In this fast paced, always connected, and everything-happening-at-once world we live in, there are layer upon layer of trends that permeate our lives, dictate our future, and continually challenge the things that we know and understand.

Of course the big picture trends include such things as outsourcing, globalization, and connectivity. The reality is that everything and everyone is caught up in a whirlwind of ever-moving, ever-changing, ever-increasing trends. There are fashion trends, medical trends, manufacturing trends, religious trends, educational trends, the much feared economic trends, the much criticized dietary trends, and of course the sometimes frivolous and often amusing celebrity trends. In advertising, there are website design trends, video production trends, custom programming trends, animation trends, graphic design trends, copy writing style trends, and even color trends.

There is one trend that has been engaged and evolving since man first walked the Earth. Innovation! It is the granddaddy of all other trends, the foundation of all civilizations, and both the savior and perhaps ultimately the destroyer of mankind itself.

I hold the belief that modern civilization is focused on measuring the wrong things. We measure countries, wealth, gross national product, population, the number of sick, the starving, the oppressed, the free, opinions, viewers, visitors, customers, travelers, manufacturing numbers, consumer indexes, etc. We even spend a great deal of time measuring trends - where they started, where they are today, where they are going.

Perhaps we should measure innovation. Innovation determines which individuals prosper, which companies succeed, which countries grow, what groups become healthier, and ultimately, which civilizations rise and fall.

At DDA, we focus on innovation and intuitively understand that everything else follows, because everything else is just a trend.

I read recently that a UN Relief Agency (UNWRA) was adjusting its forecast of the number of starving people worldwide dramatically upwards. From memory, I believe the number forecast just a few years ago was less than 600 million, a huge number and about 10% of the world’s population, to a number closer to 1.5 billion. This projection was to occur by the year 2015, again from memory.

The reason was because of the push in some countries, especially in South America and the U.S., to produce Ethanol. That’s correct, in our endeavor to lessen our dependence on foreign oil, we are producing less rice and other crops for food and using the land for growing corn and sugar cane to be turned into fuel. The second impact of this is that land is being cleared from pristine areas, like the rain forest, at a record pace to have more land to grow Ethanol related crops.

The biggest irony is that, especially in the case of corn, it takes almost as much energy to grow the corn, harvest and transport it, and refine it into Ethanol as is gained by the resulting fuel itself. About 90% as much.

So, the upshot is that we are starving people, destroying the ecosystem and producing little or no energy gain all in the interest of reducing our dependence on Petroleum. This is the law of unintended consequence.

Now you might ask, how does this law apply to DDA’s immediate world and our drive to produce high quality and affordable state-of-the-art custom marketing and advertising for clients in the corporate, medical, financial, manufacturing and educational arenas?

On a grand scale, and with a birds-eye-view, I can safely say that everything an individual does in life, and at work, begins with an intention. At DDA, we try hard to avoid unintended consequences by always encouraging and maintaining the best of intentions. Wanting to produce the best website design, video production, photography, animation, print design, catalog, custom programming application, illustration or copy writing, at the lowest cost, in the most efficient and client-friendly manner may not totally eliminate the law of unintended consequences, but it sets a course that is more clear, more fair, and more likely to get both DDA and the client organization to the place we all want to be.

Spring is definitely my favorite time of year. My new office is great because I have really nice windows. A row of them to my left and a couple behind. The first time I saw the office, I was concerned because the windows, throughout the building, are high up and not really a direct view outside. Turns out that, whether seated or standing, the view through every window is one of trees from their mid point on up. Breathtaking!

It occurs to me that during spring the trees are in transition. Early on the seemingly dry branches and twigs blossom with life, color, and attitude. Later in spring the blossoms fall, coloring the ground, and the now very much alive branches and twigs become adorned with leaves of complex shapes in limitless shades of green.

What is most compelling and interesting is the way the windows frame the trees as if to feature each grouping as a picture frame would. Each window becomes a work-of-art, combining the best qualities of renaissance, impressionism, and realism. Rich, beautiful, and alive.

At DDA, we believe advertising and marketing is similar.  It is our goal to provide glimpses of reality that feature and highlight the best qualities of our client’s products, services, staff, and capabilities. Framing each with the proper information, aesthetic, and presentation to provide the viewer with a perspective that helps our client’s organization radiate the aura of quality and success.

Websites, photography, videos, 2D animation,  3D animation, CD-ROMS, DVDs, programming applications, illustrations, brochures, sell sheets, catalogs, training portals, copy writing, virtual spins, and virtual worlds… each and every one is a little window shining light in, but also reflecting all the best that our clients have to offer.

Last night Elizabeth and I attended a leadership seminar. The premise of the presentation, and the book authored by the presenter, was that leadership cannot be taught but it can be learned. The speaker went on to explain that the the premise is not a contradiction because while schools cannot teach the curriculum that prepares one to be a leader, the hard knock, real world survival lessons of life can prepare an individual to lead.

Here is my hard learned lessons of leadership.

I think of all the staff at DDA as leaders. The programmers, copy writers, graphic designers, illustrators, SEO specialists, artists, video production crews, and photographers are leaders within their industry niche, within their department, and within themselves. They are offered responsibility and authority and challenges. They rise to accept and meet them or they shrink from the opportunity. If they rise and fail, they are hopefully corrected and thanked for trying and asked to try again next time.

Most importantly, it is in the trying that they grow and learn and become wiser and more sure of themselves and more able to lead. The concept that to be a leader, you must have followers is way too limiting. Leadership is about the willingness to have, express, and follow a point of view.

As management, Elizabeth and I know that we cannot run the business from above. There is a sign in my office for the last fourteen years that reads: You do not build a business, you build an organization, and the organization builds the business. I should probably update it to say: You do not build a business or an organization, you help grow leaders that build an organization that builds a business. Thank you DDA leaders, one and all.

I read an article this morning about an interactive digital agency that was acquired by an advertising agency. The acquiring organization claims that with the addition of the new interactive digital agency they will become a new model for advertising agencies because unlike other conventional interactive agencies, they do branding, marketing and interactive. They even say that, “someone had to do it first”.

Well…someone did. It was Dynamic Digital Advertising and it wasn’t done in a few weeks ago it was done in 1994. With all due respect, you are fourteen years too late to be first.

Dynamic Digital Advertising has been offering extensive, deep and professional branding, marketing and interactive services since 1994. It was our concept and vision since 1994. Now throw in photography (the first digital photography studio in PA), corporate and medical video production, search engine optimization and marketing, custom programming, graphic design for print and interactive CDs, illustration, medical and corporate copy writing, medical and corporate training tools and integrated training systems and more.

In 1995 and 1996 we created and distributed a series of mail pieces promoting our wide range of digital advertising services and our marketing/branding services. An early on was titled “Ride the digital Wave” and a later one was “We were digital before digital was cool”.

As usual, DDA focuses on the work, on our client’s needs, on extreme capability and on producing interactive and non-interactive advertising and marketing tools for clients in a hundred different industries with a focus on creating unique technologies and integrated projects that results in sales, profit and growth for our clients as well as long term relationships between client and DDA.

They say bad habits die hard. It should also be said that good habits are a laborious birth. At DDA, doing the right thing is NOT a matter of unlearning bad habits, but rather the articulated and dedicated practice of doing the right thing.

Most advertising agencies are born of deception and subterfuge. Example after example abounds of new agencies being formed by one or two account representatives who steal a few clients and set up a business of their own. The ease of doing this is enhanced by the fact that almost by definition, advertising agencies often don’t really do the marketing or advertising design and production themselves. Outside design and production houses, like DDA, serve the advertising agency industry by providing in-depth graphic design, photography, video production, 2D and 3D animation, programming, search marketing, copywriting, website design, ecommerce and other services. DDA provides them all.

Guaranteed, immediate clients and a readily available source of design and production make for an easy advertising agency business start-up. What is difficult is servicing the clients well over the long term and sustaining growth. What is wrong is the perpetuation of all of the bad habits the founders of the breakaway agency learned at their former place of employment and integrated into their new work process and client relationship procedures.

In this way bad habits not only die hard, they are perpetuated and spawned. Some of the bad habits may have actually been more benign at the original advertising agency due to the large size, or specific nature of the clients and industries they serve. When transferred to a smaller, less capable environment, they can mutate and become malignant.

Here’s the irony; the backgrounds of the founders at DDA are an organic mix of corporate marketing, B2B and B2C advertising, retail store and manufacturing ownership and general business management and consulting. NO advertising agency experience, no breakaway business start-up, no mutated process and poor client relationship habits.

After fourteen years of steady and sustained growth, innovation, and pioneering processes and procedures, DDA has all but reinvented the advertising agency. After fourteen years we are still fresh, eager, energized, and creating new habits daily by always striving to do the right thing.

As is true with every single business in America today, no business is an island. Each and every business is part of a commercial fabric and, as such, is interwoven with a network of other businesses and individuals that service, support, patronize, or interact with it on a regular basis.

From the smallest family-owned independent small businesses to the largest multinational corporations, they all have one thing in common, they are made up of people. With a large cross-section of people, you get a large cross-section of morals, honesty, and ethical behavior.

DDA has always believed that ethics is not something that individuals bring to the job. It needs to be an entrenched, formalized, and definable set of values and goals that are postulated, institutionalized, and supported by the business organization. At DDA, they are!

A strong code of ethics is discussed and encouraged and adhered to at DDA for a few reasons. There is an old European proverb that says, the fish stinks from the head down. Kind of quaint, but somewhat nauseatingly true. The leaders of any organization have, or should have, great influence over practices and policies throughout the organization. Frankly, we don’t want to work at a place that stinks.

A strong code of ethics is also the best protection a business can have. Call it an ethical prophylactic of sorts. No truer an adage ever existed than what goes around comes around. We treat clients, vendors, and colleagues as we wish to be treated and they return the favor. It is also human nature to encourage kindness by being kind, fairness by treating everyone fairly, and morality by being morale.

Finally, we practice ethical behavior at DDA because we want to feel good about ourselves. More than just sleeping well at night, behaving ethically, being scrupulously honest and always taking the morale approach to relationships, practices, and situations awards us a certain self-opinion that raises our standards and allows us to respect ourselves.

Ethics, like transparency and honesty are not a discipline we must be taught or a set of rules to be imposed, but rather a gift we give to ourselves.

DDA subscribes to several business practices and principles that directs everything we do. They are transparency, ethical conduct, and doing the right thing. The practice of these are both just good, sane, logical and practical approaches to client and vendor relations and emotional, cerebral and feel-good-about-yourself practices and beliefs that allows one to look himself or herself in the mirror each morning and sleep well at night.

Some definitions through the eyes of DDA:

Transparency. I like to think I am a good communicator. I know I am a lousy listener. My other career path might well have been as a history teacher and I sometimes wonder if the excitement of the advertising and business world overwhelmed my common sense.

Despite my best efforts, I recognize that four people in a meeting or discussion will leave with four slightly or largely different understandings of what just happened, what information was shared, what conclusions were drawn, and what the next steps are. Since we believe strongly that good process is at the core of all efficiency, somehow each successful advertising, branding, or marketing meeting must result in common understanding, shared goals, and a focused unified vision of the end game.

Transparency tools are woven into and heaped upon every advertising, branding, or marketing project we undertake. DDA TRAC (Time Resource and Accounting) is an in-house developed, Internet-based time tracking database tool. The result is that every hourly billed project including programming, logo design, graphic design, copywriting, photography, video, 2D and 3D animation, illustration, trade show displays, large format graphics, print design and print production for sell sheets, catalogs, brochures, flyers, direct mail, business cards, training portals and tools, CME design and development and even search engine optimization (SEO) is invoiced accurately. No time, not one minute is rounded up or added on, and every invoice is accompanied by a detailed minute-by-minute description of how the time was spent. On time, On budget, On TRAC every time.

Additional tracking and reporting tools abound. DDA’s search engine optimization (SEO) work has a series of metrics that perpetually report website visitation, usage, pathways, experience-based mapping, rankings, and much more. Website analysis means corporate websites can be better understood, improved, and managed.

Online proofing development websites are assigned to each client and each project. Our clients see every project unfold, improve, and take shape and their input is welcomed, requested, and insisted upon every step of the way.

Transparency is as much an attitude as it is a report or tool. At DDA, we believe that direct communication is the hallmark of a truly professional service-oriented vendor. We answer the phone, have project coordinators for each client, welcome questions and love client interaction. Every project is a blend of skills, expertise, information, and point-of-view provided by both the client and DDA.

Call us anytime. At DDA, the Transparency is clearly better.

Ethical Conduct to follow Monday.

Doing the Right Thing to follow Tuesday.

A few years back there was a very successful turnaround CEO that had some awful sounding nickname like the meat cleaver or hatchet man or butcher.

As evidenced by his awful sounding nickname, his MO was to takeover or be installed at the head of a troubled company and to slash payroll and every corporate budget across-the-board in order to restore solvency and make the company a viable platform from which it could grow. When asked directly about his budget slash-and-burn methodology he said that there was one exception to his across-the-board approach. While slashing payroll and every other corporate budget he would also always double the marketing budget.

Ironic isn’t it that many less savvy corporate managers and leaders choose to slash marketing budgets during a slowdown or recession.

Metaphorically, sales are the lifeblood of every business. After a heart attack, keeping the blood flowing is the first and sometimes only goal of the attending EMS worker or clinician. It is an admittedly gruesome analogy, but slashing the marketing budget during a downturn is like fixing a heart attack by slashing the throat.

Let DDA help you increase your sales,  restore vitality to your organization, and regain full health with results-oriented advertising and marketing across a wide range of media. From website design and development, with or without ecommerce capability, to graphic design, photography, illustration, logo development, branding, 2D and 3D animation, video, CD-ROMs, DVDs, custom programming. professional search engine marketing, content development and copy writing, DDA does it all in-house, under one roof, and with an experienced and dedicated staff of degreed professionals whose only goal is to build sales, impact bottom lines and build long-term relationships with our clients.

While our new facilities (since March 1st) are dramatically bigger and better and a joy to live with and in, they still lack a proper sign out front.

It turns out that most Townships, ours included, make money by allowing businesses to post signs outside their front door and make even more money by allowing the signs to change with each new inhabitation by each new business resident. This monopolistic money making scheme results in a lengthy, expensive and sometimes impossible permitting process that takes many weeks, forms, drawings and sometimes even consultants to complete successfully.

As we are often, and totally with the acquisition of our new facility, we are very lucky.

The former owner left a beautiful, big, expensive, and totally non-related sign in the facility. Didn’t want it or more likely didn’t want the hassle and expense of getting it approved in their new township location.

Turns out that if you do not change the shape or size or footprint of a sign, you can reface it without having to thread the permitting process. With some effort, good planning, and the effort of one of our artists we are in the process of rehabbing the sign just as we did the building, and just like the building it is turning out to be beautiful. Gold and green, rich and bright, lighted and landscaped, DDA will enjoy for many years to come not just the most attractive and professional sign on the street but perhaps in the entire township.

The sign reads Dynamic Digital Advertising, LLC. It should really say; within the walls this sign sits in front of, is the world’s best advertising, marketing, branding, website developer, video production company, graphic design house, photography studio, custom programming group, professional copy writers, animation artists, ecommerce specialists, search engine marketing technicians, and creative advertising concept developers.

We tried, but it just would not all fit!