Lumino blog

Instagram, UGC and brand community

Fri, 13 Apr 2012 11:06:31 +1000

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.

Facebook saw the value (and threat) in a company and community that traded in images alone. This UGC currency was also at the core of old-school, desktop-borne Facebook, but better capitalised upon through new-school, mobile-borne Instagram’s use of creative filters in photos taken and viewed on the go through camera enabled mobiles, and most importantly, an engaged and passionate community whose constant presence posting and updating beautiful photographs were synonymous with the brand itself.

No wonder fashion brands like Burberry (shown here), Levi, Bergdorf Goodman and Gucci wanted a piece of the action.

Burberry on Instagram

But now that Instagram is in the belly of the beast, what becomes of its treasured community? This is a tricky conundrum that Facebook now has to deal with, as it realises the fierce brand loyalty of Instagram users (thousands have reportedly deleted accounts or posted blacked out photos in protest). It will have to play a low-key approach and learn ways to balance the integrity and privacy of that community with its monetised core practice of trading in personal data.

One of the key lessons of UGC to be learned here is the presiding company has less of a traditional controlling ‘hands-on’ role in brand stewardship – it becomes more akin to a moderator or an ‘elected official’ of a community – the mayor of brand-land. It demonstrates the growing use of UGC and social media as part of the growing shift of brands towards more direct interaction with consumers, who want more buy-in and direct interaction with the brands they champion. It requires active, sometimes one-on-one engagement with that community.

Community-minded UGC can be distinct from ‘crowd sourcing’ in that rather than involving individuals pitching ideas or concepts in a competitive spirit, which can result in a skewed, confused take on brand message, community minded UGC seeks to engage and communicate with a target audience that shares interests, aspirations and a like-minded creative impulse to produce outcomes that have the potential to be more unified and focussed on attributes/qualities the brand seeks to align itself with.

Brands seeking to employ UGC in their campaigns should be prepared to enter a more anti-authoritarian world in which two-way interaction as opposed to one-way instruction is the norm. If it is undertaken correctly, and with respect for the community it seeks to engage with, the distinct possibility of garnering negative comments or even backlash from brand opponents or culture-jammers is offset against the instant credibility and authenticity of positioning the brand directly amongst its users on the social media forums they live and breathe.

Brand exposure

Fri, 23 Mar 2012 11:50:06 +1100

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.

The ability to generate word-of-mouth support for a brand is one of the most effective marketing tools available, having a high degree of emotional relevance and engendering brand integrity through referral; and PR is the best tool for the job.

One of the best examples of brand building through word of mouth is Krispy Kreme donuts. And it is primarily the media exposure that created this word-of-mouth, traditional advertising for Krispy Kreme was negligible during it’s launch in Australia.

Wayne Gould was the creator of Sudoku. The secret of Sudoku’s success was that he offered the Times in the UK, an endless supply of puzzles at no cost but with one proviso; that the times put a tiny credit on each puzzle, his website URL. Mr. Gould never purchased any advertising to build the Sudoku brand, it was a barter of sorts with the media. The rest is history!

And a third example, The Body Shop. Post launch, this brand grew at an amazing rate and stores opened everywhere, but no advertising was involved in that growth. The Body Shop developed a clearly stated purpose and set of key brand messages that the public could align their own values to. The media loved it and the PR machine was in constantly activity. At one stage there were 2,500 stores in over 60 markets worldwide. Anita Roddick’s personal profile had a major influence of course and her humanitarian movement constantly in the press. She said: “The business of business should not just be about money, it should be about responsibility. It should be about public good, not private greed.”

Third-party and public endorsement is the most important component when increasing brand exposure quickly. It’s what gives PR the edge over advertising. A strong piece of editorial about a brand, gives that brand the sort of credibility that can’t be offered by an ad or any other form of marketing.

So what exactly does PR involve? Once you can developed a memorable positioning statement or tagline that expresses the brand and it’s purpose, a PR campaign may include:

1. Regularly writing and issuing press releases to the media telling stories about the brand in action, how the brand is different to competitors, where the latest impact has been. The stories have to newsworthy and relevant to the audience of the publication.

2. Versions of those press releases can also be posted to your website and other online environments to increase optimised content and organic search results.

3. Brand custodians espouse the brand benefits (they attend, speak, host and present at; relevant trade shows, seminars and conferences).

4. The brand gets known for niche expertise or specific industry knowledge (through this speaking, writing, presenting, even teaching).

5. Often the PR campaign involves the participation and sponsorship of relevant clubs, sporting teams, charitable efforts; it gets the brand name in the program and hence into the press surrounding the events. If the event is well matched, brand exposure can be extensive.

6. Other brand asset building tactics such as conducting a survey on your company’s behalf; posting the results on your website and publicising the results most important to your industry, will gain credibility and hence brand exposure.

So you see how broad and influential a PR campaign can be. Brand exposure is increased exponentially through the media and PR takes on a whole new relevance in tough economic times. It costs a fraction of the cost compared to a brand launch through a major ad campaign and many would argue, offers a lot more credibility to the brand.

Producing annual reports

Fri, 09 Mar 2012 11:34:04 +1100

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.

60% of retail investors of publicly listed companies in Australia, now get either a notice by email or an electronic delivery of their annual report and proxy materials, instead of a full package by mail.

In tandem with the transition away from print, there is a measurable increase in better and more elaborate online annual reports. An increasing number of companies are posting web-centric reports instead of PDFs or ‘flipbook’ conversions. There is also a rise in the use of video and mobile.

Printing options continue to change

Cost of printing is a key driver for change, along with the changing habits of readers. Printing annual reports is not a simple task and demands high levels of checking and manual labour. Financial Reports especially, being highly sensitive documents, must be handled with complete confidentiality and time required on the press, binding and finishing also increase time and complexity.

Digital printing is a faster process than traditional offset printing, but unless the print run is limited, it is not a cost effective alternative to producing the document online.

Online production for instant connection

There are major production and distribution cost savings to be had in producing annual reports online, but the type of online report has a major impact. An online annual report can be either a fully-fledged HTML website with possibilities to shape the report according to users needs, or just a simple image based click through with no interaction. Even simple PDF downloads are sometimes advertised as an online report.

So there are 3 main options:

1.Downloadable PDF

Enriched with bookmarks and cross links this can be a cost-effective way of presenting the annual report, especially for smaller companies. PDFs are however originated from print documents and are not primarily produced for web usage.

2. JPG (or image based)

The pages of the printed report are converted into JPG images. The HTML framework does not much more than just allowing the reader to browse through the gallery and this becomes a flipbook.

3. HTML

The content of the report is converted into HTML. This allows the user to copy/paste, search through the report and use a huge variety of tools to enhance the user experience. This is where online reporting starts to make sense, as this adds value compared to a print version. Within this category there is also the option of

hybrid HTML reports, where part of the report e.g. the notes section is incorporated as PDF for download, and
full HTML where the entire report is converted.

Online annual reports should primarily be fully functional, user friendly HTML sub-sites that link through to your company's main website. Features should include:

Comprehensive tracking, reporting and analysis of usage statistics.
Direct and responsive communication with your shareholders and/ or potential investors.
Easy search and navigation allowing shareholders to directly view the specific information that interests them.
No large downloads as experienced with PDFs, fast online viewing.

See South West Airlines fully interactive online report here

Or Xerox's report here

Mobile to connect on the move

The prevalence of smart phones and now tablets makes mobile versions of annual reports the next frontier. Some companies go so far as to make a complete mobile version of its annual report and put a quick response code in the print version to take you straight to it.

Annual report apps for iPads have quickly popped up, most of these aren’t much more than simple flipbooks, though a handful, like Samsung’s Profile for 2010, which doesn’t purport to be an actual annual report, show off cool new interactive features.

Although the use of iPads for Annual Reporting is still in its infancy, current apps are all just starting to play with the possibilities. And it’s not yet decided whether other tablets will gain significant importance beside Apple’s iPad, but there will definitely be a place for the mobile version.

Video beyond talking heads

Then there is video, mixing a CEO message with a roll of the company’s key messages, products and customers can be a powerful way to communicate the annual report story.

Intel, continuing a theme from last year, has a funny introductory video that draws inspiration from its TV commercials and the vision of tomorrow’s video here. GE’s new online annual report has a series of videos of CEO Jeff Immelt talking about different topics see here.

Johnson & Johnson ventured into video for its 2009 report but made a course reversal in 2010 and went without. The healthcare giant nevertheless utlises links to Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and two in-house blogs plus a ‘share this page’ button. These features have now become widespread in online reports.

If you and your organisation have gone to the time, trouble and expense of compiling an annual report and designing it for production across multiple formats, it makes sense to use it for marketing purposes and integrate it with all your online platforms. Whether an investment into a fully-fledged online report makes sense or not, largely depends on a company’s audience and marketing communication mix. But there is no doubt that we will see a further rise in online reporting, as the decline of print runs will continue to shift interest online and mobile devices like iPads will play an increasing role in how people receive information.

See some of Lumino’s annual report designs here.

Photography in annual report design

Fri, 24 Feb 2012 11:56:19 +1100

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.

In some instances companies don’t see the true value in the photography, they see it as a cost vs an investment, yet your annual report should be seen as a marketing tool with the production adaptable to various marketing outcomes and target audiences. Last year the creative theme we developed for the Sunwater annual report included the consideration of a 2nd outcome being a desk calendar that people can keep and use (view the calendar design).

There are two options when it comes to sourcing photographic images for your annual report design; stock photography and a tailored photoshoot. The most important aspect though, is determining the overall theme and the options for communicating that theme in the most creative way. Often, with a photographer as part of the team, he or she can provide invaluable input to the creative the process and contribute innovative ideas for the treatment of imagery.

Once the theme for the annual report design has been determined, the photographer can tailor the photoshoot to the theme and really start to bring it to life. Consider also that up-to-date images of the board and the chairman are important in building relationships with the audience and this can only be done well with a professional photographer.

Peter Budd is often included as part of the team at Lumino www.peterbudd.com.au. “It's almost impossible to get a large group of directors in one room at one time, so we often have to use clever post production techniques to achieve the outcome we want". In the image above from the Gadens corporate profile Peter shot each director in the same set, each in a similar yet very personal relaxed stance. I then compiled each photograph to create this image during the post production process. The result is a very open, candid expression of the entire team of directors.

In an recent study by Danish scientist Dr Jakob Nielsen, he explains that “It’s long been a guideline for presenting a company’s image to include portraits of the executive team so that users associate real people with an otherwise faceless corporation” but adds the caution “The key point is that these are real people who actually work at the company. In contrast, readers will ignore stock photos of generic people”.

Next, the company’s case studies really need to showcase their achievements for the year and often it is the images that bring the stories to life. The case studies and achievements are unique to the company, so the images should be too. Don’t risk using a stock photo that has already been used by another company or worse a competitor – it instantly affects the credibility of the company brand.

Be careful how you choose your photographer. Many companies get 3 quotes and choose the cheapest but make sure you’re comparing apples to apples.

Consider:

• How well they’ll work with the annual report design team (the graphic designer, art director, copywriter).

• How creative they are, look at their portfolio, can they actually do the job.

• What methodology they use to achieve the outcome.

The methodology for the photography is as critical to the annual report design as the overall production or print process.

Ask questions like:

• Do they use running sheets and plan the shoot?

• How do they choose locations to best suit the outcome needed?

• How do they manage a critical timeline?

• What equipment do they have, lighting etc?

• What are their post production skills?

If your annual report is a showcase for the company, the photography should be seen as an investment and a critical part of the annual report design.

Personalised direct marketing

Fri, 17 Feb 2012 12:26:45 +1100

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.

It’s true that letter boxes are crammed with ‘junk mail’ that often goes straight into the recycle bin, yet postal direct marketing is making a come back. Marketers are using highly personalised designs, with quality-targeted data and speaking direct to their target customers with personalised messages. It’s all about sending a personalised letter, brochure, postcard or flyer to an individual on a database usually with a targeted and relevant ‘offer’ – providing a reason for the prospect to take action i.e. visit a store, call, send an email or go to a website.

The quality of the database is key, obviously with the correct names, the right spellings and in the job roles that need to be targeted, so data integrity rules! It’s also the innovation in design software and advances in digital printing that have made printed personalised direct marketing a powerful competitor to other forms of marketing.

A well-crafted direct marketing piece that uses personalised data (or variable data) and has a compelling offer will attract attention and be ten times more likely to encourage action than ‘un’ personalised direct marketing. Take a look at the direct marketing piece from Volvo and as you read it feel how much more compelling the personalised message is.

Personalised direct marketing is a highly targeted, cost effective means of marketing a business or brand and with the ability to do shorter digital print runs, there is little excuse not to personalise a direct marketing piece. The cost and size of the paper that can be digitally printed is also no longer an issue with the latest digital colour printers, so most things can be personalised.The direct mail peice we created for retirement village operators (featured top of page) was targeted directly to and personalised for, the owner of the business. It demonstrated knowledge of the industry and offered a free communications audit.

It's all about speaking directly to the user; consider the latest Coca-cola campaign, personalisation on a mass marketing scale. Although not a direct mail piece and more of a social/viral campaign, it is the advances in digital printng that has made this possible.

Marketers can also change the way people respond to personalised direct marketing. We can now link customers from the printed media to uniquely personalised websites or landing pages that reflect the imagery and message in the printed literature and speak directly to the target customer. The personalisation engages the customer and the medium encourages them to take action and make contact easily.

The fact is that e-mail has reduced general postal volumes (invoices, statements, loyalty statements, etc) but people still like to receive, read, touch and feel printed letters, postcards, catalogues, brochures and booklets. You can pick them up and put them down whenever you like. You can flick between pages and compare content side-by-side. The computer screen can restrict what you can see and often to view all the content you have to scroll up and down; this can be annoying, and doesn’t allow you to compare content easily. Mail order marketers and catalogue marketers report that the customers who order over the phone and the Internet usually have their catalogue with them on their laps. They rarely order from on-line catalogues. So printed direct mail is not going away.

The digital print revolution means marketers are able to personalise content in the same way that websites and e-mail use personalisation. And they can also be far more competitive in their timeliness of message delivery and the targeting of it. Personalised direct marketing works.

Brand experience

Fri, 03 Feb 2012 11:21:48 +1100

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.

In-store the brand experience can be created through all 5 senses using touch, taste, smell, sight and sound. When designing a store or retail environment we must consider those 5 senses and how best to influence customers with the core brand messages:

Visually: This one’s the easiest for us to work with. We create logos and other graphic elements such as signage, point of sale and storefronts. We consider typestyles, as well as the color scheme, we choose images to influence mood and messages to influence thought.The brand experience is created through the mind's eye.

Sound: Certain sounds can be associated with a brand experience through repetition and correct message match. Think about the sounds that accompany any presentation of the Intel logo, you recognize the noise as soon as you start up Windows. Music is a powerful tool for influencing emotions, thoughts and behaviour, if you drink coffee for instance, your favourite cafe is likely to play your favourite music in the background influencing your mood. How service staff talk, the words they use is important as well in particular the words of welcome and the affirmative approval of your purchase.

Smell: This is obvious when you walk into a restaurant but what other types of brands can use smell? I read an article not too long ago from Brand Strategy Insider about this very topic. Here’s what they had to say: “Smells evoke memories and appeal directly to feelings without first being filtered and analysed by the brain, which is how the remaining four senses are processed.” The sense of smell can be a very powerful influence on memory. Think about the influence smells have on you; the smell of a mango evoking the memory of childhood, the smell of a woodfire a feeling of family and sharing.

Touch: How do your products feel when they are in your customer’s hands? I love the iPhone packaging for that very reason. I love the way the matt celloglazed coating on the box feels as you are holding it. Every detail of the inside has been carefully executed to enhance the experience as you embark on a journey of discovery to find the product within. Again the Brand Strategy Insider cited online clothes shopping as one of the industries that was slow to take off online. People want to feel how the clothes fit before they buy them.

Taste: Obviously this one is easy for businesses in the food industry, but how can you leverage this sense in other brand experiences? Do you offer clients drinks when they come in? Maybe a mint, a lolly? Cold water, iced tea…

Utilising all five senses in your retail brand experience takes commitment to implement but our senses can trigger powerful thoughts and memories and this can be a great way to create positive, memorable experiences for your brand and business.

Online the brand experience is created mainly with sight and in some applications sound. Online the experience is felt through interface design, functionality, search speed, information that is relevant to the user. The information online can be more extensive and go further in influencing the purchaser's decision to buy. Online primarily the brand must gain the customer trust, it is important to provide consistency between the offline brand and the online brand, yet the online experience has to have a unique aspect to the brand experience to differentiate it.

There may be different customers that prefer to shop online than shop in store, and there are 4 core reasons that people decide to use online shopping:

1. Convenience of shoppping from home, in fact anywhere

2. Lower cost, prices must be competitive and are usually cheaper than in store

3. A wide range of products, clearly represented and easily accessible, often giving access to products from all over the world without stepping outside your front door.

4. Interactive, building an online relationship where the store remembers the visitor and tailors the content to their needs.

The brand experience must address all 4 of these core needs online. Most importantly online shops must be easy to use without too many steps impeding the checkout process. Clunky processes and multiple click throughs will damage the brand experience and discourage return visits. Have a look at these well known examples of great online stores, and note how they influence the core needs of the online shopper.

amazon www.amazon.com
shopbop www.shopbop.com
bonds www.bonds.com.au

Lumino specilaises in integrating the brand and its values with the retail environment.

Have a look at a couple of our projects:

Naturmama retail store (brand & store design)
Essence of Peregian (brand, sales office & website)

Protecting the brand experience drives our creative approach in all our built environments.

Outdoor advertising

Fri, 20 Jan 2012 12:15:01 +1100

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.

The single most important thing is the product or service you want to communicate. How often have you remembered a billboard for the overall image but can’t for the life of you remember what the product or brand was! Whatever you’re advertising should be the biggest image or text on the billboard. Remember that a billboard used for outdoor advertising, is viewed for a few seconds only.

To ensure your outdoor advertising captures the reader’s attention quickly, use no more than 7 words in the key message, with a simple font that is super easy to read. The more simple the message the better, and try to include a call to action somewhere on the page.

The imagery has to stand out. It needs to be out-of-the-ordinary, something that has the audience think differently. Choose only the most important things that need to be on the billboard, as trying to fit your whole story onto one board is a mistake. Remember, although it’s a large space, it’s viewed from a distance and often at speed. The simpler the design, the easier it’ll be remembered. The key is a simple yet creative design that leaves the audience thinking.

One-off unique billboards make people turn around, but outdoor advertising can be used to tell a story. Digital billboards enable marketers to build a message over a number of weeks as the billboard can change easily and cost effectively. With digital billboards you can have 4 or 5 different messages, one each week, that build on each other and leave the reader wondering what’s going to happen next. outdoor advertising.

Either way outdoor advertising is a balance between impactful creative and strong messaging delivered to a captive audience in a few short moments, and as you can see from the examples we found above, they have to make you go ‘wow’!

Designing the future

Fri, 16 Dec 2011 08:56:23 +1100

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.

Then comes the planning for next year, and of course we all put it off. We happily set those new year resolutions, and when it comes to the business most of us say, “this year I will do a business plan!”. But like anything, we need to ensure there is something in it for us, there has to be an obvious value in creating the plan. If you see it as just another document, sitting on your desk gathering dust, and at the end of the day you know you’re going to head into the year and do exactly what you did last year, there’s no way you’ll get around to doing the plan.

The difference between writing a business plan and designing the future is enormous. If you design your future first, the business plan is suddenly more meaningful; you see the plan as the means to understanding the steps needed to create the future you’ve designed.

Designing the future is different to planning for the future. Planning for the future is based on what your already know about the business. You plan around the highs and lows of the current client needs, the skills needed to deliver your current products and services and the environment required to manage the current staff levels. I love this Jack Robbins Hopkins chair design, and I can guarantee, if he planned the chair based on the past, what he already knew chairs should look like, then the end result would not have been this chair!

So sit somewhere different, go somewhere unusual and when designing the future decide exactly how you want the year to look. The income you want, the time off you want, the type of clients you want and it may look completely different to how life looked this year. It’s not about looking into the year and plotting out what usually happens based on the past, such as – June’s quiet so we’ll cut back expenses then we’ll ramp up in August because that’s when our current clients get busy. If June is historically quiet for your current client base, ask “what other industries can we target, what sort of clients aren’t quiet that time of year, and what would we need to do to be able to service them?” Ask also, what new services you can offer so that the quiet times for your traditional services can be supplemented with new ones, then determine what new skills sets you need to develop the business further.

Either way, design the future to fit the lifestyle you want NOT to feed the mouths of 50 staff . If you’ve always wanted to take Friday’s off, then this is the year to do it. Employ a general manager and a new business development person to ramp up the business enough to cover the time you want off!

Designing the future around the role you want might mean you actually start enjoying your business again! If you’ve been handling the HR side of the business and you hate doing it, you’re probably no good at it anyway, so employ an HR person or outsource it to a part time consultant. The outcome is likely to be much happier and more effective staff. When you’re designing the future, start with a blank piece of paper and design it based on YOU. In any business inspiration starts at the top and a happy, motivated, confident leader, inspires similar qualities right through the organisation. It’s design not planning that makes the difference.

Brand portability

Fri, 09 Dec 2011 10:44:43 +1100

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”.

For over twenty years, the Stokehouse has provided impeccable food & wine choices (the product brand is faultless) along with a service level that goes beyond excellent, the staff managing to have the customers feel like part of the Stokehouse family. This product and service delivery creating ‘endless memorable dining experiences’ for thousands of Australians and international visitors. The brand experience is faultless.

Recently the owners of this iconic restaurant opened a second Stokehouse on the river at Southbank, Brisbane. The restaurant was booked out the week it opened! What enables such strong brand portability? Well not only does the Brisbane restaurant have the same fantastic product, a similar stunning location and exceptional service, it has its own unique personality in aspects such as the Espresso Martini. The brand experience is protected and based on the reputation of the brand in Melbourne; the brand has proven to be extremely portable.

The Lumino team unsurprisingly chose the Stokehouse for our Christmas lunch. A place where a brand is displayed with such integrity and vigor is a place with values that match our own. We were not disappointed, as the images above show.

Brand portability is primarily about protecting the integrity of your brand’s core purpose and values. Never compromise the brand experience and always look for one more notch on the ladder towards perfection.

Design and social change

Fri, 02 Dec 2011 12:42:23 +1100

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:

are affordable and sustainable, sometimes made of renewable materials

use energy from renewable sources and even increase energy efficiency

reduce consumption and waste, being reusable or recyclable

are produced and developed locally

are universally accessible to people of all ages, abilities, and physical conditions

are developed as an initiative with participation of the communities they serve

facilitate mobility, communication, and participation in civic life, even decentralize political power and facilitate transparency and accountability.

Think about the United Colours of Benetton, which strongly promotes cultural and racial diversity through their advertising, their design influences social change.

United Colours of Benetton is not a charity – however their advertising rarely includes or highlights the products they sell, yet their brand and sales remain strong. Their brand takes a stand for social change and their customers respect them for it. Typically you would see this type of advertising solely from non-for-profit organisations. Many not-for-profit organisations can be used as examples of design that influences social change such as PETA, movember (mens health), beyond blue, WWF, RSPCA…

A great initiative is the 'Design ignites change program' that promotes and supports the importance of design in development work. It encourages creative professionals to engage in multidisciplinary projects that address pressing social issues. Participants are encouraged to apply design thinking to problems that exist in their own communities’, take a look here for ways that design can influence social change.

Brand competition

Fri, 25 Nov 2011 16:05:05 +1100

Brand competition drives creativity in an overly saturated market.

We’ve written before about creating stand out packaging, but in a highly competitive market, standing out from the crowd is an even greater challenge, in fact many companies question whether it is worth competing in a saturated market.

Consider when you're in the supermarket looking for a bottle of hair shampoo for the kids, or a healthy cereal alternative to fruit loops. The shelves are packed with competing brands, bright colours and wild claims of a cereal that single handedly changes your son into an iron man or nit shampoos that all get rid of those nasty eggs for good (now we all know that’s just not true!).

If you are operating in a saturated market the key is to understand your competitors better than they understand themselves, because you need to be different. In order to do that, you need to understand the target market too, understand what it is that the customers want, that the competitors are not yet delivering.

For example, in a saturated market:

5 Hour Energy came up with an innovative product with a cool name in the crowded energy drinks sector - a portable 58ml energy shot with no herbal stimulants that works fast.
Facebook designed a site that is more user friendly and makes interaction with friends and family much more fun than MySpace and is now becoming an all-encompassing digital entertainment hub.
Burberry reinvented itself to become the latest hip clothing range for the fashion conscious 20 to 30s, from a very staid ‘only for the landed gentry’ background.

All these brands approached a saturated market and won, but it was not an accident. They entered the SAME market with a DIFFERENT approach. To compete in saturated markets you need a unique idea that gives your brand the edge and the courage to approach your brand competition with excitement not dread. If your idea is good enough, it won’t matter how much competition you have; in fact competition is ultimately a good thing, it drives innovation and identifies the unmet needs of the market that your brand ultimately needs to address.

One of the top goals of any business brand is to enable growth. The key to any business is getting people through the door to view what is behind it, whether it’s a real door or a virtual one! Your door not only needs to look inviting, the welcome mat needs to say the right thing. Then to gather potential customers to knock on the door, you need to take an integrated approach to the marketing, effectively aiming the right message at the right audience at the right time in the right place. Once you’ve done that, your brand need to speak louder, clearer and more specifically than anyone else’s. We need to learn from our competitor’s successes and downfalls, identifying their points of difference to better understand how to stand apart ourselves.

DOVE - The Camapign for Real Beauty

Remember Dove soap? In 2004 they entered the, some would say, saturated beauty category with their “Campaign for Real Beauty”. It challenged society’s narrow definition of beauty by showcasing real women with real shapes and of all different sizes. It met a need within the market to acknowledge every woman’s quest for beauty, no matter of their shape and size. It honoured women and championed their cause. Within two years of this campaign, the Dove brand beat it’s competition to gain $1.2 billion in value and went from a soap bar brand to the beauty brand we now trust.

Brand competition keeps marketers on our toes and brand designers constantly innovating their approach to brand differentiation.

Managing a rebrand

Fri, 18 Nov 2011 13:32:40 +1100

Before you embark on a complete rebrand it is important to check in with your target market first.

It’s imperative to evolve your brand over time, to keep it fresh, relevant and continuing to add value to the business and your customers. But it’s also important not to rush into a rebrand without first checking in with your target market….

First, analyse aspects such as:

how relevant is the brand currently to the target audience?
how is the brand currently positioned in their minds?
what are the changes that are impacting the brand in it’s environment?

It’s important not to cling to the past during a rebranding project, remain objective. Do you have an inflated view of the brand equity that has been built over time? The only way to find out is to ask your customers and prospects. It’s also important to not go rushing in, creating change for change sake. Your brand’s equity is very much about the perception in the market of it’s value to your customers, what you see as valuable may not be what your customers see. Go out and speak to them, understand how they see your brand, which aspects of it are important such as the name, the look & feel, the experience of the brand and which aspects can be changed without harming the brand relationship.

If you’re considering a name change analyse the impact first. A product brand name such as for a skincare range, may be very important to the customers and a change may take considerable amounts of dollars to ensure the new brand has shelf presence, is remembered and associated with brand values and hence doesn’t impact sales. But then the name for a consulting firm may be far less important, as it’s the brand experience, the relationship the customers have with the consultants, which may be far more important. In fact often, professional services firms inherit names from the founder, who may be retired and long gone, rendering the name irrelevant.

It’s important to evaluate your business as a customer, spend a day in their shoes, navigate your own website, call your own help desk, buy one of your own products, what is the brand experience, evaluate each touch point and consider the impact a brand change will have and how that change will need to be managed across all customer touchpoints.

Before you embark on a rebrand make a plan, not only about the creative changes but also about how the changes will be introduced to the market. Write a step-by-step plan to firstly make the changes and then introduce them. Sometimes it is best to make the change all in one go, other times a softly softly introduction is best, ensuring the market accepts each part of the change as you go.

Ensure your reband has credibility. The story of why it is occurring must be credible with the audience. The employees must ‘buy’ the rebrand first as they are the advocates of the brand and will be the ones explaining it to the customers. If they don’t believe it, then the customers won’t.

When Andersen Consulting cut ties with Arthur Andersen, they did the worst thing a company could do -- they chose a new brand name without any meaning and did a terrible job at explaining to the market. Although it was supposedly inspired by the phrase "accent on the future," it tells the customer nothing, and stands for nothing. The change cost Andersen/Accenture an estimated $100 million to execute and was regarded as one of the worst rebrandings in corporate history!

At the same time a reband doesn’t have to be about the name or logo. Old Spice used former NFL player Isaiah Mustafa to tell women to "Look at your man, now back at me," Old Spice is suddenly a new Old Spice. The 70-year-old brand's ad campaign generated tens of millions of online views. Old Spice followed up with 186 related videos in which Mustafa directly responded to digital queries from bloggers and celebrities including Perez Hilton, Ellen DeGeneres, and Alyssa Milano. The company's efforts in reinventing the brand image worked, sales of Old Spice Body Wash rose 11 percent over 12 months in 2010, and sales have continued to gain momentum. A clever ad and smart use of social media can produce a new identity, even for a brand that many associate with their grandfather's deodorant. Old Spice didn't change its logo; it changed the brand experience.

When managing a rebrand you must understand the new environment it will operate in. What are the changes in technology affecting your brand, what are other industries doing, what are competitors up to and most importantly how is customer behaviour changing? Rebranding can be a costly exercise and you don’t want to unnecessarily spend time, money, resources and effort on a strategy that is not fully thought out. Work out the strengths, opportunities, weaknesses and threats involved before going ahead, but when you do decide to go ahead, do it properly, commit to the process and maintain the integrity of the new brand promise.

Brand recognition

Fri, 11 Nov 2011 10:20:37 +1100

Updating your visual identity while maintaining brand recognition and consistency.

Have you considered updating your brand but failed to get started for fear of losing brand recognition in the market? Although this reservation is valid, a stagnating brand can do your business and its positioning in the market even more harm.

A strong brand is constantly evolving in order to stay relevant to the target audience and market conditions. This doesn’t have to involve changing direction in the core purpose and messaging, but a brand’s visual identity and communications strategy must adapt to its environment and that includes an increasingly complex media landscape in which companies now compete for brand recognition.

A brand must identify and respond to changes in customer need in order to establish increasingly meaningful brand relationships with the target market. Subtle changes to an existing identity over time are key to its modernisation without loss of established brand recognition.

The evolution of a logo will typically maintain consistent elements, with only a slight variation of one element throughout e.g. a variation on typeface, adding of depth, colour, movement. Consider the evolution of the Pepsi brand. Pepsi’s original logo was red script on white. Pepsi introduced a red, white and blue round bottle cap to their design in 1950. They swapped the fancy script for clean black lettering in 1962. The bottle-cap stylised into a circle with coloured stripes by 1972 and as of 2011, the striped circle stands alone as Pepsi’s logo. But at no time did Pepsi completely drop the red from the logo, or the positioning of the word Pepsi.

A sudden dramatic change to an existing visual identity can potentially alienate existing consumers and damage brand equity, so a planned approach to the launch and cut-over phase is critical. All stakeholders including employees, consumers and clients must have adequate time to familiarise with the revitalised logo before another change is considered.

When revising a brand, considerations may include:

versatility & usability

relevance to the current market

positioning and taglines

cross media application (i.e. will the brand work for websites, mobile applications and social media).

Lumino have worked on many brand refresh projects. Most recently with the Cardno brand to ensure the logo more appropriately reflects the size and global presence of the company giving the company credibility in the market. See the case study here.

Brand recognition is a key element in building brand equity, so in any brand refresh project maintaining some core elements and a staged approach to it’s introduction is often the best strategy. If you’re wondering if it's time for a change, ask yourself these questions:

have your customers needs, habits, likes & dislikes changed?

has the environment you operate in changed and evolved?

does your logo, typeface and general look seem dated?

If you answered yes to any of these questions, then odds are it's time for a brand refresh to maintain relevance in the eyes of your customers. Building brand equity is a balance between relevance, recognition and consistency.

Consistency in brand experience

Fri, 28 Oct 2011 12:16:58 +1100

Recipe for a great restaurant brand

At lumino, we love good food. But we love good brands more. And when the two come together, there’s nothing better; it results in a very memorable brand experience.

On our recent trip to Melbourne, Pip & I, deliriously ravenous and still reeling from our shocking discovery that Longrain was closed, stumbled upon Ginger Boy. And ‘boy’, we’re glad we did!

After our usual design critique of the brand identity, fit-out and business card (fantastic), and a scan of the menu for typos (happily, none to report) we could settle in to enjoy the dining experience or the 'brand experience'.

In the words of The Gourmet Traveller, “Teage Ezard’s funky and fun Asian spin-off, Gingerboy, goes beyond the usual wok-mongers – it’s Thai, Malaysian and Chinese street fare with a style all its own.”

After feasting on a selection of street food and shared dishes, we would wholeheartedly agree with their promise of food that’s “sometimes hot, mostly spicy, and always inviting.” Our picks are the duck leg curry and the signature dish, son in law eggs. Oh, and a special mention goes to the Doss Blockoss pale lager – for its taste and fabulous packaging!

So what is it that makes a restaurant such a successful brand experience, such as Gingerboy? Here’s lumino’s recipe:

1 top quality chef
1 small bunch fantastic staff
1 vision, finely sliced and carefully applied
1 consistent customer experience
1 fresh brand identity, to serve

Combine all ingredients in an ambient setting, ensuring not to over-mix. Cook over a gentle heat, keeping a close eye on consistency, and serve individual portions with care and attention.

Creating a consistent brand experience is not only the thing that keeps customers coming back, it's the most important aspect in making word-of-mouth marketing work for you.

A brand experience

Fri, 14 Oct 2011 14:16:51 +1100

Last weekend on holiday we paid a visit to one of the most dynamic and cutting edge art galleries in the world, and it’s not in London, New York, Tokyo or Bilbao. It’s in (suburban) Hobart.

Nestled on the side of a cliff face in Berriedale, 30 minutes by ferry down the Derwent River from Hobart, sits an daring architectural building called MONA (Museum of Modern and New Art). Rivalling GOMA here in Brisbane and arguably MOMA in New York and the Tate Modern in London for sheer curatorial originality, MONA is owned and privately run by eccentric multi-millionaire local boy David Walsh.

If nothing else, it’s a triumphant example of how a design and art-led independent vision and spirit can communicate in a clear and unified voice (being privately funded and owned helps of course). Being unfettered by government bureaucracy or committee limitations, the collective experience of visiting the gallery – from everything including the promotional literature, website, signage and presentation of the art itself, right down to the MONA branding on the ferry terminal, uniforms and ferry itself – is satisfyingly consistent. And then there’s the art itself...

'Thought provoking' and 'challenging' are pre-requisite words for contemporary art collections these days, but the art at MONA is a mind bogglingly eclectic vision. Cutting edge installation, performance and interactive video art dealing with themes such as sex, death, biology, romance, philosophy and everything in-between, rub shoulders with Australian masters, well known international artists and fascinatingly – priceless Sumerian, Roman and Egyptian antiquities and prehistoric artifacts.

The whole fever vision is navigated via a personalised art tour pre-loaded to an iPod Touch collected at entry, in which artworks nearby to the visitor are relayed to the device via GPS. The unique proposition of the tour (and the gallery brand as a whole) is a ‘like/hate’ voting system, in which voters hit ‘+’ (like) or ‘x’ (hate). These two symbols comprise a central part of the MONA brand experience – popping up in print collateral, signage and even in the architecture and landscaping. It’s a clever integration of social networking conventions, where the opinions of the gallery’s audience are valued and sought, forming part of the total experience, while simultaneously giving ‘content’ or 'product' feedback – something that savvy commercial entity brands are increasingly realising the power of.

Marketing brands

Fri, 07 Oct 2011 13:24:14 +1100

Banner advertising has become a whole lot smarter when it comes to marketing brands.

Marketing brands can be a very expensive exercise and often, in traditional media, very difficult to track and value.

Marketing brands online through banner advertising, although much easier to track, has in the past been very difficult to target to specific prospective consumers in ‘buying mode’.

However, marketing brands through banner advertising in 2011, has become more much more effective and delivers more value for money. The new ways of banner advertising use advanced targeting and optimisation techniques that target your brand message to potential customers where they are at their most receptive and hence more likely to take action.A certain level of artificial intelligence now, powers some banner advertising systems. As consumers search online, these systems will display ads to them relevant only to their search terms. There are actually more than 300,0000 monetised websites in Australia alone (that’s websites that accept banner advertising), so with these clever systems, your ads can appear on any of those websites as many times as your daily budget allows, to people actually searching for your type of product or service.

Ever been on Facebook after visiting your favourite online shopping site, then seen an ad in Facebook for the very product you either just purchased or researched for purchasing. Feels bit big brother-ish doesn’t it, but it works!

Computer driven campaign management systems can also learn over time which keywords and which websites drive the best performance for a campaign. Then, automatically shift more of your ad dollars to the most effective sites. This is conversion-based optimization. As users interact with your campaign’s display ads, the sites that result in higher conversion rates receive the highest frequency of your banner ads. The technology allocates budget by steering ad dollars towards the sites that are most cost-effective in bringing people to the brand’s website or landing page. Marketing brands in this way ensures the highest frequency of brand messages get to the highest number of targeted consumers.

Banner ad remarketing is another clever tool used in these new systems. This works by showing the display ad to potential consumers who have previously visited your site through any of the campaign ads. After the first visit a remarketing cookie is placed on their computer that tells the campaign manager (this is a computer not a person) to remarket to this user. By targeting users who have already expressed interest by visiting your site, remarketing reinforces your brand wherever they are online. Remarketing can bring potential customers back to your site, which enhances your search engine marketing investment and moves the consumer closer to a sale over time. Marketing brands becomes more effective, more targeted and more accountable.

While not all targeted consumers in your online banner campaign will need your product or service today, display advertising now builds top-of-mind awareness consistently, so your brand will be the one they remember when they are ready to buy. Marketing brands with this kind of online system gets your brand in front of more potential consumers. The key then to more conversion, is to develop creative banner ads that drive users to take action, rather like this Nike ad!

Inspiring creative design

Fri, 30 Sep 2011 15:21:17 +1000

We take our cues from an eclectic mix of life when approaching our creative design

An interesting topic came about in the studio in recent weeks and I thought it would be a great idea to share this discussion with you all. It was just a regular day, discussing what we are having for lunch, what we had for dinner the night before, what cake we are going to eat from Tognini’s, but then we gradually moved on to talking about the Urbanspoon food guide, the Uppercase online journal, and our favourite iPad and iPhone apps. During this entire conversation the lumino creative team’s eyes were full of excitement as we shared all of our favourite sources of inspiration. As designers our everyday surroundings inspire our creative design; the cafés we visit, the music we listen to, the blogs we love reading, so I thought why not share with everyone what inspires us to produce great creative design and what keeps our creative juices flowing.

Pip

Life is such a visual feast and inspiration comes from so many sources for our creative design work. Designers are naturally attuned to their surroundings so easily find something interesting, quirky or beautiful that inspires them almost every day!

For me, I am inspired by other design disciplines; art, architecture, fashion and interiors. I love and admire the way architects use form to design something functional, how interior designers use colour and texture to create experiential spaces and how fashion can be so influential in terms of dictating trends.

I often turn to books and magazines to find this inspiration. I will always love the tactile experience of holding a book, feeling the paper and turning the pages. I am drawn to beautiful photography, art direction and styling as a constant source of inspiration for my creative design.

The design team have quite an eclectic mix of inspiration sources, which they have listed below. Let us know what inspires you in the comment box below.

Dean
Although I love absorbing exciting examples of creative design I find published in books and online, I tend to be inspired from areas outside of design (whether good or bad) – fashion, architecture, food, nature, movies and music – everyday life...

Magazines: Smith journal; Paper magazine; Edge; Fantastic Man; Project (interactive iPad magazine) & Zite (RSS feed tailored magazine)
Online: ffffound.com for general all-round inspiration; Brand New (opinion blog on recent brands); Sartorialist; plain old Wikipedia
Environments: Anywhere in Tokyo, Paris or NY; Melbourne CBD; Spice Temple (Sydney); Main Beach - St Elmo’s (Byron Bay); Main Beach – Byron Bay Bangalow; Little Stanley St, Southbank (Brisbane); Sake (Brisbane); Cirque (New Farm); Flamingo (Valley)
TV: The Movie Show; Project Runway; Nigella Express; Kathy Griffin My Life on the D-List; Doctor Who; Torchwood; The Living Dead
Art: Retrospect (Byron Bay & Gold Coast); MOMA; GOMA; MONA
Music: Cut Copy; Phoenix; Belle & Sebastian; Goldfrapp; Gaga; Daft Punk; Boards of Canada; Tycho; Saint Etienne; Kate Bush.

Chris
Why is it that inspiration comes more easily when I am not looking for it?

Magazines: Vogue Living, Marie Clare, Creative Review, Car Magazine, Frankie
Online: Coolhunter, Ebay, BrandChannel
Environments: Maiocchi boutiques, Koko Black (Melbourne), The Flying Nun Café (Samford), Campos (New Farm)
TV: Real estate shows (preferably with Phil & Kirsty!)
Art: Lethbridge Gallery
Music: Elbow, Regina Spektor, Nizlopi, Ben Folds, The Beatles.

Larissa
I draw inspiration from so many things in life. I like to keep an open mind and you never know even the smallest things can trigger something great.
Travelling to unfamiliar places, meeting new people, looking at what others are creating; this is what inspires me the most:

Magazines: Uppercase Magazine (for the creative and curious), Gourmet Traveller, Donna Hay
Online: Uppercase Journal, Design Files, Urbanspoon
Environments: La Bannette Patisserie (cakes/pastry/quiches mmhmm: Sydney),Café Bouquiniste (New Farm), Woolloongabba Antique Centre, New York, Belgium, Germany & Canada
TV: Master chef (always in the mood to cook up a storm after watching this show)
Artists: Wim De Vos & Adele Outteridge
Music: Sia (a studio faviourite), Florence and the Machine, Boy & Bear & Bjork.

Anika
People who have their own unique style that pushes creative boundaries and does not conform to the “current trends” inspire me; whether fashion, art or things they say or do…

Magazines: idN; Photoshop Creative; Culture
Online: Abduzeedo; LogoPond; Spoon Graphics
Environments: Mooloolaba Beach; Ginza, Japan
TV: Burn Notice; Outrageous Fortune; Law & Order: SVU
Music: Chris Brown; Beyoncé; Nicki Minaj.

What inspires you? Where do you look for ideas for your own creative design? Let us know.

Brand image

Fri, 23 Sep 2011 15:09:20 +1000

The impact of the media on your brand image.

Your brand image is how the market perceives you, it is built up over time and once your audience has a perception of your brand, it can be hard to change it! Think about Volvo and our perception of their cars being boring family cars, or more severely, Super Butcher’s reputation of being unfair to animals, Nike’s alleged use of third world sweatshops, and now Tiger Airlines brand image of being an unsafe airline. Once a brand has developed a reputation, often fuelled by media coverage, it’s very difficult and takes time and money to change. People have long memories!

We must protect our brand image at all cost. The media can be a friend or foe! One way to mitigate anything that happens that may have a negative impact on your brand image is to pre-empt potential stories in the press by sending out a media release explaining what is really going on and the brands intention.

Brand image is directly linked to the customer experience; this is what authenticates the brand image. If a potential customer receives clear messages through your marketing communications and brand identity, then hears or reads something in the media that supports that message, the clincher is when their experience of the product or service exactly matches what they have read and heard.

Think about some brands who have done this well. The Audi Coupe was marketed with the following message “The Audi A5 Coupé changes the way you see and the way you drive: perfect bends in design and asphalt. Superior elegance and impressive efficiency.” Then Audi won car of the year 2011 – Drive magazine. The customer experience of the drive then backs up the brand image; the drive endorsed by Jeremy Clarkson of Top Gear says it all.

Think how Apple's brand image was represented in the design of the iPod touch, espoused in the media hype of the launch and backed up by the customer experience of the "The world's most popular music player". A great brand image is what we all work towards, it takes time to develop, but very little time to destroy. Protect it!

Working with a brand agency

Fri, 16 Sep 2011 14:13:49 +1000

Developing a strong brand with longevity and presence involves working with a Brand Agency who can understand your business.

The most important element for a brand agency when developing a successful brand is the writing of a strategic brief for the creative team. The information for a good brief comes from an in-depth understanding of the business, the goals and objectives, the target market and the desired positioning of the brand, i.e. what the business wants to be known for and what they want to say to their customers…

Working with a professional brand agency gives a company the peace of mind that their brand is created with strategic thinking behind it not just based on a creative look and feel. It gives the brand longevity, to stand the test of time and achieve the goals and objectives set out for the long term.

Your brand agency may recommend that your brand does not need a separate symbol but instead recommend a customised typeface that creates the unique look and feel you are searching for. When designing a brand, the aim should be to build unique brand properties that can be leveraged to become brand assets. A brand’s typeface is one of the visual properties that can be a powerful and unique part of a brand’s visual messaging; often customising type as an option for a strong visual identity is entirely overlooked by designers.

As a brand agency Lumino believes that customising your typeface is as strong an application as a symbol or graphic mark. A customised typeface can create a strong brand identity that captures your business’s personality and differentiates the business. A strong brand identity will communicate to an audience instantaneously. A customised typeface can create a unique, individual and brilliant brand that is like no other and promotes strong brand recognition.

As a brand agency our projects speak for themselves. An example of a strong customised tyepface is:

GoVia - A system built around the idea of free flowing traffic, getting where you need to go quick and easier. The customised typography (see above) creates a sense of movement much like the idea behind this system. The type not only echoes the brand name it describes a key benefit. It communicates information instantly.

A Brand Agency thinks beyond the graphic design to develop a brand that works for the business at all levels and develops brand equity beyond the logo.

Professional graphic design

Fri, 02 Sep 2011 13:55:33 +1000

Effective direct mail demands professional graphic design.

Graphic design is the process of combining effective messages, descriptive text and powerful images to create all types of visual marketing communication. Effective direct mail, for example, requires clever relevant messages that persuade the audience to take action. When coupled with powerful imagery and standout professional graphic design, a direct mail piece will drive real results.

Many see direct mail as a dying art, irrelevant in the new age of interactive and social media. Not so; with inboxes overcrowded, TV on demand where ads get skipped over and print publications get left on coffee tables waiting to be read when time permits - direct mail, is making a comeback.

A clever direct mail piece requires professional graphic design. Some of the guidelines involve:

Design the packaging or envelope so that the piece is beautifully presented and the addressee is excited to open it
Display an engaging and to the point core message or headline
Determine your offer, be clear and upfront
Professional graphic design should draw the eye to the offer not detract from the main point
Don’t over clutter with too many images and graphical elements
Use images that the audience can relate to, that will capture their imagination
Be relevant and informative, and if you talk about benefits prove them with testimonials
Use a strong and obvious call to action
Short and simple is often best!

Apart from ensuring the mailing list is correct, on target and up-to-date, the professional graphic design approach to a direct mailer is the most important aspect. This is what entices the recipient to open it and keep reading through it.

Direct mail can capture your target audience’s attention, where email, print advertising and online such as banner ads, cannot.

If cleverly personalised, it invariably gets through to its intended recipient. The time and effort taken to produce a printed mailer, often shows a level of care and professionalism that an email just cannot compete with.

Our Professional graphic design makes the difference.

So find a great, professional graphic design team, who understands the strategic intention of your direct mailer, brief them well and your message will land right on target.

Lumino...