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So of course everyone here watched the Super Bowl.

Great game, right (even though Brady’s game-ending Hail Mary fell short of being epic)?  But what about the commercials? They were pretty killer this year and we took notice of the amount of humor that was used considering the current mood of the country. Maybe advertisers felt like we could all use a little comic relief during the Super Bowl this year. After all, it’s supposed to be fun, so why not, right?

Chances are you’ve been noticing these mixed up looking little square things all over the place. They kind of look like a Rorschach test—you know the inkblot test that’s supposed to tell you if you’re a psychopath or just a really scary individual?

Now that Halloween is over, you know what that means, GLAD WORKS friends!

It’s time for all the other stuff—Thanksgiving, Chanukah, Christmas, Kwanza, Festivus, Wintereenmas, New Year’s, what have you! It’s nothing but fast-paced action from now until 2012, so we thought we’d take this opportunity to share some of our seasonal advertising ideas with you.

Season’s Greetings!

Here’s to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes.

The ones who see things differently. They’re not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them.

About the only thing you can’t do is ignore them. Because they change things. They invent. They imagine. They heal. They explore. They create. They inspire. They push the human race forward.

Maybe they have to be crazy.

Ahhhh…viral ads. They’re fun, right?  Don’t you love it when you sit down to your computer to find that some lovely person has shared a gem with you?

In fact, if it’s really good, you might even share it with a bunch of people and then they do it too, and before you know it, everyone has seen the viral ad du jour.

Perhaps the best way to explain Social Media is to break it down a little bit.  Printed media like a newspaper is a one-way communication—you read it but you don’t tell it what you thought of the article. Maybe you call a friend and tell them about it, but you don’t sit there talking directly to your newspaper. 

If you do talk to your newspaper, we’ll just back away slowly and let you continue…

Ahem.

Facebook. The name has come to be synonymous with fun... a way to reconnect with the past and renew old relationships.

Did you know that, in addition to its ability to find your best friend from high school, Facebook also offers some strong, effective marketing options? Just imagine: with access to entire networks of people at once, your message can spread virally to all the corners of the planet in record time.

It's that time of year again.

As the calendar year winds down, countries across the country are evaluating (and re-evaluating) their projected ad expenditures for the new year. And in light of an anything-goes economic climate, those budgets will be under more scrutiny than ever.

So, what can you do to make sure your ads are being all they can be {{pardon the shameless appropriation from the U.S. Army}}?

First, keep in mind the Golden Rule of advertising: the goal of any ad campaign -- whether on radio or TV, or in print -- is not to sell a product or service.

Walking down the aisles of your local supermarket, you've probably seen all the product packaging promoting the benefits of organic food. Everywhere we look, we’re taught that organic food is healthier, more nutritious, and free of chemical substances when compared to conventional foods. Some products even claim to protect consumers from cancer-causing pesticides. (I’ll take those in bulk, please!)

So is organic food truly a miracle? An escape from all our processed and genetically-altered products?

Choosing to exhibit at a trade show is a strategic decision. Perhaps now more than ever, the decision "to show, or not to show" is fraught with huge financial risk. Costs for services like labor and freight continue to rise, and travel expenses are becoming an even larger part of the pie.

That said, the trade show arena (the figurative one, not the literal one) offers some unbelievable bargains. The payoff in terms of face-time opportunities with clients and prospects is still one of the most cost-effective and time-efficient ways to connect with your audience.