It goes without saying that if you want your brand to stand out you need to be different, but how do you differentiate your brand while still connecting to the masses? Easy, popularity shouldn’t be your focus. This does not mean you should disregard everything you know and have learned about good branding and graphic design, it just means that you should never compromise the soul of your brand to please the masses. If your brand lacks authenticity your target audience will smell it like fear and will retreat accordingly. No one wants anything that tries too hard. If you craft your brand with the hopes of becoming popular, or ‘going viral’ chances are you will experience quite the opposite. These types of attempts generally land flat and vanish into obscurity. If you want to make a splash and rise above the crowd, you have to build a brand that […]
How to Hashtag Like a Pro
How you look at hashtags depends on when you were born. Most of the generations that came before millennials see # and automatically think of the pound sign. Now, in the digital age where social media reigns supreme, we have co-opted the pound sign and turned it into a hashtag – Oxford even added it into the dictionary. Hashtags came into popularity with Twitter. There was a time when Twitter was all the rage for social media marketing because their innovative hashtag feature made it easier for the audience to both find and engage with businesses the world over. When Instagram exploded onto the scene it really made hashtags “cool” again. Hashtags have become so pervasive in our world that pretty much every social media engine gives you the ability to use them. That being said, each social platform has its own unique set of challenges and etiquette when using […]
Why You Should Invest in Your Logo
Close your eyes. Now imagine Nike, Apple, Pepsi, what do you see? Did you see a check mark, an apple, and a red and blue yin-yang? A brand is embodied by graphic design; the entirety of a company’s vision summed up in one image. A great logo cultivates the vibe of your brand; a bad logo does the same. Your logo is the face of your company, it is the first thing people see and the last thing people remember. If your logo falls flat, so will your company. The graphic design you choose to launch with, will either make or break your chance of survival in today’s ultra-competitive market. This is why choosing a talented graphic designer is one of the most important decisions a company can make. Here are four reasons you should never skimp on your graphic design budget. Your logo is the face of your company; […]
Rock Your 2017 Marketing Strategy
Goodbye 2016, helllloooo 2017! It’s a new year and you have returned to work all refreshed and ready to rock this year. Did you resolve to kick your marketing game up a notch? Before you run ahead full throttle with the new idea you had after a few bevvy’s on Christmas, stop. Slow down and start with a solid marketing strategy. Business owners and employees know that they need marketing, but many don’t have a solid strategy in place. To ensure the success of your super great marketing ideas in the year to come, start with your strategy – and no, replicating what you did last year probably won’t cut it. Marketing is constantly evolving and so should your strategy. So, what should your marketing strategy include? Well, it really is dependent on what your marketing goals are, what your industry is and so on. We do still have a […]
Boom! Our 5 Fave Ads From 2016
It seems as though 2016 was a really mixed bag. For us, business has been booming, our clients have been amazing and our service game was strong. However, it would appear as though 2016 was a bit of a shite year in general for much of the world. Between the war and strife around the globe, the Brexit vote going horribly awry, and the never-ending train wreck that was the U.S. presidential election, there just seems to be a lot of negativity in the world. Even the movies that came out were kind of – blah. Thankfully, commercials this year were on point! Marketing teams the world over seem to be fueled by the worst to tell stories that will make us smile, make us smile or just make us tear up. From commercials created in Canada to Australia and everywhere in between, short form storytelling through commercials have […]
Facebook Live is the Bombdiggity – For Now
Remember the good ol’ days when your business could post pretty much anything and people would like it? Or four years ago when simply using a photo as a Facebook post would increase your engagement by 110%. Yeah, those days are gone. It’s 2016 and Facebook knows how much you rely on social media marketing – and while using the platform is free, getting impressions for your business definitely isn’t nowadays. Yes, it may be frustrating, but there’s a reason that Facebook is a business that makes BILLIONS of dollars a year even though their service is “free.” They got you all hooked on their free advertising and then slowly, every time they tweaked their algorithm, made you more and more invisible to your audience. “But they liked my page,” you say. People have had Facebook for so long they have liked hundreds of business pages over the years – […]
Graphic Design For Newbies
Many small and medium-sized businesses don’t have a graphic designer on staff, but all of them need business materials designed – menus, price lists, logos, business cards, letterhead, social media graphics, banners, ads. Pretty much all of your business collateral has design elements to it. If you don’t have a designer on staff, those elements have to come from somewhere. Do you think it needs to be you doing the design work? If you’ve gone the extra step and bought Creative Suite to try to give your poster or social media graphic a professional feeling but you’re probably feeling awfully overwhelmed right now. Sure you can watch YouTube videos for hours that will teach you how to use basic Illustrator tools, but that still doesn’t teach you how to design. Thankfully, we have a team of graphic designers that are here to give you tips to help ease you into the design […]