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Experts Speak Out on the Recession, Social Media, ‘Bad Performances’ by Corporate CEOs and the Most Popular Giveaways

As our regular readers know, every month we ask experts from across the region to help our readers by responding to what, we hope, are some thoughtful, real-world questions that can make a difference to business leaders in South Jersey.

This month we’re taking on two topics. Elsewhere in this issue you’ll find an assessment of the changing construction and building marketplace, as we ask some of South Jersey’s top “building” minds to help us get a handle on some key issues—such as whether there is any money available to builders and developers.

In this Roundtable, we’re taking on the fast-changing world of marketing communications and asking some of South Jersey’s top advertising and public relations minds to help us get a handle on some key issues—including how best to make use of social media.

Our panel of marketing gurus includes:

• Liz Farlow Co-owner Colortec Printing and Mailing

• Amy Jo Haven-Reynolds Managing Partner Creative Haven Media & Marketing

• Darren O'Hare VP of Sales Innovation Printing & Communications

• Adam Sokoloff President Sunrise Signs - Custom Wraps & Graphics

• Michael Willmann CEO WMSH Marketing Communications Farlow describes Colortec Printing and Mailing as a family owned and operated print and mail house, which for 17 years has provided printing, mailing and ad specialty items for businesses and also for the trade.

Design services, targeted mailing lists, personalization, print and mail are all done from our location in West Berlin. Colortec’s website is user friendly and offers specials and ‘instant quotes,’ “ she adds.

Sunrise Signs is centrally located in West Deptford, NJ. “we specialize in vehicle wraps and fleet branding design and installation,” says Sokoloff.

Creative Haven Media & Marketing wants to be your “in-house” marketing executive,” says Haven-Reynolds.“We partner with you to develop a keen sense of how your business operates and implement an innovative marketing plan crafted with a consistent voice that improves your bottom line. Our bottom line—we love what we do.” 

Innovation Printing is a privately owned corporation that has been doing business for over 30 years.“We have a “Whatever It Takes” focus about our clients. Our core competency is sheet-fed printing, digital printing and web to print solutions and we operates 24 hours a day, 7 days a week," says O’Hare.

Willmann’s view of WMSH is that “we’re essentially storytellers.  award winning storytellers. We specialize in delivering individual projects and campaigns on an as-needed basis. Think of us as the marketing communications version of “dropshipping.” We do it well. We do it when you want it. And we make it affordable. All by working smarter than the other guys—at least that’s what we like to think.” 

First, we asked each of our experts to respond to a range of questions— from the impact of the recession to the impact of social media for their clients.

1. How has the recession affected your organization and what have you done in response to those challenges?

Says Colortec’s Farlow “Because most businesses have been affected by the recession and we deal strictly with other businesses, it has had a direct affect on us. Money is tight and everyone is looking to cut their cost. Even the non-profits are feeling the pinch because donations are down and government grants are being cut. In response to that we have looked for ways to cut our costs so we could pass the savings to our customers. We work closely with our customers in sharing our knowledge of the print and mail industry to explain ways they can shave money off their direct mail projects. For example, there are ways of designing your mail piece to save as much as 25 cents per piece in postage. Customers are very open to our ideas on how to cut all their printing costs. We have also beefed up our own direct mail projects with incentives to visit our website for specials and to use our ‘instant quote’ tool.” 

For Haven-Reynolds the answer is “Like everyone else, we have been forced to do more with less and look for ways to operate the business more efficiently without sacrificing the quality of our service offering. One way we’ve done this is by working with in-house partner companies at our facility, The DeSimone Group in Cherry Hill, in some cases even trading services. Recently, we kicked off a promotional campaign for a new energy drink with Phillies catcher Carlos Ruiz. We conducted the photo shoot in-house utilizing a partner’s green screen video walls, and then walked about 40 feet to record the audio for the radio spot in a partner’s state-of-the-art studio – both convenient and cost effective.” 

Sokoloff says “The impact of the recession on our organization was felt in terms of pricing pressure due to an initial decline in sales lead activity. Our response to this challenge was not to give in by lowering margins, but rather step up service, customer education via our website, and increase our overall value proposition.This resulted in moderate growth in both gross revenue and net profits.” 

“The recession has affected everyone. If someone tells you that it hasn’t they’re lying. For us, it just means that we work harder and spend a lot more time in the ‘virtual’ workplace. We have long-time clients that have cut back on what they do, but we have others that see the value in stealing ‘share of voice’ and market share by ramping up when everybody else is ramping down.” says Willmann

2. When do you expect the recession to “end” for your organization…if it has not done so already? For the domestic and global economies generally?

Haven-Reynolds responds that “although the nation continues to grapple with economic challenges and the recovery is slower than any of us would like, at Creative Haven Media & Marketing we have exceeded our revenue projections for 2010 and we are poised to exceed this year’s revenues in 2011. Frankly, the times have forced us to fi ne tune our business model moving into new market segments and expanding our service offering in response to customer demand.There is still too much uncertainty with regard to the economy and until businesses feel more confi dent about the future, they are going to be reluctant to spend money on marketing and advertising at prerecession levels.” 

Sokoloff says” It may be too soon to tell, but it looks as though we may have weathered the storm.The summer months, which are historically slower, have been fi lled with activity of companies who would like to market their businesses via vehicle wrap advertising.” 

O’Hare responds that “Although we have realized an increase in sales over the past several months, we expect a complete recovery to take an additional 24 months.” 

Farlow’s response is “We don’t expect the recession to end until business owners feel confi dent the cost of doing business is stable. Right now those who own a business do not have a very good idea how all the new regulations and the health care bill will truly affect their costs. On top of this, because of all the government spending, we know there is a tax hike coming. Business owners are not ready to hire people because of all this uncertainty. Therefore, unemployment remains high and consumer spending is low. We are all waiting for everyone to get their fi nancial house in order.” 

“Some agencies say that refuse to recognize the recession. And that sounds good, but the reality is that the ‘new normal’ is here to stay.We see a bottom to the recession that will look bumpy…up for a month or two and then back down, with no sustained growth in jobs in the region till 2012,” responds Willmann.

3. Which of the social media do you most often recommend to your clients? Does the choice vary by market segment, target audience, product service type?

“I wouldn't say there is a specifi c social media that we recommend, but rather that with social media there is a conversation taking place out there in cyberspace. It can be about you, your products and services, both good and bad. You can either choose to be a part of that conversation, leverage it to it's full potential, or don't. As a company we have chosen to fully engage in many social media's,” says Sokoloff.

“We strongly encourage clients to use social media such as facebook, but urge them to tie these campaigns with Print on Demand or Variable Data Print campaigns,” says Farlow. “Studies show these cross channel marketing efforts always yield the best results.” 

“Since we are a print and mail business,” says Farlow, “we are focused mainly on a company’s direct mail projects.Because social media has become so big, we do have a Facebook page, a twitter account, linkedin account and a blog. We use these social media tools to enhance our customer’s direct mail projects. For example, we will post their campaign via our social media accounts. They love getting this extra exposure. We also have instituted a new opt-in email gathering program that uses social media. 

“ Haven-Reynolds says that “although we conduct far reaching campaigns, our industry niche is small to midsized businesses in the South Jersey and Greater Philadelphia regions.With a largely local clientele, Facebook has proven to be very successful for our customers largely because it’s cost effective and has the capability to highly target a market segment by gender, age, geography – down to a 10 mile radius.”

“Web 3.0 is on every client’s mind and in every client’s budget,” says Willmann. Blogs, Facebook, and Twitter are the most mainstream tools for our clients.” 

Next, we asked our experts whether they work with a client from the eight-county South Jersey region that has been especially successful in responding to the recession…in effect made lemonade out of lemons?

“Burlington County College has done an outstanding job of presenting itself as the cost-effective choice for both high school graduates and for adult learners who want to reposition themselves for a new job or a better job,” says Willmann.

O’Hare sees similar results at Rutgers-Camden. “We've seen a great deal of activity with local colleges and universities. Schools such as Rutgers-Camden offer a great education at a great price,” says O’Hare. ”Students that were considering leaving the state are now living at home and commuting.Rutgers saw this opportunity and focused their advertising spend on enticing these prospective students to their campus.” 

“On a regional level, I believe Wa-wa has done a fantastic job of succeeding through the use of innovative marketing,” says Sokoloff. “Take their recent Hoagie fest initiative. The promotion included media purchases such as TV, radio, print, billboards, and vehicle advertising. Social media also played a large role in generating buzz and traffic. Their facebook fan page recently surpassed 500,000 fans. Now that's impact!” 

For Haven-Reynolds, “One success story is The Hughes Center for Aesthetic Medicine located in Cherry Hill, which provides cosmetic surgery and esthetic services – not considered an easy sell in a down economy. Yet we have seen explosive growth as the result of an aggressive, highly targeted marketing campaign to both their existing customer base and new clients. The campaign started by building a robust contacts database for promotional email blasts and direct mail. We also completely redesigned their in-house marketing collateral to provide a consistent look and voice.Once that was established, we launched an aggressive campaign for new clients that included Facebook, large scale promotional events and, more recently, local television advertising.” 

Then, we asked whether any of our experts’ clients have made successful, out-of-the-box uses of Facebook, Twitter, YouTube…or any social medium?

Says O’Hare, “Some have! … We encourage clients to use cross channel marketing to meet their advertising goals. One great example is a firm we worked with that offers teeth whitening products. F/B users that clicked on their ad were able to order literature and samples. These prospective customers also received follow-up direct mail pieces with additional offers and discounts.” 

“BCC did a great radio campaign that had high school students texting for more information about the school and for prizes on Wired 96.5,” says Willmann.

We also asked whether the digital revolution changed how audio and video production houses do business?

“The company that we partner with on audio and video production is Media Imagery. They have always been remarkably creative and client friendly, But ‘how’ they do what they do has changed dramatically. The work was always great. But now it is faster, less expensive, and of even higher quality…you can’t beat that combination,” responds Willmann.

For O’Hare, “it has allowed clients to keep zero inventory levels.Many advertising pieces can be ordered by their sales force or retail establishments, then printed within 24hrs and shipped anywhere in the world. These materials can also be produced with the local establishments contact information.” 

Next, we asked whether there is something new on the promotional product scene that has our experts’ clients excited... or whether it’s still pens, post-its, and baseball caps?

“Old standbys are still very popular with our customers; hats, pens, golf balls and calendars,” says Farlow, “but we have noticed resurgence in popularity of notepads, personalized with your company info, because these will remain on the desk of a potential new customer as a daily reminder of your company. They are popular for mass mailing because they can be sized to fit a #10 envelope and still qualify for discounted postage rates.” 

According to O’Hare it’s QR Codes.“A QR Code is a two dimensional barcode which can be used in many ways. A user with a smart phone can take a picture of the code and is then directed to a website. QR Codes are very popular in Japan, and have just started to show up in the US.” 

Sokoloff says “Our clients are looking for new ways to put their brand in front of potential customers.

As an alternative to promotional products, we are providing unique wraps in places that wouldn't expected. Some cool examples of this include: golf cart wraps, concrete and pavement wraps, table wraps, and even port-ajohn wraps.” 

“Customized (personalized) printing is very high impact,” says Willmann. As for giveaways, for our clients they have to be one of the three ‘bulls.’ That’s either edible, wearable, or usable.” 

Finally, we inquired whether the performances of Tony Heyward, the Big Three automakers, AIG, Lloyd Blankfein et al have made corporate executives more interested in media and presentation training?

“Without any doubt,” says Willmann. The need to be able to respond effectively has been staring CEOs in the face every day as they’ve watched these big names struggle.And it has created renewed interest in both crisis planning and crisis management. We just completed media training for all 40 members of New Jersey Emergency Response Team of one of the nation’s largest refining companies. It was one of the most successful events of that type that we’ve ever done…because everybody in the room was hanging on every recommendation.

Source: SNJBP.com

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