Forums Help   General New Product Development MarCom and Advertising Problem Solving Org. Innovation Services: Marketing Communications and Advertising SIT has developed a special set of tools and principles which we use in different ways with organizations that want to work on MarCom, and with advertising agencies (that want to work on - of course - advertising). Over the years, we have gained a lot of experience working with both sides of the "client-agency divide" and for the last few years have been offering a program to help companies and their communications agencies - and agencies and their clients - work better together. The outcome of such programs is a more fruitful working relationship, which leads to more innovative and effective advertising and MarCom solutions. Please click on the links below to learn more. SIT FOR ADVERTISING SIT FOR MARKETING COMMUNICATIONS Advertising There's a TV commercial that opens on a board-room meeting, where a geeky looking R&D guy is presenting a new IT solution to the board. The dialogue goes something like this: The Board:   What is it? R&D guy:   Pixie Dust. Magic, self - healing, server pixie dust. The Board:   How does it work? R&D guy:     Server goes down, sprinkle on the pixie dust, server's back up. Use it regularly and servers solve their own problems. The Board:   What does it cost? R&D guy:   It's cheap. Soya based. Bio - degradable. The Board:   Look's like we got a winner. (Appears on screen) THERE IS NO MAGIC PIXIE DUST. THERE ARE SELF - HEALING IBM SERVERS. But what about creativity? Is there such a thing as magic pixie dust for coming up with award-winning advertising ideas? As a way of understanding how we answer that question, please take a look at the ads below. Do they seem to have anything in common with one another?  Click to enlarge  Despite their many obvious differences, all these ads adhere to a specific, definable, and executable logic or pattern. (As does the IBM commercial quoted above.) At SIT, we call the pattern that these ads follow Absurd Alternative. In Absurd Alternative ads, you show the audience a ridiculous solution to the problem the product claims to solve. Absurd Alternative is one of a number of creativity "tools" that SIT has developed. The theory behind the tools is that although creativity ideation is a complex and often idiosyncratic process, there are identifiable and generalizable patterns behind creative advertising, and these patterns can be used to make the ideation process more efficient. Although SIT creativity tools are no substitute for talent (sorry!), they do significantly enhance the creative process by helping users to focus on methods that lead to quality ideas, and to avoid those that usually lead nowhere. Creativity and Advertising workshops are designed to help planners, media people, and account people in the ideation, evaluation, development, and selling of creative ideas, giving everyone a common language. So, when it comes to improving the creative output of your agency, you can invest in some magic creativity pixie dust. Or you can find out more about SIT Creativity and Advertising workshops (a slightly less absurd alternative). Testimonial MarCom We believe that Marketing Communications is taking place every time a company (or one of its products) interacts with a customer. Therefore, SIT's Marketing Communications (MarCom) projects are designed for the many points of contact that customers and companies have with one another. We work on the MarCom aspects of, among others, product packaging design, product launch advertising, promotions, point-of-sale ideas, concepts for conferences, and delivering presentations to potential and existing clients. We also conduct Marcom projects for individual departments, to help them consider their role within the larger organization, to explore possibilities for developing that role, to improve intra-departmental communications, and to align the different levels of a brand hierarchy - product  brand  department  company  parent company. Every SIT MarCom project works on three essential aspects of your communication strategy: What to say - understanding what you can communicate about your product or brand and deciding among the options. Companies often launch new products in order to expand into new markets, gain greater market share, and increase profit. SIT Marcom projects use the SIT tools to help you determine whether, instead of launching a new project, you can achieve your aims by doing more with the products you already have. By "listening to the Voice of the Product" we consider how existing products can meet the needs of untapped market segments, and how an "old" product can be marketed differently and thus warrant a new price structure. How to say it - understanding how to communicate about your products. It's not enough to develop ideas for "new promises" - a company must also know how to communicate effectively with the consumer about those new promises, which means making the product interesting and appealing enough to be remembered, and desired. Getting the credit - making sure that they remember that it is you and your brand that they heard about (and not, for instance, a similar product by your competitor). We concentrate here on the elements that create differentiation: packaging and product design as well as advertising copy and visuals. Because MarCom activities cover such a wide range, workshops are conducted by a diverse group of SIT facilitators, with backgrounds in Marketing, MarCom, Field Sales & Service, Marketing Promotion, Advertising, Media, BTL, and specific technical product research. Click here to read about the experience of Drew Boyd, Director of Marketing Mastery in EES, a Johnson & Johnson company, using SIT for MarCom: Bottom Line Helping companies and their agencies, separately or together, to create innovative and effective communication. FAQ What can I gain from your sessions if SIT is training all the other agencies in my country as well?   There are, in fact, countries where we have worked with virtually all the major agencies, so this is an important question. To begin with, SIT does not offer exclusive use of our knowledge or method; we pass our proprietary knowledge on to the agencies we work with, thus offering them a powerful tool with real potential to enhance their creativity. What agencies do with this knowledge in the long term depends, of course, on their skills, organization, and perseverance. We have worked with over 50 agencies worldwide and we wouldn't claim that every single one has made a tremendous leap as a result of using our tools. But some have. Several years ago, we began to run workshops and training for five different agencies in one particular European capital. Since then, two of them have bagged a series of advertising awards and come virtually out of nowhere to recognition as leading creative agencies. Both agencies credit SIT's contribution to their breakthroughs. (Perhaps the other three have also increased their creative potential in some way, but we are not aware of any significant breakthroughs.) When we work with agencies we see it as a kind of partnership: we bring our patented tools and method and our experienced facilitators, and we design the project based on our understanding of the agency's structure and needs - it's up to the agency what they actually do with what we bring. Is SIT appropriate for everyone in our agency - Creatives and Accounts and Planners? What about senior or junior staff?   We do believe that there's something for everyone in SIT's tools and methods. SIT is a sort of creative language - by sharing its metaphors and meanings, you create a common language for people in all your departments. Of course, the way people apply the method will depend on their background and context, and their way of relating - all of these ways will be valid, but they will be different. Many of the agencies we work with have also shared the SIT methods and language with their clients - they've found it's made a major difference in how they work, and what they're able to achieve, together. Search: Home Contact Site Map SIT Ltd. © 2005 All Rights Reserved. Created by Puzzlehead