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.

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.

The difference between script editing and writing can, at times, be astronomical. Script editing can be rather simple, where we take information that the client has presented and edit it so that it includes more effective marketing messages. As always, it can take a little more time to change sentence structures, making more impact with informational points, and so forth. But, the greatest benefit to this is that the client is already providing the correct information about their product or service.

Script writing, on the other hand, can be a bit tricky at times. For instance, when we are writing scripts about brand new products or services that have not been introduced before, it can be difficult to write specific information because we are unfamiliar with it. Through a combination of interviews, questioning, and reviews by the client, we have the ability to write full original scripts. The trade of is, of course, that this process will take longer and requires more input from the client during the process.

DDA has a staff of degreed full-time writers that are able to write or edit scripts for an assortment of products. Whatever you need, DDA can handle it.

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.

Regardless of the profession or skill level, the ability to write well is a necessity. Whether you realize it or not, people make judgment calls based on writing skills, not only in grammar and spelling, but in your ability to use words correctly and to effectively get your point across.

It never ceases to amaze me how many well-educated people pay so little attention to their writing. In a world of e-mail and digital technology, a lot of times it’s the written words that are making the first impression for you. A misspelled word may not seem like a big deal, because you are confident in your overall ability, but consider the fact that this person has never met you, and that misspelled word is the only thing they have to go on.

For many corporations and medical institutions,  it’s the website that introduces potential customers or patients to them.

If your website is full of poorly written content that is either difficult for the reader to interpret or is riddled with grammatical errors, you are making a statement to the visitor. Regardless of how well-known or accredited your business or practice may be, you lose professional ground and credibility.
At  DDA, the five full-time writers are well-versed at writing copy for all types of fields within the corporate and medical industries, and for a wide range of audiences. We know what it takes, whether it’s for a marketing or advertising campaign, or simply to disseminate information, to effectively engage visitors, while maintaining a professional tone that is appropriate to your audience.

Like any copy writing position, mine has included research. You have to understand what you are writing about in order to make the search engine optimized website content (and any content, really–for catalogs, sell sheets, video scripts, anything) relevant to both readers and search engines. So I have been researching different advertising agencies’ services, to contribute to something DDA is developing in addition to our already extensive list of integrated advertising services.

When DDA came up as one of the first results on Google, I had to laugh. It has always been a selling point of ours, that as a small and affordable full service advertising agency, we have better search engine prominence as larger companies. It reminded me of a story my Mom used to read us when my sisters and I were kids, about an old guy in the Ukraine named Isaac, who dreams about digging up treasure under a stove, and so sets out for the city to find it.

Long story short (which removes a lot of the charm and repetition that makes it a folk tale, or children’s story, whatever we’ll call it), the place he dreamed of was his own stove in his own little house back in the country, and the treasure was at home all along. I know the moral is about the reservoir of strength and potential within every person, and the necessity of looking within before you can understand the beauty of everything outside of yourself, but what I took away from it as a kid was that when you lose things, they are usually under your bed or somewhere equally obvious.

And today I took a similarly literal read of the tale, thinking about finding oneself (or one’s place of employment) when looking for others. It’s like an inversion of Isaac’s journey, and I guess the lesson here is that DDA is really, really good at improving search engine prominence, for itself and for clients.