07 3251 2600
Tag Cloud
annual annual report design annual reports app banner advertising brand brand agency brand awareness brand equity brand image branding brand message brand name brand recognition brands brand values community content creative design differentiation direct direct mail enviornments environments experience facebook image instagram integrated branding interact interactive iphone marketing media mobile applications mobile apps mobile brands naming online online documents online marketing outdoor advertising packaging personal personality photography pitch pitching positioning pr production professional graphic design profiles rebrand reduce footprint report reports retail social change social media ugc user generated content values websites
Browse by Date
Subscribe via RSS
Our blog is a place of creative thought, brilliant ideas and smart thinking. Branding, design and integrated marketing communications are the core subject matter.
We encourage your interaction, your comments and ideas and will endeavour to respond to all comments promptly and respectfully. We ask for a similar level of respect in everyone’s interaction in this blog space.
Blog
Instagram, UGC and brand community
Reaching saturation point in the media this week is the story of the US$1 billion Facebook acquisition of Instagram – a rapidly growing company whose core offering is a social photo-sharing platform via a mobile app. Users of the app formed an ever-growing world community actively engaged in creating User Generated Content (UGC) – in this case diary-style photos taken from their day-to-day lives. Typically, brands such as Instagram, Apple’s iLife software and Sony Playstation’s Little Big Planet games give its users the digital tools to construct UGC within brand parameters and their own interfaces in a ‘walled garden’ software environment.
Brand exposure
PR & media management can increase your brand exposure exponentially.
Your brand is a valuable asset, you’ve spent time and money getting the design and positioning right, your key messages powerfully expressed and the total brand presence a true representation of the company. One of the best ways now, to gain widespread brand exposure, is public relations.
Producing annual reports
Annual reports should be produced in the best format for the audience.
Once the design and theme of an annual report is agreed, the planning of the annual report production should be determined so that the design and layout can be easily translated to the appropriate online medium. Of course, there is still a place for printing, as shareholders continue to demand it, but increasingly online production is the focus.
Annual report design
A tailored photoshoot as part of your annual report design is an investment worth making.
When developing key messages for an annual report design, often it's the visual execution that is more important than the text in communicating the overall theme. We know an image can communicate a thousand words and it's often a photograph that invokes a feeling in the reader and leaves a lasting impression.
Personalised direct marketing
With advances in digital printing, personalised direct marketing is affordable and highly effective.
Many consider direct marketing using ‘snail mail’ to be dead and that somehow email communication has taken the lead in direct marketing and generating new sales leads for company growth. But people’s mailboxes are increasingly over-crowded and marketers can no longer expect that just because they managed to get an email into the inbox of an intended recipient, that it will be read, let alone responded to. Marketers are turning to personalised direct marketing.
Brand experience
In the retail environment creating the ultimate brand experience is a complex challenge.
A retail brand experience can no longer be managed without considering the difference between the in-store experience and the online experience; even if a store doesn’t have an online presence, that brand will be competing with brands that do. The customer is often in different buying modes and will have a different set of expectations when shopping online as opposed to shopping in-store.
Outdoor advertising
Creative billboards used in outdoor advertising can be a very effective medium to get your message heard by a targeted audience.
The best thing about outdoor advertising is the ability to capture the attention of your audience and keep reinforcing your message on a daily basis for a specific period of time. Of course in order to do that you need to have researched the positioning of your billboard to ensure it’s located on a busy route that’s used regularly by your target audience. Then you need maximum creativity and a great idea, only then will you attract maximum attention and ensure brand recall.
Designing the future
There is an acute difference in outcomes when designing the future vs basing the future on the past.
A New Year approaches and as business owners and managers, everyone tells us to look back and acknowledge the year that was and plan for the year ahead. We all know we should do this and love sitting around shooting the breeze on what happened, the highs and lows, what we did right, where we went wrong.
Brand portability
Opening a second restaurant 5,000kms away and finding it booked out in opening week shows amazing brand portability!
The Stokehouse is an iconic restaurant in St Kilda, Melbourne, “combining relaxed beach side glamour with exceptional hospitality”.
Design and social change
Design has a part to play in influencing social change
Consider, if you can influence a person by as little as one degree, the difference can be significant if they walk far enough.
"Design matters, like never before. Designers create so much of what we see, what we use, and what we experience. In this time of unprecedented environmental, social, and economic crises, designers will choose what their young profession will be about: inventing deceptions that encourage overconsumption -- or helping repair the world. Today, everyone is a designer. And the future of civilization is our common design project."
Do Good Design: How Design Can Change The World, David B. Berman
Design that influences social change aims to create beneficial designs that: