One of the Key Electrical logo variants

Any small business owner will agree that it is vitally important to spend your marketing budget wisely, in times of economic uncertainty this is especially true. Finding the right balance between spending too much and devoting sufficient resources to effective and professional marketing has never been more important.

Often SMEs and new businesses will try to save money by producing their own design and marketing materials, while in some cases this can pay dividends we cannot recommend it for all small businesses.

After-all every brochure, advertisement, and business card that you pass out plays an important role in establishing the image of your company. The same is true of your company’s logo and website. The design skills and techniques used to create your company’s marketing materials establish your company’s corporate identity, so why would you risk sending out the wrong message by relying on amateur graphic design work to represent your business.

The benefits your business will receive from professional logo design are

• professional image
• make your business stand out from the competition
• confirm credibility
• design longevity

So when Wigan based electrical engineering company Key Electrical Ltd. decided it was time to update their old logo they turned to Creative Mixed Media’s designer Barry Jackson for inspiration. The brief was to create a simple logo that represented the company,s core business, it must be effective without colour and contain a design element which could be used effectively on its own to represent the company, The final design would form the basis for stationary marketing materials and vehicle graphics.

logo development ideas

After initial consultation with Key electrical managing director Brian Plunkett, Barry produced a number of design ideas in sketch form. From these it soon became clear that the company name built around a stylized bulb motif would fit the brief perfectly. This idea was then developed further using a vector based illustration program, working only in black and white at this stage of the design ensures that the logo will look good in its simplest form. The final stage was to colour the logo and then incorporate it into stationary designs.

Final design incorporated into letterhead and business card

If you haven’t had your ‘lightbulb moment’ yet, and are struggling with a design that strengthens the image of your business just get in touch.

Restaurant[mappress

With a new hotel to promote, Sales Manager – for the Ramada Plaza, Southport – Georgia Hayes has her work cut out. With a ‘new build’ hotel like this, how do you get people around the world aware of the hotel, how it looks and how it feels to stay there? We hope to contribute in some part by making the images we have shot of the hotel viewable, down-loadable and usable – by way of a ‘Creative Commons Licence’ – to a global audience. Putting the images at high resolution on our Flickr account with Tags and Links should help anyone who is looking for images of Southport find the images and use them. If they appear in any features illustrating Southport, so much the better.

This is a new approach we are taking with our images whereby the intention is to have as many eyes looking at the clients approved images of their product as we can. In the past many photographers instincts have been to closely guard and restrict the use of images. However, for some purposes this approach may be counter productive and not always serve the clients best needs. We will not always give our copyright away but for some clients in some situations this may have major benefits. You can see a larger range of images on our account at Flickr.

If you want to find out more about how you could benefit from having images of your product or service take advantage of these techniques call us or send an email. We will be very happy to talk to tell you more.
[mappress] ]]> http://creativemixedmedia.com/new-ramada-plaza-and-new-marketing-tools/feed/ 0 http://creativemixedmedia.com/princes-trust-event/ http://creativemixedmedia.com/princes-trust-event/#comments Wed, 03 Dec 2008 09:08:06 +0000 admin http://www.creativemixedmedia.com/?p=763 During the ‘Children in Need’ 2007 campaign, Martin Ainscough generously bid for the services of Aled Jones and Katie Melua for an evening of entertainment. Martin quickly offered the services of Aled and Katie to the Princes Trust who, in turn, organised a marvelous charity event in Cheshire billed as ‘An Evening with Aled and Katie’. We were booked to cover the event by Southport PR company ‘Concept Communications’. MD of Concept Communications, Margaret Tarpey wrote a great testimonial which was especially well received by us because of Margaret’s experience in the industry.

Email from Concept Communications

Katie Melua

Aled Jones performing on stage

Rachael, Judith and Martin Ainscough

Jenny McAlpine and Antony Cotton

William Roach MBE and Sarah Roach

Joanne Rowden and Sarah Jane Buckley (Holyoaks)

Katie Beckham, Margaret Tarpey and Aled Jones

Andrew Donaldson, Dean Sullivan and Jane Casson

(L-R) Kim Hodgson (Ladies Champion) Philippa James (Ambassador for Pennine Lancashire Festival of Food & Culture) and Daniel Carr (Mens Champion) World Gravy Wrestling Championships - The Rose and Bowl Pub, Bacup - 25th August 2008 - Image © Creative Mixed Media 2008 - www.creativemixedmedia.co.uk

Philippa joins the judges panel and does her fair share of ‘ogling’ the greasy bodies. This is the latest edition of a series of videos that we have done with Philippa called Philippa’s Kitchen. Others can be viewed on our YouTube Channel here.

The World Gravy Wrestling Championships is part of the Pennine Lancashire Festival of Food and Culture. Enjoy.

Note:

If you have a fast internect connection click onto the button in the botton right hand corner of the video screen you can select the HQ (High Quality) option that will give you a better quality of video.

Working with a presenter like Simon, we can set up a temporary studio on your premises and record several such sales sessions in a day allowing you to have the power of such online selling techniques right there on your web site under your control. For the right products, these sales techniques really work.

David Kirkwood

Northern Lights clients were treated to an inspirational talk by leading creative consultant and internet marketeer Dave Kirkwood on Tuesday 12th August 2008. Dave, who was part of the team who launched laterooms.com, gave the audience some accounts of his career highlights so far. Dave also gave a quick guide to what businesses should be looking at if they want to be effective with their marketing efforts.

We must hold up our hands here and confess that Dave has been giving some mentoring help to Creative Mixed Media. We have been busy soaking up his advice for a couple of months now and it really has enlivened, focused and transformed our business.

Northern Lights Audience

Virtual tour movies offer some really useful features in helping people to visualise a location. A few years ago when my wife and I were looking to book a holiday cottage up on the North East coast, we were overwhelmed by the numbers of places on offer. Some had wonderful sounding locations but few images to offer any real information. The holiday cottage brochure we were trawling through mentioned its companion web site and the fact that some of the properties had ‘virtual tours’. A quick look on the internet, and we immediately decided to cut down our choice to those offering virtual tours. After that the decision making process moved on rapidly and we had the feeling that we were having a good nosey around the cottages. When we arrived on holiday, we really felt familiar with the place; the technology had done its job.

So, I have finally got around to perfecting the technique and offering this service to our clients. I know its been around a while, but I really feel that this technology helps people get a feel for a location. Its interactive, so they can look where they want. On the website of a hotel, estate agent, indeed anywhere where showing someone around a space will help bring it to life, I think it is a wonderful marketing tool. 

Click on the image below to have a look around the Northern Lights open plan office in Uclan. Hold your mouse button down whilst you drag it across the window to rotate the image. If you want to zoom in or out use the shift and control keys respectively.

If you can see the potential for your business get in contact with us. The movie requires Quicktime player to work; if you haven’t got it installed on your machine you really should have. It’s really easy to instal and can be downloaded by clicking here or clicking on the download button at the end of this post.

To rove around the images, hold your left mouse button down and move it across the image left or right. Use the shift and control keys to zoom in and out respectively.

Below is the 4th Floor corridor of the Media Factory, Uclan, Preston

So, in short, Web 2.0 does not represent any change to the specification to the internet, just the way it is being used and new tools that enable this.

I believe that Eric Schmidt has been credited with the adage “don’t fight the internet”. This sums it up perfectly for me; you cannot fight against what the internet naturally achieves. Connectivity, communication, accessibility to information and ability to copy and repurpose information with ease are all things that have changed our world forever. It is only at this stage of the evolution of the internet that we are learning to put all these ‘elements’ together to make them work for us. The exciting thing is that it continually develops in a seemingly organic way. The old ways of doing things, the old models of advertising and marketing that have been the norm for the last few decades, don’t necessarily transpose to this new medium. It is only now that we are learning how they work. And, sure enough, once you think that you have it sorted, some new widget comes along to change it all again. Getting on in the Web 2.0 world and using it to your advantage means having to embrace this and put some effort in.

SDC’s Production of ‘Party To Murder’, originally uploaded by Creative Mixed Media.

I have now added my selection of images from ‘Party To Murder’ which was staged in April this year. This is part of an ongoing project to make as many of the images that I have taken at The Little Theatre in Southport available to the cast. If you are part of SDC and want to view or download any of the images contact me at creativemixedmedia@mac.com or add a comment. If you want to know more about this please read my earlier post. – Neil Hickson

To see what is available so far click here.