The Ad Campaign

I envision a well-coordinated advertising campaign as being the first step in the successful launch of defero. The goal of this campaign will be to "brand" the company and establish an appropriate market presence while also driving people to the corporate website. As an unknown entity, defero must first become "visible" to the right audiences and enter into the conversation that is currently taking place about the role of social media in various business practices. Once this visibility and presence has been achieved, defero will then be able to utilize its tangible assets, such as experience, expertise and quality customer service, to grow and maintain its client base.

At the center of the ad campaign will be a simple but powerful slogan -- "unleash your message." This slogan will become the defero catchphrase and identifying expression. It is a powerful way of describing the essence of defero's potential services; it conveys the sense that the message already exists but is being held back for some reason. By offering to unlock the power of new communication tools and social media platforms to deliver the "message," defero is selling itself as a crucial link in the communication chain. Additionally, the simplicity and memorableness of these three words is ideally suited for marketing and branding initiatives.

Combined with this slogan will be the defero logo:

This logo was designed to be clean and current, technical but simplistic. The color scheme of blue with black shadow is very visually engaging. The detail of the open clasp at the end of the slogan illustrates the concept of "unleashing." The white specks on the fill of the black shadow convey a gestural feeling, almost as if it was hand drawn. The font used for "unleash your message" continues with this handwriting theme, which creates a visual tactility that balances nicely with defero's technological expertise.

Using this logo and slogan, various types of advertisements can be developed, targeting both old media and new. Popular trade magazines and other key business-related publications will be identified, as well as relevant newspapers. Below is a sample full page color ad for magazines, as well as a black and white version for newspapers. These could also function well as a one-page marketing "slick" or part of a brochure that could be given out at tradeshows or conferences:

In addition to these, I have developed a potential two-part ad that would be most effective in a magazine forum. The first is a full-page color ad presented as if it's a handwritten note, which is one of the simplest forms of communication. This functions to symbolize defero's straightforward method of communicating:

Continuing with the simplistic theme, this would be followed up on the next page or later on in the publication with this half-page ad:

The concept of the paper plane with the expression "your message here" is a very creative and metaphorical way of illustrating how defero can help companies deliver their message. Limiting the information provided in this ad creates a sense of mystery and mystique, which is intended to lure potential clients to the website.

The new marketplace of online advertising must also be explored along with print media. While the online market is seemingly occupied by very broad and disparate audience groups, the key will be to target the right demographics. Since defero is a business to business enterprise, there is no need to market to the extremely large, general Internet audience but rather a select group of business leaders and decision makers. Strategically placed banner ads in well-established, industry-specific web sites will be most effective, such as this one:

Another potential avenue for online marketing includes text-based links on social networking sites such as LinkedIn or Facebook. These campaigns can be coordinated to directly reach target demographics. LinkedIn would be particularly appropriate, given that it is a community of business professionals and could potentially include CEO's and other executives that would have the most interest in defero's services. More information about these advertising possibilities can be found here and here. Again, the goal of all this is to create traffic to the website and continue the process chain that will eventually allow defero to establish its customer base.