With industry-specific terms like "rough cut," "tearsheet" and "bleed," people might think that advertising is a pretty frightening business. But actually, it's something that all of us at SicolaMartin love to do. However, we will admit that we like to get spooked every so often—like at our annual SicolaMartin Halloween Contest. Every year, the creativity shines as employees and teams vie for the grand prize. One year, the cast from Wizard of Oz walked away with the trophy. Last year, it was a frightening recreation of The Stepford Wives. So what's your costume going to be? Rest assured, there are lots of good ones being created at 701 Brazos.

If you're ready to get your fright on, we recommend hitting Austin's famous Sixth Street for Halloween. Join 100,000+ ghouls, goblins and other gnarly folks who put on their finest costumes (well, most of them are costumes anyway) to parade and prowl around 'til the wee hours. It's definitely an experience you have to see to believe. We're sure you'll agree.

Trick or Treat,
Steve

Some might think that dressing up for Halloween is child's play, but not here at SicolaMartin. The amount of thought that Martians put into their duds for our annual agency contest is actually quite scary—and we're not talking your traditional witch, ghost or skeleton, either. What kind of costumes can you expect from such a creative group of people? Take a look!

What do you get when you combine a microprocessor technology leader with a graphics, chipset and consumer electronics powerhouse? It's a bit like that old peanut butter cup commercial...two great things that go great together.

In July, Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) announced their plans to acquire ATI. It's a bold move that will position the resulting new company to deliver innovative, integrated solutions in key market segments while also continuing to develop "best-of-breed" products that enable customers to choose the technologies that best serve their needs.

"ATI shares our passion and complements our strengths: technology leadership and customer centric innovation," said AMD Chairman and CEO Hector Ruiz. "Bringing these two great companies together will allow us to transcend what we have accomplished as individual businesses and reinvent our industry as the technology leader and partner of choice."

Who is going to benefit most from this merger? Let's just say gamers are probably giggling all the way to their LAN parties. They love having the latest, greatest technology, and this merger will bring them just that.

Click here to see our latest creative work for this cutting-edge audience.

Things are changing so fast these days that sometimes it's hard to keep up with it all. But the need to stay current on the latest trends in technology, "what's hot and what's not" in the consumer world, and industry best practices remain key to a marketer's success. You can do your best to become self-educated on any topic by reading everything you can get your hands on and absorbing knowledge from your co-workers and clients, but I'm a firm believer that it takes more than that to be great at what you do.

As a 14-year veteran of SicolaMartin, I can personally attest to the importance of ongoing professional training. Training and professional development opportunities offer more than just increased knowledge. They offer the added advantage of networking and drawing from other experts and specialists when it comes to new or constantly evolving industries, targets, media, technologies and disciplines.

Whether it's learning how to break through to today's high school student, what actually inspires a baby boomer, or what keeps an IT manager up at night—training on the latest and greatest trends is what ensures that our marketing strategies and creative approaches remain cutting-edge and deliver amazing results.

In order for an organization to attract and retain great employees, an investment has to be made. You always hear that an organization is only as good as its employees and I truly believe that statement. Especially in advertising, where our people are our product.

Those who resist the opportunity to learn more and embrace new ideas and technologies will become stagnant in their ideas, as well as in their career. I don't know about you, but the day that I stop wanting to learn will be the day that I die.

So, this morning on my way to work, I'm flipping back and forth between Radio Times and Left of Center (I'm a huge satellite radio fan and have been listening to Sirius for almost a year now). Stuck in traffic, I start to wonder about Satellite radio's effectiveness from an advertising standpoint. My dilemma is this...

On one hand, advertising is limited on satellite radio, so, a company's voice can easily be heard. On the other hand, advertising is limited on satellite radio (and people like it for this very reason), so would a company put themselves in bad light by advertising in this medium?

On yet another hand, there's the issue of what advertising one hears on satellite radio. I've read articles saying that many big, respectable companies—Heineken, HBO, etc.—are advertising on satellite radio. But the only ads I seem to hear want me to "Learn the Ins and Outs of How to Succeed and Get Rich Quick in Real Estate" or "Remove My Tattoo without Surgery." I could look at this as a warning sign...but I could also look at this as an opportunity to really "own" the space. Maybe this says more about what I'm listening to and what demographic I fit into...scary.

On a record-setting fourth hand, would people have resentment against hearing ads at all on satellite radio? Sirius' Web site clearly says "100% commercial-free music." OK, so the music is 100% commercial free, but the other programming is not. I, personally, don't mind the commercials when I'm listening to talk radio (yes, I do listen to talk radio) or news. And just imagine my enthusiasm if I heard a commercial for something I was really interested in, or a commercial that actually entertained me! Or was a subtle sponsorship that didn't meddle with the content I was absorbing...

The demographics of satellite radio listeners point to the fact that you can accomplish some really unique targeting through this medium. For example, the majority of listeners are 25 to 54; many of today's luxury vehicles come equipped with either Sirius or XM, so you could certainly hit the upper scale market; there's a dedicated "trucker" channel on Sirius; Stern's show has over 5 million listeners…who, by the way…are also listening to Raw Dog Comedy, Maxim, Fox News and ESPN.

With some knock-'em-dead creative, killer targeting and out-of-this-world placement—the possibilities are endless!

How is it that in an industry where the average tenure at an advertising agency is less than 3 years, SicolaMartin blows that number out of the water? As many of us know, ours can be a fickle profession. The hirings and firings of big-city agencies are the stuff of legend.

Yet here on Mars, our total average tenure for all employees we've ever hired to date is four and a half years. Narrow that down to employees who have been with us for a year or more, and the average tenure bumps up to a whopping six years (as our HR guru put it, "We've hired a lot this year and it's screwing up my math..."). Wow!

How do we do it? Some might say we drank the Kool-Aid (although we usually prefer margaritas). We like to think it's a mix of three things:

•		scrutinize every potential new hire to see how well they would fit in with "the family"
•		make ours an environment that truly lives up to its core values of honesty, respect, passion, fun and accountability
•		use notebook computer cable locks to permanently attach all employees' ankles to their desks