Serif Group

Marketing author Tom Peters once said: “Coffee stains on airline seat trays make you wonder about airplane engine maintenance.”

Everything your customer experiences, directly and indirectly, affects the way you are perceived.

You spend thousands of dollars on buying the right advertising, noodling over every single detail of copy and artwork, but if your employees take their smoke break right outside your front door where customers can see them, doesn’t that say more than any ad copy?

Are your companies delivery trucks clean? Is the person who answers your phones courteous and friendly? If your ads promise a great experience or great service, every part of your company needs to sell that idea, not just the commissioned staff.

Small businesses often have many disadvantages going against larger ones, but one advantage a small business has is the ability to control these “minor’ details more effectively. Make sure your customers expectations are met with EVERY experience they have with your company. Your brand, is your promise to your customers. Give your company’s brand credibility–in everything you do.

(Special thanks to Tom Fishburne for letting me use his cartoon).

Barack Obama is a taco salad. Oh Yeah, well … John McCain is a nacho.

This according to a new web strategy by Qdoba. Tastebud politics is a great new viral tool by the folks at Qdoba. After seeing this, I wanted to send it to all my friends, because after all if you can talk to your friends about what’s going on in politics and not end up debating about healthcare or the economy its a good thing, right? Now Qdoba turns that debate into nachos and quesadillas.

Remember back in the day (1997) when we were all a little less net savvy and we would get the email telling us about how Bill Gates would give you $1000 for sending that email to as many people as possible. Even though I am proud to say that I didn’t bite on that one, enough people did to make it a classic example of how a message can spread virally.

Many people took notice of how effective this strategy would work in the land of the internet. Many others trying to duplicate this viral strategy sent out all sorts of bogus messages telling of great news or tall tales, and luckily today we have snopes.com to determine which of these is true.

Web powerhouses such as hotmail.com, myspace and facebook have grown dramatically from viral methods. Much like a virus spreads, one person tells two, those two tell two or three more and so on, before long without an FCC regulated medium, hundreds if not thousands (or millions in some cases) have heard the message.

I’m not a big text person, so when I received one the other day I was curious to find out who it was. It was AT&T texting me about American Idol Season 8. Funny, I didn’t ever remember signing up to receive text alerts from American Idol or AT&T. With economic pressures mounting look out for companies Spamming via text. Although some would argue that the AT&T message was not Spam because it was free, it did ruffle some feathers.

As an email marketer, I fight the uphill perception battle that Email marketing is Spam. I figured the best way to combat this perception is to learn about SPAM and try to help others understand what they can do to fight it.

What do we do with all of the junk we get? If your Spam filter isn’t catching everything these sites may help:

Spam information resources:

Federal Trade Commission

Spamcop.net

The Spamhaus Project

Spambusters.org

Abuse.net

Spamresource.com

Messaging Anti-Abuse Working Group

Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial Email

International Mail Consortium

Spamlaws.com

Email Sender Provider Coalition

Conference on Email and Anti-Spam

Get Net Wise

Melon Stork

Spam Blockers or Services

Spam Assassin

S-Mail

Blue Bottle

Advertising & graphic design agency, Serif Group, has office space available. The office is located on the second floor of 207 East Reynolds Road, Suite 210—between Nicholasville Road and Lansdowne Drive.

Amenities include: conference room, contemporary décor, utilities included, convenient location, a spacious, free parking lot, lots of sunlight, kitchen area, and a private office space. See photos on our Facebook page.

It would be an ideal location for an independent professional looking to move out of their home. Rent is affordable and includes utilities. For more information, contact Jackie or call 859-271-0701.

I’m amazed at how my TV-viewing habits have changed over the years. Our first TiVo box opened up new life for us in a way that was more fulfilling than our current cable provider-issued DVR box, but that’s another story. We can now watch Survivor in 40 minutes instead of 1 hour. The Office in just over 20 minutes instead of 30. That’s a lot of extra minutes gained for housework, reading, or more realistically, surfing the web.

But what does this say about people who are supposed to watch TV for the commercials? We’re advertising agency owners, ferpetesake! However, the other night we spotted a commercial that was actually worth stopping for: the new H&R Block “Second Look” spot. The guy with one eye was too “eye-catching” to pass up.

Upon devoting 30 seconds of our lives to it, Bill and I agreed that it was great. Just what is needed these days to cut through the clutter of TV advertising. It’s not enough to sound intriguing, you must have intriguing visuals to get viewers to stop fast-forwarding.

What do you think about that spot? Disgusted like these folks? Or did it get your attention, too?