I’ve done several scratch board illustrations, but the last one I’d done was nearly 20 years ago, and finding the Will Smith image and then the blank, pristine sheets of scratch board was like the universe was challenging me to try my hand at it once more.

Scratch board, if you are unfamiliar with it, is basically a piece of poster board with solid black ink on one side, so dramatically lit images lend themselves better to becoming scratch board art. It really capitalizes on the medium and creates a much richer final image.

There are many tools you can use to scratch your image into it, but I had always just used an X-Acto knife.

Setting about the business of illustrating, I felt a little trepidation for having not done it for so long. Most of the past twenty years I have spent doing computer graphic illustrations and design. But I felt compelled and if there is anything I have learned from being somewhat creative is that you have to strike while the iron is hot.

The truly unique thing about scratch board art is that it is the opposite of a pencil drawing. With pencil you are concentrating on shading and darkening areas, but with scratch board you are actually scratching out the highlights and actually drawing the flesh on a face.

I put the general outline of the Will Smith image, and key shadow and light areas, onto tracing paper. Then, rubbed the back of the tracing with chalk so I could do a tranfer tracing onto the scratch board. You can’t erase on scratch board, so with the chalk transfer I can make sure my proportions are correct right off the bat.

The next step was to get a sharp X-Acto blade and begin. I generally start with areas with the brightest highlights. In those places I can get the feel and rythm without risking too many mistakes. The trick here is to not over work these areas. I soon skipped around to some darker areas to make sure my contrast balance was working. Later I could go back and add to some highlights if they needed it to make the image pop. Every now and then I turn the image upside down to work on it. This way I can really get an objective view of the light and dark areas. It really works!

About thirty minutes or an hour into the piece I always feel as if it’s not going to turn out good at all, but I keep plugging at it until eventually it starts to look right. All totalled, in the course of an entire weekend it took about 8 hours.

In the end, I was very happy with the piece. So, happy in fact, that I dug out one of my old scratch board references and did a portrait of B.B. King the following weekend. Not bad for a 20 year hiatis.

Will Smith on scratch board (1/24/2010)

 

B.B. King on scratch board (1/31/2010)

 

____________________________________________________________________________

Prepare now for success in the new year.  Shift your focus from tactical marketing to transformational marketing.  Inject that new attitude into your PR campaign, your internet marketing, and into all of your promotional efforts. 

2009 was not an easy year for most businesses.  We hit the worst recession since the Great Depression (is “great” really the appropriate adjective); we saw unprecedented unemployment rates.  It was a year of sustained constriction, but as with all of nature we’re in a cycle.  Fall leads to spring and times of constriction lead to those of expansion. The problem is that when tough times come, most businesses focus on the negative, actually adding to it.  They cut back on, or severely limit their marketing, which in turn restricts their growth.  So, make a decision NOW to reverse this trend in the new year.

Be practical, but be savvy.  Take a look at your business plan and make the appropriate adjustments.  Focus on your values and your core strengths, then market to those.  Get excited about where your business can go, how it can grow, the new changes you can make, the new markets you can target.  Use this time to transform yourself and your business.  By that I don’t necessarily mean make major changes to your business.  But change how you approach it.  Shift your attitude towards yourself, your business, your associates, your employees and your customers or clients.  Bring some magic to the table.  Get exited about what the new year can bring.

Now take that change in attitude, that excitement, and reflect that in your marketing.  Shift your focus from tactical marketing to transformational marketing.  Inject that new attitude into your PR campaign, your internet marketing, and into all of your promotional efforts.  Having run a public relations firm for nearly two decades, I’ve seen how the excitement that entrepreneurs or business owners bring with them carries into their marketing and ultimately into their overall success.  Make the leap towards sustained, transformational marketing your goal for the new year.  Make it your year for growth and expansion.  Make it your year for success.

Copyright © Anthony Mora 2009

Certainly, you can scale back budgets, but it is still essential to stay top of mind with your customers not only with a carefully tailored message, but with a memorable identity.

Often times it seems that tough times bring complacency to the marketplace. Consumers sometimes feel as if there is nothing new and everything is just the same old thing.

Well, that’s where a revitalized logo can be an advantage, especially if your image has been suffering, or has gotten a little stale. There’s no better time to look fresh.

Continuing to market yourself with a revitalized logo can improve your image and help you stand out from the same old, same old – and announcing that there’s something new about you business and you are ready for the future.

So, if your image is in need of a fresh look, making a change now may be right for you.

————————————————————————————————————

E-mail has moved beyond its infancy and has proven to be a high-yield marketing channel, so much so that everyone is jumping on board. Separate your messages from the clutter by implementing these dos and avoiding these don’ts. David Letterman has his top 10s, now here are mine:

Do include a call to action. In fact, include it several times throughout the e-mail. Be specific and create a sense of urgency by including an expiration date. Include the first one in the subject line. Put the second at the top to display in the preview pane. Even if your recipients never scroll, they now have two opportunities to take action. Finally, always include a call to action at the end. If your recipients were interested enough to read the entire message, don’t make them scroll up.

Do make the e-mail unique to your company. Have a style unique to your brand or company and intertwine some flavor so it never gets old. Include an accurate logo that is clearly visible and clickable. If the link is to your Web site, ensure it functions properly. Train your recipients to recognize your brand and leave with a positive impression.

Do include an unsubscribe option. Always include the unsubscribe option. It’s not just a courtesy, it’s the law. CAN-SPAM dictates that every e-mail marketing message include the functional opt out and gives the marketer 10 days to suppress the opt out.

Do include white-listing instructions. Once readers become interested in your e-mails, they won’t want to miss any of them. Show them how to add you to their white list. This decreases your company’s chances of being marked as spam in future mailings. Also, recipients will connect and become familiar with your brand. Think of it as being on their VIP list.

Do consider using an e-mail service provider to send your campaigns. With ever-changing best practices, this is the most reliable, efficient way to manage your e-mail campaigns. It lets you track e-mails, measure campaign results and improve and modify your e-mail strategy while your ESP focuses on message hosting, best-practices consulting and delivery.

Don’t overwhelm the recipient’s inbox. Sending daily marketing e-mails can cause more harm than good to your campaign. It also damages your brand’s reputation. If messages are flooding inboxes, recipients are more likely to unsubscribe or mark your messages as junk.

Don’t get too wordy. Starting with the subject line, keep everything short and to the point. Paragraphs should be short but catchy enough to grab people’s attention. Use simple words and short phrases. Arrange the text so a quick scan can easily reveal the main message. Use bullet points wherever possible.

Don’t misspell words or use poor grammar. This is obvious, but nothing will turn people away faster than an e-mail filled with mistakes. It not only shows incompetence on your part, but it also reflects poorly on the quality and reputation of your brand. Take time to double and triple check your text, scrutinize the copy until you find nothing wrong with it, then have someone else check it again.

Don’t keep sending messages when there is no interest. If your open and click-through rates are plummeting, change your approach or stop sending to the recipient. Try sending a reminder e-mail — they may have opted in but forgotten why. If there is still no action by the recipient, clean your distribution list.

Don’t send e-mails without a clear purpose. Every e-mail should have a purpose, and it should be obvious. Have a specific goal you want to accomplish with each e-mail. Recipients should not be wondering why a certain message was delivered to their inbox. Instead, they will understand and appreciate it when your message caters to their interests. Know yourself and know your audience, too.

As the old saying goes, you have to learn to crawl before you can walk. Keep my top 10 dos and don’ts in mind for your next campaign, and you’ll be on your feet and running in no time.

—————————————————————————

1. Post cards. Print your best small ad on a postcard and mail it to prospects in your targeted market. People read postcards when the message is brief. A small ad on a postcard can drive a high volume of traffic to your web site and generate a flood of sales leads for a very small cost.

2. Use buddy marketing to promote your business. For example, if you send out brochures, you could include a leaflet and/or business card of another business, which had agreed to do the same for you. This gives you the chance to reach a whole new pool of potential customers.

3. Send A Second Offer To Your Customers. Your customer just purchased a sweater from your clothing shop. Send a handwritten note to your customer thanking them for their business and informing them that upon their return with “this note” they may take advantage of a private offer, such as 20% off their next purchase. To create urgency, remember to include an expiration date.

4. Newsletters. Did you know it costs six times more to make a sale to a new customer than to an existing one? You can use newsletters to focus your marketing on past customers. Keep costs down by sacrificing frequency and high production values. If printed newsletters are too expensive, consider an e-mail newsletter sent to people who subscribe at your Web site.

5. Mail Outs. Enclose your brochure, ad, flyer etc. in all your outgoing mail. It doesn’t cost any additional postage and you’ll be surprised at who could use what you’re offering.

———————————————————————————————————-

“I just delivered one of the best seminar presentations of my life,” said the professional. “Too bad only 6 people showed up.”

All too often we hear this very avoidable lament. Firms decide to build and market seminars. That’s good. The people who must deliver the seminar in those firms spend days making sure they do a great job. That’s good, too. Unfortunately, in too many organizations the efforts for building seminar attendance often miss the mark. Too many dollars and too many hours are wasted on attendance building tactics that just do not work.
So what happens? You give up on seminars. Please, don’t. One of the most effective ways to build a professional service practice is to produce and deliver short (one-half day or less) seminars, speeches and events. Indeed, you will not find too many people disagreeing that speaking is a great marketing technique.

The right reaction to our poor professional, who had only 6 at his seminar, is not to give up the seminar, but give up the marketing tactics he used. If you do plan on taking the time and spending the money to produce, prepare, and deliver a presentation or mini-seminar, here are seven event marketing tips that will help you fill your room:

Marketing Timing: Usually, professionals market their events much too early. A CPA firm we know recently had high business development hopes from a series of six short seminars. They sent very well-written letters to inform clients and prospects of the series. The ‘invitations’ reached the client base about 12 weeks before the first mini-seminar, 14 weeks before the second mini-seminar, 16 before the third, etc. Attendance was decidedly underwhelming.

Their mistake was in the mailing lead time. They were surprised when we told them that announcements for generating attendance for 2 hour seminars is best done about three or four weeks in advance, not 12 or 16 or 20.

Rule of thumb: the shorter the seminar the shorter the event announcement lead time.
List Targeting: In direct mail the three greatest indicators of success are lists, lists, and lists. Before you send out one piece of mail, make sure you have a reasonable expectation that the people on the list will be interested in your topic. A great seminar title, mailing package, and value proposition will generate zero attendance if you mail it to a list that is not interested in your topic.

Marketing Response Expectations: Easy math: number of names times response rate equals attendance. 2,000 names times 2% response equals 40 attendees. “And why shouldn’t we get a 2% response,” inexperienced event marketers often say to themselves. “I’ve seen the research on direct marketing: 2% response is average for direct mail.”

Indeed, according to the Direct Marketing Association 2003 response rate study, direct marketing responses are somewhere in the 2% range on average. Consider, however, that most professional event marketers don’t measure response in percents; they measure it in response per thousand because, by and large, they only get fractions of a percent to attend. So if you’re going to be an event marketer, forget about wondering, “What percent of our mailing will come to our event,” and start thinking about how many per thousand might attend.
Some highly successful events marketed by professionals don’t even get a 1 per thousand response. Mailings for mini-seminars tend to do better than this, but not always by much.

What’s the point of the story? If you have your direct marketing response expectations set too high, you are in for both disappointment and low attendance. So make sure you have enough good names to mail to, and mail enough pieces to actually fill your room.

Marketing Piece: Suffice it to say that sometimes a postcard is perfectly fine for generating attendance for your events. Other times email is all you need. It might be that invitations will work better for your event. Sometimes you need an invitation, a letter, a business return envelope, a white paper, and convenient registration on your website.

This could be (and is) the subject of whole books. Just be aware that you should research what kind of marketing piece might work in your situation, for your audience, and test different pieces on different events. Think about your audience, what their day looks like, and then send them the piece that will get through the noise and clutter.

Registration Fee: Many professionals assume their ‘marketing seminars’ should be free. Here are a few reasons to consider charging a registration fee:

a) Paid events will often generate more actual attendance than free events.
b) Paid events tend to have significantly fewer no-shows than free events.
c) The attendees you generate are usually more interested in the event than those attending a ‘free’ breakfast, lunch, or ‘networking’ event.
d) People come expecting value instead of a sales pitch. If you then deliver value, you’ll establish the expectation and knowledge that time with you is worth the money.

Also note that, depending on your service, free events can work as well as paid events, especially for business-to-consumer professional services. Our final advice on the subject: know your audience, make good business assumptions, and test both paid and free.

Event Title: Your event title needs to clearly state what value you will deliver at the event. You will also want it to be as short as possible (but as long as needed), and appealing to the reader. Using the words “How To” in an event title has proven time and time again to increase attendance. The title “Learn about new investment opportunities” (a real title we recently saw), would be much more effective if it were called, “How you can take advantage of new investment opportunities.”

A very simple approach for event titling: Make a list of a dozen or so different ways you could title the event. Ask for feedback from colleagues, clients, and potential clients. If you run the event multiple times, test different titles and see if one title generates more attendance than the other.

Marketing Partners: Marketing partners are an often overlooked source for boosting event attendance. You can, for example, partner with two other firms and pool your resources and mailing lists to increase response and then deliver together. Besides having extra names to market to, your event will have a multi-faceted presenter list which can often increase attendance in and of itself.

You can also co-market the event with a trade association, get the event notice listed in your partner’s e-newsletters, work with a college or university to sponsor the event, or any number of other partner strategies. For example, a network security service firm we know partnered with the FBI to run their seminar on the new security issues facing firms. The event pulled better than anything they had ever done before.

As a final thought, one of the most overlooked ways to increase event registration is by delivering great events-providing information or tools that will be of significant value for the attendees. If you “deliver one of the best seminars of your life” every time, your events, much like your practices, will grow in reputation and attendance.
Who knows, someday soon you might even be able to answer the phone and let your potential attendees know, “Sorry, this seminar is full, but I will register you for the next one.”

There are virtually no pitfalls in using a freelance designer, but there are many advantages. From a client’s perspective, there is no noticeable difference in using a freelance designer compared to using a large design agency apart from the costs, which can be considerably less. Working like this allows delivery of cost effective solutions to the highest quality at a fraction of the cost of many large design agencies.

Freelance designers have small overhead costs and can offer cost-effective, professional design at a much lower cost than larger companies. In fact, many large agencies actually outsource their excess work to freelancers!

A good freelancer can help you bring your products and services to the right customers with the right message and the right look on-time and on-budget.
Contact Timmons Design for a design quote today!

Promising the execs a new product catalog or brochure is one thing, but making that a reality takes more than saying to your designer, “Make it so.” You might as well try to rub a magic lamp.

Designers work on production deadline schedules, so throwing a very nebulous project at them is a very inefficient use of their time and yours.

Initiating a design project requires some serious consideration of what you’d like your end result to be, and providing your designer the tools he or she needs to make your dream a reality. If you’re not sure, then ask your designers what they need before they can start. They’ll be more than happy to tell you.

Outline the scope of the project.

Before you go to your designer, nail down what it is you want. Be thorough. If you’re not clear about what your goal is, then no one else will be either and the end result will suffer or drag on longer than necessary.

Focus on your content.

Don’t worry about how many pages it will be or how it will be laid out. That’s your designer’s job. Feel free to give some examples of other brochures and styles you like, but your main task here is to provide the content that the designer needs to work with. Be as thorough as you can be. Perhaps there might be a few items up in the air, but don’t hold up giving your designer the bulk of a project when there are just a few items lacking. Again, talk to your designer and ask how they would like to receive the information – piecemeal or in significantly large chucks.

Realistic timelines.

Designer’s (for the most part) are “can do” people and love a creative challenge, but repeatedly giving them unrealistic deadlines isn’t a challenge – it’s a reminder that it’s time to post their resume. Perhaps you’ve heard the expression: “Don’t make your problem become my emergency.” No one understands this more than a designer. They know when someone has been sitting on a project and waits until zero hour to turn it over to the design department. If you want a brand new product catalog layout to be mailed out before the first of the new year, then you should be planning the new content from at least six months out.

This can’t be said enough – it behooves you to keep your designers in the loop early on. They are your ally as well as a valuable resource. Let them know you are planning a new project and the approximate time you’d like to have it produced. Many people forget that there is the important step of getting the darn thing printed to consider. How long will that take? Your designer can find out for you so you can both plan a timeline together. They can also help you get some rough printing estimates to help you plan your budget for the project.

Communication.

After you leave the project in the designer’s capable hands you don’t need to check up on them every day to see how things are going. When you have your kick off meeting with your designers you should built in checkpoints along the timeline for deliverables (for both of you). That is the best way to make sure the project moves along according to plan or if adjustments to the timeline need to be made.

Make sure your designer knows that if there are any questions along the way that your door is always open. If your designer is the lone member of the design staff (been there done that!), then you especially owe it to them, and yourself, to keep the lines of communication open.

Feedback.

Once the project is completed and printed (assuming everything went smoothly, right?) pass along any comments about the finished product on to the designer. Sure, the negative comments always make it to them with no detours: “You know, Johnson in purchasing caught a typo on page 11.” “Oh, we forgot to add two items to the accessories page. Make a note of that for next time, will ya?”

The positive comments are just as important to pass along, too: “Nice layout! Customers like the new indexing.” “The cover you designed really blows the doors off of our competition.” “The sale reps love the way you’ve highlighted the product descriptions. Makes their job a lot easier when making the sale.”

In the end, careful planning and thoughtful consideration will reward you with a design project that is completed to everyone’s mutual satisfaction.

How do you cope with the daily abuse? There are several techniques and schools of thought on this one, but before you go out and buy a Zen garden for your desk to help ease the stress, let’s focus on what it is we are presenting for critique. Whether you are presenting the fruits of your creative process to your peers, an unforgiving boss or the all important client you should always remember two things:

1     The layout was commissioned by someone else to reflect their wants, not yours

2     It isn’t going to hang on your living room wall

In my years of experience I’ve learned that there is only so much personal passion that you can put into pitching your ideas. There’s nothing worse than misplaced or overzealous passion for ones designs.

Designer: “This layout carries a theme of social awareness that we all should strive to reflect. If you’ll notice, the generous use of the color green to promote a very earth friendly message and the headline touting the word ‘FRESH’ makes the reader believe they can make a difference – a fresh new start, if you will…”

Client: “I don’t like the color green, and can you change the word ‘fresh’ to something peppier? I dunno, my granddaughter always says ‘super dee duper.’ That’s kind of cute. Yeah, let’s use that.  I also think that we should make the product bag of kitty litter take up half the page.

In a matter of seconds some fat-head has just shot down every aspect of your layout that you thought had any redeeming value. He missed all the subtext of the ad and you are shaking your head thinking he just doesn’t get it. Well, my fine friend I feel your pain, but unless you client is Al Gore you’ll never be able to get him to care about anything more than the kitty litter, let alone your earth friendly message. Many times you’ll have to bite your tongue and simply make the adjustments he’s asked for. Other times, you can (you must) toss out alternatives to ‘super dee duper’ that you may be able to convince him are more palatable to the target audience. Whatever the compromise, you must remember that it’s the client’s layout, not yours.

Don’t get me wrong, every designer must add their personal touch to the layout. That’s why the client hired you, after all, but the key is to not get carried away and understand the goal of your assignment first and foremost. If you remember that, then you can handle any critique with ease.

There is another way to turn someone else’s lemons into your lemonade, however. Because we designers are always looking for new pieces to add to our portfolios – and let’s face it, a strong portfolio is the ultimate goal to pleasing a designer’s soul – you can confidently use your original version that you felt so passionate about as a portfolio piece. Viola! Everybody wins.

I don’t believe that there is a bona-fide definition for “outside the box” thinking, but I’ve always come to assume that this jargon originated from those who weren’t satisfied with the current status of things and wanted to improve the thinking to develop better ideas – something akin to “taking it to the next level.”

The common mistake designers make is to leap outside the box from the start without checking to make sure the resources and ideas inside the box are truly exhausted. Don’t forget to check in all the corners!

I was given a group project once early in my career and the three other department’s designers began thinking so abstractly that any connection to the original project description seemed lost to me. I went to go brainstorm with our lead copywriter – a wise and considerably seasoned copywriter. He sat for a few minutes and began pulling out from his files previous marketing materials to review what’s been done before. He was opening up the box and stepping inside while everyone else was outside. He observed and pointed out what worked in the past, and (more importantly) what didn’t. I began to apply this same logic to the design elements of the pieces and came to a very pleasing conclusion. The past lays a good foundation for the future. I stripped away what was weak and didn’t work and found ways to visually improve the concepts that did – venturing outside the box for a bit of fresh air and a new perspective now and then, working with the copywriter to strive to add value in new ways.

When it came time for the designers to present their ideas, the “outside of the box” thinkers spun elaborate yarns about what feeling their concept imagery was meant to evoke, trying to tie it to the product. Even the copy seemed outlandish simply because the copy department needed to match the intensity or whimsy of the respective imagery.

Upon concluding my presentation the reviewing panel selected my layout because it was what they termed “sound” and connected with their target audience, adding that the copy’s message strongly supported the overall concept.

From this early experience I learned not only the importance of brainstorming with the copy department, but also the essentials of exploring and exhausting all the resources inside the box before ever stepping outside of it.