Gearing up for Halloween

Advertising-wise, Halloween is already here. The stores are full of Halloween costumes and decor, and some are even carrying Christmas decorations next to the pumpkins and skulls. Here at the agency, we've already nailed down creative for the Halloween season and are starting to work on Thanksgiving and Christmas.

The best part of advertising for Halloween is we get to cut loose a little, and do some really fun stuff. Even with limited space in print and time with broadcast, we can still squeeze in some cool graphics and clever tie-ins. One of my personal favorites is "Dawn of the Deals", playing off the old horror flick "Dawn of the Dead." We've also done "House of 1000 Bargains", and "{Vincent} Price Breaker Sale". Kooky stuff.

Here are a few of our ideas for Halloween 2010:

Happy Labor Day Weekend from Engelhardt & Partners Advertising

Just wanted to wish all of our friends a happy and safe holiday weekend. Be careful driving, don't forget the sunscreen, and enjoy yourself!

The Future of Advertising

It's an early spring morning and you've walked the two blocks to the train station while listening to an audiobook on your iPhone. The train's on time and you get a great seat. On the arm of the seat is an ad, small but powerful: 50% off a Grande coffee at Starbucks, with coupon.

What coupon?

At the bottom of the ad is a 1x1 inch block of black ink, the design familiar but meaningless...until your realize what it is. You pop out your iPhone, take a photo of the insignia and your phone automatically takes you to a mobile site with a virtual coupon. Show the coupon on your screen to the cashier at Starbucks and get your half-price java.

Everyone knows the Internet is not only the present but the future. But the future holds marvels that have not even been thought of by most people. And along with web technology comes advances in print, video, and beyond. Imagine:

• Newspapers, magazines, greeting cards and flyers that have a thin, flexible video screen with a slide show or actual video playing. This technology is almost here - miniature batteries that can power the device for a few days, wafer-thin computer chips and inexpensive video displays will soon come together to give print that "Harry Potter" effect. And they say print is dead.

• Seamless connectivity between your home computer, laptop, phone, TV remote, iPad and car. The kind of connectivity that will allow you to listen to emails while driving, program your TV from anywhere and turn appliances on and off from your phone or car. A lot of this technology already exists. It just needs to be consolidated.

• Giveaways that send people directly to you site. For example: You go to a baseball game on bat day and get a free baseball bat, courtesy of Rustler Steakhouse. Until now the only advantage Rustler gets out of the promotion is branding exposure. But...add a scan-readable code (like on the subway seat ad) to the bottom of the bat and suddenly you've captured a client...they go to your site to get the coupon, and you get ROI.

This is just a taste of the exciting advertising opportunities that lie ahead. Remember, just five years ago the iPhone didn't exist, and using a smartphone to view websites was a slow, cumbersome novelty. Imagine what things will be like five years from now.

Engelhardt & Partners Automotive Advertising

Working on a New Agency Reel & Presentation

Every advertising agency has a reel. Of course the term 'reel' is as old a term as you'll find in the biz, going way back to when an agency's work was shown over Martinis in a darkened, smokey room on a 16mm projector. Today's reels are a little simpler - a DVD, or web video that can be watched by clients over and over again at their leisure, with the lights on.

Our previous reel was nicely done, with a short introduction about our company and what we do followed by samples of our broadcast, print, and web creative. But times have changed, and so have we.

Our introduction has turned into a short but informative and exciting presentation on what makes Engelhardt and Partners Automotive Advertising a cut above our competition. It focuses on what matters most to car dealers today: The Internet, how to get the most out of it for the least amount of money, and how to tie it in effectively with proven traditional media.

This is our expertise. We've grown from a traditional advertising agency with strong creative and personal service to a fully-integrated digital and traditional house. And we've done it without sacrificing that quality creative and personal service.

Any advertising agency can produce ads. Most are pretty good at it. They can all promise you great results from great creative and money-saving media buys. But most of them fall short when it comes to the full package. And it's the full package that automotive dealers need to truly succeed in today's tough market.

We call it synergy. The synergy of digital and traditional advertising working together to maximize your potential. Our professionals working closely with you to provide solutions to your problems. We don't just work for you. We become part of your team. That's Engelhardt and Partners Advertising, or as we call it around here, The Power of E.
ENGELHARDT AND PARTNERS ADVERTISING HAS PROVEN SOLUTIONS FOR LACK OF TRAFFIC, TARNISHED IMAGES AND BLOATED BUDGETS. WE PRODUCE POWERFUL, FULLY-INTEGRATED AD CAMPAIGNS THAT REMAIN COHESIVE ACROSS ALL MEDIA: DIGITAL, BROADCAST, PRINT, & BEYOND, ENABLING YOU TO INCREASE YOUR MARKET SHARE.

It's time to integrate your digital and traditional advertising. We'll show you how...when our reel is finished! But if you can't wait, go ahead and give us a call at 954-927-2886. We'd be happy to speak with you about a more profitable future.

http://epadv.com

Mad Men and The REAL World of Advertising

by Christopher Pinto,
Creative Director
Engelhardt & Partners Advertising

When I tell people I'm the Creative Director of a national advertising agency, they often (jokingly) ask me if my job is anything like Don Draper's from Mad Men. I (jokingly) respond, "Not much, except for the minibar."

The Mad Men series, now in its fourth season, has given us a glimpse into the lives and work of ad execs during the golden age of cocktails and Manhattan advertising firms, in the days when all the best ideas hadn't yet been conjured up and media was limited to TV, radio, print and outdoor. In those days the Creative Director was the idea man; with his workforce of copy writers, art directors and graphic designers he oversaw the creation of fantastic advertising which grabbed attention and practically forced the reader to want to know more. It was from this era that some of the most fascinating and most powerful campaigns emerged, campaigns that are still recognizable today.

If Don Draper were frozen in 1964 and awakened now, he would be amazed at the changes that have developed in advertising over the last 50 years. Things started to really move in the 1980s as the desktop computer began to replace the art desk. Copy writing became more streamlined as ad space prices escalated. Cable television meant instead of three or four channels to advertise on, dozens, then hundreds became available, splitting people's attention and therefore each commercial's reach. As technology advanced in the 1990s, brighter, slicker, more extremely-stylized ads began to take the place of traditional photos and copy.

Then the World Wide Web sprung up. At first no one except a few handfuls of computer-savvy tech heads thought anything of it. It was slow, it was dull. No photos. No video. Just pages of copy, with the occasional flashing star or bright red headline in Helvetica Bold. Advertising agencies didn't give it a second thought. Makes you wonder if an old-timer like Draper would have embraced this technology, or would he have just wrote it off as an insignificant trend?

By 1999 it was clear that the Web was going to destroy everything that ad men and women had worked on for 50 years. The dull, lifeless pages began to look more like magazine pages with photos, clip art, and animation. People could see an ad for a product and buy it right on line. Then the technology really took off, and suddenly it seemed science fiction was becoming real. You could log on to the Web and check the weather, look up information on encyclopedia sites, watch small but interesting video, view slide shows of photos and post on social sites. And, most of all, you could advertise on these sites.

Somehow many ad agencies didn't see the potential here. By 2005 most agencies had missed the boat on Internet advertising, with the spoils going to Web Masters, Internet service providers and software developers. If you wanted a banner ad on the net, you called a web guy, not an ad agency. I think this is the point where Draper would finally see the potential, as portions of his ad budgets started getting siphoned away for the Web.

Luckily a few ad agencies (including ours) picked up on this trend. Some became completely digital, meaning they invested all of their efforts into online advertising. Some opened Web departments, others incorporated their Web advertising into existing creative departments. At Engelhardt and Partners Advertising we saw this coming a long time ago, and laid the groundwork for integrating Web along with traditional forms of media in order to brand our clients with a strong, cohesive message across the board.

Now, in 2010, we've conquered the change necessary to keep up with today's ever-changing technology. Our creative department has learned to think about campaigns that not only work in TV, radio and print, but on the net as well. Everything works together synergistically to exploit our clients' opportunities. Our ePulse Total Internet Package is unique in the industry as it incorporates all media together, concentrating on the media that works best for each client. And Creative is still considered the most important part of the process, as we know that no matter how much money you spend on advertising, if no one looks at it, it's all in vain.

If Draper were real, Engelhardt and Partners is exactly the kind of agency he would want to work at. I just wouldn't let him yell at the customers ;)

Engelhardt & Partners Automotive Advertising
www.EPADV.com

Goodbye, Mercury

It was 1938. The Great Depression was over for most Americans, Prohibition had been repealed for five years and the future looked bright. A new class of Americans was emerging...the modern middle class, and they wanted nice cars. The executives at Ford needed a brand that could slide into the price slot between low-cost, dependable Fords and high-end Lincolns. Mercury was born.

Through the next three decades Mercury models would prove themselves on the road as everything from "baby Lincolns" to full-blown muscle cars. The "50 Merc" became a favorite of customizers and hot-rodders, and the cars gained a respectable reputation as a good quality, well handling, moderately priced car.

Then came the 1970s, the era that closed the door on speed, power, good looks and the thrill of driving. Between new government standards for safety and emissions and multiple gas crisis, the power and styling of American cars got clobbered. Mercury was no exception.

The once proud brand started pumping out under-powered little Ford clones like the Capri, and under-powered, fat lead sleds (basically Fords with more chrome and a higher price tag) like the Cougar XR7. The price gap also began to close as Lincoln offered small luxury vehicles in the 1980s, and Ford offered trimmed-up models of their full size line.

Somewhere between the '70s and today, everyone forgot what the Mercury brand was all about. It no longer filled that niche between Ford and Lincoln; instead it just mirrored their models with slightly different trim packages, engine set-ups and design details. Except for the popular Marquis, they got a reputation as being nothing but rental-car material, and the number of retail buyers dwindled.

Ford says they have lost interest in Mercury because the public has lost interest. Ford is no planning to beef up efforts on the Ford and Lincoln brands. Although that's probably a good move at this point, there's no denying that Mercury will be missed.

About Flash & the iPhone, by Apple and Adobe

As a follow-up to our post on the lack of flash available for the iPhone and iPad, here's some info on what Steve Jobs has to say on the subject.

On the bottom left corner of the splash screen of apple.com is a button that says 'Thoughts on Flash'. It directs you to fairly long explanation by Jobs himself as to why Apple has decided not to allow flash developments on their products.

"...I wanted to jot down some of our thoughts on Adobe’s Flash products so that customers and critics may better understand why we do not allow Flash on iPhones, iPods and iPads. Adobe has characterized our decision as being primarily business driven – they say we want to protect our App Store – but in reality it is based on technology issues..."

In a nutshell, Jobs believes that with new technologies such as html5 (and other stuff that really only makes sense to developers, not end-users) Adobe's Flash will eventually become phased out. According to the article, Flash is too slow, takes up too much memory for small devices such as the iPhone, and allows third-party developers to create stuff that simply doesn't always work right on a Mac or Apple product (I can see his point there; I've used Macs for 20 years and have found out the hard way that Adobe releases software that works on PCs months or even years before it works well on a Mac).

Apple's views on the use of Flash vs. newer technologies is valid. After all, we no longer use serial ports, floppy discs or tape drives, and web pages have grown from simple text with one or two clip art images to the complex photo, video, and interactive-rich sites we enjoy today. And all that happened in what, 15 years? Apple believes it's time to move ahead, and believes the future excludes the 10+ year-old Flash software.

So where does that leave Adobe? We're talking about the company who has created some of the most powerful photo, video, publishing and web editing software available. Adobe founders Chuck Geschke and John Warnock have their own take on this:

"...As the founders of Adobe, we believe open markets are in the best interest of developers, content owners, and consumers. Freedom of choice on the web has unleashed an explosion of content and transformed how we work, learn, communicate, and, ultimately, express ourselves...We believe that Apple, by taking the opposite approach, has taken a step that could undermine this next chapter of the web — the chapter in which mobile devices outnumber computers, any individual can be a publisher, and content is accessed anywhere and at any time."

Flash (which was originally produced by Macromedia) has been a convenient plug-in for their users to create rich website experiences, and continues to get streamlined and more powerful every year. Obviously Adobe doesn't have any plans to phase out this investment just because Apple has their own views on the subject. After all, iPhones and iPads are popular, but like everything else they are being imitated. There are already iPhone-style devices available from all the major cell phone carriers. Soon dozens of manufacturers will offer iPad-similar devices. And if they can get them to run Flash without draining the batteries in half an hour, you can bet Adobe will be very happy to keep on supplying the software.

Read Steve Jobs' entire letter here, at apple.com.
Read Chuck Geschke and John Warnock's letter here, at adobe.com

by Christopher Pinto for Englehardt & Partners Automotive Advertising