Category Archives: marketing and promotion

A History of PR, Ad Specialties, and Movie Promo Tie-Ins

Public Relations, Ad Specialties Share Movie Promo History

The PR specialty often referred to as event promotion co-existed comfortably with the generic marketing label “Advertising Specialties”, a category comprised of often useless junk offered as customer engagement bait, usually sold from monthly catalogs sent out by merchandisers ranging from post office box headquartered side gig entrepreneurs to large resellers on the national stage.

Key rings, pens, notepads, and refrigerator magnets are top-of-mind when it comes to booth memorabilia and convention mementos, but the global pandemic and a freshly minted set of hygienic standards upset that business model.

For one enterprise zone, though, ad specialties were the stuff creative dreams are made of, and represent a time that’s come and gone in the history of over-the-top, cost isn’t a problem promotion. Before YouTube trailers, micro-targeted ad pop-ups, Netflix, and streaming on-demand content, the movie industry for one brief period relied on often wildly imaginative product tie-ins to lure paid views and valuable word-of-mouth. Continue reading →

“Workplace” — Office Design Before Covid

R/GA founder Bob Greenberg had no idea then that just four years later COVID would become the pandemic few foresaw coming and that no one had a plan for.

R/GA Documentary Ambushed by COVID

Documentary filmmaker Gary Hustwit’s examination of global agency R/GA’s decision to consolidate their New York City headquarters in Workplace couldn’t have been more prescient. Released in 2016, the movie explores the creative push that resulted in the open concept, two-floored new home to hundreds, in the world before Covid.

Hustwit’s reputation for delivering award-winning quality insight into the intersections of design and type with culture and society is unique. Workplace joins Objectified, Rams, Urbanized, and Helvetica in shedding considerable light on how our immediate environment influences our shared experiences.

Until there’s a real social or political revolution, the office will be a feature of global capitalism for a long time to come.

Is #WFH a Permanent Address?

In Workplace, Hustwit examines the thinking behind R/GA founder Bob Greenberg’s ideas for a unified office atmosphere that can physically drive creative inspiration, the agency’s lifeblood. The architectural firm Foster + Partners is tasked with delivering a functional concept that solves both the physical and psychological needs of one of the world’s top digital agencies that showcases technology and fosters collaboration.

Along the way, you’re introduced to euphemisms like huddle rooms and floor plate, as Hustwit covers the journey from existing quarters to imagined outcome through move-in day. Continue reading →

Logos to Trademarks—Masters of Their Craft

Chermayeff Geismar & Haviv Set The Bar

60 Years of Logos: Chermayeff & Geismar from Dress Code on Vimeo.

If you watch television, use the post office, have a checking account, buy gasoline, or enjoy modern art, you’ve seen their work. Driven by both research and pure instinct, the duo is responsible for a library’s worth of abstract marks and recognizable logotypes that continue to withstand the test of time.

In one short (~3′) video, design legends Ivan Chermayeff* and Tom Geismar discuss their founding, the early days, what makes a mark memorable, and how they’ve planned for their iconic firm’s future in a global environment of design on demand, ranging from crowd sourced adventure to template driven desperation to cattle call design auctions that start at the bottom and usually progress downward.

Two Legendary Designers On Memorable Careers

In this video the unassuming pair go on record about the formative years, their staying power, and what they bring to the highly competitive table of corporate communications and graphic design. Whether you’re a client or a designer, what they have to say is invaluable in charting a communications course.

Born in London in 1932, *Ivan Chermayeff died in December, 2017, at age 85.

amazon’s split personality

For Brands, Cure May Be Worse Than Disease

Read It Free Helps Subscription Rates How?

As I grow increasingly comfortable with online shopping as an alternative to chasing hard to find items in brick and mortar storefronts, rationalizing clik to add to shopping cart becomes easier and easier as the cost of shipping tumbles. Then came Amazon Prime.

Amazon Prime is by all indications a very effective loss leader in the effort to tether consumers to mega-site Amazon for all their internet purchases. Patterned after the big box membership warehouse experience, Prime, for a modest annual fee, delivers not only free 2-day shipping on most items, but includes a bunch of other perks as well.

The price is right – for as long as it can last.

The included music feed is perfectly acceptable, eliminating having to subscribe to Pandora, Spotify, or Radio for a premium listening experience. Ditto access to online t.v. content, books, and a number of other features that save time and/or money.

I just discovered that a number of familiar, favorite, and free periodicals are available as well, viewable online or as downloaded Kindle content. Which is how I came across Cycle World, Bonnier’s flagship pub in their motorcycle group stable of powersports publications, as a free read on Amazon.

I’m not sure how the business model for offering up your vanguard bike magazine for free reading moves the bottom line needle. It’s not an option you’d expect to find in a typical subscription pitch; “12 Whole Issues For One Year’s Worth of Reading Only Zero Dollars and Zero Cents!”

Since consolidating the spectrum of motorcycle pubs several years ago by purchasing those niche assets from Hearst first, then Source Interlink, the overall health of print continues to circle the drain, excepting a few standouts like Garden & Gun. The price is right – for as long as it can last.

defining the retail user experience

The Retail Chain’s Weakest Link

When I want to enjoy a retail shopping experience, Tampa’s International Mall is a perfect destination that’s just 30-minutes away. There’s an Apple store, a Williams-Sonoma, designer label signature storefronts galore, and the pedestrian traffic is an instant education in current style trends.

Parking outside Nordstrom’s, where both the professional display techniques and downright good food of their in-store restaurant are hard to resist, is convenient.

Holiday shopping always includes a visit to Neiman Marcus for their distinctive American Classic box set dessert sampler featuring a variety of six liquor infused cakes.

This year I noticed a big gap in how I, Shopper A, was interpreted. Nordstrom’s personnel were ready to offer immediate help, but not to the point of smothering. If I’d been looking for something in particular, catching the eye of a sales person would have only needed a glance.

First, be able to answer every question about what you’re selling.

Neiman’s, on the other hand, presented a challenge. Because of a change in packaging I did have questions; the ensuing search for help made me wonder if a set of railroad crossing bells would have been useful, and checkout, achieved only after some few minutes of confusion, caused further annoyance at a process that should be anything but.

Two top-tier stores. Two totally different outcomes. Know your products. Recognize your customers. Create an experience that doesn’t lead to a comparative blog post.

how logo design affects brand

Aligning Your Look With Your Mission

When it comes to promoting a business, particularly a restaurant, nothing is more critical than the brand logotype. Getting it right goes a long, long way towards making an impression on a distracted public that sees thousands of visuals on a daily basis.

To be successful, a corporate mark requires design integrity, repetition in the marketplace, and a connection to the goods or services it represents. Whether abstract or literal, the Nikes, Apples, and Coca-Colas of the business world rely on a recognizable visual that connotes quality and trust.

Emoticon, Meet Emoji

Looking at the before and after (above left) of IHOP’s haircut and a shave, it’s difficult to imagine how the approval process resulted in what struck one reviewer as a “sinister” smile beneath the word mark.

It’s arguably more legible, but only slightly, and that’s about where it starts and ends.

The IHOP acronym, in case some may have forgotten, stands for International House of Pancakes. But that’s not what I see when I try to decipher the new and improved visual. Emoticon, meet emoji.

HOW Design recently interviewed Siegel+Gale, a New York based branding agency known for their standout work, on the recent spate of chain restaurant logo overhauls. For anyone who follows corporate design, the candid remarks by the agency’s designers are for the most part an indictment of the perils of lackluster graphics.

A couple of things stand out in this collection of shareholder dependent corporate eateries. First, it’s more than okay to overhaul the corporate brand on an as needed basis. Nothing says stay away like an aged, dated, and most importantly irrelevant logotype. Second, once having decided on a freshening, make sure you’re just not slipping sideways.

Design updates should – probably – include references to historical looks that over time successfully represented a company to its public. But don’t let fear of letting go put up unnecessary barriers to a truly fresh, inspired interpretation that acknowledges the past while extending the future. Bon appétit!

b-to-b needs softer approach

Improve B-to-B With Creative Storytelling

The January issue of Advertising Age takes a look at B-to-B marketing as brands continue to sort out what works and what doesn’t for industrial communications in the digitized age.

The conclusion is that brands can’t rely any longer on a business marketing process that doesn’t address the issue of “wonderful storytelling,” according to GE global creative director Andy Goldberg. In other words, the old way of sexing up a page from a parts catalog and hoping it flies are long gone.

Like every other area of corporate communications, from PR to advertising, the social in social media is the leading influencer effecting the creative upgrade.

finding new media outlets

For GE, that means taking advantage of previously untapped platforms like late night talk, boosting “Fallonventions” on the Jimmy Fallon Show to demonstrate the brand’s human side.

Others describe the new approach as moving from data to gut, and doing what connects emotionally. United States Gypsum (USG), hardly a warm and fuzzy candidate for storytelling, did just that in their “It’s Your World” ad series.

With user experience driving this new approach, the goal is to connect potential buyers using content that explains a brand’s product in an engaging and educational manner. How well that will work with traditional buyers used to making dollars and cents decisions based on bottom line performance will determine B-to-B creative in a way that could be hugely transformative.

And if its proven effective in the long run over traditional methods, the need for involving creative direction that’s familiar with social media will be paramount.

Newsletters—the Swiss Army Knife of Engagement