Be sure to tune in to Pittsburgh Business Radio 1360AM this Friday, June 19, from 3 to 6 p.m., as Ron Morris interviews SG&D President Donna Barger live on the air!
As of this posting, Donna is scheduled to appear during the 4 p.m. hour.
The discussion will focus on the challenges of owning a business and the strategies used to tackle those challenges.
If you’re out of the area or can’t receive 1360AM, the audio stream will be available live online at the Pittsburgh Business Radio website all afternoon.
It appears that there’s light at the end of the advertising and marketing tunnel, at least to those attending this week’s Association of National Advertisers conference in New York City.
According to Advertising Age’s Jonah Bloom, major players like Dole Food Co. and Dunkin Donuts have plans to ramp up their advertising spending in the latter part of the year, focusing primarily on rebuilding their respective brands.
“The cost of raw materials is going up, and marketing is the only thing that offsets those increases,” said Richard McDonald, the senior VP-global marketing of the musical instrument brand Fender, according to Bloom’s article. “You have to build brand value and spend on marketing.”
To read the entire Advertising Age article, available until May 20, click here.
Happy Wednesday to everyone!
OK … really? It’s a cool, cloudy day. Kind of depressing. So, why not have some fun to get us through the mid-week doldrums, right?
This post is the first of a semi-regular Wednesday series to help us all keep conversation going and our minds thinking as we reach the halfway point in our workweek.
So, let’s start with the seemingly “trendy” topic of the moment in social networking. First it was MySpace, then Facebook and LinkedIn. But now it seems like everyone is jumping on the Twitter bandwagon.
Here’s the conversation starter:
How are you currently using or see potential in using tools like Twitter in your workplaces? If you’re using it already, have you discovered any benefits or drawbacks?
Or, if you have questions about Twitter or any other aspect of social networking, feel free to ask them here as well. We’ll do our best to find an answer for you!
My thoughts? I’ve found Twitter to be remarkably useful, as it’s essentially created a “help network” for me. The people I follow on Twitter have a wide variety of interests, work in a wide range of professions and in multiple neighborhoods in and around the Pittsburgh area. It’s great to have people at my fingertips that can help me find a unique place to eat with a client or get better directions in a neighborhood that I’m not as familiar with.
So, what are your thoughts? Leave a comment on this post to continue the conversation.
You can’t fit a square peg in a round hole, as the adage goes.
So, when it came to giving Mr. John of Pittsburgh a new look, SG&D followed suit, turning the company’s dated, square logo into a more modern oval with a retro feel, maintaining the integrity of Mr. John’s easily recognizable colors.
The new logo became the point around which new stationery items were designed, as well as a new 100+ page website, which launched on February 10, 2009.
To read the rest of the Mr. John case study, click here.
We got into an interesting discussion recently in my class on Decision Making, as part of my master’s program.
The topic? How getting out of a recession is generally counterintuitive.
Here’s the logic. When times get financially tough, we naturally want to save money. We want to cut back on the unnecessary items in our lives and hold on to all that extra cash for potential cash flow issues later on.
But, how do we pull ourselves out of a recession? By doing the exact opposite … spending money.
So it’s almost like we’re saying that we understand that we need to spend money to improve the economy … but someone else can do it, not us.
The same thing comes in marketing. When times get tough, we immediately want (or need) to make cuts from within. And usually the first thing to go or get downsized is the marketing department or marketing efforts.
But think about that for a second.
In an editorial column published this week in The Business Press, PR and marketing expert Paul Napolitano says that’s exactly what businesses should not be doing.
“The mission during difficult times is to do whatever it takes to find the money to promote your business more aggressively,” he writes.
“The day you stop selling the unique capabilities of your company to as many prospects as you can is the day you should close up shop and save the business from continued losses.”
(To read Napolitano’s column in its entirety, which I highly recommend, click here.)
While understanding that things are financially strapped, Napolitano makes recommendations including updating the content on your company’s website or sending out direct mail pieces or “old-fashioned letters” to prospective customers or clients. The marketing doesn’t have to be expensive or expansive.
It just has to be something. And maybe that’s not so counterintuitive after all.
~ Carla
So, how many of you have gotten umpteen invites on Facebook recently to complete that little “25 random things” list?
Yeah, me too.
So, as a way of introducing our little blog … and ourselves … to you, here’s “25 random things,” that you may or may not have known about SG&D.
1. We’re more than just a design company. Yes, we create annual reports, logos, stationery items, brochures, catalogs, and other collateral pieces. But we also can help you in promoting your upcoming event through public relations and event planning services, get ready for that big conference with trade exhibit booth design, and even place your outdoor and transit advertising.
2. And yes, we design Web sites, too!
3. All the members of our creative team are Pittsburgh-area graduates. We have two alums each from Robert Morris (Carla and Mike W.) and Duquesne (Dianne and Donna, both for grad school) and one from LaRoche (Mike S.).
4. SG&D recently earned recertification from both Allegheny County and the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania as a Women’s Business Enterprise (WBE). This allows us the ability to bid on government, state, and county projects. In the past, we have worked with Slippery Rock University and the Housing Authority of the City of Pittsburgh.
5. Our favorite water cooler discussion topic is the Pittsburgh Penguins … even in the off-season.
6. We’ve provided services to a multitude of business sectors, including higher education, logistics, manufacturing, business-to-business, non-profit, health care, financial, and technology.
7. We have a candy dish in our front office that’s currently filled with Hershey’s Kisses, but always filled with some sort of chocolate, compliments of Esther.
8. To new or potential clients, we offer a MARKevation session, which is a review of your current marketing materials to see if you’re effectively Making Your Mark. Did we mention it’s FREE?
9. Yes, we made up the word MARKevation. But it’s kind of catchy, is it not?
10. Even though we each have individual job titles, we all wear a multitude of hats. That’s one of the fun parts about working in a smaller design and communications agency.
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