40+ Most Essential Tools and Services For Marketers

After years of blogging I've learned to love a select assortment of tools that have helped to make blogging easier, quicker, and more fun. Some of these tools may not be "the best", but they are the ones that I love and the ones that I have a strong affinity for; so I figured I'd share in the hopes that they will benefit other bloggers like they did me.

RSS Readers

GOOGLE READER

This is a tool that I’ve been using since last year and it quickly became one of my favorite Google products. For anyone who does a lot of blog reading, an RSS reader will not only save you time, but it will make reading several blog posts a lot easier. Unfortunately, Google is killing this product on July 1st. For that reason, I have included a popular alternative (and the one I am attempting to switch to), Feedly, on this list.

FEEDLY

This is a popular alternative to Google Reader. It’s the solution that many disgruntled Reader users are moving to. Not only is it very similar, it is (in my opinion) better in a lot of ways with a cleaner interface and more options. They also make moving from Reader a painless process by offering a synchronization option.

Content Ideas

TRAPIT

This is a tool that I am very fond of and have been using since its inception. It allows you to “trap” various topics and it aggregates articles from around the web on these trapped topics. What I like about it is it allows you to discover new blogs, discover trends within a particular niche, and it offers you the opportunity to trap very specific topics – something that other similar services do not.

PULSE

This is something that I have only recently discovered but have immediately enjoyed using. It is very similar to Trapit only without the opportunity for specific subjects. It also seems to get the majority of its content from more of the major blogs/publishers so you don’t have to sort through some of the lower quality blogs like you do in Trapit. This application is also a great way to discover trends within your industry or niche.

GOOGLE TRENDS

If you have never used Google Trends before than I would highly recommend starting. Anyone who has ever hit a brick wall while coming up with a good title/post idea from the Google Keyword Tool often finds success here. The tool allows you to enter a phrase and Google will show you how it is trending on their search engine and other related keywords that are “rising”. Use this in combination with the previous tools (discover trends, then use this tool to see more opportunities) to stay on the pulse within your niche.

GOOGLE ALERTS

Google Alerts is another Google product that will help you discover some of the trends within your niche. If you aren’t already using this for content marketing, and we have highly suggested it in the past, then we suggest start using it right now. Use this tool to get constant alerts on terms and sites of your choosing to see what other bloggers are writing about. Unfortunately, with the reliability of the service declining, many are speculating that Google is going to kill this tool as well.

TALKWALKER ALERTS

Thankfully, like Feedly for Reader, we have a solution that is a perfectly good replacement for Alerts. This replacement is so similar to Alerts, if you visit their website (save for the minor design differences) you would think you were setting up an alert using Google. I have been experimenting with this tool for a few weeks now and I have to say that it works quite well and the difference from Alerts is minimal, if not non-existant.

QUORA

We have already recommended Quora as a solution for content ideas before. And we stand by that. According to Bostjan, “Quora is an online forum that aggregates questions and answers to specific topics. Users can collaborate by editing questions and suggesting edits to other users’ answers. The forum is organized by people and their interests so everybody can find, collect, and share the information most valuable to each and every individual.”

INBOUND.ORG

This is a website/tool that unfortunately is exclusive to content that I have been writing about recently (SEO, digital marketing, content marketing, etc.). I have decided to include it anyway in hopes that you may realize that there is a similar website in your niche that you can get inspiration for content from. This is useful because if you visit it enough, you may start to notice which topics your niche finds most valuable. Primarily because the community “upvotes” an article or discussion that they find valuable.

REDDIT

I included this because it is not a typical website that people may think of for content ideas and also because the system of “upvoting” is very similar to Inbound. Although at first glance Reddit may seem like a bunch of liberal, technologically savvy guys that love cats, further inspection reveals that there is a subreddit (or topic/subject/niche) for every thing you could possibly think of – and then some. So find a relevant subreddit, see what people are talking about/upvoting, and get inspired.

Organization/Productivity

EVERNOTE

I’m sure many of you have heard of Evernote or use it, but I am going to mention it anyway because I love it. This is a tool that allows you to keep track of just about any thought, link, or image (just to name a few) that you want into an organized system of notes. Use this to keep track of content ideas that you come up with, articles that you come across that you love, and just about any other thing that you need to remember.

WUNDERLIST

When I have a lot of things to do, I create lists. Not only does this allow me to organize and visualize all of the things that I need to accomplish, but it feels really good to cross something off your list after finishing it. That is why I love to do lists and for me Wunderlist is my favorite. Its delightfully minimalistic approach makes creating and organizing lists a breeze and has helped to increase my productivity for quite some time now.

GOOGLE CALENDAR

This tool is also something that we have recommended in the past and we stand by that recommendation as well. Use this tool to create editorial calendars (especially useful for the blogs with multiple authors), keep your future blog posts organized, and keep you on track for publishing.

SELF CONTROL

This is another tool that is not among the typically recommended but it is one that has helped me so I am happy to suggest using it. Use this when you really need to get something done and cannot risk the temptations of your favorite distractors. This application allows you to blacklist any website you want for a set period of time (for up to one day). Make sure you really want to blacklist it though because once you hit the start button you will not be able to reach that website in any way on any browser until that timer runs out.

FOCUS BOOSTER

Focus Booster is something that I have used before but unfortunately have not really gotten that great of results from. However, many people swear by it so I am including it on this list anyway. Use this tool to effectively utilize the Pomodoro Technique to maintain productivity throughout the day.

Writing

GOOGLE DOCS

If your blog or website has multiple authors or editors, this is an excellent tool for collaboration. You can use this to begin writing a post and have any other person that the document is “shared” with to contribute on it in real-time. This is especially useful for real-time collaboration with remote employees.

AFTER THE DEADLINE

After the Deadline is a tool that I only recently began using but have quickly learned to love. Install the browser extension and activate it whenever you want instant contextual spell checking, advanced style checking, and intelligent grammar checking on the blog post you are writing. This is a great tool that acts as an additional defense against grammar and spelling mistakes.

PLAGIUM

I haven’t really used this tool recently because I am no longer managing content for any sites, but when I did it was a great (and free!) tool that allowed you to quickly check if a block of text was already published elsewhere on the web. With the recent spike in guest blogging I would highly recommend using this if your blog frequently accepts guest blog posts in order to avoid accepting plagiarized blog posts. The quick use of this product will save you a lot of headaches in the future!

SOURCEBOTTLE

Although this isn’t a tool that I have used in the past, the concept of it seemed very unique and many may find value in it so I figured I would include it on this list. SourceBottle provides journalists (or publishers) with sources for content that they are writing and experts on a topic an opportunity to be a source (great if you want to build authority within your niche). Unfortunately, I cannot provide a full review because I have not had the chance to use it, but the general sentiment on the web seems to be positive.

Images

GIMP

I’m not sure if I love this tool because it is what I learned to edit images on and it is what I have been using since I began blogging/web development or if it really is the best open source image editor available. Sure, there are a lot more features with Photoshop but for the average blogger, they are definitely overkill and not worth the investment. That is why I recommend GIMP. It is easy to use, open source, and it offers a considerable amount of support and documentation for a free product.

PIXLR

For those who love web-based applications, this is one of the best when it comes to free image editing solutions. Pixlr offers three different solutions: Pixlr-o-matic, Pixlr Express, and Pixlr Editor which is for the “playful”, “efficient”, and advanced user, respectively. This web-based image editor is a great solution for bloggers who want to quickly edit images on the fly without starting up RAM heavy image editors.

THINGLINK

This is actually a really cool tool that I only recently discovered that I think many will find use in. What it does is allow you to “create rich images with music, video, sound, text and more.” It does this by allowing you to tag images with touch points that give more life and context to the image. I see this as a great way to further engage your readers in a fun and unique way. Although I have not yet found an opportunity to use it on the Zemanta blog before this post, I certainly look for every opportunity because they are actually a lot of fun to make and give your blog a way to stick out from the competition.

ASPECT RATIO CALCULATOR

This, and the subsequent two tools, is actually a very simple tool that is dedicated to only one thing. Although it has many other uses, I use it to quickly find the correct dimensions of an image that I want to scale using HTML markup. Although I have more frequently (and this recommended) scaled the actual image using an editor, this is a great way to quickly find the appropriate dimensions.

PAGE RULER

Another simple tool, and unfortunately only for those with Chrome (though I’m sure you can find something similar for Firefox), is Page Ruler. Activate this tool and you can quickly get the width or height in pixels of whatever is on screen. This is also a good way to see what dimensions would look best when you are previewing your blog post which can save some time by not having to guess and test.

COLOR PICKER

Also a Chrome extension, this wonderful tool allows you to quickly see the hex code for any color that is on screen. This allows for quick CSS markup or it can save you the time of taking a screenshot, opening that in an image editor and then discovering the color from there (well, this is what I did before I discovered this tool).

SEO

GOOGLE KEYWORD TOOL

This is a must-have tool for any blogger. If you haven’t heard of it then I strongly encourage its use. It makes it possible for you to enter search phrases (or parts of a potential blog post title) and see how much search traffic it gets during a month. Moreover, it offers other keyword suggestions; if there is a better search phrase that is similar, Google will let you know! This tool is also very useful to see what terms are worth optimizing on your site and the respective competitiveness for each one.

UBERSUGGEST

Having trouble thinking of a blog post title even after using Google’s Keyword Tool? Have a good title but it isn’t as relevant as you would like it to be? Enter key search phrases or any other ideas that you may have using this tool and get hundreds of similar search phrases. This tool is one of my favorites and is highly recommended. Especially if you are considering a PPC campaign and need to perform keyword research. Pro tip: use wildcards (search terms using an asterisk to represent any word) with this tool to get amazing results.

SOOVLE

Similar to Ubersuggest, this is a tool that returns you the most popular search terms that are most closely related to whatever you enter. The good thing about this tool is that it is not exclusive to Google. It also provides you results from Amazon, Yahoo, Bing, YouTube, Answers.com, and Wikipedia.

WORDPRESS SEO (YOAST)

Easily one of the best SEO plugins for any WordPress user (sorry other blogging platforms!), this tool makes it easy for a typical blogger to optimize their post for SEO and see how their blog post will appear on the search engine results page. After you choose a focus keyword (or whatever keyword phrase you wish to optimize the page for), the tool shows you where it may be useful to include that phrase (mostly in the meta data) and reminds you of basic SEO best practices.

MAJESTIC SEO

After you have published your post, you are going to want to see how it is doing on the web right? Well use this tool (my personal favorite when it comes to site exploration), to see how many backlinks your posts are getting, where they are coming from, and a plethora of other information that is useful to anyone engaged in search engine optimization. This tool is free with registration for the basic features but requires a membership for anyone who wants more information.

OPEN SITE EXPLORER

This SEOmoz tool is one that is similar to MajesticSEO but offers fewer features to the blogger on a budget. One immediate benefit is that it offers you the site’s domain authority and the page’s page authority – something that MajesticSEO does not do. Some drawbacks are that it is not updated nearly as often as Majestic and it restricts a lot more features. However, for anyone looking to throw down the cash for a SEOmoz membership, it is definitely a great tool in your SEO arsenal.

Marketing

SPROUTSOCIAL

This is definitely my favorite tool for social media monitoring and is what we here at Zemanta use. This tool does it all when it comes to social media: get a quick overview of all of your accounts on the dashboard, check out your smart inbox (a quick way to see all of the places your social media accounts are engaged with/mentioned and to track any terms that you want), see how your tweets or updates to your timeline are doing, schedule your messages, and get full reports. And these are just a few of the things that you can do. SproutSocial is also very committed to a good user experience and are constantly updating their service (they recently added engagement reports and breakdown by team member). Although it does cost money, it is well worth it and they do offer you the chance to try out their product for 30 days.

MAILCHIMP

If you are considering email marketing then look no further. MailChimp is one of the best and most frequently used for amateur bloggers and SMBs alike. Worried about being able to design a good email? MailChimp offers you templates to choose from. Worried that you won’t be able to customize every little thing and make it exactly how you please? MailChimp allows you to do that too (just subscribe to our newsletter to see the potential awesomeness). The reporting features that are offered are also very thorough and they make A/B testing your emails easy and fun.

LUCKY ORANGE

I’ll be honest, this is a tool product that I have not yet had the opportunity to check out, but it seemed very interesting and I thought some of you would find value in it so here you are. Lucky Orange provides unique analytics about your site that you may not see in Google Analytics – all at a fairly reasonable price. Two of the most notable features are the mouse heat maps and the visitor recordings.

WIBIYA

This is another cool product that has only recently come onto my radar. If you spend enough time on the web, then you are almost guaranteed to run into this sooner or later. It places a bar at the bottom of the browser window encouraging visitors to make a certain action. There are several options available as of now, including social buttons, discount offers, and recommended readings. This would be a great way to increase site engagement and place your social buttons in an easy to find location.

Other

ZEMANTA

Zemanta (both Related Posts and Editorial Assistant) is a wonderful tool that we of course love quite dearly. What we do is provide related posts at the bottom of your blog post (like you can see below) which helps you to increase user engagement, increase traffic from other related sites, keep track of all this using our real-time analytics, and optimize for mobile. All with complete customization and editorial control. We think it is pretty awesome.

DISQUS

Another awesome tool that doesn’t quite fit into the above categories is Disqus. This tool provides a wonderful commenting system at the end of your blog posts. It’s what we use on our site and we love it, so check it out!

 

POLLDADDY

Do you ever wonder what your customers or readers are thinking? I’m going to go ahead and guess that the answer is just about every day. Which is why I’m including PollDaddy on the list. Not only can you provide surveys to get customer and reader feedback, but you can also use it to create unique surveys which you can then turn into blog posts that your audience will be interested in.

ODOSKETCH

This is a pretty cool tool that I haven’t really had the chance to use on anything that has been published but I have certainly gotten good use out of it. Odosketch provides a canvas and a set of cool brushes and lets you go to town. The cool thing is you can share these sketches and see the process that the artist went through in creating it. It’s a really cool tool and I strongly encourage trying it out. Warning: Do not click on link if you wish to be productive for the next 20 minutes.

QUICKMEME

I know many people hate memes, but there are also a lot of people that love them. Using them in your blog posts can be a great way to show that you are in tune with popular interent culture. You have to know how each meme is used, and you have to have some good copy in mind, but if you have a blog post that it will work with well, I definitely recommend trying it out.

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SMART CAMERA & APPLICATIONS FOR COMMON MAN

“Camera” as a technology is scaling new heights in various fields and applications. Development of cameras is also changing similarly. Now we can see camera in portable mediums like pen. They are actually helping us in many ways from clicking a simple photograph to detecting of elements or metals. These detective cameras are called “smart cameras” and are used for various purposes like traffic  ....continued below.....

Samsung Smart Camera NX1000 Pink: This is a photograph by 'SamsungTomorrow', as posted on Flickr. To view this photographer’s photostream and more, click on Image.

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surveillance, smart rooms, tracking and many more applications. Further the smart cameras will be used as an embedded computing systems on a single board or chip, so as to deal with their high performed applications. 

What is a Smart Camera?
The smart Camera is a total handy unit of vision systems which can be used anywhere, where image processing can be applied. Smart cameras are equipped with a high performance onboard computing and communicating infrastructure, combining in a single embedded device.

Smart camera’s contains on board processor embedded with charge coupled device image (CCD) sensor, which provides an easily distributed and all-in-one vision system, which further transmits inspection results along with the place or raw images.

In usual vision system scenarios, only a small fraction of a picture or a frame will be the region of interest (ROI), where in smart camera’s the whole picture itself will become (ROI), so that the processing will be done as soon as the image is captured. To be specific, an image of some gigabytes will become some small amount of bytes after processing. This is exactly called as “brain behind the eyes”. 

SMART CAMERA’S V/S STANDARD SMART VISION SYSTEMS : 
In traditional vision systems, some PC-based approach have been used with minimum number of algorithms. So there will not arise a question of microprocessors, DSPs, FPGAs. But while speaking about a smart embedded camera they are the necessary tools for the implementation of a high performance camera, which could be used in various applications as mentioned above.

However the DSPs and FPGAs are becoming faster nowadays. Traditional approach contains PC-based implementation. This could be either using a camera with capability to interfere directly with PC for processing of images captured.

Smart camera on the other hand, is a self-contained unit, which consists processor embedded on a single chip or board, to do all that task which could be done using PC-based approaches. The smart camera has sensors which are flexible and are inherently capable of handling many more imaging algorithms and applications.

Assembly of various parts on a single chip with camera. 

HISTORY OF GENERATION OF SMART CAMERA :

From analog to digital cameras: 

• 1st generation surveillance: Analog equipment ( circuit Vclosed circuit TV cameras transmitted video signal over analog lines) 
• 2nd generation: digital back-end components; allow real time automated analysis of incoming data 
• 3rd generation: complete digital transformation; video converted in digital domain at the camera and transmitted via a computer network; cameras can also compress video to save bandwidth. 
• 4th generation: intelligent cameras; perform low-level image processing operations on the captured frames onboard to improve video compression and intelligent host efficiency. However, most of the processing is done at a central unit 

But “smart cameras” directly perform highly sophisticated video analysis, video sensing, video processing, and communication. They are designed as reconfigurable and flexible processing nodes with self-reconfiguration, self-monitoring, and self-diagnosis. 
Capabilities: 

• Shift from a central to a distributed control surveillance system 

• Increase the surveillance system’s functionality, availability, and autonomy 

• Can react autonomously to changes in the system’s environment 

• Can detect events in the monitored scenes. 

• A static surveillance system configuration is no longer feasible! 

PROPOSED ARCHITECTURE :

• scalable, embedded, high-performance, multiprocessor platform consisting of a ◦ network processor ◦ a variable number of digital signal processors (DSPs) 

• commercial off-the-shelf software/hardware architecture was chosen ◦ support fast prototype development ◦ achieve flexibility and performance at a reasonable price. 

 

Smart Camera Architecture Block Diagram 

The smart camera presented in this communication will reduces the data of interest field by making use of the image processing sensors. 

As the figure shows the exact way the camera works, it’s the overall view of working of  the camera. 

Hardware Architecture: 3 parts 
1. Sensing unit 

a. Monochrome CMOS image sensor 

b. delivers images with VGA resolution at up to 30 fps 

c. transfers images via a first-in, first-out (FIFO) memory to the PU 

2.   Processing unit (PU) 

a. Up to 10 Texas Instruments TMS320C64x DSPs can deliver an aggregate performance of up to 80 GIPS while keeping the power consumption low 
b. PCI bus couples the DSPs and connects them to the network processor 

3.   Communication unit 

a. network processor: Intel XScale IXP425
b. establishes the connection between the processing and communication units
c. controls internal and external communication
d. currently supports two interfaces for IP-based external communication: Wired Ethernet and wireless Global System for Mobile Communications/general packet radio service (GSM/GPRS) 

So as to get the final result of the image that has sensed by the camera sensor, one should undergo the above all stages and finally will land up to the result of interest. 
All this process will be carried in a single chip or board, which contains sensing unit for the video sensors, processing unit and the communication unit to connect with various software tools and algorithms. Once the result has been generated the copy of the result will be saved in a separate memory, so that the user can retrieve from the memory.
Software Architecture: 2 frameworks :

1. DSP framework – runs on every DSP

• Provides an abstraction of the hardware and communication channels: As the camera captures the picture or image or video it should be sensed by 

• Sensing unit after this job the image or video should be processed, here comes the use of DSP (Digital Signal Processors).

• Supports dynamic loading and unloading of application tasks 

• Manages the DSP’s on-chip and off-chip resources 

• Algorithms on different DSPs use the service management facilities to dynamically establish connections to each other 

• The DSP framework was built on Texas Instruments’ DSP/BIOS operating system. 

2. SmartCam framework - runs on the network proc 

• An abstraction of the DSPs to ensure the application layer’s platform independence 

• Application layer uses the provided communication methods to exchange information 

• Internal messaging to the DSPs 

• External IP-based communication 

• Application development by high-level interfaces to DSP algorithms and the DSP framework’s functions 
XScale processor runs standard Linux only customization of the Linux kernel is the DSP kernel module and processor uses it to establish the connection to the DSPs via the PCI bus.

Standard Smart Vision System

 

Processing of images :

SOFTWARE AND PROGRAMMING TOOLS : 

This section discusses the programs that run on an embedded system as well as software tools that are necessary or helpful to implement those programs and to transfer them to the embedded system.

DSPs are usually programmed in C at first, followed by machine code optimization for critical parts. A DSP rarely just executes one tiny program on an endless stream of rather uniform data, but instead has to perform some general tasks occasionally. Thus, it is usually controlled by a DSP operating system (OS).

A large number of companies offer an even larger number of them, frequently classified as a real-time OS. Linux is a common choice due to its flexibility, particularly on Systems-on-Chips. Following are some of your choices for operating for DSPs and/or SoCs. One of the main characteristics of these OSs is their small footprint, typically only one to tens of MB.
• Valourtech (vtLinux)

• Arcturus Networks (uClinux)

• Consumer Electronics Linux Forum (CELF) Linux

• MonteVista Software

• Mentor Graphics (Nucleus PLUS RTOS)

• Palm Inc. (PalmOS)

• Microsoft Corp. (Windows CE/Mobile)

• ulTRON

• LineouSolutions (Linux)

• LynuxWorks (BlueCat Linux)

• Symbian Ltd. (Symbian)

• Metrowerks, now Freescale (Linux)

• Pigeon Point Systems (Monterey Linux)

• Wind River (VxWorks)

• Texas Instruments (DSP/BIOS RTOS) 

Further resources that might be helpful: The “Pocket Guide to Processors for DSP,” at http://www.bdti.com/pocket/pocket.htm , and “The Scientist and Engineer’s Guide to Digital Signal Processing” by StevenW.Smith, at http://www.dspguide.com/ . 

Distributed System Architecture 

Use the smart cameras to implement a distributed intelligent video surveillance system (IVS) 

Partition IVS into distributed logical groups (surveillance clusters) 

IVS requires an assignment of cameras to a specific cluster. Dynamically and autonomously maps surveillance tasks into individual cameras depending on their resources and the system’s current state. 

Tasks are implemented onto cameras using a mobile agent system (MAS) built atop the SmartCam framework. Changes in the environment trigger a task mission. 

Quality of Service (QoS): Parameters include frame rate, transfer delay, image resolution, and video-compression rate levels can change over time due to user interactions or changes in the monitored environment (so novel IVS systems must include dedicated QoS management mechanisms).

Power awareness: Camera supports combined power and QoS management (PoQoS) for distributed IVS systems.

PoQoS dynamically configures the power and QoS level of the camera’s hardware and software to adapt to user requests and changes in the environment. 

Experimental results : 

Two identical SmartCam prototypes .Integrated up to three additional PCs (Pentium III running under Linux at 1 GHz) to evaluate larger SmartCam networks. Complete SmartCam framework and the MAS could execute on the PC without any modification. Diet agents running under Java as the MAS and applied the JamVM Java virtual machine on the smart camera prototype. Compared the SmartCam prototype’s Java performance with that of a standard PC 

The results showed that the interpreter-based JamVM is about 20 times slower than the Sun Java runtime environment (JRE) 1.4.2 on the PCs. The native computing performance between a Pentium III PC and the SmartCam (XScale) differs only by a factor of two. 

Advantages of Smart Camera : 

Cost - Smart cameras are generally less expensive to purchase and set up than the PCbased solution, since they include the camera, lenses, lighting (sometimes), cabling and processing. 

Simplicity - Software tools available with smart cameras are of the point-and-click variety and are easier to use than those available on PC's. Algorithms come pre-packaged and do not need to be developed, thus making the smart camera quicker to setup and use. 

Integration - Given their unified packaging, smart cameras are easier to integrate into 
the manufacturing environment. 

Reliability - With fewer moving components (fans, hard drives) and lower temperatures, smart cameras are more reliable than PC's. 

Applications of Smart Camera - 

• Multi-camera object-tracking application 

• Multi-camera system instantiates only a single tracker (agent) task, The agent follows the tracked object migrating to the Smart Cam that should next observe the object.

• Tracking agent based on a Kanade-Lucas-Tomasi feature tracker 

• Main advantage is its short initialization time 

• Applicable for multi-camera object tracking by mobile agents 

• Tracking
agents control the handover process, using predefined migration regions 

•  When the tracked object enters a migration region, the tracker initiates handover to the next Smart Cam 

• Each migration region assigned to one or more possible next SmartCams

•  Motion vectors help distinguish among several Smart Cams assigned to the same migration region 

• Motion vectors check whether the object moves in the correct direction 

• A master-slave approach for the tracked object handover 

• Tracking agent’s migration between Smart Cams takes up to 1 second 

Task-allocation system’s setup time—approximately 190 milliseconds

The approach is good considering they are using off the shelf products. The amount of memory and power dissipation are higher than the design would require ◦ it is good for testing and research but not suitable in real world situations. 

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Creative Methods Of Creating Great Ads On Entrepreneurship Success

“J. Waiter Thompson did recall studies on commercials that ran during a heavily-viewed mini-series, “The Winds of War.” The survey showed that 19 percent of the respondents recalled Volkswagen commercials; 32 percent, Kodak; 32 percent, Prudential; 28 percent American Express; and 16 percent Mobil Oil. The catch is that none of these companies advertised on "The Winds of War." These words are from the book Hey, Whipple, Squeeze This: A Guide to Creating Great Ads by master copywriter Luke Sullivan. This ....continued below.....

7UP Liiiiight: This is a photograph by 'nagfactor', as posted on Flickr. To view this photographer’s photostream and more, click on Image.

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book looks at the history prescriptions for building a career in advertising and features a real-world look at the day-to-day operations of today's ad agencies.Among the most disparaged campaigns in advertising history, the Mr. Whipple ads for Charmin toilet paper were also wildly successful. Sullivan explores the Whipple phenomenon, examining why bad ads sometimes work, why great ads sometimes fail, and how advertisers can learn to balance creative work with the mandate to sell products. Some interesting words follow….

In the mid-'80s, research told management of the Coca-Cola Company that younger people preferred a sweeter, more Pepsi-like taste. Overlooking fierce customer loyalty to this century-old battleship of a brand, they reformulated Coca-Cola into New Coke, and in the process packed about $1 billion down a rat hole.
"We forget we can mold it."

Research people told writer Hal Riney that entering the wine cooler category was a big mistake. Seagram's and California Cooler had it locked up. Then Riney began running his Bartles & Jaymes commercials and a year later his client had the #1-selling wine cooler in America.
"We forget we can mold it."

Research people told writer Cliff Freeman when he was working on Wendy's hamburgers, "Under absolutely no circumstances run 'Where's the Beef?' " After it ran, sales shot up 25 percent for the year and Wendy's moved from fifth to third place in fast-food sales. The 20,000 newspaper articles lauding the commercial didn't hurt either.
"We forget we can mold it."

And what some call the greatest campaign of the twentieth century, Volkswagen—none of it was subjected to pretesting. The man who helped produce that Volkswagen campaign had a saying: "We are so busy measuring public opinion, we forget we can mold it."

Testing storyboards doesn't work.
Testing, by its very nature, looks for what is wrong with a commercial, not what is right. Look hard enough for something wrong and you'll sure enough find it. (I could stare at a picture of Miss November and in a half hour I'd start to notice, is that some broccoli in her teeth? Look, right there between the lateral incisor and the left canine, see?)

Testing assumes people react intellectually to commercials, that people watching TV in their living rooms dissect and analyze these interruptions to their sitcoms. ("Honey, come in here. I think these TV people are forwarding an argument that doesn't track logically. Bring a pen and paper.") In reality, you and I both know their reactions are visceral and instantaneous.

Testing rewards commercials that are vague and fuzzy because vague-and-fuzzy doesn't challenge the viewer.

Testing rewards commercials that are derivative because commercials that have a familiar feel score better than commercials that are unique, strange, odd, or new. The very qualities that can lift a finished commercial above the television clutter.

Testing, no matter how well disguised, asks consumers to be advertising experts. And invariably they feel obligated to prove it. Finally, testing assumes we really know what makes a commercial work and that it can be quantifiably analyzed. It can't. Not in my opinion. It's impossible to measure a live snake.

Bill Bernbach said, "We are so busy measuring public opinion, we forget we can mold it. We are so busy listening to statistics that we forget we can create them." This simple truth about advertising is lost the minute a focus group sits down to do its business. In those small rooms, the power of advertising to affect behavior is not only subverted, it's reversed. The dynamic of a commercial coming out of the television to consumers is replaced with consumers telling the commercial what to say.

People generally deny advertising has any effect on them. They'll insist they're immune to it. And perhaps, taken on a person-by-person basis, the effect of your ad is indeed modest. But over time, the results are undeniable. It's been said that advertising is like wind on desert sands. The changes occurring at any given hour on any particular dune are small. But over time, the whole landscape changes.

Every year, as long as I’ve been in advertising, Gallup publishes their poll of most- and least-trusted professions. And every year, advertising practitioners trade last or second-to-last place with used-car salesman and members of Congress.

People not only dislike advertising, they're becoming immune to most of it—like insects building up resistance to DDT. The way Eric Silver put it was this: "Advertising is what happens on TV when people go to the bathroom."

When people aren't indifferent to advertising, they're angry at it. If you don't believe me, go to the opening night of a big Hollywood movie. When the third commercial comes up on the screen and it's not the movie, those moans you hear won't be audience ecstasy. People don't want to see your stinkin' ad. Your ad is the comedian who comes on stage before a Rolling Stones concert.

So you try to come up with some advertising concepts that can defeat these barriers of indifference and anger.

The way I picture it is this: it's as if you're riding down an elevator with your customer. You're going down only 15 floors. So you have only a few seconds to tell him one thing about your product. One thing. And you have to tell it to him in such an interesting way that he thinks about the promise you've made as he leaves the building, waits for the light, and crosses the street. You have to come up with some little thing that sticks in the customer's mind.
And then you have what the customer brings to the situation— pride, greed, vanity, envy, insecurity, and a hundred other human emotions, wants, and needs, one of which your product satisfies.

"YOU'VE GOT TO PLAY THIS GAME WITH FEAR AND ARROGANCE."That's one of Kevin Costner's better lines from the baseball movie Bull Durham. I've always thought it had an analog in the advertising business.

There has never been a time in my career I have faced the empty page and not been scared. I was scared as a junior-coassistant-copy-cub-intern. And I'm scared today. Who am I to think I can write something that will interest 8 million people?

Then, a day after winning a medal in the One Show (just about the toughest national advertising awards show there is), I feel bulletproof. For one measly afternoon, I'm an Ad God. The next day I'm back with my feet up on the table, sweating bullets again.

Somewhere between these two places, however, is where you want to be―a balance between a healthy skepticism of your reason for living and a solar confidence in your ability to come up with a fantastic idea every time you sit down to work. Living at either end of the spectrum will debilitate you. In fact, it’s probably best to err on the side of fear.

A small, steady pilot light of fear burning in your stomach is part and parcel of the creative process. If you’re doing something that’s truly new, you’re in an area where there are no signposts yet―no up and down, no good or bad. It seems to me, then, that fear is the constant traveling companion of an advertising person who fancies himself on the cutting edge. You have to believe that you’ll finally get a great idea. You will.

Let your subconscious mind do it.Where do ideas come from? I have no earthly idea. Around 1900, a writer named Charles Haanel said true creativity comes from "a benevolent stranger, working on our behalf." Novelist Isaac Singer said, "There are powers who take care of you, who send you patience and stories." And film director Joe Pytka said, "Good ideas come from God.” I think they're probably all correct. It's not so much our coming up with great ideas as it is creating a canvas where a painting can appear.

So do what Marshall Cook suggests in his book Freeing Your Creativity: "Creativity means getting out of the way.... If you can quiet the yammering of the conscious, controlling ego, you can begin to hear your deeper, truer voice in your writing . . . [not the] noisy little you that sits out front at the receptionist's desk and tries to take credit for everything that happens in the building."

Stop the chatter in your head. Go into Heller's "controlled daydream," Breathe from your stomach. If you're lucky, sometimes the ideas just begin to appear. What does the ad want to say? Not you, the ad. Shut up. Listen.

ABOUT 20 PERCENT OF YOUR TIME in the advertising business will be spent thinking up ads; 80 percent will be spent protecting them; and 30 percent doing them over.

A screenwriter was looking out on the parking lot at Universal Studios one day. It occurred to him, said this article, that every one of those cars was parked there by somebody who came to stop him from doing his movie.

The similarity to advertising is chilling. The elevator cables in your client's building will fairly groan hauling up all the people intent on killing your best stuff.

"They might be right."
According to ad myth, Bill Bernbach always carried a little note in his jacket pocket. A note he referred to whenever he was having a disagreement with a client. In small words, one sentence read, "They might be right."

Here's my advice, and it starts a few rungs further down the humility ladder: Always enter into any discussion (with clients, account executives, anybody) with the belief that there is a 50 percent chance you are wrong. I mean, really believe in your heart that you could be wrong.

I often think of the analogy of the two kinds of ministers I have seen. A quiet and anonymous minister at a small church who invites me to explore his faith. And the noisy kind I see on TV, sweaty and red-faced, telling me the skin's going to bubble off my soul in Hell if I don't repent now.
Which one is more persuasive to you?
Someone named John Maynard Keynes once wrote that people are often at their most dogmatic when they are most unsure. Kinda makes sense to me.One more thing to consider, again from my old boss, Jerry Della Femina.
Some ad agency people think clients are dumb because they may not know about type, art, illustration, media, the rest of it. Look, how dumb can some guy be when he's managed to build a business that's worth millions? [Many] agencies aren't big businesses. So they ought to have a lot of respect for people smart enough to build big businesses. Remember, success for an agency is a sale in someone's conference room. But clients have to succeed in the open marketplace.

Some Interesting Ads featured in the book :

1. On May 7, 1915, a German U-boat sank a passenger ship, the Lusitania, killing some 1,190 civilians, many of them women and children. America was finally too angry to stay out of the Great War, and enlistment posters began to appear in shop windows, one of which is shown below. Most other World War I posters were not as visual and instead used headlines like “Irishmen, Avenge the Lusitania!” and “Take Up the Sword of Justice.” Seems to me, all these decades later, they’re not nearly as powerful as this one simple image, this one word.”

2. An ad for PETA.

       

3. An ad promoting Tourism.

---excerpted from the book Hey, Whipple, Squeeze This: A Guide to Creating Great Ads by Luke Sullivan.

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