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Why invest in creative, captivating approaches to communicating with your target audience, when communication is as simple as showing your audience what you want them to buy and telling them to buy it? Rrrrrrrriiiiiipppppp. (That's the sound of me symbolically tearing my hair out in response to my own rhetorical question.) Goodness knows I've devoted the posts of this blog, the pages of this website, and decades of ranting to the concept of creativity as a valuable business asset. As we've discussed repeatedly, that's the idea behind the name Captivation Capital®. Thankfully, there is objective evidence to back my claim. I came across the following article on the Advertising Age website, by Emma Hall: IPA Report: Ads that Win Awards Are 11 Times More Effective. It details a study conducted by the U.K.'s Institute of Practitioners in Advertising, which evaluated over 213 case studies of advertising for household name brands. The article is an eyeopening analysis of what I'll deem the "media vs. message" debate. When many advertisers think about advertising it's mostly about getting something "out there": buying the column inches, the broadcast seconds, the billboards, and the pixels. It's a media-centric approach, borne out by the statistic cited in the article which pegs media spending at 80% of total ad spending, compared to 10% spent on production and agency fees. When, according to the IPA study, award-winning creative is 11 times more effective than the lack thereof, we at Captivation Capital, Inc. humbly submit that perhaps it's time to revisit your company's advertising priorities. Captivation Capital has won multiple awards for its work, and we would relish the opportunity to develop more award-winning (and more effective) advertising for your company. Give us a call at 616-355-2530, today. #advertising #advertisingagency #creativity #creativedirector #hollandmi #hollandmiadvertisingagency #michiganadvertisingagency #adagency #adagencies #advertisingagencies #copywriting #copywriter #graphicdesign #graphicdesigner #magazinedesign #magazineredesign #photoshop #photomanipulation #illustration #adspending

Welcome back to the next installment of WWDTOWWD! Today, I invite you to digitally page through this brochure we wrote and designed for Lorence & Vander Zwart, a successful financial planning firm in Holland, MI. Captivation Capital, Inc. was asked by LVZ to create a communications piece that not only described their services and experience, but also connected with their target audience on a more personal level...beyond simple dollars and cents. Our answer went right to the heart of LVZ's identity. By developing the tagline, "Everybody LVZ Something," we directly linked the LVZ brand with the very personal and diverse reasons people are saving and investing in the first place. If we do say so ourselves, it's a deft solution that nails the client's objective while deeply connecting people to their brand. Captivation Capital®, our chief creative product, goes beyond elevating brands...it levitates them. We can't wait to create captivating concepts for your brand. Can you? #advertising #advertisingagency #creativity #creativedirector #hollandmi #hollandmiadvertisingagency #michiganadvertisingagency #adagency #adagencies #advertisingagencies #copywriting #copywriter #graphicdesign #graphicdesigner #magazinedesign #magazineredesign #photoshop #photomanipulation #illustration

Your company could benefit from a banana waffle machine, organic free-range accounting (see Figure 1), supersonic cubicle maintenance...oh, and Captivation Capital®. We understand that Captivation Capital, our invaluable product for business, can sound as out there as a conference room table Slip-n-Slide, but stick with us, it's pretty simple. Capital Ideas You know the basics of business capital, so we'll forego the explanation, other than to grossly oversimplify thusly: it's something in which your company invests with the reasonable hope that it will pay for itself, and more, in increased productivity, output, and, ultimately, profit. It's a new machine added to the line (physical capital), new employees to run that machine (human capital), and, possibly, the financing to purchase the machine in the first place (borrowed capital). So, why can't investing in the creation of a captivating ad campaign, a memorable mascot, a lasting tagline, and other valuable creative assets be considered business capital? We say it can, darn it, and we call it Captivation Capital. Tag. Your It. Take, for example, the humble tagline. Who can argue that a winning tagline isn't a valuable asset to any brand? The right handful of words paired with a logo can indelibly tattoo a brand on the mind of the consumer. Just ask Nike. So, unquestionably, a spot-on tagline is Captivation Capital. Many clients have invested with us to develop taglines (ie: Captivation Capital). Pathfinder Systems comes to mind. Pathfinder sells equipment for concrete block and paver manufacturers, and is the exclusive distributor of TIGER machines in the USA. To highlight this partnership, Captivation Capital developed the following tagline: Conquer the Concrete Jungle. It perfectly encapsulated Pathfinder's ability to help its customers take on any concrete product challenge, while also tying in with the TIGER/jungle theme. Here's another one we created for a property management firm: DiffeRENT. Captivation Capital helped launch the new firm successfully, thanks, in part, to our short, sweet, unforgettable tagline that differtiated in a single word. These companies, and many others, invested in Captivation Capital and gained the many dividends of a meaningful, memorable tagline. Stay tuned for more installments of "What is Captivation Capital®?" in the near future. Or, if you can't wait, call to get us started on development of your company's own Captivation Capital, today. #advertising #advertisingagency #creativity #creativedirector #hollandmi #hollandmiadvertisingagency #michiganadvertisingagency #adagency #adagencies #advertisingagencies #copywriting #copywriter #graphicdesign #graphicdesigner #magazinedesign #magazineredesign #photoshop #photomanipulation #illustration #tagline #taglines

Don't get me wrong. I see stuff every day that makes me (grudgingly) mutter to myself..."wish I'd done that." But this running Oblogatory™ series will tackle the much more pleasurable and fulfilling task of expounding on the virtues of our own work. Self-indulgent self-promotion: the ultimate combo. For the first installment, I picked this cover we designed for the Christian School Teacher Magazine. We'd already completely overhauled the magazine's design, inside and out. For this issue, the feature story revolved around ways to invite the Holy Spirit back into a school. The Holy Spirit, of course, is often depicted in the Bible as a "tongue of fire." Playing off this image, Captivation Capital created the cover pictured above. Using two separate stock photo images and our photo manipulation and illustration skills, we encapsulated the idea of Spirit and education in one striking image, if we do say so ourselves. Does your brand need a captivating concept or two or twenty? We can't wait to develop the creative advertising that'll fire up your target audience. #advertising #advertisingagency #creativity #creativedirector #hollandmi #hollandmiadvertisingagency #michiganadvertisingagency #adagency #adagencies #advertisingagencies #copywriting #copywriter #graphicdesign #graphicdesigner #magazinedesign #magazineredesign #photoshop #photomanipulation #illustration

For an introduction to Buzzword Blowout™ please read here. Today's ill-fated business buzzword is the sickeningly seismic: PARADIGM SHIFT. Granted, the last twenty years has seen it's share of technological and cultural changes. So, whipping out the ol' Paradigm Shift in conversation or in the board room was warranted. Maybe three or four times over the last couple decades, at most. But soon some were spotting Paradigm Shifts under every tiny fissure in the business landscape, until a slight uptick in paper clip usage could be seen as the harbinger of a monumental, you guessed it, Paradigm Shift. Remove the "f" and you'd be closer to the truth. Naturally, we heaved this irritating idiom onto the blasting block and gave it the audacious au revoir it deserves. To see this and other buzzwords meet their deserved fate, visit buzzwordblowout.com. Plus, YOU can even suggest the buzzword that has rolled your eyeballs one (thousand) too many times. Send it in and we'll send it to oblivion on the Buzzword Blowout Blasting Block! ​ #marketing #advertisingagency #BuzzwordBlowout #explosion #specialsauce #buzzwords #businessbuzzwords

This email just came in today. Different client. Different project. Since we get these on a regular basis, we decided to make it a recurring "Gotta Love It" series, here on Oblogatory™, the Captivation Capital, Inc. blog. Again, it begs the question to all you advertisers out there: Have you sent anything similar, lately, to your ad agency in response to their work?​ Hmm? #gottaloveit #service #advertising #advertisingagency #clientservice #creativity #creativedirector #hollandmi #hollandmiadvertisingagency #michiganadvertisingagency

Captivation Capital, Inc. is on the move. See, one of the beauties of Captivation Capital®—captivating advertising concepts so valuable they qualify as true business capital—is its versatility. Captivation is captivation, no matter the medium. So, when the Japanese chemical company, Moresco Corporation, asked Captivation Capital, Inc. to add some visual impact to their tradeshow booth, we responded with the following car wrap design. The graphic incorporates both stock and original illustration to create one, continuous nature panorama, from snowcapped mountains right down to a water droplet on a single leaf. The design calls out Moresco's top die cast lubricant products, while also highlighting that they're all water based. “The vehicle wrap that Captivation Capital, Inc. designed for us really helped grab attention and bring prospects into the booth,” says Steve Wiegerink, National Sales Manager of Moresco USA. “Plus the illustration helped bring our environmental message home, graphically. It’s a real show stopper, whether it’s at a trade show or driving down the road.” Who knows, you might see a small sample of Captivation Capital® out on the street today! #advertising #creativity #petevanregenmorter #illustration #petervanregenmorter #vehiclewrap #tradeshowbooth

I screenshotted (if that's a word) the picture above directly from an email I received from a client a couple days ago. I'd sent a first draft design for a project, and, well, you can see the reaction. Dare to Dream I post all this not to brag, per se. However, I'm aware, as a seasoned advertising professional, that you, the reader, could be a potential future client. So, yes, I'm boasting enough to get your wheels turning. When is the last time you sent a similar email to your advertising agency? I get reactions like this to the work of Captivation Capital, Inc. regularly. Check out some of my recent brand-elevating work here, then stare out your office window, throw a few pencils into the ceiling, make a paper clip sculpture, or whatever you do when you daydream. Think about how infusing some Captivation Capital® into your advertising might awaken your brand and, in turn, your customers—current and potential. Beyond Bragging Because that's the real point, here, isn't it? Eliciting a response, causing a reaction, guiding toward a sale. Trust your gut. If it stirs something in you (love, joy, empathy, laughter, wonder) it follows that it will likely rouse something similar in your target audience. We're all humans, after all. I think that simple truth often gets squashed under several tons of marketing jargon. But that's a subject for another post. Here's hoping you find love the next time you open a PDF or read a storyboard or review a design from an advertising agency. Who's the agency? That's your call.

I make ads, so I pay attention to other people's. Trends come and go in advertising, like any other art-related endeavor. And, like any other art-related endeavor, "creative borrowing" is rampant. The Clone Crutch One recent trend I've noticed, heavily fueled by said creative borrowing, is what I'll call the "clone crutch." It goes like this: The ad's main character has a twin self. In some instances it's evil; in others, it's helpful; or for still others it's simply there to add a little instant humor. It's the epitome of talking to one's self and, I can safely say, painfully overdone. It's become a crutch, really. We can probably trace this approach way back to Elmer Fudd contending with a doppelganger dual on his shoulders: one Elmer with wings and a halo, the other in red with horns. In modern day ad-dom, though, I blame two classic campaigns from a couple years back: Snickers, where everyone from football coaches to lumberjacks becomes a hungry, more annoying version of themselves until they have a Snickers; and DirectTV, with its now long-running campaign begun by Rob Lowe compared to a slew of less savory "Robs." So What? So, suddenly, there's a rash of replicas in ads, a deluge of duplicates. The "why" has, I think, been answered already in this post, but let's move on to the "so what?" So what if the same technique is being used in a lot of different ads? Well, it matters for the same reason you can't slap claws on a squirrel and call it a lobster. The concept for an ad must grow organically from the brand. It's not something to be developed (or "borrowed") in a vacuum, then shoehorned into a TV spot, or print ad, or web video, then "branded" with a logo at the end to "tie it all together." The first example of misguided conceptual cloning is an otherwise amusing TV commercial for StubHub. A guy on a bus uses his phone to book tickets for the big game and, in his celebratory mood, his mini-me-sized inner fan pops out, causing minor mayhem amongst the passengers. The second example involves a woman driving with a duplicate of herself in the backseat. I've seen the ad at least three or four times and cannot for the life of me remember what they talk about...possibly saving money somewhere? The Point This later ad drives my point home, while the StubHub does win points for sheer cuteness. The point is that I needed to Google both ads to remember the companies that ran them. In fact, I couldn't even find the second ad and, after several search variations, gave up. Both ads to varying degrees fall in to the squirrelobster trap. They start with the concept, then paste on the brand. The typical result, then, is an ad that may be water cooler worthy, but, alas, no one can remember the brand it was promoting. The lesson, here, is to always start with your unique, well-defined brand when developing any advertising or marketing. Ask yourself, without my logo involved, could this ad be for any product or service? My competitors product or service? And, should you need help creating such ads, built from the brand up, I know a guy. #advertising #tvcommerical #branding #brandrecognition #creativity #creativedirection #copywriting

​ Welcome to the first installment of Buzzword Blowout™ on Oblogatory™, the Captivation Capital blog. In business, buzzwords can start out as nifty little phrases that put an appealing spin on business concepts and practices. Quickly, though, buzzwords can morph into highly irritating, hackneyed sayings that, when repeated once too often, can lead to office altercations that may or may not involve extremities being stapled to the conference room carpet. It's into this milieu that Captivation Capital, Inc. recently launched Buzzword Blowout™, a two-fold service, really. First, it rids the world of unnecessary buzzwords through the use of excessive quantities of explosives, thereby making room for the only new buzzword businesses need when considering development of an advertising campaign (Captivation Capital®, of course). Secondly, it provides a release valve for the aforementioned wild-eyed, staple-wielding types, who, instead of searching for the nearest office supply to weaponize, can safely stare and giggle into their screens as their most loathed buzzwords are vaporized in a ball of flame. So, what do we have on the blasting block today? A whole mess of SPECIAL SAUCE! Over the past few years, "special sauce" has made a long journey from its traditional confines 'neath the sesame seed bun of a Big Mac, all the way to the vernacular of hip business folks. Suddenly, everybody's company has the "special sauce" to solve problems, or make better widgets, or build cooler buildings. Even people, apparently, are brimming with the stuff. "Yeah, Bob in marketing. He's a genius. He has that special sauce, ya know, that can take on any challenge." Frankly, Bob can keep his sauce to himself. We've slathered it all over the blasting block and we're blowing it all sky high, good-bye! To see this and other buzzwords meet their deserved fate, visit buzzwordblowout.com. Plus, YOU can even suggest the buzzword that has you angrilly eyeing the stapler every time it's said. Send it in and we'll send it to oblivion on the Buzzword Blowout Blasting Block! ​ #marketing #advertisingagency #BuzzwordBlowout #explosion #specialsauce #buzzwords #businessbuzzwords

​My kids mock my wife an I relentlessly every time we have the audacity to speak the word "blog." "Daaad. It's blog not BLAHHHG," they scoff from the backseat. "Just say 'log' and put a 'B' before it." Naturally, I ignore them completely, doubling down with an exaggerated "BLAAAG." Exasperating your children, on occasion, is one of life's little gifts. Builds character. Plus, when they're grown, they can write a book about it and sell millions. So, really, I'm giving them a financially secure future. Dad of the Year material, here, folks. Enough about my parenting skills. My point is, this is my first blog and I'll strive to make it worth reading. In other words, I'm shooting for an entertaining, informative blog, not a BLAH...g. Looking forward to it. #firstpost #blogging #marketing #advertisingagency