ISSUE 248 : Wednesday, June3, 2009

I have a terrible cold. The stuff that is coming out of my lungs has set a new low for disgusting color palettes. I don't sleep, I drowse from coughing jag to coughing jag.

So, the past week has been more or less an endless spewfest of pain, nausea, doctors, x-rays, inhalers and flem. It was also the opening of the fiscal year for Smart. Our 23rd to be exact. Two years shy of a quarter century.

This is the week I dread most in the 52 to come or the 52 that have past. This is the week I set aside to determine the course of the company for the coming year. Or even if there will be a course of the coming year. In fact, every year for the past four years that has been the first agenda item. Will the company continue it's operations for the coming year or become inactive.

For the past three years I have elected to keep Smart on the inactive list, while I focused my efforts on Gasp and IAPIA. Both have proven to be worthwhile investments of time and resources. But now it's time to get back to work.

So as of June 1, 2009 Smart Communications, Inc. is back in business. And exactly what is that business? I thought you would never ask. Smart is now the World's Very First NeoAdvertising Agency. Tah and also DA!

OK. That's over. I believe in getting the easy stuff out of the way, early on. Because now that I went and told everybody, I am actually going to have to make a viable business model out of being "the World's Very First NeoAdvertising Agency". Like, what does that mean exactly? And, how does that work? Let's not forget, Does anybody even want to do this NeoAdvertising stuff? These are the hard questions that come up right after the easy stuff is out of the way. Hard questions require easy answers. My answer is, "Let's find out."

That's where the cheerleading comes in. The business imperative for Smart is to make NeoAdvertising "Real". That's it. Migrate the reinvention of advertising from a marketing and self-promotion platform to a viable product/service offering. Once again a simple statement to describe a highly complex endeavor with an unproven value proposition. So the first Cheerleading task is to fire up the troops to identify a viable value proposition based upon performance not promise. In other words , build it and they will come. The right cheer can make all the difference in the world. Cheerleading is a form of NeoAdvertising.

The primary difference between a NeoAdvertising Agency and a Traditional or Digital advertising agency, is that the Neo ad firm is in the audience building business and the others are not. So first up for us is to build a hell of an audience for our very first client. And like the Verizon Guy, trot our audience over to the Brand we built them for and say, "Let's make a deal."

Audience building requires network building. NeoAdvertising works on the premise that there are no consumers, customers or prospects. There is only the audience and they are advertising immune.

The NeoAdvertising audience has four basic spheres of interest. Family Well-Being. Financial Security, Personal Growth and Fun and Escape. Through highly focused sponsor produced content networks, NeoAdvertising engages with and influences the advertising immune audience and therein establishes on-going brand preference and topical brand equity. It says so right here on the label. Right next to this big red button.

Let the games begin.