Give Us a Call Today (813) 205-1229

20 Aug 2014

About Us

By Jim Aardema

“To effectively reach an audience today, marketing must be proactive, magnetic and seamless across all media to create impact.”

– Jim Aardema


Leadership

14 Aug 2014

About Us

By Jim Aardema

“To effectively reach an audience today, marketing must be proactive, magnetic and seamless across all media to create impact.”


Leadership

20 May 2014

Our Vision

By Jim Aardema

 

 


CEO AND VISIONAIRE

Jack Hughman

Our vision is to create beautiful websites that are easy to customize.

 

Join us


20 May 2014

Our Savvy Cards

By Jim Aardema

Scripting & Pre-Production

Video is the most effective medium for telling your story, communicating your organizational character and offering through engaging visual and audio windows into your world. The statistics are undeniable; video attracts and retains attention, and video applications are exploding as the technologies of visual arts creative tools and distribution channels enable more affordable access to high quality and amazing productions.

Scripting & Pre-Production

From conception to completion, we provide strategic planning, creative ideation, script writing, storyboarding, casting, set design, location scouting; everything that makes a video production of any scale come to life efficiently and effectively. Preparation and planning are critical elements of every project to ensure great results, and telling a compelling story in a way that the desired eyes and ears enthusiastically receive it is always a primary objective.

Branding

Branding

Who are you as an organization; in planning, growing, dusting off or reinventing? Your identity in graphic and multimedia form is your face to the world. Connecting with the world and drawing customers/clients to your product or service is a creative art form with the power to make or break the venture.

SMARTS people have that creative “stuff” that translates a message into color and movement and captures the imagination and attention. Branding from logo/slogo concept and design through website development, multimedia production including radio and television commercial and corporate video production are part of our core competence.

Media strategies, demographic analysis and media buying on local, regional, and national scales are also part of the SMARTS arsenal.

Promotional Products

Promotional Products

Learning Solutions & Content Production

Our services also include the development and production of custom learning solutions, from assessing training needs to structuring an enterprise “university” with seamless delivery of content online within a customized “Portal”.   Our service capabilities include:

  • Surfacing and crystalizing leadership vision, programs and processes for bringing enterprises and their people into lock-step behind brand and mission.
  • Brand and theme learning promotional materials and events.
  • Recommend delivery strategies to meet diverse learning levels and styles.
  • Develop learning maps.
  • E-learning courseware.
  • Instructor and training guides.
  • Video and online training scripts.
  • Content creation, development, and production.
  • Training asset organization and program integration.
  • LMS Creation and management.

Marketing Strategy & Planning

Simply put, we apply the use of video, graphic, motion graphic, animation, design and musical arts to creating and distributing branded content across broadcast, website, learning, and social media networks.

We collaborate with clients at any desired level of effort, producing simple enhancements to existing media, to the development and management of comprehensive programs for converging brand development and promotion across broadcast, website, and social media networks. We look at the relationship as applying our resources as an extension of your team. This brings you, our client, the depth and productivity of our experts at much lower cost than the expense of internally staffing equivalent capacity.

Marketing Strategy & Planning

Every organization and enterprise needs a comprehensive approach to connecting mission, product, or service with a brand identity; reach external and internal customers with that identity and message; connect with them on an individual and organizational level; everywhere.

As traditional and digital media channels continue to emerge and evolve, it is more important than ever that your brand and message are established as a “footprint” that can be easily found everywhere; particularly in the digital realm.  If you’re not there, you don’t exist.

SMARTS’ leadership have the business experience and talent to collaborate with clients in the visioning, organization of marketing assets, planning, budgeting, and scheduling marketing programs across traditional and digital media channels.

Branding & Messaging

Branding & Messaging

Who are you as an organization; in planning, growing, dusting off or reinventing? Your identity in graphic and multimedia form is your face to the world. Connecting with the world and drawing customers/clients to your product or service is a creative art form, with the power to make or break the venture.

SMARTS people have that creative “stuff” that translates a message into color and movement and captures the imagination and attention. Branding from logo/slogo concept and design through website development, multimedia production including radio and television commercial and corporate video production are part of our core competence.

Media strategies, demographic analysis and media buying on local, regional, and national scales are also part of the SMARTS arsenal.

Public Relations

Public Relations

Effective marketing strategies include finding the differentiating and newsworthy characteristics of your enterprise, the people within it, and activities surrounding it, then creatively “packaging” and connecting this information with markets through media channels.

Public, political, community, and enterprise relationship building is especially challenging these days with content coming at everyone from every direction.   It is more important than ever that your content is crafted to capture the interest of discriminating media distributors who serve as “gatekeepers” for their channels , and media consumers with an apatite for your message.

This work is clearly a marketing “art”, requiring excellence in messaging, writing, media connections, and business savvy.  SMARTS brings this blend of talent, experience, content creation, connections, and insight to client initiatives.

Here are several considerations and applications of public relations that should be part of your marketing communications strategies and tactics:

  • Leadership & Key Personnel Changes
  • Product & Service Announcements
  • Internal & External Stakeholder Messaging
  • Permitting & Community Relations for Projects
  • Corporate & Executive Reputation Management/Repair
  • Comprehensive Marketing Communications Planning
  • Traditional, Digital, Social Media Integration
  • National, Regional, and Local Initiatives
  • Press Kits
  • Writer’s Platforms
  • Editorial/News Release Calendars
  • Deal Flow
  • Competitive Analysis
  • Data-driven Strategy
  • Press Releases
  • Feature Releases
  • Journalist Relations

Project Delivery

Project Delivery

We use a cloud-based platform for project management called Basecamp.  Basecamp provides a very simple dashboard setup as a hub for internal email communications/discussions, real-time collaboration and sharing of text documents, file sharing in all media, automatic progress updates (each morning), scheduling, “to do” list assignments and reminders.

Basecamp is used to host a “project” for management of every engagement across all resources to facilitate tightly coordinated communication, efficient teamwork, and delivery of the project.

Social Media

Social Media

Along with the familiar phrase, “cash is king”, we also know these days that “content is king”.   Content development and production are at the heart of SMARTS’ mission to connect clients with internal and external customers, and also to inform and educate through real world examples (SMARTS Library videos) and learning solutions.  We are producing a great deal of our own content to share and add value to others, and we also can do it for you!

We apply talented copywriters, editors, graphic artists, videographers and digital editors as an extension of your team.  The time-consuming tasks of developing, producing, and publishing content are taken off your shoulders, and blog posts, newsletters, social media posts, video blogs, testimonials, training and explainer videos, and other media are produced and published, delivering content that is pre-approved by the client on a planned, scheduled, and consistent basis.

Production & Post-Production

Production & Post-Production

SMARTS’ production work deploys the optimal mix of equipment, experienced direction, and talented crew, scaled appropriately for each piece. We deliver high-definition videography, lighting, makeup, special effects and animations, sound, and post-production editing – where the magic really happens! We’ll shoot on land, from the air, on the water and even in the water.

We love this work; putting the power of video, music, animations, and motion graphics into the hands of our clients, and in creating each piece, whether simple, small clips or major productions, our approach is to optimize the message; make it connect emotionally, intellectually, in context with brand and targeted internal and external customers.

Search Engine Marketing/Online Advertising

Search Engine Marketing / Online Advertising

In this day and age, communicating your message effectively through digital media advertising platforms is key to business success.  Potential markets are spread across a myriad of platforms and it can be difficult to keep your message cohesive and consistent across distribution channels.  SMARTS helps client companies develop programs for getting their brand and call-to-action messages in front of the right audiences across new media.

Pay Per Click (PPC) campaigns can jumpstart traffic to your online assets, while “organic” Search Engine Optimization (SEO) tactics improve your listing results over time. Both approaches are important to the success of your online marketing campaign. Let us take your business to the next level!

  • SEO
  • PPC
  • Re-targeting
  • Pandora
  • iHeartRadio

Web Design

Web Design

The level of importance of your website in representing your brand and offering can not be overstated.  Websites, and associated applications, should be recognized as priority channels of communication, often making first impressions of your enterprise, making or,  possibly, breaking initial assessments of credibility as a product or service provider.

Your website is a dynamic, “living”, interface with your internal and external customers, prospects, and worldwide media.  As such it deserves thoughtful design, regular updates, and consistent management with attention to innovation and relevance of content.

SMARTS will work with you on website development from scratch in your choice of platform, including projects as simple as single landing pages to complex, database-driven e-commerce sites.  Our team of experts provides strategy, copywriting and editing, creative graphic design, motion graphics, animations and video production, use of themed templates, combinations or custom coding, all within the context and character of your brand and product or service offering.   Creative work, yes, but we never lose sight of the business objectives of each piece.

We also evaluate existing web assets, in some cases, “rediscovering” the administrative and technical functionality and status with regard to aspects of initial development; in other words, is it a museum piece or will it work for you moving forward?  Once the “discovery” process is complete, redesign and optimization may proceed as desired.

Website management can include routine technical updates, content and social media integration, and website marketing programs for Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Pay Per Click (PPC) to accelerate recognition of your presence in search engine results.

  • Mobile Sites
  • SavvyCards/Micro-sites
  • eCommerce
  • Web Applications
  • Landing Pages

Video Applications

Video Applications

Video applications are only limited by imagination and, realistically, budget. We do our best to “keep it real”, listen to you, and formulate productions that match up with your vision as well as your budget!

Video Application Examples:

Media Planning & Buying

Media Planning & Buying

Traditional media such as broadcast television, cable television, broadcast radio, movie theaters, outdoor signage and print are staples for viewing an advertising message, and now markets are spread out even further via websites, email, social media and text messages. SMARTS helps client companies develop effective strategies and plans for getting the brand, message, and call to action in front of the right people across media.

Media buying can be tricky, and our experts can help optimize the deployment of advertising dollars to target and reach your customers. Some advertising channels are less expensive than many clients believe, particularly cable television which can target consumers by category, media habits, market, and by county. Your message can be seen on dozens of America’s leading cable networks in thousands of programs, with the added benefit of targeting your message on a market by market basis.

Media strategies and advertising placements are also getting smarter, leveraging demographic, buyer behavior, location, and preference data and performance analytics. Pay Per Click (PPC) campaigns can jump start traffic to your online assets, while “organic” Search Engine Optimization (SEO) tactics improve your listing results over time. Blended programs may be the best approach for your marketing communications campaign.

Content Marketing

Content Marketing

Along with the familiar phrase, “cash is king”, we also know these days that “content is king”.   Content development and production are at the heart of SMARTS’ mission to connect clients with internal and external customers, and also to inform and educate through real world examples (SMARTS Library videos) and learning solutions.  We are producing a great deal of our own content to share and add value to others, and we also can do it for you!

We apply talented copywriters, editors, graphic artists, videographers and digital editors as extensions of your team.  The time-consuming tasks of developing, producing, and publishing content are taken off your shoulders, and blog posts, newsletters, social media posts, video blogs, testimonials, training and explainer videos, and other media are produced and published, delivering content that is pre-approved by the client on a planned, scheduled, and consistent basis.

  • Video Production
  • Blog Posts
  • Video Blog Posts
  • Editorial Calendars
  • Testimonials
  • Training/Learning Solutions
  • Explainer Videos

Advertising

Advertising

Communications used to persuade an audience to take action with respect to your brand, products, services, or ideas; the basics of advertising.  Traditional media like broadcast television, cable television, broadcast radio, movie theatres, outdoor signage, and print are staples for viewing an advertising message, often coordinated with digital media strategies and tactics.

SMARTS helps client companies develop effective strategies and plans for getting the brand, message, and call to action in front of the right people across media.

We will help you optimize your marketing communications through both traditional and new digital media advertising channels.

SMARTS’ core experience includes decades of radio, television, billboard, and specialty advertising products, including concept development, creative, production planning, production & post-production, media planning, media buying, and advertising program management.

Promotional Products

Promotional Products         Search Promotional Products

Promotional products are proven to be one of the most effective media available to advertisers.  They’re mobile, tangible, useful, highly targeted, inexpensive, and deliver a high rate of recall and return on investment.  Almost any product imaginable may be branded with your logo and company message, whether a simple T-shirt or other conventional promo item, or custom-designed products from scratch to meet highly specific advertising campaign needs.

SMARTS will guide you through the process of finding product ideas, conventional or unique and surprising, that will proudly carry your brand.

Event & Trade Show Media

Sure, we produce signs as big as billboards, but marketing at events means your brand has to be front and center in a more intimate setting.  SMARTS provides creative design and production for banners, trade show booths, and every imaginable kind of marketing content companies need to shine at any scale.

Print

Print

Business cards, rack cards; any promotional print from simple coupons to beautiful brochures are among the marketing arts we love to create.   SMARTS writers and designers will help from concept to delivered print media in support of any marketing initiative.

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