by Fiona Humberstone on August 24, 2010 · 4 comments
I feel a bit nervous showing you my photographs of Liezl Croft’s promotional brochures. Not because I’m not proud of the brochures, but because there’s something very nerve-wracking about taking photographs of a photographer’s work. So please ignore the dodgy photos (mine, not hers) and hopefully you can see the beauty in what we’ve done for Liezl.
Anyway… we’ve been working with Liezl for the past year or so helping her create a more professional brand identity and an impactful set of marketing and promotional literature. Liezl has recently moved to Warwickshire and has had to step her marketing efforts up a gear or two to let the county know that she has arrived! Part of that marketing effort was creating Liezl some promotional brochures that Liezl could use for a multitude of purposes. She can leave them in nurseries and toy shops; she hand them to people she meets networking; she can give them away at baby fairs and she can use them alongside a letter as a part of a direct mail campaign.
We worked with Liezl to plan and write both pieces before Caroline and Chloe did a fabulous job of designing them. We’ve been a bit cunning with the print too – we put both of these brochures on one A3 sheet of card which means that Liezl enjoyed some economies of scale when it came to the print. I’m not sure if you can see the spot varnish pattern over the top, but that just finishes the whole thing off. (we used printing.com’s Starmarque Creased Showcards in case you’re interested…)
The Bump to Baby Brochure
The baby brochure is all soft colours, cute as a button images and soft, approachable text.
The illustrations are very similar to those used in the children’s brochure below. And I love those buttons!
I particularly love the scrabble words and the butterfly trail from bottom to top.
The Family Brochure
If the bump to baby was more about soft pastels and cute cutouts, the kids brochure is about fun. Elements are picked out in spot UV – the boys leaning round the tree, the bunting on the back cover and the floral pattern on the front. I love the childlike font Caroline has used and the fact that Chloe has carried the red background on the “throwout panel” (below) over to the inside page. It adds a lovely sense of continuity and intrigue.
I love the bunting that Chloe has illustrated on the inside, as well as the cute snail and frog. Liezl also took great care to send us a mix of images, and I think she’s done a great job of mixing up the ages. It’s easy to think of family photography as being for under seven’s but this brochure shows a good range of family members.
I love the simplicity of the back cover, especially the wooden background.
in Case Studies, Direct Mail, Graphic Design, In The Studio This Week, Print
by Fiona Humberstone on August 4, 2010 · 5 comments
After years of believing that the holy grail of marketing was a flashy website with plenty of SEO activity, online retailers are getting back to basics and placing the catalogue at the very heart of their marketing campaigns. It’s a clever strategy and something small businesses would do well to take heed of.
In our age of information overload; hundreds of emails a day, blogs, twitter and other social medium the catalogue {to borrow an analogy from a famous beer brand} quite literally reaches parts that other marketing media can’t reach.
A catalogue is intrusive. It lands on your doormat or desk just when you’re not expecting it with it’s oh so evocative photography and asks you to sit down with a cup of tea and see what’s the latest must have.
A catalogue will travel round the house with you: from kitchen table to sitting room, up to the bathroom and your bedside cabinet. A catalogue can be marked, written on and well thumbed. You interact with a catalogue physically in a way that you simply can’t with a website. And you can dip in and out of it at your leisure. In fact, you’ll probably revisit a favourite catalogue much more than you will a website. A catalogue is a truly powerful medium.
To sell successfully online, you need to have an offline strategy too. The big retailers know that: The White Company, Viking, White Stuff, Boden and Isabella Oliver have been doing it for years. The small businesses understandably see chopping the catalogue as a way to save money in a tight marketplace – but it’s a short sighted strategy.
A catalogue is your branding tool. It’ll underpin your web and retail propositions and help your business become memorable. According to The Catalogue Exchange, when you mail a catalogue, 45% of recipients will visit your website. You compare that to an email campaign where if you get a 17% click through you’re doing well and you can see why the big companies haven’t given up on direct mail.
For every £1 spent on a catalogue, The Catalogue Exchange say you’ll get back between £2 and £5 in store or online. And if you run a luxury brand, or any brand come to that, you need to differentiate or die. A catalogue, with it’s evocative brand images, space to properly communicate and the way it intrudes on your customers, will help you do that.
I’m not for one moment saying that you should ditch your online marketing methods, but what I am suggesting is that you look at where your marketing spend is going, and invest it in the activities that are going to give you the greatest return. Put together a proper strategy that you believe will bring you a real return. If you’re spending anything at all on advertising, then you can afford to create a catalogue. Advertising will build brand awareness if you’re lucky (and you chuck lots of money at it), a catalogue will bring you a return on your investment.
in Business Strategy, Direct Mail, Marketing, Print
