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.

As mentioned, in a clean store we can effectively eliminate all extraneous marketing materials to influence the buying decision. If we assume that a salesperson won’t be offering an opinion, there then becomes just three onsite factors that play into the last minute decision. The first and second factors are related: shelf space and location in the store.

Shelf space, the amount of physical room the store has allocated for your product, has always been important. If you have more of your products visible than your competitors, it makes sense that you would have an advantage in getting your item picked up. Location can include position on the shelf; being eye level is optimal compared to knee height or above the customer’s head. But also, end cap locations, front aisle, near the registers, etc., are also factors. Anyone in retail knows that these are typically items that are negotiated between the manufacturer and the retailer.

But the wildcard in the retail game is the third item on our list, and that is the package itself. If your package stands out on the shelf, it automatically gives you an advantage. Just like any advertising, we believe there are two main rules. When I teach classes or give lectures I refer to them as “Randy’s Two Rules of Advertising“. Of course, they aren’t original to me, but hey, I’m the one in front of the group and I can call them whatever I want. The two rules are: Rule no. 1, Get Noticed. If you aren’t getting noticed, you are throwing your money away. Rule no. 2, Have A Strategy. Why are you doing what you are doing, what is the objective, how are you trying to influence the viewer?

Making Borbello’s Frozen Pizzas stand out on the shelves

If we apply the same thought process to packaging, our number one job is to get noticed. We recently created a new package design for Five Star Frozen Foods in Kaukauna, WI., the makers of Orv’s Pizza, for their upscale pizza product, “Borbello’s”. We created a new logo and completely redesigned the packaging. Each box features a photograph of a quarter pie on the front of the box, and when arranged together, the combined graphics creates an image of an extra large, complete pizza. Since many store displays have an area to show four to eight boxes (or more) next to each other, this allows for the opportunity to arrange the packaging to create what is essentially an extra large sign, right on the shelves themselves.

When combined together, the Borbello's pizza boxes make a bigger graphic display.

There is no doubt that, by displaying the packaging together in this way, the Borbello’s brand stands out in the frozen food displays.

The strategy? Our strategy was two-fold. We wanted Borbello’s to be seen as an upscale, quality pizza in the same category as a DiGiorno, California Pizza Kitchen, or other higher priced brands. Second, we wanted to showcase the abundant toppings that you get on the Borbello’s pizzas.

The black background color creates a very elegant look, reminiscent of an upscale restaurant. The supporting colors are bright, but not gaudy. The new logo is refined, perhaps understated, but still gives the perception of a fine italian eatery. The packaging is simple, but creates an instant upscale perception. If you buy this pizza, expect it to be better than the cheaper brands.

To highlight the amount of toppings, we did two things never seen before on pizza packaging. First of all, we turned what is commonly a required element of the package into a product feature: the weight of the pizza. We emphasized the weight by making it larger than we legally needed to, and highlighted it on the package by putting it in a colored oval to stand out. (We actually wanted it to be higher up on the package to emphasize it more, but we were forced to put it in the lower third of the package to get FDA approval.)

Another element that we’ve never seen done before is we showed a “cutaway” of the pizza. We sliced each pizza in two and positioned the camera at “eye level” to photograph it from the side. This straight from the side viewpoint showcases the thickness of the crust and the toppings piled on top. The cutaway photograph is featured on the backside of the package as well as on two sides of the package. On the sides, it is pretty close to being actual size.

Using the sides of the box gives us another chance to sell the product. In some stores, the extra stock is seen from the sides. By utilizing the side view in this way, we create another opportunity to get our strategic message to our potential customers.

On the back we included a cross-selling message that there are other toppings available. If you examine the boxes on the back closely, you will see that they don’t specifically name any topping combinations, giving our client the opportunity to change recipes down the road. On the back we also included very simple (and large) baking  instructions. No need to get out the reading glasses to make a pizza here.

It makes a difference

Sometimes a new look is enough to create excitement. It must have worked with the new Borbello’s packaging as Roundy’s stores decided to pick up the brand after reviewing a sell sheet featuring the new packaging, before the packaging was even completed. Roundys is a Midwest grocery chain that includes the Copps, Pick’n Save, Rainbow, Marioano’s and Metro Market brands of stores. We’ll make the assumption that with the simple addition of the new retail stores that Borbello’s sales will undoubtedly increase.

PDF of other Gunter Agency Sackaging Samples.  << Link to http://www.gunteragency.com/library/agencyinfo/ga_packaging.pdf >>

PDF of other Gunter Agency Food and Beverage Samples.  << Link to http://www.gunteragency.com/library/agencyinfo/ga_food_beverage.pdf>>

We’ve recently added RSS feeds to the ad listings on the Ad Diner. This is a great feature for visitors who use RSS and want to keep an eye on new offerings, but only a small fraction of internet users actually know what RSS is. If you aren’t familiar with it though, it’s worth taking the time to give it a try. It might dramatically change the way you use the web.

The problem with the web.

Every now and then something comes along that solves a problem most people didn’t realize they had. People got along fine before the remote control was invented, but these days no one would buy a TV without one.

I follow dozens of websites, and each of them adds new content in varying frequency. Some of the more popular blogs update several times each day, and many of the smaller sites only update every few weeks, if that often. I could waste a lot of time checking all of these sites every day to see if they have updated, and even then the less frequently updated sites tend to get forgotten about. Often a lot of valuable and interesting information gets lost in the shuffle.

Some websites have tried to solve this over the years with email reminders and newsletters, but if you sign up for too many of those you’ll end up with a cluttered and unusable mailbox.

RSS helps solves this by providing a better way to check and read all of your websites in one place.

Okay, what is RSS?

RSS stands for either “Rich Site Summary” or “Really Simple Syndication,” depending on who you ask. An RSS feed is just a file on a website that summarizes the site’s most recent content, with links to the original articles on the site. An RSS feed by itself isn’t particularly useful—it’s just a list of recent articles on a website. It’s when you use an RSS “Reader” that feeds become indispensable.

(Above: The front page of CNN.com and the contents of the accompanying RSS feed. Notice how the RSS feed offers the same information as the links on the front page. I actually prefer not to use RSS to follow major news sites like this because the sheer volume of content tends to overwhelm everything else I’m following, but they all offer RSS as a way to follow the news as it happens.)

An RSS reader (sometimes called an “Aggregator”) is a computer program or a website that checks all of the RSS feeds you tell it to and combines them together in one list. It keeps track of what you’ve read, and lets you know when something new is added. All in all, it’s a lot like using email—you have an inbox, you can sort articles by author, title, or date, you can flag stories you want to read later, and if you fall behind and just want to give up, you can mark everything as read. You no longer have to check to see if sites you read have updated, because the reader checks for you.

What do I need to get started?

First, you need a reader.

There are lots of different RSS Readers available, although most function fairly similarly. On the Mac, NetNewsWire, Vienna, and NewsFire are all good options. More recent versions of Apple’s Mail program also function as an RSS reader. On Windows, FeedDemon is a popular choice. There are quite a few cross-platform options as well, such as RSSOwl and BottomFeeder.

For people like me who have multiple computers they use on a regular basis, a web-based option might be better. Bloglines is a fairly popular web RSS service. For people who already use Google services such as Gmail or Google Docs however (and who doesn’t?), Google Reader is an excellent choice. Google Reader uses the same user account as the rest of your google services, and is available anywhere you have internet access. There’s even a special version for the iPhone and other mobile devices.

Some of the non-web RSS applications such as NetNewsWire and FeedDemon will synchronize with a Google Reader account, so you can still check your feeds when you’re away.

Then you need something to read.

Take a look at your favorite websites and see if they have feeds available. Not every site offers RSS, but most do. Just about every blog will have one. On most modern web browsers an RSS logo will appear in the address bar of a page that has an RSS feed. If not, look for the RSS logo on the sites you visit:

Take a look through your bookmarks. You might find some sites that you found something interesting on, bookmarked, and then promptly forgot about. See if they have a feed and subscribe to it. Most bookmarks are clutter you’ll never look back at, but a feed is a potential source of new information.

Some sites do interesting things with RSS. Craigslist doesn’t just offer feeds for each of the category listings on the site, you can also subscribe to a feed for a particular search. If you listen to podcasts on your iPod or other MP3 player, you’re already using RSS in a specialized way. Podcasting software just uses RSS feeds with links to audio files to handle updates.

Adding a feed to Google Reader is simple. (see below) Click the “Add a subscription” button, and enter the page you want to subscribe to. Reader will try to find the site’s RSS feed. Most other readers are similar.

Our ulterior motive:

Obviously we hope you’ll subscribe to the Five and Dime RSS feed, and if you’re reading this coming from the Ad Diner, subscribe to one of our feeds there.

The new guidelines talk about celebrity endorsements, blogging endorsements, use of testimonials in general (including non-celebrities), and sponsored testing.

On the FTC website is a pdf document that you can read about it (81 pages), see the link at the bottom of this article. I’ve pulled out and summarized some components here that I think are of interest to advertisers and ad creators.

I personally applaud these new guidelines, I think any time we make ads less deceptive we help our stature as advertising professionals as well as make it better for legitimate businesses to prosper.

Celebrity endorsements – basically the new guidelines state that a celebrity must actually use and endorse the product in most circumstances. It also states that the celebrity can be held liable if misstatements are made. Previously, celebrities had some “safe harbor” that is no longer available.

Typical results - any ad that uses an endorsement must represent a typical result of the product or service. A disclaimer stating “results not typical” or “results may vary” are no longer accepted and the ad could still be considered deceptive even when these types of disclaimers are made. (A lot of the examples on the FTC site talk about weight loss ads.)

“Sponsored speech” disclosure - anytime someone receives something of value, even a free sample, it could require that a disclosure is made in the ad or endorsement. This is particularly pertinent to bloggers as it also pertains to reviews of products or services. (Please note the word “could”, there are exceptions.) This even holds true if someone writes a post on someone else’s website or blog, if they are paid by the company that they are commenting about, they must disclose this relationship.

Sponsored trials and studies - any study that is sponsored by the advertiser, even if conducted by a third party, the sponsorship must be disclosed.

Use of “average person” - endorsements must be real (a real person that actually used the product) or there must be a disclosure to the contrary. This is particularly relevant to anyone that uses stock photos of people. If your copy represents that this is an actual person and makes a statement of some kind relating to that person and the product or service, but in reality they are really just a model or actor, you must reveal this fact.

Actors playing an “average person” - if an ad uses actors that seem like an “average person”, this must be revealed. The example given is for a “hidden camera” ad where the viewer may assume that these are average people that just happen to be asked about a product, not paid actors.

Independent testing – any mention of an organization endorsing or commenting on a product must be a real, bona fide, independent organization that actually has tested or otherwise substantiated any claims that are portrayed. It is deemed deceptive for a company to create an organization solely for the purpose of marketing a product.

Pertinent expertise – if an ad portrays or implies someone as an expert, they must actually be an expert in a relevant way. For instance, a hearing aid ad that uses a “doctor” within an ad would reasonably have a doctor with a relevant expertise in hearing and ear related healthcare, a non-medical doctor (e.g. an individual with a Ph.D. in exercise physiology) would not be accepted in this scenario.

These are the components that I found most relevant and interesting to the typical ad maker or advertiser. To review my source material, please visit these links at the FTC website:

• 81 page pdf about the new guidelines
• Videos about the new guidelines

A disclaimer: I am not an attorney and I am not giving any legal advice. It is possible that I could misinterpret these FTC guides, so please do your own due diligence and learn how these new rules affect your business and your advertising.

(Please note: this article is really written for the small business. For our larger clients, you may find it interesting, but there really is a different strategy for larger companies dealing with social media. Contact me and we can talk about those ideas.)

Everywhere you turn, it seems like people are telling business owners that they have to be working with social media. The latest buzz is all about Twitter and “tweeting”.

As a marketing person, I have a keen interest in anything that helps promote my customers’ business (or my business, too.) But with all of the hype, all of the articles, and all of the news, I have yet to see many concrete examples on how a typical small business can use social media such as Twitter as a marketing tool.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not anti-social media. I just believe that there is quite a bit of hype and less substance when dealing with social media. There’s simply a lot of businesses that really can’t take advantage of Twitter and Facebook (other than placing ads on Facebook.)

So let’s define the marketing opportunities that social media has to offer and then look at who can and who can’t take advantage of the different social media.

Tweets and social pages

A Twitter announcement is referred to as a “tweet”. A tweet is a short message that someone posts on their Twitter page. If you have no one following your tweets, no one actually sees those messages. But if you have “followers”, whenever you tweet something, those tweets appear on their page when they log on. (Other sites may refer to these  “followers” as “friends” or “fans”.)

For some small businesses, a tweet can pass along useful information. If you’re a restaurant, sending out the day’s lunch specials may be a good use of Twitter. It’s information that your followers will find useful before they head out to lunch. With that in mind, I would define a restaurant as a “social business”.

Social business defined

Defining someone as a “social business” is my own way of looking at the types of businesses that have an inherent interest level on a regular basis. If you are a restaurant and people frequent you more than a couple times a month, you fit that category. Other food places such as coffee shops and grocery stores fit in this category too. If people are following your establishment on a regular basis, you can be considered a social business.

Another way a business can be a social business is if they have customers who are “fans”. These are the types of businesses where people are genuinely interested in what is going on with that organization. The local sports team can fit this criteria. Or perhaps a musical group. If people are often wondering what is going on with your business, you fit this social business mold.

Apple Computers is an example of this. (Sorry, I couldn’t think of a small business example.) They are newsworthy, people want to know more about them. It could be interest in new technology or gadgetry. It could be because people own their stock and  want to know if the value is going up. It could be because they have a charismatic leader in Steve Jobs. (Who gets as much coverage because he’s not speaking at an event as he does when he is speaking at it.) A lot of people are “fans” of Apple.

On the local level, schools fit this model very well. If you have a son or daughter attending the local grade school, or if you are attending college, the latest information from the school is good to have at your fingertips. You want to know the latest news and getting information every day (or even several times a day) doesn’t bother you. In fact you desire the contact.

The problem is that most businesses don’t fit this definition of a social business. Most businesses have to struggle to get attention. They have to work to get a news story about them. Most of them have products or services that their clients and prospects really only think about when they have a need for that particular product or service. Sorry to say, people really don’t care about them on a daily basis.

Who really wants to follow the tweets of their local insurance agent?

Can the insurance agent use social media to help grow her business? Of course. But what she needs to do is think of social media like marketing media. In other words, advertise using social media.

Is advertising a bad word?

The social gurus are going to have a field day with that last statement. They’re saying you can’t advertise. They’re saying that people don’t want to be advertised to, they want relevant information. People want to be entertained. Advertising doesn’t work because people ignore it.

I’ve got news, good advertising has been supplying relevant information for years. Good advertising has been entertaining for years. Good advertising doesn’t get ignored. The problem is that there is a lot of bad advertising out there and that is what people associate with advertising. Good advertising depends on creativity, risk-taking, and the ability to understand the psyche of the viewer.

A few years ago, BMW came out with a series of eight short films on the web that starred Clive Owen and hired well-known directors, including John Woo, Tony Scott, John Frankenheimer and Guy Ritchie, for their “The Hire” series. These web-based movies were ground breaking at the time, using the web as their distribution.

Now that there is so much film content on the web, it is hard to stand out like BMW did. But the bottom line is that they blurred the line between advertising and entertainment. In reality, these were very long, very elaborate commercials to showcase how hot the BMW cars were. Whether you walked away consciously with that isn’t important, the subconscious message was there. And instead of showing these movies on TV or in a theater, they showed them online.

That’s what good advertising has always done. It entertains while educating, creating a brand promise while developing an interest in the product. Whether it is a good TV commercial, an innovative radio ad, a compelling print ad, or a good brochure, direct mail piece, or other traditional media, advertising can reach its audience in an interesting way. It can also be achieved with a quality website, compelling viral sales video usingYouTube, or other new media.

Media is media is media

What makes good advertising isn’t dependent on the media, it’s dependent on creativity. A bad online ad won’t be any better than a bad TV commercial. The strategy to use online and social media isn’t that different than the strategies used in traditional media.

So if you are the insurance agent that we referred to earlier, can you use social media to promote your business? Of course. Here are some suggestions.

Your website. Your website is probably your most important social media tool. Practically everything else you can do with social media can be accomplished to some degree with your website. When people are looking for insurance advice, your website can give it to them. It can be an online brochure, educational library and how-to video resource. People can find it through searches (see our other whitepaper on SEO to learn more about how to get on the search engines) or through advertising. A website can be an ad, a brochure, a catalog, a sales video, and a press announcement all at the same time.

Facebook and Twitter. We don’t have any problem with you creating a Facebook or Twitter page, just don’t overdo it with the messages. We prefer Facebook for businesses. If it is for your business, not for you personally, make sure that you have relevant information. Comments on the new tax laws and how they affect investments is appropriate. The idea that you voted on what your favorite musical group isn’t.

For businesses, a more relevant social media group is LinkedIn. This is mainly for professionals who use it to develop business contacts. It creates an environment where you can enlist your contacts to connect with their contacts. The other aspect of LinkedIn is there are numerous professional groups that you can join through the site. These are forums where you can reach out to your peers, ask questions, and gather information.

Advertising on Facebook and using YouTube

More relevant than creating a Facebook page is the fact that you can advertise on Facebook. You can target the ads geographically, so you reach only your local area. You can target by gender or age. And you can even target by interests. So if you have a specialty in insuring over-the-road truckers, you can probably find people interested in trucks to target. Plus, you can choose what level you want to advertise, setting limits on what you will pay per click and daily limits on your spending levels.

YouTube has become the defacto place to host video. You really no longer have to store video on your own site, you can put it on YouTube and then embed it on your own site. (It will have the YouTube logo in the lower right hand corner, but I think it is common enough that people don’t think twice about it.)

YouTube now allows higher resolution content, so your videos can be uploaded and seen with good picture quality. (See our UFO story to see a sample of an embedded YouTube video.) If the video is relevant to someone searching, there’s also a possibility of someone finding it on the YouTube site itself. A TV commercial that we did for one of our clients has now had over 50,000 views on YouTube. (And that’s low for YouTube standards, but not bad for a local company to get extra views for no cost.)

Be selective on what you put up on YouTube, make sure that it is professional quality. Don’t just get a camera and record your own video and place it up on YouTube. We’re talking about your brand image and everything you do positions your brand. There are a lot of people putting up amateur looking videos on YouTube but don’t make your business one of them.

Email marketing

We flip-flop all the time on email marketing. It can be effective, but also can be annoying. Personally, we never send mass emails out more than twice a year. Yet, if you develop a list, it is a very cost-effective way of reaching a lot of people with little out-of-pocket expense. (Assuming that you are doing it yourself and not hiring it out.)

Email marketing is not different in strategy than traditional direct mail. You need something to get people’s attention, and then have an offer that makes it interesting for the person to follow through with your call to action. Sometimes the call to action is immediate (click here and order), sometimes its more branding oriented (when it’s time to buy insurance, think of us.)

Blogs and e-Newsletters

If you can offer pertinent information that is useful to your clients and prospects, a blog or email newsletter can be a good tool. We’ve had success with our own newsletter, and have now switched over to a blog instead. (With the intent of adding information on a more random basis, but still sending out an email a couple times a year letting people know what has been posted on the site.) If people are savvy enough to use an RSS feed, they can get the latest updates whenever they are posted.

We’ve always been a proponent that a blog or newsletter has to include more helpful information than sales propaganda. A little bit of sales is okay, just don’t overdo it.

Getting mentioned on other people’s blogs, newsletters and websites should now be a component of any public relations program. To do this, you need to examine how your press release is written and distributed in order to meet the criteria of the social media/web world. Being an expert for blogs is an intelligent PR strategy in its own right. (Look for a future white paper on PR strategies that use the web.)

Conclusion

We see that a lot of businesses are caught up in the hype telling them that they have to dedicate a lot of time and energy towards social media. We think there is a lot of “Emperor’s New Clothes” in that outlook, sometimes people are afraid to be seen as out of touch, so they don’t trust their common sense.

Although we don’t believe there is anything wrong with having your social media points of contact, we would much rather you spent your time and energies developing a strategy that uses a balance of traditional media and sales tactics, and include using some social media as an advertising vehicle. For most businesses, that’s a course that will reward you with more sales, better branding, and a higher return on investment.

The issue, of course, is that PowerPoint, the computer slide presentation software from MicroSoft^®, should be used as a tool for making the presentation, it shouldn’t define what the presentation is.

That in itself isn’t the problem, the problem is that people misuse PowerPoint in a way that makes their presentations bad. They would have been better off not using PowerPoint at all. In fact, there are many people that would be much better off just talking without any visual aids whatsoever. Still, many people think it would be impossible to make a presentation without this software.

The Key Mistakes of PowerPoint

Let’s face it, PowerPoint in the wrong hands can make for a very, very, very boring presentation. People tend to cram into their slides everything they can think of to get their message across, then end up reading it on the screen.

An effective PowerPoint slide should be like a billboard on a highway where you are cruising by at 70 miles an hour. If you can’t read it in a few seconds, it probably has too much information. The simpler, the better.

Before PowerPoint came along, people use to give slide presentations. They would talk, and they would show a photographic slide or illustration projected on a screen to complement what they were talking about. Very few people had the means to put type on their slides, so they just used the slides to supplement their speech.

These slide presentations were a lot more effective than most PowerPoint presentations of today. But of course, you can take that approach with PowerPoint, how many words can you eliminate and use a picture instead?

However, some people think because they can add all the type, they should. The best PowerPoint presentation is probably one that doesn’t have any type in it at all.

Leave the special effects alone

Talking about using something simply because you can, the use of special effects in PowerPoint can create seizures in an audience.

Let’s take a page from Hollywood: I guarantee you that every great director and editor out there in Hollywood has the access and technology to apply all kinds of transitions to their movies when they cut from one scene to another.  But I bet you could watch a dozen movies a day for the next few weeks and only see straight cuts and simple dissolves.

So why doesn’t Hollywood use a spinning twirly iris effect when they cut from one scene to the next? Because it usually is distracting and it always looks amateurish.

With the exception of  newer Star Wars and other B movies, you will rarely find a Hollywood picture use a “special effects” transition from one scene to the next.

Your PowerPoint will look more professional if you also use basic cuts and maybe a simple dissolve or two. Leave the twirling special effects to the people that are lacking in content and have to “jazz up” their presentation in other ways.

PowerPoint Should Never Be A Leave Behind

I had someone tell me that they had to put up all that type information on the slide because they were going to use the PowerPoint presentation as a leave behind piece.

The problem should be obvious, a PowerPoint presentation is almost always a horrible leave-behind. It’s like listening to half of a phone conversation, you can probably pick out a few things, but since you can’t actually hear the other person, you really don’t know what is actually going on.

It’s the same with the leave-behind made out of a PowerPoint presentation: the viewer later won’t have the benefit of being able to hear the speaker again, so the written slides are only part of the story.

Why not create a separate leave-behind that actually works as a leave-behind?

There really is only one reason that anyone would use the PowerPoint presentation as a leave-behind: it’s easier. It’s certainly not better, but it is easier. But I hope that you don’t make decisions on what is the easiest way of doing something and rather on what is the best way of doing it.

Making a good presentation

The key to making a good PowerPoint presentation is to have something interesting to say, then decide if you even want to use PowerPoint at all.

With any communications, having a goal in place is a good start. What is it that you want to communicate to your audience? Can you simply tell them or do you need that projector? Will a graphic actually help make your point? Or is it really just a crutch that you need because you don’t want to practice your presentation?

Now don’t get me wrong, I believe that showing pictures, graphics and illustrations can be a powerful aid in a presentation. When I make presentations, there are usually a video clip or two involved.

Tell Stories

One of the biggest pieces of advice that I can give in making a presentation is to tell stories. People can relate to story telling, and they’ll probably remember a story much better than facts and figures. Can you make your point telling a story?

Graphics

Okay, let’s look at a few things as far as the graphics part of a PowerPoint presentation. Some simple do’s and don’ts.

• Do use a black background, it makes lighter graphics jump out and video becomes like a theater.
• Don’t use a pure white background, if you need a lighter color, add a little cream or beige to the mix, it’s easier on your viewer’s eyes.
• Don’t mix more than two fonts, and one is probably better. This is a simple design rule, but something that is often broken in PowerPoint presentations. If you’re using two font families, pick one serif and one san serif. It’s okay to use different font weighs (book, bold) and the italics to differentiate different parts within your text.
• Use the right resolution. Learn what resolution your projector can handle, then create your graphics at that resolution. The higher the better. This will keep your images sharper and get rid of “jaggies” in your type. Most projectors can do much better than an 800 x 600 resolution, yet many people stick to this default resolution when they make their presentation because it’s easier or they simply don’t know better.

A few more suggestions…

Don’t turn down your lights on your audience. Try to leave the lights as bright as you can while still allowing your audience to see what is projected on the screen. This way you can make eye contact with the people in your audience (this simple thing will make a huge difference on how you are perceived by your audience.)

Go to YouTube and look up Guy Kawasaki’s 10-20-30 Rule. Guy is one of my favorite business authors, so you can also go to the library and find his books like “How to Drive Your Competition Crazy”, “Selling the Invisible”, and “Art of the Start.”

Guy talks about his 10-20-30 Rule for PowerPoint presentations: presentations should be no more than 10 slides, should take no longer than 20 minutes, and should use a minimum of 30 point type. Don’t take my word for it, go online and hear Guy explain his thoughts.

Closing thoughts

To make a good presentation, practice it. And then practice it again.

Bring an extra bulb for your projector just incase the bulb burns out. Or even better, figure out how you can make your presentation if the projector explodes and you have to give your presentation without it.

It might be better that way anyway.

Contact Randy Gunter for reprint permission. randygunter@gmail.com

First of all, let’s make sure everyone understands what SEO is exactly. Search Engine Optimization is anything you do to create or add features to your website to get higher rankings on search engines. And of course, search engines are the websites where you look up information online to find other websites that have the information that you are looking for. The most commonly used search engines are Google and Yahoo.

Along with the website where searches are carried out, the phrase search engine can also refer to the actual company (Google or Yahoo for instance), or the computer program that does the searches. For this article, we are lumping these three areas all together, we don’t feel that we need to distinguish between the different components for our illustrations.

How do search engines work?

Let’s first talk a little bit about how search engines work. A common phrase used when talking about search engines is “algorithms”. For some of us, we remember algorithms from math classes from high school. (Not that we necessarily understood them, but we remember them.) An algorithm by definition is a set of rules or a process that govern calculations or other problem-solving operations. Why is this important? Because search engines use algorithms to get information about your website.

Some people assume that when they submit their website to a search engine for review that someone, somewhere is going to sit on a computer to review their website and decide how it should be placed within their lists. But, if you think about the millions of websites that are out there, you begin to realize that this is an impossibility.

So the search engines have developed programs to review your site. We refer to this operation as their algorithm. They develop proprietary algorithms and, like the Coca-

Cola recipe, these programs are highly guarded secrets. They don’t tell anyone how they work for obvious reasons… first of all they spend a lot of money developing and refining their programs. No sense giving that away to their competitors. The second reason this information is held close to the vest is that it helps keep people from “gaming the system”. (More on that later.)

So if someone is not personally reviewing the site, how does the search engines get information? They send what is known as a “spider” or “bot” (robot). A spider is a program that runs to visit your website and collect information. It doesn’t view your website like people do, it actually looks at the source code. (If you ever want to look at code on a website, you can look under the “view” heading on your browser and drop down to “source”.) It takes this information back to its home where the algorithms go to work, in essence cataloging your website and deciding what is relevant.

Relevance is a key word in search engine optimization. The more relevant your site is to search parameters, the higher up on the list it will go. And this is probably the number one thing that you can do to get better placement for your website. In fact, when you are designing your site you should put together a list of key words that people will likely search, then use these words in your copy.

Taking the copy a step further, don’t just think about key words, but think about key phrases. If someone types in “Chevy Corvette” in their search, you will get better placement if you have the words “Chevy” and “Corvette” next to each other, rather than “Chevy” on one page and “Corvette” on another. In addition, repetition is good within a website. Use those key phrases in different areas.

Metatags: Do they work?

So what about metatags? Metatags are words and phrases placed within the code that aren’t necessarily included in the copy on the site. (You don’t see these at all when you look at the site.) At one point in time, these metatags were picked up by the search engines and used as part of the list placement. However, this created a lot of issues where people were using metatags to move their placement up on the search engines, regardless if their site was actually relevant to the phrases.

The bottom line is that very few search engines use metatags for placement in today’s world.

“Gaming the system” is a phrase that pretty much can translate to “cheating”. When someone creates a website that tries to fool the search engine algorithms, it is gaming the system. Although there still is some of that going on, the search engines are a lot more sophisticated than they used to be. It is tougher to pull a fast one on the search engines, and if you try, it can have

adverse effects.

BMW’s German page was removed from Google’s search results after alledgedly writing content that didn’t fit Google’s search protocols. They said “sorry” and Google eventually let them back into their system.

Paying for rankings

So how about these companies that claim that they are going to put in the metatags that are going to help you get higher rankings? There are certainly some “do’s” and “don’ts” in the metatag world, but I would be wary of anyone claiming that their metatag usage is going to make your site jump to the top of the results list.

As mentioned earlier, there are some companies that claim that they will add your name to hundreds (if not thousands) of search engines. Our advice is to pick the top three* to five search engines and do it yourself. It certainly doesn’t hurt to submit your site to more search engines, but we would be surprised if you get much value out of it.

If your site is new, or recently revamped, do submit your information to the main search engines. But, to be quite honest, if you have any kind of presence already, the spiders will find your site without a new submission.

And what about companies that guarantee your placement on the first page? Read the fine print. If you put enough descriptors in the search, eventually they’ll get you on the first page. But how many times are people going to search for your company name, including the company’s president’s name, the town he grew up in, and his favorite drink?

So what are some of the other real tips to move up in the rankings?

We already talked about relevance as probably the primary key to get results on your search engine marketing. Another factor that most search engines take into consideration is tied into relevance, that is, how relevant is your site to the rest of the online community? In other words, are you a player?

The only way the search engines can make this decision (remember, its all algorithms, not people making decisions) is to look at how many people are actually looking at your site, or referring people to your site. That can be sort of a catch-22, how can you get people to refer to your site if they aren’t finding it in the first place?

The answer is to find other ways, besides search engines, to get people to hook up to your site. This can be done with referrals, getting people to link to your site from their site. One of the best ways to do this is to generate publicity through online press releases. We like our clients to get online news stories with links to their sites. Of course national press is great, but most local news sources also have their websites with local information.

The common exchanging of links is also a way to get referring sites to find your site. Some are done more tactfully than others, as a marketing company we advise using good judgment on these types of referrals. It is more important to maintain brand equity than to get a few extra links to your site. But if you can get other sites, especially popular sites, to put a link to your site, it also helps get your search engine ranking up higher.

People on blogs also can link to your site. There are big companies that pay individuals to get their names and links on blogs, although there are some “gaming the system” issues with this, and if it’s not done correctly, it can create a backlash.

A problem with referrals could arise if your site is linked from what is referred to as “link farms”. You’ve probably seen them when you typed in a wrong domain address, these are pages with no real content and simply links to other sites.

Paying for placement

So can you pay to get placement? Yes, and you should look into it. There are two ways to pay to get your site viewed. One is to pay for advertising, typically banner ads, on other sites that link to your website. The strategies and purchasing of online advertising is still evolving, but it is getting more established and the pay per

click model is still a major way to purchase online advertising.

The other way to pay for getting your site viewed is simply to participate in the search engine’s paid results. This is a lot simpler, and may be cheaper, than most people realize. These are the “sponsor results” listed on the side of the search engine results. You “bid” on key words that you want to own. When someone types in those key words, you are placed in relationship to how much you bid. For instance, you can “bid” 25¢ for key words. If no one bids more than 25¢, you get the top placement. Let’s say if someone bids 30¢, they move ahead of you on the ranking.

If someone is at 10¢, they are below you.

The price is per click. Just because your listing comes up on the page doesn’t mean that you are going to pay that amount. What it does mean is that if someone clicks on it and is directed to your website, you then pay.

The other part of the equation is that you decide a limit per month on how much you are willing to pay. For instance, you can decide that you never want to pay more than $50 a month. Once you hit that amount, your listing is taken down until the next month.

The downside to this scenario is that there is some worries about your competitors clicking on your link to raise your monthly bill. There are some safety measures in place to keep this from getting out of hand, but a little of that might occur.

Search engine optimization is clearly an important tool to use to get your website ranked higher on the searches. But be wary of companies that have their secret ways to improve your rankings, it’s probably more snake oil than actual legitimate processes. And last, but not least, remember to be relevant. Not a bad suggestion regardless of whether you are trying to get better search results or looking for a new business philosophy in general.

* Not sure who the top 3 search engines are? In order, Google, Yahoo, and MSN are the top search engines by total hours used.

Contact Randy Gunter for reprint permission. randygunter@gmail.com

On the business side, people who use video are wondering about HD and how to make it work in their television commercials, on their website, and for long-format video.

Resolution Basics

Most people understand that better picture quality is primarily created by more lines of resolution. (We’ll explain lines of resolution later on.) But there’s more to the story than just that.

There are actually two resolutions that come into play with HD. There is the source resolution–where the video is coming from (cable, broadcast, DVD, BluRay, etc.) And then there is also the monitor’s resolution.

(Please note, when we refer to monitor, you can substitute the word TV. When we’re talking about resolution, there is no difference.)

The Monitor Resolution

A pixel (picture element) is a dot on the screen that is actually made up of three little lights, one red, one green, and one blue–that’s where the acronym “RGB” comes from. In theory, by changing the intensity of the three different colors, practically any color can be made.

If you count the number of pixels per square inch (PPI), you get a number that indicates the resolution of the monitor. Most monitor manufacturers do not prominently list their PPI, instead they translate that into a number referred to as “native resolution”. This is the number of pixels in width multiplied by the number in height on the entire screen.

The larger the number of the native resolution, the better. For example a monitor with a resolution of 1440 x 900 is higher resolution than a monitor of 1366 x 768.

Source Resolution

Now to try to make things more confusing, you have a completely different resolution to contend with. This is the resolution of the source video, often known as the video feed.

The source video is made up of lines of resolution. Common lines of resolution are 480, 720, and 1080. The resolution number is determined by counting the number of horizontal lines. (A line being a string of dots across the screen.) To get the number, you simply count how many lines you have stacked up on top of each other.

So if you have a 720 source feed, you can count 720 lines up and down on the screen.

Upconversion and Downconversion

The signal, the video information supplied to your monitor, is coming from your source, typically your cable or satellite feed, your DVD player, your computer, or the signal broadcast over the air.

Even if you have a high definition monitor, if your source is broadcasting in standard definition (SD), you won’t be getting that high resolution picture. (Recent studies have shown that 50% of consumers who own HD TVs aren’t even sure if they are watching in HD format!)

There are devices that can take a standard definition signal and “upconvert”, where it will interpolate the image to make it look better on a high definition monitor. It won’t be true high def, but it will help sharpen an otherwise blurry image. You will probably want to upconvert the signal when watching old DVDs on a newer, larger HD monitor.

If your monitor is lower resolution than the source, it will automatically downconvert a higher resolution source.

For optimum picture quality, a source and monitor that are the same resolution will provide the best results.

Mind your “i’s” and “p’s”

So we now know that there are different monitor resolutions, and different source feed resolutions. So what are those “i’s” and “p’s” that you see after the numbers? To understand that, we need a quick TV history lesson.

TV video signals are really still images flashed onto the screen so fast that they give the appearance of moving. On a standard TV, for every second of video there are 30 pictures, or frames, that are flashed up on the screen during that second’s worth of time.

But, these images are “interlaced”. (That’s where the “i” comes from.) Interlacing means that you divide the picture’s image in half into what are called fields. Each field is made up of every other line of resolution. Counting up and down, every odd numbered line is one field, every even numbered line is another field.

By taking the 30 frames, you actually show one frame in the odd fields mixed with the next frame in the even fields. In this way you are actually showing only 50 percent of the image, which gets mixed (interlaced) with the next image.

Why this is important is that, if you think about it, at no point in time are all of the lines of resolution being used for a single image.

So what would happen if you could flash each frame up using the entire screen? It obviously would show more information on the screen, which would in turn create a higher resolution image. (Remember with interlaced you are only seeing 50% of that same information.)

The newer digital technology allows us to do exactly that, and it is referred to as “progressive scan” –that’s where the “p” comes in.

(And to be technically accurate, as progressive scan indicates, images are “scanned” in on the screen a line at a time, but this happens so fast that for our purposes saying that they are “flashed” on the screen is easier to envision.)

So if you compare a resolution that has an “i” in it, such as 1080i, and one that has a “p” in it, such as 1080p, you can easily figure out that for every second of video that you watch, the “p” version has twice as much information being flashed on the screen. (And along with that, a much clearer picture.)

So what is better, 1080i or 720p? That’s a toss up, since the 1080i has more lines of resolution, but the 720p has the advantage of progressive scan. To a majority of consumers, this won’t make much difference at all. There may be a slight advantage to the 720p image for high speed action, like sporting events, because interlacing of a fast image won’t be as sharp.

What to stay away from

Manufacturers came out with what they called ED sets–Enhanced Definition. This is the same thing as your Standard Definition (SD) TV but it is progressive scan technology instead of interlaced. (It’s 480p instead of 480i.) When you see them on display in the stores, they are going to look better than your regular standard definition TV when playing from a progressive scan device.

But if you later switch over to a broadcast HD signal, the ED sets are not going to show the higher resolution picture. Our advice is to stay away from ED sets. The good news is that they aren’t as prevalent out there as they have been over the last few years. But beware, there are still ED sets being sold and they really aren’t true HD quality.

High Def “DVD” Players

So if you have a high definition monitor, you also need a high definition source. Your regular DVD player won’t supply that information, although you can find some that will “interpolate” the lower resolution to look better on an HD screen. (Once again, this is referred to as upconversion.)

Anybody remember the VHS-beta wars? There are currently two formats that are fighting it out to be the standard in high definition to replace your old DVD format. Those are BluRay and HD-DVD. Since Sony is a motion picture company and one of the owners of the BluRay technology, you will find their movies exclusively on BluRay.

The good news is there are devices out there that will play both formats. The bad news is that these devices are extremely expensive. (At least right now they are. Like every other electronic device, they should go down in price in time.)

Broadcast in HD

As far as broadcast signals, the cable and satellite companies will both sell you a package that will broadcast channels in the HD format.

But you can also receive HD signals with a basic set of rabbit ears. Since the networks are broadcasting HD digitally, it is very common to be able to get a good looking HD signal with a simple antenna where you normally would only get a snowy picture with the analog signal. For those of us who live out in the country, that is really nice.

Pillarboxing

As one more note on HD televisions, there seems to be a preponderance of stretched images. (As I have observed in quite a few stores that sell wide screen TVs.) What we are referring to are ‘aspect ratios’ and how people evidently don’t know that they can simply change their television to adapt to the different sized images.

A typical standard definition screen size is a 4:3 ratio, which means that the height of the screen is 3/4ths its width. A typical wide screen image has a 16:9 ratio. (14:9 and 16:10 ratios also show up at times, although less common.)

When you have a widescreen television and you are watching a image that was originally created as a 4:3 ratio, you can either stretch the image across the screen, distorting it into unnatural shapes. Or you can click on the ‘aspect ratio’ button on your remote to fix the problem. Pillarboxing simply centers the original 4:3 image in the middle of your wider screen, creating black “pillars” on either side of the image.

Digital Broadcasting in 2009

As you are probably aware, the United States is switching over to a digital broadcast signal in 2009. But this isn’t an issue of standard definition versus HD. Many people are confused about this and think that their old TVs will be obsolete at that time. This simply isn’t true. (Although I am sure the TV manufacturers don’t have any problem if people believe that they have to go out and buy a new TV.)

This change simply means that the signal will be digital, not analog. If you have cable or a satellite feed, this is a total non-issue. Your current receiver/box already takes the digital signal and converts it to an analog one.

The only people that this will affect are people that watch old TVs with rabbit ears or an outside antenna. Those people will have to get a converter box. (Estimated price will be around $50.)

A government website has good information on this subject at www.dtv.gov.

HD in the business world

Let’s take a look at where HD fits into the business world. It seems that everyone is moving towards HD, as they should. It will be the standard in just a few years.

If you are considering a new video project, should you shoot it in HD format, even though you may not need it in that format right away?

In our opinion, any project that is being produced at this point in time probably should be shot in an HD format. The simple reason is that you can always “dumb it down”, making it lower resolution. But there is absolutely nothing you can do to take a standard resolution file and turn it into high definition.

In most local markets, it seems that a majority of television commercials are still produced in standard resolution, even on the HD channels. But we feel that will change as HD becomes more common and the fact that HD video equipment is coming down in price.

Prosumer equipment (named because both professionals and consumers who want high end equipment are targeted for these items) is coming out that makes it more affordable to capture high definition video.

On the editing side, faster computers and cheaper, bigger hard drives also make editing HD something where smaller businesses can now afford to compete.

Distributing the HD signal

As far as video projects go, the biggest obstacle for HD is the lack of true HD quality players. It’s one thing to have a HD quality video, it is another to actually play it for other people. Until businesses are equipped with BluRay or HD-DVD players, you may be stuck running it from your own playback device. There are hard drive solutions and you can also run the video from digital tape.

The other current problem is the expense of BluRay or HD-DVD equipment to burn your own copies for distribution. In time, as the technology develops and becomes even more common, these issues will resolve themselves.

HD technology is here today and will only become more prevalent. Isn’t it time that you made the jump to HD for your next video project?

Please contact Randy Gunter for reprint permissions.
randygunter@gmail.com
www.RandelGunter.com