New Blog

Dear Internet Community,

Thanks for visiting our blog but we've moved it here. We decided to give the blog an updated design and a new Wordpress management system. Please check it out and thanks again for stopping by!

Thursday's Open House

Thanks to everyone for coming out to see our new space last Thursday! We had a great time showing it off. Here are a few pics:

Campaigns Out to Launch

Corona Cinco de Mayo


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Morning Tongue



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Distinguish Your Company with Marketing

Whether the current state of the economy has affected your industry or not, the reality is you are probably more careful on how and where you spend your marketing dollars. To be cautious is understandable but before you make any moves consider this analogy by MarketingSherpa.

Imagine you’re a broker on Wall Street and your client’s stock is plummeting across the board. Would you sell the plummeting stocks, ride out the storm, or invest in even more stocks?

If you answered ‘invest in even more stocks’ you are right! Don’t stop investing (or marketing). The goal is to buy up as many stocks as you can now so when the market turns around you own a greater share of stocks.

This same concept applies to investing in your branding and marketing efforts during this downturn. By innovating your products or services now you'll discover non-traditional customers in new niche markets, resulting in a larger slice of the market share pie when the market comes back to life.

So although times may seem tough, take this opportunity to break away from the pack. Your next question may be ‘how do I begin?’

Dig for the Truth
Your first step is to immediately uncover new markets and new customers since your local and traditional customers are probably cutting back on their purchases. Start by researching and analyzing your current customers and their spending habits. You could identify a new trend and then respond with a new service or product to meet the changing needs.

By adopting this philosophy you are automatically setting yourself apart from your competition.

Example: Plastic Surgery Specialist (PSS) of Annapolis took notice of moms coming to them for certain procedures that would give them back their pre-mom bodies. Therefore we created the ‘Mommy Makeover’ where several procedures are wrapped up into one nice package.




Implement your Innovation:
Step two includes implementing your innovation. Take the research you gathered and formulate a strategic plan to implement your new product. In today’s economy where money is tight and gas is at a historical high people tend to stay home more. And when they’re home, they’re online – shopping, e-mailing, looking for entertainment and searching for ways to save a buck. With this in mind, make your marketing dollars work harder by using online marketing tactics such as search engine marketing.

Online campaigns are more cost-effective and quantifiable unlike traditional TV, radio and print campaigns. Since you’re launching a new product or service in a new market, you will be able to reach a broader audience at a lower cost. Plus you are able to quantify the leads better against your marketing dollar.

Example: Annapolis Lighting discovered their audience is mainly the high-end niche. Based on this we created the ‘Lighting Supremacy’ brand that targeted this audience. This new brand was launched in several integrated campaigns such as the Pink Ticket and Holiday Campaign in the fall and winter of 2007. Each campaign included a microsite, search engine marketing and an email component. These campaigns generated a 95% click-through rate, which was significantly more revenue than recent past promotions.

Visit our site, www.TheCyphersAgency.com, to contact us for help with your search engine marketing and advertising.

The Cyphers Agency has Officially Moved Up!

ANNAPOLIS, MD – May 6, 2008 – The Cyphers Agency (Cyphers), a leading full-service marketing, advertising and public relations agency recently relocated their office in Annapolis to the new building on Old Solomon’s Island Road.

This move comes on the heels of the tremendous growth spurt Cyphers experienced over the past few years. The decision to remain in Annapolis was made based on current clients located in Annapolis and the close proximity to both Washington, D.C. and Baltimore.

“Our hard work and dedication over the past decade has led us to this exciting turning point. We are thankful to our loyal customers who have worked with us over the years in helping them grow their businesses,” said Dave Cyphers, owner of Cyphers.

Most of the 5,000 square foot office is an open studio space that was designed to inspire collaborative thinking.

“We wanted to create an office environment that would influence and inspire creativity,” said Darren Easton, Creative Director at Cyphers. “Visual stimulation was the key. This space energizes people and makes them want to create work at an even higher level. There was a real push to add color, angles, a variety of lighting, and whimsical elements (such as galvanized and glass walls) to get people to see and think differently. We made a point to sweat the details instead of skip them – I think it has truly paid off.”

Cyphers current clients range from local favorites like Fractured Prune Donuts to Annapolis-based TSS Software, the nations leading national title software company. Most recently Cyphers won a 2008 ADDY award for their Annapolis Lighting mixed media campaign.

About The Cyphers Agency
The Cyphers Agency, Inc. is a full-service marketing, advertising and public relations agency with a focus on brand development and interactive services. Headquartered in Annapolis, MD, Cyphers was recently named one of the area’s largest advertising agencies by the Baltimore Business Journal. Cyphers was founded in 1989, and now has 26 employees who strategically serve and advise more than 35 regional and national clients. For more information, please visit www.thecyphersagency.com, or call 410-280-5451.

See our talented team!

Last night, the Baltimore Addy Award Show showcased the talents of the Maryland advertising community with the theme "Baltimore's Got Talent". See more about the Baltimore Advertising Association here: http://www.baltimoreadvertising.com/. We had the opportunity to show off our own special talents in a video created by our team. The show was a success and we took home an Addy award for our work for Annapolis Lighting. We'll post more about that later.

Watch the video below:

"The Newbies"

“Good character is more to be praised than outstanding talent”, but at The Cyphers Agency, we have both. We take pride in knowing we have a staff comprised of character, aptitude and determination. When we see someone that would fit us like a glove, we know we want them as part of our team. We are excited to bring on board two new employees, Nicole Thompson and Lucas Hanyok. Nicole was hired as Custom Publications Account Executive where she will be managing editorials and advertising for various publications. She brings experience from companies such as Alter Communications and Crosby Marketing. Lucas, the newest addition to our creative team originally came to Cyphers as a Freelancer. When an opportunity arose to keep him full time, we knew we could not let him go! He will be working full time on various accounts as a Graphic Designer. We are extremely happy to be working with both of these amazing people!

Everybody says they build brands!

The average American has thousands of brand experiences every day. With the heavy competition of today’s market, it is imperative to create brand awareness, and to enhance the quality of each brand experience every time we come in contact with it. The importance of your brand is relevant with the advertising, public relations, and direct marketing, as well as with every delivery of your product or service. From the messages you communicate internally to the design of your Web site, your brand must be considered with every element.

When developing a brand, you need to take a look at all of your media and use it effectively to build your brand. The goal is to help you differentiate yourself and your products from the competition. You must communicate your brand in every way you can, in every point of contact with the many groups who invent your brand with their perceptions. All your audiences, all your relationships affect what the brand is – the collective images which, over time, develop your brand.

Most companies are reluctant to accept any limitation on the image of their brand – they want it to appeal to all people. They generally end up with a brand that has no identity at all and doesn’t appeal to any particular audience. It is easy to give in to the pressure to change your image. But the advertiser who remains patient and sticks with their initial position for the long haul will eventually reap the rewards.

The success of a brand is measured by “brand loyalty” – the stream of profit generated by repeat and referral sales. Many agencies spend too much of their resources on making people feel good for the moment and not enough on creating a lasting relationship with the consumer. This process involves constant reevaluation of the brand, which includes reading the market, researching the changing environment and listening to the consumer. Once your brand creates a buzz, not only does it accelerate the branding process, but sales too. It is of the utmost importance to constantly keep that fire burning. So many brands die as a result of indifference, and that begins when the agency kicks back and throws their feet up while the praises for a job well done allow complacency to set in.

By offering the consumer the added value of a brand name, yours will more easily become their brand of choice. Branding is such an integral player in the success of your marketing campaign – it is essential that it receives the appropriate consideration.

Search Engine Marketing

The phone book is dead. It’s a sad truth phone directory publishers might not tell you, but we can’t remember the last time we used a phone book for anything other than kindling for a fire or a booster seat.

IF consumers recall traditional advertising, they no longer call or visit a business. Today’s digitally conscious consumers are plugged in 24/7 and research shows they prefer to go online for research. Additionally, it is a fact that consumers are increasingly turned off by most forms of advertising – they despise being sold to, and see it as a monumental waste of time.

So how then, if traditional media such as phone books aren’t working, do you make sure that people can find you or look you up? One of the most important and cost-effective ways is through Search Engine Marketing (SEM).

SEM is defined by Wikipedia.com (you didn’t think I was going to pull Webster’s dictionary off the shelf, did you?) as a set of marketing methods to increase the visibility of a Web site in search engine results pages (SERPs). In plain English, it’s all the stuff you do to get to the top of search engines where people will see you.

Unfortunately, there’s no magic bullet for conquering SEM. It’s a complex process that has lots of complexities; however, conquering two main categories (or paying a professional to handle it) will get you started:

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the art of adjusting the makeup of your Web site so that it comes up high in organic (unpaid) search listings. Much of this is done as the Web site is being built – in copy, page titles and meta tags. But increasingly, it’s crucial to improve site navigation, name pages and images properly, and increase relevant outbound and inbound links. It’s a constantly evolving process and usually requires monthly maintenance and tweaking by a professional to maintain high rankings.

Pay Per Click (PPC) Advertising can be wildly successful and very cost effective. It involves purchasing keywords and phrases that people use when searching online for your product or service so that you come up at the top and to the right of unpaid search listings. These are extremely effective because unlike traditional ads, these are directly related to the needs and wants of the consumer. The challenge is determining which keywords and keyphrases are going to get you the best results for the money you’re willing to spend. Through PPC advertising, you can achieve qualified leads, and you only pay if your ad entices someone to click through to your site. New technologies available to agencies like ours even allow us to target geographically and track phone calls from Web sites.

So next time you’re preparing your yearly marketing budget, ask yourself whether you’re taking advantage of this crucial new medium that’s helping customers everywhere find exactly what they’re seeking. If not, perhaps you should consider dumping some of those print ads and phone book listings and writing SEM into your plan. Get on the bus now, before your competitors beat you to it.

Superbowl Sneak Peek

It's not Superbowl yet, but we’ve got an inside connection to give you a few sneak peeks into the biggest commercials. Can you picture a Super Bowl without a GoDaddy.com ad? Or the pre-game lengths the company goes through to get a spot approved? I can, but where's the fun in that? The tenth time was the charm this year for Go Daddy. The first nine times, consisting of five different concepts, spelled rejection for the company. There is a plot twist concerning this year's ad; it's not the ad Go Daddy wanted to run, and it's a cliffhanger! A group of friends, except for one, are watching the big game in "Spot On," the approved ad. The other friend is sitting at a computer, eagerly awaiting the online launch of "Exposure," the unapproved ad starring Indy racecar driver Danica Patrick. Everyone races to the computer to see a snippet of the banned ad, featuring Patrick slowly unzipping her jacket.



What's underneath? Besides the obvious, who knows? The approved ad is slated to run in the first quarter and drives viewers to GoDaddy's Web site to see what Danica's hiding.

They're the Little Elves That Could

NEW YORK (AdAge.com)
Forget the subservient Chicken, the Whopper Freakout and Monk-e-Mail. When it comes to digital campaigns, OfficeMax's ElfYourself has left them all in the dust.

Some 26.4 million people -- nearly one in 10 Americans -- this season visited the office-products company's holiday site that allows users to paste images of their faces onto dancing elves. That's up more than tenfold from last year, its first year in existence.

"It really is a digital phenomenon," said Anne Bologna, founding partner and president of Toy, New York, the agency that dreamed up the idea for the site. According to Ms. Bologna, if you add up all the time people spent on ElfYourself this holiday season, it totals 2,614 years. "There were 123 million elves created this year, up from 11 million last year," she said. "All we did was add more elves."

In fact, the website's metrics are all over the place. When it first came back online in October 2007, the website was ranked higher than 400,000 by Hitwise, an internet-tracking agency. By December, it ranked No. 55 among all websites. "The first month the site grew 99%, the second month 89% and the third 29%," said Hitwise Research Director Heather Dougherty. "It just popped each week. Over the course of November/December, their market share of internet users grew 508%."

According to Pete Blackshaw, exec VP of Nielsen Online Strategic Services, the site's active reach in December (i.e., how many of the 165 million active internet users that month made a visit) was 16%. That's 26.4 million people -- nearly one in 10 Americans. "They had a very nice echo effect from last year, and as far as buzz goes, pass-alongs on blogs were huge," said Mr. Blackshaw, whose company tracked the site's presence on blog posts, along with its not-so-closest competitor whopperfreakout.com.

But the real question is: How much help did the OfficeMax brand get from its silly little helpers? "That's always the danger with this kind of advertisement," Ms. Dougherty said. "They're cute, they're funny, but they're not necessarily related to the brand." In this case, however, Office Max came out a winner. Of the 20 most common search terms in the four weeks of December, Ms. Dougherty said, six of them included the words "Office Max," indicating that brand awareness had carried through.

For Bob Thacker, senior VP-marketing and advertising at OfficeMax, that was the whole point. "We were looking to build the brand, warm up our image. We weren't looking for sales. We are third-place players in our industry, so we are trying to differentiate ourselves through humor and humanization," he said.

It appears Mr. Thacker got what he wanted for Christmas: "Our goal was to double elf activity from what we'd gotten last year. The results were nearly 10 times that." That's with a budget Mr. Thacker said was less than the average cost of a TV ad, which runs between $300,000 and half a million dollars these days.

"The proof is we're still talking about it," Mr. Blackshaw said.

The Cyphers Agency announces TSS Software Account!

ANNAPOLIS, MD – January 31, 2008 – The Cyphers Agency (Cyphers), a leading full-service marketing, advertising and public relations agency announced today that they have been chosen as agency of record for TSS Software Corporation (TSS), the nation’s leading independently owned provider of software exclusively for real estate title, settlement, and abstracting companies.

Cyphers will be working with TSS on strategic marketing efforts that include brand development, public relations, web marketing and launching their newly enhanced AbstractExpress product.

“We choose Cyphers after an extensive review of agencies,” said Bob Miller, CEO of TSS. “They understood our 2008 goals and were able to grasp what we needed to do marketing and branding wise to reach our goals.”
TSS’ flagship product, TitleExpress, fully integrates the title and settlement processes. Their software is designed to be underwriter neutral and underwriter friendly. More than 16,000 users of title and settlement companies nationwide have chosen their title and settlement software. TSS’s full product suite includes five additional applications tailored specifically to companies needs.
In a recent nationwide survey TitleExpress received the highest ratings in overall customer satisfaction, ease of learning and use, value for the money, quality and availability of technical support, and the ability to deliver products in an increasingly electronic environment. The survey, conducted by October Research Corporation, is the Title Technology Survey of Independent Title Agents. The ratings compared the four leading national software brands.

“We are honored to have been chosen by TSS,” said Dave Cyphers, owner of Cyphers. “They offer a very dynamic platform in a niche market where they are thriving, despite the real estate market downturn. We are thrilled to support their marketing strategy during a time when they are experiencing significant growth,” said Cyphers.

Welcome Baby Evan!

We’d like to welcome Christina’s new baby boy to the Cyphers Family! Evan Thomas Drews was born December 31st, 6 lbs 3 oz. and looks just like his older brother. We’re all very excited for Christina and Pat and can’t wait to see if little Evan will join us in our marketing world one day. With as much as both his parents know about web development I imagine he’s already surfing the web and will very soon be building the back end of a Web site!

How does your tag line stand up?

Testing a Tag line for Effectiveness:
The line may look good on paper, but there are some tests you can give the words to see if they really work:

Does the line help when you're ordering the product or service?
Some examples that do:
"I want to have 'the ultimate driving machine'." (BMW)
"Give me 'taste. Not waist'." (Weight Watchers Meals)
"'Why fool around with anyone else?'" (FedEx)

Some examples that don't:
"I want a beer that's 'good, but not that good.'" (Tennents)
"I want two tickets to Brussels on 'Britain's second-largest international scheduled airline'!" (Air Europe -- now out of business)

Does it prompt a sarcastic or negative response?
Some examples that do:
Delta Airlines: "We get you there."
Mobil: "We want you to live."
FileMaker software: "What's your problem?"
Eastern Airlines: "We have to earn our wings every day."

Does it sound a bit pompous?
This is where you read the line with the utmost gravity, like an American narrator in a 50's corporate film, giving it the true spin of importance. These fail the test:
Ariel Ultra: "Digests the fatty food stains ordinary compacts leave behind at 40°."
Churchill: "Surprisingly passionate about insurance."
Kyocera: "Doing what others dare not."
Olivetti: "Our force is your energy."
The Hair Clinic: "Where excellence is an everyday word."

Does it reek of 'corporate-speak', sounding unreal?
Most banks: "Where people make the difference."
Ames Rubber: "Excellence through total quality."
Neptco: "Committed to innovation, quality and service."
Powergen: "We do everything in our power to put you first."
United Research: "Accelerating strategic change."

Does it make you say "Ho hum...", like these?
Cadillac: "It out-steps its own great traditions!"
Izod Lacoste: "We are what others pretend to be."
Staffordshire Building Society: "A real building society -- mutual since 1902."
Currie Motors: "Nice people to do business with."
"Visit your Tetrad stockist and discover the Tetrad lifestyle."

Does it make you say "Oh yeah?"
These do:
British Rail. We're getting there.
British Telecom. It's you we answer to.
Kmart. Changing for the better.
Tellabs. Leadership in providing innovative solutions to the telecommunications industry worldwide.

Does it sound a bit mixed up?
Caltex Oil. At the heart of your engine. And the community.
XS Health. Medical insurance for you. Because you don't get ill.
Stillwell Ford. We put people in front of cars.

How did yours do? In any event, here's to more creative, effective slogans.

Darren Rocks!

I happened upon an impressive piece of information regarding our very own Creative Director/VP that he would never display himself. So I’m stepping in!

Congrats to Darren Easton for being named one of Biltmore’s Who’s Who Among Advertising/Marketing Executives and Professionals. Darren was chosen along with achievers in the Advertising and Marketing industry across the nation based on his individual accomplishment in our geographic area. He’ll be listed in the 2008 Biltmore Who’s Who Honors Edition.

Here at Cyphers we’ve know the caliber of Darren’s talents for years. He keeps us all inspired and ensures everyone is thinking creatively on a daily basis, from the account executives to the production director to the copywriters. Darren works extremely hard to lead the creative team and allow their innovative and strategic talents to shine. So congrats Darren!