Is Investing in Traditional Advertising Insane?

By Matt Valentine 

One of the greatest minds the world has ever known, Albert Einstein once described insanity as, “Doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results”. When it comes to marketing and advertising many businesses have gone insane!

Too many businesses are still employing the old traditional tactics. Taking out ads in the Yellow Pages, paying for television ads, newspaper ads, or radio spots, and many have found that no matter how much money they invest into these “traditional” forms of advertising they continually see the same poor results, but continue to invest in them anyway!

Traditional advertising simply is not as effective as it once was. Many factors have converged to make this happen including: audience fragmentation, decreased attention spans, and overexposure to advertising, among others.

In fact, “Many advertisers have pointed out that traditional forms of advertising have become less effective in reaching their consumers, especially the lucrative 25-35 year old demographic. They are out and about and when they are at home, they're either in front of the computer or usually watching cable (digital) television. It has really segregated the market and forced advertisers to look at creative solutions."
- Caroline E. Mayer, The Washington Post.

One of the most creative solutions available in advertising today is a form of non-traditional advertising known as Vehicle Wraps. Vehicle wrapping is “the marketing practice of completely or partially covering (wrapping) a vehicle in an advertisement or livery, thus turning it into a mobile billboard.”

Nothing delivers your businesses message as powerfully and boldly as vehicle wrap advertising. More importantly, your message is being delivered 24 hours a day, 7 days a week and is reaching your customers where they are. Vehicle wraps cannot be ignored, cannot be turned off and actually produce the results you’ve been looking for from traditional advertising.

Vehicle wraps are also the most cost effective form of advertising that exists today. So, stop acting insane by relying on the same tired tactics of traditional advertising. Invest your money today in Vehicle Wraps and get the results you need at a price you can actually live with. 

A Vehicle Wrap in Under a Minute

Is Mobile Marketing Dangerous For Business?

By Matt Valentine


Many pundits are predicting that mobile marketing through SMS (text messaging to the lay person) will be essential to stay in touch with customers in the near future (if not now). With phones becoming "smarter and smarter" and at a pace thats almost to much to keep up with, it would seem that mobile advertising will become one of the most effective ways to reach a large consumer base and keep them up to date on your businesses events, sales, specials etc.

However, with businesses already reaching into so many different aspects of our lives, how far is too far? At what point does a consumer become overly inundated with our attempts to reach them? At what point does reaching out become an annoyance? How much noise are people willing to listen to until they simply decide to turn it all off?

Most businesses, large and small, already utilize social media, email marketing, and traditional advertising. And most would correctly argue that through those channels (with the exception of email in some cases) its ok to market to people because they have already given their consent by becoming a fan, follower, or subscriber.  However, what worries me, and I will admit I'm not old enough to know whether or not this exactly happened, is that I have a sneaking suspicion the same thing was said about email upon its introduction to the masses all those years ago.

My real fear is that my text message inbox will soon look eerily similar to the spam folder in my email. While this fear is a personal one, it should also be the fear of every business thinking about using mobile marketing. How effective is your message if it ends up in a "spam" folder? How effective is your message if I get a text from you and say "Well these guys are really annoying."?

Think about it. If we already have a Facebook page, twitter account, email subscribers and blog subscribers and now we start a mobile marketing campaign, we will most likely be drawing most of our mobile subscribers from that same pool (at least until shadier practices become available). What I am trying to say, in some apparently convoluted way, is that engaging in mobile marketing can be a dangerous endeavour; especially when we consider that we are already engaing them in so many different ways.

Do people really want us on their phone too? To me, and maybe I am just crazy, but my phone seems so much more personal then any other form of media that advertising can reach me. And I don't want to see the day when I am getting text messages from some business I don't remember giving my number to.Maybe I am  alone, but if I am not, then maybe mobile advertising is just one step too far.

To me it seems that we, in the business world, are already walking a very fine line. We're going to need to know how to tread just lightly enough that we don't start stepping on our customers toes, or phones, or whatever.

The question is where do draw the proverbial line? How do we know how much to push before we've pushed them away from us? The real problem is, will we even know before it's already too late?

The Best of Vinyl Wrap Advertising

So, I am attempting to compile a list of some of the coolest vinyl wrap advertising that is out there. I will be scouring the internet for the best examples of vinyl wrap advertising that I can find, but it would be great if you could help me out and post some of the best examples you've seen. The examples can be anything from vehicle wraps, bus wraps, building wraps, elevators wraps, boat wraps, anything that has been wrapped in vinyl and looks awesome, funny or unique we want to see it!

I look forward to seeing some of your submissions, in the meantime lets get on with it. In no particular order...

From our friends at Premier Wraps  in Fontanta, California
That is one Bad A-- Trailer.

 http://www.premierautowraps.com/

National Geographic Bus Wrap 

National Fallen Firefighters Foundation Bus Wrap 

Created by Amy de Boinville, Patti Odbert, and installed by Applied Advertising, Inc.

A Plumber With a Sense of Humor 
Not sure who to give credit to on this one, but it's pretty funny. 

Copenhagen Zoo
One of my personal favorites 

Canby Graphics Porsche Vehicle Wrap 
Not sure if I would wrap my Porsche, but its still pretty cool. 

 Hudsons Bay Company in Downtown Vancouver Building Wrap 
This wrap is honor of the 2010 Olympics in Vancouver (wish I had a better picture) 

SuperWraps.com  It's going to get weird...Two Dragons

ShapeShifter Media Nike Staircase Ad

Application Nation Elevator Floor Graphic 
Im already scared of elevators...I don't  think this will help, but it is different. 

Cranky Creative WWE Elevator Wrap 

Magic Display 3D Building Graphics
Apparently since Avatar came out 3D is all the rage...pretty cool though.

One of KDF's Own (Gotta give us a plug too!) 
O'Connor Racing Trailer 

Gecko Signs and Graphics Native Air Helicopter Wrap 

SCS Vinylworks Mandown Boat Wrap 

That's what i have gotten so far I am sure there is a ton more out there, but I'm going to need your help to find them. Keep in mind KDF can meet all your vinyl wrap needs so feel free to check out or website. 






Matt Valentine is the Marketing Manager at KDF Reprographics, Inc. providers of Large Format Printing, Vehicle Wraps, Fleet Graphics, Color Scanning, Posters, Banners and Trade Show Displays. To contact Matt or setup an interview please call 888-533-2667 or visit our website @ http://www.kdf-comp.com/ or you can become a fan on Facebook @ http://www.facebook.com/pages/Rockleigh-NJ/KDF-Reprographics-Inc/209102776252?ref=ts or follow us on Twitter @http://twitter.com/KDFReprographic

5 Emerging Trends for 2010

By Matt Valentine 

I am clever. You can tell because the title of this article rhymes. I am also trendy which means I have been the victim of some pretty terrible movements in fashion, hair, you name it. I had a bowl cut back in ’95, I owned cargo pants from Old Navy in ’98 (which I am going to resurrect in 2010), I was Emo for a week back in 2000, of course I became metro sexual for about a month in 2005, until my girlfriend broke up with me for taking too long to get ready. 

The point is I like to stay on top of trends. And now that I am a young businessman I try to focus my energy on emerging trends in the business world, instead of trends that make me look like a fool (although some of these may make me look foolish if they don’t pan out, but by then whose going to remember I wrote this?). So, with all kidding aside here is what I think the emerging business trends of 2010 will be.

Going Mobile-

Smartphone’s are pretty trendy right now (yep, I said it) one of the few trends that I actually don’t regret getting involved with. And that’s just it. With more and more people using iPhones, Androids, Blackberry’s etc. marketers are going to be targeting us where they know they can reach us and that’s on our phones. Expect to see businesses both large and small rolling out a slew of mobile targeted marketing campaigns.

Soon your text inbox may be inundated with coupons, updates, announcements etc. Will it get annoying? Probably, just take a look at some of the things you have in the spam folder of your e-mail, but it will happen for better or worse.

Social media will continue to expand into the mobile market in 2010 as well. Expect to see some updated mobile versions of your favorite social media apps in 2010 so you can follow all of Ashton Kutcher's important tweets like: 'Watching my wife steam my suit while wearing a bikini. I love God!' Seriously, why is this guy the most followed person on Twitter? In fact, have you ever looked at the top ten most followed people on Twitter (and you can here http://twitterholic.com/) ? It reads like a who's who of people with nothing important to say. Barack Obama at #4...who is that guy?

Hyper Local-

Everything from news to business advertising will be going hyper local in 2010. As regional newspapers and news outlets begin to feel the fallout from layoffs and cutbacks a void is going to be left behind and that void will be filled by hyper local news portals. As that trend begins to emerge along with it will come hyper local advertising.

A good example is something called PlaceLocal developed by PaperG. According to PaperG’s website, PlaceLocal is, “a local ad platform that can automatically build a stunning, customized online ad for any local business.”

Basically, PlaceLocal will build the ad for you and run your ad on well known websites in your area. You have the option to upload your own ad, or edit the ad PlaceLocal created. Expect to see many small businesses utilizing local ad providers like PlaceLocal in 2010 to promote their business.

Staying at Home-

Thankfully, I am gainfully employed, (you don’t think I just write these magnificent articles for fun do you?) but many Americans (about 10%) are not and even more have had to take reduced wages and reduced hours as businesses are still reeling from the economic recession.

Many have taken this unwelcome free time to turn themselves into entrepreneurs, or more accurately homepreneur, a word someone just made up. According to the SBA (Small Business Association) half of all small business are home-based and according to me, due to the ease of technology and relatively low costs, that figure will continue to rise in 2010. 

Waving Goodbye to E-mail-

I’ve said it before here @ http://kdf-comp.blogspot.com/2009/12/death-of-e-mail-and-wave-of-future.html, but 2010 could truly see the death of e-mail as Google introduces Google Wave (I told you I was clever; see heading). Google Wave is currently in a preview stage and is accepting new users by invitation only. Invitations are limited to 8 per person so if you know anyone on it and really want to see what Google Wave is all about ask them for an invitation. Better yet, if you help spread this article around and make me look good I’ll send you one of my coveted invitations. I won’t go into all the details of Wave in this article as I have already done that previously so feel free to check out the other link.

Going Green-

Going green has been trendy for a while now. How could it not be with a dynamic spokesman like Al Gore? Despite recent controversy surrounding the global warming issue businesses and consumers alike are still embracing the green movement. This will lead to new opportunities for small business entrepreneurs as businesses shift to sustainable business practices, products and services in 2010 and beyond.

Matt Valentine is the Marketing Manager at KDF Reprographics, Inc. providers of Large Format Printing, Vehicle Wraps, Fleet Graphics, Color Scanning, Posters, Banners and Trade Show Displays. To contact Matt or setup an interview please call 888-533-2667 or visit our website @ http://www.kdf-comp.com/ or you can become a fan on Facebook @ http://www.facebook.com/pages/Rockleigh-NJ/KDF-Reprographics-Inc/209102776252?ref=ts or follow us on Twitter @ http://twitter.com/KDFReprographic