Photography by Joe Wojcik

Apple Box Studios’ staff competitions bring out best

02/17/2012 – by Patty Tascarella
Senior Reporter Pittsburgh Business Times

Apple Box Studios needed to add bigger and better clients in order to grow. It was losing out on too many pitches to larger agencies, as far as Principal and Creative Director Michael Wertz was concerned.

Because of its relatively small size with a staff of 13, some potential clients were concerned whether Apple Box could handle the workload and meet deadlines, and tapped other agencies.

Wertz knew he couldn’t do anything to alter the landscape, but he could shake things up on his own end of the equation. He believed the key to winning accounts was having the best creative ideas and concepts.

“Creative is the key,” Wertz said. “So, we cannot compete based on our size or client list or national account experience. But we can develop creative campaigns that knock people’s socks off.”

Creative is admittedly a subjective call. Tastes differ. So Wertz decided to ratchet his company’s standards.

“I’m a very competitive person and I understand what the by-product of competition is — better work, setting the bar really high,” Wertz said. “There’s competition in life and among other agencies. Why should there not be competition within your own agency?”

So, in early 2011, Wertz began pitting employees against each other to come up with the best campaigns for clients — writer versus writer, designer versus designer, but mostly writer/designer duos.

“What we do is lay out a creative brief, give it to the teams and they go to their corners and work totally separately,” Wertz said. “There’s a ticking clock and we have formal presentations.”

Apple Box often fields three different teams, each devising multiple ideas.

“Ultimately, the client decides what creative wins, but the internal process is up to us,” Wertz said. “There’s a referee — me internally and then the client externally.”

Wertz is no easy sell.

“You can’t be lazy about your creative; you have to be able to pick it apart,” Wertz said.

The Mount Lebanon native worked in Los Angeles, editing and running the cutting room for several movies for nearly a decade, including “Scream II,” “Gone Fishin’” and “Striking Distance.”

The employee or team whose work wins receives a bonus.

“Winning over the client is one thing. Winning compensation makes it a real competition,” Wertz said.

In 2010, Apple Box won around 30 percent of the requests for proposals to which it responded.

After implementing the strategy Wertz calls “competition by design,” that changed dramatically. In 2011, Apple Box came out on top 80 percent of the time.

Revenue last year rose 25 percent over 2010 to $1.4 million. Apple Box won work for Dick’s Sporting Goods, Emerson Process Management and Northwood Realty Services.

Tom Hosack, president and CEO of Wexford-based Northwood, said Apple Box’s size initially gave him pause, and he hedged by bringing on two agencies last summer.

“When we first decided to rebrand our company, we interviewed multiple firms and hired two and had them working at the same time — a traditional larger firm and Apple Box,” Hosack said. “After about a month or so, it became apparent to us that Apple Box was faster and more creative and really understood what we wanted to do instead of telling us what to do.”

Apple Box also successfully deployed its competition-by-design approach with the Pittsburgh Advertising Federation’s recent RFPittsburgh, a creative competition for its membership that aims to open opportunities with national marketers. Wertz won StarKist Co.’s challenge to create a full-page print ad featuring its pouch line: It will run in a national publication selected by StarKist. Apple Box also gets to submit a credentials package to StarKist with the hope of gaining more work from the seafood company.

For this challenge, we immediately established three separate creative teams each anchored by a designer. Through a series of benchmarking, research, and strategy sessions, three different creative approaches were developed. Each team, working separately, presented their final artwork to the creative director. After further refinement, two of the three concepts were chosen for submittal.

With every design challenge, our philosophy is that design follows messaging, and form follows function. The StarKist ads were no exception. A powerful theme line gave us clear direction, as keeping our audience in mind helped us stay on strategy. To relate to a young, physically fit demographic, we chose a simplistic approach to our design. It showcases edgy photography that captures the subject matter in a natural as opposed to a staged environment, along with a headline that grabs the reader’s attention. The popular phrase, “G.T.L.”, or “Gym. Tan. Laundry” is often repeated within in this demographic. We put a spin on this popular saying, creating “Gym. Tuna. Laundry.”, involving tuna as an essential part of one’s workout routine.

Apple Box’s additional concepts include: “Trail Mix (is for those who stick to trails)”, “Mr. Tunaverse”, and “Slim Pouch”.

Adweek places Nike’s Write The Future ad as the #1 spot overall. I couldn’t disagree more. Not just because I think there are better commercials out there, but I think this commercial goes over the head of your average viewer, and they take too long to get to the point. That being said, I find it very hard to name a #1 overall commercial, so I will just mention some of my favorite in no particular order.

Heineken, “The Entrance”
What can you say that is wrong with this piece? I’m sure some will find fault with it, but I find it to be very entertaining, great music piece, great choreography and great timing with each piece. And they do what a lot of companies don’t do during these types of commercials – they show branding before the end! This commercial is definitely in my top 10!

Skittles, “Touch The Rainbow”
Ok, so there are several of these videos, but I am lumping them all in together as one. They have some very twisted humor and that’s right up my alley. Great branding and funny scenarios (for the most part). If you love just outright bizarre commercials, you will love the whole series. I’m embedding just one, but please feel free to browse them all when you get a moment. You won’t be sorry!

Volkswagen, “The Force”
Do I really need to talk about this one? This one went viral as soon as it was shown before the Super Bowl. Love the natural comedic timing this kid has (and if you didn’t see any of the interviews, it is a kid inside there). This commercial definitely qualifies as a top 10 smash!

Carlton Draught, “Slo Mo”
If you are a guy, you are going to love this commercial. Very funny. If you are a girl with a lot of patience, you might find it entertaining as well. Listen to the words of the song. Very funny stuff.

Traveler’s Insurance, “Trouble”
From the Super Bowl the previous year, this commercial debut and remains one of my favorite to this day. Just a very clever commercial with a dog that really knows how to act!

Google, “Speed Tests”
Actually, I like a lot of the new Google spots that I’ve been seeing on TV and the Internet. Google Goggles, Google Translate and the one for Google Maps (road view). But this one caught my eye because, to me, the browser speed is key to optimizing time spent on the Internet. Lately I’ve been on Firefox and Chrome and although I have experienced many bugs with Chrome, it definitely seems to be a faster browser. So the commercial rings true.

Honorable Mention

Carolton Dry, “Sheep Impact”
I saw this commercial on Adweek and, although it wasn’t a top contender in their eyes, I still found it to be entertaining. And, c’mon – it has Steven Segal in it!

So there you have it. My top picks from Adweeks Best of. Remember the key is to capture people’s attention and make sure you get your branding across!

Commonly, these codes are used to generate links to SMS Codes, Calendar Codes, Geo Codes, Text Codes, vCard Codes, Email Codes and other dynamic and static digital codes.

So just how safe are QR codes? IMHO, they are not safe at all. If you can embed links into the code that will send you anywhere without warning of what the content is, then people will start to use this in malicious ways. It’s sad, but true. What’s to stop someone from sending you to a website with a virus, or worse yet – someone may just figure out a way to embed the virus into the code (if they haven’t figured that out already). Virus’ for hand-held devices are not very common – yet! But the more we wean ourselves off of the PC and into the mobile age, the more common those virus’ will become. And how about porn sites? So many teens have phones that can scan these images and no way for a parent to block them. Then they are immediately swept off to Smuttsville, USA.

While QR codes are currently all the rage and very “today”, tomorrow they may become a tool for the evil. Since you can embed a phone number into the code, what’s to stop a terrorist from embedding the number of a phone attached to a bomb somewhere, and some innocent QR Scanner blows up a shopping mall? This all sounds a bit extreme, of course. But this is my point – if an upright citizen such as I can figure out this stuff, I’m sure the malcontents of the world are doing the same.

In today’s day and age, it will only take one or two incidents before people stop scanning the codes and they become obsolete. That’s a shame too, because this really is very cool technology. Unless someone is pro-active and starts working out a way to make these codes a little safer, I’m afraid the inevitable fate of the QR code will be pretty much the same as the 8-Track, cassette tapes, rotary phones, butter churns, the horse and buggy… you get the picture.

Practice “Safe Scanning” everyone!!

Today, Google has rolled this change out to all English language queries and made a few minor updates (with an estimated impact to 2% of U.S. queries).

So what will creative design firms and those who practice at the art of SEO need to be made aware of?

They will be affected several different ways. First, they will have to start creating better quality sites – content and navigation will be key. Can your visitor easily find their way around? Is it obvious what the topic on the page is about? Is the content original or used from other sources? Do any ads on the page obscure the visitor’s ability to access content quickly? And other criteria will need to be examined.

Also, the use of obtaining domain names for the use of SEO (such as YourSearchQuery.com) will no longer be effective. Creating landing pages for the sole purpose of SEO will more than likely get blocked as well as several other SEO “shortcuts”.
This might seem like a pain at first, but what it’s doing is cleaning up the clutter that is on the Internet. This alone won’t do it, but it’s a start.

So we suggest you use this information to start making improvements to your web designs and to your SEO practices. If you get a jump on it now – you will only benefit from it sooner.

We’ve been thinking a lot about measurement lately at Applebox Studios. Not only measuring our efforts as an ad agency in Pittsburgh, but also our social media efforts, as well as our marketing initiatives and how it all plays out into today’s economy and it utlimately affects you, the consumer. Thus, we came up with a couple of absolutes that for now, make sense to us.

• Social media measurement will adapt with the changing of external markets and it‚Äôs influencers.
• The rules of engaging the consumer and marketing to that consumer are changing at light speed with the advantage shifting towards the consumer.
• Social media engagement should be measured differently in tough economic times.
• The tone of marketing and social media marketing is changing.
• Consumer expectations of social media will not change during¬† the current economic woes because they haven‚Äôt set any precedents yet.
• The importance of social media optimization and SEO has never been larger.
• Social nets have a better chance to thrive now, more than they did at this point last year.

Is this your company?

You’ve been told that you should have a blog. Though the reasons why seem somewhat hazy. You’ve been told that you yourself should write the blog posts. Though the last time you wrote anything of length it was a letter to the judge to try and keep you out of Juvee.

Ok maybe I’m kidding about that last part. You know, you probably actually read some blogs yourself. Though you might not even know they are blogs. If I asked you what the basic structure of a blog was, could you tell me? If I asked you what the purpose of a blog was, would you be able to muster an answer?

What If I said it was for SEO purposes-would you know why and how? If I told you that you should write a blog so that you can connect with your customers-would you know how? Would you know what to say? Would you know where they are?

Please don’t tell me that your company does have a blog…

You keep hearing that social media is THE thing that your company needs to get into-but what do you know about social media? Do you even have the time to answer that question, and any of the questions asked above?

If I were you, I would at least make time to learn it before you decide whether it is right for you.

Most people don’t know about your blog, because you don’t what you’re doing or why you’re doing it.

So do we talk about the ROI of social media or KPI’s? Do you know the difference? The difference is similar to the difference between an advertising agency and a company that focuses on marketing. Or better yet, Heinz Field and PNC park.

From a purely definitive standpoint ROI is pretty basic, ROI = (X – Y) / Y, If you invest $10 and get back $30, your ROI is (30 – 10) / 10 = 2 or 2 times your initial investment.

Now let’s apply that to social media. Having solid goals and a realistic baseline measurement is crucial to figuring out your social media ROI.¬† So before you set out to measure and monitor your social media returns, you need to have a clear idea of what it is you want to accomplish. <—-Isn’t this something you would do in any business situation?

So once you have your goals defined, you need to gauge the baseline for your levels before starting or changing your social media strategy. For example, if your goal is to increase social media mentions of your company, in order to measure the ROI of any actions taken toward that goal, you need to know where you stand now. You can’t evaluate the ROI accurately without a baseline. If the baseline is zero, so be it.

Now KPI’s are completely different in that you’re tracking and making sense of interactions, which is a fundamental part of social media. Many of these metrics are factored into the notion of “Key Performance Indicators” and in the same way you can score different interactions to create some kind of interaction index, each one has it’s own merit. For instance here are 15 fairly common social media KPI’s.

1. Alerts
2. Bookmarks
3. Comments
4. Downloads
5. Email subscriptions
6. Fans
7. Favourites
8. Feedback
9. Followers
10. Forward to a friend
11. Posts
12. Social media shares / participation
13. Uploads
14. Views
15. Widgets

So what are the KPI’s that you are using within your organization to measure your social media interactions?