Ed Icionsub

The new Chrysler commerical is awesome. It starts out with some kickin music – I really want to find out who does that tune. It shows little vignettes of typical Detroit scenery, and then at the very end it shows the new Chrysler 300 looking sharp. I like that car a lot – it has such a gangster look. I would think it was more Chicago than Detroit – even the scene in the commercial could easily be streets in Chicago. But, of course, GM is in Detroit. At the very end of the commercial there is a short message that says, “Imported from Detroit.” Woot! Great commercial.

Until I accepted this position with my company, I had always worked for small businesses. There is a big difference between the owner of the business balancing the company checkbook and have a Vice President of Finance with a staff of accountants and bookkeepers handle your finances. The same thing goes for marketing and advertising. In a small business, there is often the feeling that an Advertising Agency is too expensive and that the owner should be able to do all the advertising and public relations work.

But honestly, unless that small business happens to be in the advertising industry, why does an owner have to know everything that the professionals in an advertising agency know from years of training and experience? How can a small business owner be expected to have all the business contacts and networking sources to launch an effective advertising campaign? How does a small business owner know how to measure the effectiveness of that campaign? How much money does the small business owner actually end up saving – or losing – by making the wrong advertising decisions?

When you have a very small business that is well established and earning a lot of personal referrals, maybe you do not need an actual advertising agency. But if you are more than just a few employees or you are a new company trying to get as many new customers as possible, using an agency makes a lot more sense. The people at the advertising agency are professionals at their craft – just as you are expected to be the professional or the expert in your own line of work. Smart business owners take advantage of the skills and talent that can be hired for specific projects and don’t try to do everything by themselves.

Most of the time I will not write about politics on this blog. But to ignore all the debates and straw polls in advance of the party nominations and next year’s elections would not be good, either.

So here is what I plan to do. I will make positive comments about the candidates and offer my own opinions on the issues. Readers are welcome and sometimes expected to disagree with me. That is OK, as long as you are polite and respectful in your comments.

Its been at least a year – maybe two – since Allstate Insurance started their commercial campaign with little scenes of “Mayhem.” Have you seen them? I have watched them here and there, and I guess I was just ignoring them because when my daughter started talking about Mayhem I had no idea what she was talking about. She looked astonished and described one of the commercials and even though I had seen it, I just never made the mental connection between Mayhem and what the scene was about. I tune out a lot of commercial and didn’t realize how much I could ignore things on TV until my daughter brought this up. Of course, now that she has raised my awareness of the Mayhem commercials, I notice them almost every time I turn on the TV. LOL

Just saw a commercial for the Lenovo laptops. The commercial shows a cup of soda spilling onto the keyboard of the traveling businessman’s laptop. He just picks up the cup and blots the keyboard dry with a table napkin. So, how did they do that? I’ve seen laptop keyboards from underneath and can’t figure out how they would make the keyboard spillproof.