blog posts

This year, on February 18th, members of the San Antonio Advertising Federation will gather at the Westin La Cantera for the 2012 ADDY Awards. Creative Link is excited to announce that we've received 21 nominations this year! We're gunning for GOLD!

The 40 Under 40 Rising Stars publication honoring young people in San Antonio who are making a difference in the business world and the community selected Creative Link's very own, Brooke Miceli.

What's your holiday wish? Tell us and you can help a holiday wish come true for some well-deserving area children.

Amazon.com has often been known as a pioneer in online usability and user experience. Their ability to organize massive amounts of products and customize product selections have been used as examples in countless books and talked about across the web. But yesterday, I had to question what was going on at Amazon.com.

After being in client service for many years I’ve heard a lot. Clients call stressed because they have forgotten a project, they have just been given a task by their boss, a great opportunity has come up and the email, the ad, the script, whatever it may be, is due in an extremely short period of time. But what is common in all of these circumstances is the urgency, sometimes panic in their voices.

Holy frijoles! Bobby got beet up on his bike! Queso, now what? You can chip in at greenling.com/gift and lettuce all be glad our friend is on the mend.

The creative and interactive interests of Linkers expand far beyond our day-to-day projects and into our personal lives. On any given weekend, you might catch us launching personal e-commerce websites for our watchband-selling spouses, participating in the creative planning for our home church or making elaborate home movies with our kids. We’re passionate about what we do and it shows in our extra-curricular activities.

So you’ve met with your client and they signed off on the budget and scope for Very Important Project. Discovery is complete, timeline is set and work is in motion. A couple of weeks into the project you get a call, from a somewhat panicked client, explaining their budget has been cut and marketing items are being slashed across the board. What do you do?

The Creative Link team was tasked with updating the website for Arias & Associates – a group of geotechnical, materials, and environmental consultants. In addition to visually needing a refresh, they asked that we make their site work harder and smarter for them. We responded by recommending and providing a new, up-to-date, website with a strong focus on user centered design.

Creative Link is a blended marketing, branding and technology company. As such, we have some practice areas that do not get the love and attention in the blogosphere that we give to interactive projects. One under appreciated niche is retail promotions which require a specialized set of talents to design and produce effective marketing materials. Just as important are respecting retail budgets and delivering on-time.

Sometimes in the creative process, I need a buddy. Someone that can help me wade through a bog of ho-hum ideas to find the treasure of a great creative concept. Occasionally when the project, time, budget and stars align, I get the chance to collaborate with another creative, and it can be a wonderful thing.

Creative Link is excited about “Ideas Worth Spreading!” and is donating time and talent to bring this year’s TEDx San Antonio event to life.

Let's say you're going to be in a wedding this weekend. And miracle of all miracles, the attire the bride or groom has selected for you to wear is to your liking. Then suddenly, the delightful couple calls to say that your dress, or suit, will no longer be basic black.

Team building is crucial to the success of a company. After all, it can help improve communication, make the workplace more enjoyable, motivate individuals, increase productivity and encourage collaboration.

Most clients today are spending marketing dollars within a closely monitored budget. With reduced spending, there are fewer free dollars to test new opportunities, or even expand in channels that are working like, pay per click, email marketing or television. However, there are ways to make your budgets work harder, optimize results and grow your business. Here are 5 tips to help you get the most out of any budget.

Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising has the potential to be very efficient. Not all keywords are equal though, and those keywords that aren't as efficient can find themselves either deleted or their bid lowered to the point they receive zero clicks. It isn't always the keyword's fault though. If it's a relevant keyword that should work, maybe the keyword isn't the problem and bid optimization isn't the answer.

Ladies and Gentlemen! Lets get ready to ruummmble!! In the red corner, we have Search Engines! And in the blue corner... Users! Ding ding! Fight! Wait... why are Search Engines and Users battling it out? After all, search engines purpose is to help users find what they're looking for, fast. So why the competition?

Business-to-Consumer (B2C) and Business-to-Business (B2B) marketing have their differences, but not realizing that both B2C and B2B marketing are speaking to an individual can hinder your B2B results.

Last month an online marketing firm’s system was compromised by hackers who accessed a subset of customer information. Epsilon, the firm attacked, sends billions of emails annually on behalf of more than 2,500 clients. Some of these clients include Walgreens, Best Buy and Citigroup. How does this effective your email campaigns?

What a difference a year can make. Having spent 2004 through May 2010 working for an online yellow pages company and then a PPC agency, I was convinced that online marketing was so much more important, effective and efficient than traditional marketing.

Talk to any copywriter and within minutes, they’ll find a way to let you know how terribly clever they are. Nonsense, you say? Obviously, you don’t know any copywriters.

Twitter’s reach is undeniable and can be a viable PR tool for any business or organization with the right approach. Here are a few tips to utilize tweets to promote and effectively cover a professional event while not taking away from the actual experience:

The internet has long been the land of Arial, Verdana, and Times. Typography on the web has been a boring and lonely place.

Georgia just got a little more French. And Creative Link was a part of it.

It was another great night in the sand! We had a little food and drank and we were ready to play.

Creative Link is again delivering the “Wow!” After careful thought and hours of research, we’ve decided to alter our color scheme. The agency’s main color now will be a striking, energetic pink. Because it’s awesome, and so are we. We believe the reaction to this move will be tremendous. What do you think? Leave us a comment with your feedback.

I detest junk mail. I own a shredder and laugh maniacally when I use it. So I got that wild look in my eye when I wrestled a huge envelope from Ipsos Mendelsohn out of my mailbox.

The cabs are here! And they’re headed straight to the beach, er, I mean, the sand volleyball courts. Creative Link’s all-star company volleyball team (staring our very own JWOWW, Snooki, Deena, Sweetheart Sam and the boys) put all creativity and work to the side and embraced the world of competition.

Call it giving Kudos, or drooling over amazing work. But whatever it may be... here’s a small sample of work we think is remarkable.

Does your website’s Thank You page send visitors on a one way to a dead end? Many websites fail to engage visitors or encourage an action other than closing out of the site after a form submission or product purchase. Check out these tips to continue engaging your customers.

In honor of St. Patrick’s Day the San Antonio River is dyed green (don’t worry it’s environmentally-friendly green dye) and our lucky team members are decked in green. Those who aren’t, aren’t so lucky. As our very own office leprechaun (Katie) is running around the office pinching those not in green.

Wake the World, what is that all about? I asked Ryan Caroll (founder of Wake the World Texas). Apparently, the question was very common, and Ryan needed the help of Creative Link to show people the difference this organization is making in children’s lives. Ryan is filled with passion when he explains what WTW does for the kids at St. Jude’s Ranch Children’s home, “We will give these kids a memory they would otherwise never have the chance to have… A fun day at the lake.”

Here at Creative Link we love our pets. In fact, most of us have more than one pet in our homes that we consider family. So in honor of February's Responsible Pet Owner Month, we put together an infograph to see who rules the office: the cat people or dog people.

Creative Link was given the opportunity to create and brand the promotional material for the San Antonio Regional Golden Gloves Tournament which benefits the Boys and Girls Clubs of San Antonio. The creative team began producing some amazing concepts, and I was asked to help create a video* for the campaign.

It's that time of year when love is in the air. Our Valentine's Day blog is dedicated to all things we hold near and dear to our hearts.

Here's a list of my favorite Super Bowl® commercials. Oops! did I just infringe a copyright? I meant to say "The Big Game". I like these spots because they each provided something unexpected, a key ingredient for viral video.

Last month, I spoke with Haynes and Boone, LLP of Austin, and we had a Q&A session on Social Media. While there are so many best practices out there on how to blog or write Facebook posts or Twitter tweets, they asked me to share what has to happen beyond Facebook and Twitter to make your Social Media strategy a success.

Today is Macintosh Computer Day, and Creative Link wants to share some of the reasons we love our Macs!

You have to understand that I first started in this industry in what many of you would call the dinosaur age. The age before internet access, email, Facebook and YouTube. Computers were huge mainframes crunching numbers for large corporations. In 2011, is printing still alive?

In the advertising and marketing industry, we are tasked with learning how to make the most of digital connections for our clients and their audiences. As a result, most of us are massively over connected and over stimulated on a daily basis, leaving little room for actual creative time.

Most New Year's resolutions are centered around improving one's health by eliminating a bad habit, reducing stress or getting into better shape. These personal goals can provide a useful way to think about potential New Year's resolutions for your business.

So here we are a few days before the New Year. Not a lot to do. 2011 plans and budget were finished months ago. Wait! This isn't you? Well if you're like many, you're playing catch up to your advertising plans for the start of the year. Creative Link has a few tips to share as you get a plan together for 2011.

As we head into 2011, Linkers reflected on 2010. Here are some highlights from the past year.

Click on the "Happy Holidays from Creative Link" blog title above to view our holiday video!

Many businesses question the effectiveness of blogs and wonder if they are worth the time and effort. Creative Link is here to tell you, it can lead to a happily ever after.

As Google strives to provide relevant content to users, they now place a larger emphasis on localization--more specifically with Google Places. Local searches now display Google Places listings at the top of search results, blended with organic listings. This move dramatically increases the importance of maintaining your business’ Google Place page (or pages if you have multiple locations).

Creative Link has been busy the past few months with the launch of quite a few sites. Allow us to introduce some recently launched in the healthcare industry: HealthTexas Medical Group, HealthTexas Rejuvenation Center, Trinity Laboratories and Paloxin. Each of these sites run on Creative Link Technologies’ SiteBlox Platform and quickly achieved first page results on Google!

Everyone’s a Writer – Even You Shaking Your Head. Guess what? You’re a marketing writer, and they didn’t even bother to put it on your business card. Protest all you like that your company has a marketing department or person or agency that handles the “words.” It does not alter the fact that one of your day-to-day job responsibilities is to write.

When businesses hear the word “creativity” or “design” from an agency they usually think pretty pictures, clever concepts and witty headlines. What businesses don’t think of when they think of design is strategy, business objectives and solving problems with solutions that marry desirability, viability and feasibility.

In today’s post, we will show you just a few ways to facilitate communication with existing customers, give them reasons to keep coming back and inspire them to become your biggest fans.

It's one thing to be listed on over 30 online business directories, but what information is available about your restaurant? Content is key.

Millions of people make the decision every day on what restaurant to visit for breakfast, lunch or dinner. When hunger strikes, people turn to the internet to find what they are craving. Do they find your restaurant to satisfy their hunger?

Today’s focus is Content. The sustenance for your website.

Creative Link has put together a menu of essentials for restaurant websites (Part One: Visual; Part Two: Content). Check them out to see if your website is an appetizer or the main course. Plus find great “tips” to keep your restaurant on the tip of their taste buds.

Wake the World Texas 2010 benefits St. Jude's Ranch and takes place at Canyon Lake on July 19th.

Creative Link recently launched new client website, The Protocol School of Texas. The site features Texas based etiquette professional, Diane Gottsman, and her corporate and university etiquette training services. A cosmopolitan design is emphasized while reflecting Diane’s image of remaining approachable.

We are constantly learning new things about the diverse team at Creative Link. We have designers that are also photographers, an interactive director that is a wake boarder, company executives that are on competitive BBQ teams, and a video editor that is a talented illustrator and music video producer! Rick Lopez is the editor and producer for our client’s commercial video projects and can be found in our Eight Slate Productions editing bay everyday. We recently stumbled on a set of Rick’s personal video projects and decided that one of them was too awesome not to share. After viewing this video, take a look at his other projects!

Creative Link is thrilled to welcome Jason Little and Marisa Fox to our team in San Antonio, Texas increasing the scope of our full service advertising expertise both online and offline. With these additions, along with the recent acquisition of business analyst, search engine optimization, and interactive design talent, Creative Link is preparing to tackle several new multi-channel marketing clients.

Your website is not a lot different than your brick and mortar retail store. A lot of thought is given to the physical layout of your store to make sure your customer’s shopping experience is the best. Aisles, product placement, signage, and displays. All these elements make it easier for your customers to navigate through your store and find the products they’re looking for-and hopefully a few more. Your website can do the same thing. It is a virtual version of your physical location. It’s not hard. Just take a little time to think about your customers and what they expect to find from your site.

By definition, web content is literally the words and text on a web page. Who decides how good the content is? Your customers do… And, they’ll make that decision within 4 seconds.

Creative Link and our sister company Creative Link Technologies are proud to announce the launch of two new client websites. Each client came to us with their own set of challenges and requests while our strategic, design, and development teams listened and prepared to create dynamic solutions.

At Creative Link, we are full speed ahead when it comes to reinventing how we do what has been known as “advertising.” The game has changed and we see ourselves as change agents participating in what is now a very exciting multi-channel conversation between business, consumer and the larger social networks within which we communicate.

Small businesses now have powerful tools to evaluate every expense and monitor how they impact their bottom line. In today's age of online marketing, free tools like Google Analytics give reassurance to business owners that their marketing efforts can now be soundly measured based on an investment model which looks at how much traffic is sent to the business website as a result of resources allocated.

In an effort to support our troops, the Cinco de Guyos are trying to provide financial support to the members of Darryl's unit to help offset the costs of a trip home before their year long deployment in June. We’re counting on you for your support. Help us raise the funds we need to connect our troops with their families.

Happy Easter from Creative Link

A recent Media Post article, Who Is Your Brand's Social Media Voice? raises important points regarding the inner process of selecting and preparing committed, capable social media gurus to spread the brand story throughout the growing available social media channels

The Link's BBQ specialists team up with the Boys and Girls Club to sell BBQ plates to help the organization raise money to reach their $100,000 Be Great SA Challenge.

The 2010 San Antonio Addy Awards brought Creative Link a couple of gold addys which we all think resemble blocks of cheese. Our co-worker from Wisconsin was particularly excited.

We were tasked by the Valero Texas Open to rebrand them in a way that captured the essence of Texas. We knew this was more than a shift in images and typography, but a complete overhaul of the spirit and culture of the tournament. We dug right in by getting out in the hill country, touring the back roads, talking with true Texans and getting a complete look at the people behind the tournament. We think the results are true, engaging and most all Unapologetically Texan.

We have created the following flow to help clients understand the ongoing commitment to their newly established social presence and those that are participating in their efforts. Monitor: Start by actively listening before jumping into social media. Manage: Mediate conflict and strategize your responses. Mentor: Teach your company the value in social engagement. Message: Don’t shout, but share…AFTER you’ve listened.

For our 2009 holiday card, we thought we'd try something a little different and create a lip dub to send out to our clients.

Green Design goes beyond using recycled materials and moves into the territory of creating smarter, more efficient solutions to solve the problem.

Please join us in extending a warm welcome to Rick Lopez, our new resident director/editor of the Link's in-house production studio.

As excited as we were to shoot the new Valero Texas Open "Unapologetically Texan" television, the unexpectedly cold weather caught us a bit off guard. The chilly early mornings on the golf course were tough to bear even for a Wisconsin native.

Our Social Media Essentials package is ideal for the business that just needs to learn ‘how to fish’. We will conduct an online reputation analysis, develop a manageable strategy, and set up your essential online profiles. We will train your internal team how to best utilize these tools for ongoing digital engagement.

Halloween is always a favorite here around the Link. We always welcome creepy, creative characters around the office as long as it's only on Halloween.

Texas Wilson, an office furniture and supply company approached us about helping them rework their brand. They wanted a contemporary, modern and engaging look to take them forward as a company.

These are just a few brand focused books that we like. Don't get us started talking about design books or our favorite pop-culture reads.

We had a lot of fun shooting the first ever television for Valero Texas Open this past spring. The 2009 campaign dealt with the seemingly un-men things that take place on the golf course like afternoon tee, using irons and the enjoyment of long drives. This was a great shoot, the weather was perfect and the final commercial turned out to be entertaining and beautiful.