What Day is It?

What Day of the Week is the 24th?

In the Late 80’s, when I was first in radio, I remember writing a :10 Live event commercial for the DJ’s. It said something like “Join us on January 24th at Masquarade to see…” Well, within a couple of days I got called into the bosses office. He told me some of the best advice I’ve ever heard when writing copy and some of  the best advice that I still use to this day, but has not been passed along to enough people.Its a pretty simple, yet mostly overlooked “RULE” in copywriting. here it is:
PEOPLE DON’T THINK IN DATES, THEY THINK IN DAYS” Especially for people like me who think in pictures, I can barely remember what day it is let alone what date it is. And I am not the only one who doesn’t always know what Day a certain Date is. Thus, if a print ad, TV or Radio commercial is telling me to be somewhere on November 24th with no Day listed next to it, It’s going to be extra hard to advertise to me.  I actually just mentally tallied it up and came up with Thursday.  Not totally sure if that is correct, but pretty sure.

This poster is an example of someone who didn’t use a Day. It only says the date.  And they have been putting ads like this in my elevator for months, DATES with no DAYS listed. It’s pretty frustrating for someone like me and probably you too? It’s really not their fault, no one mentored them or called them into their office to explain this easy “trick” to better remembrance of when to be somewhere. Please use Days to help your advertising in Hawaii or around the world become more effective.

Even today which is Halloween I was listening to the radio and a couple of the commercials  didn’t say “Join us Tonight” Or even “Join us Monday October 31st”. It was playing today and just said “join us on October 31st” ugh! Yeah-I know,  it’s a bit different since most people know October 31st is Halloween, but you get the point, if it was next Monday and it said “Join us November 7..” it would have been pretty easy not to know that it was That Monday night and not some other day since Tonight nor This Monday Night were not used in the commercial.

Here’s how I take care of updates for all of my clients.

1.  A couple weeks out:   Join us Thursday November 24th

2.  The Monday before the Thursday:  “Join us This Thursday” or “Join us this Thursday November 24th”  Up to you on that one. I personally go for the simpler “Join us This Thursday”

3.  Wednesday all day:  Join us TOMORROW NIGHT ..How many radio spots do I hear on a daily basis that are still saying “join us November 24th EVEN the Day before the event!  double ugh!

4.  Thursday November 24th:  “Join us Tonight” People think in days and even simpler-use tomorrow night the day before the event and Tonight the day of the event. Totally throw your dates out the window now!

People think in days not dates and this also goes back to the KISS principle..”Keep it Simply Simple” or as us Ol’ Schoolers used to say the politically incorrect KISS principle: “Keep It Simple Stupid”..LOL

You May not want to get this involved in your copywriting, In Such a fast passed world, many get lazy on these simple updates. But it really is the right thing to do. It’s what I do to be as effective as I can for my clients. However, if you remember one thing from this blog, remember that people remember DAYS much easier than DATES. I would recommend adding in Days to all of your print, TV and Radio Commercials.  Even if you forget to all the different updates, for a better remembrance of your event ad, please add the day to your commercials, promos, and Ads.  Have a Great November!!

If you need any ideas for upcoming events or promotions, send me an at scott.mackenzie@coxradio.com and I’ll get you a bunch of free ideas for your upcoming marketing dilemma.

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Should I Stay or Should I Go?


I really enjoy European Advertising and I totally dig the City of Brussels in Belgium.This ad or viral video whatever you want to catogorize it as-is pretty fun to watch. And I’d also give it an A for Effectiveness in selling the brand. I remembered the beer was “Carlsberg” after just watching it once and I dont usually even see that kind of beer around Hawaii very often.

Check out the video, it’s lots of fun. And let me know “What would You do if you you were at this Theatre? Stay for the movie or leave before even sitting down? Interesting decision and discussion. “Should I stay or Should I Go?” (The Clash circa around 1983)

50500-Instant Electronic Business Cards!

On Saturday I went to another Pacific New Media Class.  The class was entitled:  “How to Use Social Media to Build your Professional and Personal Brand” taught by “Neenz” Faleafine. Neenz was the social media director for Governor Abercrombie, now works at Oceanit, and is the chief evangelist for Guy Kawasaki’s Alltop Website.

I personally think many of you would enjoy taking her class in the Spring, thus I won’t tell you everything I learned, but I will tell you a few pretty cool things:

1.  the Hottest, Newest social media site is called Chime.In.  It’s where all the cutting edge Techies are going to last week and this week. And did you know that there are over 500 Social Media sites in existence!!!  OMG! But Facebook still rules with over 800 Million people on it! So, for marketing purposes, if you only choose one SM avenue, I would still advise using and getting good at FB.

2. Check out contxts.com.  At this site you can set up your own electronic SMS business card.  First just go there. Then after you are set yours up, you just take a new friends phone, put 50500 in the “To:” section then in the text section write your name. Then within 6 seconds, an electronic business card pops on to their smartphone screen. in plain English”text your name to 50500″.  I love it, it’s almost as fun as QR codes, but I’m still pretty attached to those!

3.  Set up Google Alerts for your name at Google.com\alerts, purchase your own domain name with your real name, check knowem.com to see how many you can still get using your own name, tag all your photos, tag your content relevent to your brand and as we learned before…Create Content because as  Dan Z said “Content is King” and @NEENZrecommends that when you create content make sure it conveys what you want your personal brand to be, spell correclty and be specific!

I just got home from work a little while ago, so I need to go now, time to relax a bit before the new day starts.  If you need some free ideas for any type of promotion or marketing campaign you are working on, feel free to email me anytime at scott.mackenzie@coxradio.com  or give me a call at 275-1106.  Take care and have a Great Mega Halloween Weekend!

 

 

Radio Is Happy!

Listed below is a portion of an article I just saw on the Huffingtonpost.com site.  Reported on their site by Lucas Kavner. It bascially says People are really happy when they listen to the radio.  That would mean, to catch people in their best moods, one of the best places to place your commercials would be on the Radio! See below for most of the atricle or click on the above Huffingtonpost.com site for the complete story.   Have a Happy Day!

A new study commissioned in the U.K. by the Radio Advertising Bureau concluded that listening to the radio makes people happier than watching TV or surfing the Internet.

1,000 Britons participated in the study, using their smartphones to respond to questions about their media consumption and emotional responses at various times of the day.

“On average, when consuming radio, happiness & energy scores increase by 100% and 300% compared to when no media is being consumed,” the study found. But happiness increased most when that media was the radio.

Radio is a kind of “lifestyle support system,” the authors wrote, which helps people feel better as they go about their days. Many respondents didn’t realize how important radio was in their lives until they had participated in the exercise.

To Michael C. Keith, a professor at Boston College and a leading scholar in history and electronic media, these conclusions come as no surprise.

“Why else do people listen to music radio, other than to get enjoyment out of it?” he asked HuffPost in an interview last week. “People don’t listen to radio to be depressed, certainly not when it comes to entertainment radio or music radio. The whole idea of listening to radio is to gain companionship and, at the same time, enjoyment.”

 

QR Codes get Baked

QKies – sag’s mit Keksen from r3 media on Vimeo.

As you know, I love QR codes and have been having fun with them for a few months now. These guys in Germany are really having fun with them. check out the vid or visit their website to check out these brand new QR Cookies. Thanks to springwise.com for the tip!

Pretty Awesome Jump Roping seen Here!

Lately, I’ve been a bit bogged down with paperwork, writing proposals, just keeping up with advertising in Hawaii that I havent been able to write about Hawaii advertising too much. But whenever this happens, it just means that something big is on the horizon. For today, I just want to share this social media marketing spot that I found on ibelieveinadv.com

It’s advertising Penguin Jackets and has some great Jump roping stars in it that are not people. Just watch it and see. Pretty fun Vid. BTW I saw a girl in downtown Honolulu wearing a full-blown Down Jacket two weeks ago and it was 82 degrees outside. I’ve seen this before when it gets down to the 70’s, but never in the 80’s. The jacket even had a fur hood!

Hope you enjoy the Penguin commercial. Red’s not exactly my favorite color, but the ad is pretty fun to watch and I only wear a jacket when I hit the mainland at Christmas Time. But maybe, you’re due for a new Fall coat. LMK what you think. Aloha.

iPhone 4S..No iPhone 5…yet

The news is all over the place, about an hour or so ago it was announced that Apple’s next phone will just be an upgraded iPhone4 and will be called an iPhone4S. I bet they saw the same video we showed here on advertising in Hawaii that had the iPhone 5 with the removable floating keyboard Ala’ CSI computers and the videos you could watch in mid-air. After watching that, if the phone I was about to release didn’t do some cool things like that, I suspect I’d just release an up grade too. And get to work on the real iPhone 5 that will hopefully blow our minds.

Bummer thought, lots of expectations for today’s big announcement.  But, if you don’t have a flip camera or don’t like to carry two things around with you, the new phone has a much better camera and video action.  Here are some of the highlights of the upgrades:

8 Mega-Pixel camera-up from 5 Mega-Pixels

Takes pictures in 1.1 seconds.  the Droid Bionic takes 3.7 seconds.

Better video quality in High Def at 1080p

and a couple other things that don’t much excite me since my iPhone 3GS stays on its charge for a long time and I don’t usually listen to music on it, still listen on my computer.

Here they are:  8 hours of talk time  and 40 hours to listen to music

Well, what do you think?  Maybe I’ll try to snag a cheap iPhone4, at least my camera will be better.  But overall, not a fun day in the electronic smart phone world.  Some guy on some blog said it probably best:  “Dont give me a letter, I want an Integer” then I’m excited.  Pretty sure he was on the Los Angeles Times blog, some pretty good comments on there!

iPhone 5 Update

October 4th is the new date that the iPhone 5 is supposed to be talked about at a Media Event put on by Apple. I say talked about because according to most of the internet publicity, it says it will be another 1-3 weeks before it will become available. The employees at Sprint who were told that they can’t go on vacation in early October might be able to go after all..LOL.  It’s Mid to late October that they wont be able to go on Vay-Cay.

Funny thing about tracking this story down was I went to Hypebeast.com to check on new Kicks, found the iPhone article, it took me to engadget.com, which then took me to allthingsdigital.com who had the speculation article on the October 4th date.  I’m still looking for shoes,  but if you want to read more on the iPhone5 rumours here’s the link to the original source of the information. Note:  allthingsdigital.com is where the info originated, I Dont know where the info came from before that. the article was too long for me to read right now.

What’s Hot for Men Going to Prom!

Whatcha’ Going to Wear to Prom?

HOT TRENDS FOR MEN FOR PROMS

With the Second Chance Prom less than 8 days away, I figured it would be a good time to check in with Christopher Wright Director of Store Operations at Celebrity Tuxedos and See What’s HOT for men!

Quick-Look Interview with Christopher Wright from Celebrity Tuxedos in HI

Since the Second Chance Prom is approaching us quickly, my first question I wanted to find out was-When is the latest a customer can order a tux and have it ready to wear on Saturday October 1st, 2011? The Answer sure surprised me, perfect for the last-minute ticket buying public..

A.  They can visit any of our locations by Friday September 30th …Yes!  the day before, and be able to pick up their tuxedos the following afternoon before they head over to the prom.  Now, we certainly suggest trying to visit us before that.  It is best to try to come in at least a week prior. But we can accommodate you the day before the “Big Event”.

I’m a big Trend spotting fiend, so the next question I asked Christopher was:  What are the trends right now for dressing up for the Prom?

A.  Sharp Contrasting Colors, Black Shirts with Colorful vests. White Tuxedos are always popular for prom.  Pin Stripes and shadow stripes. Skinny Ties and Narrow Lapels.

Next up, I asked:  What is the best color to wear?  having not been to a prom in a pretty long time..LOL

A.  You want to coordinate with your date.  In terms of Tuxedos, black and white are always in style but we have noticed light grey and charcoal grey getting really popular as well.

Knowing that the TV show Mad Men has spawned some new trends in menswear-see Banana Republic for an example-I next checked:  What is the best way one would acquire the “Mad Men” TV show Look for Prom?

A.  We do carry the more “fitted” designer tuxedos and suits so that would be the first thing to consider when trying to get the “Mad Men” look.  They also tend to wear cummerbunds and bow-ties when they wear tuxedos buy you could also go with a vest and a skinny tie as well.

And I know we touched on trends earlier, but I still wanted to know more and  asked:  What are some of the interesting trends coming in 2012 that you could mention today?

A.  We see a trend in wearing something different from the traditional black or white tuxedo. We carry light grey, Charcoal, grey and even a chocolate-brown tuxedo. Also, as I mentioned earlier..Narrow or skinny lapels with skinny ties.

There you have it, if you don’t know what to wear to the Second Chance prom or your first prom, these are some great tips given to you by Christopher Wright from Celebrity Tuxedos here on the Island of Oahu.  If you want tips on Shoes, you can always visit my other blog at streetzblog.com And if it was me dressing up: I would wear a one button Black Tuxedo with a crisp white shirt and a midnight Blue skinny Emporio Armani Tie with of course the cool black pants with the black on black stripe down the side. And my choice of shoes would be my Limited Edition Black Patent Jordan 20’s. They totally hurt my feet, but are so worth it and look the best with a dark-colored tux.  If my feet hurt too much, I’d change into my black patent Jumps from the Jump store in Soho in NYC. The store they buzz you into and its also the store that doesn’t have much on-line to buy, but actually going there is really, really fun. its like a luxurious Spa inside, well that’s at least what I would compare the store to..whether you go traditional, “Man Men”, or a  Combo of many of the options, make sure like Christopher said You want to “match your date”  I totally would have forgotten that part.  If you want to get a hold of me this week, best is by phone at 808 275 -1000 or just hit me back on the comments section. Have fun!

*Celebrity Tuxedos is located in Sears Stores at Ala Moana Center, Pearlridge and Windward Mall.

 

 

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