Marvellous Monthly Marketing Tips

The flourish identity... it's coming together

I've been posting sneak previews of our logo on twitter but I thought I'd give you a bit of an insight into where we're headed with the flourish identity.

 The logo is really taking shape. We love the feminine, creative and spontaneous feel of the typeface (which fits well with our Spring personality), just a few tweaks with the colours and I think we'll be there.

The lower case f definitely works better: more feminine, relaxed and approachable. And with some colours added...

The pink isn't right. I've used pink because, well, I love pink! But it doesn't say the right things about the business. The green could be on the right track but the colours certainly need tweaking.

And here are Chloe's initial business card designs. I love where she's headed with them but I'd like to draw out more of a "flourishing" theme so I'm going to get busy with my pen and start illustrating!

Branding your own business: it's not about what you like, it's about what's right for the business (note to self!)

The Flourish logo is taking shape (more on that later...) and having got over the creative block of designing for ourselves we're really throwing ourselves into creating something that a) we love and are proud of and b) (and most importantly) that says the right things about our business and will appeal to our clients.

We're all pretty much in agreement on the concept, the fonts and the execution of the website and business cards, but what we can't get our heads around are the colours.

Take a look...

 

Rather than go with our gut feel on colours, we've employed our knowledge of colour psychology to select colours that we know say the right things about our business. And that means not just picking the right hues, but also the right tones. I'll come on to why we've picked those specific colours in a minute, but the first thing we needed to do was identify our colour personality: spring, summer, autumn or winter. There's a lot more information on Bernay Laity's website (and I promise one day I will type up my notes on this blog too...).

We've selected colours from the Spring Palette: clear, light and vibrant they reflect our business well. Spring businesses are forward thinking, great communicators, they're visionary and enthusiastic. They are also bubbly, lively, vivacious and spontaneous. Importantly they are also imaginative, effervescent, quick witted, positive and optimistic. Spring represents our business really well and also the reasons that our clients use us. And we deliberately chose the name Flourish because it suggests growth and again fits in well with a spring.

Our problem is that these are colours that we wouldn't necessarily have picked ourselves. I love green, and the acid greens we've chosen sit well with me. In fact, so do the blues and the pink. Orange I have an issue with: but it says creativity, abundance and sociability, so it's a bit of a no brainer for a design company really! But for me it's too light. I would prefer darker colours to give it a bit more gravitas.

And Caroline and Chloe are similar. Whilst I readily identify with the Spring pallete, Chloe and Caroline are probably more Summer inclined. They're organised, efficient and detail focused. They are elegant, understated and keen on quality. They are cool, calm and collected and perfectionists! Summer personalities are also intuitive, perceptive and serious, which are all key attributes of our business: but they're not the most important.

If we'd identified our business from the summer palette we'd be using cooler, muted tones which were more elegant and sophisticated, but wouldn't encompass our approachability and accessibility.

We also all have a bit of the Autumn colour palette in us: passionate, intelligent, independent Autumn colours are warm and intense. Autumn people are great campaigners, they love to learn and they are very energetic and career minded. They're efficient, friendly, enthusiastic and independent. And we all really struggled to decide whether Flourish should be Autumn or Spring. 

Had we selected Autumn, the greens would have been more muted and intense, the orange more fiery (think leaves turning) and the blues more muted and petrol-y. And whilst aesthetically it would be nice to mix Spring with Autumn, you're then heading for a disaster psychologically speaking! By selecting colours from the same palette, we can communicate the positive elements of the colour, if we mix and match the design (and ergo the company) starts to lack integrity and you start bringing out the negative elements of the colour.

So the problem that many clients will be familiar with, is that constant battle to put your own preferences aside and do what's right for the business. Sure, you have to love it, but the orange is so right for the business I have to find a way of incorporating it in a way that I love it. And at the same time resisting the temptation to darken it too far!

What do you think of the palette so far?

Do your competitors make you nervous?

How confident are you in the strength of your brand? Do you find yourself nervously checking your competitors' websites to see what they're up to, only to find your heart sinking at their latest marketing campaign? 

If you have a strong brand, if you've differentiated yourself from your competitors powerfully, then you won't be doing this. You'll still probably have a healthy awareness of what other businesses operating in your market are up to: but you won't be lying awake at night worrying about it.

Successful businesses start by defining what makes them unique. They look at what their clients want, what they themselves are good at and what they know they can deliver. And they operate in a niche. They don't get overly worried about what their competitors are up to because they know that to their target clients, their offering is irresistible.

But how about you? Which camp does your business fall into? Do you have a strong brand and a clearly defined niche or are you still looking over your shoulder at your competitors? Either way you'll probably find my Brand Profitably article helpful. You can download it for free on our website. Enjoy!

Do you have a plan for 2010?

What are you going to do to make sure that 2010 is a great year for your business?

I was speaking at a business link event last Thursday and was blown away by the energy in the room of the women looking to start businesses next year. They were literally bubbling over with enthusiasm, drive and ambition. But for many of us, the last few years have been tough. The wind has been knocked out of our sails and we're altogether more sombre.

I don't know about you but I've certainly learned some great lessons from the tough times of the last two years and I am absolutely confident that my business is in good shape for 2010. But I need to write my marketing plan!

How about you? Have you sat down and thought about how you're going to achieve your business goals in 2010? Why not join me for a hands-on marketing planning masterclass on 3rd December and kick your new year off in style!

And if you book before 19th November you'll save £20 from the £97 ticket price making the whole morning of expert marketing tuition just £77 + VAT. Book your place today!

Success Coach + Free Business Cards = an authentic first impression?

I was invited to one of those 60 second style networking events last week (probably for the last time if they're reading this post!) and was sat next to a magazine editor and a success coach. As is expected at these events, one of the first ways the success coach communicated with me was to hand me his business card, which was one of those free business cards that regular readers of my blog will know cause me such delight. 

There was something about the idea of a "success coach" not being willing or able to invest £200/300 in a set of decent business cards that undermined his professionalism to me. I mean, if he doesn't believe in himself, why on earth should I?

And if he can't afford any business cards, what does that say about his own success? 

So the question I'd like to leave you with today is what do your business cards say about you? Do they create an authentic first impression? Or do they leave the recipient questioning your authority and professionalism?

We're rebranding!

I've long believed that branding is about more than your logo and your company name. Your brand is who you are. It's what people know about you, how they react to you and what they have experienced with you. And I've always been very confident that Guildford printing.com has a strong brand. Our clients and people we meet out networking know that we also offer great graphic design, and they know that we know what we're talking about when it comes to marketing.

And whilst the name "printing.com" has always bugged me a bit (because we've always offered so much more) I love the brand and the product so much that I've lived with it. And also because my franchise agreement stopped me from marketing my business under another name!

So there I am. The business branding specialist with a strong brand, but a name that could be better! And a brand identity that is great, but that doesn't encapsulate a lot of the things that I've developed for my clients under my own steam: the marketing workshops, the branding and copywriting processes, the public speaking, the marketing focused graphic design. 

And then the opportunity came up for me to change my franchise agreement. And I had this huge lightbulb moment over the summer when I realised that I could create my own brand that would truly reflect what we do and really differentiate us. How exciting! I realise that this is how lots of my clients must feel when we rebrand them and finally give them an image that's just so "them"!

We'll still be selling printing.com products: I love the company, the brand and the print and I'm not about to give that up. But we'll also be known as Flourish from now on, which I think sums us up nicely. 

I can't wait to show you some of our logo mockups. But oh the pressure of having to get that right! What with one very demanding client - moi? really? And a design team equally passionate about getting what they want it's going to be some weeks before we do any unveiling. But I have been planning to write a diary of a rebrand to share with you because it's a nerve-wracking thing! And very healthy I think for me to see it from the clients' perspective too...

In the studio this week... The websites are almost live for MIB Music!

I've been bursting to show you the website makeovers for MIB Music and they're very almost live so I thought I'd give you a sneak preview. And so here's MIB Music's website makeover...

It's very pink! There are still a few tweaks to make and a few bugs to resolve, but I love it, and so does the client. It makes a much, much better splash than what she has at the moment (the grey website below)...

What do you think?

Do you really need a twitter strategy?

I was chatting with a client yesterday and somehow we got on to twitter. "I still haven't put together my twitter strategy" he said. And I thought... twitter strategy? Do I have a twitter strategy? Do I even need a twitter strategy?

So how about you? Do you have a twitter strategy for your business?

For those of you that haven't stumbled upon the delights of twitter yet, twitter provides you with the opportunity to connect, build relationships and share your expertise with millions of people out there in just 140 characters. It's a bit like a permanent Facebook status feed! 

Everyone has their own agenda when it comes to twitter. Some will use it to chat to their favourite celebrity (and I have to be honest, I'm not immune to the lure of chatting to the Home Show's George Clarke!), others use it to chat to friends and others use it for business. I have to say, I tend to use it for all three because my life is more than my business...

So if you're using twitter for business, do you need a strategy?

My gut reaction is absolutely not! But you do need to give it some consideration. There are those who think numbers are everything, who sign up to all manner of schemes to get followers. They then spend all of their time trying to "push" visitors to their site or get them to sign up for their "free reports". Now I have no objection to that in moderation - but I mean moderation! I'll tend to tweet about my workshops once or twice a month, the rest of the time I try to add value or actually interact with the people. Because it's all about the people for me.

I do consider what I tweet about because people will form an impression of me, and so I try to stick by the mantra "if you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all". And I try and get a balance between work @fionahumberston the marketing and branding person (I'm loathe to use the word Guru or Expert: let's let the readers decide eh?) and @fionahumberston the mum of two, wife and jam making/ baking/ gardening enthusiast! Why? Because I'm a real, 3D person, not just a celeb hunter or a workaholic (although that said I am writing this on a saturday ;-( ). 

So I guess I do have a twitter strategy of sorts. But ask me for targets, plans, goals and a file on my laptop called "twitter strategy" and I can't give it to you. My twitter strategy is called "a spoonful of common sense". How about yours?

In the studio this week... Initial concepts for the Sea Deli

The Sea Deli has been one of the most fun projects we've worked on all year. The concepts below are for a new deli/ cafe that's going to be opening in a Devon seaside resort. Catriona, one of the owners, asked us to come up with an identity that reflected the high quality food they are going to be serving and was also sympathetic to the seaside location.

We had a lot of fun brainstorming this business, with plenty of ideas for the cafe and serving the kids lunches (in buckets and spades!) as well as for the logo and brand identity itself. Below are the three initial concepts we sent to Catriona. We're still in the refining stage (she prefers option two) but I'm just so excited about them all that I had to share them with you.

Enjoy! (and do let me know what you think, I always love to hear from you.)

OPTION ONE

 

The faded charm of the seaside with a crab for the logo to reflect the location and specialities of the sea deli.

OPTION TWO (and Catriona's favourite)

 

Bold, modern and funky with some fab nautical illustrations that could be carried throughout the deli as well as on the packaging.

OPTION THREE (and my personal favourite)

I love the fonts we've used for this one and love the colours. I think they're friendly, laidback and fun: just what you want from a seaside deli!

In the studio this week... A new corporate identity for UGO UNI

I did promise you that we'd been creating a lot of new brands over the last couple of weeks, and today I'd like to show off UGO UNI's new branding. Sue Chamberlain set up the company six months ago to take advantage of her expertise at helping students select and get into the Universities of their choice. She realised that she had a lot to offer in terms of helping people navigate the minefield that is the UCAS form, and so UGO UNI was formed.

Sue initially used her own logo, which was a combination of black and red in I think Arial. These are incredibly harsh colours and psychologically speaking quite aggressive. Not especially the impression you'd want to portray! Instead, we learned from Sue that she wanted to communicate professionalism, reassurance and organisation, and so we selected colours that communicated those things.

Here is Sue's stationery. 

The website is just being built and I'll post a link to that as soon as it's live, but you can get a sneak preview here...