I attended the “Marketing ROI in a Down Economy” session yesterday at RAC. It’s foremost on the minds of everyone, as evidenced by the lively discussion and candid comments in the session. In particular, two statements stuck with me: “using ROI only as a metric can stifle creativity and innovation” and “a downturn is a terrible thing to waste.”

We don’t pretend to have everything completely figured out at our agency, but ROI is a stake we put in the ground long ago … combining data-driven customer understanding, response-oriented creative and a disciplined approach to communication that matches the right message to the right customer. The foundation for this perspective is what we call InsideOut Retailing(SM).

We realize it is not feasible for every marketing agency to do what we’ve done — develop our own retail brand in order to understand the unique world of retail from the inside out. But we find it has been extraordinarily helpful in understanding the nuances of our clients’ businesses, keeping them ahead of the curve and developing collaborative relationships with them. By putting our own skin in the game and testing in our own “laboratory” first, we have earned the respect of our retail clients. They know we operate on both sides of the glass.

InsideOut Retailing means that we have:
· Experience with all touch points of retail (site selection, financing, store design, package design, branding, employee training) as well as typical issues facing retailers (expansion, employee turnover and  development, market downturns and competitive encroachment)
· Knowledge of how to stretch vendors, work with them to get more and leverage co-op opportunities
· An entrepreneurial mindset — innovative, aggressive and penny-wise
· Understanding of advertising’s place in the marketing mix

Bernstein-Rein clients have always known InsideOut Retailing worked, but never before has the economy put it to the test as it is right now. We’d love to hear stories about how others are rising to today’s challenges … and if you’d like to know more about how our clients are making cash registers ring in this tough economic landscape, go to  www.insideoutretailing.com for their stories. An economic downturn is a terrible thing to waste.

Arturo is a distinguished filmmaker and editor currently pioneering new ideas, technology and collaborations in the pursuit of hypermedia, which emphasizes a blurring of the lines between forms of communication, and emphasizes the convergence of imagination, interactions and immersion. Throughout his illustrious career, Arturo has won numerous international awards and received national recognition for technical and artistic achievement. Arturo is also a writer painter and musician. His works are in permanent collections in Chicago, New York, London, Ottowa and Vancouver.

Arturo and his creative partner, Sarah Weis, have coordinated live/internet events featuring art, performance and technology from collaborators around the world – most notably the first ever International Independent Interstitial Festival (the i^3 festival). He has a B.F.A. in Plastic and Graphic Arts and an M.F.A. in Electronic Visualization.

At i^3 productions we have eliminated unnecessary steps in the production and post-production processes in order to simplify work flow and offer clients a full range of services with the least amount of interruptions to the creative process. Color, sound, editing, graphics, and effects can all be done in one session, enabling your team to maintain full immersion while working on the project. At the same time, clients are no longer covering overhead for other departments, nor paying for outdated equipment and procedures.

While other companies struggle through the current transitions taking place in both production and post, at i^3 productions we have already embraced the newest technologies, shaping our working methods around them and establishing new procedures appropriate for the hyper-reality of the digital age.

@radical

Thank you for taking the time to review this brief montage of our long form content work. We’re excited to have this opportunity to share our collective experiences with RAMA.

www.radicalmedia.com Contact Dana Locatell, Executive Producer: locatell@radicalmedia.com

Our philosophy is simple: any surface can become a video screen, without distortion and with perfect integration into the existing interior or exterior architectural features. Like video wallpaper, we crop projected video to seamlessly fit.