No one is in business in spite of the customer – we are all in business because of the customer. If other people didn’t have needs that we could fulfill, we would still all be hunters and gatherers, foraging for ourselves.

Big companies sometimes lose sight of this simple truth. Over time, they forget their roots, growing into complex organizations with lots of layers of management and administration, production and supply chain integration. Most of the people, whose livelihoods ultimately depend on the customers, are completely out of touch with them. If you surveyed the work force of a very large company I wonder how many of them would be able to tell you why the customer buys or what they most care about. (more…)

Yes, Gap is again searching for a new agency to generate creative ideas for their upcoming campaign. This is their strategy to reach their goal of increasing sales. I guess it is hard for a one-time market leader to actually do something different.

To save me from repeating myself, here’s last year’s blog: The Challenger Gap!

I still have my 1988 Gap jean jacket. It is increasingly becoming buried in the back of my closet. But as a loyalist, I’m still rooting for you, Gap. If this year’s campaign doesn’t work, maybe you’ll think about a brand spanking.

Fitting Group met with the Comcast folks last week and learned all about the cool stuff coming down the pike for advertisers — both online and on cable TV. What we learned was that upcoming innovations clearly point to Comcast’s understanding that in today’s world, TV must learn to play the instant-gratification game in order to keep up and attract young audiences.

Most advertisers are familiar with Comcast’s On Demand service, which was its first attempt at providing subscribers with more in-depth information on a product or service. This was a good start, but it didn’t compare to the “seek-n-find” capability of the Internet. Well, in the very near future, subscribers are going to be able to push a button on their digital cable TV remote when they see an advertisement to instantly (with a double opt-in “yes” feature) request that coupons or additional information be sent to them via snail-mail or email.

This capability will open up endless possibilities for advertisers — if subscribers actually do it. As with anything else, it will take time to catch on. But, when it does, it will become as second nature as setting your DVR to record The Bachelor (by the way, you will also be able to hit a button on your remote when you see a promo for The Bachelor to signal your DVR to record it for you — instantly!). Technology and advertising — I LOVE IT!

Lots of client work is a good thing — but it left us with very little time to create a proper holiday greeting. SO ANYWAY, here are some videos we had lots of fun hastily cobbling together.

Using nothing but home-made puppets, action figures and a whiteboard, we improvised video recreations of our favorite holiday stories.

And hey… actors sometimes enjoy their performances more than the audience does. So, be kind!

No matter how good your marketing efforts are, if you don’t follow through — if you have a poor customer relationship management (CRM) process — you aren’t likely to see the results you dream about.

Spending your precious resources of time and money on generating leads and then failing to work at converting those leads to customers is almost as crazy as running really good advertising that attracts “shoppers” and then being closed for business. As in the movie Groundhog Day, in which the protagonist played by Bill Murray wakes up every morning only to find that it’s still yesterday, a marketer who lets leads fall through the cracks is doomed to a never-ending loop of unqualified lead generation.
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This article first appeared in our April 2008 newsletter, but since our archived newsletters are no longer available online, and since there is still no short supply of wimpy, noncommittal brands out there, I thought I’d run it up the flagpole one more time. These are eternal truths here people.

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When I was young, my mother had this little plaque in my bedroom. It read, “Stand for something or you’ll fall for anything.” Pretty heavy stuff for a five-year-old, but I guess it worked – I still remember it.

And it keeps coming back to me when I look out at the sea of cliché and noncommittal brands in the marketplace these days. Very few companies stand for anything. This ambiguity kills any chance for retention in the minds of possible customers, which means wasted marketing dollars.

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We’re starting a new file at Fitting Group. I’m going to call it the “turn down the heat and let it simmer” file. In this file, we will store all of the great and crazy ideas we have for clients and postdate them for 18 months to three years from now. We’re doing this to maintain our sanity.

In reviewing the work of our agency over the last three years, I began to see a pattern. In our desire to help clients get ahead of the curve, we have often promoted ideas that were viewed as too risky. So the conversation goes something like this:

FG to Banking client: (seeing the regulatory environment loosen up and allow more competition plus the trend in online banking) “We think you should change the name of your bank to UnBank. We’ll advertise that you’re a new kind of bank – completely transparent, with no hidden fees or evil practices. Unbank takes the pain out of the banking relationship for the customer. You’ll launch new products with no minimum balance requirements, no penalties for early withdrawal or loan payoffs, no ATM fees, etc.” (more…)

Senior Designer Andrew O. Ellis loves Pittsburgh. Read why.

If you don’t mind, I’m going to spend the next few paragraphs patting myself on the back.

Why? Because I’m part of a small and exclusive group. I’m a young person who moved TO Pittsburgh and stuck around. And more than that, I did it before it was cool.

You see, I grew up in the suburbs of Detroit. One Christmas during the early 1990s, we came to Pittsburgh to visit relatives who at that time lived in the Squirrel Hill neighborhood. I don’t know if it was the rivers or the hills or the dinosaurs or what, but something about this town captured my imagination for the rest of my childhood. Pictures of the skyline adorned my bedroom walls. Bridges became more fascinating to me than cars and trucks, and the Pittsburgh Penguins became my hockey team – a move, in Red Wings territory, that was about as popular as being, say, a Cleveland Browns fan in Steeler Nation.

In Detroit, most of the art and design schools were rumored to be straight recruitment lines to the now-crumbling automotive industry – a path I wasn’t eager to follow. It seemed almost too perfect that I’d end up attending the Art Institute of Pittsburgh. I still had friends questioning the move as my high school graduation loomed, but I was feeling the sort of satisfaction that you feel when things start falling into place. (more…)

Advertising, marketing and communications awards are more than just fancy dust collectors for the office walls and lobby.

Awards for a job well done are the calling cards of excellence that communicate our worth to clients, prospective clients and competitors. They’re also motivators for employees to keep up the good work.

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George M. Elish, Executive Vice President of Rosetta Capital Corporation, joins Fitting Group as a guest blogger.

I have often talked with executives who believe that a marketing agency’s fee should be determined, at least in part, by sales results. When I hear this, I immediately think that they really do not understand the role of the marketing agency, and more importantly, perhaps, the fundamental difference between marketing and sales.

It also underscores why I believe that marketing and sales decisions are among the most difficult that executives have to make. (more…)