The madness of Summer
…madness of the creative sort that is. Our top three creative influences at Liquid Graphic so far this Summer:
Best Buy
Already with some serious customer service clout to their name, this retailer has some clever things going on. Not least of all, Best Buy has provided their sales advisors with smart phones to engage with Twitter. Now, when a customer tweets a question about that next LCD TV they’re looking to buy, they will benefit from the expertise of Best Buy’s entire team. In fact, using Twitter has gained such momentum that Best Buy now provides staff with fun incentives purely based on the speed and quality of responses.
Flippin YouTube
Trend spotters in web and viral marketing are citing YouTube as the next ‘big thing’. Already successful in its own right as a social medium, the commercialisation of this channel has been slower. But with brands now having figured out the right and wrong ways to use Facebook and Twitter, YouTube was always the next logical step to breathe animation and ‘life’ into online marketing campaigns.
So, grab your video camera and think video blogs and creative competitions. And grab your video camera while you can. The Flip video camera is one of the most simplistic and popular standalone video cameras on the market but production has shut down since the company was bought out by Cisco due to competition from the smartphone market. If you’re a fan of simple – which we are at Liquid Graphic – go grab one now.
Festival feel-good
It’s that festival point in the Summer where there’s a lot going on that has to do with being outdoors, being with people and being celebratory. It doesn’t need to be about Glastonbury or one of the big music festivals, although these are good examples. It can also be as simple as your town carnival, a barndance, the funfair or a traditional country fete. Whatever your need for inspiration, there’s a lot we can take from these moments of celebrating togetherness and humanity.
Contact Liquid Graphic if we’ve inspired you to think again about your creative or to think about engaging more effectively with social media.
A Twitter of the people, by the people, for the people…
Alas, politics is a much-altered game to that played by Abraham Lincoln.
Some rules remain. The road to party rule still relies on a manifesto that is relevant (of the people), borne out of meaningful contact with voters (by the people) and that will make a difference (for the people).
Others have changed. PR is now as powerful as policy on the campaign trail and political careers live or die by the effectiveness of communications strategies.
In an aim to stay relevant and to connect with individuals who have the potential to influence others, politicians have turned to Twitter.
Barack Obama has revealed that Twitter will feature as a significant part of his 2012 re-election campaign. He’ll even personally send some of the tweets, signing off with his initials “-BO” to distinguish them from those of his Obama for America Staff team.
No newcomer to social media, Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign is credited with being the first campaign to truly leverage the power of the web. Facebook, YouTube, blogs and discussion boards were cornerstones of the Obama campaign and using perceived modern mediums didn’t hurt Obama’s public perception as the young, in-touch candidate that would guide America into a brave new world, technologically if nowhere else.
But, using Twitter as an online soap box comes with a stark health warning for politicians. Twitter’s proposition is viral communication. Done right, and your message is disseminated again and again to like-minded individuals and constructive debate ensues. Done wrong, and there’s nowhere to hide your mistakes.
For more on ‘How Not to Use Twitter in Politics’ see Forbes’ article on Ed Miliband’s recent casualty of a Twitter campaign at forbes.com
Politicians should proceed with caution when it comes to social media. But proceed they must as another Lincoln soundbite resonates: “Things may come to those who wait, but only the things left by those who hustle.”
Liquid Graphic, doing right for its clients on Twitter.
Enjoy ‘free from’ marketing
So you’re out doing a spot of grocery shopping and alongside that wonderfully designed pack of sausages featuring an idyllic parochial Yorkshire setting, there is a less glamorous (yet still appealing) value range pack – appealing in that it’s £2 cheaper in price.
That’s because the general rule in food is the cheaper the price, the more nasties it has and you generally have to pay a premium to buy food that is ‘free from’ nasties. Oddly, when it comes to marketing and graphic design services, often the opposite can be true.
Being freelance allows us to write our own recipes at Liquid Graphic and we choose to keep our services ‘free from’ the following nasties:
Hidden costs – our quotations are upfront, honest and realistic. We’ll work with you to establish the scope of your brief and we’ll be clear about what our quotation includes.
Account management costs – we like building relationships with our clients and talking to them about their projects, we don’t look upon it as a revenue opportunity to charge them for our time.
Dismissal of smaller projects – at Liquid Graphic, no project is deemed insignificant and we would never refuse to provide a quotation on the basis that the project wouldn’t bill enough.
Trendy jargon – we don’t try and deliberately baffle our clients with uber-marketing speak to create the pretence that we’re infinitely cooler than them.
If we were you in that supermarket, we’d still plump for that Yorkshire-bred sausage that isn’t padded out with scraps from the pig’s ear, tail and heaven knows where else. But we’d also avoid similar excess padding in your marketing costs; no-one has the budget for nonsense ingredients these days.
Good banter sir – use Social Media
Is it just us, or are you also noticing the cool kids are all about the ‘banter’ at the moment?
The Urban Dictionary describes banter as something ‘playful, intelligent and original. Banter is something you either possess or lack, there is no middle ground’. We like to think of ourselves and our followers as being part of the cool club, therefore we thought we’d share some of the banter behind the Liquid Graphic site.
Be inspiring
Good graphic design lives and dies by its ability to inspire. Our world is crowded by media messages and achieving genuine standout is more challenging than ever. True creative design is the way forward to avoid stale and uninspiring advertising.
Be future-proof
A business that is stood still is a business that is in decline. For a brand to have cracking web design and web site optimisation is no longer considered an advantage, it’s a hygiene matter. Future-proofing your business isn’t all about new-fangled web technology though, it’s simply about building a website in a way that can be easily maintained and modified to suit the needs of your business.
Be noticeable
There really isn’t anyone who wouldn’t feel patronised if you sat down to explain to them the all-encompassing role that Google plays in our world. If your site doesn’t have a decent Google ranking, it may as well not exist. Google Adwords and other search engine optimisation techniques can be employed to bring you back into existence and your consumer’s radar.
Be connected
Everyone who’s anyone has an opinion about social media. Likewise every business that’s switched on has realised that, although it’s not always an obvious fit, social media is a benefit. With the right strategy and customised business pages, Facebook and Twitterhttp://www.liquidgraphic.co.uk/social-media.html can yield big time results in the form of viral marketing, building loyalty and customer relationship management.
Be eye-catching
A great image is worth its weight in gold to a brand and often forms the centrepiece of a successful campaign. Without too much bubble bursting here, the photography that arrests and captures your attention day to day has usually spent a good deal of time in the hands of the graphic artist working on post production and image re-touching. So what if it’s not always the magic of the photographic lens? The effect is still magic.
That was a bit about our banter, now have yourself some good banter this weekend…
