Thursday, October 3, 2013

Brochure Design

Professional Brochure Designers


A professionally designed brochure about your business is more than just a nice leave behind piece. Our brochure designers will make you look like the leader in your field. In every industry the buyers of your products and services will shop around prior to making a buying decision. Most people will prefer to buy from a bigger more successful company because they feel that the quality will be better, the company will be there if they need support or service. It isn't necessary that you MUST be the biggest in your industry it is important that you look like you are the biggest. With our team of highly skilled graphic artists and our professional copywriter we are able to make any company large or small appear to be very successful.

The black and blue brochure design example above is one that we made for a Fort Lauderdale attorney who specialized in yacht transactions.







Brochure Design is OUR Job NOT Yours!

We do all the design and writing so you can run your business!

You might be surprised to know how many business owners will put off having a new brochure designed for their company even when they know that they need to get it done. The problem is that the business owner feels like they need to wait until they have some free time so that they can focus on what will go into their brochure. There is no reason to put off hiring our talented brochure designers any longer. With our team, you'll have a professional copywriter with a master's degree in journalism writing all the text. We do research on your business or industry so that we can write all the details saving you the time. The only information we need from you is just the specifics about you personally and your company. Our graphic artists work on creating a brochure design that will match all of your other marketing. For example, if you already have a website which uses the colors blue, white and gray then we would want to incorporate these colors in your new brochure. By doing this we keep a consistent look and feel for your new brochure so that is anyone who has seen your website before were to see your brochure, they would know it is yours before they opened it to begin reading.






Fake It Until You Make It!

Look like a Fortune 500 company from the day you start.

 This client came to us with just an idea. He wanted to compete with Fortune 500 companies selling commercial alarm systems. It is a lofty goal for a guy in South Florida just starting out and he required a lot of assistance. The first project was started by our logo designers. Once the logo was completed then our website designers took over and kept everything consistent with the big corporate look that this client needed. With a great looking two pocked folder, big quad fold piece (shown here) and a trifold brochure that fits in a slot within one of the pockets we made our client look like a Fortune 500 corporation from the day he started his company.






Act Like The Leader and People Assume You Must Be The Leader!

Do you really need a brochure for your business? 

Many people wonder if they even need a brochure for their business. A brochure they reason is only given to people who already know them or people they have already made a presentation to about their business. There is only some truth to this; brochures won't bring you new clients but they help you to close the sale. Your clients have many options in vendors for all types of products and services. Once they meet with a few of these providers then they are left to try and pick the one who provides the greatest value. Value doesn't mean the cheapest! Your clients don't want the cheapest products or services they can find. If that was true then we would all drive the same inexpensive car but we get what we want when we see the value in paying more to get what we want. When a potential new client is trying to decide upon your company or some other company then that is the point at which a well thought out brochure can help them make up their mind.

For this client, we have completed several projects:

1. Logo Design
2. Postcard Design - Direct Mail Program
3. Website Design

This is one of the advantages of working with a full-service advertising agency; you'll get a cohesive marketing package.

Simple Yet Elegant Brochure Design

This technical brochure required space for a lot of text

The client came to us on a Monday and needed to be in Las Vegas Friday for a trade show where he would need some brochures. The brochures were technical in nature and required a lot of space to explain the features and benefits of the software their company developed.

This gave us two challenges:
1. Our design needed to allow room for a lot of text.
2. We had to design a brochure in way that could be printed quickly.

We came up with the accordion fold idea because we could increase the amount of text by simply printing the brochure on a bigger sheet. For the printing part of the problem it was all on one sheet so it only needed to be cut and then it got folded the same day.
 

One Brochure Does The Job Of Five

Colorful Brochure Design Example For Children's Health Facility

The Center For Children a division of a West Palm Beach Florida hospital was going to branch out on their own and they needed everything. We created the name "Center For Child Development" and the logo. We also designed their website using the same colors found in the brochure.

Originally they spoke with us about designing several brochures. As we asked more questions we found a unique solution to save some green and not just trees! Instead of four or five brochure design projects as they requested we suggested that one brochure properly designed could do the job of four or five separate ones. What we did is that we arranged all the general text about the facility on the folder. Then we created some inserts which each had a different topic. By doing this we were able to give them a way of selecting which inserts to include or leave out of the folder. The folder was also designed to fit in a standard sized envelope so it was inexpensive to mail.
 

Dog Brochure?

Let the designers do their job!

This client asked our logo designers to use their pet dog, a poodle in the logo design and company name. The client owns an insurance company and has clients all around Miami and Fort Lauderdale. We agreed that "Chester" is not a bad name and nobody would know anything about the dog but we couldn't agree to use a big black poodle in the logo. We had to explain that this would be like an inside joke that only they would get. We explained that everyone would wonder what a French poodle has to do with this business; they would also wonder about the company name. Only insiders would know that the dog is named Chester. We decided that the tree has some meaning in the design of the logo because of the coverage it provides. When our brochure designers got to work on this project they never had to ask what a tree (coverage) has to do with an insurance company. Having a dog or a gecko as a mascot for use in TV advertising is entirely different from having a dog as a logo for an insurance company.


Brochure Designers

Direct Mail Marketing

You may be thinking about brochure design as part of a direct mail marketing strategy. As a full service advertising agency we can do much more than just design great looking brochures. We can create a mailing list so that we can mail out your brochures to your targeted, potential new clients. Today we have many more options for direct mail marketing than we did in the past and believe it or not, the prices have actually come down. The US Post Office is offering new, very low rates for direct mail marketing. As a result of the new programs they are offering we are helping many more clients with their brochure design.


Our Brochure Designers Get A Testimonial

Many of our clients are referred to us.


Bob worked at the former BankAtlantic Center, (now renamed BB&T Center) home of the Florida Panthers. When he has clients who want to advertise in the stadium he refers them to us to create their posters or to design whatever they need. He knows that we will get the job done, get it done on time and at a fair price to his clients. 


Wednesday, August 21, 2013

Movie Theater Advertising

Movie Theater Advertising


Is cinema advertising right for your business?

There is no single type of advertising that can be called "the best". For each different type of business there are different types of advertising that will work better than others. What works well for one business may not work well for your business. We have heard people tell us, "I tried advertising and it didn't work". Vague statements like this have little meaning and we always have to look further. For some people advertising means promotional products such as pens with a website address and phone number. However, when we speak of advertising we mean something more aggressive where we put you in front of a specific targeted audience. Pens with your phone number are nice give away items at a trade show or inexpensive gifts to give to clients who come to your office but it is not real advertising.

The video below shows a movie theater advertisement we made for a Fort Lauderdale dentist. The dental office is very close to the cinema so if you live close enough to go to that theater then you are close enough to go to this dentist.

How To Reach Your Target Audience

One of the best things about movie theater advertising is that we are able to target a neighborhood. Now this is only good if everyone in the neighborhood is likely to be a potential client. In the above movie theater advertisement that we made for a dentist you can see a perfect example of the type of client that would benefit from movie theater advertising; a dentist. The reason this works so well for our client is that everyone in her neighborhood is a potential client. This is very different from other businesses where maybe the clients are only women or a business where the clients are likely to be male and female teens. Everyone needs to see a dentist at some point so advertising in the area near the dentist is an excellent, cost effective way to do dental advertising.

Compare this with TV advertising and you'll get the point. With TV advertising we can select the specific shows based upon Neilson demographic info. So we know which shows are seen by more men than women, which shows are seen by younger rather than older people and so on. This information is of no value to a dentist because absolutely everyone in the area of the dental office is a potential client of the dentist.

Below you can see what the dentist has to say about her experience with movie theater advertising.

Movie Theater Advertising

 


Cinema Advertising

We created a movie theater ad for a client in the business of refilling ink cartridges. This is a great example of a movie theater ad because refilling ink cartridges is not fun nor is it exciting. Ink cartridges are just something you either refill or replace. So in this case our challenge was to make an ad that would be interesting and fun even when the topic isn't and get people to take action.
We ran this ad right after the new year so we talk about setting new years goals.  We also wanted the ad to have an old fashioned look so we even made lines run through the ad like an old video would have.  Then we made the music sound like something from an old silent movie.

Cinema Advertising

 

Movie Theater Advertising On Smartphone Apps

Today we are able to reach movie goers before they even get into their cars. We know the following about people who go to movies:
93% of moviegoers use the Internet to find information about movies.
66% of moviegoers watch movie trailers online.
86% of moviegoers go online via a computer or mobile device at least once a day.
We can now run advertisements on websites about movies and on smartphone apps about movies. Movie theater advertising is no longer just about running ads inside the cinema on screen or in the lobby.

Cinema Advertising

Not all theaters are setup to be able to handle animated ad or video.  In this example the client owned an art gallery near an older theater.  So in this example of movie theater advertising the only thing we could do was to make an ad that looks like a magazine advertisement.  It appears on the screen for 15-seconds without any sound.

Please feel free to contact us about movie theater advertising for your business.

TV Advertising Misconceptions

Television Advertising Myths

As the owner of an ad agency I've seen people make some big mistakes with TV advertising. My job is to give good advice; the problem is that I can't force people to accept my advice.

Here is an example of TV Advertising Myth Number 1:
Just last week a man called our office and wanted to do a national ad campaign with a budget of $40,000.00 per month. This is a very small budget to advertise all over the United States. When I mentioned that running his commercial just once could consume his entire monthly budget he was concerned about that and wanted to speak with his investors about obtaining more funds. I called him back the next day and he was very excited to tell me that he wouldn't be needing my services because he found that he can buy national TV advertising on the Internet for $5,000.00 per month. He further told me that he now realizes that his earlier estimate of $40,000.00 per month was much more than he'd ever need.

I tried to explain that to be on the number of networks he told me his ads would run would not be possible but he only thought I was trying to over charge him. I explained that if there were 1,000 stations around the country that would all run his spot then they are being paid $5.00 each. Now lets say that you have only 6 spots available in a 30-minute show and all of those sold for $5.00 then the station is being paid $5.00x6=$30 per half hour that they operate. This might cover the salary of one employee at the station. What about rent, electricity and all the other people who work there?
It is possible to buy spots for $5.00 but this might be on local cable TV covering a small part of a city and the spot might run at 2:00am with somewhere between 0-10 viewers. Now what if you just don't care and want as many spots as you can get as cheaply as you can get them then isn't $5,000.00 still a good deal for national TV coverage?

Before I answer here is a question for you to consider. Try to remember the last time you saw a product or service advertised on TV just one time and you decided that you should go buy that product or service. So there is the problem; TV advertising is a very powerful way to advertise but you need two things besides a good TV commercial. You need reach and frequency. What this means is this. Let's say that in a city there are 1,000,000 people. TV advertising is effective when we get a population to see our ads about 15 times. That is when people start to feel like they know us and trust us and want to buy our products and services.

This does not mean that you should run your TV commercial 15 times!
Yes I've seen the website selling "National TV Advertising" for $5,000.00 and it is a great example of getting what you pay for. When you don't understand TV advertising then paying less to be on TV sounds like an awesome idea. When you understand some advertising terms like reach and frequency then you see why the $5,000.00 investment in national advertising is going to be a waste of money.
Depending upon the ratings for that show you might need to run your commercial hundreds of times in order to get people to see it 15 times. This is true because we have hundreds of channels we could watch and we aren't sitting at the TV all day and night waiting for your TV commercial to run.
Ideally we would like to get about 25% of a population to see our ads run about 15 times or more and that is when the magic of TV advertising begins to work and people take action and buy our products and services. If we get this to happen then we would have a "Reach" of 25% and a "Frequency" of 15 and that would be typical of a TV advertising campaign that we would expect to produce results.
So let's call this "TV Advertising Myth Number 1"

There is no TV advertising Santa Clause!
If a persons only concern is to buy the cheapest advertising then why not go with a $5,000.00 per month ad campaign? The problem is that it will be $5,000.00 wasted and a better use for this money would be to go to a casino where you might at least get a drink or two and have some fun while your money is being thrown away.

Get a reputable ad agency to make a TV schedule with good reach and frequency! Try talking with someone at an ad agency and pretend you've never heard of reach and frequency. When they give you a schedule ask why they recommend this schedule. The only way to answer that question will be to explain to you about the reach and frequency that you'll be getting for your money. Any stories about "getting your name out there" or anything else is nonsense.
Reach and Frequency are what matter in TV advertising.

Isn't More Better?

There have always been super cheap spots available on TV so what you are seeing is not new and it is not an indication that bargains are available. The problem with TV is that cheap spots are not better spots they are a waste of money. I could but won’t offer you the very same spots. I could because any agency could, I won’t because I want you to be a customer again next month and the month after that.
In every business there are left over products that nobody wants. In order to dump these products you drop the price to irresistible low rates and someone will buy them. TV advertising is no different, there are spots that are on shows that nobody watches in small towns. In order to dump cheap spots small TV stations around the country have pooled their cheap spots together and they offer “national” advertising at bargain prices.

The problem with the bargains like 5,000 spots for $5,000.00 is that there is never any mention of Reach and Frequency. With TV advertising what we are buying is reach and frequency. What is all too often offered to clients by ad agencies that just want to take their money is "bargains" like $5,000.00 to buy 5,000 spots that nobody wants because nobody is watching.
If your budget is $5,000.00 I could make a schedule for you but I would ask you to not count the number of spots because that isn’t important. It is only the reach and frequency that is important.

Look at it this way, which is better?
1. Spots are $5.00 each and 50 people will see each spot.
2. Spots are $500.00 each and 50,000 people will see each spot.
In example 1 above $5,000.00 would get us a total of 50,000 views of our spot.
In example 2 above $5,000.00 would get us 500,000 views of our spot.

The numbers above are not based upon any specific TV shows but are very realistic. If you are being offered a number of spots for a price with no mention of the ONLY thing that is important on TV and that is what percentage of the population will you reach and how many times will you reach them, then you should grab your check book and run.

Very simple but effective TV commercial example

 


TV Commercial Example With Jingle

 

Friday, July 12, 2013

Why You Should NOT Hire A Lawyer Web Design Expert

So you are a lawyer or your work in a law office and someone has directed you to find an attorney web design expert. My advice is do NOT hire any type of law firm web design expert. The same is true of dental office web design specialists or any other specific type of category like that.

Here is the problem as I see it today.  A client who is a dentist became a client after hiring a dental web design company.  When you would do a search for her you'd never find her website even if you searched by her name.  The dental web design experts, just like the attorney web design experts offer some templates for design and some templates for text.  You pick the color you like and the text you like and you have an instant website.  Of course they allow you to edit the text so that you can drop in your name and make other changes.  In the end you've got a website with boilerplate drool and that is the least of your problems. Search engines detect duplicated text and give it poor rankings.

I'll get to the real problem next but first please do a search for "Fort Lauderdale dentist" for example and you will find my client Dr. Natalia M. Benda because of the work I did for her after some other company made her website. Had the dentist hired me to begin with she wouldn't have had to pay twice; once to get a website and secondly to get it to rank well. Here at our company we believe that should all be included from the beginning.

If a company claims to be an attorney web design expert or specialist then what incentive could they possibly have to make YOUR law firm's website better than all the other websites they have made for lawyers?  As a lawyer you are well aware that you need your website to rank well in order to stand out among your competition.  If a website design company claims to work exclusively for attorneys or mostly for attorneys will they make YOUR website compete against their other attorney websites?

Think of it this way, if an attorney web design company made 100 law office website design projects last year and Google will display the top 10 on the first page then the best their clients can hope for is that they'd have a 1 in 10 chance of being on the first page of the search results.  That is ONLY true if all 100 of their attorney web design projects were the best ones in Google.

When you come to our South Florida full service advertising agency we think you will be pleasantly surprised to find that we won't ask you which web design template you'd like.  We have a designer with a Bachelor's degree in design and he will custom design a professional look for your law firm.  You may also like the fact that we won't show you any boilerplate text that you can modify.  We have a writer with a Master's degree in Journalism and she will write all the text for your website.

We keep current on changes in the Florida Bar Associations rules on advertising for lawyers.  We can also design business cards, letterhead, envelopes and brochures. Let's meet in person, on the phone or in an online meeting and go over some options for your next law office web design project.