CREATIVE SPECIALISTS: 3 Action Items to consider when adding building and emphasizing your companies brand

How Branding Communicates School Pride, Culture and Legacy

by Bill Massey and Emily Parris, AthleticBusiness.com

·      Be consistent – All content should be consistent across the board in order to establish a brand. 

·      Pay Attention to Detail – The little things make the biggest difference, don’t overlook details in the design. 

·      Embrace a theme – Embracing a theme allows the building of a brand and keeps content consistent.

(https://www.wordtracker.com/academy/social/getting-started/social-media-branding)

 10 Social Media Branding Strategies Every Business Should Follow

By Domique Jackson, Sproutsocial.com  

·      Develop Voice – Who or what does your company represent?

·      Be Authentic – Make sure you aren’t trying to be someone you’re not! 

·      Build a Network – Creating a network of influencers and supporters is important to the growth of your brand. 

Graphic Designers: 3 Important Logo Design Trends You Need to Know

As a graphic designer you know that a logo is a graphical representation of a company's products and services. This makes it important for you to understand logo design trends when you are faced with a logo design project. As a graphic design consultant, and a graduate student at Northwestern University, I have had experience with logo design and I found two great articles that highlight the logo trends of 2016, thus far.  

In Bill Gardner’s article, 2016 Logo Trends Report Sees Simplicity As King, for Graphic Design USA, he mentions the comeback of KISS. Which is a creative acronym for “Keep It Simple Stupid.” The main point of Gardner's article is, logos are simple. Gardner writes that designers are “rebelling against complexity” and moving towards simple minimalistic shapes for their logo designs.

http://gdusa.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/circles.jpg

In the article, A Closer Look at 3 of Today’s Logo Design Trends by Amanda Aszman, for HowDesign.com, Amanda shared the same sentiments as Gardner, and mentioned a few other trends. One of them being, logos are becoming geometric. More companies are adopting simple geometric logo designs with the hopes that it will represent the simplicity or uncomplicatedness of their service or product. Circles, in particular have been the most popular geometric shape so far in 2016.

Based on these two articles and my experience as a graphic design consultant, here are my three recommendations to consider when designing your next logo:

1.    Keep it simple: Avoid complex logos, stick with a simple logo. Simple logos
show that what your company has to offer is uncomplicated and simple

2.    Go geometric: When designing your logo, utilize simple geometric shapes.
They provide your logo a clean and minimalistic look that is on trend.

3.    Count on Circles: Circles in 2016 were popular and will remain popular.

Following these three trends will be helpful in designing a logo that will set any brand apart from its competitors.   

Max Do
I am an Information Design Strategy student at Northwestern University, as well as a graphics consultant for the largest healthcare brand in the U.S. I am a versatile designer with experience in print, web and digital design.

You can find me on LinkedIn or Twitter.

Content Creators: 3 Ways to Develop an Instagram Community Around Your Brand

Instagram has become one of the most popular platforms for creating and sharing branded content. As an undergraduate at Northwestern University studying Communication Studies, I have found two articles that highlight the importance of engaging customers on popular social media channels, namely Instagram. 

In her article Using Instagram to Build Brand Awareness, Amanda Clark highlights three main ways to build brand awareness on Instagram: encourage engagement, include customers as parts of the stories, and call users to action. Brands can encourage engagement with photo contests, include users in their stories by reposting and sharing their photos related to a branded product, and utilize many hashtags to call users to action and increase brand awareness.  

Hashtags for Major Sports Brands

Instagram recently updated the look of its icon and inner app design. A more major change involving an algorithm, however, is in the works. Mike Isaac in his article, Instagram May Change Your Feed, Personalizing It With an Algorithm, discusses the potential results of this new algorithm. Instagram will be implementing a new algorithm that pushes the moments it believes the user cares about the most to the front of their feeds. The order will be changed based on ‘likelihood of interest’ and relationship the user has with the person posting. The goal is to increase the personalization and engagement of Instagram. As a result, brands must find even more powerful ways to stand our from other content posters and enhance their relationships with followers.

  

Instagram User Feed

Based on my review of the these two articles and my work with content creators at Northwestern, here are three actions items I recommend you consider:  

1. Engage your followers: To ensure you don't get lost in the cloud of content, focus on engaging loyal customers by pushing them content that prompts them to act (ex. hashtags, reposting for prizes, social mentions). Just as valuable is reaching a wide enough group to hold onto a more diverse audience. 
2. Share your stories: Not only engage your followers to be active, but also engage directly with them. Share personal brand stories, create brand narratives, and allow users to tell their own stories. Listen, but be heard, and the connection will form.  
3. Show you care: Show customers that you are seeing their personal stories and that you appreciate them. Comment on and like users photos, give special shout outs, and highlight loyal customers. This will increase their relationship with the branded content and the likelihood for followers to see the brand’s content. 

Social media use will continue to increase, and content will continue to be moved on to user-curated platforms. With over 400 million users on Instagram, instead of just selling a brand, we should think about forming relationships with followers. Instagram is not only a platform to send creative messages, but has become a place for conversation and connection. 

Helen Chen is a undergraduate studying Communications and International Studies at Northwestern University. She is currently completing the Integrated Marketing Communications certificate, and is interested in a future in creative advertising, nonprofit work, as well as starting her own small business. She is also very passionate about education and is involved in a student-run nonprofit called Supplies for Dreams. Connect with her on LinkedIn here.

3 Tips for Marketers: Don’t Let Poor Design Hold Your Awesome Content Back

If content is king, design is queen. Design is content’s partner; it’s better, more eye-catching half. Emphasis is always on the message, but you need good design to help you deliver it. As a graphic designer, strategic communicator and graduate student in Northwestern Medill’s Integrated Marketing Communications [IMC] program, I have a few easy lessons that will help you marry your awesome content with good design.

Design has a big impact on how audiences understand and receive messages. Communications scholar and professor Curtis Newbold, also known as "The Visual Communication Guy," in Top 5 Most Common Design Mistakes that Will Make You Look Like an Amateur outlines some of the most common problems in designing communications: center alignment, all caps, overemphasis, small margins, and tacky fonts. He says that while most people know poor design when they see it, they do not know why it is bad or how to fix the design issues. He is right and offers practical advice for avoiding a typical #designfail.

Design skills are necessary for marketers and communicators who want to better communicate to, interact with and serve their audiences. Tips are useful, but even more so when combined with design thinking. Designer and AIGA member Emily Hamre speaks to the process of solving communication problems with design in her article 3 Tips For Becoming A Better Design Communicator: understand the problem, gather insights from others, and make ideas tangible. Just as you plan your message and carefully craft copy, design is planned. 

Universal design principles and theories can help guide your understanding of what makes good graphic design — but you don't have to learn them all. I've synthesized my knowledge of good design into three key design rules that you can keep in mind the next time you plan the design of your marketing communication:

1.  Make it readable. 

Readability is twofold. Think legibility and comprehension. Knowing your objective and audience is just as important to design as it is to marketing. Ask yourself, is the text easy to read at a glance, and can my audience easily take away the key message I am trying to convey? 

2.  Make it consistent.

Clear and consistent use of type, graphic styles, and graphic elements gives your audience a framework for receiving your message and understanding the information. You want to provide an overall visual system for your content that brings all elements together into a more easily understandable whole. Consistency makes things instantly recognizable, simplifies learning, improves user experience, and ultimately builds trust. 

3.  Make it pretty (or make it C.R.A.P.).

For some, "making it pretty" comes naturally. For others, some things to think about when arranging elements in a composition: structure, order, harmony, balance, which translate into the main principles of design – unity, variety, and hierarchy. You can achieve unity, variety, and hierarchy using different strategies. One of the easiest is the C.R.A.P. or contrast, repetition, alignment, and proximity. The best way to get better at making things look pretty is to look at pretty things. Look here and here.

These are my mantras. You too can learn these simple design rules to make your communications look more professional and let your awesome content shine.

Maggie Hutaff
I am a graphic designer and communicator in North Carolina. I hold a bachelor’s in visual communication from the UNC School of Journalism and Mass Communication and am currently working on a master of science in integrated marketing communications from Northwestern University’s Medill School. I have taught Introduction to Graphic Design at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Follow me at @designmah.

3 Easy Tips For CMOs To Improve Brand Marketing With Video

There’s tremendous upside for CMOs that can build a solid video presence into their branding, but without a background in video production, getting started can feel overwhelming. As both an experienced video producer and graduate student in Northwestern’s Integrated Marketing Communications Master’s program at the Medill School of Journalism, I can confidently tell you that the potential impressions and engagement you can get from a smart video campaign are too good to pass up, and that producing video can be a lot simpler than you think.

What can you gain from branded video content? In a blog post, Video Brewery CEO Andrew Follett compiled several shocking statistics about the efficacy of online video. Most notable is a survey of online shoppers where 90% said they found video useful when making a purchasing decision, and that on average, the presence of video in an email blast increased click through rates by 200%.

This simple video campaign was produced in an afternoon, but increased engagement by over 120% (courtesy of Sugo Media LLC)

With a little focus, your brand can benefit from a branded video campaign. Social media strategist Starr Hall suggests keeping each video brief and with a singular focus to help your message reach viewers. The most important suggestion Hall gives, though, is this: every piece of video content you produce should offer value to the viewer. Answer a question they might have about your product. Show them something new that might interest or surprise them. Entertain them!

This may seem like a tall order for a CMO to tackle without hiring an expensive contractor, however, I can tell you from my experience working as one of those expensive contractors that you can be successful on your own. Here’s a few things to keep in mind:

• Get to the point and be authentic - If you’re a small business, don’t try to produce a polished Super Bowl-caliber ad. Be real - viewers respond to authenticity. Also, tailor your messaging to the platform you publish on - there’s lots of video platforms available (YouTube, Vimeo, Instagram, Vine) with different strengths and weaknesses that marketers can use to share an authentic message. Do you want to be informative in 4 minute bursts? Host your videos on YouTube. If being rapid fire and goofy matches your brand, look to Vine or Instagram instead.

• Don’t be afraid to do it on the cheap - if you have a phone, it can film 1080p video. Load it up to YouTube, and you can edit the clips, add a soundtrack, and do a color grade entirely on the site before making your video live. GoPro cameras are another inexpensive option for high quality and low cost video - cameras can be purchased for as little as $200.

• Produce several videos at once - if you’re taking the time to produce a single video, you could probably use the resources to make several at the same time. The only thing better for a business than one video is four videos. You’ll be shocked at how much leverage you get out of an afternoon’s work.

With all the tools now available to marketers, and all the potential benefits a strong video component can have for brand marketing, you have no excuse to leave those impressions and engagements on the table. Grab a camera, and press record.

Joe Filipas is an advertising specialist and video producer in Minneapolis, and is currently earning an Integrated Marketing Communications Master’s degree from Northwestern University. Follow him on Twitter at @JoeFilipas, or connect with him on LinkedIn at www.linkedin.com/in/josephmfilipas or on his website at www.joefilipas.com.

Marketers Leverage Unexpected Sources into Revenue

As a CMO or marketing manager, you see the consumer is changing and expectations of advertising are changing, as well.  Marketing that was once new and different has become commonplace and expected.  Finding a new way to market to the evolving tastes of the consumer has become more challenging in a market where most consumers believe they have ‘seen it all before’.  To meet that challenge, CMOs and Creative Directors need to tap into assets they may not realize they have.  They need to look outside of the marketing world in order to develop non-traditional marketing strategies.  These non-traditional strategies are those that move the success of the campaign to the consumer.

Picture Source: http://www.mediapost.com/

In his interview with AdAge, Trevor Guthrie, East Cost director of OMD’s Ignition Factory, talks about deliberately constructing a team of people from places other than advertising and media, looking for those who “who see things differently, who travel around looking for inspiration or ideas”.  His team developed a billboard baseball drop to promote Showtime’s new program “The Franchise”.   As people checked into the show’s billboard through Foursquare, they got a free baseball.  Dropping 3,000 baseballs meant 3,000 check-ins at a single billboard, and each of those check-ins were immediately broadcast to all their friends.  Using this non-traditional media, the Ignition Factory got consumers to start spreading the word to each other through these broadcasts.

Having consumers spread the word themselves is the key to the success of non-traditional advertising.  Most consumers brace themselves against traditional advertising, whereas they are more receptive when the message comes from a friend.  In order to get those consumers to start spreading the message, marketers need to start thinking like the consumers who will eventually deliver their message.  It is because of this that the most effective sources of non-traditional marketing will not come from the marketer’s brain, but rather from the mind of the non-marketer.

Here are a few tips for using non-marketing sources to develop powerful non-traditional marketing:

11.)    Don’t limit who you hire.

Guthrie talks about him being more interested by a potential employee who has studied dolphin brains, than by one with traditional marketing experience.  As the consumers have more control of the market place, companies need employees who don’t think like marketers to reach those consumers.

22.)    Don’t be held back by technology.

As a CMO or Creative director, as soon as you start putting constraints on what can be done with your non-traditional marketing, you will constrain how effective it will be.  Technology is moving so quickly that even if a platform doesn’t exist now, it can probably be built.

13.)    Keep sight of what is relevant 

Stay focused.  Just because it is new doesn’t mean that good non-traditional marketing abandons everything the consumer already knows about your product.  Any marketing, traditional or non-traditional, is not going to work if it doesn’t align with what the consumer thinks of you.

There is a risk in using non-traditional marketing, as it puts the more control in the hands of the consumer.  The evolving consumer makes this risk worth it, however, because they are looking for that control.  The concepts above will help in developing the best possible - revenue generating - non-traditional marketing.

Ryan McGuire has spent five years in media execution and is currently a graduate student in the Northwestern Medill IMC marketing program.  Follow or contact him @RyanIMC  

How to secure the leading position in technology industry?

Market the future concept to show ambition and know the consumers more. 

Technology industry is now competitive than ever. Innovations happen every moment. Biggest challenge for marketers in technology industry: how to help a brand to secure its leading position in the industry? Show the ambition and understand your customers.

Released on April 4^th, Google’s “Project Glass” shows its ambition of future technology. It has already generated 14 million views. Is it a good timing to market the unfinished product – say even a conceptual product? For most of us, as marketers, what we really want to figure out is what does Google want from this marketing campaign? The answer is simple: Consumer feedback and brand image enhancement.

Google is not the only one to pursue this strategy. Microsoft and Samsung unveiled their own conceptual video as well – Microsoft in 2019 and Samsung 2015. Find anything in common among these three cases? Yes, they are all leading companies in the industry. The goal above the line is to show off the company’s capability and creating a blueprint of future life to consumers. Companies want to show to the consumers that they own the industry and is capable to offer the consumers a better future life.

Is there any hidden goal behind the campaign? Those leading companies can look deeper into consumers’ response through this kind of campaign. Project Glass has already generated 14 million views and both positive and negative comments. From all the comments, Google can understand more about the consumers’ imagination towards the future life and see whether the company’s future blueprint will fit or not. By understanding the negative comments, Google is able to identify which kind of technology is unrealistic for consumers and drop it in their future plan.

Marketing in high-tech industry, what can we take advantage from Google’s Project Glass?

1.     Brand image enhancement: If you want to impress the consumers and strengthen your brand image as a leading brand, unveiling your blueprint is not a bad way. Take the inventor spot as quick as you can to impress the consumers.

2.     Creative idea is a must: If you are a marketer, it’s time to come up creative ideas by leveraging the future technology. Get the sense about what consumers expect and how you can utilize the technology as marketing tools.

3.     Take advantage from consumers’ feedback: Listen to the consumers is always the key. Show them your ambitious and listen carefully to what they respond. It would help you to readjust your blueprint.

      Casey Lin is a Medill IMC Graduate student at Northwestern University. She is very enthusiastic about marketing, especially in technology industry. Follower Casey on Twitter  @Caseylin_NW.