the hype? Didn’t your mom tell you that just because everyone’s doing it doesn’t make it right? Isn’t it time we took a step back, evaluated the internet and digital marketing space for what it is, and continued providing our clients with the right solution?
Strategic marketing in the digital space may be the right solution for the right product in the right online space. But we do more than just digital around here. We look at the whole picture and determine, from there, the right strategy. If it’s not the right fit, we’re not going to force-feed you digital just because that’s what everyone else is doing. And our mothers are so very proud.
