Koroberi Blog

I’ve been thinking about some of the downturns I’ve worked through in the ‘80s, ‘90s and earlier this decade. I’ve re-read articles published during those periods and found a common theme—this time of uncertainty is an Opportunity.

Advertising is an investment just like a machine that cuts production costs. Consider the lead time of sales in the B2B space. Few industrial products are purchased on impulse. Especially when every dollar spent is being scrutinized. Current advertising affects your future. At worst, advertising now facilitates a holding pattern. Advertising keeps your product in front of your customers; without advertising, a vacuum of information starts to develop.

Stopping your advertising has eroding effects. When advertising is cut out, the result is always diminished company and product awareness, fewer in-bound calls, fewer sales appointments for your reps to go to, fewer sales, decreasing share of market, less revenue, less profit and so on. Maintaining your share of sales and market now is much less costly than trying to rebuild them later. Once your momentum stops, you start over from scratch later.

Also remember, there’s always turnover at your customers and prospects. New specifiers might be starting today, next week or next month. Do they know anything about you yet? Advertising to these new influences is critical especially when they’re trying to maximize their impact and make their mark.

One of the most compelling considerations about advertising in a recession is the opportunity to steal sales and market share from a competitor who’s thrown the brakes on their own advertising. Think about the double whammy you can score: less competition in the marketplace of ideas from them means more impressions and more potential sales for you.

Jeff Asher is the Regional Sales Manager of New Equipment Digest, published by Penton Media, Inc.

Although it’s likely not a topic of interest outside the writing professional’s circle — and possibly of waning interest even there — the serial comma and its usage are nevertheless of abiding interest to this long-in-the-tooth copywriter.

Also known as the Oxford comma or Harvard comma, the serial comma is the comma used immediately before a grammatical conjunction that precedes the last item in a list of three or more items. Having started down my career path back in the days when pencil, legal pad, and a copy of Strunk and White’s The Elements of Style were the basic tools of the trade, I’ve undoubtedly passed the millionth serial comma usage milestone several times over.

But, alas, there’s a conspiracy afoot to banish my hard-working little friend. Aided and abetted by the wankers behind The Associated Press Stylebook, the assault on the serial comma extends even into the ranks of the young. One of our interns, an earnest, committed, and eager-to-learn English major, reports that profs at the UNC School of Journalism regularly rail against the serial comma. Although I have no idea why journalists are so repulsed by the diminutive and ever-so-useful character that they’re willing to sacrifice clarity of expression for paucity of punctuation, I’m incensed, outraged, and just plain hopping mad at the blatant abuse of authority teachers of journalism display when dealing with an impressionable audience.

As an integrated agency engaged in both pr and advertising, Koroberi has adopted a schizophrenic policy regarding serial comma usage: press releases, magazine articles, and other material intended for publication toe the AP line (as misguided as I believe it to be) and are produced sans serial comma — albeit reluctantly on my part. But when it comes to everything else, the serial comma reigns supreme, sublime, and, I hope, eternal.

Thanks largely to the infectious influences of mass media, technology-induced shorthand, and a language- and vocabulary-challenged commander in chief, proper grammatical usage is in a state of rapid decline in the USA, with the quality of both spoken and written communication overall becoming ever more abysmal — even among the ranks of so-called professional journalists.

That’s why it’s time for all writers who truly care about their craft to draw a line in the sand, throw down the gauntlet, and confront the enemy in his own backyard. Only by being steadfast, determined, and unwaveringly committed to preserving the sanctity of the serial comma, will we succeed.