Against the Grain: Advertising

If we’ve learned anything from our celebrity-obsessed, reality-TV-addicted and perpetually young culture, it’s that maintaining your image is critical to remaining relevant. A fresh look can be just what a company needs to attract a new audience or keep an existing one. Here are some things to think about when considering updating your brand identity.

• Only refresh the identity because of actual changes in the business, not just because you feel like it.
• Be sure the changes you make don’t affect existing customers’ brand loyalties.
• Get an idea of what customers want and what they have come to expect from your brand. Measure their perceptions of your business and incorporate what they like about your company into the new identity.
• Approach the refresh realistically.
  • You may not have the budget for an entire revamp.
  • You can do small tweaks overtime.
  • Make sure you do what works best for your company.
• Accordingly, your refresh may have to work with the old identity, meaning it will have to fit with your current look without alarming the customer.
• Involve and educate the whole company in the refresh process. This way, employees will understand the reasons behind the change, which helps to create consistency and recognition.

There are a lot of factors to think about when considering your brand identity. Trilix’s creative and account teams can help you figure out what is best for your company.

I love stories – any kind – whether they’re found in the pages of a book or newspaper, flickering from a movie screen or being told aloud. It doesn’t matter if I have heard them a thousand times; stories have the ability to fill me with a renewed sense of wonder and intrigue. It is that passion, that connection and commitment to storytelling that propelled me, and many of my colleagues, to work in advertising.

I find that many of my co-workers share the same passion for their work as I do for words – and we are lucky. We are able to merge what we love to do, with what we do at our jobs everyday. We don’t leave our passion at the door – it extends into our outside interests. By reading a new novel, sketching greeting cards, networking or perusing the ever-evolving world of social media in our spare time, we are expanding our knowledge and discovering new ways to enhance our talents.

These pursuits of our individual passions help us collectively bring innovative ideas and deliver superior results to our clients.

In today’s world, where conversations are shared across multiple platforms at the click of a button, you can spread your brand’s marketing message to your target audiences easier than ever before. Whether you use traditional outlets or embrace social media, make sure that your brand’s message stays consistent across all communications platforms.

Here are a few things you should consider:

• Develop a few key marketing messages. Identify your top products and services and explain what distinguishes them from your competition. Create talking points to help your customers understand how they will benefit from your products or services. Review and update your key messages regularly to share recent data, support marketing campaigns and promote new products or services.
• Maintain your image. Visual branding is an important part of your integrated marketing communications plan because your logo, print collateral and website design tells your company’s story. Create a style guide specifying fonts, logo sizes and color schemes to keep a consistent look. You should also incorporate your visual branding on all official communications, e.g., newsletters, press releases and your company’s Twitter background and Facebook profile picture. When you create a consistent look, people will begin to automatically associate your visual branding with your company.
• Get the word out. Don’t shy away from social media! It is a powerful communication tool that allows you to support your traditional marketing efforts and listen and interact with your target audience online. You can tailor your communications to fit an online forum but the key messages should stay the same. Remember, when you communicate via social media, you are representing your brand online so always be transparent, respond promptly and be respectful of others’ opinions.

Integrated marketing campaigns allow you to use traditional and online media platforms to reach your target audiences. Keep your messaging consistent across all communication channels to raise awareness about your products and services to create a stronger brand.

If advertising was a true science, it would be easy to evaluate the effectiveness of a media campaign by measuring points and metrics like impressions, click-throughs, reach and frequency. However, advertising is part art as well, and “soft” factors—like added value promotions—must be taken into consideration when evaluating a campaign’s overall success.

Trilix’s media team works hard to build lasting relationships with advertising sales representatives, and this can help them negotiate added value opportunities into each media buy. Trilix’s media buyers involve their sales reps in the planning process to maximize their clients’ advertising dollars, and in exchange, the media buyers are able to provide programming and promotional suggestions to increase deliverables and “soft” factors in their clients’ campaigns.

Some of the “soft” factors include:

• Live remotes and/or event sponsorships that can highlight clients’ products or services, and can be incorporated into promotional contests and giveaways.           
• News and weather sponsorships, and other on-air mentions, that can add reach and frequency but is not factored into the metrics.
• Social media promotions that are a cost-effective way to engage target audiences.
• Bonus spots, logo IDs, and banner ads that are just some of the added value opportunities that Trilix’s media buyers can negotiate on their clients’ behalf.

Trilix’s media team understands their clients’ key messages, target audiences and overall objectives, and creates custom advertising schedules based on their budgets. Trilix’s media buyers can help negotiate value added promotions and great rates to maximize your advertising dollars and the impact of your company’s next campaign. To learn more, email info@trilixgroup.com.

In our day-to-day life at Trilix, we all do some form of writing or designing. Today, Trilix sat down with production manager (also known as proofreading extraordinaire), Leng Vong, to gather some of her editing knowledge.

Trilix: What is your process for proofing something?
Leng: First, I prioritize the projects. Then, I look at the piece as one big picture. I ask myself, “What is the purpose of this piece?” “Who is the audience?” “What is the message trying to convey?” Once I figure out the big picture, I read over the whole piece once to look for obvious errors. Then, I make sure to look at it once more to make sure I didn’t miss anything.

Trilix: Why is proofing something so important in our business?
Leng: In our business, we are helping our clients tell their message to their audience. We need to make sure that nothing goes out of our doors with errors, typos or inconsistency.

Trilix: What advice would you give a PR professional, designer or copywriter?
Leng: I would tell them to look over their own work and double check everything. Sometimes it helps to take a step back from the project and come back to it later. Also, people need to make sure to research the client, projects and previous examples. It’s also important to know the messaging, language and tones to provide consistency.

Trilix: What are your biggest pet-peeves in proofing?
Leng: Misused hyphens, the wrong use of dashes and extra spaces!

Trilix: What error do you see the most?
Leng: I see the wrong use of dashes, extra spaces, the wrong forms of words and run on sentences the most when I proof something.

Leng’s other tips –

• Try reading the sentence backwards. It helps misspelled words stand out.
• Read one word at a time, instead of the whole sentence. This trick also helps misspelled words stand out.

Thanks, Leng! I think we can all say we learned a lot today.