![Welcome to Our Flog [flawg]](images/header-flog.gif)
Noun
1. A combination of the terms “Flynn & Friends” and “Blog” [flynn + blawg].
2. An online forum in which the agency considers the perils of beating dead horses, overcommunicating, underselling, and others of the many sins of the advertising tribe.
3. Occasional tangential and peripheral thoughts on The World We Live In and how it relates to The Getting and Keeping of Customers.
Verb
1. To beat with a whip, stick, etc., especially as punishment; whip; scourge. < Many ad agencies flog visitors to their websites with too much information. >
2. Slang
a. to sell, especially aggressively or vigorously. < Flogging customers with extended warranties is a good way to lose them. >
b. to promote; publicize. < The Old Glory Company hired Flynn & Friends to help it flog its flags. >
The place of the pencil in a digital world.
When we started business in 1986, computers were just a rumor, spam was still a canned food, and websites were places where spiders went fly fishing. Now, that we're in the 2020s, how do you keep pace in a world where POTUS is the Tweeter In Chief and...
One of the joys of our office on Franklin Street is its location hard-by a couple of bars that routinely get beer deliveries. One of the joys of our work is seeing "our work" out in public - like this logo and tagline ("Real Beer Made in Buffalo") we did...
We were asked by a company who is changing their name to come up with some ideas for a new identity. We worked on it for approximately a week. The result was about 15 design ideas which we presented this morning to an astute and appreciative client. They...
84 million of anything is a lot - and when you multiply it by $1 bills, you have made quite a statement. But Lance Armstrong, in his April 2012 visit to Buffalo, said that when the mock-up of the Livestrong wristband was first presented to him, he...
Look closely at the real estate sign in the photo and you'll notice there's a black-and-white square in the upper left just below the big bright red "SOLD" header. That's a QR code. "QR" stands for "Quick Read" and is a relatively recent and ingenious...
What would WC Fields have said?
Although one of WC Fields' most famous quotes is "Never work with animals or children," he's said to have secretly admired the younger generation. And what's not to like, especially when you have winning kids of all ages from the graduating classes of...
The beauty of Band-Aid solutions.
The Tipping Point is, in our opinion, the greatest book on marketing ever written. We just finished re-reading it for the fifth time. Each time we travel its pages, a new perception jumps out at us. Take this one from author Malcolm Gladwell's litany of...
This came to the office earlier this week. A hand-written plain mailer with no return address and a CD with the words "Play This Now" in the same hand. Being a sucker for a good teaser mailing (we have done many here at Flynn & Friends, several with...
Procrustes was the name of a legendary Greek bandit who literalized the concept of "one size fits all" in the most morbid of ways: he tied his victims to his bed, and if they didn't fit exactly (no one did), he'd stretch them if they were too short and...
Does tweeting make you a twit?
Horror movie fans cherish Alfred Hitchcock's "The Birds" for the same reason the Taliban fears CIA drones: airborne attacks are downright scary. "Scary" also seems an apt term for the imbalance between the ubiquity of the Twitter logo (hallmark of the au...
Western New York has witnessed an epidemic in the last few weeks. Not measles or some other disease, but an unsettling trend of drivers crashing into restaurants, stores, apartment complexes, markets, and houses. The question is, what makes for an...
We love billboards for three reasons. First, you can't tune them out. (At least not as easily as changing the radio dial.) Second, done right – which is to say headlines of five words or less paired with simple graphics – they represent...
At least two of our larger local competitors - we've been advised not to mention their names lest you google them and go to their websites instead of staying here where you belong - started their businesses the same year we started ours, in 1986. What's...
I got an e-mail this morning from a colleague (who simultaneously sent me a "friend" request on Facebook) asking what I thought were the most important qualities of a copywriter. Here's the question and reply: > Hi, Mitch. In preparation for my course in...
There's been a lot of news of late about the efforts to promote Western New York, aka Buffalo, through the entity formerly known as the Convention Visitors Bureau (CVB), now known as Visit Buffalo Niagara (a call to action recast as a brand, which is a...