Gramercy Communications VP Eric Wohlleber Featured on YNN

Chances are you were one of the more than 111 million viewers to watch the Green Bay Packers defeat the Pittsburgh Steelers in Super Bowl XLV (or 45).

More specifically, you may have been among the growing group of viewers who are only watching for the commercials and not the action on the field. This year advertisers spent $3 million for a :30 spot, or $100,000 per second and in some cases it was not money well spent.

Time Warner’s Your News Now (YNN) invited Gramercy Communication’s Vice President Eric Wohlleber to speak about this year’s ads prior to the game and also brought him to do some Monday Morning Quarterbacking.

We invite you to take a moment and watch Eric’s take on the commercials via the links below. Check out our Facebook page and let us know which ad you thought won the day:

Pre-Game Analysis

Monday Morning Quarterback

FOX23 News: “Facebook ‘Sponsored Stories’ promote your posts”

You may want to think twice before you “like” something on Facebook or “check in” to a location.

Advertisers are now promoting your posts.

It’s a sort of social media word-of-mouth.

Facebook is letting advertisers pay to advertise your “likes” and “check-ins” on your friends’s pages. The social media juggernaut is calling the ads “Sponsored Stories.”

“I guess it’s pretty cool because you can see what your friends are doing,” says Carina Mahar, a College of Saint Rose student from East Greenbush. “It’s nice and then, if you like it too, you might learn about something new that you didn’t know about.”

Facebook posted a video on its site to explain the “Sponsored Stories.”

Here’s how a company engineer explains it: “It’s not this message that’s saying, ‘You should buy this thing or you should come to this Web site.’ It’s your friend saying, ‘Look – I did this and I want to tell you about it.’”

Some Facebook users say “Sponsored Stories” are invasions of their privacy.

“I think it’s creepy!” Jen Marsteller, said a student from Long Island.

Justin McCormack from Lake George says, “Unnecessary information is really what it is.”

Other people think the new ads are part of a clever marketing strategy.

Marissa Urkevich of Brunswick says, “I think that when you make a Facebook, you’re putting all of your information out there publicly anyway so I think it’s kind of fair that they use it.”

Thomas Nardacci, president of Gramery Communications explains, “We live in an age now where you can skip ads so advertisers are really trying to find: how do I reach my audience? And this is a new way that they’re doing it.”

Nardacci admits that the advent of social media has completely changed the way he works. He says companies should be answering certain questions before paying for “Sponsored Stories” on Facebook.

“Is it right with their brand and is it right with the things that they do and how will people react to it?” Nardacci asks. “There’s opportunities for companies but, also too, there’s potential pitfalls.”

Right now, Facebook users cannot opt out of being part of “Sponsored Stories.”

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President Obama’s Message to Tech Valley by Tom Nardacci

 

Two weeks ago, I was lucky enough to be one of a few hundred guests to attend President Obama’s address at GE in Schenectady. Throughout the day, as I milled around GE and networked with business, political and media colleagues, and then as I listened to the President talk about our region, it made me think how moving back to the Capital Region was a really smart move.

 

Every once in awhile, friends or colleagues will ask my wife and I why we left Manhattan or why we didn’t settle in Washington, DC where we met. There are certainly times when we have both thought about the careers we left behind. We both had very good jobs in the City, but we were confident that we had the work ethic that would help us be successful no matter where we lived.

As I think about our decision and the careers we’ve built the past five years, it’s a no brainer that we made the right choice. The Capital Region has a relatively stable economy with government, education and healthcare as strong anchors. The cost of living is very affordable. More importantly for my business and me is the recent and projected growth of new economy sectors, particularly high tech and renewable energy. Over three quarters of my business is in these areas. The Business Review featured Gramercy Communications in a story a few months back and called it “The Foundry Effect,” alluding to the development of the $4 billion GlobalFoundries and the current and projected spin-off benefit for local companies.

In the past 16 months, the President of the United States has visited us twice to talk about high tech and renewable energy, claiming that our region is a model that is working. President Obama called for the “return to the principles of Thomas Edison,” that he wants our country to once again invent things and sell them. Our President said that Tech Valley is leading this national charge. Pretty impressive. From a business planning perspective, it offers a great deal of optimism about future opportunities.

After decades of watching the industrial and manufacturing decline in our region, we are on the upswing in new manufacturing and cutting edge research & development. After years of steady layoffs, it is satisfying to see the positive changes at GE in Schenectady and the new manufacturing growth opportunities. Similarly, I grew up in Rensselaer not far from the BASF chemical plant – a classic company town scenario. Most of the families in the community had relatives that worked there for decades and had built solid careers. The company abruptly shuttered the plant and the great fear was that 80 acres of prime industrial real estate would sit vacant with a locked chain link fence. My aunt lost her job and scrambled as a 40-something to find a new career. Today, an $800 million dollar state-of-the-art energy facility is now in operation on the south 40 acres. It’s personally rewarding that they are a Gramercy Communications client and we played a role in helping them to build this plant that produces enough energy to power 750,000 homes. Incidentally, the two mega combustion turbines…built by GE.

This turnaround is just one of dozens and dozens of success stories getting seeded around our region. Another is the rebirth at the Watervliet Arsenal. Gramercy Communications has also worked with the Arsenal Business & Technology Partnership to support their efforts to attract global companies to fill underutilized space. International semiconductor leaders are calling the 143-acre Arsenal home and many many more companies will be on the way.

Our responsibility as a business community and region is to keep thinking big. We are fortunate to have companies with a global reach such as GE here. We are fortunate to have the university and healthcare system that can support and stimulate the new economic activities. We are also fortunate that more and more high tech start-ups are calling the region home. We need continued investment from the private and public sector, in partnership, to keep pushing the growth of high tech and renewable energy sectors forward. The proven job creators in America are entrepreneurs. We need the Capital Region as a whole to embrace this entrepreneurial spirit. Finally, we need more service providers, including public relations firms (for a shameless plug), available and ready to serve these new companies and industries.