uFinancial's Matt Dobbie is featured in Central Penn Business Journal, PA Business Central!

Matthew Dobbie, Senior Managing Partner of uFinancial, wrote an article about the recent changes in Roth IRAs that was featured in both Central Penn Business Journal (Fri. Feb. 19, 2010) and Pennsylvania Business Central (Fri. Feb. 26, 2010, but online now).

The article in CPBJ: http://www.centralpennbusiness.com/article.asp?aid=74498

The article in PA Business Central: http://www.pabusinesscentral.com/2000/02/2010-roth-ira-conversion-is-it-right-for-you/

Way to go Matt!

SNOWpocalypse and Social Media

Holy SNOW Batman! With record breaking snowfall totals and incredible new white landscapes across the entire East Coast, it's no wonder that words like SNOWpocalypse, SNOWmaggeddon and snOMG have been coined across social networks to describe the recent weather conditions.

As people were stranded inside their homes, watching the white out from the comfort of their couches, many turned to social channels such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube to document the historical weather as it happened.

This video, picked up by news stations across the country, shows the snow accumulation of over 30" in D.C. last weekend in just 30 seconds of time lapsed video footage.



Twitter became a crowd-sourced weather report for days at a time. Users reported on snow accumulation, road conditions, and personal accounts of the storm through tweets, pictures from their phones, and links.

The District of Columbia's Department of Transportation even set up an interactive map to show the status of snow clearing on all of it's city streets. It's pretty interesting to play with, check it out: http://snowmap.dc.gov/snowavl.asp

On Facebook, users began to organize massive snowball fights in major cities. They also posted many new pictures to document their use of the snow outside their front door as a beer cooler or the before and after effects on their front lawns, including many great snowmen.

Personally, I'm part of the stranded passengers meant to be on one of the 5,700 flights cancelled this past Wednesday. With plans to return from vacation last Sunday night, I've had my flight cancelled and rebooked four times since last weekend. My itinerary was impacted by both sets of storms and thanks to Southwest's diligent customer service, I will finally be returning home a full seven days after expected. Truly though, Southwest has been amazing about alerting me to the cancellations over 24 hours in advance in all cases, and has even proactively called me to fix a mistake in my reservation. I couldn't ask for more from an airline (other than open airports) when I'm stranded far from home. I was happy to tweet their praises to @SouthwestAir, and got a personal thank you from their team for doing so.

After all of the media hype and most East Coast'ers ready to be rid of all things white and frozen, some have dubbed it all just a bunch of SNOverkill.

I think we're all ready for a little sunshine!

BrandBowl: Twitter's response to the Super bowl's Ads

During this year's Super bowl, there was another competition taking place that captured the attention of Twitter users all across the U.S.

No, I'm not talking about PuppyBowl. I'm referring to the battle of the brands: BrandBowl, hosted on Twitter by Mullen and Radian6. Using a special hashtag - #brandbowl (a Twitter user's way of organizing similar tweets), the two agencies were able to track the thoughts and tweets of viewers worldwide in real time. At several points in the evening, #brandbowl even became a trending topic, meaning that the hashtag was among the top ten most mentioned words across the world on Twitter.


So how did the brands that advertised during the big game fare in this battle? According to the competition's site, Doritos took home the top honor thanks to their consumer-generated (crowd-sourced) spots. My favorite spot of the Doritos set was "House Rules" with the adorable, mom-protecting, date-scaring kiddo. Interestingly, Doritos hosted it’s own competition called “Crash the Superbowl” wherein consumers sent in their home-made spots in hopes of getting it voted high enough on the Doritos site to be aired during the game, but also in hopes of taking the top spots on USA Today’s Ad Meter. The top three :30 spots took home additional prize money. The genius in this is that Doritos used a social media, user-engagement platform to select commercials that they didn’t even have to create. Furthermore, when the spots took home the top rankings, both the brand and the consumer won. What is that called again? A win-win-win-win situation, I think?

Second place was Google with their simple storytelling of “Parisian Love”. The spot elegantly pulled at the heartstrings while also demonstrating the features of Google, all told from within the search box. As Google’s first TV spot, this was a home run for the search engine brand.

Third was Focus on the Family with their Tim Tebow spot taking a stance against abortion. As Joe mentioned before, this spot got more PR value than any other brand due to its obviously controversial nature. While other spots were voted up because of their humor or cleverness or emotional value, quite frankly, I believe this spot landed in at number three for none of those reasons. Simply put, everyone was talking about it and that was enough to bubble it up to the top.

Other brands that landed high on BrandBowl 2010: Snickers, Budweiser, Bud Light, Hyundai, Kia, GoDaddy, and Coca-Cola. As Joe mentioned, the worst spot of the night was clearly GoDaddy's, so it's likely that the #brandbowl hashtag was used to report how much everyone hated their overdone tactics of hot girls selling domain names.

Since BrandBowl 2010 only tracks buzz, and was unable to capture opinions on a larger scale, it's difficult to say that these spots were "the best" or "the most popular" or even "the winners."

But the Twitterverse spoke and they definitely took home top honors for the "most tweeted."

Super Bowl Winners and Losers

This year the game for me was a winner. Unfortunately, the spots were the losers for me. In fact most of them were an interruption in my life (And people who know me know I don’t care much for NFL Football.) To me the Super Bowl is a celebration of smart creative individuals and brands, showcasing their talents to nearly half of America. And then they play that important game.

As a Creative person I always try and find the germ of the idea in the spots and then analyze why they went bad or good. Was it the Executive Creative Director putting his thumbprint on it? Did the agency President think it should have his stamp and twist on it? Did it fall short in the production or did the client muddle with the agency and crush a killer concept. I’m not being a creative hater here. At dio we had a spot ready to roll for a local Super Bowl media buy but the client pulled the plug at the last minute. The interesting thing is, and not to brag, but our spot for uFinancial told more of a story than 60 percent of the spots that aired, and I know strategically would have created a connection with the local audience. Oh well, maybe next year!

To me the big winners were:

Dodge Charger: Man’s Last Stand

They are selling these cars to MEN. The creative connects with the demographic watching the game, especially the line about being civil to her mother. Lets face it men, we’ve all been there. Celebrate you manliness with a go fast mean machine. This is a spot well done. I’d buy one but my wife says no because I wrecked my last manly go fast machine.

http://adage.com/brightcove/single.php?title=65106415001

Dove: Manthem

Great montage of “manthem” to the William Tell Overture. This spot is driven with incredibly powerful music and voice over to celebrate all the accomplishments you’ve made with a very simple message - Now that you’re comfortable with who you are, isn’t it time for comfortable skin. How much clearer can that message be? I love the spot; I’m just not giving up my Old Spice.

http://adage.com/brightcove/single.php?title=64892881001

Audi: Green Car

We’re all trying to be a little “Greener”. This spot takes a smart yet funny approach to how we could all do a little better to be green. This spot is full or great scenarios, hot tub water too high, ryes’ in the compost piles violations and the ever so dreaded statement, please step out of the car and put your drinks on the hood. (Glad it wasn’t a tofu doughnut joke.)

http://adage.com/brightcove/single.php?title=64892835001

Spots that didn't connect with me.

I wouldn’t call any of the spots I didn’t call winners, losers. I think all the spots had some sort of merit. The production quality was good on all of them except the strange Sketchers Exercise Shoes spots that ran about three times. I think the Google spot was good story telling but I’m not so sure why they spent the money to run during the Super Bowl. The Boost Mobile Shuffle left me scratching my head. The Bud and Bud Light seemed like they were a huge stretch in reality, rather than embodying the beauty of truisms. Then we have the stick with no pants in Career Builder and Dockers. They reminded me of creative that was embodied in bathroom humor that creatives know to stay away from. The Coca-Cola stuff was just plain and simple strange. I don’t sleepwalk for soda or watch the Simpsons, so why would that motivate someone to purchase a shitty can of Coke? Hell, you can’t even find that stuff in the bottle that you patented a billion years ago so show the fuckin’ can. The Denny’s Chickens Across America - mediocre creative but the offer is so huge they will have every seat filled on Tuesday the 9^th.

Now I’m going to get to my biggest disappointment of the night - Go Daddy. Guys or girls, you need a new shtick. How many times are you going to play the same joke over and over and over? I don’t know if you focus group test that crap-ass creative, maybe it tests well, that’s why you want to run it over and over. Maybe it’s time you take it from in-house and hire a real dam agency or marketing firm to come up with something new. The hot ladies are fun a couple of times but now it’s boring and everyone knows what’s going to happen. And please don’t send me to your Web site to see the ending. Yep, you’ll be able to quantify your media spend to your shareholders by the number of hits on your site. But it’s getting old and we know to go to your site to purchase a domain name and host for $1 a day. I’ve actually given this too much thought, and I certainly don’t want them to get any free PR or a viral effect.

The Tim Tebow – Focus on Family wins my award for the most talked about PR Driven, viral spot that was so soft in the media environment during the game I actually missed it. However, I think they did get the most PR and viral out of all Super Bowl spots. So, well done for the little guy getting noticed.

Till next year! Stay away from people buried alive in Doritos or disrespectful little brats reminding adults to “keep yo hands of my momma” and people with no pants sleepwalking going to Web Sites with scantily clad women and babies talking about your finances. I mean who trusts a kid to handle your retirement anyways?

Joe Easton Creative Director

The $2.5 million :30 Spot Controversy

I am a huge fan of controversial creative. Creative that makes people think, feel and do. I know this is going to ruffle some feathers - The Tim Tebow Super Bowl Spot.

CBS says it will run the spot during the Super Bowl, but will also consider other "responsibly produced" advocacy ads in its Feb. 7 broadcast. OK, so that means pro-choice advocates can purchase equal time. Right? Right. So what’s with the craze of media about why CBS shouldn’t run this spot? The 30-second spot is expected to recount the story of Pam Tebow's pregnancy in 1987. After getting sick during a mission trip to the Philippines, she ignored a recommendation by doctors to abort her fifth child. She later gave birth to Tim, who won the 2007 Heisman Trophy and helped the Florida Gators win two BCS championships. Ok, that seems pretty reasonable. Right?

Let’s think about this. The spot has yet to air and it has gotten more PR than a North Carolina Senator running for President who had a love child to a videographer on his campaign trail. So what’s the value of the PR? I would bet, without having to talk to our PR Director and Media Director, that it has already well exceeded the media buy and cost of production.

Some people feel that the spot shouldn’t be allowed to run. Why? Evidently, the production quality is on par with other spots submitted. So, the pro-choice people can submit their spot that is "responsibly produced" according to CBS. The beer companies can promote their goods. In fact most people don’t know it but the beer companies target “Super Heavy Users” - people who drink 30+ beers a day. So, I’m still trying to find a reason why this spot shouldn’t be allowed to run. (I’m sure I will get a flood of reasons.)

What has this spot made people do? Well for starters, go do a Google search for Tim Tebow Super Bowl Spot and see for yourself. The bottom line is that not all Super Bowl spots have to be funny, make you send something overnight or go online and purchase a URL because a racecar driver tells you to do so. We idolize brands because of TV spots, and if they are done well and are based on solid strategy they make us think, feel and do. Maybe the strategy for the Tim Tebow Super Bowl Spot had a huge PR component to the strategy? If it didn’t, it does now! Congratulations on a spot that paid for its production and media buy without airing yet.

Joe Easton

Creative Director