First Quarter 2010 • Produced by Berlin Productions • www.berlinproductions.com • 914-683-5759
BERLIN GROWS

Last year was a tremendous one at Berlin. Even in the challenging economy, we expanded our staff and our capabilities. The added full-time talent brings more than 100 years of full-service marketing, sales, creative and programming capabilities and experience to our agency, now in its 28th year.

Lindsay Farrell, who interned at Berlin while attending Sacred Heart University, brings additional creative talent to our web and print design projects, and she helps bring these projects to life with her programming skills. In addition, Lindsay is a lead producer on interactive presentations, using both PowerPoint and Keynote.

Geoff Grant infuses Berlin with more than 25 years of sales and marketing expertise
including planning, integrated marketing and development for clients such as Kraft Foods, Unilever, William Grant & Sons, Panasonic, Western Union Financial Services and TriArc Beverages. Geoff’s experience with The Guild Group and Hewlett-Packard also enables him to lead Internet-related marketing programs for Berlin’s clients. Geoff has a B.S. in computer science from Boston College, Carroll School of Management.

Tom Hayduk brings to us more than 30 years of experience in packaged goods marketing, trade marketing, sales, product management, strategic planning and consumer promotion planning, including retail, trade and account-specific programs. Tom’s diverse client and brand experience includes Pepsi, Kraft Foods, Back to Nature, Balance Bar, Starbucks, Tazo Tea, Mott’s, Kozy Shack, Guinness and Weight Watchers. From Douwe Egberts Van Nelle and Ryan Partnership to TLP and The Guild Group, Tom’s expertise with consumer promotions benefits all Berlin clients.

Alan Karel’s foundation as a marketing
specialist is built on 30 years of strategic planning and concept development. Alan spent several years in advertising and promotion at The Guild Group and has also served as division VP at agencies for McDonald’s and Taco Bell. He has led marketing teams serving Fortune 500 clients, while managing functional areas including planning, media, premium procurement, fulfillment, legal and safety
compliance. Alan is a graduate of the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, with an MBA from the Sawyer School of Management at Suffolk University in Boston.

Ryan Wilensky has extensive account
management experience in the consumer packaged goods and hospitality industries. He began his career working with Holiday Inn and IHG, where he developed and implemented People Notice, a set of training standards focused on delivering a consistent experience for hotel guests. For Kozy Shack, Ryan has implemented several offline and online integrated consumer promotions for the United States and Canada, driving sales, share gains and incremental purchases. A creative thinker and tactician, Ryan is obsessed with meeting timelines and budgets.

So, what do these additions mean to you? Complementing our long-established web, interactive and video development capabilities, Berlin's services now include:
  • Marketing Strategy & Planning
  • Concept Development
  • Consumer Promotion (development and execution)
  • Integrated Marketing (online with offline)
  • Program Management
  • Sales Collateral
  • Retail/Account-Specific Planning and Execution
  • Sweepstakes Administration and Legal
  • Prize Procurement and Fulfillment
PROJECT SPOTLIGHT

Quest for Real Ingredients

As part of our marketing strategy for Kozy Shack, Berlin developed, designed and implemented this continuity program in which consumers collected codes from multipacks of Kozy Shack pudding to earn free movie tickets. Codes were submitted at a specially designed promotional microsite, where the consumers could also download and print their tickets. Berlin created and executed the promotion, including:
  • Designing and constructing the microsite;
  • Developing all creative elements including package design, print ads, POS media and e-mail blasts;
  • Generating unique codes for all packaging;
  • Custom-programming all site functionality and security;
  • Creating a secure online interface with
    the e-movie ticket provider; and
  • Generating daily performance reports.
The promotion drove over 500,000 site visits and 90,000 code inputs, while providing a simple yet pleasurable branded consumer experience.

Websites

The following are just a few of the sites Berlin designed, or redesigned, for a variety of industries in the past few months. (Click a client name to visit the site.)

Tafapolsky & Smith
Kozy Shack Canada
Intel WiMAX
TMPG

JBI International (The Jewish Braille Institute)
Peter Thomas Roth
Reliance Merchant Services
EMAIL MARKETING WITH MOXIE

Email is the most popular form of direct-response marketing for large U.S.-based corporations, according to a survey conducted by Direct Partners of New York and reported by Brandweek.

Although we at Berlin are pleased to see businesses embracing email marketing, we see many e-blasts that miss the mark. Here are some of the most common offenders:

The “Haven’t We Seen This Before?" email: Distinct messaging requires a distinct look. Using services that offer do-it-yourself templates may be tempting, but why lessen the value of your message by using a cookie-cutter design that’s been seen before and used by hundreds of other businesses?

The “Overstuffed" email: This email has so many elements crammed into it -- often with colors and fonts that clash -- that the recipient doesn’t know where to look first. Effective email design requires a professional-looking design.

The “I Did It in Outlook" email: Outlook is a powerful business tool, but it’s not meant for sending emails in bulk. Aside from its limited design capabilities, Outlook has its own way of sending HTML emails, and, often, those emails render properly only when received by other Outlook users.

The “How Dare You" email: Sending a hefty PDF or other attachment is a sure way to alienate your audience. That is, of course, if people receive the email or attachment at all. Many ISPs and organizations either strip attachments from emails or impose mailbox-size limits on subscribers.

The "Email? What Email?" email: One of the most common reasons recipients don’t receive an email blast is spam filtering. Email blasts produced and sent by reputable companies are more likely to succeed because such companies comply with anti-spam regulations and take all possible steps to stay off ISP blacklists.

In addition to capturing the attention of your target audience, email blasts are environmentally friendly, because they are paperless. Email blasts produced by Berlin are followed by a full report that includes the number of emails that were opened, links that were clicked, recipients who opted out of future emails, and many more statistics. The number of recipients who opened our most recent email blast was double the industry average. Find out how you can send your own email blast with measurable results -- contact us!

Call Berlin Productions at 914-683-5759 or e-mail us at contact@berlinproductions.com
Berlin Productions • 2 William Street, Suite 403 • White Plains, NY 10601