It has been a long time coming but we finally have a bit more breadth to our portfolio section. As much as i wish that the portfolio section is now definitive, the fact is that this is still the tip of the iceberg of work that we have done. It shows some of our work from ads to websites to logos to print to…well, you get the idea. Enjoy.

click here to check it out

When thinking about running an ad or formulating a comprehensive marketing campaign, you have to remember that what you are doing is not a complete facsimile of the product or service that you are marketing. In other words, you have to be selective on what exactly you are using for text, image and messaging.

I like to think of marketing and, specifically, advertisements,  as reflections of what you are trying to sell. These are not complete images of your product or service, but a just a glimpse of it.

Part of our job as marketers is to make sure that reflection shows off the best possible features of the product or service so that the reflection is enough to cause the viewer to want to turn their heads and look directly at the product or service. That is the advantage that we have, is that we can pick and choose exactly what to reflect.

We often recommend the use of blogs for businesses when approaching a website for them. That might seem a little odd if you think of blogs as i used to, that they are personal free-association online journals. Yes, there are those that have personal blogs that do divulge just about anything on their mind, but that isn’t really what i am referring to here.

A blog can simply be the free avenue in which a dynamic website can exist while still being professional. Moreover, a company can be more free to show more personality, flavor and experience through a blog than a website. When it comes down to it, a website needs to have a level of professionalism that can win over potential clients. Coupled with this website should (not always, but often) be a blog that also supports your brand to win over potential clients. Both of them working together can give a broader-reaching response to question of “who is your company”.

Recently, we helped Closeknit Clothing setup a blog. With their focus on fashion within an urban market, this sort of avenue is perfect medium for their intended audience. We branded their blog to match the look of their already-existing website so that both of them complement each other and further the brand of Closeknit Clothing.

We also added in the capability for visitors to subcribe to future blog posts. Then, when Closeknit updates their blog, subscribers will automatically get e-mailed and therefore this can be treated as an ongoing e-mail newsletter.

Click here to view their blog.

I have this tendency to think in images, to create momentary photos like an internal camera obscura. Sometimes, i am lucky enough to have an actual camera with me to capture some of these angles, colors, lines, textures and shapes that seem to catch my eye. Such was the case yesterday where the light of the beautiful sunset allowed me take some photos of seemingly innocuous things. Trying to capture the ordinary things in life in a new, interesting way is a challenge.

This challenge holds true within marketing as well as within photography. Without an interesting angle, a wall is just a wall…a marketing piece is just a marketing piece. There is the need to have a creative presentation of your product/service in order for it to stand apart from the ordinary.

We would love to help you create something unique.

-jeremy

In undergrad, the most influential class that i took was rhetoric. While that might seem like it is a class that teaches one to wax poetic, it is rather a education on how to learn, process and read messages as well as giving you the basis of how to communicated effectively with others. Anyways, one of our classes was about learning from nature.

It might sound a little odd to think that we can pick up cues from nature and use them within marketing. On the other hand, most consumers are creatures of habit and often fall prey to subconscious cues used within marketing in order for them to choose what products or services that they spend money on.

Today i have been looking at flowers. There are a few outside my window that are striking in their color and density. Strong purples, oranges and yellows are easy to notice from a distance while they seem to just get more striking as you get closer. These flowers are tiny advertisements to passing bees. With the pollen that the bees carry, these flowers must get bees to land there in order for them to continue to exist.

TIP. With all of the marketing “flowers” out there within your market, why would any “bees” come to your company? Looking at the plants outside my window, i would say that catching attention utilizes the idea of being different/unique while have prolific messaging so that is one ad doesn’t cause a customer/client to look your directly, another ad will.

There had been a few questions from clients about logos and how that logo can be used throughout various mediums. There are certainly no rules for this, just principles that should be followed in ensure the best possible brand recognition.

Principle one: give your brand some time. It is easy to want to swap out the brand periodically if you do not think that it is performing. This is fine to do every few years (5-10 years) to keep the logo fresh and current (look at how IBM, Pepsi,…etc. update their logo periodically while keeping the same structure to the logo), but let your logo fully saturate your market before changing your branding. If it doesn’t perform over the long-hull or you are updating the company itself, then it is time to update the logo and then push that logo on the market.

Principle two: let the ads tell the story of who your company is, do not switch up the look of your logo to attempt to tell your story. The logo (brand) needs to ground the various marketing/advertising that you are doing, it should not be used as the advertising (unless you do this intentionally to go against the norm, see sample below).

Principle three: the brand needs to have recognition. This means that it needs to be noticed but noticed for the right reasons. For instance, if you squint your eyes at a logo for a short distance, the text and/or graphic should still stand out and not blend together or disappear in the background. Thus, it will be easier to reach a larger audience simply because your brand is more recognizable.

Principle four: the brand is not the company. A common misconception is that the logo and other branding must convey all that there is about a company or organization. While this seems far-fetched, people actually want to try to do this. In reality, the branding is a small representation of the company that should have the goal of drawing potential clients/customers into your business.

I could go on, but this is already getting lengthy. Just remember that a brand is not a brand at all unless you get it in front of people. So market well.

-jeremy

It is easy for companies to get hung up on a marketing initiative that has worked. While this might not seem like a problem, it certainly can be since it is not thinking in terms of what is best for the company, rather, what is easier. Just because there was some success once on a marketing initiative, doesn’t mean that it is the best possible outcome for all of your marketing initiatives.

TIP: Diversify your marketing initiatives. This will keep your proverbial eggs in multiple baskets. This will also allow you to gauge the effectiveness of your media mix (various marketing through different mediums), and then continually re-vamp your marketing strategies as you progress. Diversify, evaluate and then diversify again.

-jeremy

Whether you are a small business or a large business there are ways to approach marketing that should be standard. Here are a few of the basics.

1. Actually do marketing. A surprising amount of business folk out there still see marketing as a waste of money. These same doubters often rely on their own larger-than-life personality to sell and have not given marketing a chance to increase their business potential beyond what they can accomplish by themselves.

2. Look at the long-term (strategic approach). Marketing is not just about immediate sales but it can create the framework for a client/customer base for years to come.

3. Look at the short-term (immediate sales). Whether this is promoting a sale or it is the day-to-day sales, this cannot be overlooked so that both existing customers are not forgotten and potential customers can be added to the customer base.

4. The brand is sacred. Treat your brand with as much consistency and reverence as possible. It is not something to change on a whim or something that should be degraded visually or verbally for the sake of any immediate sales.

The ultimate goal of marketing should be growth for the business. No matter what size business you are, if you are not growing then one reason could be ineffectual marketing.

Market well,
-jeremy

If your product or service is not quite solid is it possible to make some sales? Absolutely. The problem will be with sustaining those sales throughout time. Marketing effectively is not about trying to cover up the lack of a solid product or service, rather, marketing effectively is about letting the audience know about your quality product or service and then get them excited about learning more about you or to purchase the product.

TIP: As tempting as it is to want to sell to a vast audience immediately after concepting a product or service, try to work out some initial kinks to hone down what you are selling prior to bringing it to the greater audience. Marketing can help increase sales and exposure, but a quality product/service will exponentially sell itself throughout time.

-jeremy

As an undergrad art student, I remember being introduced to the minimalist art movement for the first time. These artists were made famous for such things as putting just a few squares on the canvas or leaving the canvas entirely blank. My first thought, like most artists who see them for the first time, was that I could have done that. Now, I’m not so sure.

For simplicity to work in art, there has to be a conscious decision to leave out elements. When faced with a blank canvas, it feels good to put all of your thoughts, energy and passion into making that canvas not blank anymore.

TIP: The goal of art is to express while the goal of marketing is to sell. Therefore, with marketing and design, simplicity is crucial for the viewer to focus on the message at hand. To do this, there needs to be a conscious decision to focus on a couple, or one, key element(s) and to leave out the extraneous information.

EXAMPLE: Let’s say you have a tee-shirt company in Oregon and you want to establish yourself in the market. You sell slim-fit shirts with age-old sayings on them. You only use organic cotton. You are a woman-owned business. You manufacture over 10,000 shirts a year. You sell to the western US. So, with that situation, what do you say in your marketing materials?

There are a few ways to slice this one, but you could say “Oregon Shirts, Organic Wisdom”. In other words, focus on one or a couple of items to put in the forefront of the marketing and put the other information as the secondary line of marketing (further within a brochure/website). The idea is to draw in the audience by the first marketing piece, thus, getting the audience onto further information to fully gain their trust in your product/company.

-jeremy