![AOR [AGENCY OFF RECORD] MARKETING STRATEGY, ADVERTISING, GRAPHIC DESIGN](http://www.thinkaor.com/newsletter/images/newsletter_feb_09.jpg)
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You're receiving this e-newsletter because you subscribed at the AOR site. This is a good time to thank all of our readers for subscribing, commenting and sending us your ideas. Keep those comments coming, we love to hear from you.  The best, most effective ads and marketing strategies start with a thorough Creative Brief. It's really your roadmap to marketing success. Without one, you can easily go off-strategy and get caught up in a cool creative idea that doesn't really hit the mark. At AOR, we call ours the Creative Workplan and it is 2 pages long with 10 questions. (Email us if you'd like to get a free copy.) But sometimes projects and deadlines are coming at you so fast, you may be tempted to skip the Creative Brief. Don't do it! At the very least, do what I call the Lazy Person's Creative Brief. It's as simple as writing down one little sentence:
"I want to convince (key target audience) that (your brand promise/product benefit) because (supporting features)."
That's it. Here it is in action: "I want to convince Front Range snow-lovers that Winter Park & The Fraser Valley is the place to go have fun this winter because it's only 69 miles from Denver with no Tunnel traffic, has lots of great snow, special deals on lodging and restaurants all over town, AND you could win $10,000 just for visiting!" By the way, that is all true. Check it out here: welcomebacktowp.com  If you're running a Google Pay-per-Click (PPC) campaign as part of your Search Engine Marketing (SEM) strategy, you should definitely think about including negative keywords. According to Google, "A negative keyword is a special kind of keyword matching option that allows you to prevent your ad from appearing when the specific terms are a part of the user’s search." It's a good tool to help you filter out the clicks of people who aren't really looking for you or your product.
For example we wanted to generate leads for one of our clients in real estate selling luxury mountain homes and condos. Some people using those search terms might be looking for a home or condo to rent, though, and we don't want to pay for those clicks. So we added the term "rental" as a negative keyword. Now anyone who includes the term "rental" in their search words will not get our ad served up to them. This will increase our ROI over time since we're not paying to get people to our site who aren't interested in buying. Plus, not using negative keywords and the resulting untargeted traffic can lower your keywords' Google Quality Score, which means you could end up paying a higher CPC (cost-per-click) and be ranked lower on the page. Give us a call if you'd like a no-obligation review of your keywords and we'll offer no-cost suggestions for adding negative keywords to help refine your results.  It's an age-old marketing problem—the internal marketing team gets sick of a campaign way before your target market does. It can take a long time to get into the minds of consumers, especially if they don't know about your product or they're comfortable using the product of your competitor. To you, it may seem like your ad or your campaign message is tired, overused, and verging on hitting the "Head-On" level of annoying. But in reality, you're just hyper-alert to your own messages and your prospects may still be in the dark about you. They have so many other marketing messages being driven at them, it will require many hits before yours sinks in and sticks.
Look at Apple's strategy. They have been running their 'Mac vs. PC' ads for several years now and instead of being sick of them, we all love them and can't wait to see how Mac slyly clobbers PC in the next one. (Or maybe that's just us Mac lovers...) The key though is that while the creative platform and tagline stays the same, Apple changes the ads just enough every once in a while to keep them fresh. And because Apple keeps the content topical (ads for Christmas, ads on Vista, ads on Microsoft's new TV ad), they can conceivably keep them going for many years to come. Mazda, too, is smart about staying the course. They've been using their "Zoom Zoom" platform since early 2002. This past fall, they unveiled its latest incarnation. The new tagline is "Zoom Zoom. Forever," and will be featured in broadcast and print ads. "We are going tighter than ever to our core," said Bill Gordon, group manager of marketing at Mazda. 'Zoom zoom' has been tweaked, and while we have always been fun to drive, "zoom zoom forever" will let the consumer know that we will always be what we are. This is a stronger expression. It replants the flag in the ground." Read more at Brandweek: http://tinyurl.com/d69bv6 So, don't abandon your campaign just because you're tired of it. If it's a strong message, true to your brand and connects with your consumer—stick with it. Refresh it with smart, timely content, but hold your course. It will pay off in the end.
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