Just Creative Design

Smart Ass Marketing

When I was going through submissions for the Logo Of The Day website, the Design Encyclopedia logo was suggested and when I went to check out their website, I read the top three lines of their website and was pleasantly surprised that I could stay updated to their website “through their rss ass”. See the screenshot above or visit the website yourself.

Although this got a laugh out of me, I didn’t really think anything of it until I read that they were a division of Under Consideration and seeing though they know a thing or three about marketing I wondered if this little number was purely a mistake or a smart marketing move by the guys over at Under Consideration. Personally, I think it is a marketing ploy, and a clever one at that.

What makes me think so? The fact that there is a huge RSS watermark behind the text and the fact that the header hasn’t changed since 2006, however, I should note that on close inspection it does say RSS not ASS.

Update: Armin from Under Consideration had this to say:

I never noticed the ASS text until someone pointed it out literally after 30 minutes from when I uploaded that header image. Since then, every two or three months I get an e-mail from someone telling us about it. It takes five minutes to change the header but for some reason I now enjoy it being there. It’s like the arrow in the FedEx logo. Sort of.

Anyway, thought I would share this one with you and hey I guess the marketing ploy worked… I’ve written a blog post that has gone out to to 12 500+ subscribers and I’ve sent out a Twitter message to 6500+ followers which then got retweeted many, many times -  Not bad, eh?

What’s your take? Smart? Dumb? Honest mistake? Vent your spleen.

80 NEW Creative, Smart & Clever Advertisements

I know you see many creative advertising posts, but I went out and tried to find some of the lesser known creative ads of which you can see below. This is a follow up to the post 192 creative advertisements.

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How To Get 100% Free Advertising On Google

Did you know you can get ranked number 1 on Google for free using Google Local Business Center and Google Maps?

Google Local helps your advertisements show up in Google searches that are made in close proximity to your business which will help you get more traffic, leads and sales.

Let’s use Just Creative Design as an example; if someone who lives around Newcastle (where I freelance from) searches for ‘graphic designer newcastle’ my business comes up first in the local search results of which you can see in the image above and that position is 100% free through the use of Google Local.

In the image below you can see the free local google listing again but this time you can also see my paid advertising at the top (highlighted in yellow) which I have paid for through Google Adwords. I use Google Adwords to ensure that I get clicked first no matter what.

Anyway, keep reading to find out how to get to number 1 on google for free.

What You Need To Get Free Advertising On Google

Before you jump in and get your free advertising on Google you will need to have these things:

• An account with Google.
• A short description of your business for when a user clicks on your business name.
• The phone number(s), addresses and any other contact information you want to advertise. Remember that the phone number will show up on the results page.
• A logo and/or image(s) of your business and products.

How To Get Free Advertising On Google

1. Go to www.google.com/local and search for your business to verify that it is not already listed.
2. Go back to www.google.com/local and click “Put your business on Google Maps” found in the left side bar.
3. Follow the simple steps provided by Google. You will be asked to verify your business by phone or SMS. A good tip is to to not put your full address into Google but rather the largest town in your area. For example I live about 20 minutes outside of Newcastle in suburbia and not as many people would search for ‘graphic designer cardiff’ as they would ‘graphic designer newcastle’. I also do not want to show my home address on Google Maps as I freelance from home so this is a good way around it.
4. Come back in a few weeks and see if your listing is up. My listing took about 3 weeks to show up and started off in position D and somehow moved to position A… I am not sure how this is controlled but I won’t complain.
5. Well there we have it, you can now get free advertising on Google. You can track and edit your listing by going back to the Google Local page.

Further Tips

• You can also offer coupon codes on your Google Local listing - use this to your advantage!
• You can also add your products to Google Base, the product search engine.
• If you live in Australia, submit your site for free to True Local, the leading local search engine.
• If you live outside of Australia and know of some local submission sites please leave them in the comments below.
• You can learn about Search Engine Optimisation here.
• You may also want to swap to Gmail for your email, here is 10 reasons why to swap to Gmail.

Well there you have it, you can now get free advertising on Google. Good luck!

18 Truly Awesome HandPicked Designer TShirts

If you are like me, you love your t-shirts and this is why I have hand picked 18 awesome, cool designer tshirts for your pleasure. All of these shirts come in men and women’s sizes and are on sale from $19 at DesignByHumans by affiliate. Read more »

The Design Process Of Creating A $40,000 Creative Newspaper Advertisement

This semester at University I am studying ‘Design For Advertising’ and the first project we received was based around how to professionally design a creative newspaper ad. I am going to go through the process I used to create one along with some tips on the way.

The Brief

In short, we were to design a creative newspaper advertisement / campaign for the factitious chocolate company sweets2u.com and the purpose of the campaign was to create awareness of the new and exciting chocolate delivery dot-com.

The sweets2u service is based on chocolates arriving the next day anywhere in the country, along with a personalised message printed on a personally selected decorative card.

We were asked to find an interesting way to advertise this service to the nation.

We were given no other information (not even a budget) and we had to find out what would be the best way to raise awareness of this new business so this meant we had to research the size, the number and where to place the advertisements.

Research

Where to advertise?

Before we even began on trying to come up with an idea we had to try to figure out the best place to advertise in a newspaper and for the best price that would be within the budget of this dot-com company. We researched newspaper demographics, prices, sizes and distribution numbers and finally came down to choosing to advertise in the Weekend Australian newspaper.

We chose this paper because it suited our target market of high socio-economic business people, mainly 25-60 year olds who would be more likely to send chocolate via the internet and had the money to do so.

What size to advertise?

After knowing what paper to advertise in, we had to choose the size and where to advertise in the paper and also compare prices with other newspapers. We did this by looking at newspaper advertising rate charts and by making calls to the advertising departments which proved to be a lot easier than working it out ourselves from the website rate chart. We had to take into considerations things such as colour loading (30% more to use colour) and what side of the paper to put the ad on which some papers charged more for.

We finally chose to advertise on page 3, on the bottom right side of the paper which you can see in the diagram to the right. The actual size was 20cm by 10 columns which is 20cm X 37.6cm in this particular paper. The cost for this would be AUD$40,368 inc GST for a full colour ad and that would be distributed to 305,000+ people.

What is the Unique Selling Point (USP)?

After we had decided on what paper and size to use, we could now begin creating an ad. The easiest way to sell a product is to find a unique selling point and after a bit of brainstorming and discussion we came down to these USPs for sweets2u.com; They delivered chocolate conveniently via the use of the internet and they offered personalised messages, something that you don’t get when you buy chocolate any other way. These were the USPs we focused on.

Brainstorming

After choosing the USP’s I brainstormed ideas of which you can see one of my very messy mind maps below. I generally go pretty crazy with these things and jot down as many words that come to mind within a space of about 5 minutes - this is just a method that works with me. There are many other methods on how to be creative.

After I brainstormed, I did many rough (emphasise on the rough) sketches and came up with about 70 different ideas. Below you can see a few based around the same ‘Chocolate Delivered’ theme.

I didn’t think the ‘chocolate being delivered’ theme was working too well as the ideas were too basic so I then started thinking about ideas on the USP of the service being personalised. I came up with quite a few ideas however the one idea that I ended up using actually came to me while I was trying to get to sleep… is anyone else like that?

Execution

After I had the idea firmly envisioned in my head I finally started on the execution of the ad. Below you can see my original rough (again, rough being emphasised) sketch of the proposed ad. It depicts a pair of briefs, chocolate and socks hanging on a clothes line with the tag line “Very Personal”.

The body copy underneath will read;

Choosing a present is never easy but don’t resort to socks or undies this time, instead let us do the work for you.

We will deliver chocolate anywhere in Australia overnight guaranteed…

…all you need to do is log onto www.sweets2u.com and write a personalised message to go with it! You don’t even have to leave your house.

I then went down to the shops bought some chocolate (mmm) came back, grabbed my camera, some of my undies (sorry you had to see them) and socks and went outside, pegged up the items on the clothes line and shot my scene. I experimented with different shots, combinations and lighting and after about 50 shots came back and reviewed them. You can see 4 variations below and the chosen image below it.

After choosing the shot above, I clipped out the background to simplify the scene.

I then added a nice blue cloudy background to set the scene a bit more.

I then played around with the text, body copy and positioning logo until I was happy. Below you can see the final design - you will have to click on it to be able to read the body copy. The fonts I used were Franklin Gothic Demi for the body copy and Salamander for the heading. (If you have read the post 30 fonts graphic designers must know and own you would know that the font Franklin Gothic is great for newspapers!)

And upon completing the advertisement I got to eat the chocolate! It was a sweet reward.

Mistakes To Avoid When Designing For Newspapers

Here are some mistakes to avoid when designing for newspapers along with some other tips.

Too much clutter – Don’t forget the importance of white space. If you can’t fit in all the information you had hoped to, consider going with a larger sized ad, or editing down your information to a more manageable amount or get creative… how can you say your whole message in just a few words or a picture?

Unclear message – Make sure you know what you are trying to get your reader to do before you start to design your ad. Keep this objective in mind at all times and review your ad when you are done to make sure this has been accomplished.

Errors – Even though it may seem easy to proofread such a small set of type, sometimes errors show up and are glossed over no matter how many times you read it. To be safe, have someone else review your ad for you also… this goes with almost all graphic design work. This is actually one of the top 15 mistakes designers make.

Lack of contact information – This common error is particularly frustrating for readers. You may have convinced your reader to contact you or purchase your products, but if they can’t easily find contact information, they will probably not bother to look much further. Always have a call to action.

AIDA - Try to remember this acronym… AIDA. Attention, Information, Desire, Action. Get the consumers attention, give them the information and desire for your product, then give them a call to action.

One More Tip - Another thing I noticed while researching effective newspaper ads was that any ad that had a solid block of colour as its background (with a lot of white space) really grabbed your attention straight away… you couldn’t turn the page without looking at it. This was one of the reasons I simplified my advertisement by removing the white background and adding the blue sky.

On another note, if you like creative advertising, you must check out out this list of 192 creative advertisements.

Hope you enjoyed reading through my design process and as always, constructive criticism is welcome, as well as any comments or questions. How was my copy writing? Could I improve on it?

Don’t Read This If You Do Not Want More Email

Over the past few weeks I have been trialling having contact forms on all the main pages of my site and boy has it increased the amount of emails I have received, not only from potential clients, but also from people just wanting to say thank you or a friendly hello, and let’s face it, who doesn’t like hearing compliments?

So I ask, why should we have only one contact page? There are so many more benefits from having more than one contact page;

• Potential clients have an easier way to contact you.
• You get more email. (Good or a bad thing, that is for you to decide.)
• More clients mean more money.
• Less clicks for the user to find your contact details.
• People that may not have went the extra click will now more likely contact you.

What pages should you put contact forms on?

You should look at your site statistics to see what page/s are your most popular and you also must take into consideration what the page is for, for instance you may not want a form on your ‘Featured Articles’ Page as it is not appropriate.

Where to place each form will vary from blog to blog but personally I put them on my five main pages which are my About Page, my Hire Me Page, my Design Portfolio page, my Contact Page, and my Testimonials page.

You will also notice on my contact page I use a standard form however on my hire page I ask questions about budget, deadlines, etc that relate to my profession.

How do I get a contact form?

I personally use a Wordpress Plugin called Cforms which is great however there are many more out there! With Cforms you can customise a variety of forms very easily and then easily place them onto any page with a click of a button.

Track What Pages People Contact You From

With the Cforms plugin (and most others) each email you receive looks like the screenshot above. It will tell you exactly what page the form has been sent from along with other details such as the date and IP address of the sender. You will notice the email above has been sent from my testimonials page along with the answers to each question. This is very useful as you can see what pages people are sending the most emails from.

So… why have just one contact page?

192 Creative, Smart & Clever Advertisements

Here are 192 of the best creative, smart and clever advertising messages that I have found across the web in recent times. They have used some great techniques and ideas in all of these ads and I think they are brilliant!

You may also be interested in:

• 56 Awe Inspiring Creative Photographs
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Sources: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5