Tonight, each 30 second spot will cost 3 million dollars, which is a record level as far as commercials go. As you can see from the title of this post, that’s $100,000 per second. Expensive, to say the least. What we’re wondering, here at Tridea, is whether this is a good investment? A lot can be accomplished with the amount companies are spending on 30 seconds. Of course, nearly 100 million viewers are expected to watch tonight’s broadcast, so some say the cost is justified.

Further, the Superbowl Ads are not only viewed once during the game but are then blogged about all over the internet. So in terms of getting people to see your message, well, it’s tough to beat that exposure. However, I am curious to see how people will react to these companies spending so much money when thousands of jobs are being shed each week.

When all is said and done, NBC will have banked a record $206 million dollars on the Superbowl ads. Could that money have been spent saving people’s jobs? Shoring up an ad buyer’s bottom-line? We’ll have to wait and see.

Back in May we had the Bear Sterns bankruptcy sell-off to JP Morgan. This past week it broke that Lehman Brothers was filing for bankruptcy which caused a miserable few days for financial markets. In a move that many feel should have come sooner, the government stepped up and offered a bailout plan for Wall Street with the hefty figure of 700 billion. Yes, billion with a “b”.

In a tough economic time, dollars companies spend on advertising are sure to go down. Where, in times like this, where is it best to put ones money? In your website!

We’re in the midst of a Web 2.0 shift, one in which online communities and connections with users are being formed as opposed to old static sites and pushing content one-way onto the users. Social networks are growing and social media opportunities offer low-cost (and often free) ways to interact with your user-base. Companies now utilize fan pages on Facebook as well as creating Facebook Apps that can integrate into the site itself.

And let’s not forget the mobile web. With the Apple upgrading the iPhone’s data speeds to 3G and opening up the Apps store, there’s a been a flood of mobile web application development. Before the end of the year Google’s Android cellphone operating system will debut and there will be yet another major reason to focus energies on mobile-based websites.

So instead of shelling money out for advertising, focus on your site. Create rich content. Explore social media opportunities. Work on making a iPhone/mobile optimized version of your site. While the economy may be going through some rough times, web based business presence continues to grow and you can flourish if you focus on it.

If you haven’t seen Mad Men, I’d suggest watching it. It’s quite good:

Set in 1960s New York, the sexy, stylized and provocative AMC drama Mad Men follows the lives of the ruthlessly competitive men and women of Madison Avenue advertising, an ego-driven world where key players make an art of the sell. via

Clearly, in a show that deals with advertising, you’d expect they’d be creative in their marketing efforts. That’s what it seemed like when the show’s main character, Don Draper, showed up on Twitter posting updates as if he was a real person. Subsequently, other characters began popping up on the service. And then in a knee-jerk act of foolishness, AMC’s lawyers sent a DMCA takedown notice to Twitter and it appeared the jig was up.

Luckily, turns out AMC’s web marketing company, Deep Focus, talked some sense into their client and got them to realize that FREE PROMOTION is not actually a bad thing. Thankfully, their twitter accounts were restored and allowed to continue and fans interact with them daily.

So the moral of the story: instead of being afraid of social media, businesses should embrace it and work on creative ways of interacting with their customer base. Oh hey, did I mention Tridea is on Twitter?

While depositing a clients check over at Tridea’s bank of choice, TCF Bank, I noticed bottles of Ketchup on top of the dividers between teller stations. So I inquired, “Why are these bottles of ketchup here?”

Turns out, the tellers used that as a way to initiate a pitch on “Catching up on home improvements with an equity loan.” I thought it was a unique way to get that first dialogue and pique the customers interest. Just goes to show you, there’s creativity all around if you look for it!

One thing that has really stuck out in our first year is setting goals, whether that be per project, or for Tridea as a whole. Setting goals really helps us to stay focused, and accomplish things however we need to. As we get ready to take on a new year of projects, we will be setting our goals a little bit higher than we did this year, just push ourselves that much more.

Since December is normally a slow work month, we will be working on some internal projects to help touch up our branding, which includes a redesign of our website that we look to launch in early 08. We also want to refocus our marketing efforts, because thus far we’ve gotten most of our work through referrals. That isn’t necessarily a bad thing, however, we are looking to expand our business and marketing will be essential.

We very much look forward to starting a brand new year, taking on new challenges, and setting our goals higher than this year. In other words…..we love this stuff.

I think this is a great opportunity for any business to get into the social networking scene, and attempt to connect with the tons of [potential] consumers that are already registered on the site. Of course it helps to have a plan of how you are going to utilize this as well.

Tridea has setup a page, and since we are still very involved with the Professional Writing program at Michigan State University, so we plan on leveraging our page to maintain our relationships with people, since a lot of them are on Facebook. This also gives us another platform for fans and/or clients of Tridea to interact with us, whether that be through the discussion board, or the Wall.

Another idea that we’ve tossed around in the past is having Tridea host events, where we invite friends and clients to join us. Through our Facebook page, we can easily setup an event, notifying all of our contacts of the time and location.

This is a great feature that Facebook has released, and we plan on using it to stay in touch with people, as well has have a another platform for our supporters to stay in contact with us. So feel free to become a fan of our page…..we look forward to utilizing this tool a bit more.

In an article written by Forty Media, they talk about setting a web design budget. Here is one of the best chunks of information that came from that article:

In the current market, $5-10k is a good price range for a simple, custom-designed website. If you have unusual needs requiring custom software or configuration, that might get up into the $10-15k range. (If you’re on a tight budget, you may be able to get a decent site from a talented freelancer for a good amount bit less, though you’ll be trading one set of risks for another.)

So, if you are thinking about having a website for your business, I would highly recommend reading this article. It might help you figure out what your priorities are with marketing.

What’s beneficial about using this, is that frequent readers or your blog can subscribe to these RSS feeds, and through different feed readers, both web based and desktop based, they can read this content shortly after the author posts the blog without having to spend time visiting the site.

To better illustrate this concept, take a look at this video…

Click To Play

That is possibly the easiest way to explain RSS, and as the video says, be careful, because it is definitely addicting!

For our About page, we struggled to word our identity in such a way that it conveyed who we are as a company in the shortest amount of words possible. Our first draft:

We are a creative team that thrives on working for and with passionate people. Our goal is to establish meaningful relationships with our clients and provide them with exceptional products. We strive to create personal relationships in a digital world. For a robust listing of what we can accomplish, please visit our services section.

So, what’s wrong with this? Well, for one, it’s a bit verbose. Another thing is that it fails to address the reader in a familiar, comfortable way. Also, we wanted to avoid using directive language, such as “please visit our services section.”

Revising this paragraph called into discussion of who we are and what our goals are. Much of what we talked about revolved around things we had already covered in our voluminous business plan. It was then that it dawned on us that this paragraph was essentially a down-to-earth, abbreviated version of it. What we finally came up with was the following:

Tridea Design is a group of passionate minds that provide creative solutions. Your company is unique; we strive to form meaningful relationships with you to mix what makes your business special with our creativity.

It’s tight, descriptive, and speaks straight and on-the-level with the reader. We are a company dedicated to strong connections with our clients. As we reviewed other design company sites for inspiration, we came across, time and time again, highly technical and jargon-laden language that would go over the head of business owners. We know you don’t use terms like , , or . By keeping our vocabulary relatable and understandable, we hope those who read it will gain an understanding of what we do, without the distraction of such jargon.

Writing content for a website has many considerations, foremost of who your target audience is. In addition, with websites, you only have so much time to reach your user before they navigate away. This means that the content must say as much as possible with just a few words. We encounter these considerations everytime we sit down with websites, whether it’s this site, the sites we work on, or our own.

Take some time to think about how you write, how it fits the audience it’s written for, and the form of media it’s conveyed in.

Your brand represents your company as a whole. That means, the way that you do business, how your product works, the way you interact with your customers, your logo, website, brochure, etc. Your brand is the whole package deal, which makes it the most important aspect of your company. What your client will remember about your company, is not simply the logo, but how you are portrayed from all of the things listed above.

Some good examples of this are Apple and Best Buy. When you see their commercials, or ads, and then go into the corporate store, you feel their brand. They do a very good job of maintaining their brand across multiple platforms. The minute you walk into an Apple store, there is a certain feeling that you get. You may not pay attention to it every single time, but if you pay attention, you will notice the Apple brand influencing your every thought about their store, products, and employees.

It is very important for a company to be their brand. If you want your business to have a laid back type of brand, then be laid back. Let it be known in the way that you handle your customers, in the wording of your brochure, all the way down to the look and feel of your store. What your client walks away with is a sense of your brand, not that you just had a cool store.

If your company wants to thrive on simplicity, then make it sure that when dealing with clients, it is a simple process for them, and hopefully you.

We, at Tridea, are in the midst of branding ourselves. It is no easy task, and sometimes takes years to establish a memorable brand, but since we like challenges, we are up for the task. When we meet potential clients, we don’t want to make an impression with only one aspect of our business (that we have a cool website or stylish letterhead,) we want them to leave with a good impression of the whole package deal……our brand.

Design is not the only part of your brand, but it plays a major roll, and that’s where we come in.