Archive for October, 2009

This is a small sampling of different TV commercials produced by Vamonos Marketing—including its years operating as Miller Marketing.

Category One is this fantastic store in Rockbrook Village full of very nice cooking ware, cool gadgets, unique dishes and glasses as well as very tasty sauces, jellies and coffees. So our presentation had to reflect the distinctiveness of this locally-owned delight. We were very fortunate to get Nikky Boulay as our spokesperson who is a popular local Radio announcer, dynamite on camera and happens to be a good customer of the store. The twist in doing this ad is that Nikki was very much expecting a baby at the time of production. She did not want to show her full figure so the on-camera scenes had be from the shoulder up. It all worked out fine and the holiday commercials produced great results.

Turn on almost any TV program this month and you’re bound to see at least one message supporting or opposing national health care reform—likely two of each!

The year began with a barrage of ad money going towards messages about energy and environmental issues. But that seems to have been just the warm up to the hundreds of millions of dollars now being spent on influencing public opinion in the health care debate. And it’s spilling over from nationwide network TV to local network TV affiliate spending.

Katherine Ramirez, local sales manager of ABC affiliate KETV-DT, says that issue money spent to date in 2009 on Omaha local TV is running double of last year. “Last year was an election year when besides all the candidate ads you get a large amount of other ad money about issues in the election,” Katherine explains. “We’re running twice the issue money now in an off-election year.”

The smokin’ red hot button in 2009 is national health care reform. Organizations representing either side of the issue are using a good share of their ever growing cash reserve to include issue advertising in individual markets. A favorite spot to place that money is local TV news. The local audiences are big and the credible newscast environment for such a message is ideal.

As annoying as the torrent of messages has become, viewers will not be seeing the issue ads go away anytime soon. “They’ll probably keep hammering on the health care debate up till when the President signs the bill,” says Don Felton general sales manager for the Omaha NBC affiliate WOWT-DT, “and then comes another election year with more political and issue spending in 2010.”

The best advice to local advertisers who run in newscasts and other popular local TV programming is to plan and place ahead, don’t demand the cheapest rate which will easily get your ad bumped out in a pinch, and be flexible on days and times. Both sales managers have said that local stations are committed to help you get equal or better value if by chance your first choice of program is pre-empted.

Here are some a sampling of Print ads by Vamonos Marketing in various publications.

It’s been three weeks since we made the big switch from Miller Marketing to Vamonos Marketing. Actually, I’m learning it’s more of a process than just flipping a switch.
Client response overall has been very positive and encouraging. I discovered though that most clients don’t know how to pronounce the name! Those would be my real gringos. That’s OK. Sort of anticipated that, and it’s funny to hear their enunciation attempts. My real concern is that they can spell Vamonos correctly on a check. Maybe I should make a rubber stamp for them.
I did get a couple of reactions to the effect of “You’ve been watching too much Dora the Explorer”. Never seen the show honestly, so was glad when a customer explained the connection.
Well, clients may be challenged on saying “vamonos” as they crack a joke about it, but they’re down with the name change and where we’re going in the pursuit of more mobile marketing solutions. They don’t quite get yet what all this involves. But they do agree that traditional media is loosing its grip–especially on reaching the more elusive consumers who don’t spend much time with TV, Radio or the daily newspaper.
That just makes me all the more eager to return to these clients with some specific new deas on taking their marketing message to different medias and venues. The goal of getting results is the same; it’s the method of achieve it that’s evolving!

As good fortune would have it for good businesses, Aqua Palace Spas & Pools of Council Bluffs became the official provider of hot tubs for the Olympic Swim Trials held at the Qwest Center in Omaha June 2008. Aqua Palace brought two of their larger Marquis spas for the swimmers to relax in after practicing or performing. The tubs were set up next to the giant practice swimming pool. Part of the opportunity also provided Aqua Palace some very precious display space in a large spectator expo during the event called the “Aqua Zone”. Obviously this was a big deal–an exclusive deal–to promote!
One of the challenges we faced was the IOC commandment not to use “Olympics”, “Team USA” or “Swim Trials” in any form of advertising. That right was reserved for their major corporate sponsors. There was a special organization formed locally called H2Omaha that planned and staged the whole Olympic event coming to Omaha. And they received a lot of media attention for months. Because the hot tub arrangement was made with H2Omaha, Aqua Palace had permission to use their logo. We believed using H2Omaha would make that association of Aqua Palace to the Olympic Swim Trials.
This ad ran in the Omaha World-Herald just before and during the event. Our main goal was to promote this exclusive sponsorship. Who wouldn’t. It could be a once in an 4 year event!