There’s no escape when it comes to ads. They appear virtually everywhere and we see them so often that they’re a part of our everyday lives. Unless you live out in the woods, 24/7, with no source of technology or newspaper print, then you probably at least encounter an advertisement or two every single day.

It all starts in your own home. Commercials are an obvious one in between our favorite television shows or programs. Streaming applications such as YouTube or Hulu have ads that usually play at the beginning of each video stream. Then there are the printed magazine ads that you look through when you’re on the toilet, or the daily newspaper ads, usually looked at by an older generation every morning while eating breakfast and drinking coffee. Even when you check your mail on the way out there are usually unwanted coupons/ads sent to your house.

As you leave to go about your day you are encountered with ads. They may be playing on the radio station that you’re listening to in your car or printed on the side of the bus that you ride every day. As you’re driving, take a look around every so often at the side of the road. See that big, lit up, printed sign on a pole? Billboards are EVERYWHERE along the roads and are a constant advertisement being viewed by all travelers.

Throughout your day you probably use some sort of social media website, correct? Well if you do, then you know social media sites such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat, etc. use ads (usually linked to things you like) in your newsfeed. Even when you stop to use any public restroom you occasionally see an advertisement or poster up on the wall.

So as long as you’re living “on the grid” you will encounter these ads daily that are meant to keep products or services in the eyes and ears of the consumer. Advertisements are the most powerful tools in marketing today, that come in many different shapes and forms. They draw in revenue and create an image for the companies that utilize them.

So if you’re sick of seeing ads, you might want to consider building a cabin, atop a mountain which rests on an isolated island in the middle of unchartered waters, and spend the rest of your days without a tv, radio, wifi, cable, cell phone, telephone, or any sort of media print, etc. and just enjoy the peace and quiet sounds of nature.

Or just keep watching the ads and subconsciously buying these products that are being advertised. That’s most likely what I’ll do…

The saying, “the right tool for the job” certainly holds true when it comes choosing a lens. Macro shots of nature and tilt-shift photography of cityscapes are only possible with specialized lenses. Dial it back even further; focal length can be a deciding factor in being the right tool for the job.

An abbreviated lesson on focal lengths would be; lower numbers like 16mm produce wider shots, while higher focal lengths like 200m produce “zoomed in” shots. So which one is best? Well, it depends on who you ask. Creatively, there is no wrong answer. You can get Instagram-worthy photos with any focal length, let alone any camera. So if you had to choose one, which would it be?

If I had zero knowledge of an upcoming project and had to pick a single prime lens, it would probably be around a 35mm lens. It’s still considered wider than “normal”, but I think this focal length is perfect for most situations you are thrown at. It’s wide enough to give you coverage, while still looking natural. If you walk closer to your subject, you can get a portrait with a nice blurry background without distorting the face too much. 35mm is a good balance of smoothness and perception of motion when incorporating camera movements like a slider or steady cam.

It really all comes down to what you like. I just seem to favor the look of the 35mm. I think if I averaged all the shots I ever took; it would come close to a 35mm. So is it the right tool for the job? Probably not, but that’s what makes it creative work.

What lens would you choose?

It’s a fairly common misconception to think that these two terms are similar—after all, they both have the word “graphic” in them. However, they each serve a completely different role from one another.

Here’s a quick break down on the difference of each one:

Graphic Artists don’t necessarily need a degree but may pursue something in the arts field. They create artwork/visuals that evoke emotion and ideas through the use of photos, drawings, software designs, and any other medium that gets the story across. Sometimes there’s no logic involved, and design rules can often be broken. Graphic artists create illustrations, animations, visual designs/effects, comics, and fine artworks.

Graphic Designers, however, need at least a bachelor’s degree in their field to work at most jobs. Their primary role is to solve visual communication problems. They have studied color theory, typography, concept development, user research, and how to implement the design principles and elements based on the users’ needs. Graphic designers focus on print and web design, branding, packaging, and following the design process (research/discovery, plan, prototype, produce, and evaluate).

Of course, the surface has only been scratched on what each role is responsible for. Primarily, the end difference between these two is that graphic artists focus on the aesthetics of an idea, and a graphic designer focuses on the needs of the user.

I haven’t found the sweet spot in this topic yet. Let’s figure that this is the first in a series of blog posts, and the searching behind them, on service as it relates to marketing, or more specifically, to me.

I hope when I finish this series that I am better for it. Like the classic scene in “As Good as It Gets”, when Jack Nicholson stops Helen Hunt dead in her tracks by saying, “You make me want to be a better man.” I too want to come out of the other end a better man.

I believe that marketing communications (or advertising or sales promotion or branding or whatever the current phraseology might be) is arguably the most cost-effective piston in the economic engine. I make that argument from my august viewpoint of business philosophy and experience.

I have witnessed great advertising, which includes the big idea, the right executive, and smart media buys, add second shifts to production lines, fill warehouses and trucks, fill appointment calendars and schedules, build lines in front of theaters and restaurants, and universally create a demand that exceeds supply.

It does this by connecting the best consumer with a product or service. It creates a need and fills the need. It’s win/win. Good advertising even makes a bad product fail faster, minimizing loss.

Knowing all this as I do, I say confidently that a good agency, not just Murdoch Marketing, but any good agency, provides a valuable service, perhaps the most valuable service a company can ever buy. A service that helps reach milestones, creates opportunities for advancement, improves a standard of living and a quality of life. Not just for you, but for those around you, too. Good advertising is a core component of a healthy ecosystem.

Now, as advertising professionals, can we provide that service without first thinking, what’s in it for me? Can we put the customer first, ahead of reciprocity? Can we truly be of service, in and by itself?

Of course, we can. Right? Said Henry Ford, “A business absolutely devoted to service will have only one worry about profits. They will be embarrassingly large.”

Not sure on that one. Maybe the next post in the series.

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Emoji use in email marketing campaigns has grown immensely in recent years, due in large part to the fun and convenience of being able to visually communicate your message right off the bat. The correct emoji can in some cases better express the content of the message and attract an increased open rate with your selected audience than a traditional subject line alone.

This growing trend is something that is unlikely to go away any time soon, in fact, a recent study by Braze found that emoji usage in marketing messages has increased at an annual rate of over 775 percent year over year. But, before you start tossing emojis in every campaign, understand that there are some pros and cons to be aware of and you should have a strategy in place to avoid an emoji-overload.

Pros of Emoji Use in Email Subject Lines

Let’s start with the advantages. Emojis tend to attract subscribers and improve your open rates. Consider the following subject lines:

“Book Now: Fly Away to Your Spring Getaway!”

“Book Now: to Your ? Getaway ?!”

Which of these two would be more likely to catch your eye as you scroll through your plethora of daily emails and promotions? If you picked the second one, you’re not alone. A recent study shows that 56 percent of brands using emoji in their email subject lines had a higher unique open rate than those who didn’t.

Another advantage is that emojis improve your brand’s visibility. In a similar vein as the last idea, including an emoji in your email subject line will make you more memorable to your audience. For me, in my personal email account, I can immediately think of two major brands that consistently use emojis: Hungry Howies ? and Sephora ?.

Using emojis in your subject line also helps you save space. Considering the number of emails being opened on mobile devices grows annually, subject line space is a premium. If you want your subject line to fit on a mobile device, your character count is pretty limited – generally only about 30-40 characters max. You know the old saying, “a picture says a thousand words,” think of the emoji as the modern-day equivalent. Brands can convey a lot with an emoji and it only takes up one of those valuable characters.

Cons of Emoji Use in Email Subject Lines

While the emoji craze may be fun and seem tempting for your brand, there are a few things to consider before jumping on the bandwagon. Does emoji fit with your brand’s tone? If your brand covers a serious topic – say healthcare or financial planning – using an emoji may be off-putting to your customer base that may feel the message lacks professionalism and seriousness.

Before you go and revise your upcoming subject lines to include a fitting emoji, be sure that you know your audience demographics. If your brand markets to a younger generation, like millennials, using emojis will likely hit the nail on the head as this age group is accustomed to using emojis in their daily lives. However, this doesn’t mean that older generations cannot or will not embrace emojis as well, but more thorough testing is recommended for these groups.

The last thing to take into consideration is potential rendering issues based on different operating systems and email clients. Essentially, emojis use a “Unicode character,” which is interpreted differently by each operating system, meaning that the emojis you select may appear differently (or not work at all) for different users. The best solution to this potential issue is to send out a test email to users on various platforms and double check that they are appearing the way you want them to.

Emoji Email Line Best Practices

Now that we’ve covered the basics and you are celebrating ? the idea of all these new opportunities, let’s review a few key tips to make sure you use emojis to best engage your audience.

You may be wondering, where can I find the emoji options? There are many sites that catalog popular emoji options. Once there, you simply copy the emoji you want and paste it into your subject line. My favorite site categorizes the emojis into groups such as “smileys and people,” “food and drink,” and “activities” to make it easier for you to select the emoji that best fits your needs.

Make sure your emojis match your context. With hundreds of emojis to choose from, you are sure to find one that communicates your message visually. You don’t want to include an emoji just for the fun of it. Be witty and carefully select an emoji that is relevant to your subject and that helps to clarify your message. I am ? percent confident you will find the one you are looking for.

Don’t be afraid to be creative. It can be tricky to express tone and emotion through text alone. The emoji offers the perfect solution to help clarify the emotion and help you to express your message more clearly. Consider Murdoch Marketing’s latest newsletter subject line: Murdoch Marketing: Th!nk Newsletter where the emoji was simply there to help draw in the reader’s eye. Or take a look at Walgreens who used the cat emoji in the following subject line: “? YOU HAVE GOT TO BE KITTEN ME! Up to 60% OFF???” which is a playful way to get the user to open the message.

TESTING 1… 2… 3… be sure to test your audiences and make sure emojis are displaying properly. I know I mentioned testing earlier in this post, but it’s very important. Before adding emojis to your marketing strategy, split your email list into two groups: one group who will receive the emojis and one who won’t. You can evaluate this data to help determine if emojis are a good fit for your audience. And one last time for good measure, send out a test email to make sure everything looks correct before sending to your entire list.

Happy Emoji’ing ?

To wrap up, emojis can be a fun way to help you communicate what you want to say with minimum character use. They offer a wide variety of options to really help customize your message and garner attention to increase your open rates. I will leave you with a chart of 2017’s most popular email subject line emojis for inspiration.

Most Popular Emojis From 2017 Subject Lines via Mailchimp

When communicating with a client, it’s the graphic designer’s job to make the experience as painless as possible—especially when using terminology that sounds foreign to people outside the field.

Sometimes, however, these foreign words slip out, so here’s a list of some common terms and what they represent:

CMYK: CMYK = Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, Key (Black), is used for printing purposes.

RGB: RGB = Red, Green, and Blue is used for digital purposes.

Kerning: The adjustment of space between two characters. The primary goal is to have proportional spacing between each letter. Set too close, the words became hard to read; set too far apart and the words appear disconnected. 

Tracking: Is the adjustment of spacing between the entire This will change the space equally between each letter.

Leading: The space between vertical lines of type. Too tight leading will make the type overlap, making it hard to read. Too loose will make the type appear as if disjointed.

Widows and Orphans: 

• Widow: A single, lonely word that is left stranded at the end of a paragraph or column. The problem: widows leave too much white space between paragraphs or at the bottom of a page.
• Orphan: The last line of text or a word that doesn’t fit in the current column of text, making the line flow to the beginning of the next column. The problem: This creates bad alignment and disrupts the flow.

Hyphen (-): This is used for compound words. No spacing is used between the words and hyphen.

En Dash (–): Is used to represent a span or range of number, dates, or time. En dash has no spacing whatsoever.

Em Dash (—): A form of punctuation mark. It can take place of commas, parentheses, or colons. The em dash is typically used without spacing on either side.

Sources:

https://www.canva.com/learn/graphic-design-terms/

http://www.thepunctuationguide.com/hyphen.html

Being a writer is no cake walk. In fact, being a copywriter might even be a curse. I admire people who can sit down and bang out a blog post, an article or even a headline. Me, I have a need — or desire — to wrestle with the Muse for an indefinite length of time. I don’t rush a new theme or headline because I can’t. Could be a few hours, could be a week of the cursor flashing impatiently. Blink blink. Or the whiteboard as vacant as a Sears parking lot.

You remember headlines, those big words that used to be on the page before Facebook ruled they can’t be more than 20% of the ad space and Google rejected them for containing numbers.

When the thoughts do break free and start to flow, the words are not far behind, and there comes an immense sense of accomplishment in the completion of the task at hand. Only then do I feel I have properly expressed myself. As much as I’ve read about the creative process, I don’t know the secret trigger. I just know the mouse has finally pulled the thorn from the lion’s paw, to borrow from the African folktale.

I might even stop and buy donuts for everyone, I’ll feel so good. Try to make up for the previous four days of brooding, walking around the office with my trademark scowl.

When you’re in the ad business, those ‘incubation periods’ are on the clock and often very unprofitable. But I’ve also learned that, allowed to fester, the end product can be very marketable. Or more important, very valuable to a client. A great headline will be more effective, sell more product, create more value. Those five or six memorable words can even make art directors look good; I’ve seen it happen.

You might image then, how dismayed I am when the long fought for headline is rejected by the client. A good headline has no history, no legacy of data to support its effectiveness. All you have is, “It will work, trust me.”

Best headline I ever wrote was for a, well, a non-profit foundation. They wanted to draw attention to the fact that underneath the all-is-well veneer of Holland, Michigan, there was a disturbing increase in spousal abuse. The proposed newspaper ad featured a headshot of a young lady with a black eye. The headline: “She Works in Holland, but Lives in Hell.”

They never ran it.

Change is the only constant on Facebook. Algorithms and policies change on a weekly, if not daily basis. Consumers, and more so marketers, always have to be adapting to how they use the platform. Here are three strategies that are not working as well as they used to.

1. Organic Growth

Facebook is a business, and they need to make money. For Marketers, the systems today are very heavily pay-to-play. Scroll through your feed and count how many posts you see that are sponsored by brands. You’ll need to budget and plan for Facebook advertising costs to reach your audience.

It’s not to say you can’t organically grow. We recently reached more than a quarter of a million in a recent image post for one our clients. If it’s good, shareable content, you will see results. But put a bit of cash behind it, and you might just see more results.

2. Facebook Videos

Remember about two years ago when you would see recipe after recipe in your newsfeed? They were literally everywhere. And the reason was that the algorithm heavily favored video. Now, not so much. Videos still work, but they have the pay-to-play aspect like above. Facebook Live is what you need to use.

Facebook will organically push FB live videos into your audience’s news feed more than an image, post or regular video. Facebook Live is a great way to interact and develop a personal relationship with your audience. And best yet, half of your budget doesn’t need to go into Facebook advertising.

3. Facebook Pages

In the early days, Facebook pages felt more like a community that enjoyed your product or service. Discussion and interaction were easy from both sides. Now, layout changes like hiding the visitor posts have made Facebook pages feel like one giant billboard.

But it’s not to say you shouldn’t work on growing your Facebook page. You still need to do that. But consider focusing some of your efforts on Facebook groups. Facebook groups are a great place where you can interact and build a community that backs your product. Groups encourage discussion and if your service is truly great, consumers will be strong advocates for your brand.

I’ve always preferred Apple over Samsung for smartphones. Both phones have great features and are everything you would want in a phone, but I just prefer the OS and user experience.

Recently, Apple has received a lot of flack for changes or “innovations” like the notched screen and removal of the headphone jack. While some of these innovations trickle down into other manufacturers, some of them can sure be questionable. Samsung took that opportunity and ran with it.

Samsung has been aggressively running a series of short 30 second spots featuring an Apple employee interacting with various customers. The customers pose questions about “features” and phone performance of Apple vs Samsung, only to get an over the top sarcastic response. They don’t shy away from anything and are very blunt about how Samsung is better than Apple. Even the campaigns title “ingenious,” is a direct stab at the Apple Genius that is featured in the commercial.

What I really like about the campaign, is how direct it is. It’s not something you see too often when a company is comparing features. The sarcastic comedy resonates well with possible concerns, and gets you thinking…

Take a look at a few of the ads. Are they effective?

How’s your bokeh? For you marketers out there, it’s a valid question. According to Wikipedia, “bokeh is the blur, or aesthetic quality of the blur, in out-of-focus areas of an image, or the way the lens renders out-of-focus points of light.”

Maybe you’ve never heard the term, but your spell checker won’t flag it. In lay terms, it’s often why someone says, ‘wow, that’s a great picture of you.’ Technically, it’s about aperture, circle of confusion and quality of the glass. Good bokeh claims importance, if not the importance, in why you and I might admire a photograph. It often has nothing to do with the actual subject in the photo unless you argue that bokeh is the subject.

While there are many high-end lenses that can produce good bokeh, the most popular glass seems to be the Canon 50MM 1.2 L or the 135MM 1.4L. Most any Leica will do. The inherent qualities that produce good bokeh is why some glass is $1,900 and other seemingly similar lenses sell for $399. The ability to render good bokeh separates the men from the boys, so to speak.

Bokeh can evoke emotions and a sense of movement. Subtle bokeh directs the eye to the subject, while loud (bad) bokeh distracts and competes with the subject. Personally, I think Jimmy Johns has the worst store bokeh in the world; you have to shout above 135db grunge rock to spend your money.

So, back to marketing. One good use of the bokeh metaphor is describing a showroom, for example, an Apple showroom, where the background is pleasing but the product really stands out. Or perhaps, you enjoy a restaurant (not Jimmy Johns) as much for the ambiance as you do the food. In comparing two very similar products, you select one based not so much on the product per se, but because the company is known for excellent customer support and a no-questions-asked return policy. You might say that the product has good bokeh.

One more. Our team at Murdoch Marketing tends to make me look good (an increasingly difficult task, by the way) even though they are in the background during many of my client contacts. They are the ones who make sure questions are answered, details are addressed, and our business functions like the top-notch agency it is. They are the ones who give me great research, concepts, designs, and videos that I am more than happy to present.

Like I said, it’s not me. It’s my bokeh.