While web companies were concentrated in Silicon Alley and Silicon Valley, they were also located in lots of [...]]]> The NJ ad agency environment has gone through extreme changes in the last ten years. But that’s nothing new for businesses who locate west of the Hudson River, so close to New York City.

The Internet Bust

While web companies were concentrated in Silicon Alley and Silicon Valley, they were also located in lots of smaller regions. One ad agency opened for business in New Jersey December 20, 1999. At the time, they thought their only worry was the Y2K issue. Little did they know that a much larger crisis loomed on the near horizon.

The agency mentioned above had four Internet-related clients and 2 others who were more traditional. By 2001, they were already feeling the loss of 2 of their 4 Internet companies. But the attacks of 9/11 affected even one of their largest traditional clients, who was forced to freeze their marketing budget for nearly 6 months to assess the damage.

While the Dot-Com bust affected this NJ ad agency’s Internet clients the most – all 4 were out of business by 2002 – other more traditional clients were affected as well. One client was a telecom capacity exchange. A large part of their business was web companies. When the web died, lots of companies who were servicing Internet businesses died too.

One report stated that New York ad agencies had laid off approximately 20% of their staff by 2002. NJ ad agencies had similar results.

The Recession of 2008

Being outside of New York City, NJ ad agencies look for business that’s “off the beaten path.” We typically don’t get clients like the big package goods brands. Those are more comfortable spending their marketing money with New York agencies. New York is very close by after all. Typically, these agencies go after home builders, regional banks, small manufacturers, hospitals and service companies.

There are lots of smaller manufacturing industries in New Jersey that prefer a NJ-based ad agency. Plumbing supply manufacturers, building material companies, and others have found New Jersey to be a good place to do business. But you can imagine what happened to these companies when the Great Recession began. They got hit hard and subsequently had to lay off some of their staff.

In the advertising agency world, New Jersey is known as a great place to get into pharmaceutical marketing. There are tons of pharmaceutical companies within easy driving distance from Summit, New Jersey (sort of the middle of the north Jersey area). The recession of 2008 also put the squeeze on these pharmaceutical companies. Direct to consumer (DTC) pharmaceutical advertising had already been thrown under the bus years before; but now the whole industry is suffering from commodity status. Once again, this was led by New York ad agencies who saw a way to help their bleeding bottom lines. They raised their right hands and pronounced themselves pharmaceutical marketing experts; leaving the New Jersey ad agencies to look for business elsewhere.

NJ Ad Agencies Remain Nimble

Being smaller than their New York counterparts, NJ ad agencies are able to be more flexible; probably because costs are a little lower. They certainly can pay their employees less thanks to the much more agreeable commute. This is a major advantage to agencies in New Jersey. And there are others:

• Varied client categories
• Less cut-throat environment
• More relaxed leadership
• More loyalty from agency owners

Because of the above advantages, New Jersey ad agencies enjoy more loyalty from their employees. Once someone has switched to New Jersey from New York and stopped that hideous commute, they never want to go back. And, once they’re working in a less cut-throat environment, they won’t easily be talked back into the New York ad agency scene.

In a perverse way, the bad economy in the first decade of this century may very well be helping every NJ ad agency who’s survived the downturn. Now they’re more nimble; they’ve cut costs to their critical levels; and they’ve focused on what they do best. We think the next decade looks very promising.

We produced three “hidden-camera” commercials for less than $10,000.

You might not think much of that, but to me it’s an historic moment. I grew up on encyclopedias, spending hours in the library combing through science, history, geography, [...]]]> Today, on the CNN Money website, an article was posted announcing that Encyclopedia Britannica plans to stop printing in book form.
(Click for article)

You might not think much of that, but to me it’s an historic moment. I grew up on encyclopedias, spending hours in the library combing through science, history, geography, etc. There was something about the design of the information, interspersed with small photos, which made the information inviting to read and easy to understand. I loved well-crafted print ads and powerfully simple billboards.

As a NJ ad agency owner, I look back fondly to the days I was cutting my teeth on retail print advertising, nearly a decade before Al Gore invented the Internet. Print media had a wonderful permanence to it.

Far from being troubling, this kind of change is exciting

Already I see my younger employees ignoring printed media. They get what little they read from the Internet. Almost everyone in this younger generation claim they don’t read at all.

Our grand-children will have a very different experience with information. While there is a reduction in print media, access to information has never been greater. It’s “always on” and always being updated and clarified. For a ad agency who embraces this kind of relevant access into consumers’ lives, this will truly be an exciting time.

What it means for leading ad agencies, both in NJ and worldwide, is completely and utterly letting go of the past. It’s time to embrace digital now, before the train completely leaves the station. I know a lot of folks in the business who are still fighting this trend. They’re missing out on one of the most epic changes our business has ever experienced.

My earliest experience with NJ ad agencies came when my wife wanted to get back into the industry after a 5 year hiatus with our 2 kids. She joined [...]]]> As a New Jersey ad agency with a different background, we’ve found that competing here is quite interesting.

The NJ ad agency with a difference

My earliest experience with NJ ad agencies came when my wife wanted to get back into the industry after a 5 year hiatus with our 2 kids. She joined a small group in Morristown. That was quite a wake up call. NJ ad agencies are very different than what we were used to. At the time, I was still commuting into NYC as creative director of a mid-size (150 people) agency, working on Omnipoint, Waterford Crystal, Popeyes Chicken, and Riggs Bank. Before that, I had been at Chiat/Day in Toronto working on Labatts Beer, Nissan, and Canadian Airlines.

Being a CD in NYC was a lot of fun. But while I was jetting off to LA to produce $800,000 commercials, and editing with the very best New York City had to offer, my wife was having a very different kind of experience. Her agency was entirely focused on SALES. It was all about the income. There was no such thing as account service. Their AEs were sales-people. Their creative approach was also very NJ-centric. Not a lot of room for break-through ideas. I never quite figured out why.

At ion Leap, we find inventive ways to get huge ROI out of any campaign we’re running for our clients.

We’re local, but our methods aren’t

As you watch this section of our website grow, you’ll quickly see ion Leap rise to page 1 on a Google search for the phrase “NJ Ad Agency.” This is only one arrow in our marketing quiver. You’ll quickly pick up on the others. They include:

• Highly effective creative
• Inventive social media tactics
• Web content writing that pulls in customers
• TV, Radio, Print, Collateral, Outdoor; all invented and produced on-budget

Our background in the country’s top ad agencies makes us different. We have processes that guarantee a better result, rapid delivery, and a uniquely ambitious approach.

Learn more about the NJ ad agency with a real difference.

Contact us to learn more about ion Leap’s unique position in the NJ ad agency environment.

Watch a brief video on how one NJ ad agency approaches social media differently

Marketers must stay on top of all the changes as they happen. Ongoing migration of your [...]]]> This video by Corning Glass really paints the picture well of how the future will be all about interaction between devices. Convergence Marketing will be critical, and it will have to be seamlessly woven into our prospects’ lives.

Marketers must stay on top of all the changes as they happen. Ongoing migration of your content to fit new delivery methods is a must.

Learn more about convergence marketing by following this blog.

When one of your services is ranking clients on search engines using valuable content, understanding how search engines view older web content writing is an important question. It [...]]]> People talk a lot about getting their site ranked on page one for key phrases, but I’ve never seen anyone experiment with getting OFF of page 1.

When one of your services is ranking clients on search engines using valuable content, understanding how search engines view older web content writing is an important question. It takes a lot of work to claim a key phrase for a client. By the time you’ve achieved a good ranking for a client on about 20 phrases, you start to worry that those you’re giving less attention to might start to fall off of page one.

It’s a valid concern because no one is quite sure how the Google algorithm – that mythical website ranking voodoo – really assesses the pages of our hard work. At ion Leap, we keep circling back to older phrases to add fresh content and work the pages using social media, but that will get overwhelming at some point.

There’s a phrase on ion Leap’s website that I worked very hard to get ranked on page one over a period of about 9 months using our very experienced content writers. It currently sits at page 1, position 5, that all-important above-the-fold spot. I can’t give out any more details on the phrase because someone may swoop in and try to push me down the page.

I’m currently testing the rate that content sitting neglected on a website will fall off of page 1 search engine results. The funny part is, I have very little data to go on:

• We SEOs suspect that freshness counts greatly, but that might depend on the competitiveness of the key phrase in question
• Social media chatter is believed to be a growing factor, yet after 9 months of no chatter whatsoever, we’re still ranked for that phrase
• At ion Leap, we’re always believed that content will win out in the end, and this phrase is backed by a very solid wall of content with good key phrase density and great SEO
• Competitiveness of the key phrase in question has grown, and a major software company has released a piece of software with the exact name of the key phrase (and you can bet they’re working that phrase), yet we’re still above them

Stay tuned for more on our web content writing neglect experiment

We’ll continue to report back on this experiment from time to time. What we may be seeing through this experiment is a move by the search engines to give even more rewards to valuable content writing. In our opinion, this would be a wonderful tweak to the algorithm.

Read more on how our web content writing services will help you achieve SEO

Contact us about web content writing services