Archive for the ‘tips’ Category

3 Ways to Get More Mileage from Your Trade Show Booth

Posted by Eryn Willard on July 7, 2011

Feeling the pain in your budget with another trade show season underway? Armed with a video or still camera, here are three ways you can get more out of that booth investment.

 

  1. Your booth is your brand in 3D. Visitors are surrounded by colors, textures, images and products that tell your story. And when it’s staffed with employees, it’s an ecosystem of company culture and mood. Capture staff interactions and booth events on camera – you might even consider “interviewing” employees using questions about the brand. Anything you capture can be used as fodder for your email marketing, company blog or for employee recruitment.
  2. Many brands don’t have national sales meetings and rarely see all of their reps in one place, at one time. If that’s you, you can inspire them by creating a “how-to” video. Record some of the sales interactions taking place in the booth as examples. Your booth is the perfect backdrop to help reps learn how to sell the brand, not just the merchandise.
  3. Chances are the product in your booth is merchandised exactly how you’d prefer it to be on the retail floor. Take this opportunity to document how products are displayed in accordance with your brand guidelines and/or seasonal theme, and share them with your retailers and outside sales reps when you return from the show. This is especially helpful if your company doesn’t produce planograms or merchandising guidelines.

Got any other ideas, or examples of how you’ve gotten a little extra out of your trade show presentation? Tell me in the comments below!

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Posted in strategy, tips, trade show

Why Paper Planograms (and Workbooks) Will Never Go Out of Style

Posted by Eryn Willard on February 16, 2011

This is a much-discussed topic in our circle here at Studio 22. Brands and sales reps often feel mired in the stacks they have to ship out or carry with them, not to mention the printing and mailing costs associated with these materials.

What I hear a lot is, “It uses so much paper. Can’t we put it on the web?” Of course, we’re biased toward printed pieces – it’s our nature. But we are also always in favor of cutting waste – it’s our duty.

I’m here to make the case for keeping these printed pieces (and their associated mailing costs) in your budget. In the instance of Planograms, particularly, it’s important to look at the situation from the retailer’s eyes. There are benefits to you, the manufacturer, wrapped neatly in here, too.

The purpose of creating a planogram is to ensure that your brand is represented properly at retail via signage and product display. If you rely on the retailer to do your floor or wall set (rather than a brand rep), sending a planogram is a necessity.

Send two hard copies: one for the office (back-up) and one working copy for the sales floor. If these are the only copies the retailer has, they’ll keep track of them. You are actually helping to control waste this way. If your planograms were accessible online, they would be printed an indefinite amount of times and tossed in the waste basket after use. Additionally, colors vary from screen to screen and printer to printer, so you have no control over how color swatches are conveyed to the user if printed from the web. Not to mention…

When it’s time to do a reset of your merchandise for markdowns or a new season, the last thing a shop owner running on limited staff (you know, this economy…) wants to do is send a sales associate to the back to locate and print your planogram. An unattended sales floor = poor customer service = lost sales and/or possibility of theft. If there is one quality color document on the sales floor, you’ve saved the retailer 15 minutes. Looking at this from the retailer’s perspective is important, which brings us to…

The overarching point, which is: Make it easy and convenient for the retailer to present your merchandise. If it’s not easy and it doesn’t help them sell product, they won’t do it to your specifications and brand recognition will be lost.

Printed workbooks, when designed correctly, also offer convenience to your retailers. They become an important reference tool when quality product images (photos or renderings) are prominently displayed in the layout, reducing phone calls and sales rep visits.

We’ve been on the other side of the cash register, and have culled this expertise into creating several new service offerings aimed at connecting brands with their end-users on the retail floor. Click here to see our merchandise presentation services list, or give us a call at (240) 288-8116.

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Posted in apparel, branding, retail, tips

Cutting Waste & Enhancing Customer Experience with QR Codes

Posted by Eryn Willard on November 17, 2010

I’m pretty excited that we’ll be working on a new design project that will include QR codes. (For detailed QR code information, see Larry Pluimer’s Indigitous site.) This particular project is a piece of sales literature that will need to function at times in the absence of a company representative. So, using these codes is an efficient way for this manufacturer to expose customers to additional product information without overwhelming them with a ton of text to read on the printed piece. Plus, it allows the reader to stay focused on the product visuals!

QR codes can be used in a number of ways to enhance not only business-to-business transactions, but the customer experience as well. For example:

  • Send the consumer to a landing page or micro-site showcasing component details, care instructions, or other ways to use your product.
  • Provide an offer code for a discount on their next purchase of your product.
  • Invite them to join your email list.

Another advantage of using QR codes is waste reduction. You can significantly decrease your printing expenditures and paper (and ink, and energy, and water) use by including a code on your package or hang-tag to allow consumers to:

  • download a PDF of your manual in their language of choice.
  • allow them to register their product for warranty.

You can even reduce the size of your signage if you include QR codes. Plus, it frees up one of our favorite things – white space! Imagine a sign with only a great, attention-grabbing call to action and imagery that intrigues someone to want to know more about an event you’re hosting. A QR code can be placed on the sign that leads the viewer to an event listing where they can purchase tickets/register, get calendar details and click through to a website. Here, you’ve engaged your audience before the event even starts. They’re invested in the experience with your company.

If done with purpose and process, QR codes can be very engaging. Without planning, though, they could easily fall flat. I’ll be sure to do a follow-up to this post once our new project is complete. But in the meantime, I leave you with my own QR code:

Eryn Willard contact info

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Posted in marketing, OIBIZ, sales tools, tips

“Dog Found” – A Simple Communication Tactic

Posted by Eryn Willard on November 1, 2010

Both the Studio 22 office and my home are in a small rural town in the hills of Central Maryland. Aside from our news channels, you’d never guess that we’re only an hour north of DC, and an hour west of Baltimore. Things move at a slower pace here – and that’s just how we like it.

One recent day while running errands, I passed a sign near the road. It was a small, hand written one on a stick that read: DOG FOUND. It had an arrow on it, pointing down a side road to a single house.

All the way back to the office, I smiled, reveling in the powerful simplicity of the communication. As a “professional communicator” my first reaction was: YEAH, AND? So often, we (and our clients) feel the need to include ever more details in advertisements or marketing pieces, fearing that the audience will lose interest or fail to get the facts. In reality, too many details can muddle the point and stifle the call to action. (You’ve heard us creative-types talk about needing more white space? This is really what we mean.)

So after I got over my initial reaction of wanting more details, I realized there were several reasons why this simple sign was an effective piece of advertising:

  1. It identified the target audience: 1 dog = 1 owner. The sign-maker knew that they didn’t have to provide more details about the found dog. The owner missing his dog would know where to go.
  2. Well-crafted visuals: The dog finders knew that people would be passing by this sign at 30 mph – not enough time to read and absorb more than a few words. They used their allotted space (8.5 x 11″) as effectively as possible with bold, black, capital letters.
  3. Strong call to action: The call to action on this piece was actually a symbol – the arrow pointing down the side road. (Side note: Symbols are powerful communication tools! Think hieroglyphics, road signs and…LOGOS.) The creator saved valuable real estate on the sign by using a single mark that says: THIS WAY, LONELY DOG OWNER. YOU CAN CLAIM YOUR PUP AT THE ONLY HOUSE ON THIS ROAD.
Heritage Festival Sign

Similar to DOG FOUND, here's a sample I snapped in town that follows suit.

Next time you’re crafting a new communications piece for your brand, try applying the DOG FOUND tactic. It’s not necessary to give all of the information, all at once. The idea is to engage your target audience so that they want to seek out more details from you and learn about your brand. Be strategic as you begin building a relationship with them.

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Posted in advertising, branding, inspiration, marketing, tips

Your Home Page Is A Magazine Cover

Posted by Eryn Willard on April 5, 2010

While your business’ website surely has more tasteful content than what you’d find in the tabloids at the checkout line, there is something to be learned from their covers.

Magazine covers aren’t meant to tell the whole story, they’re meant to pique your interest enough that you part with $4.99 to read the contents.

When planning out your website – particularly the home page – take some cues from the magazines:

  • Pay attention to hierarchy and organize the most important information in places of prominence. They eye moves from the upper left corner of the screen to the lower right (one reason the company logo is in the top left corner on most sites). This visual path will help you configure your page.
  • Use punchy lines of text with small blurbs that link to the interior content pages of your site.
  • Keep as much information on the home page “above the fold” as possible (okay, this is newspaper-speak, but still works here). In other words, you don’t want to lose any critical bits off of the bottom of the screen.
  • Above all, keep the home page layout simple – engaging, but simple. A magazine cover can’t hold all of its interior content, and neither can your home page!

Please, take one: I just wrote a short article called “5 Things Your Small Business Website Needs to Engage Your Customers“.

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Posted in tips, web site

When Things Get Hectic

Posted by Eryn Willard on February 16, 2010

It’s Tuesday, and with Tuesday comes a different set of stresses than with Monday. If you’re an entrepreneur – or manager of any sort – Tuesday is the day when the rest of the week comes into focus, and you realize how much crap stuff you have to accomplish before the weekend arrives.

Among your to-do’s are marketing tasks (hopefully) that will keep your customers rolling in. Activities like:

  • monthly/quarterly mailings
  • attending events or trade shows
  • updating your company website and blog
  • creating a seasonal product catalog
  • making presentations/sales calls
  • sending email newsletters
  • advertising

When things get busy, we (yes, even us designers) tend to procrastinate marketing our businesses in order to get through the rest of our tasks. However, even when things are hectic, you should still be focused on promoting your business.

Making a calendar at the beginning of each year that outlines your marketing efforts helps you stay on track, while also helping you budget for any design and printing costs. This can be done quarterly as well, to the same effect (my preferred method), and allows you to be more nimble with your decisions.

By planning your marketing efforts in advance, you can reap some cost savings by:

  • ganging up your print jobs for mailings (saves resources, too!)
  • having a general brand overview piece on hand to send to prospects and take to meetings
  • resizing one design for multiple trade show booth layouts
  • qualifying for discounts from your mail house for scheduled catalog mailings
  • creating a single branded email newsletter template that is ready for monthly content
  • having a standard advertisement design that can resized and sent to publications on the fly
  • not paying rush charges when you’re behind the 8-ball!

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Posted in marketing, tips

Visual Diversion

Posted by Eryn Willard on September 23, 2009

By now, most of us are familiar with word clouds. Right? Okay, maybe not, but there is a site on the web where you can create and customize your own in a few minutes. It’s called Wordle and you should check it out. I played around with text from our home page today for a mid-afternoon visual break and some inspiration.

Here are a few favorites:

wc_hotwc_asparaguswc_coolsummer

Imagine using this to come up with word combinations for product names; or entering your brainstorming notes to see new combinations of phrases for a marketing campaign; or for creating a tagline. Anything that helps you look at something from a new perspective can give you a creative charge.

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Posted in creativity, inspiration, short and sweet, tips, words

5 Ways to Keep the Green in the Design

Posted by Eryn Willard on July 20, 2009

We are a proud member of the Designers Accord. The following guidelines were inspired by a recent Designers Accord gathering where maintaining sustainable design practices in an (ugh) ailing economy was the topic of discussion. For the record, Studio 22′s stance is that these actions are “baked in” to our process.

1. Analyze what is in your control, such as paper selection, bindings, or packaging/containment method. Make choices as part of the design exploration process.

2. Make it as easy as possible to disassemble the piece (if bound or packaged) for recycling at the end of its life cycle.

3. Estimate quantities based on past usage of similar projects as closely as possible so that you don’t over-produce. Even if you recycle your leftovers, it’s still waste.

4. Cut back on unnecessary wordiness in your text to reduce page count – not only does this help save on production costs, it saves paper and reduces postage expenses.

5. Evaluate how your audience will use your communications piece. Do they want to read an 8-page product brochure, or would they rather have a line sheet with highlights? Making it convenient for the end user can result in reduced materials consumption.

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Posted in corporate citizenship, CSR, eco-friendly, environment, green, paper, sustainability, tips

Who says packaging doesn’t help sell products?

Posted by Eryn Willard on June 10, 2009

Even graphic designers themselves fall prey! I know it every time I’m drawn to purchasing something I most likely don’t need. Take, for example, the following…

Orange seltzer is not an item I would normally buy on a grocery trip. But don’t you know, this one, from Boylan Bottling Co. practically jumped off of the shelf at me. I’m a sucker for well-done retro-style anything, so in the cart it went. I thought, ‘Even if I don’t drink it, I would still like to stare at the package.’ (The seltzer’s actually quite tasty, living up to its great packaging and label, and their website kicks ass, too.)

Boylan’s packaging (for all of their products) supports their brand story. Just by looking at their packaging, one can tell the company has a deep history and a sense of fun. Their designer distilled their story into a visual representation of their brand.

On the same trip, I also grabbed some Twist Sponge Cloths. Did I need them? Probably not, but their packaging and presentation was just so nice that I didn’t want to leave without them. (Of course, I use them all the time now since I’m trying to break the paper towel addiction in my house.)

A consumer knows when they look at Twist’s line of products on the shelf that the brand is about making a mundane activity more enjoyable while also conserving resources.

So what’s the point of this grocery shopping recap? The point is:
Thoughtful label/package design (and this includes hang-tags and boxes, too) promotes your already-great product.

Would I have tried the orange seltzer had it not been for the Boylan’s package? No.

Would I have thought that Twist’s European sponge cloth was the solution to my dirty kitchen counters? Nope.

When launching your brand, don’t blow it by rushing through the planning and design process for your support materials. Hire a design firm that will take the time to understand your brand and it’s story before crafting solutions.

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Posted in branding, hang-tag, marketing, packaging, retail, sales tools, tips

Communicating Your Sustainability…or Communicating Sustainably?

Posted by Eryn Willard on May 7, 2009

What should you do during “recessionary times?” Both.

As stated on Twitter earlier this week (find us @studio_22), consumers 18-34 will be driving green trends in the next decade. We also said that when you promote your products to this group, you should do so in a sustainable way.

If you’re a brand that can demonstrate a genuine commitment to responsible practices, tell consumers your sustainability story. Do it authentically. Brands can gain a competitive edge when they engage consumers on issues that they care about. Do it on a hang-tag. Do it in your catalog. Do it on your website. The person buying your product or service will feel good about making the purchase because it supports a belief that they subscribe to. You’ll provide added value – an important quality at the moment.

Now, about those sustainable communications…those hang-tags, brochures, catalogs, reports. There’s more to a sustainable marketing piece than slapping some ink on 30% recycled content paper. We won’t bore you with substrates here, but care must be taken with the imagery and text, colors, sizing, and ink used in producing your communications. Even the firm you choose to work with has an impact on the footprint of your printed materials. Embracing this concept on the back end will push you even further ahead of the competition in the eyes of your customers.

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Posted in bottom line, carbon footprint, catalog, corporate citizenship, CSR, eco-friendly, environment, manufacturing, marketing, outdoor, short and sweet, sustainability, tips

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