The Five and Dime

Had a meeting this last week with another marketing person and saw that he had many similar books on his reading shelf that I have on mine. He recommended the new book from James Collins, Great by Choice. We’ve both read Mr. Collins’ earlier book, Good to Great, and recommend it. (Well actually I had it read to me listening to it as a book on CD in the car.)

I thought I’d put some of my favorite business and marketing books in this post. I’ll add to it later, I’ve literally read hundreds of business books and the good people at the local library know me by name.

Good to Great by James Collins

Jim Collins analyzes companies that have taken their companies from good (average results) to great (exceeding profits of their competitors) and sustained it over fifteen years (long enough to show it wasn’t a fluke.) He compares the selected companies with similarly sized competitors in each industry and analyzed the differences. The findings, the traits or “DNA” that were identified in all the “great” companies, were then conveyed as a potential road map for success.

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Logos and business cards selected for upcoming books

The Gunter Agency’s work has been selected for two upcoming books, one on logo design and the other on business card design. The books are put together by David Carter, who has over 100 design industry books to his credit. Mr. Carter has decided that all of his upcoming books will be e-books. The titles are simply LOGOS1 and BUSINESS CARDS 1.

Works from our agency includes logos for The Ad Diner, Forward Theater, Capital Wealth Advisory Group Foundation, Madison Youth Performing Arts Foundation, Ray’s Barber Shop and Precision Tool & Service.

For the business card book, works includes cards for Libris Codex, Forward Theater, Ray’z Barber Shop and Precision Tool & Service.

John Krull (former employee and all around good guy) did the MYPAF logo. Dave Kizer did a 3-D version of the Ad Diner logo that was selected (needing to put that graphic up here.) Otherwise all of the other work was done by Trevor Gunter or myself.

The Gunter Agency has been included in numerous industry “best of” books and periodicals. If you look up “Gunter Advertising” on Amazon, you can find a few of them.

New Borbello's Pizza Box Design

A common trend in the retail world is “clean stores”. A clean store limits or completely eliminates the signage and displays provided from manufacturers. All of the stand-ups, clings, banners, shelf talkers, inflatables, and anything else that tries to get your attention in the store aisles are disappearing. The reason is stores are trying to control their environment.

Many retail marketings subscribe to the philosophy that the most important action in to influencing the buying decision is to make an impression right before the purchase is made. Remember, just because someone walks in the store with the idea to purchase one brand or product, it doesn’t necessarily mean that they will walk out of the store with that brand or product. The “last chance” to alter the decision is right there in the store.

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Joan Gillman, Jody Glynn Patrick and Randy Gunter in the studio

I will be on the air on September 22nd, interviewed by Jodie and Joan on WTDY 1670 in Madison at 6 p.m. The following day you will be able to access a podcast at feed://ibmadison.com/extensions/podcast-rss.jsp .

And if you’re wondering how I already have a picture, the show was taped in advance.

This commercial we created for Verona Vision Care uses still photos of their staff and customers trying on different frames. We then animated the still photos to create the visual effect. Pretty simple idea, but sometimes the simple ideas are the most effective.

The frame show was advertised with localized cable TV one week prior to the show, radio a couple days before, minimal print, posters on location and an email blast. We visited them at the end of the day and they were still busy with customers past the advertised closing time. We heard from the owners that it had been busy non-stop from the time they opened until the time they closed.

More new work to show: this is a new logo for Precision Tool in Brodhead. Precision is an exciting company that has done major engineering and manufacturing work for numerous corporations. In fact, some of their work has found its way to the moon via NASA space flights.

They also produce their own exclusive line of specialized tools for manufacturing. And, as a sideline, Jack Klopfenstein (company President) is coming out with a new line of games. We like to think of our agency as creative, but I’ll tell you what – these guys are creative and smart in a completely different and amazing way.

You can get contact info at www.ptsproducts.com (be aware, a new website is on its way.)

Just sharing some new ads created for LifeStyles Furniture, a contemporary furniture store in the Quad Cities (and online) that is opening a new location in Davenport, Iowa. We took existing photographs and knocked them out and created new imagery using the furniture photographs. (Everything except the type and logo is made up of furniture.) The first three have run, the last two have not.

We recently finished a fun project for Swiss Valley Farms that included the design and production of a custom trade show display, photography and design for light boxes, a 3-1/2 minute looping video for an LED display, building of the shipping crates, and all of the coordination of those items.

The trade show display, light boxes and video for Swiss Valley Farms/Faribault.

We had about a month to pull everything together. Finding willing partners down the street from us at BrightBox Industries, Inc., we set out to the task. As BrightBox’s name implies, they make custom light boxes. But they’re also known for a variety of display work; primarily in-store displays, but they are also up to the trade show task.

The Fancy Food Show is an important show for The Caves of Faribault, a subsidiary company of Swiss Valley Farms, so they wanted to showcase a variety of their cheeses in this quality setting. Our design reflected the upscale nature of the show, including a cherrywood display reminiscent of a parade of homes quality kitchen, complete with a granite solid surface backsplash. (Well, at least it looked like granite.)

Lauren Albracht, Marketing Specialist at Swiss Valley Farms, was heavily involved throughout the design process. One of  her goals was to make sure the display worked extra hard for her company by being multi-functional for other shows. She explains, “We are very excited about the flexibility this booth provides. We can change the lightbox graphics and video reel to adapt to new product introductions and speak to different audiences at the shows we attend.”

There was one added challenge in designing this custom display: the final assembly of the display had to be accomplished without any tools and all parts needed to be shipped in one crate.

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This post is about the AAF and ADDY awards, and is mainly written for ADDY awards participants. Anyone is welcome to read it, but it probably won’t have relevance for many businesses who aren’t participating in the ADDY awards.

ADDY judges in Tampa Bay. L-R: Leslie Haines (Nashville), Randy Gunter (Madison), Judy Thompson (Cincinnati) taken in front of the Columbia restaurant, Ybor City, Tampa, FL.

Recently I was in the Tampa Bay area judging their local ADDYs, the advertising awards sponsored by the American Advertising Federation (AAF.) The local advertising club’s entries were down significantly this year, almost half of what it had been in previous years. In fact, all of the clubs in Florida were down this year. (And I am going to be inquiring about other clubs across the country, so I’ll keep you informed.)

I predicted that the local clubs were going to be hurting with lower entries four months ago. No, I’m not much of a psychic, I was just included on an email from the national headquarters of AAF announcing that they were going to raise the prices of the entries and they expected the local clubs in turn to also raise their prices. Read the rest of this entry »

Are you using email marketing as part of your marketing mix? If you are, and you are sending materials out en masse, there are certain requirements you need to follow in order to do it legally. This is referred to the “CAN-SPAM Act” which was signed into law in 2003 by George W. Bush.

Some of the most common mistakes we see are simple ones.

First, you need to have an “opt-out”, an easy way for your email recipients to be taken off of your email list. (And then make sure you take them off!)

Second, you need to state within the email where you are located. This includes your address. (Not just a website address or phone number.)

These are two of the most common mistakes we see in emails that we receive. But, there are other requirements.

You can learn more about the CAN-SPAM act at the Federal Trade Commission website. They have an easy to understand page that goes into more detail. View it at http://business.ftc.gov/documents/bus61-can-spam-act-compliance-guide-business.