Strategic Brief

Date: February 23, 2009

Client: Palmer Advertising

Prepare For: Creative & Production Department

Prepared By: Barbra Gago

Project: Palmer Website Strategy (Re-Design)

Job Number: 20782

End Date: Projected Launch Date of April 11, 2009 (Other dates
noted below)

Overview

The following is a re-design & re-develop project for the Palmer Advertising
website. The site as it is,has been live for about six years. While the design
has served its purpose in the past, it now conflicts with the “Palmer re-brand
platform” (job #20326) that was developed late last year.

Since the company is positioning itself in a different light, the website must
reflect this new brand image. The site has also proven to be dysfunctional as
a marketing tool, or a lead generation device, and therefore a complete re-
develop of the site is to be conducted with a real SEO strategy and a long
term content development plan.

Objectives

Our objective is to re-design the site (front and backend) to adhere to the
messaging provided by the brand platform, and to be the primary marketing
tool & lead generation apparatus for Palmer Advertising. Here is a list of the
primary objectives:

• Generate sales enquiries (primary marketing tool)

• Raise brand awareness
• Raise organic search results
• Generate “inbound marketing” traffic
• Reflect new brand guidelines
 • Engage and interest users
• Build outreach lists – emails
• Exploit the creativity of the company
• Provide educational material
• Encourage brand loyalty
• Position ourselves as experts within the community

Audience / Targets

The target audience for the site is the same target audience that was
outlined in the brand platform. Palmer is specifically targeting smaller to mid-
sized companies with annual advertising budgets of $500,000 to $5 million
per year. Due to solid experience, Palmer also wishes to parlay its extensive
experience to targeting community banking, fairs & festivals. Target
characteristics for website visitors may be:

• Perspective clients in general

• Varied Industries; Technology, Agriculture, Alternative Energies,
Financial Institutions, Automotive, Healthcare, Governmental, etc.
• Advertising & marketing decision makers
• In-house Marketing Professionals
• Designers, Copywriters, and other creative people (potential
freelancers, etc)
• Award groups – Once creative is submitted
• Relatively tech savvy individuals
• Possibly other advertising or marketing agencies

Competitors

The following are sites we analyzed for competitive purposes, and to

determine best practices among the advertising and marketing community.

• Alt – Marketing & Advertising Firm

• Grey – Local Full Service Agency
• Goodby – Local Full Service Agency
• Doremus – Full Service Agency Specializing in High Tech
• Haggin Marketing – Marketing Agency
• Gumas – Full Service Agency
• Wong Doody

Others sites to reference: AMP Agency (Branding, Interactive, Promotional) &

Burder Engel (Full Service) Olgilvy (Local Full Service). Possibly other
advertising or marketing sites may also be referenced for features or other
creative elements.

Competitive Research Results

These are our findings from the competitive analysis conducted. Based on
the seven sites listed above, here is a summary of our findings:
Overall these sites are interactive, mostly by use of flashanimation. There
were few that were really engaging (adding additional information or added
value such as white papers, videos, tips, etc) aside from explaining what their
company could do for you. All of the sites were well designed, but specifically
to exhibit their brand personality through their creative, and not to engage or
really interest the user, or connect on a deeper level.

While some sites do engage the user, most of these sites exist solely to
display their work, and act as an online portfolio. Haggin marketing, and a
couple others do more actively engage you, and this is due to the magnitude
of content available, such as blogs, white papers, innovative/interactive flash
demonstrations, and product summaries.

The look and feel of most of the sites is professional, sterile, and modern.
Many of them have an almost corporate feel to them. Rather than using the
site to present their personality most of them depended on the work to show
their personality.

Common Observations

• Corporate look and feel, lots of white space, little personality

showing
• A lot of Flash or Java was used
• Very interactive and creative ways of showing off creative
• Strong emphasis on the creative
• Many companies present their client by logo
• On average there was about 10-15 clients displayed
• Work per client ranged from 3-6 pieces
• A lot of work was presented w/case studies and/or explanations of
the project
• All presented their “philosophy”, “process”, “approach”, etc.
• “Leadership” section always introduces the employees (usually C
level)
• All introduced their team
• Most sites aside from the creative were not very robust
• Only smaller companies had blogs
• No social media efforts were detected (Wong Doody 55 Social
Bookmark links)
• Half low page ranks below 5, half with decent page ranks 5, or above
• No place for client feedback/comments or referrals

Best Practices

• Navigation: About, News, Portfolio, Clients, Services, People,

Philosophy or Approach, Contact, additionally “access” if client
access available, and blog
• Display 6 - 10 Clients w/ 3-5 pieces, and case study / campaign
overview
 • Secure client login section
• Interactive features
• About company, services, history, and employee bios
• Case Studies, Client Raves (Quotes)
• Press Releases
• Simple and Clean design elements

Marketing and promotion

Marketing for the site will be done in a grass roots manner. Along with the
launch of the new Palmer site, we will also be launching a Palmer Advertising
Community Site. The community site will be a sponsored site that focuses on
advertising in a recession. This site will have expert feedback, and
interviews, as well as user generated content related to advertising tips,
tricks, and success stories. Direct advertising might include; banner ads, or
other sponsored links (on podcasts & newsletters, etc).

The new Palmer site will also be promoted through announcements via email
to all our clients, and associates, press releases will be sent, and overall
marketing support through PPC efforts—keyword research was done to be
sure the content is keyword rich, and therefore high organic listings, as well
as smart paid listings.

Our linking efforts will be driven through the blog, which will be full of rich
content for other sites to link to. We will offer tips, case studies, and other
relevant marketing and advertising information. Some of this content may be
syndicated through the community site as well. And, other various social
efforts will be taken to promote the launch of the new site.

Design and branding

Highlights - As outlined in the Brand Platform (Job #20326)

The design should convey all of the below feelings and perceptions. Our
objective is to deliver a robust site, full of great and useful content, while still
being professional and specific to our field. There will be a blog (with a
newsletter set up for monthly updates) as well as more explanatory efforts on
the site where needed (ref Haggin Marketing) for services, case studies, etc.

The creative to be present on the site is to be determined. We are working

on a “content map” that will outline the specific creative, and guidelines /
location of site copy.

Agency Personality

The agency is very accommodating, flexible and adaptable. We think before

we act—every project begins with strategic planning, and we do not execute
creative based on guesswork, and it’s not interested in random, one off
projects.

Unique Sell Proposition

Palmer Advertising offers the creativity and service of a small shop combined
with the capabilities and talent of a big agency to provide small – to mid-sized
companies with the full range of services needed to drive their business
goals. We are frank, honest, approachable, and fun to work with.

Brand Promise

Palmer Advertising will give you big-agency caliber advertising – without big
agency waste, bureaucracy and attitude.

Key Message

You can have BIG, smart advertising without a big, impersonal, wasteful
advertising agency – all you need is Palmer Advertising.

Other Key Messages (Support)

• Every company—regardless of size or market niche—can improve its

business with advertising
• We specialize in inventing customized plans to advertise your
business
• We employ creative strategy, and strategic creative – to find ways to
make your advertising dollars go further
• Palmer is a small agency staffed with big agency personnel—so you
get the same quality of thinking and creative like at the big shops,
only without all the overloaded bureaucracy
• Palmer maintains constant and open communication
We are frank, honest, approachable—not to mention fun to work with

Look & Feel

The core brand design elements should be present, these are:

• Palmer logo
• Signature multi-colored stripes
• Color pallet
• Trade Gothic typeface

Transitioning from the current site design, it needs to evolved to look more
like this:

• Uncluttered
• Economical in words & visuals
• Convey confident humor w/ worldly voice, rather than cute
• Quick, decisive in it’s communication i.e. you look and you get it

The copy voice, and brand tone should be:

 • Competent
• Professional
• Sense of Humor
• Savvy
• Down to Earth
• Hip / Urbane
• Intelligent
• Knowledgeable
• Confident
• Relaxed & Friendly

Technical Comments

Currently the site is non-existent to search engines. We have a web grade of

15/100 for marketability. This grade is based on Alexa ranking, content,
indexed pages, in-bound links, social bookmarks, readability, blog, RSS feeds,
meta data, heading summaries, image summaries, and PageRank. Our goal is
clearly to improve the rating of all of these elements. Ideally, a grade of 70%
or above would be the goal; competitively other agencies are closer to 50%.

Keyword research was conducted to be sure all pages are labeled effectively,
and headings / descriptions are accurate to each page.

Currently, we have overlapping issues due toflash. Sometimes when you are
viewing different pages of the site, the previous page will remain below the
new page, and all the text is overlapped making in impossible to read.

The creative section is not developed enough. We would like to show of the
creative in a more dynamic manner, like our competitors.

The business priority that is not currently being met is simply lead
generation. Our main goal with this re-design is to generate leads, and
increase our visibility, while presenting ourselves more accurately (according
to the brand platform).

We want the site to be dynamic and interactive, but we don’t want to slow
down the load time of pages. Rather than all Flash (some is okay), Java is also
an option. Also, any content existing in Flash or Java, needs to be shadowed
by text.

Deliverables

List the deliverables (For Designer)

• Design Concepts – 3 or 4 Concepts (Homepage / Secondary Page)

• Website Style Guide
• Final Website Design – All relevant pages: Home, creative,
employees, services, contact, news, blog, newsletter, etc.

Budget
TBA

Timetable

General Timeline: Three Phases (Detailed timeline attached)

• Phase One: Research, Analysis & Concepting February

12th – March 16th
• Phase Two: Design March 5th – March
17th
• Phase Three: Built & Test March 17th – April
9th

Support and maintenance

Once the site is built, the support will be done in-house.

Content Management

In-house access will be available for all content management.

At this point the blog will be set up for weekly posts (at least one, possibly
more, depending on aggregation from Community site content) Also, a
newsletter will be developed and sent out monthly through the blog, to send
announcements, tips, etc. to our clients and other subscribers. The
community manager will be responsible for the blog, and all related tasks
here.

Copyright Statement

TBA