I live in San Diego, and last week, there were fires here. Boy, were there fires here.

My family didn’t have to evacuate, like we did during the fires three years ago. So aside from the smoky air and having the kids indoors all week, it was mostly business as usual. We were very fortunate.

Naturally, I had my backups ready to go. Everything was saved on two flash drives. Then, something strange happened.

I started getting phone calls from clients. Their emails to me were bouncing! My ISP’s email server had gone down.

I immediately switched to a Hotmail account I’d created just in case something like this came to pass. I sent messages to all my clients from the account, so they would know what was going on. It got me thinking: we all know we should back up our data, but what about our systems?

I was prepared, because I had a Hotmail account ready to go. My alternate address isn’t anything cool, revealing, or personal. It sounds professional, and I use it only for business. The account is also a paid account, so it can handle larger files.

I also have a dial-up internet account, so I’ll be operational even if my primary ISP shuts down. I can serve my clients from any computer, anywhere, no matter the status of my ISP, primary email server, or web host.

These days, email is an essential form of business communication, but all kinds of events, both local and distant, can cause outages.

As a professional, are you prepared?

Perhaps you’ve seen this story making the rounds: A Texas teenager is suing Virgin Mobile because it used her image without permission in a billboard campaign in Australia.

The girl appears in a photograph which was released under a Creative Commons license. The photographer, via the license, expressly permitted commercial use of his image, as long as he received a photo credit. Virgin Mobile Australia duly credited the photographer when it used his photograph in the ad campaign. However, because the Creative Commons license does not apply to the likeness of the girl, who found her face being used to tout a mobile phone network halfway around the world, Virgin may still be in hot water.

A photographer is free to license his own work in whatever way he sees fit, but unless model and location releases were obtained, that license does not, by extension, cover the likenesses which appear in the image. How many photos on royalty-free photo sites come with model and/or location releases? Not many, last time I checked.

So, next time you turn to the royalty-free sites when sourcing images for your clients, ask yourself these questions: (more…)

Apparently, some people think the success of online, interactive advertising is all due to blinking lights and sound clips, so they’re bringing the same capabilities to print advertising. Yes, print ads can now sing to you and flash lights at you; they can give you a temporary tattoo, a whiff of black cherries, or a taste of rum.

Take that, internet advertising!

Well, I have two comments. First, the power of web-based marketing lies not in its audiovisual smack, but in its vast capacity to deliver individual customers authentic brand experiences of their own choosing. To focus on the smoke and mirrors is to miss the essence of the trick.

Second, and this saddles me up on one of my favorite hobby-horses, all advertising must be interactive. Advertising is a dialog. Granted, we can only fully control half of it, but there is always a customer response.

If the customer’s response is to turn the page, leave the room, or navigate away, then the ad has failed to engage, and it’s not interactive no matter whether its online, or in a magazine with a sound chip and flashing lights.

Regardless of medium, interactivity in advertising is not an option. It is mandatory.

This article from Computer Arts (UK) explores the challenge of staying fresh and original while still employing the tools of visual shorthand in communicating concepts.

I’m reminded of a quote from Pablo Picasso: “Good artists copy. Great artists steal.” Hey, that’s what all those award books are really for, right?

But I’m also reminded of a good technique for pushing past a pre-existing form. I’m not sure where I read this, but it was originally related to copywriting and the use of a “swipe file,” which is a file of ads and other marketing materials that one thinks are singularly effective.

The key was this: rather than re-execute the original, create the sequel.

If you’re doing any direct mail in the U.S. – including brochures that may be mailed – then you should look at the new postal regulations. Because it wasn’t just a rate increase that went into effect, it was a change in how the Postal Service calculates rates. Odd size? Lumpy enclosure? Material that might jam the machines? Oh, that’ll cost ya.

Now, I’m not ripping on the U.S. Postal Service. Postage in the U.S. is dirt cheap compared to almost anywhere else in the world, and the standard of service is high.

But, as advertising professionals, it’s important to know media rules because they affect what we produce. An ultra-rigid cover may make a brochure more expensive to mail even if it fits in a standard envelope (section 101, part 1.2e). Our clients are counting on us to know this stuff, and here it is, straight from the source:

http://pe.usps.com/RateCase2007/DMM300_HTML/dmm300_landing.htm

Helvetica, the über-ubiquitous sans-serif font, is celebrating its 50th birthday. Here’s a BBC story about why this font has endured despite designers’ love/hate relationship with it.

Now, why should a copywriter care about a type font? Well, type is where the tone of the copy meets the tone of the design. Copy in Garamond Light Condensed (to pick on a popular mid-80s typeface) will feel different from the same copy in Bookman, or Palatino, or Franklin Gothic Book. Or Helvetica.

Typography can enhance the copy or detract from it or even comment on it. That’s why I like to work closely with designers – so copy can be tweaked to fit design and vice versa, depending on what’s needed to best communicate the emotional element of the marketing message.

Some clients, especially those that do no business over the web, question the need for a website or an SEO effort. But they seldom question the need for local publicity.

My wife writes magazine articles. One recent assignment had her seeking out local farms. They were hard to find, in part because few had any web presence. After all, why would a small farm need a website?

Yet, here was an experienced writer, story assignment in hand from a respected regional publication with some 400,000 readers. As publicity, it was priceless, and it went largely to those enterprises that could be found online. And this situation happens again and again.

Search engines are key research tools for journalists and editors. That makes having a website, even a simple one, an essential step in the local marketing/P.R. efforts of any business. Even those that “don’t do business online.”

How much is that logo worth? $500? $5,000? $50,000? $500,000?

There are designers and brand developers at each of those price points.

But, how much is a brand worth?

How about $66,434,000,000? That’s Google’s brand valuation – the amount of its overall value contributed by its brand.

Don’t have $66.4 billion? General Electric’s brand is valued at about $61.9 billion. Microsoft’s brand is worth almost $55 billion.

These brand valuations come from the Millward Brown Optimor 2007 BRANDZ Top 100 Most Powerful Brands, a 27-page report you can download as a PDF from the Millward Brown website. This study says that branding accounts for about a third of the value of the Fortune 500.

Obviously, it takes more than a great logo to achieve valuations like these. But, just as obviously, in creating a brand you create a potentially very valuable corporate asset.

DOWLOAD Millward Brown Optimor’s 2007 BRANDZ Top 100 Most Powerful Brands

Outfoxing the Small Business Owner: Crafty Techniques for Creating a Profitable Relationship, by Gene Marks (2005, ISBN 1-59337-157-8) is worth reading if you’re thinking of freelancing. Small businesses make up the vast majority of potential clients, and the approaches you’ll take to work with them profitably are different from those you’ll take with large corporate clients. I’ve worked with both, and found this book to be up-to-date and practical.

(FULL DISCLOSURE: I received my copy as a gift for contributing to one of Gene Marks’ other books about small business management.)

I am among the last generation of copywriters who sat with art directors and designers as they sliced into type galleys to hand-kern letters, adjust word or line spacing, or piece together new words and sentences.

“Can we cut seven characters out of this copy block?” they’d ask, and I’d take up the challenge, think of another way to say the same thing in the same voice using not only seven fewer characters but also only the words and characters already typeset.

It was the final, laborious polish on the mechanical, and it was a team effort.

Now it seems there’s less sweat equity in the way copy looks. And that’s too bad.

Why accept an imperfect line break, a stray widow or orphan, or a repetitive word stack when the solution might be a minor re-write? As a copywriter, I think anything that enhances the visual appeal of copy, makes it more inviting, is worth doing.

It’s not just about legibility. It’s about fine-tuning the details to create great work.