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a person or company for a special project. Unfortunately yes,

despite any caveats to your endorsement.

How do you protect yourself from this very delicate situation?

The easy answer is don’t recommend anyone. Many people do just that,

because of the potential for problems.

If you are in a service business like advertising, insurance or even the legal profession

requests are common. They are also a vote of trust in your relationship.

Here’s what I did at my advertising agency.  I only recommended people I new, generally

from past experience. I never, ever accepted any referral fees. In most cases, I attended

the first meeting as a courtesy. I always kept in touch with the vendor and client,

to make sure things were going smoothly.

These simple points helped pave the way for a successful outcome. After all, my good name

was at stake. Especially when the boss asked, where did you find these people?

Their work is great!

Now, if you don’t know about Alexa ranking, you need to get up to speed on it. So are you ready?

Alexa is an independent company that rates your website or blog on where you rank on the web.

Meaning, if you are rated at 10 million, there are 9,999,999 other sites that are more visible than you.

In essence, the lower you are ranked the better. Now, if you Google a question like “How to improve

your Alexa ranking” you will get at least 20 different answers I am sure. In that regard, all I can say is the

following is working for me on my blog. Give it a try, over the next 30, 60 or 90 days

• Link back to Alexa and install the Alexa toolbar on your site.
• Post, Post, Post at least three times per week. Use an aggregator to get the word out.
• Comment on Twitter or Facebook every day, at least ten times.
• Get involved with major sites in your industry by commenting on articles.
• Offer to be a guest blogger on other sites that are known in your category.

This process will take some time, but I can assure you it will work, provided you commit to a plan.

You see major personalities all the time on Television. Many are at the end of their careers. Some are at their peak. They will help sell any thing. Including reverse mortgages, car mufflers or men’s underwear. And everything else you can imagine.

Paid hundreds of thousands

They get paid a small fortune for their services. Most people would not believe how much they make. Michael Jordan was supposedly paid in the mid-hundreds of thousands for his contract with Hanes. Now, he may have been the best professional basketball player ever, and one of the most charismatic athletes in sports.

Its underwear

But, is that enough to make people buy Hanes over any other brand? Come on. It’s underwear.

Bad by association

The dangerous side of celebrity endorsements can be summed up in one word Tiger. Do you want to risk your brand name with a person who for whatever reason flips out? A person who embarrasses their family and themselves, an also makes their sponsors look bad by association.

If you’re lucky

At best celebrity endorsements are a 50/50 proposition if you’re lucky. It’s just not worth the risk and the expense. If celebrity sponsors are the best your agency or creative department can do, that’s lame, and maybe it’s time to look at alternative marketing sources.

Ad age article:
Biz Report article:

They are extremely hard to do. Only the most gifted writers can successful pulling it off. Have you ever tried to write something funny? Then you know what I am talking about.

Only the Bravest

Uber famous copywriters of the past, John Caples, David Ogilvy always frowned upon it. Today, big time advertising agencies Creative Directors (for my students that’s the boss of the art director and copywriter teams who do ads) are reluctant to even consider humor. Only the bravest will attempt it.

Why is this so taboo? I am glad you asked. I’ll give you a few reasons it’s off limits.

• Advertising is not about entertainment, but information that can become a potential sale.
• Many people worry they’ll remember the humor and forget the product.
• Product cost for ads are very high and it much more of a gamble to go with humor.

Yeah, but laughter

I can just see you saying that’s ridicules, everybody love a good joke and laughter is universal.

Hey don’t get perturbed at me, I am just the messenger and I love a good laugh, even in advertising.

Fireball viral

The game changer today is YouTube. If something is funny, really funny, overnight it can go viral, like a fireball.
For the right product, to the right demographic, this can explode your sales figures. That’s no joke. (Ha! Ha!)

If you have a website, blog or even own a couple of domain names, you may already
be hip to this type of con game.  However, on the chance that you hopefully have not experienced, or it hasn’t happened to you this is worth reading. It will save you some money.

This is the way the dirty little game is played. You will receive an official looking form. It will have all the important details. The domain name, date of expiration, some legal mumbo jumbo and a statement that says this is going out to a million other websites owners. (In my view alluding to the fact that if you don’t renew, someone else will and in turn own the name) an of course the price for this renewal, is at least three times the real price, you should be paying for renewal.

Is this the end of the world?  No.  Not really, I just hate to see people get ripped off. So if you get this “Official looking form” in your mail box by post or email. Don’t panic. You can take comfort in knowing that most respectable hosting companies generally do one of two things. They renew it for you and charge your credit card on file, or they notify you months ahead to renew. Don’t be scammed!

Power of FREE

Famous advertising copywriters around the world know the power of the word FREE.
It grabs people’s attention. I have always questioned if free has any value. If you paid nothing for it,
will it ever be a valued possession? If you loose it do you really care? After all it was free.

Inducement as FREE

When Free is used as an inducement to subscribe or buy something does that advertisement (after you read the fine print) turn people off? I think so. Now, if you are in the market to buy that type of item anyway, then it’s extra and sweetens the deal. But that’s a very low coincidental percentage.

Quality rarely FREE

Many very smart marketers, that I know, believe that in America you must price your products and services high to convince customers it is high quality. You will rarely see a perceived high quality brand giving anything away for FREE. In the long term, it just doesn’t pay to offer anything FREE. Especially, if you are building your brand.

A few weeks ago, I read an article in Ad Age magazine, about the lack of creativity in advertising. The writer Matt Herrmann, VP-director of strategy at BBDO made some good points. Although, I believe he missed some critical facts in his overview. The comparison of advertising today to yesterday, specifically the sixty’s, considered “the golden age of advertising” is misleading.

Drastically different times

Agencies of the good old days borrowed/remixed plenty. In retrospect we only remember the
great advertising work from that time. The corny work they did is billed and buried never to be seen again. The times were drastically different. The agencies then were smaller and owned by people not
mega, publically traded corporations who by nature want to fast track everything and they become even more conservative as they grow larger.

Remixing borrowing themes

In reference to borrowing themes or remixing ideas of the past, that’s nothing new it’s been done for years in advertising. After all is there anything truly new? When MTV launched the campaign “I want my MTV” years ago that was borrowed from a famous cereal ad campaign. “I want my Maypo” using Mickey Mantle and other celebrities, thirty years earlier.

Advertising clutter

Blaming the “lack of creativity” on the lack of pride in ownership of the ad makers is a little misguided. In advertising today we are dealing with other issues: These including tighter legal restrictions, in-house agencies, technology “political correctness” and tons of advertising clutter and much more.

.A bit edgy

In summary, I believe there is some good creative being done today. It’s getting buried by all the clutter and equally important clients are scared to death of taking a chance on something just a bit edgy.
Emil Gargano (Ally, Gargano agency) said it best years ago “It takes a good client to do good advertising” that was 50 years ago.

So what’s new!