Research, Respect, and Listening
- 1 day ago
- 3 min read
Welcome to June's newsletter. I send on or near the 28th of each month. Ideally you sign up to receive them, but just in case- voila!
June 28 minus 2, I'm not sending on the weekend, nor on a Monday.
This month's creative projects include (so you can grasp what I can do for you):
Label design and strategy for food packaging
Organization and launch of drone photography (I have resources!)
Print ad design
Mutli-page publication layout and design
Retail Product design and t-shirt design (they went together)
THEME: Branding. Research, respect, and listen.
BRAND HOUSEKEEPING
I must address something.
Too often I see frustrating names for businesses and products. And I mean frustrating for the owners AND the clients. This can effect brand trust, recognition, or growth, heck, ALL THREE. Here are some rules. Yes, even for established businesses, you might need a refresh.
Is the name easy to say? Repeat it aloud many times.
Is it easy to spell?
Are you considering multi meanings?
Are the words clear enough to be legible in a URL?
What about doing a google search, what ELSE comes up? Eeek....
How short - or long is it?
Is it too location specific for growth?
What is the acronym? (sad face emoji) I can go on...
Speaking of acronyms, here a 3 recent examples I have seen. I'll be extremely ambiguous not to call them out, but these are prime examples. And to me, it hurts my branding heart. Here they are:
"DG": a VERY high end company is starting to use this acronym. Consider that DG is a longtime, well established, national, ubiquitous brand that is anything BUT high end. (Dollar General for the people in the back)
CD: A company that is about (oy) security has this in their name. Let's just say it sounds... seedy... (does that sound trustworthy?)
METH: Acronym for a very large, intellectual organization.
Are these the end of the world? No. But branding is expensive. Do the reserach.
PS: Don't waste your time looking these examples up. I don't want to talk bad about specific companies... Most importantly, I don't want METH in your search history.
IN SHORT: Do your research.
BRAND RESPECT
What started as my business card concept for a creative conference, later turned into a city's self-promotional campaign.
The conference I was preparing for in January got canceled last minute due to snow. Since I already had the card and had stayed at the hotel, I went around the empty-ish conference rooms taking pics of the few participants, who had also reserved the hotel.
Someone saw my post on social media and localized it for their town's marketing campaign. They were cool enough to call, ask for permission to use concept, talked it out, then they implemented an awesome interpretation. The campaign is going on right now. Tomorrow is their chalk walk. Best wishes to Montgomery, Alberta and I hope you have awesome weather!
IN (not so) SHORT:
Collaboration is the key to success.
Respecting the ideas of creatives is classy in my books.
Please trust the process when I say your marketing materials need to be different
BRAND SAMPLE
Concepting a brand logo and how it can be used is the fun part. There are so many places a logo can go. You can't just slap it everywhere and expect it to look good. I test different layouts like one color printing, laser etching, package labeling, other swag concepts, etc.
And what I especially love about my work, is when a client says they love the beach, I make sure I put the beach in one of the settings for the logo.
IN SHORT: Listen to your client.
LAST MINUTE THOUGHT TOPPING
"Being mad at someone for making a flyer with AI is liking being mad at someone for eating at McDonalds."
This was my comment on someone's social media post about folks fighting about the AI images for business posts (comments got viscious!).
They're angry for the wrong reason... I'm angry because the post images aren't on brand. It completely defeats your purpose. If you're going to use AI for marketing materials, for the love all that's holy, prompt for your brand. Right now it all looks the same - paint swooshes, grid layout, over abundance of illustrations... Stand out.
OK. Go have a good day now. Just kidding. One more thought from Gary Vee:
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