We’ve been helping our firiends at the leading PR agency, Brands2Life, this month, helping them to create an ad dramatising one of their most spectacular achievements!
The agency was asked to deliver a high impact launch for the introduction of the new Nikon 1 camera. Their campaign of six-metre high hands in capital cities across Europe certainly delivered.
Our ad for the agency just takes that dramatic statement and puts it on the page.
For us, leaders and brand-builders are marked out by some key characteristics:-
- leaders always concentrate on market expansion. Their goal is to grow the market (or a market sector) and then secure a larger place within it, while followers, on the other hand, tend to go for strictly ‘knock-off’ tactics. Leaders think too about how to create new market sectors. (Ezra Pound said at the beginning of the last century that we ‘advance by discrimination, by seeing things which we thought of as separate and distinct as harmoniously linked.’)
- leaders have confidence. Confidence leads to an approach – visible everywhere – that emphasises quality and core values. Those who are confident are prepared to use humour too, to make their point. They certainly always have a distinctive style
- their style lasts. They tend not to get bored with an approach which works. Of course, they will amend it over time, but once they have a position which is comfortable, it doesn’t change too often – something which reassures consumers who like to know where they are
- leaders use intelligent approaches to the market. Leaders respect the people who use their products and don’t talk down to them, while followers are often prepared to state the obvious
- leaders want quality and consistency in their approach, and are prepared to make sure they get it. They tend to come down heavily on product managers who want to compromise the whole approach for some short-term sales gain, or something that is dangerously off message
We always like working with leaders and brand-builders. If you’re there already or if you’re working to become one, please do get in touch with us at WildWest.
We think that our clients should be able to manage their website content. If they want, they should be able to add blog entries, upload news items, keep text (and maybe images too) current and relevant.
But the choice of CMS isn’t always easy. We’ve built entire sites in WordPress for example, which provides a user with a wonderfully easy interface that’s actually quite difficult to get very wrong. Even with my fairly uneasy relationship with technology, I find can get along with it. For an example, take a look at our site for INCo, an IT sales lead company. You can view it at www.inco-online.com.
The funny thing is that INCo don’t actually want to manage their content. They are busy people and are quite content that we (with their involvement and help) keep their blog up to date and their website fresh. Their priority was to have a site that would be continually refreshed, and we applaud them in that. (As we’ve said before, the key to SEO is good content, not any kind of magic bullet).
Other companies like to be in control of almost everything, and that can get quite involved, particularly when the website is actually the front end to some fairly important applications, as well as that shop window website. In this instance, you probably have two choices – head down the road with Microsoft on the path that leads to Sharepoint, or if you need to stay with an open source approach (the one that we prefer), have something built that is tailored to your applications.
There are many half-way points that in many instances are entirely acceptable and workable options for open source users, but the key thing is to be aware – preferably before any new website implementation is specified – exactly what the long-term plan is.
We don’t ask our clients to be psychic, but we always point out that it will help to extend the life of any site if something that could affect its structure 9and that of any CMS) is even being considered.
If a client makes it known that there are plans to link the site – to a database of shareholders, or a user group, or an application that will allow nominated users to be able to change a page of their own content – then these kind of things can be considered when the question of which CMS to use comes up.
A website, like any other piece of technology, probably won’t last forever. You should plan to make it last as long as possible though, and if you can, separate the shopwindow from the applications that may lie behind. And have reasonable expectations from the CMS you choose as well.
We’ve worked for a number of new and emerging clients over the past few years. Inevitably, they’ve been both feisty and challenging – wanting rather more in terms of design, brand values and presence than they might get at a print shop on the corner, but not wanting to spend money unnecessarily in the process.
Some of them have gone on to greater things (Secerno, for example, a technology spin out from Oxford University were purchased by the ubiquitous Oracle Corporation, and Alcentra have become an international presence in investment markets), while many more continue to try to gain traction and impetus in the fragile economy that some see around us.
The initial goal for most of these companies is to get the basics in place. To have a business card that they can use in their first meetings without feeling embarassed by the quality. To get a website that engenders the spirit that they bring to their particular sector of the market. To have a high quality outbound emailer that they can use to keep in touch with their clients and prospects.
It has to be said too that they are often relieved that a company like ours exists. Because we integrate design and web and electronic development, we can ensure that quality stretches across every part of the marketing equation. Something that for a newer company is vital.
Hatton Grange are typical. A headhunting firm specialising in helping private equity firms to staff their new investments (particularly in the fields of new media and marketing), they have been excited and encouraged by the help that WildWest Design has been able to give them, setting up a simple but immensely stylish website and giving them a logo that is both impressive and simple to integrate on stationery and business cards, as well as on the marketing projects they have in mind for next year.
Source Foods are another example, a local company recreating themselves as a great value seller of an interesting range of food for offices and office workers. Our Source ecommerce site is effectively a new outlet for this pioneering firm as they plot the development of their service, which already includes food for meetings to companies anywhere in West London, delivered free of charge.
In similar circumstances, we have managed to help Resolute Asset Management, Satya Capital and most recently R3Location Ltd., a new company offering a more personal and all-embracing service to companies who need to relocate senior executives and their families to homes in London and the South East.
At WildWest Design, we’re very proud of our track record in helping emerging companies to establish themselves, and we always remember that, when they grow, we grow with them.
Sometimes marketing works only slowly. Often results come in inverse proportion to the value of the deal. It’s just not everyday that you can point to direct marketing results such as those we achieved for Ariba a few years back. (See the Direct Marketing section on this blog for details of that).
So, it was nice to see that our marketing initiative for a barristers’ chambers called Hardwicke had finally paid dividends. This is what Legal Week had to say: “In an unusual move, Veolia, the French utility giant has also added a barristers’ chambers to its external legal line-up for the first time, with Hardwicke Chambers winning the appointment”.
Four years ago, we worked with Hardwicke on a campaign to position them as an organisation ready to take advantage of new rules under which barristers could be instructed direct. At the time, they had a lot of press coverage, and although they saw their profile build, there was little we could point to as a tangible result.
Well, now, there’s direct evidence that our initiative opened doors, and Hardwicke’s ground breaking arrangement is a direct outcome of that work, conducted with Hardwicke’s Ann Buxton and their PR firm.
Not too long ago, our friends at the sports marketing agency, SMI, came to us for help in producing a promotional brochure for their client Citroën Sport. SMI were marketing a sponsorship proposition for Citroën, one of the leading teams in the World Rally Championship.
Since the sponsorship deal would only be done for a not inconsiderable sum of money, our work had to be prestigious and noticeable – noticeable enough for Europe’s leading brands to start showing an interest. Our solution was dramatic piece of print, an A3 portrait brochure highlighted in Citroën red, and featuring some of the really dramatic photography that was available.
Fast forward a year or so and we find ourselves producing ‘Captured’, a photo-book highlighting award-winning photography of the teams and players in the Barclays Premier League – a coffee-table ‘book of the season’ that you’ll see in many of Barclays’ corporate reception areas.
It was ‘Captured’ that enabled us to find a format for another SMI project, this time promoting Mahindra Racing, who this year are the first team from India to compete in the Moto GP championship. Mahindra wanted to demonstrate to potential sponsors both the substance of Moto GP and the solid credentials of the team that they were bringing to the grid for the first time.
The Mahindra Racing credentials book comes with its own slip case and is part of the door-opening programme being implemented by SMI, in which Mahindra plan to introduce themselves to potential sponsors and partners, in India and across the world. We equipped their team too with a complementary Powerpoint presentation – styled to match the contents of the book – to help explain the nature and extent of the full sponsorship proposition.
The lessons from all of this seem to be that if you want to impress high-level audiences, then you can’t afford to take half measures, and a book may just offer the presence that your proposition deserves.
My credit card company sent me a mailer recently. It was so flimsy that I doubted the sales proposition even before I read it, and it wasn’t much of a surprise to find the offer totally valueless. Better to send me nothing than this kind of thing.
On the other hand, WildWest has proven over the years that producing high quality items (with a little imagination mixed in) really does produce good results.
Like? Like the two-part mailing we once developed for a software company. It was aimed at Times Top 250 finance directors – a market we thought was well nigh impossible to reach, let alone get response from. Our mailing had a theme – power and control. The message was that you can’t be powerful unless you are in control (our client’s software promised control over corporate expenditure).
Our pack contained a remote-control car – a bright red Porsche model. We branded and re-packaged it to reflect our message, and we sent it out with one omission. The controller for the car. You didn’t get that unless you sent back the card in the first pack.
There was no catch. No salesman would call (unless requested). No marketing material would be sent.
It wasn’t too much of a surprise to find that we had a 60% response rate within a week. What was more surprising was how many of our target market wanted to meet with our client and to find out more about that software. Our client – previously unknown in this market – suddenly had a hugely valuable sales pipeline.
The same theme is reflected in the work we have been doing with sports marketing agency, SMI.
Sports Media International market sponsorship packages in motorsport, sailing and soccer, and the really high quality marketing packs that we have developed for their clients (at Citroen Sport and Mahindra Racing) are both appropriate and respected. So too, with the brand-building photo-books which we produce for Barclays and their work with the Barclays Premier League.
The message is simple. If you have a high-quality product, you need high-quality materials to back it up. And of course, there’s no one better to meet those demands than WildWest design.
The new INCo website
INCo are a sales lead generation company, pure and simple. They work – through telemarketing – for all kinds of IT and Consulting organisations. As they point out, there’s no magic to what they do – they apply a straightforward method in a totally methodical way. And that produces results, for big, household name companies and products, and for newer, emerging ones too.
Now, with a smart new website (designed and implemented by WildWest Design), and an active blog that addresses some of the very current sales issues that they confront on behalf of IT and consulting companies, they are ready to take the next steps in their development.
Already, they have taken the INCo method right to the top of organisations in the Times top 250, and working to address C-level exectutives, have proved that they can develop strategic opportunities at very high levels within the largest companies.
INCo's business is sales lead generation for IT and Consulting companies
INCo work to provide forecasting data too, and many different types of company (software, services and hardware among them) are finding real benefits from getting real, intelligence-based knowledge of market potential, in both the short- and medium-term.
For more on what INCo offer, visit their new site at www.inco-online.com
You can follow the official sponsor of the English Premier League now on Twitter (search for Barclays Footy) and you can see all the great things that Barclays are doing for the game on YouTube too.
The Barclays Premier League has to be one of the most popular national leagues in the world and Barclays is helping to bring it closer to more and more international audiences.
At Wild West, we’re incredibly proud that our design work (in electronic and print media) is now being seen by huge numbers of people around the world, and helping to underline too our status as a great source of design in the world of football, sport and sponsorship.
Barclays football is also on the web (of course!) at www.barclaysfootball.com
Stock's international sales are growing fast, thanks in part to our website
According to press reports, our clients at Stock Spirits are planning to launch an IPO sometime next year. Of course, we can’t comment on rumours, but if you do feel like a celebration, you will find some excellent cocktails on the Stock Spirits website!
We’ve designed and built websites for Stock in its corporate guise, as well as dual- and sometimes tri-language sites for the Stock operating companies around Europe (Italy, Czech Republic, Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia) and in the US, as well as a site dedicated to their growing international sales portfolio.
Stock came to us via their corporate PR agency, and we’re looking forward to providing great value and great presentation as they extend their global reach still further into new countries.
The Stock Appletini. Find the recipe on the website
And of course, if you feel like a celebration, you could hardly do better than the Stock Appletini. You’ll find the recipe (with some others that use the great Stock range of branded drinks) on the Stock Spirits website.
Stock Spirits continues to win major international awards for its spirits brands, which combine traditional methods and high-technology in terms of production and quality control to achieve remarkable results. No wonder that Stock is rapidly becoming central Europe’s leading producer of branded spirits.