The Western Creative Blog

Check out our feature on FOX2 news in Detroit this past weekend regarding our Christmas party!

REDFORD, MI — The need for help in the Detroit metro area has never been greater. With the slumping economy, and thousands of jobs hinging on an automotive bailout there’s a tremendous pain facing our community this holiday season. Therefore, Detroit based advertising agency, Western Creative, has cancelled their traditional company Christmas party in an effort to help the homeless in the city of Detroit.

Instead of planning an extravagant party with dinner and entertainment, the Western Creative staff will instead host a party on December 20th at the Detroit Rescue Mission for the homeless residents of Detroit. Western Creative chairman Mark Young states, “by using the money budgeted for our own Christmas party we are able to help the less fortunate without spending additional dollars.” The party will consist of a dinner, entertainment and gifts of necessities for the residents.

Rather than call attention to itself, Western Creative hopes to call attention to the great need of Detroit’s homeless this winter, and pass along this helpful idea to other companies looking for opportunities to help.

Engineering a name change can be complicated, said Mark Young, chairman of Redford Township-based advertising and marketing agency Western Creative Inc., formerly Western Communications.

Business owners contemplating a name change should begin by analyzing the reasons, Young said.

“Are you changing the name because there’s been an ownership change that requires it? Are you changing because it’s confusing with another company name? Or are you changing it because it will reflect who the business is and what the business does?” he said.

The first rule, Young said, is like the charge to doctors — first, do no harm.

“Try to measure. What is the equity in the current name?” he said. “Is it a positive equity or negative equity?”

An owner of a restaurant contemplating a name change, for example, might visit local review Web sites to determine the public perception of the business.

“In some businesses, such as hospitality, name changes make a lot of sense if there’s negative equity,” Young said.

“Most people who have tried a club, lounge, bar or restaurant and had a bad experience are likely to remember it and not return. So in that case, a name change can be good, because in the world of local business, most people will give the new name a shot.

“On the other hand, if you’re buying a brand that has positive equity, you need to be careful.”

Whether the business name has positive or negative equity determines how the name change should be handled, he said.

The owner of a well-liked business might want to make the change slowly, or even consider co-branding with the business’ old and new names.

But a business with negative name recognition should slash and burn, eliminating all traces of the prior brand, Young said.

“My advice would be change everything as radically as possible, don’t recycle the logo, image or font, just get away from anything that’s reminiscent (of the old name),” he said.

“But if you’re trying to build on positive equity, you may want to phase in things like fonts, artwork, colors.”

When Western Creative changed its name about 10 years ago, Young said, it was because the descriptor “communications” had become widely identified with stores selling cellular phones or paging devices.

“Though it wasn’t a radical name change, we wiped out everything — logos, colors, literature, business cards. We trashed everything and replaced it all,” he said.

Young also advises business owners to consider the current economic climate, because a name change can be expensive.

-Excerpts taken from a recent article by Nancy Keefer on DetroitMakeItHere.com

Western Creative chairman, Mark Young, was featured in an article this week in Crain’s Detroit Business. The article featured the promotion of online paid search advertising for small businesses. The article included facts regarding the number of consumers who use web searches for discovering and gathering information about products they’d like to purchase. The need for local businesses and CPGs to embrace search marketing is huge. There are millions of searches made every month, and most web surfers do not delve deeper than the first few results pages on search engines. If your site is not absolutely optimized for Google/Yahoo, it’s most likely these consumers desperately searching for your business will never find you. The Western Creative Adnetics department is certified for using Google Adwords and MSN Adcenter paid search programs. Contact us today to learn how we can help your business grow online!

American households spend forty-three hours per day with media. That’s a shocking number for certain. While it may sound difficult to achieve, the reality is the typical household has several media consumers, many of whom participate in the phenomenon known as media duality: the act of using more than one form of media at a time.

The term phenomenon might be an understatement. Studies show that 77-percent of Americans use the Internet and television simultaneously. This means most people use multiple media concurrently, at one time or another ­– though not necessarily all of the time. (Additionally, the number of people who watch TV while reading magazines or other print media is over 70-percent.)

The tendency is to believe that younger people, aged 18 to 24, would display this behavior more, but the fact is the statistics reflect habits of a wider age group, the coveted 18 to 49 demographic. Further breakdown within the demographic reveals that women are more likely than men to vote or respond to a contest, while men are more likely to check out web information.

All in all, both genders show a propensity to investigate product information and offers seen on TV. And according to a recent survey by the American Marketing Association, over one-third of all adults watched a TV show and then immediately engaged in a related website to vote for a contestant, enter a contest or watch bonus scenes.
So what does all of this mean to you? It means advertisers cannot look at any single medium in a vacuum. We must consider all media, how they affect and interact with one another, and how to leverage multiple media for the most impact at the lowest cost.
Because our audience is highly likely to have a relationship with us through multiple media outlets, consistency of message is more important than ever. We must make sure that every advertisement you deliver is consistent in look, feel and message, so each impression builds on the previous one. (Of course, there is an exception: if you are advertising to different demographic groups, you may be better served to tailor messages to each group.)

Ultimately, most consumers need to see an advertisement 3.7 times before they fully understand it; and there is no indication that every impression must come from the same medium. By taking advantage of people’s media duality habits, we can build a wide-reaching campaign that helps us reach the impression goal more quickly and cost effectively.

The result is a more powerful brand – and more business for you.

- Mark Young is the chairman of Western Creative. Western Creative is a full service ad agency based in Redford, MI specializing in consumer packaged goods.

Welcome to the Western Creative, Inc. blog!

This blog was created to provide web lemmings, like you!, with a multitude of knowledge encompassing our passion and thoughts regarding the advertising industry. Whether you’re interested in direct response advertising and infomercials, QVC representation, brand identity, or developing a TV commercial you’ll surely find a volume of tips and tricks of the trade here at the WC blog. Since Western Creative is your one-stop shop full-service advertising agency, we’re able to share with you a plethora of priceless advertising thought nuggets spanning across all areas of advertising. Also enjoy our other blogs focusing around direct response and shopping channels. There will be plenty of information available soon to help your business take off!