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Lady Gaga’s Lessons in Marketing

June 21, 2011

Who knew we could learn so much about marketing from Lady Gaga? The pop star* has taught us two more lessons;

People will still buy music if it’s really, really cheap. Billboard says that Amazon sold 440,000 digital copies of her new “Born This Way” album at $0.99 each. The e-commerce giant sold 330,000 copies on a Monday in May, even though demand for promotion blew its servers up, and 110,000 more copies a few days later (Thursday), when it repeated the stunt.
People will still buy music if they’re really, really interested in a particular act. Billboard reported that s Lady Gaga was set to sell 1.15 million albums in the album’s first week. Which means that buyers are paying full price for some 700,000 of them.

Bonus lesson, because we already knew it, but it’s good to remember anyway: People are still buying CDs! Billboard also projected that Apple’s iTunes will account for 200,000 units sold by the end of the first week. Add in Amazon’s totals and you get to 640,000 digital albums sold. Which means that Americans will have bought more than 500,000 good old-fashioned compact discs this week, too.

Have you bought a CD in the last year? Do you know anyone who has?

But someone is: A decade after Napster, discs still account for a majority of the music industry’s revenues.

What they don’t teach You in Ad School

June 17, 2011

There’s one thing that everyone in the fields of advertising, marketing, design, digital and the like all share: We were all once newbies. Young pups. No matter how we earned our first job or sneaked into this industry — and regardless of previous class work, internships and competitions — most graduating students have no idea exactly what they are getting themselves into. We would like to share some key insights into our world that more institutions, that offer Communications, Marketing, Advertising, Design majors, should be addressing in their curriculum.

#1 It’s Ultimately About People
No matter how “creatively driven” the agency, we are ultimately responsible for helping our clients interact with real, living, breathing human beings. While it’s tempting to get caught up in pursuit of fake gold awards to hang on the mantel, we need to always remember that we’re being paid to create connections between people and brands — whether it be building awareness for a new product or cultivating evangelism for an established brand. So while we may make ads, or build apps, or design and program websites, we must never lose sight of the fact that we are truly in the “people” business.

Cover up that Camera!

June 16, 2011

Shooting on rainy or snowy days can result in some amazing images but also in accidental damage to your equipment. Whether you do nature or street photography, limiting yourself to getting out on dry days can be very frustrating.

Probably many of you had been using makeshift plastic covers from bags, shower caps, etc. They work in an emergency situation but, to be honest, they are not always a dependable solution to protect your expensive gear

We have a recoomendation for you…the Storm Jacket!

Here is the scoop: The Storm Jacket is made of AquaNylon fabric and features a bungee draw string on each end. It fits securely over your lens cap and stays in place. The other end also features a draw string which can be pulled tight between shoots when walking around on a rainy or snowy day. The difference between the standard and pro models is the ability to use a tripod with the pro model. The Pro Storm Jacket has the added feature of a Velcro opening on the bottom to allow for the mounting of a tripod or monopod. We also recommend the pro version if your camera strap connects to you tripod socket.

– The Standard model comes in five sizes (from 11” to 31” or 27.9 cm to 78.8 cm), in yellow, red, black or camouflage.

– The Pro model comes in four sizes (17” to 31” or 43.1 cm to 78.8 cm) in black or camouflage.

In order to choose the length you need, you just measure the length from the front of the lens cap (zoom fully extended) to the rear of your camera and add 2 inches to that number.

If folds flat, weighs almost nothing and comes with a small zippered pocket that can hook on to your belt or camera bag. The only drawback we can think of is that is it not clear. There are clear covers available out there but they are definitely not as durable as the sturdy fabric used on the Storm Jacket.

Prices range from $36-$59 (depending on size)

You can further check this product out with the links below:

Vortex Media

B and H Photrography

…

The Magic Ingredient of Branding

June 14, 2011

Brands are built around four fundamentals: product differentiation, relevance, esteem, and knowledge But the magic ingredient that converts those fundamentals into a branding success story is consistency. If you bring consistency to your branding program, you end up with a brand that stands head and shoulders Above the others.

What is brand consistency?

Brand consistency is where a business attempts to communicate messages in a way which doesn’t detract or wander away from the core brand proposition.

For example, a single logo is always used in a similar way on all marketing materials, a single typeface is used with particular guidelines on typography, consistent color ranges are applied and similar design styles, so that everything visual is inter-linked and has a link back to that core brand proposition. Every piece of marketing material is like a member of the same family, supporting and even looking similar to all the other members in the family.

The brand has it’s own unique “look” which enables a consumer to recognize it as belonging to that brand proposition and distinguish it from competing brands.

This visual “look” often evolves slowly over time but the core message of all successful brands never really changes.

Why bother with brand consistency?

Brand consistency has one massive advantage – recognition.
With recognition comes familiarity.
With familiarity comes trust and confidence.
Consistency brings clarity and purpose which consumers buy into. Customers become loyal.

Brand consistency often takes many years to master before it really starts working for you. This means you need to think long term. Leading brands are normally leading because they have had many years of consistency behind them and they have had a long term goal for their branding which has been consistent. The trick is to have in place a clear idea of your brand and then the right people (Us!) in place to guard it.

The 10 Worst things that you can do to your Business Card

June 7, 2011

Your business card is also another important respresentation of your Brand. Your business card, like your webaite, generally becomes the first impression a potential client has of you and your business. Thus, we feel it is important to have your card professionally designed in order to maintain synergy accross your brand. Below are the common mistakes made in the design of business cards by both people who try to do their own designs oand inexperienced graphic designers.

1. Cram too much information into your card.

This card incorporates #1 and #10

Want to cram everything anyone might ever want to know about your business onto that tiny rectangle of paper? Use a small font size so you can add more text and cover as much of the surface of the card as you can. Who cares about making it easy to read? Your business card should contain everything, even if you have to provide a map to find your phone number on it.

2. Hide the important information.

Make your logo so small only you know what it actually looks like. Make sure your name and the company name are too small to be read without a magnifying glass: after all, anyone you give your card to knows that already. But put your fax number and physical address in large font. After all, everyone visits or faxes: no one’s going to email you, are they?

3. Don’t bother grouping related information together.

Have your name in one corner and your job title in the other. The company name in the middle, the address in the third corner and the phone number on the fourth. Your email address? On the back of the card, with the text informing me that it’s made of recycled paper.

That hurts my eyes

4. Use similar colors for the text and the background.

Contrast? What’s that? You like blue, so use a bright blue background and dark blue text, except for your name, which can be in light blue. Try reading that, you pesky prospect!

5. Crowd the edge of the card.

Margins are for suckers: your business card will have text right to the edge.

6. Use as many fonts as you can.

What are all those fonts on the computer for, anyway? Show the world how creative you are!

7. Never use the back of the card.

No, don’t even consider it. That’s the sign of the devil, or something, having a Twitter handle on the back of the card. Just cram everything in the front. . . oh sorry, that’s #1.

Give me more than a phone number, Joe!

8. Don’t include all your contact information.

Yeah, you have a blog and a Facebook page, but why would you put that on your business card? It’s not like you want people to find them!

9. Ignore your company colors.

Your company logo is in green and orange? So what, if your favorite color is purple go ahead and use that for all the text. Who’s the graphic designer to tell you it’s clashing? It’s your card, isn’t it?

A dash of color and a clean uncluttered design: this simple card manages to avoid most of the mistakes I’ve outlined

10. Be bland.

Your business card reflects your personality and your business, so your boring black-on-white card makes you look just as boring as you are. What’s wrong with that? Better yet, take your sister-in-law’s card design and just swap in your contact details. Why should your business card be original anyway? Your cupcakes store can totally have the same card as her accounting business.