Odato Marketing Group won best of category, Consumer Products, in the American Marketing Association (AMA) Marketer of the Year Awards, held December 8 at the LeMont, for its Noble Juice Campaign.
“Our campaign was planned in Pittsburgh and literally sold-out the Noble Juice in the Central Florida Publix chain,” said Odato Marketing Pittsburgh’s VP/GM Bruce Downing. Continuing, “We were ecstatic about the results of the campaign, and truly honored to be recognized by Pittsburgh’s largest marketing organization.”
The Marketer of the Year is Pittsburgh’s only results-based marketing competition. Each entry was judged by points awarded from the judging panel, with 40% of the points coming from the results of the campaign. 2011 marked the fifth year of the competition, which also recognizes a “Distinguished Educator” and a new “Marketing Hall of Fame” member, annually. AMA Pittsburgh is the largest professional marketing association in Western Pennsylvania, with over 300 active members.
Odato Marketing Group, an advertising, PR and Web agency operating in Sarasota and Pittsburgh, is launching StudioSarasota.com to highlight the firm’s expanded video production capabilities for companies that might not need to engage the full-service agency.
“In 2009, we recognized the growing need for high-quality multimedia Web content and began to offer in-house production for our clients,” says Odato Marketing president Rich Odato. “As we added talented people and the latest equipment and software, we realized that our production team could match or exceed the production values we used to go to Tampa to access—and that we could do it affordably.”
Jim Scott, co-founder and former partner of Off Kilter Productions, heads up video shooting and editing, while Becca Dahmen handles production management and styling.
“We’re proud to be part of the growing film and video production community in this region,” says Scott. “As more projects come to Sarasota, there will be many opportunities for everyone that does great work.”
Odato Marketing owns all of the equipment the firm needs to produce high-quality television commercials, corporate and training videos, trade show videos, multimedia Web content and YouTube videos in 1080p HD, only supplementing with rentals and outside support for the largest productions.
The :15 cinema commercial we produced to promote Sarasota Memorial’s iPhone app has been featured on a top healthcare IS blog. We had so much fun shooting this with a professional comedian playing the lead role. http://histalkmobile.com/news-52511/
Hillview is the place to be this Sunday, March 27. Giving Hunger the Blues, in its 16th year, is an all-day event featuring local musicians, restaurants and family entertainment. Check out their website & be sure to like them on Facebook! The OMG team will be out and about enjoying the festivities!
Choosing an agency is a critical decision. The cost of a bad choice includes lost time, lost money, lost sales, unhappy employees and sometimes serious damage to your brand. Ideally, an agency relationship should last a minimum of three years and a maximum of 20 years. Work levels may vary greatly during that period, but it’s important to maintain continuity. New agencies typically want to change everything and make their own mark, but a positioning campaign takes multiple years to resonate in customers’ minds.
Are you ready for an agency?
The first step in choosing an agency is to determine if you’re ready. Most clients choose to contact an agency in response to a specific need or opportunity, when they feel they are leaving money on the table, or when they’re so dissatisfied with their current agency that the hassle of working with them surpasses the hassle of replacing them. If you’re not earning all you can earn, you can probably benefit from some help. You should begin with a budget in mind. As a rule, many companies spend 1-3% of gross sales on business development. A successful agency relationship also takes an investment of time. If you’re not prepared to meet with your agency routinely, your priorities can fall behind those of an agency’s other clients—ones that are committed to working with the agency as partners. This brings us to chemistry.
Chemistry
Pay close attention to the people you meet during the business development process. If you’re going to have a successful partnership, you’ll be spending a lot of time with these people. That doesn’t mean you have to like every person at the agency. Diverse groups are rich with ideas. However, make sure you understand who will be your day-to-day contact(s) and that you’re comfortable with those people. Also, make sure you’re meeting the real account team and not a “pitch team.”
Size
This is a factor that’s often overlooked by business leaders and marketing managers. The right size fit is critical for an agency/client relationship. Generally, it’s best to avoid being much larger or much smaller than the agency’s current client list. The largest account may have volume needs the agency simply lacks the capacity to fulfill. The smallest account may be ignored.
Creative Philosophy
Many agencies will energize around a client with the biggest opportunity for creative expression. Even if that client has the smallest budget, it can become the most important if the people doing the work are excited about the opportunity. That doesn’t mean you should let the creatives run amok, though. It’s important to have a thoughtful, written strategy and for your account manager to hold the creatives accountable to that strategy. If you ever reject or refocus the work, it should be on the basis of the pre-determined strategy and never for subjective reasons.
Industry Experience
At most new business meetings, clients ask, “what do you know about my business.” Many agencies have experience in your industry because they’ve worked with your competitors in the past. This experience can save you money and time, but it’s a double-edged sword. Sometimes, the best ideas come from a fresh perspective. The reality is that you know plenty about your industry and a good agency can minimize the learning curve and bring valuable ideas whether they have industry experience or not.
Skill Set
Great marketing is a comprehensive approach to strategy, creative, publicity, direct marketing, media, Web technology and other skills. Even if you plan to engage the agency for a limited assignment, other needs will come up over time. The time you invested teaching that Web company the ins and outs of your business will be wasted if you suddenly find yourself in need of crisis management communications.
Experience
How senior are the people who will be working on my business? (Not the people in the pitch-the ones that will be doing the work.) Pay close attention to the bios of your account team.
Growing or shrinking?
Where is the agency in its life cycle? Is it a new agency on the rise, an old faithful, a declining force? What type of clients has it had in the past? What type of clients is it chasing now. It’s important for you to understand if the agency’s goal is to have accounts like yours or if yours is just a stop along the way. The latter is not a bad thing, but it’s helpful to know where you stand and keep things in perspective.
Leadership
On the advertising side, most agencies are started either by former creatives (copy writers or designers) or by account managers (strategists). If you plan to beat your competition on the basis of brand personality alone, a creative-led agency may suit your needs. If your brand is truly different from your competition, you must take care to ensure that those competitive differences are not lost behind the creative. In either case, make sure the agency you choose has strong credentials in both creative and strategy. If your account includes public relations (and it should), choose an agency with a strong in-house public relations capability. Subcontracted PR programs are sometimes low priorities for ad agencies and can result in missed opportunities.
Who’s Your Marketing Director?
Any agency can work with your marketing director—defined as a staff person whose full-time responsibility and background is marketing (not sales or general management). Often in organizations spending less than $1 million a year in advertising, that function is not represented on the management team. In this case, the agency’s account manager is often called upon to perform some of the thinking and functions, reporting directly to the president, the board or a sales VP. In this case, the account manager must be a smart, long-term agency member with good chemistry with the client and a passion for the client’s business.
Send your resume to: resumania –after you read this, of course.
As principal of an advertising, PR and Internet marketing agency and in my previous positions, including “webmaster” roles, I’ve seen hundreds of resumes over the years. It amazes me to see the mistakes job-hunters make over and over again, especially mistakes that go against the advice of job-hunting books that have been available for decades. Here are a few tips that can help you get a job at Odato Marketing Group–and probably thousands of other regional agencies, too.
(1) Do your research: Know why you want to work there, what job you’re qualified to do and who the decision-maker is. Agency managers don’t have time to sift through your resume and find you a job. There are eight key roles in an agency: account service/strategy, copy writing, graphic design, public relations, Web development, media buying, new business development and administrative support, and several levels within each role. The skill sets are so different that it raises an immediate red flag if you don’t even know what department you want to join.
(2) Say it with flair: You’re a marketer, right? So why should you have the same cover letter as an accountant? It amazes me when “marketers” send me a resume with no cover letter, no e-mail intro and an utterly unremarkable subject line. If your resume simply lists your previous employment and your responsibilities, throw it away and write a new one that shows your accomplishments (quantified, of course).
(3) Send it to the right person: Agency websites make it easy to blast your resume to hundreds of prospective employers–but that doesn’t mean it’s a good thing to do. Taking a moment to find out who’s who can help to differentiate you from the pack. Also, you should know that generic email addresses are typically viewed by multiple people within the agency, so if you don’t want your future colleagues to know you were once a duckpin setter in a bowling alley, send your resume only to the decision maker.
(4) Drop names: This is important. When an agency head hires you, he or she will be thinking about marketing your experience to clients. The clients will not typically see your entire resume. The brands you’ve touched in your professional career and the successes you’ve had with those brands become your most important credentials. Your “story” is what the agency sells.
(5) Be perfect: This should go without saying, but make sure your resume, cover letter and all correspondence are letter perfect. Typos can cost agency heads thousands of dollars, so they’re not eager to bring people with sloppy work into the shop. The materials you send have to be perfect, but that doesn’t mean you have to be perfect. Get someone to proofread for you, just like you’ll do in the agency if you get the job. Check the AP Stylebook if you’re unclear on anything.
(6) Sending your portfolio: I don’t recommend sending an unsolicited CD-ROM or any file attachment larger than 1-2 MB. It’s better to send a link to an online site where the decision-maker can see your work. Make sure the site you send them to is as perfect as your resume, with no typos or grammatical errors, and cross-browser compatible.
(7) Network, network, network: Join groups like the Advertising Federation or the FPRA, where you will meet people who can hire you or recommend you to someone who can. Get out there and introduce yourself to anyone who will listen. Tell them what you’re trying to accomplish.
Good luck!
–Rich
(c)2007 Odato Marketing Group. Article may be reprinted freely, provided that this copyright notice remains attached.
