With ads appearing in outlets like Stars & Stripes and Military Times, the campaign is aimed at fostering grassroots involvement and increasing MOAA’s membership of 370,000. Elements include print and online ads, a video and a microsite (joinmoaa.org), all created by LM&O Advertising of Arlington, Va.

The ads echo the outrage of servicemembers who may be shortchanged some of the benefits that attracted them to military careers if cuts proposed in the 2013 defense budget are approved. A headline over an image of the U.S. Capitol building asks, “Who on earth would break a promise to our nation’s military?” “You kept your promise to serve. Now they’re breaking theirs,” says an online banner.

The campaign’s one-minute video begins as a letter from Uncle Sam: “Dear Servicemember, through hot and cold wars, you met every demand your country imposed. For your career of service, we promised you and your family a special package of health and other benefits. Now we’re writing to tell you, we’ve changed the deal.”

Moving beyond anger to action, the creative urges servicemembers to “make sure our leaders do the right thing” by visiting the campaign’s microsite to “join the fight to protect the benefits you were promised.”

“Our strategy appeals to officers’ sense of leadership in times of crisis,” said MOAA Marketing Director Mike Jordan. “To defeat these budget proposals, MOAA needs strength in numbers now more than ever.”

If lawmakers approve the proposals, military retirees’ healthcare costs could rise as much $2,000 a year by 2017, and a new commission will have the authority to fast-track other changes to military retirement.  The House Armed Services Committee is expected to meet on May 9 to finish its version of the 2013 National Defense Authorization Act. Senate Armed Services subcommittees are scheduled to begin mark-up May 22.

The campaign’s media schedule, which runs through October, also includes military.com, GIjobs.com and Facebook, among others. LM&O handled media planning and buying.

Share

On Friday, the Mid-Atlantic Marketing Summit–Intelligence & Insights on the Future of Communications will bring together 300 advertising, marketing, communications and media executives to discuss high-level marketing and communications issues through a series of panels, keynotes, presentations and networking.

Sherri’s panel State of the Industry: Insights from Association Leadership will address the state of the industry, measuring ROI and finding and keeping talent in the market. The event is co-produced by two of the most respected news organizations of their kind in the region: Potomac Tech Wire, the region’s source for technology news and co-producer of Digital Media Conference East, and Capitol Communicator, the region’s source for marketing and communications news. The conference will be held on April 20th at the elegant and state-of-the art conference center at the Gannett/USA Today’s headquarters centrally located in McLean, VA.

On April 21st, Sherri will share her insights with students and young professionals at the third annual GW Women in Business (GWWIB) Spring Conference themed  “Envision. Engage. Execute. A Blueprint for Success.” which is expected to draw more than 200 college students and young professionals.

Keynote speakers include:

• Princess Yasmine Pahlavi, Founder, The Foundation for the Children of Iran;
• Bobbie Lloyd, President and Chief Baking Officer, Magnolia Bakery; and
• Alexis Maybank, Founder and Chief Strategy Officer, Gilt Groupe.

The conference will feature ten industry-focused panel discussions with thought leaders in finance, consulting, marketing and advertising, sports management, food and restaurants, fashion, event planning, technology, law and policy, and media. Sherri will be a speaker on the Marketing & Advertising panel.

Following an afternoon networking luncheon with notable Washington bloggers, attendees will participate in personal and career development workshops on topics such as mentorship, college entrepreneurship, social media, personal branding, diversity, business style, philanthropy, and more.

The conference is open to women and men of all ages. Tickets must be purchased in advance and include conference admission, breakfast, lunch, and dessert, a conference “swag” bag, and a signed copy of By Invitation Only, a new book by Gilt Groupe founders Alexis Maybank and Alexandra Wilkis Wilson.

Share

To attract UrbanArias’ target audience of 20- and 30-somethings, the campaign has to bust entrenched opera stereotypes. Ads reassure prospective ticket buyers they will not be subjected to three hours of medieval French by billing the festival as, “Two modern, short (90 minutes) understandable (English) operas.”

The campaign takes advantage of the productions’ juicy subject matter—sexual positions, marital roles and addiction—to counter the perception that opera is out of touch. The poster for “Booze and  Cigarettes,” depicting a smoky, red velvet-clad lounge, suggests a late-night bender and definitely not, say, a funeral pyre suicide.

Taking a cue from the festival’s other production, “Positions 1956,” LM&O went for a retro look for some of the creative. Barbie- and Ken-like silhouettes, dance-step diagrams (a la Arthur Murray) and the era’s distinctive editorial style are part of a fun, on-trend aesthetic. It signals that audiences  are in for a good time and dispels the belief that opera takes itself too seriously.

“UrbanArias’ mission of producing short, contemporary opera is meant to appeal to a younger generation of arts consumers, but we face that group’s preconceived notions of what opera is. LM&O’s campaign clearly portrays UrbanArias as fun, hip, young, subversive, and interesting,” said UrbanArias Executive and Artistic Director Robert Wood

LM&O produced the creative and media plan. In addition to posters, materials include print and interactive ads, which are running in Washington City Paper, Metro Weekly, washingtonian.com, ARLnow.com and washingtoncitypaper.com.

Tickets for UrbanArias’ festival of short opera are $22 and on sale at www.urbanarias.org.

Share

ARLINGTON, Va. – A new recruitment ad campaign created for the U.S. Coast Guard by LM&O Advertising taps GPS coordinates and passionate young recruits to attract motivated millennials with an aptitude for science, technology, engineering or math.

Rolling out this month, the national television, radio, print and online ads are the Coast Guard’s first campaign from LM&O, which was named agency of record in May.

“The Workout,” one of two 30-second TV spots, opens with a Guardswoman putting herself through the paces in a gym aboard a Coast Guard ship. “Training is about more than muscle. It’s about inner strength. So I push myself,” she says in the voice-over.

“The campaign aims to strike a chord with young men and women who are self-propelled. They have an inner drive and know they can achieve great things as part of a team,” said Dave Marinaccio, chief creative officer at LM&O.

The agency used geographic coordinates (i.e. representing latitude and longitude) to unify the campaign and engage the Coast Guard’s tech- and science-savvy target audience. The figures flash continuously in the lower left quadrant of the TV spots and stand on their own as headlines in the online and print ads.

“We want the audience to see that a career in the Coast Guard aligns with their skills, piquing their interest in finding out more,” said Marinaccio.

The new campaign, which is slated to run through 2012, retains the Coast Guard’s “Born Ready” tagline, introduced in 2009.

Share

VIDEO / LM&O uses GPS coordinates and passionate young recruits to attract motivated millennials with an aptitude for science, technology, engineering or math into the U.S. Coast Guard.

Share

By Marjorie Censer, Published: September 18

Local information technology contractors have taken the federal cloud-first policy quite literally.

Since the government announced last year that it would give priority to cloud — or Web-based — computing, contractors have been overloading their Web sites with images of puffy white clouds and blue skies.

They’re hoping to show that they’re on board with the new policy — and ready to be awarded contracts — but some marketing specialists say the images may signal something else.

“If everyone is portraying themselves to look like the same thing, then there’s no differentiation in the offering,” said Susan Waldman, a partner at District-based branding firm ZilYen.

Waldman said she’s only seen one company — Apple — get it right.

Apple is busy readying iCloud, which reflects an effort to stamp its own identity on the space, Waldman said.

She and Sherri Green, president of the D.C. Ad Club and director of business development at LM&O Advertising in Arlington, said the key to successful advertising is illustrating how a firm’s version stands out.

For “an IT professional, seeing an image of the cloud — it’s an automatic get [that] this company offers cloud technology,” said Green. “So the ad has got to communicate what [the] benefit is.”

Green said LM&O has seen an increase in the number of companies interested in the agency’s help in marketing their cloud-related products and services.

To be fair, IT contractors face a challenge marketing their technology services — many of which aren’t exactly camera-ready. Will Gustafson, marketing manager at Accelera Solutions in Fairfax, said in an e-mail that the cloud image is so pervasive that the company can use it “to evoke instant associations with our intended audience — IT professionals.”

He said Accelera seeks to show what it can offer by pairing cloud images with physical equipment such as a laptop.

Lex Crosett, vice president and chief information officer at Germantown-based Earth Networks, is less impressed with the marketing of the cloud than with the model itself.

Cloud computing was previously known as “utility computing, with the concept that you would rent only what you needed,” he said. “This somehow morphed.”

He criticized the proliferation of puffy clouds in advertising as a fad that doesn’t do much to clarify what a company is offering.

Crosett comes from a business that knows its clouds — both of the literal and the figurative variety. Earth Networks operates WeatherBug, an online site whose need for data capacity fluctuates with the weather.

“We’re kind of poster children for the need for cloud or utility computing,” Crosett said. “When the weather is calm, we’re at 20 percent of capacity; when we have a big weather event, we go right up to peg the limit.”

Share