Bah Humbug! Here’s how to nail your Christmas Marketing this year

It’s the most wonderful time of the year for what is often the worst kind of marketing. Every business in existence starts hashing out the same, tired, generic Christmas marketing content to their clients and audiences. Look, this isn’t going to be detrimental to your business (it’ll probably still help a bit- lest you be accused of ‘censoring Christmas!’) but if you really want to make Christmas the gift that keeps on giving all year round, it’s time up your game.

Here’s our four top tips on how to make your Christmas Marketing a breeze this year.

Give your Christmas Cards a personal touch

A few weeks ago we talked about the different approaches you can take with Corporate Christmas Cards, and how to nail those.

Here’s the thing though. Even if you’ve gone the extra mile with a well branded, well designed card, if the body content is boring, then you’re just throwing away all of those good graces. Ergo, when sending out your corporate Christmas cards this year, try and make the body content a little bit more than;

“Dear Taylor’s business.

Wishing you a very merry Christmas,

Thankyou for your patronage this year.

From, The Boring Company.”

Shocking as this may seem, this is not going to make your business memorable in the eyes of your clients. In no way are we suggesting you write an essay, but a little effort can go a long way.

Additionally, data merging services are a great way to write a ‘personalised message’ without writing entirely new copy for every. single. card. Basically, you write “Dear X, Merry Christmas” and ‘X’ is subbed in for whatever you want it to be at the printing stage.

Go the extra mile with your packaging

Once again, this is all about the little things that can go a long way. If your business sends out packages in volume, it might be an idea to get some customised packaging. Whether it’s envelopes or boxes, it’s way more exciting to open something up that’s well branded and looks pretty, than a generic box or envelope.

Additionally, customised packaging makes for great social media content- encourage your customers to post share photos of them and their ‘fully awesome branded package’ from your business on their social media, and then share it to your own social media platforms! Easy content that gets your fan-base excited, is always a win.

Two disclaimers here – sticking your logo on an envelope doesn’t count here (Unless maybe you stuck a Santa hat on top?) – that’s not the level of branding we’re talking about here. Also, it obviously depends on context. If you’re a funeral home couriering out a loved ones ashes, then perhaps now is not the best time to say “Tis the season to be jolly!”.

Knowing your audience is a must. That said, if this style of packaging is appropriate for your business, then you should absolutely do it.

Develop meaningful Christmas packages

With all the gifts, decorations, cards, holidays, etc to attend too, Christmas is generally quite an expensive time of the year. So why not capitalise on it?

By developing meaningful Christmas themed product bundles and pushing them over the silly season, your business will develop a competitive edge over competitors that just act as though it’s business as usual. It should be noted that these packages actually need to be of value to your clients. Don’t just push bundle up stock that’s taking up space in storage (though that could be one of the options you do) but rather, create a solution to their problem. What are they most likely going to need? What are your best performing items, and how can you sell them as a Christmas package deal?

Dress up that website.

Everyone rocks around the Christmas Tree, but what about your website?

If you have an online store this is an absolute must. With this in mind, even if you’re not a retail-oriented business, that doesn’t mean you can’t have a little bit of fun with your collateral over the holiday season. Christmas branding is all about making your brand feel more warm and personable, avoiding any whiff of being called a Christmas Stooge. (Bah Humbug!)

If you are a retail-oriented business, make your customers life a whole lot easier during this busy time with targeted gift ideas. A specific gift ideas landing page is all you need to make these gift-giver’s shopping experience a whole lot easier.

Consumers are time poor at the best of times, let alone at Christmas. By helping take the effort out of their gift giving decisions, you’ll undoubtedly be at the top of their nice list.

Look at that! It really is beginning to look a lot like Christmas.

Don’t be a Christmas Stooge. Why not get in touch and let us help you nail your advertising this Holiday Season.

Why good design aesthetics are just as important as product functionality

Okay, so bear with me… A lot of you are probably reading this / the heading and thinking “Wait, good looking products are important?!? Knock me over with a feather.”

And you’d be right.

In spite of this, there wouldn’t be a single graphic designer / web developer / product specialist / marketer / etc who doesn’t have at least one story of a client who “Just doesn’t understand why I need to spend so much money on how it looks! The product should speak for itself!.”

In theory, this (sort of) makes sense. The practical application of the product should be the important bit. It should speak for itself. But here’s the thing. It doesn’t.

Think about it this way.  How many times have you gone to the store to buy something, noticed the outside packaging is a bit dented or torn, and opted to go with a nicer looking one (or demanded a discount). Or perhaps you erred away from a particular food item because it doesn’t look overly appetising, despite (apparently) tasting delicious?

Humans are not logical beings. We think we are, and we can of course think logically, but our default state is not logical. A logical being would look at the dented packaging and acknowledge that it has absolutely no consequence to the product inside. Yet here you are, asking the staff member for a discount on your $2 box of fish fingers because the box has a dent in it.

But, maybe that isn’t you. Perhaps you’re one of the rare individuals who genuinely doesn’t care about aesthetics and only focuses on practicality. Maybe you can see past all the slick marketing of Apple products and instead go for a Generic-Mobile Phone 3000 instead.

This article is for you, Mr (or Mrs) Robot.

Good design taps into our subconscious

A lot of money has been invested in researching the link between psychology and design aesthetics.

One of the most well known theories behind design practices can be understood through the Gestalt Principles, a set of principles first proposed by Gestalt psychologists to account for the observation that humans naturally perceive objects as organised patterns and objects; a principle known as Prägnanz. These five Gestalt principles are Proximity, Similarity, Continuity, Closure, and Connectedness.

While the Gestalt Principles certainly aren’t the ‘be all and end all’ when it comes to design, they do serve an important function in understanding and adhering to good design practices. The importance of this becomes even more apparent when you consider that our brains make a decision on how we feel about a brand in less than a second (50 milliseconds, to be exact). If you want to make a good first impression, you’ve got to make sure your branding is on point.

A whole lot of thought also goes into colour, which you can read more about here.

Good design is seamless

They say good design is invisible, whereas bad design is everywhere. If you think about it, there is nothing but truth to this statement. Let’s use CGI in films for example. Everyone can think of a film where “Oh my god the CGI was so bad, like it doesn’t even look realistic” (Sharon, they’re aliens. Of course they’re not going to look ‘realistic’). But when CGI is done right, even if it’s a giant space monster or a futuristic vehicle, it looks seamless. You don’t even know it’s there. Point and case, the trailer for Aquaman vs the Trailer for Avengers Infinity War.

Which one looks better? (Hint. It’s Avengers)

If your product/ packaging is poorly designed, it’s going to stick out like a sore thumb, and no matter how good the rest of it is, that’s the part people are going to remember. Your product’s legacy shouldn’t be that it looks like trash.

Better designed products = better profits

Let’s go back to the Apple example we discussed earlier. Why do so many people like Apple products? Is it because they’re well made/ have good hardware? Possibly, but so do lots of other phone brands. A number of them are arguably better quality both in build as well as tech. Despite this, Apple is routinely one of the top 3 mobile phone brands in the world.

So why is this?
In 2005, UK- based research group The Design Council studied 63 portfolios of companies that traded on the FTSE (Financial Times Stock Exchange) over the course of a decade. What they discovered was that the companies that put an emphasis on design did significantly better than those that didn’t, outperforming the FTSE 100 index by 200%

Put simply, for every £100 ($184 AUD) a firm spent on design, that company saw an increase in turnover by £225 ($415 AUD).
In other words, for every $1 you spend on effective design, you get $2 in return. Good design is good for business. Measurable, profitable, and helpful for the customer.

As they always say, you’ve got to spend money to make money.

We’re here to make your business better, so why not get in touch and see what we can do?

The most versatile marketing tool you’ll ever use

We all know the age-old adage, you have to spend money to make money. What that proverb doesn’t take into account however, is that you should try to spend as little money as possible (where practical) to make that money. Enter posters. Posters are an incredibly cost effective and versatile marketing tool used by businesses of all sizes and scales. With this in mind, it’s always good to have evidence to back up your claims and at Emroy Creative Group we’re all about making sure you have the very best information at your disposal to make good business decisions.

Here’s five top reasons why posters need to be a core part of your marketing mix.

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This is why you need content marketing to help amplify your brand’s reach

Content isn’t king. It’s the Kingdom. A recently released survey of the advertising industry has found that content marketing is well and truly here to stay. Over a third of marketers say they increased spending in 2018 compared to last year, with 53% noting they spent about the same, while only 8% said that they were spending less. Lots of organisations have been playing the game for years, but 2018 really does seem to be the year of the content.

If statistics aren’t really your thing, we’ve put together a couple of points as to why you really need to jump on the content train all the way to profit town. (Assuming you do it right, of course).

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A guide to nailing your yearbooks from start to finish.

It goes without saying that yearbooks are a big deal.  For school leavers, they’re a time capsule containing what are hopefully some of the happiest memories of their life; for schools themselves, they act as an invaluable marketing tool that showcase, in detail, the offerings they have for prospective students.

With this in mind, there’s usually a fair bit of pressure from various bodies to get it right. This wouldn’t be a problem if yearbooks were all that you had to worry about, but that’s (usually) not the case. You’re an educator. You have students to worry about, assessments to mark, reports to write. That said, with a bit of foresight and pre-planning, your school’s yearbook can be a breeze.
Here’s our top tips on how to enjoy building your school yearbook.

Assemble the team

Firstly, remember that yearbooks are a team effort. No one person should have all of the responsibility at their feet. Determine exactly who is in the team, and assign tasks according to suitability and availability of time. In any team, it’s necessary to assign a leader to whom all other participants will report. The leader should head up an introductory meeting to outline the goals, scope, and scale of the yearbook. This ensures that everyone is on the same page from the get go, allowing them adopt a collaborative and encouraging mindset.

Book your printer

It’s a good idea to work out who you’ll be printing your yearbook with early on in the planning process. Printers will often have different specifications for things such as margins and bleeds, and it’s better to know this stuff early on so that you can plan accordingly; rather than have a mad rush at the end, trying to rejig everything so that it’s fit for print. Your printer will likely also have some tips on how to get the most out of your yearbook, and this also good to know early on.

A number of the top yearbook printers also offer design packages which may be of consideration to you.

Plan the page framework

Yearbooks follow a pretty traditional construction process; You start with the foundations, the skeleton if you will. This is what the yearbook will look like, how many pages you’re after, etc. After this, you can move onto the content. The flesh and blood.

In content you can work out which sections will be to devoted to what, calculate approximate word counts, where images will be required, and who will be responsible for contributing what.

Planning it out this way ensures that only the work that needs to be done, gets done. This in turn helps to ensure that your team are able to stick to their specified deadlines, and that they remain within the design parameters.

Set out the yearbook calendar

Often when you first start planning your yearbook the deadlines you and your team will face are still months away; making it easy for them to sneak up on you if you forget about them.

It’s important to set out milestones for design and content; staggering different elements of the yearbook at different times so that the content compiler receives a steady flow of information, rather than a tsunami. It’s in no one’s best interest for them to be drowning in content right before the publication is due, simply because of poor planning.

You should also note that as with the rest of the Production Timeline, these milestones don’t need to be set in you know, stone. Things can change, and there should always be sufficient wiggle-room in the event that some sort of delay occurs.

Work out your key imagery early

You don’t buy an expensive suit only to wear it exclusively at McDonald’s. Such a sentiment should also apply to your yearbook. Feature images (Such as group photos) need to be scheduled early on in the planning process to ensure that everyone is available at the designated time. The earlier you schedule your photos, the surer you can be that they’ll be  delivered by copy deadline.

Additionally, always make sure that names have been spelled correctly, captions have been created, and the final number of photos have been accommodated in the page layouts.

Provide tools to facilitate content creation

Depending on the scope of your yearbook, it’s likely that you’ll be drawing content from at least several sources, and this can fast turn into a logistical nightmare. Emails bounce, USB’s and files are “Lost”, deadlines missed, and will others may under or over-provide what you asked for.

To combat this, we recommend assembling a Google Kit, a cloud-based system which allows for real-time accessibility (Assuming there is an internet connection) to everyone granted access.  Consider including the following in your production package:

• Your yearbook’s page framework;
• Word count parameters (minimum and maximum);
• How many images you require per section;
• A Google Docs template into which they can submit content;
• Instructions regarding submitted images.

The great thing about Google Docs is that it’s generally not caught up in DEC/ other education institution based firewalls and filters, meaning contributors should be able to access their files wherever they are. Be it home, school, or otherwise.

Additionally, it’s best to try to avoid USB’s where possible, due to risks associated with corrupted files, lost devices, etc. The last thing you want is to be given a USB full of documents and photos, only to misplace it and lose everything.

Keep your branding on point

Every bit of branding in existence tells a particular story. Your yearbook is quite literally telling that story right there in the covers and pages; materials that could well last at least a lifetime. Therefore, it’s pretty important to get it right. Make sure that your yearbook adheres to your school’s style guide (if you have one) and remains uniform and professional throughout.

As with most things this is considerably easier to do if you start early, and such an approach also grants time for amendments.

Assign an Editor / Copy Manager

It’s important that your yearbook maintains a consistent ‘voice’  throughout the publication. That said, it would be unreasonable to expect every contributor to conform to a specific style when preparing their content. This is where a Copy Manager or Editor comes in. Your Copy Manager/ Editor should be someone who has writing experience  and is adept at altering copy, as well as picking up on typos. (Maybe lean on the English or History faculty for some help here.)

Ultimately, the editor will be responsible for ensuring that there is a uniform ‘voice’ throughout the publication; one that is devoid of spelling and grammar mistakes. Every aspect of your yearbook is an exercise in branding, and should therefore receive the same level of attention as your school’s logo or uniform.

Meeting timeline goals

The yearbook calendar should be revisited at every meeting and revised accordingly. One team member must be responsible for administering deadlines and following up on outstanding materials. Consider posting a final deadline for that’s about a month earlier than what you actually need. This should give you enough breathing space should anything go wrong in the interim.

The experts are here to help!

Alternatively, you can just have someone to do a lot of this for you. Outsourcing the bulk of the work to people who do this for a living; copy managers, graphic designers, and project managers, will allow you to get the results you want, without all of the headache that comes with juggling a mammoth project with the rest of your standard workload.

We’re here to make your life easier, so why not get in touch and see what we can do?

What is Yearbook Project Management?

Let’s take a trip down memory lane; back to when you had to do group projects. Remember the ones where not everyone was pulling their weight, where there were delays in getting the content back to the central source, and sometimes people just not even bothering to showing up at all! The solution to this (other than perhaps an ever growing collection of voodoo dolls) is good project management. Project management is the practice of initiating, planning, executing, controlling, and closing the work of a team to achieve specific goals and meet specified criteria at pre-determined times.

Every successful team project, whether it’s a political campaign or a team of chefs preparing food in a restaurant, have someone calling the shots and directing team members on what to do. Why should your yearbook be any different?

Why consider outsourcing project management?

Yearbooks are often a pretty big, with a lot riding on their success. For school leavers, they’re a time capsule containing what are hopefully some of the happiest memories of their life; for schools themselves, they act as an invaluable marketing tool that showcase, in detail, the offerings they have for prospective students. The issue here is that yearbooks are a massive undertaking; one that is often on top of your primary job.

On top of this, we as humans have a tendency to get sidetracked on unimportant or irrelevant tasks, invariably delaying the project to well past its original due date. Scary stuff.

By outsourcing the yearbook project management system to an external entity, you’re able to reduce that stress by working with people who do this as their bread and butter; those who have plans and redundancies in place should things go wrong.

Additionally, it’s super cost effective. Taking the time to set these systems up is tedious. By working with an organisation that already has them in place, you can trust that you’ll be working within the confines of tried and true project management practices.

How does it work?

Every organisation is going to have a different approach to project management. We’ve worked hard to develop a yearbook management system that automates much of what would usually be done via manual processing and streamlines those tasks that still need to be done by a human; taking the load off you and your team.

• First of all, we need some baseline information about your team. You let us know who is responsible for providing what content and imagery for each section.
• We then develop this information into a shared database; before contacting each person via email and phone to let them know submission requirements and due dates.
• As the content deadline approaches, we send polite reminders for those we haven’t received content from.
• Our design team works to flow the content and imagery through your custom yearbook design.
• We send a proof back and you let us know if you require any revisions.

Now isn’t that much easier?

It’s never too late to get a head start on your yearbook. So why not get in touch and see how we can help?

Here’s the secret to how your competitors are getting away with charging so much more than you do

It’s every business owners dream, raising prices without impacting future sales. Why is it that some businesses can charge double or even triple the price of competitors while still managing to maintain market share, and turn a steady profit?

Logically, providing a quality product and solid customer service should be enough to justify charging at, or above market rate. Unfortunately, the world is not a wish-granting factory, so this not the case.

So what’s the reason why some businesses can grow so easily whilst maintaining a profitable, and even enviable pricing structure?

It’s because, like L’Oreal, they’re worth it.

Or at least they’ve made themselves look worth it.

How?

Your Brand Image holds a perceived value

Don’t get me wrong, there are other factors involved in price justification. However, the moment customers first encounter you or your brand is where they will most likely decide whether your business is a budget or premium supplier, and build their expectations of price accordingly.

Let’s have a look at these two logos and look a bit into their branding strategies.

Chances are these are two highly recognisable brands, but just for a moment try to consider them with fresh eyes.

You most likely recognise both these logos and how they position themselves, however for a moment consider them with fresh eyes.

Picture this, you walk into a Dior store, with their elegant, minimalist logo, branding and setup. Each shirt has been perfectly spaced on the racks and is crisp to the touch. You expect to see price in excess of several hundred dollars. Whether or not you’re comfortable paying that, the price feels appropriate and justified due to their branding and store setup.

On the other hand, let’s consider a typical Lowes store, with their bright, playful coloured logo and branding. The shelves are always packed to the brim, generally overflowing, and normally stacked pretty high. When you look at a label, it’s been stuck on to show most things at bargain prices, and the aisles are compact and tight. If you pulled an item off the rack and it was priced like a Dior shirt, there’s no way you’d go for it.

Of course, both of these businesses have tapped into different target markets; Dior focuses on lower volume with a higher margin, while Lowes gears themselves towards higher volume and lower margins.

Here’s the thing though, if your logo and branding look like Lowes’, no one will ever pay you Dior prices.

Here’s why one of the best ways to help maximise your market coverage is the humble newsletter

Due to the explosive growth of social media, many businesses have let newsletters fall to the wayside in recent years. Why spend the time writing out a lengthy document that ‘probably no one reads anyway’, when instead you can just do quick, small updates all the time? Well, contrary to what you may think, newsletters still offer a lot of value to your business. Here’s 4 reasons why newsletters need to be part of your marketing mix.

Newsletters allow for greater depth

While your newsletters *probably* shouldn’t be essay-length documents detailing every last aspect of your business since your previous blast, they do allow you to go into a level of detail that social media doesn’t always allow for. You can create a much more personal connection and reveal more intimate (but not too intimate-no one wants to hear about your divorce, Sharon) details about you and your business.

They’re also great for promoting any sales or product launches you may be running at the time of publication.

Newsletters work as an additional touch point

We’ve discussed the importance of multi channel marketing before, and there’s no reason why newsletters can’t (or rather shouldn’t) be a part of this repertoire. Think about the type of customers you service, and what their media habits are like. Not everyone is on social media, or uses it as much as others. This leaves these clients at a deficit when it comes to receiving updates from your business. What we all have to do however, is check emails. In publishing a newsletter you’re ensuring that these customers cannot forget about you.

Familiarity

If it seems as though we’re always harping on about the Mere Exposure Effect in these blog posts it’s probably because we are. With good reason. We know that consumers generally stick to what they’re familiar with, so not only do clients need to first be aware of you, but then they need to feel comfortable, and continue to feel comfortable with you. Maintaining brand familiarity is critical if you want to keep repeat customers. By proactively sending out new messages, customers will recognise your brand as familiar and will think of it more often. It’s an efficient and consistent way to remind people of your presence.

On top of this, if your content is timely and compelling, it’ll drive your audience to act.

Content Recycling

Not everything in your newsletter needs to be an original piece. If you’re an active user of social media or run a blog (like ours) then you can quite easily lift content from that and incorporate it into your newsletter. That said, try to rejig information or use excerpts to prevent consumers feeling like you’re just rehashing the same news. That way, clients who are across all of your brand’s media points will still feel as though they’re getting something from your newsletter.

Newsletters are not obsolete. For those businesses that are prepared to put the time and effort into setting one up the pay off can be significant. They’re great for increasing brand recognition, increasing customer awareness, and just increasing your marketing ROI in general.

So what are you waiting for? Get started on your own newsletter today. Not sure how to set one up?

Our dedicated design team are on standby and ready to help. 

We are exposed to hundreds, if not thousands of different fonts every day. However, that doesn’t necessarily mean that we know how they work.

So lets start with the basics. A font is a set of characters, usually letters, numbers, punctuation marks and other symbols. Fonts are characterized by their size, weight, and style. Some fonts are larger than others, some fonts are bolder or more italic than others, and so on.

In the context that this blog post will be discussing the term ‘typeface’ is more appropriate, but for simplicities sake (there is a lot of debate in- industry about when and where to use each term) we’ll predominantly using the term ‘font’.

This article is by no means exhaustive, but it should give you a better understanding of how fonts work.

What’s with the Quick Brown Fox?

Easy one. The Quick Brown Fox jumps over the Lazy Dog is a sample sentence that includes every letter of the (English) alphabet at least once. It’s an easy way of expressing what each letter will look like in a particular font.

Font Weighting and Style

These two are pretty simple. Font weighting refers to how thick the characters it contains are, or more exactly how thick the strokes of the characters are. For instance, a font can be regular, bold, or light; with regular (understandably) referring to the standard format of the font.

Style refers to the shaping of the font within the parameters of the typeface. Fonts can be italic (or oblique), condensed (or narrow), compressed, extended (or expanded), and so on. For instance, the characters from an italic font will all have a distinct slope. The characters from a condensed or narrow font have a narrower spacing than the standard spacing between them, while an extended or expanded font has wider spacings between its characters.

Font Families

There are two main families of fonts, of which most fall under- ‘serif’ (e.g., Times) and  ‘sans-serif’ (e.g., Calibri). Serifs are those little features that appear at the end of strokes within characters, so a font that belongs to the ‘serif’ family has these, whereas those that are aligned to the house of sans-serif, do not. (The font you’re likely reading this in is a prime example of a san-serif font.)

A general rule of thumb is that if you’re designing something for a screen then you should stick to sans-serif fonts, particularly for body text; however when it comes to print, you have a bit more flexibility. (Read more below)

Picking the right font for the occasion

Just as you wouldn’t (we’d hope) rock up to a black tie event in a singlet and thongs, you should always try to choose a typeface that fits the context of the work it exists in. For example, you probably wouldn’t want to write up an annual report in something cursive like Scriptina, because it would appear inappropriate and unprofessional to do so. (It would also be difficult to read). Think about who your target audience is, what sort of document/ text that you’re writing up. A good graphic designer will know what works, and what doesn’t.

For the love of Comic Sans (Accessibility)

When selecting fonts it’s important to consider accessibility. People who are visually impaired or those who experience conditions such as Dyslexia may find it difficult to read more elaborate, (often cursive) fonts. More than 2 Million Australians and over 15% of Americans are estimated to have dyslexia, meaning that there’s a reasonable chance that some portion of your audience will as well. Know your audience, and consider what their needs are. A good Graphic Designer will take these factors into account when drafting something up for you.

To optimise accessibility try to consider the following suggestions-

• Sans-serif fonts are preferred
• Clear letter spacing (letters should be distinct)
• Line spacing should be at least 1.5
• Font size should be at least 12-14pts
• All caps and underlining reduce readability
• Letter forms such as “p” and “q” should be distinct, and not mirror images of each other.

While we haven’t really touched on it in this article, it’s worth noting that colour also plays into the readability of fonts. Always try to go with a colour that contrasts with the background it’s set upon, and for the love of good design, never do rainbows. (Never.)

Make sure you nail your design choices every time. Our team is ready to help!