Posts Tagged: "advertising"

The Commission issued a Final Order that bars the POM marketers from making any claim that a food, drug, or dietary supplement is “effective in the diagnosis, cure, mitigation, treatment, or prevention of any disease,” including heart disease, prostate cancer, and erectile dysfunction, unless the claim is supported by two randomized, well-controlled, human clinical trials. The Order also prohibits misrepresentations regarding any test, study, or research, and requires competent and reliable scientific evidence to support claims about the “health benefits, performance, or efficacy” of any food, drug, or dietary supplement.

Both patents cover methods and associated systems that enable peer-to-peer advertising. In the innovation described in the patent a subsidy program is set up based on a profile of an advertiser. A qualified subscriber is identified for the advertiser based on a profile of a subscriber. One or more advertisers and subsidy programs for the qualified subscriber are then selected. When a communication transmission is received one or more advertisements associated is transmitted from a central communication device to the subscribers communication device.

Over recent years, online advertising has been a driving force in the growth of the Internet. As business owners, you never stop hearing about the benefits of having your own website and advertising your services on-line. I am guilty of preaching this sermon myself! However, because of the ever-increasing existence of badware, it has become increasingly difficult to know what ads or websites we can trust. Thankfully, tech giants such as Google, Twitter, Facebook, PayPal and others have joined forces with StopBadware.org and formed the Ads Integrity Alliance (AIA) in order to combat Badware, protect users from bad ads and maintain the integrity of the “online advertising ecosystem.”

Forever a PC family, IPWatchdog has slowly converted over to all Apple/Mac products. It started with iPhones, then an iPad, followed by 27″ iMacs, and now MacBook Airs. This conversion ultimately got me thinking, “What happened to the old Mac vs. PC Commercials?” Nearly two years ago I wrote an article Mac vs. PC: A Simplistic Yet Effective Marketing Strategy. You remember Mac vs. PC don’t you? The usually frazzled, often disheveled “PC” was played by John Hodgeman and the always hip, cool and technologically advanced Mac was played by Justin Long. The Get a Mac ads which started in May of 2006 and ended in October of 2009 seem to have virtually disappeared. In fact, the commercials are not even featured on the Apple Website. If you click on the “Commercials” link you are now taken to a “Why You’ll Love a Mac” page. Boring. Could it be that Apple thinks PC’s no longer have the issues that have always plagued them in the past? I doubt it. Why do you think we are moving over to “the Dark Side???” Maybe Hodgeman and Long got too big for their roles? Well no matter what the reason, I have one question, “Hey Apple, what happened to Mac vs. PC?”

Brand building seems like a rather easy task for companies that offer tangible products, but as attorneys, all you have to sell is your time, so things can be a little bit different. You need to also factor in that in many, if not most, instances clients feel they are represented by an individual. Sure, the firm identity is important, but the relationship is with the individual. Thus, for attorneys it is especially important to always keep in mind that You Are Your Brand! As with any industry, you cannot simply create some ads, a website and some social media profile pages and expect people to come to you. Rather, clear goals need to be outlined and a strategy for reaching those goals should be mapped out.

Brand building can be defined as ‘Building the perceptions of your target audience.’ Those who work in marketing usually say that in order to really build your brand you need to be consistent in your marketing campaigns. Consistency and repetition are a sure way to ingrain your message into the minds of those you are trying to reach by creating a focused brand image. However, Geico, has shown that, when done right, you can break the widely accepted and customary brand building “rules” often having numerous different iconic ad campaigns running at once. So today I’d like to discuss 5 of the more memorable GEICO ad campaigns beginning with the GEICO Gecko® through the most recently added Mike McGlone Commercials and analyze what your business can learn from these ad campaigns.

As we have seen a drastic increase in our readership over the last few years, IPWatchdog.com has become a full-time endeavor, and as such we are actively seeking advertiser and sponsor partners who can use the visibility we can provide. This will also provide us the ability to do more of what we are already doing, which we seem to have a knack for. So in the spirit of the holidays we thought we’d offer discounted rates good for advertising or sponsorship campaigns initiated or continued during December 2010.

Throughout the last three decades (or more) there has been an increasing influx of catchy ad campaigns as television viewership has increased and more companies have looked to utilize this means of marketing. A really powerful ad campaign is one that is interesting, funny and memorable, and clearly defines what the product or service is, the type of commercial that is often the topic of discussion, or is frequently quoted. However, this type of ad campaign can also be ineffective and even damaging to a company’s brand if the your target audience does not know what product the commercial is trying to endorse. I am sure you can recall hearing catchy ad slogans and jingles or seeing commercials that have left you wondering, “What company was that for?”

Last week a US Patent Application No. 20100010893 published detailing an invention relating to digital advertising, and more particularly to creating video overlay advertisements suitable for use with digital videos. The owner is Google and the patent application was originally filed on July 9, 2008. It seems that the Internet giant and purveyor of the extraordinarily popular YouTube video sharing website,…

Apple is capitalizing on what would appear to some as Microsoft “crying wolf” syndrome and putting into question whether the new operating system can be trusted because its issues have not been effectively resolved by any of the previously released PC Operating Systems thus far. These ads are brilliant!

Earlier today a pending non-provisional utility patent application assigned to Apple Computer published. This application, US Patent Application 20090265214, is titled Advertisement in Operating System, and covers exactly what the title implies; namely an operating system that is capable of displaying a variety of advertisements to users. You are likely to have heard of the first listed inventor, Steven Jobs, the CEO and co-founder of Apple Computer, Inc.

Recently I saw one of Intel’s new TV commercials, oddly enough as I was standing in line at Dunkin Donuts waiting for a coffee. It was playing on the TV positioned perfectly for everyone in line to see, no doubt taking your mind off the wait. I thought this commercial was so awesome I grabbed my cell phone and called…

Personally, I think the PC VS Mac commercials are right on. The thought that Microsoft would put out a product that requires their users to potentially need to purchase all new software and hardware components for their PCs is rather baffling. The fact that they are willing to budget hundreds of millions of dollars to advertise a product that does not work nearly as well as it should and is not compatible with most software and hardware currently on the market, is almost surreal.

You can file this under the “just what we needed” category.  Yes, more advertising will be thrust upon us as it seems thanks to Diebold, Incorporated, who announced on September 25, 2008, that they had received seven patents on software that will transform automated teller machines (ATMs) into revenue-generating business tools.  Said another way, Diebold is going to bring us…

Advertising System US Patent No. 6,742,293 [ PDF ] [ HTML ] Issued July 1, 2004       This particular invention is classified by the United States Patent Office as fitting in US Classification 40, which relates to card, pictures or signs.  Specifically, this invention is classified as a person carried sign.  How bizarre!  I suppose you could characterize this invention…