Our new spot for Key Largo took us from the edge of the Everglades to the bottom of the sea. Key Largo has long been known as the Dive Capital of the World, but our mission for this new spot is to show the world that it is much more. Key Largo is home to eco-adventure, world-class fishing, incredible ocean-front dining and some great places to just chill. This new spot encourages the viewer to “look deeper” into Key Largo.

Our first new spot, launched this winter, for Key West is all about art. And not the kind of art that’s all about matching a suburban couch. It’s the kind of art that makes you think, makes you feel and definitely gets your attention. In Key West we find that art and life are wonderfully intermingled and that everyone here is part of a massive performance piece.

Our new spot, “Island Made of Art”, is part of a 7 spot package that was shot over several months in 2011. Capturing the beauty and unique environments of the Florida Keys - from the Everglades to the Dry Tortugas - One World Productions and our team shot from ultralights, underwater, from sea planes, power boats, canoes and waist deep in mangroves. We met some very knowledgable and dedicated folks, as well as some truly strange people. But it was all an amazing adventure and we couldn’t be happier with the final product. The music was created by Audacity Recording in Hollywood, FL. Editorial & finishing by I Think Studios.

The results of this shoot are some of the most inspiring images we’ve ever captured. Stay tuned for more new spots over the coming weeks.

I tried to listen to commercial radio this weekend, I really did. My wife and I were working in the garden and plugged in a boom box with no iPod dock and turned on the radio. I know, I know - no one does that any more. But we just thought that we could listen to some light holiday music to get us in the gardening mood. But after a couple of songs it started. An incessant barrage of horrific retail spots with “chain saw” voice announcers and horrible, aggressive sound effects and “music.” There were endless blocks dedicated to a new electronics retailer and a car dealer who is still ripping off the Ghost Busters theme song. Every single spot started on “11″ and went up from there. We tried to tough it out, just to get through to something listenable, but the endless stream of mindless scripts read at a scream level got the best of us. ” The radio is all crap, Baby”, said my wife Adriana. “Yes it is, Honey, they must think we are all morons”, said I as I yanked the plug out of the wall. But, I couldn’t help but feel sad. Radio was such an important part of my childhood and it can still be an amazing medium. Some of our classic radio spots like “Michele” and “I love food” prove you can make a radio spot that people actually like and our retail advertising for the Huizenga School of Business got great numbers while refusing to wallow in the ditch of cliche retail radio tactics.

If commercial radio wants to stand a chance against iTunes, Pandora, Spotify and XM it will have to come to terms with the fact that some of the advertising they air is so abrasive and condescending that listeners will simply opt-out and choose to listen to the neighbors’ weed wacker instead.

I recently had the opportunity to attend The Travel Forward Conference at Google’s headquarters in Mountain View, California.  A group of approximately 120 individuals from the travel industry were presented the latest thinking from Google on how emerging technology can be integrated into marketing plans for travel related companies.

Currently half of all domestic travel is booked online and that continues to be a growing trend.  Moreover,  research for travel continues to be a growing area with over a billion travel related searches a day.  Also, 70% of all travel related searches are not for a specific brand, but the search begins generically, this presents a tremendous opportunity for those in the travel industry.  Google is making search more relevant by making it easier to access with less movement.  For instance it is not necessary to leave the search results page to get hotel or flight rates.  It is a rollover and click away.

Mobile is where Google sees the biggest growth in the next few years.  Mobile traffic grew by 400% last year and that trend will increase with nearly a million new smart phones sold each day.  About 50% of the population now has a smartphone.  Smartphones can’t be viewed as an extension of a computer website.  It is its own device and should have its own site.  Mobile is a local based marketing opportunity as most purchases from this device are made within 20 miles of the transaction.

Mobile commerce is in its infancy, but will explode over the next two years.  The much discussed Google Wallet is in test and should roll-out over the next year.  Using Near Field  Communications (NFC) technology (a chip in your phone) consumers will be able to purchase items without having to access their credit card from their wallets.  The consumer will “wave” their phone over a device at the merchant and the transaction will be complete.  This technology will also be used for boarding passes at airports.

Location based marketing will also develop over the next few years as messaging will be delivered through Google Spot, which will know your exact location (down to the aisle in a f store) and deliver messaging  to you, such as a coupon or offer from a competitor.

As organizations like Google invest in innovation, the manner in which travel and nearly every other category is sold will evolve and change how business is conducted.

New Zealand 3011 – A team of archeologists were examining the remains of a village from the 21st century and came across an artifact that was quite puzzling. It was a well-preserved ceramic mug with a strange drawing of a baby monkey going backwards on a pig. Was it a Hindu religious icon? A depiction of the Chinese lunar calendar or was it the most misunderstood phenomenon of the digital age – The Meme.

A Meme is a cultural item that is transmitted by repetition in a manner analogous to the biological transmission of genes. And like genes they mutate over time. To understand this meme we call Baby Monkey, we must first explore its provenance.

A video of a tiny monkey riding backward on a small pig was shot somewhere in Asia with a hand-held consumer video camera. That video was posted on YouTube and received hundreds of thousands of views. It was then “discovered” by punk rock band Nerf Herder’s front man Parry Gripp. Parry scored it with the lyric “Baby monkey going backwards on a pig” and it went viral all over the world.

But it didn’t end there. You see, memes are more than just peer-to-peer sharing, they inspire parody, mutations and millions of people who want to be a part of it. In fact there are countless variations of this video on YouTube featuring re-mixes, dubsteps, reenactments and bad photoshop jokes. It has even spun-off into an iPhone app. But the only mutation that will last into the future is the ceramic mugs created by Tinsley Advertising’s Associate Creative Director Rick Blitman (Rick’s Bad Art). The mug, unlike the fad, will not fade or decay. But when a future viewer sees it, will it make any sense at all? It’s impossible to tell.

There is a distinct possibility that some memes will become part of our cultural vernacular the same way that archaic terms from our past like, “Three sheets to the wind”. (a term for being drunk - derived from the erratic behavior of a sailing ship with mis-aligned sails).

But will things like “Antoine Dodson”, “Charley the Unicorn” or “Nyan Cat” evolve into an enduring part of our collective consciousness? Or will the original meaning be lost and the reference survive like, “freezing the balls off a Brass Monkey” (originally refering to a “Brass Monkey”-a device that held cannon balls that would fail in cold weather.)

New memes are being spawned every day and new parodies and mutations will continue. To be relevant, when communicating with a new generation of digital natives, we must be aware of the power of memes, the challenge of context and the fact that really silly stuff will always get more attention than overt sales pitches.

We wouldn’t be lying if we said Henry Flagler hangs around our office. In fact we have a whole wall of “Henrys” and are pleased to announce that we just added three more to our collection.

Named for Henry Flagler, the Flagler Awards were established in 2000 to recognize outstanding tourism marketing in Florida and we are fortunate to have won every year since. In this year’s competition, we were finalists in four categories and won the top honor in three.

We won a Henry in the category of Resource/Promotional Material Consumer for our fabulous new LGBT Brochure, which compliments our Best of Show win at the Addys for our Gay and Lesbian marketing.

Our New York Transit poster campaign also won a Henry in the Out-Of-Home category for these memorable pieces: “You’re not a sardine, get out of this tin can”,
“Please step to the end of the line” and “Call in and say you caught something”.

For Print Advertising we won a Henry for these ads:
(For our fishermen) “Big eyes, full lips, drives men crazy. Angelina is that you?”
and “More fans than all of Facebook” (promoting our amazing reefs).

We also won Silver for our Direct Marketing pieces: “The Earth is your Recreational Vehicle”, and “There’s nothing like the end of the road to turn you around.”

We thank the Monroe County Tourist Development Council and its Director Harold Wheeler, for being great clients and allowing us to do the best tourism advertising around.

We’d also like to thank old Henry Flagler for building the railroad that connected the Keys to mainland America and brought paradise a little closer to home.

As the summer comes to a close that can only mean that school is back in session and the fall television season is upon us. A few themes seem to be taking hold as in most years. Retro is definitely in (for now) and reality television has found its place in the American viewing landscape.

NBC
NBC has a new owner and a lot of ground to make-up. They will be coming to market with at least a dozen new shows for the fall. Having taken a look at a preview of some of these shows, NBC will need to head back to the drawing board. Most of the dozen or so new shows do not look promising. Whitney appears to be the only winner in the Peacocks stable. Working off the strength of Mad Men, NBC brings us one of the new retro shows, The Playboy Club. It does not have the depth of Mad Men. Steve Carell leaves The Office for greener pastures (we’ve seen this before) and James Spader is now the boss at Dunder-Mifflin. The show is depending on a line -up of special guest stars to keep this franchise moving forward.

CBS
CBS has only five new shows this fall and a couple of them look like winners. 2 Broke Girls, a comedy that looks promising and will air on Monday nights at 8:30PM , a great spot for a comedy. How to be a Gentleman starring Kevin Dillon of Entourage has an outside chance. The rest of CBS’s offerings are dramas. Person of Interest from J.J Abrams is a cross between The Mentalist and CSI. A Gifted Man and Unforgettable are dramas that have a paranormal skew to them. On everyone’s mind at CBS is how Ashton Kutcher is going to do as Charlie Sheen’s replacement on Two and Half Men.

ABC
ABC has a few potential hits. Apt. 23 is an off-beat, comedy that deals with a psycho New York roommate. Another unusual twist in this show is James Van Der Beek (Dawson’s Creek) plays himself. Man Up is another comedy focusing on three men and how their lives are interrelated. Charlie’s Angels is back and this time set in Miami. I wouldn’t bet the farm on this being a winner. Pan Am another retro 60’s offering will have a tough time keeping the story line fresh. Watch the first few episodes, because it might not be around long.

26 years ago, Crockett and Tubbs were prowling the streets of Miami in a Ferrari. Ronald Reagan was urging Gorbachev to tear down the Berlin Wall. Parachute pants were the rage and Tinsley Advertising was celebrating a new account win: The Florida Keys & Key West.

Now, the only thing remaining from that indelible period in time is our relationship with The Florida Keys.

Last week, Monroe County’s Board of County Commissioners voted unanimously to approve Tinsley Advertising as the Agency of Record for The Florida Keys & Key West, again. This follows a similar vote by the Tourist Development Council who reviewed a total of five Agencies.

“Tinsley showed a level of understanding of The Keys and a breadth of work that the other agencies didn’t come close to,” said Rita Irwin, Chairman of the Monroe County TDC.

The 50-minute presentation included everything from an innovative “Station Domination” program for New York commuters to behavioral and contextual marketing on Pandora and Facebook. We also proposed a voluntourism campaign that will encourage visitors to donate a small portion of their vacation to help Florida Keys causes. And of course, we showed some cool new TV concepts for Key Largo, Islamorada, Marathon, Big Pine and the Lower Keys, as well as, new water sports and art spots for Key West.

Our 26-year relationship with The Keys has allowed us to do some of the best work in the travel and tourism industry. We have been honored by The Travel Industry of America, Visit Florida’s Flagler Awards, and the Addys, where The Keys won 30 awards in 2011 including “Best of Show.”

We are so happy to have such a wonderful client as The Florida Keys & Key West. It is a partnership that continues to produce great work and the highest daily room rate in the state.

Thank you Monroe County from everyone at Tinsley!