Like smells, colors may mean different things to different people and stir up memories that would otherwise be forgotten. For example, every time I smell Garnier Fructis shampoo it reminds me of when I had morning sickness. This is a smell I don’t ever wish to smell again. Color and certain color combinations also carry around different meanings and create a mood, welcomed or not.

In the corporate world, companies adopt their corporate colors - brown for UPS, yellow for DHL and purple/orange for Fedex - and use these colors as the main focus of their branding. UPS has certainly taken their corporate color and created an entire marketing theme: “What can brown do for you?” Color choice, along with all the other ingredients to a successful design (typography, composition, photography, imagery, illustration), needs careful consideration before beginning a project.

Just now I got a phone call from a client requesting that their video animation be placed on a dark blue background to create a slick, classy look. While I am sure we can create a slick, classy video animation on any color background, for this particular client dark blue was chosen. Luckily there are some general rules when choosing the proper color and as with all rules there are exceptions. Except the rule about running with scissors. That should never ever be broken. 

Here are a few: Stay away from reds when designing for the healthcare industry. Yellows, reds, and oranges are great color choices for restaurants and the food industry as they have been proven to increase one’s appetite while blues have been proven to suppress ones appetite as people commonly associate them with mold or rot. However, blue is a great choice for very corporate companies that want to emote dedication, trust, and loyalty.   

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!

Many years ago (at least ten), we included a feature in the DDA website called DDA Dare. Dare stood for Digital Agencies Requesting Exposure. It offered a listing on our website, to any other agency worldwide that offered all of the digital advertising services that we offered.

Due to the significant amount of traffic that our website receives, the DARE feature was exposed to thousands of competitors. Over the years a small number of design and advertising companies across the world have applied for the honor and advertising exposure the DARE program offered.

When researched by us, not a single one offered anything approaching the spectrum of advertising services offered by DDA. Further emphasizing this distinction is the fact that every one of our advertising and marketing services is done in-house. Branding, logo design, website design, trade show graphics, programming, copy writing, research, search engine optimization and search marketing, illustration, CD development, photography, video, DVDs, 2D and 3D animation, and more is all done by degreed, experienced, professional, full-time, year-round DDA employees.

As with all advertising and marketing projects, it is the results that are most important. DDA’s extreme capability and combination of services results in innovation, the development of hybrid technologies, and in products and services that outperform our client’s competitors in their respective industries.

Anyone can build a website. Find another organization that can build, in-house, a website like http://www.chains-and-charms.com/ that is professionally scripted, video integrated, e-commerce enabled with powerful proprietary programming, copy written with search engine optimized product and marketing content, monitored for usability, hosted, maintained, and tracked and I will…..give them free advertising in DDA DARE.

The green grass of spring is finally here. The landscapers are visiting for the first time and the bushes, lawns and even the rocks are being pruned, pared back, raked and mounded in preparation for growth. Hope springs eternal and spring brings eternal hope for the promise of growth through good weather and hard work.

So it has been for thousands of years and so it will be.

At DDA, the growth is as much a personal one as it is corporate or financial. The human condition does not allow for stagnation. We are all either learning, and striving, and growing or we are ignoring lessons, slacking, and dying.

Every day I see our photographers learning, our programmers improving, our website designers testing, our search engine marketing specialists tracking, our artists illustrating, our writers illuminating, our video production crew stretching, our flash artists animating, our branding team clarifying, and our ecommerce technicians polishing and presenting.

The weather is not always great, the world is not always perfect, but it seems the growth comes not from the results but rather from the effort. Spring is here, again!

I looked at the calendar for this week when I got in this morning and realized there are fewer appointments scheduled for today and tomorrow than I can ever remember. A moment of panic entered my mind, my fight-or-flight instincts took over and stress hormones flooded my body. Every business owner’s dark side took over and my mood plummeted. Is the recession really here and no one wants to do any branding, marketing, graphic design, video production, or advertising of any kind ever again, anywhere in the world, for any industry, service, or product? Is all that we have built in jeopardy?

Thankfully the voice of reason, of common sense, of objectivity and logic and peace and joy whispered in my ear, David, it is April 14th and Tax Day is tomorrow. It will return to normal on Wednesday. It was my wife and partner, Elizabeth, and of course, as usual, she is right.

Wednesday, the tempo will pick up and my life will once again be filled with controlled chaos, too much to do, incessant meetings, lots of questions to answer, and oh the uncontrollable phenomenon of time flying by way-to-fast.

Actually, the quiet and calm of today is kind of nice!

Visions sometimes just happen, an offshoot that starts as a dream, and slowly through trial and error, continuous refinement, “getting things right” after inevitable mistakes and above all persistent application of energy to all layers of that dream…the vision becomes reality. 

When Dynamic Digital Advertising started, the tag line on our first promotion piece was UNDER ONE ROOF.  Interesting that today we could still use that line, although it is used extensively by numerous industries. But when it comes to all things requiring digital expertise, we are definitely in the forefront. We moved to our new offices a month ago. Everything about the new space is reflective of what David and I thought when we would sit up nights planning what to be many years ago. It has not been easy, but it has always been exciting,  even while it required quiet patience and endless weekends in the early days.

Today, we work a permanent four day, ten hour week, with a process in place to take care of emergencies should they arise 24/7.  We offer our clients custom graphic design, original copywriting, very affordable marketing and branding expertise, and professional video production services complete with an extensive actors gallery.  Yes, we are here to stay!

I would like to believe that as we continue on this journey we can be what Steve Jobs once said, “Be a yardstick of quality. Some people aren’t used to an environment where excellence is expected.” It is at DDA.

America’s population is just over 4% of the world total. Americas economy is about 25% of the world total. Economic metrics more-or-less match the same period in 2007. Unemployment is about 5%. Inflation is under control. Real income is same as last year or slightly higher (up half  a percent).

OK, so the economy is not growing like China’s (which could be a blog post within itself), but things are stable and Americans are spending as usual. All a recession means is that there is not positive growth. This is not a depression and the sky is not falling.

DDA, DDA Medical, and DDA Video may truly be some of the nation’s best economic indicators. Business is steady. We continue to find new clients in all areas from website design, corporate and medical video production, photography, and custom programming, to animation, marketing and branding, illustration, graphic design, copywriting, and search engine optimization. We are growing. We are also preparing new ventures, new portals, and new business initiatives that explain, illuminate, highlight, and present who we are and what we do.

We are grateful for our long client list, and we are grateful for our new clients. Most of all, we are grateful for our country. The greatest country on earth that, while not perfect, is always trying to do the right thing.

David