The Official
Moosylvania Blog

One of the most fun assignments you can work on in a creative advertising agency is a guerrilla marketing campaign. In a world where specs, file size, and frames per second can dictate the creative limits, guerrilla marketing often has no boundaries.  But for all the originality and fresh ideas, there are also certain lessons that can be learned from some less-than-successful past campaigns. Let’s take a look at a few things to avoid in planning a guerrilla marketing activation.

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So you have dreams of opening your very own business. Maybe a restaurant? Bookstore? How about a shoe company? Whatever your business may be, one of the first and most exciting steps (after the almighty name) is developing the look and feel of your brand. (more…)

The Big Game, or El Plato Supremo as we are calling it here at Moose, had some winners and losers as always. It was encouraging to see that so many more brands understood that people were using a second screen and likely tweeting from it, so they included a hashtag or some form of social media marketing into their campaign. A few stood out from the pack and one came about as close as the 9ers did to #winning, but lost the ring in the end. Here are our thoughts and a list of the commercials with links so you can check them out yourself, in case the party you were at was a little too loud. Tell us what you thought of the commercials this year in the comments!

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Thanksgiving is behind us and our holiday plans have been made, so it is now time to start thinking about the New Year. Take some time to reflect on the past year and craft resolutions for a more successful 2013. (more…)

The holidays are here, and the hottest items of the season are selling like hotcakes to mobs at the mall. However, selling a new and fresh idea to a client can be more difficult that elbowing through the a sea of humanity to snag one of 20 TVs selling at 70% off.

As a creative at a design agency, you are faced with the task of selling your concept throughout your career. And when you have that super awesome concept, you owe it to your concept to get behind it and sell it to your client. Let’s talk about the fundamentals to kick-start the concept-buyer mindset of the client:

 1. Take A Page From The Boy Scouts

Be prepared. As a creative, sometimes you’d rather face a firing squad than present a concept to a client. Nerves won’t sink your concept but coming unprepared to talk through strategy will. Review your work, collect your thoughts, formulate and practice key points that you want to bring up to your client. Few people can wing a presentation and sell the concept, so give your concept a solid start out of the gate by arriving composed and prepared.

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In the last five minutes, I have decided how I am wrapping my Christmas gifts, decided on a recipe for dinner (from my favorite recipe blog), chosen another top contender for an area rug in my living room, reviewed Tory Burch’s Holiday collection and categorized myself in this social media infographic pinned by Moosylvania advertising agency.

Yes, I was on Pinterest. A virtual pinboard where users can organize and   share anything they discover online. You can “pin” your own content or browse pinboards created by others. It is a perfect social media platform for discovering new things and getting inspired by others who share similar style and interests.

This amazingly simple idea is now a staple in people’s daily online routine. But, how did this concept take off? The simple answer, I think, is that it allows us to pin and explore anything we want whether it’s a new book, a new outfit,  interior design ideas or recipes (both realistic or unrealistic). That is exactly why brands have taken notice. The opportunities are unlimited for brands to promote their products. So how do brands, especially with the announcement of brand pages, take advantage of the opportunity to be part of a users experience?

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I’ll admit it. I’m addicted. I’m addicted to Starbucks. In college, at a time when I was merely scraping by, I would ask my dad to inject my bank account every now and again to help out. His first question was always “Are you still buying your $4.35 soy lattes?” Caught. Mocha-handed. Even now, on my way to work at Moosylvania advertising agency, it takes everything I have in me not to pull into that endless drive-thru to overpay for coffee.

So what is it about that little overpriced coffee shop that drags me (and the entire java-loving population) back time and time again? And not to just buy coffee. Is it the curiously aromatic drip? The lavish pastries? The worldly music selection? That mesmerizing green mermaid staring back from my cup of joe? (more…)

For me, Cardinal baseball is like a religion. In reality, it’s a brand. And just like many other brands, harnessing social has been a learning process for sports businesses and franchises. Most teams have learned that creating a social brand strategy is the best defense against an offensive remark.

Employees of brands act as mini-brand ambassadors, tweeting and posting about what’s happening around the office or, in the case of sports teams, the field, track, or pool. Early on, many businesses realized a need to implement a social media policy for their employees. For any employees who post socially as a part of their job or as a private person, Mindjumpers recommends a social media policy that provides corporate guidelines to:

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October brings three of my favorite things: MLB playoffs, candy corn and a new fall TV lineup. As a copywriter (and admitted TV addict) who works for a creative advertising agency, I can tell you one of the best ways to get ahead in advertising is to get behind a television. You’ll learn:

1. HOW TO: Write completely out of the box.

As an advertising copywriter, your work is infinitely more memorable when it’s unexpected, uncensored and 100% original.

Best shows to watch:

• NBC’s 30 Rock: For deliciously random scenarios like Tina Fey’s fight with a plastic bag (“I will make you eat your family”) or Alec Baldwin breaking up with Condoleezza Rice via text message (“You + Me = Frowny Face”).
• ABC’s Happy Endings: For wickedly original vernacular like “Freddy Krueger-ing” and getting “rotary dialed.”
• Fox’s Family Guy: For Seth Macfarlane’s foul-mouthed poetry and collection of unorthodox characters.
• FX’s It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia: For its out-of-control themes (“Frank sets Sweet Dee on fire”), random movie parodies (“Lethal Weapon 5”) and nonsensical musicals (“The Night Man Cometh”) (more…)

With the current infographic craze, it is a common misconception that “infographic” is a code word for hiding copious amounts of confusing data. On the contrary, infographics are meant to make content and data sing.

With all the buzz about infographics today, it’s easy to be disappointed when stumbling across a bad one. So how do you end up with a good one?

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