Show Management, producers of the Fort Lauderdale International Boat Show (FLIBS), has turned to Starmark to create a new brand mark, website redesign and strategic media campaign for this year’s event. (more…)
Starmark has taken top honors once again at the Visit Florida Govenor’s Conference on Tourism, which was held August 31st. The team, along with our client the Greater Fort Lauderdale Convention & Visitors Bureau (GFLCVB) took home the “Best of Show” award for the ground-breaking LGBT campaign, “Love is Love.”
Celebrating Florida’s recent marriage equality ruling, the campaign was the first of its kind, inviting 100 couples of all loves to exchange vows on beautiful Fort Lauderdale Beach. Campaign elements included videos, print and digital ads touting the headline “Finally, We All Do,” and a microsite where couples could enter to win.
At the Love is Love ceremony, (which took place just one month after the court ruling) NSYNC member and Dancing with the Stars alum, Lance Bass, delivered a moving address on the meaning of love as the event’s official “Love is Love” ambassador with his new husband Michael Turchin. A highlight of the ceremony was the pronouncement that the couples were all legally married, which was celebrated with an all out beach ball toss.
Additional wins for Starmark were a Henry for Love is Love in the mixed media campaign category; a Silver for Momentos Sunny (Latin American video series), a Silver for the GFLCVB Digital Magazine and Vacation Playbook; a Silver for the Destination Marketing Luncheon; and a Bronze for “The Beach Looks Good on You” Washington D.C. experiential event.
“Hello Sunny,” Starmark’s branding campaign for the Greater Fort Lauderdale Convention & Visitors Bureau has won the U.S. Travel Association’s “Destiny Award” for Branding and Integrated Marketing Campaign.
The brand-defining campaign was originally created by Starmark to seed Greater Fort Lauderdale’s refreshed positioning both domestically and internationally, drive traffic to sunny.org, create desire and ultimately increase hotel bookings. In the three years since its launch, it has accomplished all of the above, and more. This Destiny Award is its latest achievement.
“We couldn’t be more proud of the team,” stated Lisa Hoffman, Starmark Chief Marketing Officer. “When you have a passionate group of creative people, complemented by a client who is willing to push the envelope, that’s when the magic happens.”
About the Destiny Awards
The Destiny Awards recognize members for excellence and creative accomplishment in destination marketing and promotion at the local and regional level; and foster the development of imaginative and innovative destination marketing promotion programs and activities.
A geographic fence or “GeoFence” is a virtual way to define a physical area for marketing purposes. This brings a lot more flexibility for marketers than using pre-defined designated marketing areas (DMAs) or ZIP code.
Geofence technology targets users using their mobile devices when they “enter” or “leave” one of these custom-defined areas. Because of the variety of mobile devices out there, the technology is not incredibly precise – let’s say one city block is an example of an area – but GeoFence can work effectively when you want to target users “nearby” or within a broad location.
Practical applications could include a welcome greeting to visitors who enter a mall property or theme park. Geofencing requires an app which is aware when users enter your geofence which means it can customize its response based on proximity.
If you don’t have an app, fear not, you can still leverage geofencing through third-party apps. For example, let’s say you want to geofence a media buy to target users with a mobile banner ad when they are within one mile of your location. As long as you specify the one-mile radius (or number of city blocks) in your plan, the ads will appear to users via 3rd-party apps based on their location.
Marketing is all about relevancy, a geofence could help your messages become more relevant.
Operation Lift Hope is a community initiative uniting leaders from Fort Lauderdale’s business, government and social agencies in an effort to improve homelessness in South Florida. By leveraging a set of diverse experiences and creating a stronger, more caring community, Operation Lift Hope is working to literally lift hope for homeless families, veterans and individuals.
The Starmark team joined forces with Fort Lauderdale Mayor Jack Seiler, County Commissioner Chip LaMarca, Andy Mitchell, President of Fairwinds Group, and other community partners to clearly identify the organization’s positioning. To support this positioning, Starmark developed a brand mark and brand messaging. The new Operation Lift Hope branding and positioning was revealed as a fully integrated creative campaign, which consisted of a new website, OperationLiftHope.org; print advertisements; emails; a television spot; a PR fundraising kit; and print collateral. These campaign elements are being used as promotional tools for the Inaugural Gala, which was held on the evening of September 25th, 2015 at the Broward County Convention Center.
“Starmark has done a remarkable job with the Operation Lift Hope effort. Their creative staff has been amazing to work with as they developed the complete launch package in record time. Starmark leadership sets the tone that creates the “customer first” atmosphere while demanding personal excellence in all transactions regardless of the team players involved. This teamwork environment brings the best out in people resulting in top tier creative content achieving all objectives and delighting the customer in the process.”
— Andy Mitchell, President of Fairwinds Group and Chair of Operation Lift Hope.
To broadcast its mission, Starmark was asked to redesign and expand the Operation Lift Hope website. Using Agile methodology, Starmark roadmapped the project and identified business objectives, goals and success criteria. Production was quickly underway and the result is a modern and user friendly website built to support the fundraising efforts, showcase the extent of the partners’ collaboration and generate greater public awareness.
“Starmark has done a remarkable job with the Operation Lift Hope website. Their creative staff has been amazing to work with as they designed and produced the new website in record time.”
To learn more and to get involved, visit OperationLiftHope.org.
In today’s world of digital advertising, whether you call it SEO, SEM or PPC; or measure by CPC, CPL or CPM, the goal is one and the same — tracking and conversion. While a variety of tools make measurement fairly mundane, how do businesses attribute conversions to the appropriate marketing source? Let’s explore two methods within Google’s AdWords Program.
Tracking offline conversions
Oftentimes, a click on an AdWords ad doesn’t lead directly to an online sale but it’s the beginning of a customer journey that will hopefully result in a sale or conversion. Whether it’s in-store or over the phone, we need to trace that sale back to its origin. To leverage this method, the prospect must have been driven to your website and submitted data (i.e. lead or subscription form). With the sale tied to its source, the sales team can track the offline activity against the original lead source via AdWords and show not only lead submissions, but how those leads resulted in actual sales/conversions.
Estimated Store Visits
With the relatively new AdWords ‘store visits’ tool, you can estimate the amount of in-store traffic that may have resulted from an ongoing AdWords program. Using an anonymous data set from mobile devices with location tracking enabled, marketers can estimate the amount of traffic that entered their stores and while this tool cannot tell you that X people clicked on your ad, which resulted in Y store visits and Z sales, it can provide greater accountability of your ad words program. Currently, this program is limited to larger businesses with multiple US store locations and a high number of ad clicks and store views such as Office Depot.
As the line between online and offline continues to blur and more people begin their search for products and services on mobile devices, offline conversion tracking will continue to mature. But getting started today will be a critical success factor for your AdWords program.
Reprinted from South Florida Business Journal
Apple Watches are just starting to make their appearances on busy executives’ wrists. There has been hype about game, stock, news and health apps for the new wearable technology, but not so much about what benefits Apple Watch offers technology-crazed business leaders who bounce from emails to smartphones to tablets to laptops – and not always with the greatest of ease. (more…)
Starmark’s summer BBQ really sizzled as we celebrated emerging technologies; new releases; and clients, old and new! Throughout the festivities, we enjoyed a feast of scrumptious bites hot from the grill. It was a sizzling good time and the grills and thrills were nonstop from start to finish! (more…)
Snapchat may have finally found an advertising model that its core millennial users will actually like — custom geofilters with opportunities for companies to brand and sponsor.
Geofilters allow users to add a location-specific filter to photos or videos they post to the network. These filters have become a popular way to tell friends where a photo was taken, and now more than 1 million snapchats a day are decorated with a geofilter.
Since December, users have been able to propose new geofilters however to date, the company stated only one-third of the submissions have been approved for use and distribution. Brands benefit tremendously because they can bypass the regular user-approval process and add geofilters to thousands of locations simultaneously – a huge win for retailers with multiple locations.
While sponsored geofilters will be marked with a small “Sponsored” imprint, they will function exactly as existing filters do. So if your brand is trying to appeal to millennials, Snapchat geofilters may be an effective tool to make a lasting impression for your brand in a new and upcoming channel.
Location based marketing (LBM) is a direct marketing strategy that delivers targeted communications based on where your audience is standing. With the proliferation of mobile devices in today’s market, there is tremendous potential to leverage this emerging technology. To help you navigate through the geofences and beacons, we’ve developed a cheat sheet that outlines these and more! (more…)
Introducing the new Starmark eTips app — an interactive library of hundreds of marketing tips, organized by category (branding, advertising, direct, interactive, mobile, public relations, analytics).
The eTips app complements our fourth edition of the eTips book series, 50 eTips for Market Leaders. With the new app version of eTips, our clients, partners and friends can now receive our weekly tips right on their mobile devices, plus they’ll have instant access to Starmark’s full library of eTips.
From the latest in Google’s mobile algorithm updates to the impact of influential social media celebrities on your brand – you’ll learn from members of our team who live and breathe these concepts every day. From geo-fencing to beacons, the app features several location-based marketing technologies, and when you visit Starmark, you’ll see it in action!
The Starmark eTips app is available at the App Store for iOS and on Google Play for Android. Download today and keep up to date with the latest developments across all things marketing.
Marketing with native mobile apps and location based technologies is an important part of any integrated marketing program. Often written about and discussed, technologies like push notifications, Beacons and geo-fencing are a lot easier to understand when you can have a demonstration of them in action.
Before developing any mobile app, at its core it needs to be useful to the users who you want to download it. If the app is not compelling, it will be difficult to expand adoption. So, the Starmark Innovation Lab brainstormed and outlined a mobile app that is not only packed full of cool tech that’s easy to demo, but also a useful marketing reference guide as well.
One resource that Starmark has been building upon for over five years is our library of eTips. Creating an app that could include all of the eTips as a searchable reference helps our technology demonstration app meet this requirement. With over 200 tips, and new ones added every week, we decided to build the Starmark eTips App and make a useful reference guide.
We also wanted the many location based technology demonstrations built into the app to be useful.
To demonstrate geo-fencing we created a “Directions” tab in the app to for users to get directions to our office. When users are outside the geo-fence, the app provides driving directions Maps. When users enter the geo-fence – which is about 2 blocks around our downtown office – the app alters the content on the Directions screen to focus on nearby parking, the valet, and the location of the office front door.
To demonstrate beacons, we installed several around the office which are configured to compliment a tour of the office. Not only did we want to demonstrate how beacons work, but also some of the possibilities of marketing via beacons. One is setup to drive users to video content, an example TV commercial produced by Starmark. Another is setup to demonstrate a social connection by driving users to check in to Starmark on Facebook. The third is setup to prompt users to download an App.
And, if you have not yet downloaded the Starmark eTips app while you are on an office tour, we also setup a demonstration of Smart Posters which have an NFC antenna built into them. This allows Android users to hold their phone over the poster and receive a prompt to download our App. Another demonstration of location based marketing technology that can be applied to any piece of paper, from a poster to a name badge.
Lastly, a feature most people are familiar with but still has a wide variety of marketing applications is push notifications. With the Starmark eTips app we can notify users when a new eTip is loaded, or for other announcements and event reminders.
The Starmark eTips app is available in the App Store for iOS and on Google Play for Android. Download today and keep up to date with the latest developments across all things marketing.