If You Missed Our April Newsletter, Here 'tis. Enjoy

PITY THE FOOL     Belated Foolin'   While April 1st is long gone, many of the top April Fool's advertising gags are still making the rounds. Following are a few of our favorites.   1. Google Nose   Google is notorious for its April Fool's Day pranks. If you haven't watched the search engine giant's video about its newest technology, Google Nose--a mobile aroma indexing program that delivers scents online--take a break and watch it now.   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VFbYadm_mrw   Interestingly enough, however, technology is indeed moving toward endowing computers with a sense of smell, say experts. Such applications could eventually sniff out explosives or food contaminants, for example. To tell you the truth, we're not looking forward to the age when you can't blame it on the dog anymore.     2. Scope Bacon   We thought we had seen it all when Denny's came out with its Bacon Sunday. Turns out Proctor and Gamble jumped on the Bacon bandwagon too. While the Denny's alternative dessert really is on its menu, we're comfortably certain that Scope Bacon isn't real.     http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tc_iT1bSrJM      3. Thin is In   We think this is hysterical. (Okay, maybe the writer of Can't Touch This shouldn't speak for the whole staff.) American Eagle Outfitters has one-upped the Skinny Jeans genre by introducing AEO Skinny SKINNY Jeans. Enjoy.     http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IfNF57jHbFc    4. Automobile Accoutrements   It amazes us how far companies will go to get a corporate video--let alone a spoof like this one--to go viral. The quality is fine enough for any major network, and the expense to produce on par with what a national spot would cost to shoot. Without further ado: HondaHAIR.   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0fEIHjuA4vk    5. Glass Bottom Plane   With all of the antics by Virgin Atlantic's Richard Branson, the luxury carrier's ad about its new glass bottom jet was almost believable. Almost. Okay, upon first read, we swallowed it hook, line and sinker. But it seems like it could really happen, doesn't it?     http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/virgin-launch-new-jet-see-through-1795500 6. Samsung Eco Tree   Electronics manufacturer Samsung unveiled its revolutionary new Eco Tree, "a smart companion for a richer, sustainable and healthier life." The solar-powered Eco Tree actually produces oxygen. Optional accessories include tire swings, ladders, tents and tree houses."    http://global.samsungtomorrow.com/?p=23405 7. Cattle Cam   And last but not least is the Cattle Cam by WholeFoods Market. This ingenious marketing concept involves fitting cattle with point-of-view video cameras to allow beef eaters to see what their beef eats. For us, it smacks a little too close to the kid raising a ribbon-winning steer only to see it trucked off to slaughter.    The fact that a YouTube search lead to no other links to this video other than the one on the online magazine AdWeek's AdFreak section leads us to contemplate that the concept is quite possibly a joke on us by AdFreak. Either way, and lawsuits aside, the whole thing is just pretty darn cute in our opinion.     http://www.adweek.com/adfreak/aprilfoolsday2013#april-fools-2013---whole-foods-41   AGENCY FRESHIE     Downtown In Bloom at Downtown at the Gardens   The last weekend of the month, April 27-28, our client Downtown at the Gardens will hold its annual Downtown in Bloom event, extolling the beauty of the great outdoors. Essentially a garden show--but with way more to experience than any garden show we've ever been to--this one-of-a-kind, must-attend affair will feature:   * Display gardens * A garden market * Live entertainment * A kids' zone * A KOOL 105.5 wine garden * Contests * Gifts * In-store seminars * A charity garden walk * And more (but, heck, ain't that enough?)   Not to mention admission is FREE! So come on down to Palm Beach Gardens' own "Main Street," (that's PGA Blvd. to you and me) and attend Downtown in Bloom at Downtown at the Gardens. You can bet we'll be there.    Dial up www.DowntownAtTheGardens.com for details.

ONE TO WATCH   Quality Living the Davie Way    In addition to working on Kennedy Homes' new Italian-inspired townhome community in Palm Beach Gardens called Trevi at the Gardens, we're also concentrating on the 50-year-old builder's new Broward County development, Taralyne.   When complete, this enclave of 26 family-sized lots nestled in the laidback town of Davie, Florida, will be home to three luxury floor plans: the three-bedroom 3,050-square foot Solana; the four-bedroom 3,438-square-foot Summerlyne; and the five-bedroom 3,712-square-foot Country Manor.   "Kennedy is a lot more than a bricks-and-sticks builder," says RWA Pres Valerie Staggs. "They're in the business of creating distinctive communities, each with its own unique lifestyle. It's our job to help them convey that concept of belonging to a unique community through the newspaper, direct mail and online advertising that the company is undertaking as well as events in the planning."   For more about Taralyne, see www.Taralyne.com. For details about Trevi at the Gardens, dial up www.TreviAtTheGardens.com.      SERIOUS STUFF   Increase Traffic to Your Website: a 101 Refresher       Every day the importance of your online presense increases. Yet every day the difficulty of distinguishing your online presense from your competitors' increases too. Add to that the bazillions of megabites of unrelated online data standing between you and your customers and you might find yourself on the last page of a Google search every time. So what's a business to do?     Well, firstly, if all this cyber stuff is still newish territory for you, read on for a better, albeit basic, understanding. If you're already well versed in selecting keyword phrases, analyzing metatags and other SEO processes, however, then the following might bore you to tears. (Although the clever writing alone promises to make it well worth your five minutes.) Here goes:   You absolutely have to have a decent website. You could run the most creative Superbowl TV spot in history directing viewers to your website. But if your site is crummy, every one of the 100 million viewers who dial it up during halftime will click to something else faster than a kid with ADHD on a half-pound of M&Ms.   And by "decent website," we mean everything from the look and navigation to how fast it downloads, the quality of information, and those aforementioned keywords, metatags and other SEO stuffs. There are so many avenues to acquiring a snappy and functional website out there, from free do-it-yourself online tools to the sky's-the-limit paid design and programming, that there is no excuse anymore for a business website to be anything less than stellar. Plus, nowadays an attractive, well-functioning site doesn't have to cost a million bucks.   Provide backlinks to your website everywhere you can and as often as you can. A backlink is simply an online post containing your website address somewhere other than your website itself. This is where blogging comes in; press releases; social networks like Facebook, Twitter and Google+; bookmarking sites; question-answer forums; and lots more.   Most are free and pretty simple to master once you get the hang of it. And big brother Google is out there 24-7 crawling the Internet for new information that winds up on its pages of search results--information that can be about you and that leads folks back to your website. Do you have to contribute to all the available social media types and online forums? No, but the more you do and the more times you do it, generally, the better your results.   We recommend starting with a company Facebook page because chances are you already have a working knowledge of how Facebook works, compliments of your personal page. From there, you can move on to LinkedIn, Twitter, Google+ and on and on. But don't stop there. Posting to pages hosted by others can be a very effective online marketing technique too. Intelligently conversing with followers of other companies and organizations can entice those browsers over to your website.   One caveat to the concept of "more is better," however: Constantly hammering home messages about the quality of your widget or that it's on sale this week for 99 cents gets boring fast. Worse, it can also turn people off to your product or service. For the most part, people want to be educated with solid non-salesy information, or entertained. The more creative communicators educate, entertain, or both, while subtly selling as well. But that's for another edition of Can't Touch This.   Do your search engine optimization (SEO) and search engine marketing (SEM) due diligence. Much of optimizing your website in an effort to get it to appear on the first page of results in a Google search (SEO) happens automatically by following 1 and 2 above.    Can more be done? Most certainly. There's optimizing the text on your website so that it contains the words folks typically search for (keyword phrases), which Google demands; adding lots of photos, which Google loves; and even naming those photos with your keyword phrases, instead of how we typically name them like "Photo 1" or by the date it was taken, etc., which Google isn't at all interested in.    The list of what the Google spiders that crawl your site love to see on it just goes on and on the deeper you drill. And what Google likes, will get you closer and closer to the front page of her search results.   Up until this point, if you do it all yourself, the cost to do so is only your time. The final ingredient, SEM, will cost you, though. SEM involves paying a company to procure space at the top or down the side of a Google results page where your website listing will reside no matter what the organic results of a search dredge up. That's not to say that if the phrase "ice cream cones" is searched for, your meat packing plant will appear at the top of the page, but you get the picture. Then, every time somebody clicks on your listing, you're charged a fee (aka "pay per click").    You also get all kinds of analysis about who's clicking on you, how many pages they're viewing, whether they came to your site organically or via your paid presence, as well as all sorts of innovative tracking and marketing programs. If you're a whiz at SEO, you might not need to undertake an SEM campaign. However, the two combined can only help.   Shameless Plug. At some point, unless you've got the mind of a Stephen Hawking, the patience of Job, and the time on your hands of a prison inmate, you'll likely want to hand off some or all of this to an expert. If and when that day comes, please give us a ring. At Ryan William's Agency, we've got your back.

Google Nose is Amazing!!

Google unleashed Google Nose today, which enables searches via olfactory sense. It's amazing!! Insiders say the search engine giant is also working on a taste version. More on that when we learn more. Meanwhile, check out Google Nose. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VFbYadm_mrw

Our ADDY Award-Winning Entries

Local ADDY Results In and Ryan  William's Judged "Not Too Shabby"    Thursday, March 7th, the results of the American Advertising Federation's local competition of the annual ADDY Awards were announced at the event banquet in Stuart, Florida. Ryan William's Agency is proud to share with you that we scored a total of 13 gold and silver awards.  "Not too shabby," exclaimed Ryan William Staggs, agency Pres Valerie Staggs' 11-year-old son, after whom the agency is named. "So what's an ADDY?"  Funny he should ask. The ADDYs honor excellence in advertising and cultivate the highest creative standards in the industry. With 60,000 entries combined in the three-tiered event, the ADDY Awards are the nation's largest advertising competition. The contest begins at the local level with 200+ AAF member clubs around the country. Local winners (that's us) then proceed to district competitions, and those winners (that's hopefully us) proceed to the national finals.  While Ryan William's doesn't create advertising in order to win awards, and instead focuses ultimately on selling more widgets for our clients, receiving an award is flattering and gives the crew its 15 minutes in the limelight. So without further ado, following is what all the hubbub is about.         We seem to have a knack for creative logos that work. All three of the following went home with awards and we have our rock star Design Director, Jason Heisel, whom to thank.  Torry Island Campground and Marina is located in western Palm Beach County near Belle Glade on the southern shores of Lake Okeechobee. Torry Island is quite peaceful, clean, and a whole bunch of fun for the family who likes to camp, fish and boat together. http://www.torryisland.com     West Palm Beach-based Knight Corporations provides an array of services, including electrical contracting, fire and security systems design and installation, communication systems integration, and design and installation of home theater equipment and electronics. http://knightcorporations.com             SV Microwave engineers and manufactures connectors and components for the RF and microwave industries. The company has just released a new line of connectors called Quarter Back, for which we created this award-winning logo. http://www.svmicrowave.com                   While we had a hunch our new website was pretty cool, we weren't entirely sure. Whelp, we have confirmation now, at least from a jury of our peers. Wonder how much we charged us for the new design. www.RWADS.com          Because we're a member of the Executives' Association of the Palm Beaches, the group often comes to us for design help, which we're only happy to provide. Two thousand and twelve marked the 25th year of the local Execs organization where the top business principals in the Greater Palm Beaches network and assist each other with any and all matters pertaining to their companies. Fittingly enough, an ADDY was awarded for this Silver Anniversary Gala invite. http://www.palmbeachexecs.com    Tripp Electric Motors specializes in the repair, redesign and rewinding of AC/DC motors. The Belle Glade company also provides predictive maintenance, fabrication and machine shop services, pump repair, and electric motor sales. While finding just the right mix of fun and attention-grabbing pizzazz for a company of this nature might be beyond the creative capabilities of others, we ran with the challenge and Wiley Coyote'd right over the cliff with this fetching magazine ad. http://www.trippmotors.com        The Original Pancake House is one of our more varied accounts. We produce print ads for them, email blasts, help out at events, create television spots, record radio ads and more. This little ditty was awarded an ADDY. The judges certainly liked it. What do you think? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i0Q93XdHnAs     Downtown at the Gardens, Palm Beach Gardens' shopping, dining and entertainment destination, had a summer of rock 'n' roll in 2012. In keeping with Downtown's boutique style, management had us create this design for the event tee shirts. By all accounts, the concerts were a complete success, and thanks to Downtown at the Gardens, we found more heavy metal. www.DowntownAtTheGardens.com   Downtown at the Gardens' series of four banners that run through the corridor connecting the parking garage with the main mall took an ADDY. The "This is My Downtown" campaign illustrates how patrons with varying needs, from hip shoppers and cultivated diners to nighttime revelers and fun-seeking families with kids, can find just what they're looking for at Downtown at the Gardens. www.downtownatthegardens.com

We created a table tent for The Original Pancake House that was awarded an ADDY. For those not in the food  biz, a table tent is a freestanding "sign" that sits on a  table. Sometimes they're as simple as an  A-sign shape with advertising on the front and back or like ours, a multi-page pancake-shaped flip book that hangs on a stand. If you want to see The Original Pancake House award-winning table tent in all its completed glory, you'll have to go to one of the South Florida franchise's 11 stores. But don't visit just to see the tent. Eat a plate of wholesome goodness for breakfast, lunch or dinner. We do all the time. www.OriginalPancakeHouseFlorida.com

We thought this was a cute twist on the business of business brokering and apparently so did the ADDY judges. Transworld Business Advisers pairs buyers and sellers of businesses. The company maintains a database of established businesses that are for sale at a wide range of costs that budding entrepreneurs in the market might not otherwise know exist.  www.tworld.com.         The Town of Palm Beach United Way focuses on raising funds for programs that promote the building blocks for a better life--education that leads to a stable job, income that can support a family through retirement, and good health. Since its inception in 1989, Leadership Giving members of the Alexis de Tocqueville and Red Feather Societies have contributed more than $53 million to the Town of Palm Beach United Way. www.palmbeachunitedway.org       Speedy Hot Water is a very clever device that reduces the time it takes for hot water to travel from your water heater to the tap.  Because the product must stand out among the myriad of products in fine hardware stores and home improvement stores nationwide, the packaging has to really pop. We feel the design does just that as did the Treasure Coast ADDY judges. Hot product, hot water, hot packaging design. Who could want more?  www.speedyhotwater.com