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This is my concluding post on Simplicity in Marketing
Why Experts Matter
A qualified corporate messaging process drives the dialog so that the visuals, language and information hierarchies are designed in concert with the product or service. Thoughtful design of content should begin earlier than many corporate executives and entrepreneurs believe. It isn’t just make-up to apply after the real thinking’s done. When experienced content designers are part of a strategic planning team, they can influence explanations for greatest success. They can provide the context to build the relationships between breakthrough ideas and the way they are expressed to the people who will buy them.
Whether homegrown or outsourced, your business needs a team dedicated to scanning for patterns and trends, and forging connections between ideas. They will also facilitate the integration across mediums that will bring together the systems, structures and processes in such a way that choices and solutions are connected, linked and cross-sold. A great marketing team is the liaison between the products of business and the minds of the consumer. It must understand both before it can serve
either.
Particularly in this tight labor pool, a competent external marketing partner can be as important to business success as financial and legal counsel. Assuming a venture has an innovative product idea and business model, a great executive team and enough financing to get traction, it still needs the packaging that will take it to market effectively. An experienced agency (like us) can provide critical bandwidth and brainwidth extensions to ensure that a company’s look, feel and messaging resonate the personality an enterprise wishes to own in the marketplace.
Blending Online and Offline Worlds
Although brands and identities must be integrated, many messages that work great in print suck on web pages. This is a topic onto itself, but here’s the top layer.
Print requires great attention to one-dimensional design and layout. Each view is a discrete canvas. Information elements are static and can explain and enhance each other predictably. Web pages, on the other hand, are a dynamic scrolling experience that place greater significance on navigational feel. Relationships between information components are fleeting.
Print can be visually stunning and still accommodate substantial text. It appeals to the eyes. Web pages are compelling for their interactive engagement as much as their content. They appeal to the hands. Why does everyone need to print stuff out? It is actually quite difficult to read online (never mind the iPads and the eReaders.)
The infinite navigational dimensions of the web, current bandwidth limitations and differing desktop environments mandate fewer and smaller graphics, shorter text and simpler typography. While effective print design is grounded in highly refined best practices, web design is still infantile, with huge upside for marketers who get the interactive value and simplicity thing figured out.
To be successful in today’s energetic marketplaces, companies must project a integrated message across all communication materials – corporate identity, packaging, advertising, promotions and web presence. Companies must quickly amalgamate all of their core messages into a single, powerfully unique selling proposition in order to convince impatient, value-minded consumers. But the approach must be optimized for the delivery channel. The implementation techniques are very different.
Why Simplicity is Paramount
Simple means clear, consistent and easy to find. It all starts with leaders who aren’t afraid to think independently. To explore and map new ways through unchartered physical and virtual spaces so that people, actions and events can be connected in creative, compelling ways. It ends with those same leaders being willing to hear and communicate truth. It involves calculated risks. It requires the insight and courage to involve communication specialists in the development of business strategy.
The leader’s objective is to build a “landmark,” not just become “scenery” in a target market. Landmarks are easy to spot, but often endure on the basis of considerable underlying complexity. They don’t necessarily have to be large in stature, but they must be unique in appearance. They are always enduring and prominent. They are obvious.
The return on simplification is huge. By providing the right information the right way at the right time, messages resonate and trigger responses that deliver actual sales and maximize valuation. By distilling content, leaders are able to spend less to build and sustain differentiated brands. Investing in a singular positive image that is optimized for each medium has leveragable impact across the company’s entire portfolio.
Why Experts Matter
A qualified corporate messaging process drives the dialog so that the visuals, language and information hierarchies are designed in concert with the product or service. Thoughtful design of content should begin earlier than many corporate executives and entrepreneurs believe. It isn’t just make-up to apply after the real thinking’s done. When experienced content designers are part of a strategic planning team, they can influence explanations for greatest success. They can provide the context to build the relationships between breakthrough ideas and the way they are expressed to the people who will buy them.
Whether homegrown or outsourced, your business needs a team dedicated to scanning for patterns and trends, and forging connections between ideas. They will also facilitate the integration across mediums that will bring together the systems, structures and processes in such a way that choices and solutions are connected, linked and cross-sold. A great marketing team is the liaison between the products of business and the minds of the consumer. It must understand both before it can serve
either.
Particularly in this tight labor pool, a competent external marketing partner can be as important to business success as financial and legal counsel. Assuming a venture has an innovative product idea and business model, a great executive team and enough financing to get traction, it still needs the packaging that will take it to market effectively. An experienced agency (like us) can provide critical bandwidth and brainwidth extensions to ensure that a company’s look, feel and messaging resonate the personality an enterprise wishes to own in the marketplace.
Blending Online and Offline Worlds
Although brands and identities must be integrated, many messages that work great in print suck on web pages. This is a topic onto itself, but here’s the top layer.
Print requires great attention to one-dimensional design and layout. Each view is a discrete canvas. Information elements are static and can explain and enhance each other predictably. Web pages, on the other hand, are a dynamic scrolling experience that place greater significance on navigational feel. Relationships between information components are fleeting.
Print can be visually stunning and still accommodate substantial text. It appeals to the eyes. Web pages are compelling for their interactive engagement as much as their content. They appeal to the hands. Why does everyone need to print stuff out? It is actually quite difficult to read online (never mind the iPads and the eReaders.)
The infinite navigational dimensions of the web, current bandwidth limitations and differing desktop environments mandate fewer and smaller graphics, shorter text and simpler typography. While effective print design is grounded in highly refined best practices, web design is still infantile, with huge upside for marketers who get the interactive value and simplicity thing figured out.
To be successful in today’s energetic marketplaces, companies must project a integrated message across all communication materials – corporate identity, packaging, advertising, promotions and web presence. Companies must quickly amalgamate all of their core messages into a single, powerfully unique selling proposition in order to convince impatient, value-minded consumers. But the approach must be optimized for the delivery channel. The implementation techniques are very different.
Why Simplicity is Paramount
Simple means clear, consistent and easy to find. It all starts with leaders who aren’t afraid to think independently. To explore and map new ways through unchartered physical and virtual spaces so that people, actions and events can be connected in creative, compelling ways. It ends with those same leaders being willing to hear and communicate truth. It involves calculated risks. It requires the insight and courage to involve communication specialists in the development of business strategy.
The leader’s objective is to build a “landmark,” not just become “scenery” in a target market. Landmarks are easy to spot, but often endure on the basis of considerable underlying complexity. They don’t necessarily have to be large in stature, but they must be unique in appearance. They are always enduring and prominent. They are obvious.
The return on simplification is huge. By providing the right information the right way at the right time, messages resonate and trigger responses that deliver actual sales and maximize valuation. By distilling content, leaders are able to spend less to build and sustain differentiated brands. Investing in a singular positive image that is optimized for each medium has leveragable impact across the company’s entire portfolio.
So go ahead: make your long, long story short and bring your brand alive.
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