Should be, “My name is Spam.” It seem like this commercial is on every other commercial on every channel. If there is one thing to be learned it is that Dodge thinks that if they just over saturate every channel with this ad it will pay off.

What they fail to understand is that the commercial is pure CRAP. from the very determined, and serious voice to the personification of a pickup truck to make it seem godly, to the same tried and worn methods of depicting classic images of Americana.

I do think the Ram trucks look good but if I ever was in the mood to purchase a truck this commercial would have taken Ram out of the running. I am a strong believer of speaking with my wallet and when such horrible commercials are put out there I can only try and be quick with the remote to change the channel.

Please Dodge stop. Please. Or take note from my prevois post and do it right.

Now I really dislike American cars. From their boring ride to horrible handling to ugly styling, they have been the shining example of how any one industry can NOT get anything right. For a long time Cadillac was on top of my list (except of course a nice mid 70’s convertible) their cars have been just big, ugly, and when you ride in them you feel like you are riding on a cloud. If you want to ride in a huge box and not feel the road, or any responsiveness when you corner or accellerate then go Cadillac.

UNTIL RECENTLY! Not only have they changed their styling, to atleast appear as though they are past 1984 but they are changing their image. The new Cadillac’s look fairly nice to even very unique. And they handle much better than their ancestors, but they still just are not responsive like the European cars.

But I digress no more. The commercial is well made and ties in perfectly with a shuttle launch. The soundtrack is perfect and transitions are very well executed. The cars looked stunning and the production is about as high end as I, or anyone can expect from a car commercial. The commercial ends with what appears to be the car in outer space. The transition from a harsh and aggressive launch to a more subtle and soothing instrumental was well done. I also like how Cadillac didn’t throw around all the common buzz words that every other car company is jumping on and slapping their opponents with. “Oh look I get 42 MPG on the highway,” but in city driving I get only 18 because if you know how hybrid technology works, especially on those SUV’s, you will be using the gas guzzling engine as normal.

“Hey did you know that I come with 4 tires?” I really expect that to be a selling point on a future car commercial, and quite frankly I think it will work with the very unsophisticated car buyer, but Cadillac said SCREW IT. They went all style and emotions and I think it should payoff for them as they try desparately to rebrand. I think the concept to execution was very nicely done and there was not one boring, bland buzzword. I can probably say this is one of the best BRANDING type car commercials I have ever seen and if I were in the market for a new car I would absolutely check out a Cadillac (I might never own one) but in the past I wouldn’t even step on the lot.

Ah finally back to the ads! This one cracked me up and is extremely clever, and absolutely naughty (in a funny way of course).

Hardee’s (aka Carl’s Jr. on the West Coast) uses dirty humor perfectly here and this is such a great change from the horrible Carl’s Jr. ads we are subjected to. You know the ones? You don’t? Well lets just say that if my burger sounded like a slug getting stepped on while I ate it I wouldn’t eat THAT burger.

But Hardee’s, and I assume, uses different talent to make their commercials because this one works. Check it out for yourself.

1. Keep all links the same.  Make it easy for your users to differentiate the links from the content.  You can have 2 different styles (ie. one for links in content, and 1 for links that are not a part of content) but that the maximum number of link styles I would recommend for most sites.
2. Keep your fonts to the universally owned fonts (Arial, Tahoma, Georgia, Times New Roman, Verdana, Helvetica, and Comic Sans).  This will ensure your site is viewed properly on all browsers, plus you wont have to worry about a users browser substituting a horrible font by mistake.
3. I do believe that there should be some type of image to text ratio on each page.  Not only does it break up the monotony but it also looks much better than all text that scrolls for hours.  I usually go 60/40 text to image split most of the time and the rest goes 70/30.  The fact remains that people just don’t want to read a lot.  In other words we want it dumber (Most of the time).
4. We read left to right and top to bottom.  So with this in mind the most valuable area of each page is top left (this would be the left side above the fold).  Design with this in mind.  Information importance will flow downwards.  The most useless corner of a page is the bottom right.  Bury info there that isnt hugely important but is somewhat necessary for that page.  Keep your readers interested all the way through.

My next post, and I promise, will be about an advertising campaign.  Enough of this help stuff .

The best part is when he walks through the kitchen with Lebron.  I really think they should consider making a puppet TV show with these characters.  It might work.  It will make their egos much bigger but I think its funny nevertheless.

1. Must have vision.  Campaigns that don’t see past your nose simply won’t go that far.  Look ahead and have a grand plan of WHAT YOU WANT if everything goes according to plan.
2. Must have patience.  These things take time to develop, time to plan and time to execute.  Then you have time to wait to measure the results.  I see most campaigns fail because they run out of patience.
3. Must have reasonable expectations for what is put in.  Most of the times if you spend no money on a campaign don’t expect to hit it rich.  You must temper your expectations, or reward, with the amount of risk you are willing to put in.

So there you have a short qualification list before you get to the meat of this post.

I will also preface that if you aren’t the creative out of the box type of thinker necessary to come up with campaigns to really get your audiences attention then find one (and they aren’t cheap but they will give you solutions that you wouldn’t have thought of) like well, me the orange county graphic designer for instance, but there is also Google so go ahead and dig.

Now the real meat and most of this has been said before in some form or another but here will be my take.

1. A proper SEO campaign.  Get keywords important to you generating traffic for you.  Also use PPC strategies as well (and there are multiple strategies that have different desired outcomes and ways of approaching them so don’t just do PPC to do it).  And be aggressive in attacking the keywords that are KEY to your business.
2. SOCIAL MEDIA.  Why in all caps?  Because still most people just don’t get it or don’t want to.  Times change, technology changes, climates change, pretty much everything changes except how some people want to do business.  If the failure of GMC doesn’t strike a chord with you then what will.  Besides having several fundamental issues as how a company was run they just didn’t see the writing on the wall and failed to compete with the imports.  Adjusting to incorporate new technology in your marketing is not only smart its evolution and in a matter of time with be the norm.
3. Video.  If you offer a service, or a product lets make some videos and get them out there demonstrating what it is you have.  Websites that offer actual product/service demonstrations are at least twice as likely to convert as those that do not.  People love video, but don’t want to use it for themselves.  How many times have you seen a video and thought, “Man that was awesome?  I’m going to get me one of those.”  I know I have on several occasions.
4. Direct mail.  It’s not dead, if you don’t do what’s not always done.  Go 3D, be original, be impactful, BE the one that gets opened and not thrown away.
5. Utilize local TV advertising where applicable.  Rates are great and you can really target your demographics and get a lot of impressions.
6. Articles/blogs.  I put these together because they kind of go hand in hand for me.  Write articles and blog posts about what’s new and what’s going on with your product/services.  Think of it as PR.  The whole while bolstering your keywords and your website.
7. If possible involve your customers.  Make your Website a 2.0 application where the user has an input on content rather then force feeding them everything YOU think is important.
8. Create a concise, tight yet completely out of the box campaign that will be memorable.  I would always rather be polarizing than not.  Either way people remember you because they A) didn’t like you or B) they loved you.  Being in the middle will ensure one thing, you are forgotten.
9. Provide great customer service.  I know this isn’t really a marketing idea but I can tell you that there are large companies out there that have these blind processes that do one thing, piss me off and alienate me as a customer to the point I will never use them as long as there is an alternative (and I don’t care about the price difference).   Companies like Yahoo Finance, AT&T, Times Warner Cable, Quizno’s, and many more have guaranteed I will never use their service and I tell everyone I know not to as well.  Bad customer service = BAD MARKETING.
10. Throw parties and events around your product or service.  People will show up and you get 1 on 1 marketing and feedback and get you to observe customer reaction and feedback.  Plus if you make a great statement not only will you be guaranteed that people will talk about it but they will blog about it and write about it and put up pictures and video, and invite their friends to join your cool group on your social networks and then you can offer them more advertising (at almost 0 the cost).  Wow, no way.  But that takes vision, and some guts to pull off.

In the end every company wants to be the cool kid on the block.  Most fail.  Sometimes because they just didn’t try and sometimes because what they tried didn’t work.  Now more than ever with the amount of information we are being bombarded with is it not important you stand out?  I know I try, and I am just one person.  It all comes down to your marketing and advertising consultant and how much that person can push the envelope.

Man this one is hilarious.  Just watch for yourself (its all bleeped of course).

Why can’t the “King of beers” have the testicular fortitude to put this on tv?  If it was I never saw it and I think this is a funn commercial that will endear them to their audience more than the boring drinkability spots.  Easily worth 3 Urkles.  Please US companies take note from the funny European commercials.  Put them on TV.  Guarantee this one would be talked about.  But I could be wrong.  That’s why I’m just writing about this stuff and not actually doing it…

Now please note that these steps are just what works for me, but they are in no real particular order of when things need to be done. Some might work for you and some might not. But the most important RULES are you have to put in time and have patience. Now on to the list (because everyone loves lists).

1. Have your site BUILT.  Content is the key here.  Make sure all images have ALT tags and all internal links are thought out.  DONT USE “CLICK HERE” UNLESS YOU HAVE 0 OTHER CHOICES.  Instead use keywords where possible, “Click the following link for more of my services.”  You should get the idea from that.  “More of my services” is called anchor text.  Your anchor text when creating links within your website or to your website should be your keywords.
   WHY?  How else are the search spiders supposed to know what keywords are for your site.
2. Make sure you have your important keywords built into the content for their respective pages.  Telling Google to check out a page of yours for a certain key word and its no where to be found is not good.
3. It is ideal to target about 3-5 key words per page.  Dont over do it.
4. Leave the more generic and high level keywords for the homepage and sub head pages (if you check out my post on how to structure a site you will understand).  Put specific keywords (ie. Orange County Graphic Designer) in deeper pages and leave Graphic Designer for the home page.  I don’t do that because I am not interested in such a competitive keyword but Orange County Graphic Designer is important to me.
5. Make sure each page has a unique title and description in the meta section.  Meta keywords are not that important, but I personally use them and if someone wants to see what keywords I am using go ahead.  Remember SEO is a game of chess, you have to see several moves ahead if you want to advance.
6. Dont duplicate your page content either.  Use Canonical URLS if you must.  Why?  Because you want to tell Google or any other bot which set of the same information you want indexed.  So when it reads XYZ on page 1 and XYZ on page 2 it will then know, if you specify, which page is the all mighty one. Just add<link rel=”canonical” href=”http://www.example.com/product.php?item=whatever” />
   in the head section of the page you want to be indexed for content that is duplicate.
7. Dont overdo your strategy.  Focus on 4-6 words in the beginning (30-60 days) and add more as time goes on.  Why?  Because the more keywords you are managing the more pages you have to tweak and work that needs to be done.  So prioritize your words and move ahead.  If you can afford a firm to do this for you then double the number.
8. Create a 50 and a 100 word summary of your site along with the relative keywords you want to pursue (these will also be called tags from time  to time).
9. Build an XML sitemap and submit it to google.
10. Get your site up in directories.  DMOZ, Yahoo, MSN, blah blah.  The list goes on.

So these are just the starting point for your adventure in SEO(ing??).  You can always hire someone like Darryn Cooke to help you out and consult and he would be extactic to do such a thing.