Create a Crowd—Advertising that is Worth the Wait

By Harlan West, Design and Marketing Professional with 25 years of experience designing materials for major healthcare organizations, municipalities and large corporations.

This is a follow-up to my previous blog, Harness the Power of Word of Mouth, posted on September 10, 2013. Actually I am amending that post where I wrote that the most powerful form of advertising is word-of mouth. Yes, I still believe it still is, but I would like to add “creating a crowd” as a great form of advertising.

Now this may seem obvious, but many people miss the fact that a line is actual advertising. In fact this is a phenomenal way to advertise a business. When people are waiting for food, more people will want it. It’s almost as if it were contagious.  GENERALLY THE ASSUMPTION IS THAT IF PEOPLE WILL WAIT FOR IT, IT MUST BE GOOD. Now don’t get me wrong, this doesn’t include food at the ballgame. It just pertains to food in regular restaurants, cupcakes or other short-order items. It might also apply to retail items such as a run on a new style of blue jeans, tennis shoes or a particular “must-have” toy for the holiday season, or tickets for a rock concert, pop star or latest movie phenomenon. When people see a line they are curious and want to find out more. We all want a piece of the action. A line is in your face and it gets noticed.  It’s peaks our curiosity.

Making people “wait” fosters anticipation and strengthens the desire to possess something that we can’t yet have. All of this is part of the psychology behind marketing decisions and our basic desires inherent in the purchasing of non-essential items.  In short, “producing a line” often translates into “positive buzz” and often increased sales.

After I wrote this blog, I actually happened to see a wonderful movie this weekend, called Chef, which illustrates this very point.

Is it not true that sometimes the longer we wait for something and the harder it is to get, the more we desire it? In other words, sometimes, a good marketing strategy can consist of playing “hard to get.”  It’s basically a the law of supply and demand.  If you tighten the supply channel for a product or service already in demand, in many but not all cases, the demand for a product will rise and so can the price.

Having a new recipe for a specialty item such as donuts, ice cream, or cupcakes can get people to wait in long lines for an item that is normally considered ordinary or commonplace.  We see these lines and wonder what is all the fuss?  We ask ourselves, “Maybe I need to try it to see what everyone is ‘buzzing’ about.”  In other words, I don’t the want to be left out, kind of like jumping on board with a politician who has momentum behind their campaign. No one wants to be associated with a loser but everyone wants to be part of a “winner.”

So the next time you see people in a long line (and not at the bank or DMV), ask yourself, “What is the merchant doing different to generate this type of demand?” More importantly, ask, “What are the unique selling points of their product or service and how does that differentiate and/or make it better than that of the competition?”

Make your customers line up at a visible place and you are sure to generate a following. The big issue is how do you create increased demand and hopefully create a crowd?

Some tips:

1. Create a completely “new” and never before heard of recipe or formula for a product or service.  It may also be a new process or way of doing business.
2. Limit supply.  It might be good to run out.  Then you can take orders for the next day.
3. Create an event around the release of a new product.  This may involve a costly advertising campaign that promotes “anticipation” as well as excitement
4. Create excitement around the line.  Give people something to talk about.  Generate press releases. Hand out samples and coupons to people waiting in line and hold contests. You might even try providing music and hiring a band to promote the experience. Make it a community experience.
5. Tie it in with a benefit for a local charity.  Maybe 2% -5 of profits could go to help a local non-profit foundation to give back to the community.  People will feel good about patronizing your establishment.
6. Maintain consistent quality and value and try to keep it “new” for as long as possible.
7. Use social media to develop events around a product and excitement.  Sending out Tweets and developing an active Facebook and Instagram following along with a blog will help to get people wondering and may even drive them to your business.

Create a line.  You will create “buzz” and more people may line-up to get your product or service.  It  will be a “crowd-pleaser.”

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If your company or organization needs an innovative or unique solution for a promotion or a marketing campaign, please contact HWDS at hwdesign@west.net.  We make beautiful things happen. To find out more, please visit westdesign.com.

Harlan West is the author of successfulcorporatecommunications.com and has been working as a creative director and design professional for more than 25 years and has designed and art directed hundred of publications for both print and online purposes.

Silver Marketing—75 Bold Ideas to Make Your Publications More Successful

By Harlan West, Design and Marketing Professional with 25 years of experience designing materials for major healthcare organizations, municipalities and large corporations.

I am proud to commemorate the publication of 75 blog posts! Celebrate with us by continuing to read our blog and encouraging your friends and colleagues to subscribe as well.  Here’s a list of the last 25 blog posts on our site. These constitute 25 unique ideas for making your marketing publications (online and print) more effective and hence successful.

 

Here’s 25 fabulous reasons since our 50th blog to keep reading, rereading and forwarding.  Each one of titles contains a link to the original article on our blog at  successfulcorporatecommunications.com.

75. Make Your Marketing Grow Green

74. A Great New Visual Effect for Beautifying Corporate Reports: Pairing Grayscale with Color Images

73. This Mother’s Day, Give Mom Flowers—By Design

72. Marketing Materials are More Effective When you “Paint” with Your Content

71. 23 Tips for Developing an Effective Park District/Recreational Catalog

70. Delivery: Too Often an Overlooked Piece of the Marketing Package

 69. Using the Influence of Art Deco Architecture to Add Elegance to a Publication

 68. Fashionable Design

 67. Avoid Milk Toast Marketing for the Masses

66. Why Retail is Dying a Slow and Painful Death

65. The Benefits of Press-Checking a Printed Publication

64. Flying Off the Web Press with 50,000 Quantity

63. Political Campaigns: Don’t Throw Your Hat in the Ring Without Effective Branding

62. A Well-Designed Interview About Design—Part II

61. A Well-Designed Interview About Design—Part I

60. Refreshing Your Newsletter is Like Getting a Car Wash

59. Why Small Businesses Need Newsletters for Effective Marketing

58. Why Doctor Groups and Healthcare Professionals Need Newsletters

57. Fly Higher with an Airline Newsletter

56. The Value of Transit Industry Newsletters

 55. How the Printing Industry Has Become Environmentally-Friendly

54. Look No Further for Inspiration

53. Paper Adds Weight to Your Marketing

52. Happy Halloween from Successful Corporate Communications!

51. 50 Reasons to Follow the Successful Corporate Communications Blog

Use these great ideas to grow your corporate marketing, design more effective publications, gather inspiration, use paper effectively, refresh your newsletter, develop effective recreational catalogs, make delivery services run smoothly, and to try new photo treatments.

Like silver, a precious metal which symbolizes a “75th anniversary, these 75 blog posts are precious tips for building successful corporate communications

 

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If your company or organization needs an innovative or unique design solution for an invitation, corporate report, newsletter or website, please contact HWDS at hwdesign@west.net.  We make beautiful things happen. To find out more please visit westdesign.com

Harlan West is the author of successfulcorporatecommunications.com and has been working as a creative director and design professional for more than 25 years and has designed and art directed hundred of publications for both print and online purposes.

 

Make Your Marketing Grow Green

By Harlan West, Design and Marketing Professional with more than 25 years of experience designing materials for major healthcare organizations, municipalities and large corporations.

The Power of Green: Green Can Grow Your Marketing Campaign

It’s time to look at color as an important factor in corporate communications. Since it’s still spring, let’s use the color green to spice up our marketing campaigns.

Designing with green

Some words that come to mind when using a bright green color include: freshness, spring, life, St. Patrick’s Day, gardens, plants, thrive, growth, rebirth, health, lime, vegetables, recycling, sustainability, “go”, moving ahead, and environmentally friendly.

Here’s some ideas:

A Great New Visual Effect for Beautifying Corporate Reports: Pairing Grayscale with Color Images

By Harlan West, Design and Marketing Professional with more than 25 years of experience designing materials for major healthcare organizations, municipalities and large corporations.

 

I did not realize the true beauty that black and white photos can have when they are placed on top of color backgrounds. This effect can really heighten the contrast of an otherwise drab photo.  In the photo of the kiwi below I also added an overlay translucent layer of the color on top of the black and white image.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Additionally, I employed some special effects that included knocking out the background to isolate the image, increasing the contrast of the black and white image, layering the grayscale image to give added richness of tone, adding warm gray tones to the black and white image, building gradient of color behind the image and then including translucent patterns of that same color on top of the background.

This Mother’s Day, Give Mom Flowers—By Design

By Harlan West, Design and Marketing Professional with more than 25 years of experience designing materials for major healthcare organizations, municipalities and large corporations.

 

The other day, I was at the car wash and discovered an interesting photography effect using closeups of flowers which appeared on greeting cards. I felt that this effect could be duplicated and modified using layering effects from Adobe Photoshop. It gave me an idea for this coming Mother’s Day.

Here’s (3) samples of what I came up with…

Marketing Materials are More Effective When you “Paint” with Your Content

By Harlan West, Design and Marketing Professional with more than 25 years of experience designing materials for major healthcare organizations, municipalities and large corporations.

This week I met an interesting landscape designer who creates drought-tolerant gardens with a wilder more natural feeling. While we were discussing a new garden at my home, she made a very interesting point. She arranges plants or as she says, “I paint with plants.”  In short, she creates a visual masterpiece by painting with the subject matter.

With respect to corporate communications, we basically paint with a non-paint medium. As designers, we paint with puzzles and pieces and patterns. You can try this by finding a natural resource that is related to the theme of your product or service and then “painting” or designing with it to give a lush feel to your publication.

PAINTING WITH PATTERNS

Here’s some elements that provide great design enhancements:

 

23 Tips for Developing an Effective Park District/Recreational Catalog

By Harlan West, Design and Marketing Professional with more than 25 years of experience designing materials for major healthcare organizations, municipalities and large corporations.

 

I often receive park district catalogs and recreational catalogs in the mail. Having designed several of these magazines, I would like to relay some suggestions to my readers:

 

 

In order to develop an effective park district/recreational catalog you should have:

Delivery: Too Often an Overlooked Piece of the Marketing Package

By Harlan West, Design and Marketing Professional with more than 25 years of experience designing materials for major healthcare organizations, municipalities and large corporations.

 

Too often a publication can be beautifully designed and printed but the delivery goes a-rye and makes the project a complete failure. For instance, I once had a client use a very high-end marketing kit for a press conference on a huge federally subsidized underground railroad system.  We designed a beautiful promotional kit for the event. At the event were to be lots of VIPs including U.S. Congressmen, Senators and various other federal, state and local government officials.  All steps were taken to ensure that this was an exquisite piece with optimum print quality, a press check, aqueous coating and a special spot color plate.  No expense was spared and no corners were cut. The piece looked great.

Then came the delivery…

Unfortunately the final delivery was attempted but the driver took a wrong turn and arrived at the venue after the event occurred. Needless to say the client was quite embarrassed due to the actions of one individual in the mix. Luckily we did not hire the printer but had merely provided the names of several good local printers. Nonetheless, everyone looked bad since the end-product was basically rendered useless.

Here’s some very simple suggestions to avoid delivery disaster:

1. Be sure to ask the client, “Is there a hard deadline such as a conference, board meeting or other public gathering?” Always request projects back from a printer at least a day or two before the actual event.  Waiting till the morning of an event for the delivery is just too late.  You don’t want to end up with egg on your face!

Using the Influence of Art Deco Architecture to Add Elegance to a Publication

By Harlan West, Design and Marketing Professional with more than 25 years of experience designing materials for major healthcare organizations, municipalities and large corporations.

 

At HWDS we often draw inspiration for our designs from the art deco architecture of the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s. Its craft motif style drew from the age of machinery and features symmetrically designed patterns of geometric shapes and intricate ornamentation. Repetition of graphical shapes is a key element of the art deco architectural movement.  Colors often consist of pastels including pinks and teals as well as the use of silver and platinum. Its rich patterning of repetitive lines and shapes make it  the source of wonderful elements for logo design and border treatments.

Here you will find some samples of art deco architecture, most notably seen in the Chrysler building, far right, in New York City.

 

A great place to see art deco architecture is South Beach, Florida.  South Beach, also known as SoBe is actually a neighborhood in the city of Miami Beach.  It probably has the largest number of remaining art deco buildings in the United States.  Certainly it has the largest number of art deco hotels in the northern hemisphere. The repeating shapes founds in some of these building can be wonderful elements for  corporate logo designs. A spectacular book of SoBe architecture is Deco Delights, Preserving the Beauty and Joy of Miami Beach Architecture by Barbara Baer Capitman with photographs by Steven Brooke. Prints from the book are available at Steven Brooke’s website.

Other examples of art deco architecture can be seen in intricate mosaic patterns in the architecture of Europe where majestic fortresses were built with curved  plaster patterns.

Art deco typically uses these design elements:

1) Symmetry—A very symmetrical, balanced design resonates through the architecture.  Doors and windows are arrayed uniformly, cohesively and identically throughout the structure.

2) Lines—Beautiful, strong lines flow though the exterior of the structure and often serve as a decorative motif.  These can often be seen in balconies and the fascia of the building.  Often these lines are decorated with bands of silver metal or platinum.

3) Repetition—Geometric shapes and lines are echoed throughout the building and often repeated several times. These can be both in the exterior and interior of the structure.  This repetition can also be seen in doorways, windows, balconies and decorative elements.

4) Rhythm—Here decorative elements are arranged in a symphonic harmony.  The art deco era is characteristic of a style with incredible energy with bold colorful, geometric shapes and intense rhythm where the repetition of elements crates an atmospheric harmony throughout the building.

5) Pattern—Art deco structures frequently have patterns of mosaics, waves and symmetry arrayed in the design.

6) Color—Art deco architecture frequently used light neutral colors with the addition of silver and gold accents that were combined with sand, gray, beige and peach walls.  Pastels were also frequently used.

Fashionable Design

By Harlan West, Design and Marketing Professional with more than 25 years of experience designing materials for major healthcare organizations, municipalities and large corporations.

Create your next marketing piece in the best of fashion.

Here’s a great concept. Try drawing inspiration from the latest designs in fashion. pinstripe, polka a dots, plaids, turtlenecks, denim—these make wonderful design elements.

 

How about the stylish face of a watch? Watches have elegant ally designed stylish faces in rich platinum, gold or silver. I saw one watch in a magazine with a face in cobalt blue and hands in copper.  This would make quite a sharp graphical element.

Tie one on
Men’s ties, women’s scarfs and leather belts can make great backgrounds. Try scanning and colorizing the pattern.

It’s in the jeans
Even denim and the folds of cotton t-shirts can make for interesting textural elements.

Top it off with a little drama
Hats are like the cherry on a chocolate sundae. They provide dramatic angles for wrapping text around.

Look around you. Fabric stores, fashion magazines, clothing stores, accessory stores make great places to find patterns and new inspiration for artwork.
Here’s some samples of polka dots, paisley and plaids as aesthetic elements in a newsletter.

Is your marketing campaign in style?  Why not add a flair of fashion direct from a Paris runway?

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If your company needs an innovative or unique design solution, please contact HWDS at hwdesign@west.net.  We make beautiful things happen. To find out more please visit westdesign.com

Harlan West is the author of successfulcorporatecommunications.com and has been working as a creative director and design professional for more than 25 years and has designed and art directed hundred of publications for both print and online purposes.