It was the best of times, it was the worst of times

Nobody's having much fun with the economy hovering over the toilet bowl these days. But that doesn't mean you have to just sit there and watch the customers flee. Case in point: This modest print ad for the School of Visual Concepts. They offer professional development education in graphic design, advertising, and marketing communications, along with Adobe Creative Suite training. Those marcom industries, like many, have been rocked by layoffs, so the strategy we brought to SVC was offer classes to the recently laid-off at 50% off the regular rate. It's a good deed done for those in need of skills to make themselves more marketable, and any time you can fill an otherwise empty seat, it seeds good word of mouth advertising. So far, SVC is finding itself on the other end of the economic teeter-totter, enjoying two of its biggest quarters since the school was founded 38 years ago.

We taught the Harvard Business School a few lessons

One the more intriguing assignments we've had in recent weeks was preparing a multimedia presentation for the Harvard Business School's reunion. Our task was to vividly portray the achievements of the Class of 1963, now 45 years after cap-and-gown day. Since everyone's a voyeur, the guts of the presentation were built around a survey of class members that revealed such tidbits as: 50% of the class has a net worth of more than $10 million (or at least they did a couple of months ago), 79% have founded or co-founded a company, and 52% say they take out their own garbage. A bunch of wealthy, critical, seen-it-all CEO-types is a tough audience, but the presentation received some of the highest evaluation marks ever recorded.

Let's hear it for consistency

All too often, marketers make a big splash with a new program and then walk away well before it's taken root. This flash-in-the-pan approach to promotion simply doesn't add up for products and services that have any sort of drawn out purchase path -- like a new condo, for instance. So kudos to Vulcan Real Estate for having the wisdom to send bi-weekly emails to their extensive list of prospects about goings-on in South Lake Union (and an extra tip of the hat Vulcan's way for choosing Worker Bees and RMB Vivid to make it happen.) Rather than a strictly commercial message, the more subtle approach of spreading timely news about happenings in the area slowly wins over both current and prospective owners and tenants. Along with five or six news tidbits, each email concludes with a "home of the every-other-week" feature promoting a specific unit for sale at a Vulcan property. Want to get on the list? Sign up.

Do testimonial ads have to be boring?

We certainly don't think so. Our highly biased opinion may have something to do with the fact that patient stories form the backbone of a new consumer ad campaign for Swedish Medical Center in Seattle. Inevitably, all hospitals do (or claim to do) pretty much the same thing. And, while you could run an ad saying "our technology is better than their technology," or "our doctors are smarter than their doctors," if you're a reasonably healthy person, you just don't care. That's why we turned to dramatic and provocative testimonials from Swedish patients. In this print ad, we talk about a minimally invasive procedure for heart valve repair that takes the place of the traditional crack-your-sternum-in-two open heart surgery -- something only Swedish and a handful of other hospitals can do. This and other stories are told again in radio commercials, and on a special web landing page created for the campaign.