We’ve had a great year over here at Rains | Birchard Marketing; we changed our name, our logo, our website and even gained a number of clients we’ve all been thrilled to work with. We’re excited to see what 2013 will bring and anticipate even more opportunities on the horizon. Special thanks to all of our lovely clients for making 2012 such a fun and rewarding year! And now, our list of highlights:

Creative work often must be reviewed by someone other than the individual directing and managing the project.  You should ensure that reviewer has been properly briefed so they are qualified to comment on the work.

Good creative work doesn’t just happen.  It’s the result of a collaborative effort on the part of the marketing agency and the client contact.  But, oftentimes a decision maker other than the client contact must give their final approval prior to project completion.  Unfortunately, these final reviewers aren’t always qualified to make comments or pass judgement on the fitness of a project.  Everyone’s heard a version of a story involving the boss’ wife reviewing creative work at the final hour and finding fault because she simply “doesn’t like it”.

In the wife story example, the reason she doesn’t like the work is she’s not in the target audience and doesn’t know the motivation for the particular creative.  Her husband (the boss) showing her the piece failed to properly brief her on how to review the piece.  In the normal business environment, this same scenario plays out as well, but it’s more often a VP of Sales or a Director, the President of the company or even the owner.  That person has not been involved in the process of creating the creative work and their subordinate often doesn’t give them the proper context within which to view the work in order to render judgement.

There is also an element of selling when presenting creative work that needs to take place.  Creative is subjective, can be perceived as risky, and granting final approval often means the approval of significant costs.  So, the presenter needs to keep these factors in mind.  At the final review stage, it is critically important to preface the presentation with an overview of the project goals, the target audience for the piece, any mandatory requirements influencing the design (such as legal compliance) and the medium in which the work will appear.  Only with the proper frame of reference and insight into the reason why creative decisions were made can the reviewer provide informed feedback.

To help in getting the approval you seek, engage your full service marketing firm.  They’ll be happy to present the work with you to your decision maker.  Or just be there for “moral support” if you need it.  If you and your agency have both done your job well, you’ll be equally invested in seeing the work approved and be able to defend your creative choices.  Partnership in this regard can ultimately lead to better creative work and fulfillment of the project goals.

The Elevator Pitch is an exercise that will make a business focus on its value proposition.  Sharing it with your full service marketing firm gets you off to a good start.

I often ask new clients to give me their elevator pitch. I’ve yet to meet a prospective client with a concise pitch prepared.  I actually don’t expect them to, but the reason I ask is to get the client thinking about their value proposition.

I’m digging for insight into what, in their mind, makes them different from their competitors.  What will get busy potential customers to care about whatever it is you’re selling?  The Elevator Pitch puts your entire value proposition into a brief, rehearsed statement without jargon, that could be delivered in 30 to 60 seconds.  The Elevator Pitch also evolves as your business does, so plan on reworking it occasionally.

My clients often know the minutia of their business operations, and therefore can have difficulty articulating what makes their business unique in a concise way.  So part of what I do is help them distill their many features and benefits down to the one or two key points that truly make them stand apart from their competitors.  With those defined, we can start to build good marketing strategy.

A good marketing strategy is the foundation for success.  So, to get started on the road to success, develop an Elevator Pitch and then share it with your full service marketing firm during one of your initial meetings.  If it’s a good pitch, your agency will be excited and the hope is good creative will be the result.

Here are some resources for help in creating your own elevator pitch:

Mastering an Elevator Pitch from Inc.

The Perfect Elevator Pitch from Businessweek

10 Tips for a Great Elevator Pitch

Retainers have many advantages that have kept them a popular compensation method for professional services.  Here are five reasons they are a smart way to work with a full service marketing firm.

Like any business, a marketing agency needs to be profitable in order to stay in business and be a reliable resource for their clients.  Compensation methods are many and varied, but a retainer relationship as all or part of the financial arrangement you have with a marketing agency is something you should explore.  If the agency doesn’t bring it up, you should ask if it is something they offer.  Here are five reasons why Rains | Birchard Marketing thinks retainers are a smart way to do business with us:

1. Budget for your marketing expenses.  In many cases, clients will have a fairly consistent level of needs over the course of a year, and the costs to meet these needs can be accurately projected. Assigning a fixed fee, or retainer to this work allows a client to easily budget for the majority of their marketing expenses while also allowing the agency to forecast revenue.

2. Proactive thinking on your behalf.  Marketing is rarely a stationary endeavor; what keeps your business’ brand at the forefront of your customers’ mind is creative action.  By retaining your marketing agency, you give them the freedom to explore creative ideas that may never be finalized but would result in billable hours.  Without a retainer for the agency to bill this time to, you’ll likely not want to pay for this exploratory work, but it can sometimes lead to the most innovative and successful marketing ideas.

3.  No dis-incentive to call the agency.  Retainers foster positive ongoing relationships between the client and agency by allowing the agency to quickly act upon requests or opportunities for the client without awaiting budget approval.  And as the client, you don’t need to feel like “the meter is running” every time you call or e-mail the agency.

4. You’re at the front of the line.  You have priority within the agency over those clients who do not have a retainer.  Simply put, you’re a preferred customer pre-paying for services so you get served first.

5. Get a better deal. If a client is willing to commit to a retainer, the agency is often willing to offer somewhat reduced rates in exchange for the commitment.  Buying in bulk gives you some negotiating power.

Businesses wanting to maximize their marketing spend often opt to cut out a photography budget in favor of stock photos.  But this ends up being a penny wise and a dollar foolish.

Our agency used to have good working relationships with a number of photographers and would routinely manage photo shoots for our clients.  Everything from in-studio product shots to staged locations with hired talent.  Design often needs photos and the old adage that a “picture is worth a thousand words” still holds true.  However, what has happened is now the pictures often tend to be low-cost stock photos purchased online.

Stock photography has been available for a long time, and can be very useful if you need something like a photo of the Eiffel Tower and don’t have the budget to fly to Paris to photograph it.  But the advent of low-cost, royalty-free stock photography from sources like istockphoto.com, shutterstock.com and bigstockphoto.com has changed design and marketing.  What once cost several thousand dollars and would take days of planning and execution was quickly reduced to a downloadable image for ten bucks or less.  Granted the stock photo isn’t exclusively yours and often isn’t perfect, but the cost and time savings outweigh even the most ardent pro-photo shoot arguments.  The result is a nice marketing piece that may have great overall design, concise copy and be on-strategy, but has been executed using a stock image.

With their wide spread use, consumers have become well-trained at spotting stereotypical stock photos in marketing materials.  By and large stock photos look disingenuous, fake and staged.  You can tell subconsciously that they’re stock because real photos you see every day don’t have the same feel.  And some stock photographers have become so successful and prolific that the same model appears in countless hundreds or thousands of images.

You’ve see this guy so often that you probably already recognize him.

And that’s the fundamental problem with stock photos – they don’t differentiate your business’ product or service from your competitors.

By using stock photos you save some money up front, but the effectiveness of your marketing will be impacted.  Potential customers will gloss over your marketing because it looks “salesy” with the overt use of stock photos.  Differentiating yourself with bespoke photography is a valuable way to get your customers to stop and take notice.  Your images don’t have to be just photos either, we use a consistent illustration style for all of the main images that appear in this blog allowing us to stand out while reinforcing our branding over time.

So, if you’re looking to differentiate your marketing, consider budgeting for photography or custom illustration.  This is one of the smartest investments you can make to help your business stand out.

No, the logo you copied from your website won’t work for print.  Here’s a quick overview of image resolution to help you more effectively work with your marketing agency.

All images are made up of tiny squares of color called pixels.*  The clarity of an image results from how big the pixels are relative to how closely you view them.  Resolution is in fact just a description of the density of pixels; typically described by the number of pixels per inch (ppi).

Images used in print should be 300 ppi (though this is often interchanged with dots per inch [dpi] it is not exactly the same thing). For images that will be viewed on a screen, such as a website, the resolution of an image is typically 72 pixels per inch.  However, new high-res displays are changing this rule, like Apple’s new iPad boasting a screen with 264 ppi.  The size of the pixels help determine the clarity of the image, the more pixels per inch, the sharper the image.  The new iPad for instance touts a “Retina Display” with pixels so small you can’t discern one from another at a typical viewing distance of 18 inches or so.  But the same is true of a Jumbotron in a sports stadium.  The actual pixels may be almost a foot square, but when viewed from the other side of a stadium, your eye sees a complete image and not individual color blocks.

So density of pixels is what defines resolution.  Here are some samples:

HIGH RESOLUTION 300 PPI FILE FOR PRINT.
NOTE THE CRISP DETAIL.

LOW RESOLUTION 72 PPI FILE FOR WEB SHOWN AS IF IT WERE PRINTED.
NOTE THE JAGGED AND BLURRY APPEARANCE.

ENLARGING IMAGES: BIGGER ISN’T ALWAYS BETTER.

With the exception of vector artwork*, all images, graphics or photos are created at a certain size, with a predetermined resolution. When someone tries to enlarge an image beyond the size that the image was created for, the resolution of the image decreases and results in a degraded, “pixelated,” or blocky, stair-stepped image.  All you end up doing is making the pixels bigger, you aren’t adding more pixels.

Long story short: Unless the file extension has an EPS at the end of it? Don’t enlarge it. It just won’t end well.

HIGH RESOLUTION 300 PPI FILE AT 100%.
NOTE THE CRISP DETAIL.

HIGH RESOLUTION 300 PPI FILE AT 300%.
NOTE THE JAGGED AND BLURRY APPEARANCE.

*Okay, not all images are made up of pixels, only bitmap formatted images. Vector based images are the exception and are points connected by lines, or “vectors”. But for the sake of argument, we’re only talking bitmap images here as they’re the only ones affected by resolution. For a brief overview of file types, read my post on A Quick Guide to Understanding Logo File Types.

Don’t know the resolution of an image you have?  Get in touch and I can get you an answer.

Fun fact: the colors on your computer screen are not the same as the colors you see in print. Really. Here’s a quick overview of the types of color and what it means for working with a marketing agency.

You may have heard of RGB or CMYK and even PMS with reference to color, but these acronyms can be glossed over.  Most people think colors are all the same, regardless of media or medium; that orange is orange is orange.   Well? Think again.

Turns out, the color space changes from what you see on your screen to the proof that your printer gives you. Colors also vary from printer to printer, and from one computer screen to the next.

Graphic Designers earn their keep keeping colors straight so that your business’ branding remains consistent across all executions of your brand, from web to packaging, signage to ads.  Your orange has to look just right so your customers don’t mistake it for a competitor’s orange.

RGB COLOR SPACE:

RGB (R=RED, G=GREEN, B=BLUE): Anything that is viewed on a screen, such as televisions, computers, or mobile devices uses a RGB color space. The images on a screen are made up of red, green and blue pixels, and the light that screens emit behind those colored squares produces a spectrum of colors that we see. However, the RGB color model is device dependent, meaning the way colors are displayed on a screen depends on the hardware used to display it. That’s why colors will look differently on your computer than on mine.

CMYK COLOR SPACE:

CMYK (C=CYAN, M=MAGENTA, Y=YELLOW, AND K=BLACK): Anything that is used for print, such as business cards or magazine advertisements uses a CMYK color space. In this printing process, color is produced by mixing the four separate ink colors.  You only need these four colors to reproduce photographs, and “process color” as it is also referred to or “four color process” is the way all color printing is done, except for when you use PMS (see below).

PMS COLOR SPACE:

PMS (PANTONE MATCHING SYSTEM): The industry standard for matching colors exactly the same way on every thing you print, no matter what. Pantone is a company and they literally control color.  Using the PMS color, you can match your exact orange in print, in textiles, in plastics, in paint in you name it.  It’s quite fascinating actually.  Each of the nearly 2,100 standard Pantone colors have a unique code for reproduction; for example PANTONE 158 C is a dark orange color Rains | Birchard Marketing makes frequent use of. When printing, each Pantone color gets its own specific printing plate, making the colors more vibrant than CMYK. Pantone even offers metallics and flourescents, which cannot be reproduced with CMYK process color printing.  When your marketing agency or designer creates you a logo or branding guideline, they will invariably define PMS colors for you.

What all this means is you need to know how colors will be used to know what color space to use them in.  A qualified full-service marketing firm will be staffed with graphic designers that live and breath this stuff.  Trust the experts so that you get consistency in your use of color.

So you have a great logo and now you want to put it on everything.  But, which of the myriad file types your agency or designer gave you is right for each application?  This will explain it.

Upon completion of your gloriously heart-stopping, tears-of-joy inducing logo, your marketing and design agency lovingly provided you with all of the file formats you would ever need. How nice of them!

However, each file has a crazy suffix at the end that no amount of “textspeak” can decifer. All you want to do is some light voodoo magic: update your invoice template in QuickBooks and add your logo to your e-mail signature. That’s. It.

However, like most things, not all file formats are created equally. The type of file you would need if you’re printing something will be different than if you’re adding a logo to a website. Here we will discuss the baffling world of file types and what you need to use and why.

Bonus? No potions or shrinking heads required.

.EPS FILE

An EPS file is a vector illustration commonly used for logos because you can resize the graphic as big or small without the quality of the image being compromised. An EPS with a large number of programs and is best used with printed documents due to its high-quality appearance.

WHEN TO USE AN .EPS:
• ANYTHING THAT WILL BE PRINTED, SUCH AS:
• BUSINESS CARDS
• BROCHURES
• ADVERTISEMENTS

.JPG FILE

JPG IS PREFERRED for internet use because they have a smaller file size and fast load time. Though they can’t be enlarged like an EPS can, when they’re kept at their original file size they look sharp when viewed on a computer monitor.

WHEN TO USE A .JPG:
• ANYTHING WEB-RELATED, LIKE:
• WEBSITES
• E-MAIL MARKETING
• SOCIAL MEDIA SKINS

.PNG FILE

Like JPGs, a PNG IS PREFERRED for internet use when you need a web-ready graphic with a transparent background to float on top of another graphic or solid color.

WHEN TO USE A .PNG:
• ANYTHING WEB-RELATED THAT REQUIRES A TRANSPARENT BACKGROUND, LIKE:
• WEBSITES
• E-MAIL MARKETING
• SOCIAL MEDIA

.TIF FILE

A TIF works in just about any program and can be used for high-quality printing projects, as long as they were created at 300 dpi and don’t need to enlarged.

WHEN TO USE A .TIF:
• ANYTHING THAT WILL BE PRINTED OF HIGH-QUALITY
• MICROSOFT OFFICE PROGRAMS

And if you still have questions or have another logo file format you don’t know what it is or can’t open it, get in touch and we’ll be happy to help.

Custom printed envelopes can seem expensive because they are converted; meaning they are printed flat, die cut, then folded and glued together.  This extra processing drives up the cost.

Envelopes are one of the three items Rains | Birchard Marketing routinely designs and produces for new clients as an integral part of business stationary.  Everyone needs business cards, so when designing those, our agency also designs the letterhead and #10 envelopes to match.  Over the years, many new clients have been surprised at the high cost of printing standard envelopes when compared to letterhead at an equal quantity on the same paper.  With online printing services like VistaPrint.com literally giving away free printing of business cards, some clients are reluctant to invest in printing at all; or think we’re trying to “pull a fast one” on them with the price of envelopes.

To understand the price disparity, one needs to understand the printing process.  With offset printing, ink is applied to paper by a press in one or more colors.  Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Black are all you need to reproduce full color photos and graphics.  A printing press applies each color, one at a time, to a flat, consistently sized sheet of paper.  Typical press sizes can accommodate paper that is 29″ wide or 40″ wide, called “parent sheets.”  The flat shape of a #10 business envelope will fit five times on a parent sheet for a 40″ press.  This same parent sheet can print eight sheets of 8.5″ x 11″ letterhead.  To yield a finished quantity of 1,000 sheets of letterhead and 1,000 matching envelopes, you’d need to print only 125 parent sheets for the letterhead but 200 for the envelopes.  That’s roughly 60% more paper for the envelopes.

Letterhead then simply needs to be chop-cut to size using a straight blade.  Envelopes on the other hand need to be die-cut with a custom metal cutting die to the special flat shape of an envelope.  A bindery machine then will be fed the flat envelopes and will fold and glue the flaps together to form the bottom and sides, then apply adhesive to the top flap for you to lick and seal.  This process is referred to as conversion.  And those extra steps along with the increase in the amount of paper used for printing are what drive the cost of envelopes up.

Like anything else, an understanding of the process helps to explain the overall cost.  Perhaps when I meet with our next new client, this will have answered one common question.

About half of the Requests for Proposals (RFPs) we receive won’t yield quality responses because they’re written incorrectly.  Here are some tips for writing an RFP that will get results.

Marketing and creative services can be difficult to compare, due in large part to the subjective nature of creativity. It is much harder to compare “apples to apples” for creative services than if you were hiring a construction contractor.  Yet, when businesses are issuing RFPs, they must find a way to compare different service providers.  Here are some tips for authoring an RFP that will get you quality responses and help you to find a qualified marketing and creative firm.

1.  Let respondents be creative.  This is what you’re buying, so please don’t restrict responses by putting page count limits, requiring double spacing, double-sided, 12 pt. Courier font and 30% post-consumer waste recycled paper with no binding. It’s like telling your creative team to create an ad but only use Microsoft Word to do it.  It’s just plain stupid and you’ll get a terrible result.

2.  Know why you’re issuing the RFP.  I have had to ask more than once why a certain business is issuing an RFP because there was no clear goal defined.  Please know the reasons why you need to hire a marketing agency.

3.  Define and share a budget.  Marketing budgets are important for many reasons and are integral to the success or failure of your marketing.  If you don’t tell us how much you have to spend, we may not have an incentive to respond.

4.  Ask questions that will yield answers other than “yes” or “no”.  For instance, don’t ask: “Does your agency have the available capacity to meet our needs?”  Instead ask: “Describe the approximate number of hours it may take your firm to meet our needs and what percentage of total available capacity this may represent.”

5.  Be sure your scoring/evaluation system for the RFP makes sense and values the marketing services you’re buying.  Giving 30% of a total score to whether I followed your rules and gave you unbound, double-sided, double-spaced 12 pt. Courier font on 30% post-consumer waste recycled paper, grossly undervalues the 70% that presumably has to do with marketing and creative services.  If you want to hire someone to follow your rules, you might not find the best objective solution to your business’ challenges.

6.  If you must have a separate Vendor Qualification, don’t make that more cumbersome than the RFP.  I’ve won RFPs where the initial Vendor Qualification took substantially more effort to respond to than the actual RFP.  By the time I’d qualified, I’d answered more than half of the typical questions asked in an RFP.  Keep this in mind, and be reasonable.  For marketing and creative services, you should just combine this within the RFP.

Ultimately, my top tip is to skip the RFP altogether and just get in touch with me.  Let’s talk through your needs, and in a short while I’ll be able to tell you if we would be a good fit or not.  This saves us both a lot of effort and cuts right to the chase.