Tag: Design Agency

Why Print Is Still Important In A Digital World

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In this ever more digital age we live in, with websites and digital media, there is still a need for great design for print. It’s easy to forget how effective ink on paper can be, there are many advantages to this form of marketing. We’ve compiled a short list of why printed literature is still a key piece of your marketing toolkit.

Tangible
Printed literature is an object that can be physically touched and held by your clients – for instance a magazine or a brochure, many of these are found in our homes or offices which are likely to be left around for years, subconsciously leaving a imprint on peoples grey matter. Compared to internet ads which normally disappear within a couple of weeks!

Credible
Print is able to give your clients and consumers that sense of legitimacy. The fact that anyone can just create a website to do anything is overwhelming and the fear of scams and viruses come with this problem, where as print has a more professional image that comes with it.

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Branded
Print is also a great way to give your brand a very professional image to make it stronger. However, in order to be successful when doing this you must ensure your communications are consistent throughout. Colours, fonts, images and style of writing should all fit within your brand guidelines and adhere to your company’s ethos.

Targeted
Sending out direct mail is a great way to reach a niche audience that have been harder to reach via online marketing techniques. Not all businesses are completely sold on the internet and feel that some advertisements can be viruses or spam, print allows you to break through the online marketing blur and specifically reach your target audience while still keeping that professional image.

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Engaging
79% of people will act on direct mail IMMEDIATELY*. An engaged audience is far more likely to respond to call to actions on advertisements as the majority of readers trust the information that they read in newspapers, magazines and flyers, making print ads a great way for brands to continually build a growing client base.

To Conclude, Print is

      Tangible
      Credible
      Branded
      Targeted
      Engaging

Overall when marketing your business you need to utilise as many different channels as you can to reach your target audience. Most of your marketing activities will be online, but there is also a segment of consumers who really will engage with printed literature. Finding the right balance between all marketing facets is key.
*Royal Mail MarketReach Mail & Digital Part II, Quadrangle, 2014
*‘From letterbox to inbox: Building customer relationships’ dma.org.uk

Need great design for print ?

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Why Blogging Is Important To Your Business

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There are many arguments as to whether blogging is still relevant especially in this ever expanding social media marketing environment. But it does not matter whether you are a small business, or a multinational company, blogging is a massive part of your online content, presence and marketing strategy. Here are a few benefits that your business will receive from blogging regularly. Enjoy!

SEO

Regular blogging helps to boost your business’ SEO (Search Engine Optimisation). Search engines love new, up-to-date and valuable content and by blogging the search engines will reward you by boosting your website in the rankings. This improves organic search visibility and increases website traffic.

 

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Brand Story

A blog allows you to tell your business’ brand story. A blog is a great place to offer consumers a better insight into your company, philosophy, employees, and ideas. It also tells your customers why you’re in business and how you can help them. It also gives your business a way to touch on some of your issues, concerns and prospects. Your blog posts will give you a great way to share your voice and personality, building up trust and increasing your brand’s likability.

Increase Traffic 

Your blogs will give you an opportunity to make relevant content for your consumers, this is a marketing tool used to drive traffic back to your business’ website. For this to work, the blog on your website will be the foundation for all of your social media platforms. Your business should already be on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and LinkedIn. You should be posting links with relevant visuals of what you are blogging about to your social sites. This way you are giving your social followers more of a reason to click through to your website.

Increase in Sales 

Roughly 60% of consumers will feel more positive about your business after reading content on your website. When a consumer is looking to purchase a product or acquire a service, consumers mainly want a business that they can rely on. The best way for a consumer to do this is to look for proof to see if your reliable or if you can actually deliver what you say you can. By sharing regular blog posts your business is showing what expertise you have and how your potential customers can trust you.

 

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Target Audience 

Blogging will attract your business’ target audience. By writing blogs that are helpful and relevant, your business is attracting visitors to the website that would otherwise not know your business existed. Also by showing expertise in your industry by blogging, this can instil trust and make your users more inclined to purchase a product or service from you. A blog can give a business a way of connecting with customers and prospects through a two-way conversation. It signals to visitors that your open to comments, feedback and even criticisms. This allows you to form a business perspective, as learning what’s on the minds of prospects is marketing gold.

To Conclude, Blogging….

  • Increases your business’ SEO
  • Lets your consumers understand your company’s brand story
  • Drives traffic to your website
  • Increases sales of products and services due to increased website traffic
  • Reaches your target audience

Blogging has now become more than just an individual’s hobby; it is now a very influential tool that most businesses of today use regularly. Blogging has been able to create an even playing field among businesses, allowing small businesses to compete with the Fortune 500 companies. A business does not need millions of pounds to maintain a blog; all it requires is someone educated in the field or even willing to do research in order to consistently keep updating and educating your readers.

 

Do you need any help with business blogging? 

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What Makes an Advert Successful to the Younger Audience

Everyones view of what makes a good advert are different. Some focus on if the advert conveys a message well. I feel as long as the advert can make you remember it, no matter what the reason, then it has been successful. An advert does not always have to convey the message of the product or company to be successful. If you can make the audience remember the product and company just from being funny, quirky or outrageous then as an advertising team you have done your job.

Make it colourful and out there

One of the best examples for colours in an advert would be the Sony ‘balls’ advert for their TV set brand Bravia to show how well it’s screens distinguish colours. For this advert they took thousands of different coloured bouncy balls and let them bounce freely down a street in San Fransisco. The advert, released back in 2005, was an amazingly creative idea and very memorable.

Add some fun and humour

The One Dollar Shave Club have a collection of quirky and funny adverts, but the stand out has to be the first advert they made. It had the strapline “Our Blades are F***ing Great”. In the ad, the adventurous CEO helps out immigrants and wielding a machete. It even has hillarious dance party at the end with money flying around. As an advert it gets its point across very well in a humourous way and keeps you interested throughout. If something is very funny, it is highly likely to be shared across social media.

Accompany with good music

Beats by Dre (now Beats Music) released an advert for their headphone ranges called ‘The Game Before The Game’ for the Football World Cup in 2014. The music used was ‘Jungle’ by X Ambassadors & Jamie N Commons and it really captures and immerses you in the advert. The advert is very good at captivating its audience and making them feel part of the prematch rituals of the football players.

Go a bit wierd and random

In my eyes there is only one advert that takes the award for being totally random and a little wierd. Mountain Dew’s advert for this years’ Super Bowl for their new drink Kickstart starred the ‘PuppyMonkeyBaby’. No words can describe it, just watch below…

You might be thinking “what the hell did I just watch?” but for being so bizarre it could potentially be one of the most memorable adverts. Your not likely to forget a puppy/monkey/baby in a hurry!

Even annoying can work

In what could potentially be one of the most annoying adverts of all time, the Go Compare advert was released in 2009 to the annoyance of audiences across the country. You will only have to watch this advert once to totally understand how annoying it is but due to hearing the company name “Go Compare” being sang in an annoying classical style, it quite powerfully sticks in your head which means everyone knows the brand name of the company. Controversially it’s brand awareness at it’s best.

In conclusion, for adverts to appeal to a younger audience you don’t need all of the above points together but if you play just one or two to your strength it can work out to be a very powerful advert. Out of all the adverts listed above my stand out favourite has to be the Mountain Dew ‘Kickstart’ advert with the “PuppyMonkeyBaby”. Just on the basis of it having the wierd factor and being a very out there piece of advertising which will be remembered for being so random yet funny.

South Wales Young Entrepreneur 2015

South Wales Young Entrepreneur 2015

We have some great news here at MeeCreative that we would like to share with you all. We are pleased to announce that our Creative Director, Liam has been shortlisted for the South Wales Young Entrepreneur of The Year award, pretty cool right? We thought so too!

As a result we thought it would be a nice idea to put him on the spot and have a quick Q&A with him about his life as a budding Entrepreneur.

 


 

So Liam, how old are you?

“Believe it or not I’m only 26 years old…I was getting into pubs at the age of 13. It was the unkempt beard of course!”

Where were you born?

“I was born in Merthyr Tydfil. A great little town (Don’t be fooled by Channel 4) in the heart of the welsh valleys.”

What is your current occupation (I already know but others may not)?

“I am the founder and Creative director at MeeCreative, responsible for managing busy schedules and sourcing new and exciting projects for the MeeCreative team. Also, I part time lecture product design at UWTSD (University of Wales Trinity St David), which is hugely rewarding when you see students flourish because it wasn’t all that long ago that I was in the same position as them.”

What course did you study at university and what qualification did you achieve?

“I studied BA Product Design at UWTSD back in 2007 when it was legendary named Swansea Institute (shenanigans down Wind St…oh they were the good ol’ days) and achieved the qualification of a First-Class honours.”

What inspires you?

“Mmmm, good question. I have a serious love and fetish for furniture so I have always looked upon the wacky work of Australian designer, Mark Newson. He experiments with materials and form to create pieces of furniture that are truly unique and original. The other people who inspire me daily are my staff – learning new methods and techniques to achieve outstanding results for our clients is something they do week in week out. They are a my biggest asset, they are all driven, professional and creative individuals with an energy that is inspiring. Without this team we would never be where we are today!”

What does it take to be a young entrepreneur in South Wales today?

“Personally I think it takes a lot of resilience, courage and perseverance; not everything goes as planned in business and sometimes the easy option is just to give up when things aren’t going as planned. You have to keep reaching for your goals and realise success doesn’t always come overnight. Setting small targets while subconsciously driving towards the larger vision is essential.”

What has been your biggest challenge so far in building your business?

“Initial start-up was always our biggest challenge here at MeeCreative. Trying to build the foundations and establishing yourself in a competitive discipline was difficult. We are in an industry where track record and a solid portfolio win you business; and of course when you start a design agency such as ours you have neither so you have to convince clients that you are the right choice. This was a great hurdle that we had to face but we did it!”

What is your top tip for young entrepreneurs just starting out?

“An army isn’t built around one individual. In business you need to armour yourself with the right support mechanisms. You can’t do it alone, so stop trying. In Wales we are lucky to have a lot of support from the Welsh Government but there are also very talented individuals that go unrecognised that can provide you with business support. We have a fantastic chairman here at MeeCreative – Barry Wanless – who keeps us in check, acting as a solid mentor and soundboard. The more people you talk your ideas and business objectives through with the better because conversations spark new ideas and new ideas open uncharted doors.”

The team at MeeCreative wish Liam the very best in the forthcoming awards. The ceremony will take place on the 11th of September at The Bear Hotel in Cowbridge, Cardiff. FINGERS CROSSED!

A MeeCreative Christmas

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It’s always difficult to decide what sort of things to push out around Christmas time; it can’t be too festive too early, but it can’t look like you’ve completely forgotten that it’s December, either.

So, this year at MeeCreative we had some late-night brainstorming sessions to discuss the best way to do some Christmas marketing, as well as thanking our fantastic clients and brilliant fellow design agencies.

Idea 1: Breakthrough Social Media Innovation

The first idea pitched by our web developer Ashley was incredible – a short, concise labelling system for social media posts which would allow users to relate the subject matter of their posts to others just like it, despite the actual content being different. We fired an email across to Twitter, in the hopes that the idea – Ashtags – would be swiftly adopted by them.

Unfortunately we were told that they already had a similar system in place, but, undeterred, we went straight back to the drawing board.

Idea 2: Christmas Decorations

What better for a product design agency to do than design a product?! Everyone is putting off the putting up of their Christmas trees around this time of the holidays, but perhaps it’s only because their existing decorations don’t motivate them enough to exhibit those pine needles! We needed to come up with a ground-breaking idea for a tree trinket that would take the world by storm.

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Unfortunately it turns out printing ultra-fine resolution 3D prints of human heads can really blow through a budget – not to mention our focus group telling us they just weren’t that interested in hanging strangers’ noggins in their living rooms – so we had to scrap that one, too.

Idea 3: Aggressive Marketing

On the face of it, the purpose of marketing is simple; try to get as many people to engage with your product or service as possible. However, this task becomes more difficult as the year comes to a close – as fighting for attention amongst expensive corporate advertising can seem impossible.

The solution? Aggressive marketing. Get our services out as quickly and in as much volume as possible, and try to spread the spirit of Christmas cheer in the process. Make the British public aware of the benefits of design!

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Unfortunately there were a few crossed wires whilst discussing the idea. While half of us got the idea of this aggressive marketing campaign, the other half (the half in charge of sending the idea to print) got the idea of an aggressive marketing campaign – one which involved a cheerful, pot-bellied representative of Christmas pointing a powerful six-shooter at holiday shoppers. Drawing board, we’re stopping by again.

Idea 4: Christmas Card

Deciding that the other ideas may have been a little ambitious, we settled on the idea of producing a nice, traditional Christmas card – based around the theme of the 12 Days of Christmas. Everybody likes a Christmas card (even the focus group), and it’s a great opportunity to be creative on just four little squares.

Even managing to rope in our chairman, Barry, we spent some time carefully crafting some props to use, brought in a load of scarves and hats from home, and had some fun taking photographs of the team for use in a feature on the inside of the card.

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As soon as we were happy that we’d done enough goofing around, we sorted through the photographs ready for laying out on the inside of the card. Not all of our horseplay made the final cut, however…

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Once we had decided which pics to use, we set them into the inside grid of our carefully-crafted Christmas card and sent the designs off to print!

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We’re absolutely chuffed with how the card turned out, and most of all we had a lot of fun creating it – we hope you like it too!

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Have a very Merry Christmas, and a very Happy New Year,
from all of us here at MeeCreative.