Blog Archives | PriceWeber

October 22, 2020

CGI for Marketing and Advertising – It’s Not Just for Spaceships and Dinosaurs Anymore

In 1972, advances in and increased access to computer processing spawned the first experiments in what would come to be known as computer graphic imagery (CGI). That year, the future founder of Pixar, Ed Catmull, created the first known 3D CGI film. Simultaneously Hollywood writer/director Michael Crichton’s engineers pioneered the first use of CGI in […]

October 20, 2020

5 Reasons Financial Institutions Must Curate Deeper Customer Relationships

1. Building Trust Is Essential for Growth and Retention Financial institutions of all types understand the importance of trust. Without it, you won’t be successful in retaining existing customers, and it will be difficult to lure in new money without a trustworthy reputation. But the mindset that you will build trust by simply doing what […]

October 13, 2020

Public Relations Is More Than Press Releases

In 2020, typical communications strategies took a back seat amid the global COVID-19 pandemic. Many businesses quickly pulled all marketing efforts during the start of COVID-19, evaluating how to best handle this crisis and still get key messaging to the public without appearing tone-deaf to what was happening in the world around us. But while […]

September 28, 2020

Expect the Unexpected – What 2020 is Teaching us About Crisis Communications Planning

For a long time to come, 2020 will be known as the year that changed everything – the way we live, socialize, shop, travel and work. You name it and it was impacted this year. That includes crisis communications plans that were already in place. Many businesses have formal plans that help them prepare for their worst-case scenarios, but who was ready for a pandemic that affected how businesses operate, or for national protests as a result of racial injustice that held businesses accountable to be transparent about where they stood in the Black Lives Matter movement? The answer: absolutely no one.

September 23, 2020

Have Bank Customer Expectations Been Changed Forever?

There’s no denying that customer experience (CX) has looked very different in 2020. However, there’s still a question of how this strange year might affect expectations for CX moving forward.

September 21, 2020

Taking Excellent Social Media Photos — 5 Tips From a Photography Legend

We are surrounded by photographs pretty much every waking minute that we are using any type of communication device these days. In the realm of social media, photographs and video content rule the platforms. Let’s dive a bit further into the subject of Taking Excellent Social Media Photos — 5 Tips From a Photography Legend. […]

September 16, 2020

Open Banking in the US – The Drivers and Barriers That Financial Institutions Are Watching

Open banking is oftentimes perceived as a trend taking place in Europe but that is lacking adoption in the United States. The reality is that it is very much a part of the financial services landscape in the U.S., but its proliferation is driven by a different source than in Europe. Due to European regulators predicting a boom in open banking, the EU drafted PSD2 (Payment Services Directive 2) while the U.K. released their version known as OBI (Open Banking Implementation) in order to get in front of the phenomenon with regulations and guidelines. In the United States, the Treasury has agreed to draft guidelines and recommendations, but there is no law or regulation in America that drives open banking forward. However, one doesn’t have to look further than the number of Third-Party Providers (TPPs) affecting consumer and business banking in the U.S. to realize that the trend has taken hold in the states as well.

September 9, 2020

Surviving the On-Premise Apocalypse – 4 Strategies for a Healthy Spirits Brand Today and Tomorrow

A casual reader looking at spirit sales numbers for 2020 might think it’s a pretty good year. After all, in July Nielsen indicated a 52-week rolling sales increase of 5.1%. But those numbers do not tell the whole story. Overrepresentation in sales increases by the larger, high awareness brands and well known value brands, and […]

September 1, 2020

Are Podcasts Finally Ready for Prime Time?

Podcast advertising has recently become a hot topic among brands and media planners. In today’s PriceWeber Plain Talk post, we’ll talk about why the medium is growing, some reasons it might be time to consider adding podcasts to your media strategy and some of the best practices for podcast advertising if you do. The technology […]

April 16, 2020

Is the Clock Ticking on TikTok?

While most of the world is in quarantine and practicing social distancing, one social media platform has continued to maintain a rapid growth in downloads, especially in the U.S. According to Sensor Tower’s report, 2019’s second most downloaded app worldwide, TikTok, saw an 18% increase in downloads, tallying the number to 2 million between March 16 and 22, compared to the previous week at 1.7 million.

April 9, 2020

Community banks, critical to economic recovery

If you’ve been in the banking business for a while like me, you can attest to the fact that for decades, pundits have declared virtually every recession, economic downturn or national crisis to be the death knell of community banks, and in 2020, the financial emergency caused by the global pandemic is no different.

March 27, 2020

Trust, COVID-19 and Corporate America

In this edition of our plain-talk series, we’ll take a look at brand trust and corporate social responsibility, and discuss how the two are playing out during the current COVID-19 global crisis.

March 10, 2020

When Small Banks Are Battling Goliath, They Need to Think Like David.

Community and regional banks facing competition from the bigger money center banks need to know how they can compete effectively and win. If they try to fight the same way as the giants, they will get overpowered and definitely overspent. But if they think like a smaller bank, they’re nimble and responsive enough to compete successfully. So, how do smaller banks prevail? They think like David.

February 10, 2020

Barnes & Noble, Black History Month and the Value of Insight Over Intuition

Recent headlines regarding a planned (and abruptly cancelled) Barnes & Noble Black History Month promotion serve as a reminder that not all well-intentioned marketing ideas are worth doing. As marketing professionals with years of experience, we’ve all learned to trust, to some degree, that little voice inside our heads that tells us when we may have stumbled across an idea that could be genius. Intuition. Inspiration. The gap in time and space where the magic happens.

January 24, 2020

Follow the money in the financial services ad space

Ad dollars are on the move in the financial space – increasingly shifting from traditional to digital, and specifically to mobile. While financial services have historically relied on more traditional vehicles, times are indeed changing. In this edition of the Compound Interest series, we’ll talk about why it is time to up your digital game and how to do it.

January 9, 2020

Top Five Priorities for Regional Banks in 2020 and Beyond

If you’re like me, the beginning of the new year means you’ve spent some time thinking through the opportunities and risks that lie ahead in 2020, hopeful that with the right marketing plan, you can enable your institution to grow, keeping customers, employees and the board content. But often, input from stakeholders, overambitious business plans or constraints on staffing and budget mean that not every facet of your plan can be realized. In this first installment of our “Compound Interest” financial services marketing series, I’ll share some of the valuable things I’ve learned over my 30 years in bank marketing about how to put a successful plan into motion.

Influencer Marketing Strategy – Is Influencer Marketing Right for You?

Influencer marketing has become a digital monster. Are you doing it? Are you doing it wrong? Should you be doing it at all? If so, how and under what circumstances? In this edition of the Plain Talk series, we’ll take some of the mystery out of influencer marketing and dispel a few myths along the way. First, let’s talk about the money.

November 12, 2019

Your website definitely needs to be ADA accessible

In our Plain Talk article earlier this year, Can your website land you in court? Making your website ADA accessible, we discussed a few reasons why businesses should consider upgrading their website accessibility for people with disabilities. At that time, a flood of discrimination lawsuits were hitting the courts that related to Title III of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), and we recommended that if your business had a physical location and a website, you should “probably” make it WCAG 2.1 compliant to meet contemporary recommended standards for accessibility. In this edition of our Plain Talk series, we’ll be upgrading that “probably” to a “definitely” and explaining what’s changed and how it may impact you and your business.

July 22, 2019

Digital ads that drive business

If you’ve been advertising online for any amount of time, you’re probably already pretty familiar with a couple of the most common ways to run ads on the web.

June 28, 2019

Social Responsibility Trends

In today’s plain-talk newsletter, we’re talking social responsibility trends. Americans’ trust in the federal government to handle both international and domestic matters is at the lowest point it has been in more than twenty years, according to a recent Gallup poll. Only 35 percent of Americans have “a great deal” or “a fair amount” of trust in the U.S. government’s ability to handle domestic issues. Meanwhile, trust in the government to handle international issues ranks only six points higher at a mere 41 percent.

June 21, 2019

Trends in B2B trade show best practices

In this first edition of the “plain-talk B2B marketing” series we’ll be talking trends in B2B trade shows. We hope you’ll find valuable insights that you can apply to your B2B marketing regimen.

June 17, 2019

Filling Those Open Healthcare Positions

In this first installment of our “plain-talk healthcare marketing” series, we’ll prescribe some practical advice about some of the most difficult marketing that healthcare groups have to do – recruitment marketing – and how to smooth the path to filling open healthcare positions.

June 13, 2019

Get ready for the California Consumer Privacy Act

Welcome to summer! Remember when summer meant vacations with the family, sunny days lounging by the pool or even just sleeping in? Yeah, we remember that too. However, in today’s fast-moving world of digital marketing, summer also means planning time.

April 25, 2019

Time to get rid of your old CMS

For years you’ve had your website on a partner’s proprietary content management system. Why is now the time for a change? In this installment of our plain-talk digital series, we’ll explain.

April 11, 2019

Mobile Trends That Drive Business

If you haven’t been following the latest trends and best practices for mobile web design, you may be leaving money on the table. So how do you design a better, more effective mobile website experience for your customers? In this installment of our plain-talk digital marketing series, we’ll talk about five trends driving best practices in web development for mobile.

March 29, 2019

April Fools’ Day 2019 – A Walk Down Prank Memory Lane

In the advertising world, April Fools’ Day is comparable to the Super Bowl. Advertising agencies and corporations show off their creative flair with entertaining (and sometimes eye-roll worthy) spoofs. As we prepare to be blown away by the latest and greatest brand pranks in 2019, let’s reflect on our favorite April Fools’ Day pranks from 2018. So sit back, relax and get ready to chuckle (or groan).

March 12, 2019

Can your website land you in court? Making your website ADA accessible.

So deeply has the web penetrated how we navigate the world, that today your website could land you in court for a pretty unexpected reason.

September 7, 2018

Aging In Advertising And Popular Culture

Last month, this meme juxtaposing Tom Cruise and Wilford Brimley’s ages made the internet rounds, leaving innumerable blown minds in its wake. For those who followed up with Wikipedia, it proved true: When he filmed Cocoon in 1984, Brimley was 50 years old; Tom Cruise filmed Mission: Impossible-Fallout at 55. The age comparison between the two men has been circulating for the past few years, updating essentially with every new Mission: Impossible release, but this time it rocketed around social media faster, perhaps because Cruise is now in his mid-50s yet still pulling off his own stunts.

July 30, 2018

Recognizing and Reconciling Bias in Strategic Planning

Lately, our society has engaged in much more discussion about the need to recognize bias in ourselves and our culture, in how we interact with and represent others. As a primary means of mass communication, advertising has a special role to play in this concern.

February 20, 2018

Strategies for Navigating the Nursing Shortage

We are in the midst of a longstanding nursing shortage that has persisted in the U.S. and is expected to reach 1.2 million vacancies by 2022. While some states are in better shape than others, these vacancies will impact nearly every healthcare organization nationwide. Fortunately, there are recruitment tools and tactics that healthcare organizations can implement to overcome the effects of the shortage.

June 26, 2017

“I will not abandon my new site in the cold darkness.”

In 2016, PriceWeber began a relationship with an economic development association, where our specific charge was to upgrade their web presence after several years of neglect.

May 15, 2017

Practicality Over Pranks: The Changing Face of College Choice

Economic recession has been influencing decisions whether and where to attend college in recent years. A new survey bears out that this trend continues among teenagers despite news that consumer confidence is on the rise.

May 4, 2017

Is Big Beer the Future of Craft?

When we initially fielded research on people’s tastes, attitudes and preferences in the craft beer category, we expected to learn or validate much of what’s already been discovered. Yes, people are suffering a bit from hop overdose. Fruit sours are growing in popularity. People increasingly treat craft beers like wine, pairing them with food. Consumers often discover new craft beers upon recommendation of bartenders and friends, so you need bar staff relations and social media programs to spread the word. Our research backs these trends up, but the question was — were there any surprises?

December 19, 2016

Cracking a Few Nuts

We didn’t say it, but Gene Marks of The Washington Post did. This holiday season, PriceWeber wanted to create a unique way to showcase our festive spirit while driving awareness for our client Louisville Ballet. So we constructed a 39-foot, 6-inch nutcracker. The result is “cracking a few nuts” from its position just off Shelbyville Road. And yes, it can actually crack a nut.

September 15, 2016

Long-Game Crisis Communications: Planning Beyond the Incident

If 2016 set out to be the year of controversy, it certainly hasn’t disappointed. Daily local, regional, national and international headlines have not failed to give passionate social media users a plethora of causes to fuel the expression of their opinions. And much like the Energizer Bunny, they just keep going and going and going.

September 9, 2016

Don’t Reinvent the Wheel: Tips for Overhauling Your Website

If you’re like most businesses today, you have a website – one that may have been designed five to 10 years ago, and today is an unsightly patchwork of add-on features.

May 10, 2016

Reality Check: Virtual Reality’s Role in Marketing

Unless you’ve been in hiding, without a smartphone, you’ve heard a lot about virtual reality. For some, VR is touted as the “it” technology that will save marketing (or make it cool again). From the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas to gamer and entertainment blogs, it’s been hot water-cooler talk for some time. If you’ve experienced virtual reality yourself, you have to admit, it’s pretty cool tech. But is it really the next big thing, or will it just be another arrow in the marketing quiver?