Marketing

B2B Stories

Aiken company spreads AHH little sunshine with promotional products

What started as a hobby 30 years ago for Jim Hanna, grew into a successful business. He used to play in slow-pitch softball leagues, more than 300 games a year, which led to unique sales opportunities. “I started selling bats out of the back of my car and suddenly everyone wanted one,” he explained. Those sales were a catalyst for the promotional product business that he started. Over time, it grew from bats to banners, signs, T-shirts, vehicle wraps, and everything in between. If you can put a logo on

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B2B Stories

Masters Week: All In or All Out?

  Don MacNeil is the former Marketing Director of Windsor Jewelers and long-time on-air radio professional.   Is it just me, or… Masters Week: All In or All Out? If you’re reading this, chances are you have some degree of self-promotion planted somewhere and at some cost. This would be the moment – nearly your last – to consider whether running your ads during Masters Week would boost your business or be a waste of time. Consider: A significant number of our neighbors leave town for the week. Are they

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B2B Stories

Subaru and You

  Don MacNeil is the former Marketing Director of Windsor Jewelers and long-time on-air radio professional.   Is it just me, or… Subaru and You I have to admit to being among the millions who for decades have seen Subaru vehicles and especially their owners as (politely) a smile-inducing, eccentric sub-set of humanity. The term, “Tree-huggers” comes to mind. But in seeking to get to the bottom of how this automaker and this culture found each other, I uncovered an array of marketing insights that could be helpful to you

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B2B Stories

Your Ad Pro As Bench Coach

  Don MacNeil is the former Marketing Director of Windsor Jewelers and long-time on-air radio professional.   Is it just me, or… Your Ad Pro As Bench Coach Baseball invented the bench coach as a way of acknowledging the fallibility of single-decision-maker decision making. Medicine calls it the second opinion. Napoleon and Hitler could have used one when contemplating Russia. Things just seem to get smarter with a second viewpoint. You and your marketing are no different. To demonstrate, let’s meet Mark. Mark owns a modest electronics store and fervently

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B2B Stories

2022’s Alamo Moment

  Don MacNeil is the former Marketing Director of Windsor Jewelers and long-time on-air radio professional.   Is it just me, or… 2022’s Alamo Moment We’re blessed in this country for many reasons, and among them is the happy geographical accident of a 3,000-mile moat on either side of us, which has served us well for our 246 years. It suggests that for us it won’t one day be the Visigoths coming over the hill but a complacent rot from within that does us in, but that’s a discussion for

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B2B Stories

Local marketing firm helps Augusta Tech in its rebranding efforts

After more than 60 years of providing career and technical education programs to CSRA students, Augusta Technical College is being rebranded, thanks to help from local marketing and advertising firm Wier/Stewart. In developing the rebranding campaign, the firm has provided many services to the college, including conducting perception surveys, designing merchandise, and creating new promotional materials, according to an article from Wier/Stewart. “Throughout this rebrand, I learned so much about Augusta Tech and how they contribute to supporting the local community,” Sarah Maffetone, the firm’s Account Manager said in the

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B2B Stories

Ads That Go Bump in the Night

  Don MacNeil is the former Marketing Director of Windsor Jewelers and long-time on-air radio professional.   Is it just me, or… Ads That Go Bump in the Night When our small businesses are on the line, we think nothing of employing any device necessary to ensure survival, including but not limited to, frightening people into doing business with us. Most of the time we do it without a second thought, but my intention, should you choose to go this route, is to arm you with an understanding of what

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B2B Stories

The Little Things

Is it just me, or… The Little Things Note: The following is what happens when a lifetime of a certain kind of work causes you to notice things that fail to grab the attention of almost everyone else. Every day we’re surrounded by marketing phenomena we ignore, fail to question or don’t believe applies to us. Let’s dive into a couple of them. Telegram-speak on supermarket self-checkout pinpads Since we’ve raised at least two generations since the age of the telegram, I should quickly explain that to send one was

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B2B Stories

“Oh No, Not Again!”

Is it just me, or… “Oh No, Not Again!” “If I see that Kohl’s commercial one more time, I’m going to scream,” she said from a far-away city last November. I had no idea what she was talking about. Clearly the Kohl’s marketing algorithm had found her and her favorite platforms, while the same software knew there wasn’t much gold to be found from me and my channels. The question is, what’s the sweet spot of an effective video/commercial performance life before it loses its power to persuade? Remember when

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