Campbell, Harrington & Brear

August 1st, 2011
Posted By: Allan Pettit

The York Builders Insurance Trust needed some marketing jiu-jitsu.

The Trust has been serving the insurance needs of York Builders Association members for nearly half a century. It seemed as if their marketing plan had been around about that long, too.

“Association members had been seeing and hearing the same message over several years,” says CH&B’s Director New Business Development Angela Wenner, herself an active member of the York Builders Association. “Members were either becoming bored with it or ignoring it altogether. We thought it was time they updated their look and message and joined the electronic age.”

At the center of our recommendation was our plan to rebuild an existing website on a new content-managed, SEO-friendly platform, allowing better search engine visibility. The content was also revised to more effectively sell the Trust and provide SEO advantages.

To drive traffic to the site, we crafted a 12-month advertising schedule around three fresh print ads and three new digital ads that are rotating throughout the year in various York Builders Association vehicles.

We also provided an email marketing package that includes a custom email sending tool, as well as an email template design that carries the new brand look. Combined with a user friendly list management component, the Trust can now create and send regular targeted messages that inform existing customers and/or prospects.

“What we have done for them is create discipline and consistency within an easy-to-use platform that allows them to manage their own marketing on a very small budget,” says Angela. “And they’ve embraced it whole-heartedly.”

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July 18th, 2011
Posted By: Mel Campbell, Jr.

When New York Wire Company spun off its consumer insect screening line last year, it also sold the New York Wire brand name and its unicorn logo.

The company was now free to specialize in its true competencies: the design and production of engineered industrial open mesh and light wire material for a strong group of core customers – as well as for a yet-unknown, untapped universe of potential customers.

Continue reading “Making Marketing Mesh for a Re-Wired Company” »

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July 5th, 2011
Posted By: Mel Campbell, Jr.

Okay, so I am now assuming that you, after reading the first two blog posts, believe paying out your hard earned cash for yellow directory advertising is a total waste. If you don’t believe that, you need to reread the first two installments on this topic or go back to reading about unicorns and their rainbow poo.

Yellow directory advertising is over. Permanently.

So what’s a person to do? Simple, next time, tell your yellow directory rep you are out all together.

Now, I know you are probably thinking: “Okay it’s over for phone directories, but I will just slash the budget by 50% or 75% or 90% this year.” Kinda ease your way out of yellow advertising.

Continue reading “Part III: Saying Goodbye Is Never Easy … What Do You Mean I Can’t Cut Back?” »

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June 29th, 2011
Posted By: Allan Pettit

Word of mouth is a relative concept. For instance, who makes a more compelling argument for your hair product, me or Beyoncé?

Here’s a better example. During my 23 years as part of a committee that plans the York County Special Olympics Celebrity Golf Classic, a lot of people have said a lot of nice things about the tournament.

But never has someone like Johnny Holliday praised the event before the entire Mid-Atlantic Region during a live broadcast of a Washington Nationals baseball game. At least not until this year. Continue reading “When It Comes to PR, Sometimes You Just Get Lucky” »

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June 21st, 2011
Posted By: Mel Campbell, Jr.

There was a time in a world long, long ago when yellow telephone directories may have had reason to exist.  That day is way gone.

Back then, if you were a local retailer, all your advertising dollars were in the Yellow Pages except for some local media advertising that directed consumers to your Yellow Pages ads…and, well, that may have worked 40-plus years ago.  It won’t work in today’s world.

Let’s get one thing straight from the beginning:  The phone directories are directories and nothing more.  Period.  No matter what sweet talk the sales rep fed you, they have never been an advertising vehicle.  They are, first and foremost, a book people go to for phone numbers. People do not do their “shopping” in the phonebook as their reps would like you to believe.  It is a book that lays there until someone picks it up to look up a phone number and then calls it.  And that habit has totally changed.

The medium of choice now is on-line phone number searching on Google, Yahoo or Bing.

Continue reading “Part II: The Case for Leaving Yellow Page Advertising.” »

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June 9th, 2011
Posted By: Mel Campbell, Jr.

For 34 years we have counseled our clients on whether they should be in the two phone directories – Yellow Pages and Yellow Book – and, if so, to what extent: i.e., how big an ad, how many pages of ads, and how many books they should be in.

Sometimes, we have advised clients to increase their stake in the directories. Many more times we have advised them to reduce their exposure, or eliminate it all together from their “advertising” mix.

Some clients accepted our advice, many more agreed with our assumptions but didn’t have the intestinal fortitude to step away from the phone directory punchbowl.

Continue reading “Part I: In Yellow Pages? You Shouldn’t Be.” »

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May 19th, 2011
Posted By: Mel Campbell, Jr.

Today is a great day for York County, for Craig Trebilcock and for Campbell, Harrington & Brear advertising agency.  Tuesday, Trebilcock, the candidate CH&B represented for Judge of the Court of Common Pleas of York County, won the top spot in a seven-person race for two available seats on the bench.

Not only did Craig win, he hammered the competition.  Trebilcock came very close to receiving double the votes of his nearest competitor!  That is incredible to begin with, but to do that in a seven-person field is amazing!

Continue reading “The Craig Trebilcock Victory: Lessons from a Textbook Campaign” »

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March 28th, 2011
Posted By: Angela Wenner

Ah, technology. Just when we think we’ve got it all figured out, some smart programming team based somewhere in Silicon Valley excitedly announces the release of the latest version of their browser.

You may have just gotten comfortable with Internet Explorer 7 and all of your company’s internal computers are now loaded and running smoothly. Or, you’ve been using Firefox 3.5.7 because your I.T. guy says that it’s less prone to viruses. Well, guess what: Firefox just announced its latest and greatest version, 4.0. And it’s pretty cool. And the recently released I.E. 9 might not be all it was cracked up to be.

Maybe you don’t have a preference about browsers… but your company website does.

Continue reading “The Never Ending Saga of Website Compatibility” »

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