Each Spring tens of thousands of Berkshire Hathaway investors land in Omaha from all over the planet for the largest annual shareholder’s meeting in the world. And this year they’ll be welcomed by Berkshire Company, Borsheims, even while they wait for their luggage. A Borsheims branded welcome message is on every baggage carousel at Eppley airport. While baggage carousel advertising is available in a few large cities, it’s still relativity unique and it’s brand new at Omaha’s airport. Borsheims is the first advertiser to use the baggage belts at Eppley. Read More

Some good food for thought. Read More

"Mud Girl"

I can’t remember the last time I enjoyed a TV ad campaign as much as I do Swiffer’s “What About Love” campaign. The term ‘clever’ has gotten kind of a bum rap in our industry. Why everyone knows that ‘clever’ copy has no substance to it – it’s just a cheap joke and nothing more. Often that’s true, but not in this case. Read More

Nan Pike, Broadcast Production Manager

A 30-second commercial goes by fast. A good one delivers a quick, memorable message. But creating that simple message can be anything but—just ask Nan Pike, Bozell’s broadcast production manager. Nan is the person the creative team trusts to take its concept from paper to full life on the screen.

In the 20-plus years she has managed the production process, Nan has learned how to keep all the people and pieces in line to make sure that every shoot results in powerful material and happy clients.

Take a look at what happens behind the scenes of that seemingly simple 30-second commercial. Action!

Before a shoot

Behind the scenes of a how-to video series for Westlake Ace Hardware, shot on location at one of the company’s Kansas City stores.

The process starts long before the shoot date. About four to eight weeks out, a concept is finalized by the creative team and handed over to Nan for production. Then, Nan starts assembling her team. This involves reaching out to production companies whose style might go well with the company’s brand and message.

“We talk with the companies and get their feedback and ideas, making sure they will work well with the creative team to enhance the concept, and not try to change it or make it their own,” Pike said.

Then, bids are collected and reviewed from the production companies that are good matches. A recommendation is made to the client, the client signs off on a final decision, and Nan gets to work coordinating the production team with internal efforts to make sure everything comes together seamlessly on the shoot day.

“Good planning and efficiency are absolutely critical to a shoot. Otherwise you end up backtracking, missing things or spending more than you needed to,” Pike said.

Careful planning is especially important because it helps her to be ready when the unexpected happens—and it always does, Pike said.

For example, once, talent flying in from Minnesota had her flight cancelled due to an unexpected storm. Pike and her crew had to scramble to find a replacement or face rescheduling the entire shoot, a costly undertaking.

“Replacing talent is especially difficult. There are so many aspects that go into a talent choice—performance, look, ambience. Intangibles that really make a difference in the commercial’s feel,” Pike said.

The better the pre-production planning, the better the shoot and final product (and the friendlier the prices will be).

On set

It took a lot of careful setup and special equipment to turn the hardware store into a studio.

There are many people who must be brought together for a successful commercial shoot. Your production team, to begin with. Even a small shoot can need as many as eight to 10 people in production alone.

“A lot of specialists are required for audio, lighting, hair and makeup. You need your producer, director, assistant director. It takes a lot of people,” Pike said.

The creative team also needs to be present. The people who imagined the concept into being, designed the look and wrote the script are key to running a smooth shoot with good results. There are always last-minute needs and adjustments, so having the writer on hand for a quick rewrite is invaluable. Also, the creatives are the most likely to catch it if something on set is not true to the concept, like if the color palette is off-brand.

And of course, a client representative must always be present during shooting to ensure that the client is satisfied with the results. With the client comes the account manager, who makes sure the set is pleasant and accessible to the client and that their concerns and questions get heard.

Keeping all these people and pieces functioning “is like being a duck. You’ve got to keep everything smooth on the surface, but underneath you’re paddling like crazy,” Pike said. “You have to coordinate all these different groups of people to bring the concept to life and address the needs that come up along the way.”

A shoot can take up to 12 hours, even on a day where everything runs smoothly. Setup alone can take two or three hours. Because of the time and costs of running a shoot, shoots are completed in one day whenever possible. This can lead to some pretty long hours on the set.

After the shoot

The final videos were squarely on-brand, offering Westlake customers helpful guides for a wide variety of simple household projects.

Once the shots are on film, three weeks are dedicated to adding the other elements and perfecting the spot.

It starts with the creation of a rough cut—a preliminary edit of the shots to get the sequence viewed and approved by the client. Then, music and voiceovers are added, as well as graphics, such as the company’s logo, and any legal information required. The polished edited cut is color-corrected. Then, the final edit is sent to the client again for final approval.

Once a finalized ad is approved, it is sent out for placement on television to broadcast its message to the world.

As you can see, a lot of time and work goes into creating a 30-second commercial. It’s a long process and requires a large team of creative and technical specialists. But the satisfaction of a carefully crafted and neatly wrapped up 30-second spot never gets old.

AP dropped the hyphen in email earlier this month and now the latest update of the Oxford English Dictionary Online has added a whole new slew of initialisms to the roster. OMG, LOL, and ♥ (as in “to heart”) join other entries of this sort such as IMHO, TMI and BFF.

With approximately 600,000 words, the Oxford English Dictionary is the longest official dictionary; as stated by The Guinness Book of World Records. And getting longer by the day. If you’re one of those who look at these “initialisms” and say WTF,  there’s even more torture. In February and March a whole bunch of ridiculous words made their way into OED. Here’s just a few:

• La-la land: can refer either to Los Angeles or to a state of being out of touch with reality (and sometimes to both simultaneously.)
• Muffin top: a roll of fat visible above the top of a pair of women’s tight-fitting low-waisted pants.
• Bromance: a close and non-sexual relationship between two men. (I blame Barney from How I Met Your Mother! for this one.)
• Woot: used to express elation, enthusiasm, or triumph
• Nom-nom: used to express pleasure at eating. (Seriously?  Does anyone past the age of 2 say this?)
• Sammich: a sandwich (I can see teachers cringe everywhere.)
• Tanorexia: an obsessive desire to acquire and maintain a suntan, by natural or artificial methods.  (Ummmmm, really?)
• Egosurf: search the internet for instances of one‘s own name or links to one’s own website.
• Buttload: a large number or amount. (I’ll admit I’ve been saying this one for years, but never in writing)
• Tinfoil hat: used in allusion to the belief that wearing a hat made from tinfoil will protect one against government surveillance or mind control by extraterrestrial beings. (aka nut bags)
• Sexting: the sending of sexually explicit photographs or messages via mobile phone.

I don’t see sammich in a spelling bee anytime soon, but as an avid Scrabble player, I’m happy these little electronic jewels are official words in the dictionary.  How soon will the Scrabble iPad app recognize them?  LOL! And TTFN.

Facebook has been data mining wall posts and status updates to create relevant ads for a while now, but they are upping the ante to mine real-time conversations to instantly target ads.

If someone posts “Thinking of pizza for dinner” Domino’s could instantly serve up an ad. That potential to be present at the moment someone expresses a desire for something is a very compelling proposition for advertisers.

Facebook is testing the instant ad model among only a small group of users — a mere 1% of the base, but that’s still some 6 million people. This test could make a huge difference in how Facebook ads perform, as well as how they are perceived by users. But, this brave new world raises the usual privacy concerns and Facebook will have to be very careful not to overstep the balance or risk freaking people out.

Campaigns on Facebook have been extremely successful for many big brands, but some analytics firms, including Webtrends, claim that Facebook display ad click-through rate are abysmally low — 0.051% in 2010, or about half the industry average. Low click through rates or not, last year Facebook sold some $1,86 billion in ads, over half of which were self-serve ads purchased directly using Facebook’s targeting tools. And that number is expected to keep increasing.

I wonder what the CPC will be for a chat-triggered ad compared to the other targeting options?

Yahoo has unveiled Search Direct, a feature it will integrate into select Yahoo sites, giving searchers answers to questions and lists of trending topics as queries are typed.

The feature rolls out in the U.S. first, and later this year, internationally. Yahoo Search Direct predictive-search technology comes several months after Google Instant. The feature is geared to help searchers find answers, not links, faster.

Search Direct covers top trending searches, movies, TV, sports teams and players, weather, local, travel, stocks and shopping categories on Yahoo.com. Search Direct starts working as soon as you click inside the query window. A dropdown box displays the latest trending searches before you’ve typed a single character.  A larger window to the right of the trending list displays relevant information as you type.

Enter “cameras,” for instance, and Search Direct displays camera pricing information for Yahoo Shopping.

• Trending Searches – The moment the cursor hits the search box, top search trends appear and are updated every 10 minutes to display the latest and greatest search trends.
• Search Previews – Search Direct predicts the search term as you type, providing the 10 most likely searches. You can then easily scan each option to see the related top results and find the best match for your needs.
• Direct Answers – For many common searches, Search Direct provides instant answers before you click the Search button. Find an address or phone number, a three-day weather forecast, financial stock performance, the top trending stories at Yahoo! News, or when and where a movie is playing – all without going to a results page.
• Direct Results – When you scan the search options and find the site you need, Search Direct provides exactly that – direct access to the site. No more overwhelming pages of links.
• Rich Content – For all top searches about sports, top news stories, and finance, Search Direct displays rich content that only the world’s largest digital media company can provide. For example, type “n” to get the Yahoo! News display, which always shows the top two trending stories.

Yahoo!’s share of the $12.37 billion US search advertising market fell to 10.4% in 2010, down from 13.7% in 2009, according to eMarketer. This year, Yahoo!’s share of overall US search ad revenues is expected to fall further to 8.1%.  Much of the decline in Yahoo!’s search business is a result of Bing’s rise.

Writing this article got me curious so I decided to take an informal survey here at Bozell and found that 99% of employees use Google as their preferred search engine.  Only one person listed Bing and no one listed Yahoo. Granted this was a very small (40 participants) & controlled group but I think it definitely shows us that Google is still the 1,000 pound gorilla in the search world.

Yahoo’s Search Direct to me is a little underwhelming and probably won’t be a game changer.  Marketers are attracted to volume when it comes to bidding on paid-search ads, so consumers would need to begin using Yahoo search for market share to even change. People don’t typically jump from one search engine to another quickly.  They are very loyal to the one they like.

More information on this new technology is available in beta form at search.yahoo.com within the United States.

Last year AP Stylebook changed “Web site” to “website”. And now they’ve finally dumped the hyphen in email.

Even before the switch, many companies neglected to include the hyphen. I know we’ve been using the non-hyphenated version for a long time, but continually had to tell our proof readers to stop trying to correct it to match the AP Stylebook.

Cellphone and smartphone as one word instead of two are also being adopted as new Associated Press style guidelines.

Changes that clearly indicate the terms are no longer merely abbreviations for things like electronic mail or cellular telephone — they’re words unto themselves.

So all you copy editors and proofers out there, take note.

So, when you read the sign pictured above, what do you see? The first thing I saw was a big fat “LOL” right in the middle of the sign. It is emphasized by a couple of wavy underlines, apparently to shame and ridicule the person in distress as they meet a watery demise. Then the footnote suggests you call 911.

If you turn the calendar back about 10 years (and I think I’m being generous here for the public at large) I think the sign would be interpreted differently. One might actually see a person flailing their arms above their head as they desperately try to tread water and gasp for air.

But over the last few years at least, the term “LOL” which stands for “laugh(ing) out loud” has become so ubiquitous that whether it’s uppercase or lowercase, people know what it means. That’s what struck me about something as simple as this sign. A part of Internet culture has bled into mainstream culture and changed the way we see things.

This type of thing has always fascinated me, and is pretty simple when you get right down to it. Our language – both written and visual – is based on symbols that have a greater meaning. As designers, programmers, marketers and communicators, it’s our job to understand these symbols and apply them properly to achieve the desired outcomes for our clients. Sometimes, that means evaluating what your current messaging is and making sure it still makes sense. Like the sign above.

It’s also about understanding context for things and being able to observe from multiple perspectives. There are plenty of stories about poorly chosen domain names and ads that have unintentionally used the wrong words due to cultural differences in language. Just goes to show that you really do need to pay attention to what’s going on.

If you sign people need any help redesigning your Drowning Signs, hit us up.

Oh – and be sure to call 911 and then see if you can help, should you see someone drowning out in the real world. Laughing out loud at them wouldn’t be cool.

John Rector is the author of a book called The Grove, among others. He hails from Denver but was recently quoted in an article about authors in the Omaha World Herald. The authors were either from Nebraska, had set their novels in Nebraska, or both.

John Rector, author and Omaha resident

John decided to set his novel in Omaha. He even decided to move here at some point. Needless to say his quote in the World Herald came as a bit of a shock. He said:

“As an outsider coming to Nebraska, it’s a pretty grim state, especially in winter.” The big dome sky, the flatness, the fact that it’s gray so much of the year. “It’s kind of easy to imagine grim characters and grim plots in such a desolate state.”

What did we do to deserve that? Has he ever been to upstate New York in the winter? We’re working so hard here to let the rest of the world know that we’re a much cooler place than you’d think and then this public figure makes a public declaration about our grimness. Not helping!

After reading this article I became so incensed that I e-mailed the author to share my opinion of his recent PR foray. His response was admirable if not compassionate:

“Aren’t different perspectives a wonderful thing?  Imagine how dull life would be if we all saw the world the same way?”

Kind of a cop out in my opinion. I can only hope that his fame matches his ability to accurately convey Nebraska. Then at least the collateral damage would be minimal.

I fail to understand why people of note often feel a need to knock Nebraska when it comes up in the course of conversation. Recently a national news program reported that Nebraska had come in number one in a poll for happiest places in Nebraska – financially speaking. What an enormous honor. The perfectly coifed and elegantly attired reporter felt a need to speculate on why that might be. Her speculation went something like this:

“I would guess that Nebraska is such a mundane place that people don’t expect much so the fluctuation with the economy would not cause them any hardship because that’s all they know.”

Really? You call yourself a news reporter?

Come on people! Either do your homework and comment fairly or leave us the hell alone!