Tinsley Meets Charlie

By Rick Blitman

The Juggernaut began in March, when Tinsley Advertising took home 37 Awards at the American Advertising Federation of Miami’s 53rd annual Addy Awards. Last night, it culminated in a Charlie…the highest honor given by the 4th District of the American Advertising Federation.

The Charlie Award represents the best work in a variety of categories, and Tinsley was recognized for Best of Television, for our Florida Keys & Key West Campaign.

Great work does not happen without great clients, and we’re fortunate to enjoy a tremendous partnership with the Monroe County TDC, including Director Harold Wheeler, the District Advisory Committees and the Fishing, Diving and Cultural Umbrellas of The Florida Keys & Key West.

On a side note, the Monroe County Tourist Development Council was recognized by the Board of County Commissioners for their great contribution to the success of the Florida Keys as a world class destination. TDC Chair Rita Irwin was kind enough to recognize Tinsley, Newman PR and Fla-keys.com at the presentation in Marathon yesterday. Thanks Rita, the BOCC and AdFed!

Florida Keys’ Performance Leading the Nation

By John Underwood

Our Client, The Florida Keys & Key West, is dominating the lodging industry in performance results across the country.

According to the most recent report from Smith Travel Research, Inc. (STR), the Keys properties have achieved the highest hotel occupancy among all U.S. markets through first quarter 2014. The Keys have also achieved the highest revenue per available room (RevPar) in the country.

According to STR, Keys lodging averaged 88.1% occupancy from January through March and RevPar (calculated by dividing room revenue by rooms available) for the same period was $262.49, followed by Maui at $257.13.

The Keys have consistently led the state for RevPAR each year since 2008. They have also led occupancy figures 2008 through 2010 and again in 2013.

This is great news for the Monroe County Tourist Development Council (TDC) and the entire lodging and tourism industry We are certainly proud to part of this success.

Tinsley Wins 37 Addys at the 2014 Addy Awards

By Dorn Martell

With the Miami skyline as the backdrop, The American Advertising Federation celebrated the best of the best in advertising last night at the iconic Rusty Pelican on Key Biscayne. It was a big night for Tinsley and all of our clients. We won a total of 37 Awards, including 10 Gold Addys. Some of our most notable wins were for The Florida Keys & Key West where we won Gold Addys for our complete campaign, new Key West spots as well as new Art and Culture ads and spots. We also took home the Gold for City Furniture for our launch in the Villages in Central Florida. We even won in the logo category for our newest client Karisma Resorts and Hotels. (See complete list below).

Great work isn’t made in a vacuum. It’s the collaboration of clients, the agency and our production partners that make it possible. We’d like to thank our clients: Harold Wheeler, Director, Monroe County TDC, The Monroe County Tourist Development Council, the District Advisory Committees and the Fishing, Diving and Cultural Umbrellas of the Florida Keys & Key West. Vanessa Northrop, Mike Lennon and the entire team at City Furniture and Mandy Chomat and Rafael Feliz, Jr. at Karisma Hotels & Resorts.

A huge thank you also goes out to our production partners: Mike Neumann and Sung Hwang at One World Productions, Chris Irving at iThink Studios, John Jay Martyn at Audacity Recording. Thanks to our photographers: Mike Marrero, Nick Doll and Steven Flint, all the crew members and everyone else involved in this highly collaborative process.

Here is a list of this years winners.

GOLD ADDY
City Furniture “Villages Launch” Local TV Campaign
The Florida Keys & Key West “Nocturnal Creatures” Regional/National TV
The Florida Keys & Key West “This is where” Regional/National TV
The Florida Keys & Key West “Regional/National TV Campaign”
The Florida Keys & Key West “Integrated Campaign”
The Florida Keys & Key West “Art seen” Magazine Ad Arts and Sciences
The Florida Keys & Key West “Another Masterpiece” TV Arts and Sciences
The Florida Keys & Key West “Writer” Photography
The Florida Keys & Key West “Kids at sunset” Photography
The Florida Keys & Key West “Wreck Treck” Music

SILVER ADDY
Karisma Hotels & Resorts “Allure Hotels” Logo
City Furniture “Villages – Habitat” Local TV
City Furniture “Villages – Work Hard” Local TV
City Furniture “Villages – Who We Are” Local TV
City Furniture “Bernhardt – Understated” Regional/National Outlets TV
City Furniture “Good Morning” Regional/National Outlets TV
City Furniture “Intimate Relationship” Regional/National Outlets TV
City Furniture “Total Campaign” Regional/National Outlets TV
The Florida Keys & Key West “London Cab” Vehicle Graphics
The Florida Keys & Key West “One thousand words” Magazine Ad
The Florida Keys & Key West “Wild Things” Magazine Ad
The Florida Keys & Key West “Bills are stacking up” Magazine Ad
The Florida Keys & Key West “She’s had a little work done” Magazine Ad
The Florida Keys & Key West “Relaxation techniques” Internet Commercial
The Florida Keys & Key West “Wreck Treck” Internet Commercial
The Florida Keys & Key West “Wreck Treck” Regional/National TV
The Florida Keys & Key West “Relaxation techniques” Regional/National TV
The Florida Keys & Key West “The most important promise” Regional/National TV
The Florida Keys & Key West “Learn to dive” Regional/National TV
The Florida Keys & Key West “One thousand words” Magazine Ad
The Florida Keys & Key West “This is where” Music
The Florida Keys & Key West “It’s like an ejector seat…” Banners Rich Media
The Florida Keys & Key West “Low pressure zone” Banners Rich Media
The Florida Keys & Key West “Shoveling skills” Banners Rich Media
The Florida Keys & Key West “A thousand words” Digital Advertising
The Florida Keys & Key West “Artists in residences” Digital Advertising
The Florida Keys & Key West “Art seen” Digital Advertising

Keys Ads Send Warm Wishes To Toronto And Chicago Commuters

By John Underwood

Check out one of our latest outdoor efforts for The Florida Keys & Key West. This program targets two of our key markets, Toronto and Chicago, with messaging and visuals that specifically sell our warm-weather destination. The two efforts are slated for the first quarter and will surely bring awareness and desire to visit The Florida Keys.

Via http://www.travelhotnews.com/reportages.php?sequence_no=46614

Keys Ads Send Warm Wishes To Toronto And Chicago Commuters

Paid Likes, Fraudulent Friends and Fake Followers

Judging the value of an impression in the digital era.

By Dorn Martell

As you may have suspected, a large proportion of Justin Bieber’s followers are fake. I’m not judging their taste in music or fashion, I’m just stating the facts. According to StatusPeople.com, more than 36% of Bieber’s followers are bots. At a time when human trafficking is in the headlines, non-human traffic is a dirty little secret that those who live and die for metrics don’t necessarily want you to know.

The digital and social space is a must for every client and we buy the best on-line media available, but one of the biggest challenges facing advertisers today is judging the effectiveness of their campaigns. There are a lot of digital companies making huge promises that everything can be accurately tracked. Many companies want you to judge your ads and social media efforts based on the number of clicks, likes, followers and views. But, how legitimate is this and how is it being “gamed”?

Pay me and I’ll be your friend.

In real life, you know that true friends cannot be bought. If someone likes you because of your money, your car or your connections, it soon becomes apparent that they really don’t care about you. But in the wild west of social media, it’s all too common.

Facebook estimates that there are 76 million fake users out there “liking” and “friending” like there’s no tomorrow. I have seen a dramatic increase in odd friend requests from “people” with nothing in common with me and no content on their profile other than a picture and a “joined Facebook” date. I’ve also received numerous messages from “girls” that write in broken English and want to be more than friends. Only a robot or a con artist would start a message with “Hello Dear I would like much to be your good friend.”

screen-shot-2013-12-05-at-112341-am

The nature of Twitter makes controlling legions of followers even easier. If you want your own army of followers you can buy them from sites like buyfollowerstwitter.co.uk. According to the Wall Street Journal, an entrepreneur named Jim Vidmar is selling his 10,000 plus Twitter bots to aspiring rappers to make them “trend” and gain publicity. Harmless enough for entertainers, but these bots can actually affect world politics. It is believed that an army of Russian bots is hard at work countering any anti-Kremlin sentiment. But most clients will never know if the campaign they paid for generated true potential customers or if all those clicks and likes were generated by machines and fake people.

The 800-pound gorilla named Google blocks nearly 10 percent of traffic flowing through their ad exchange because it is non-human traffic. Like customs, if they catch that much just imagine how much they don’t catch.

How do you judge the value of an impression?

It would be simple if the quantitative model of clicks, likes and followers were the “clean transaction” that the digitelegencia would like you to believe they are. But over-valued impressions are not a new problem. Nielson ratings have tried to put science in consumers viewing habits for years. But the accuracy of the audience’s engagement has never been accurately reflected in voluntary or automated systems that quantify viewership. Magazine subscription numbers have always been gamed as well. You can find stacks of a prominent South Florida magazine (named after a street), sitting on that street and all of these mags are counted as impressions when the Client asks, “How many people saw my ad?” But new media has really taken the over-rating of impressions to a whole new level. One savvy client of ours nailed it in a meeting with a web cam provider when he said, “I don’t care how many views the camera generated! If a million boys in China are watching this web cam and don’t have the money to stay at my resort, it’s worth nothing.”

#IwantAFreeLuxuryVacation

One of the biggest ways to generate engagement in new media is to give stuff away to generate friends, followers and clicks. But this model may even be counterproductive. Another client cited a much-hyped social media campaign that incentivized people to like or re-tweet messages for a chance to win a weekend in a luxury villa. It generated thousands of new friends and followers but didn’t sell a single night in the villa. For luxury brands, generating armies of followers without the means to afford the product is costly as well as pointless.

Maintain Hope. Manage Expectations.

It’s great if your campaign went viral. It’s wonderful if you have thousands of friends and followers. But the secret in creating brands with lasting value is to create desire among your target audience. It’s much better to impress a few qualified buyers than masses of “tire kickers”. Don’t fall for immediate gratification. A thoughtful commercial may touch the heart of your true customer but the effect may not be a click-through within seconds of seeing your message. If your customer says, “That’s a place I’d like to go someday.” Then your message did its job. Clients must adjust the expectations for their Key Performance Indicators. If everything is judged by clicks, likes and follows you may be knee deep in bad data. Requests for more information and visits to showrooms are certainly more tangible, but nothing beats sales, booking room nights, etc. And in the long run a high average daily room rate or selling to a better customer who spends more on merchandise with a higher margin is a better bet than short term stats that look impressive in a graph, but do little to contribute to the bottom line.

So, be patient, do good thoughtful work and watch the results build over time. After all, your customers are persons who think before they act, not mindless robots.