How do you drive home to the prospect that all the answers to their security problems lies in a CD inside the publication they’re reading? First, a double-truck spread where the CD is stapled helps, but that’s not all it takes. It needs eye candy with punchy headlines and enough come-hither to make a CIO stop on a dime.
The “Five Big Mistakes” ad turned out to be TrueSecure’s biggest hit of the season, with thousands of prospects and a few hundred converted by the end of the campaign. Click here to download a more readable PDF of this ad.
The Big 5 you don’t want to know
How do you drive home to the prospect that all the answers to their security problems lies in a CD inside the publication they’re reading? First, a double-truck spread where the CD is stapled helps, but that’s not all it takes. It needs eye candy with punchy headlines and enough come-hither to make a CIO stop on a dime.
The “Five Big Mistakes” ad turned out to be TrueSecure’s biggest hit of the season, with thousands of prospects and a few hundred converted by the end of the campaign. Click here to download a more readable PDF of this ad.
What Color Is the Sky?
There is nothing better, we always tell our clients, than a challenge. We really like it when someone asks us to create an ad that screams the color blue, but we can’t use the word or the color blue.
After years of repeating this challenge to the universe we did nearly this very thing for a client—the leading provider of environmental, health and safety (EHS), crisis management and sustainability software for governance, risk and compliance (GRC). The campaign promoted “Total Emissions Control”—monitor global emissions and reduce an organization’s local environmental footprint.
Geeky, but not that kind of geeky
Compliance. Dry, boring regulations, right? Not when you get your message right! Tim and his team took what could be one of the most unexciting of corporate requirements and made it… fun.
Compliance Geeks is one of the Midwest’s most well-known compliance consultancies, covering several states and providing on-site consultation, audits, job-hazard analysis, engineering assistance, gap analysis and expert testimony as well as a full line of safety videos and interactive training. The copy was straight-from-the-hip straight talk to complement the playful graphics. Download a PDF of the Compliance Geeks brochure.
The Continuous Sentry
Point-in-time: not good enough for the 24/7 enterprise. TruSecure had the most rigorous testing and was rapidly becoming the de facto standard for secure e-business. Tim and his team made the grade by getting customers to take a point in time to get a free white paper and hopefully get the “short version” of a sales cycle.
The ad did not win any contests, that wasn’t its purpose. It generated a successful wave of leads for TruSecure, making a difference in the client’s bottom line. We never intended to produce a “cliff” hanger… just measurable results.
Lather, rinse, repeat
Living in Silicon Valley, marketers ignore the semiconductor business at their own peril. It is a heady, complex process, but Tim has significant experience in this area.
Gasonics was a leading manufacturer of automated wet bench technology, holding many patents for innovative advances, in this case an automated wet bench that was, in fact, dry. An early effort at “green” technology, the technique reduced the amount of hazardous chemicals used in finishing silicon wafers for market.
A career milestone? maybe not…
Early in his copywriting career Tim was tasked with writing an ad for a new video game based on the movie remake of The Untouchables. But who was Eliot Ness to a new generation?
This ad gained some notoriety as its publication dove-tailed with an inquiry by the Joint Congressional Committee on Video Game Violence. An enlargement was trotted out in front of the committee as a prime example of violence in video game advertising. Yes, the headline portends violence. Yes, a parent could be shocked. But ask them about “The Untouchables” and the parents are likely to tell you Robert Stack was one of the original TV bad-asses, and they loved the series. You can share this sterling moment in Tim’s career and see how his headline caught the eye of the U.S. Congress via a Quicktime movie wherein Nintendo President Howard Lincoln apologizes to the congressional committee.
Posted in ad, portfolio, Tim, video game marketing
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Fundamentally a Great White Paper
A sound information security program starts with security policies that support core business functions, then continues on to maintain customer confidence and further protects the company’s most valuable assets. This white paper provided a primer on the importance of security information and was designed to “educate” the C-level executive on the Fundamentals of Secure Information Technology to the point where they might feel pretty secure themselves tossing around a few of the terms found within. It was a very successful effort for Symantec and helped them sell oodles of secure solutions to some very large customers. Here we would normally provide you some good-looking graphic to whet your appetite, and entice you to read or ask questions. It’s words with no graphics (however, there is a table on page 7).
Posted in b2b, high tech, portfolio, Tim, white paper
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I don’t want to set the world on fire
While the humming of the neon light outside might cast the right ambiance for a Dashiell Hammett novel, it can be a hazard for business.
Neonix had patented a solid-state neon light transformer, dramatically reducing the hazard of accidental sparking. We wrote this ad to dramatically illustrate the hazard of not buying Neonix.
What about the Enterprise?
Sure, we can write all about the Star Trek enterprise, and how it relates to yours. What will it take? A little creativity and a huge licensing fee.
Boole & Babbagge—named after two 19th century pioneers of computing fundamentals—was a powerhouse in the systems management arena, at least large enough to provide this kind of support to their ad agency.
The Executive Suite has Technology
Hoppmann Audio Visual has been dedicated to providing unique, innovative, high-quality and cost-effective audio visual and video teleconferencing solutions for clients worldwide since 1955. Fresh out of college, McGraw helped shape Hoppmann’s voice early on, one of many clients he has had in the audio and video space.
This was an early ad in the days before the Internet. Hoppmann continues to be a respected integrator of executive suites equipped with the latest presentation technologies. In this ad, Tim reminds people that Hoppmann facilities have sustained ROI while other facilities fall into disuse.
