Category: Article

How many times in your life have you heard that old chestnut ‘time is money’? Who doesn’t want to experience less downtime, more productivity and get more bang for our buck! Time is the most valuable asset we have, so it makes smarter sense not to tie ourselves or our staff’s time up unnecessarily, when there is a much better ‘hands off’ solution available, that’s a no brainer! What are we taking about?…. A Retainer! That’s very American I hear you say. We’ll it works great in Ireland and UK too! The reality is that there are multiple advantages to you, the client, in having an Artefact Ltd retainer in place rather than wasting enormous amounts of time preparing and managing tenders and quotations, not to mention dealing with multiple agencies. Besides, you have predictable monthly costs and the retainer can cover all the possible brand, creative, website and marketing support services you could possibly need, freeing your in-house team to focus on other / higher level tasks. What’s the first thing that comes to mind when you think of an agency retainer?… How much does it cost a month? The concept of an agency retainer is often misunderstood just thought of as nothing more than a pricing agreement between you and your agency – a set rate for a set time. But working with Artefact Ltd team, our Retainer service is so much more and greatly benefits you, the client; it’s a partnership between the client and us, the agency, where all parties are equally invested in the long-term success of your business. Working with an agency you know and trust like Artefact Ltd, over a longer period, enables us to tune-in to how you think and operate (& what your client base wants from you, more importantly) and to get to know you as people. We are in the relationship business primarily. Unlike working with one agency after another, this means that you know you don’t have to explain ad-nauseam what you want to convey/achieve in your communications (across any channel), because we are already tuned-in to what we know you like and know what works in your market place. Let’s face it, chopping and changing for every new project is bad for brand consistency and does not necessarily lend itself to fresh ideas. If that was the case, you wouldn’t have a full-time in-house marketing/creative team etc. Artefact team is your team, essentially  a valuable extension to your in-house team, providing them with more capacity and additional skills, enabling you to take on more of your client work, in turn helping to grow your bottom line. In short, our very affordable Retainers plans are an area in which we feel we can help clients to thrive – working with them on a long-term basis to get a deep understanding of their business and brand, focusing on both their long-term objectives as well as tackling any immediate needs or challenges”. Think of us as your Plug-in support team! ‘Coherence and consistency, without the headache’. Don’t Hire… E X P A N D! Everything starts with strategy Speed matters. So does quality. Cost effectiveness too. So how do you guarantee all three? When your strategic, brand and creative vision is clearly understood within both your in-house teams and us, your agency team, it follows that ideas and assets are swiftly delivered with the boundaries of your brand values, communication style and agreed marketing strategy. Consistency is the key to both process and output and not having to worry your agency partner not having an understanding your strategic or creative execution can free up vital headspace and valuable time as a busy marketer. As your long-term agency partner on retainer, we include regular strategic reviews so that long-term strategic planning and short to medium-term adjustments in your approach are embedded in what needs to be a sustainable, successful partnership, delivering the best and consistent results for your and your in-house team. This helps us to be proactive instead of reactive, while providing overflow support to your in-house marketing team when your resources (and time) are stretched and being able to look beyond the brief to support your wider business strategy. Artefact Ltd’s knowledge and skills can be invaluable to client teams who are stuck in their everyday routine and struggling to find the time to think proactively and creatively. As account director, I personally act very much as a sounding board for clients – taking the time to understand their challenges, helping them to find solutions and generating ideas, to help them create strong strategic plans for the future.  ‘Our clients feel understood and valued 🙂 Take A RETAINER plan today! Or contact us to discuss

We all want top quality, top service for the cheapest price.. who doesn’t, right?  Artefact Ltd team is considered generally competitive on price and we want long-term client relationships. That’s the game we are in. One of the many advantages of partnering with us, is that we have 25+ years of experience working with top brands and business leaders across all sectors,  including having specialist expertise in creating outstanding packaging design and brand collateral for Pharma, Healthcare, Medical devices, Food & Beverage and other FMCG products. Every agency/creative is different, but most agencies don’t have our expertise nor experience to the same levels. Standards of customer service differ greatly between agencies/creatives too. We often end up fixing other people’s mistakes from our competitors, client in-house teams or amateur ‘have a go Henry’s’! Therefore, we know that we provide extremely good value. Obviously, price/cost is more important to some than others and we can work out a ‘fixed price matrix’ for you for certain types of repeat projects, or we can work on an agreed contract/retainer/hourly rate, so you don’t have to keep requesting a number quotes for every project from multiple agencies – saves you time, hassle and is a lot less stressful for you and your team. In certain cases we are willing to match the best quotation you have received, if it is not totally ‘ridiculous’  as some agencies/creatives will lower prices as an act of desperation to get a job/client. ‘Quality is remembered, long after the price is forgotten’ ~ Gucci. As seasoned professionals, our goal is not to be the cheapest in the market, but to offer extremely good value in terms of service and results. Most of our clients stay with us for years (or decades) because they appreciate our work, value, insights and relationship.  That is not to say there are not cheaper people out there, there always are, but usually they may not be necessary better. You wouldn’t expect to get a Lamborghini for the price of a Lada. Sure both will get you from A to B :-).  ‘Apples and Oranges’.  You generally get what you pay for in our experience. Highly skilled  – V – Amateur / inexperienced Getting to know how you think as a client, over time, and particularly what your target market wants, is something we can hone in on as the relationship grows and therefore helps deliver a more collaborative, targeted end results, which ultimately should result in more sales, brand recognition, business growth etc for you. In addition, we have a number of services that many of our competitors can not or do not offer, which could be of value to you. Jumping from one agency to the next is not a good Content Strategy and Delivery for you or your brand in terms of cohesiveness and continuity over time. Go for experience, quality of work and relationship/service first if a better model. Think of us as an extension to your in-house team. Our team is your team! Click here to see our competitive Pricing Options and Rates. Let us help you today!

For document accessibility, portrait orientation is generally preferred over landscape, especially for web content and digital documents. Portrait mode is more compatible with mobile devices, which are often used in portrait orientation, and it often leads to shorter lines of text, making it easier to read and navigate. While landscape can be useful for displaying wide tables or images, it can also create accessibility issues if it’s not properly designed.  Here’s a more detailed breakdown: Advantages of Portrait Orientation for Accessibility: Mobile Device Compatibility: A majority of users access websites and content on mobile devices, which are typically used in portrait orientation.  Line Length: Shorter lines of text in portrait mode are easier to read, especially for users with visual impairments or who might need to zoom in or out.  Navigation: Portrait mode tends to be easier to navigate linearly, from top to bottom, which can be beneficial for users who rely on screen readers or have difficulty with complex layouts.  WCAG Compliance: The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) encourage content to be viewable in both portrait and landscape, but restricting content to a single orientation can be a barrier for some users.  Disadvantages of Landscape Orientation for Accessibility: Mobile Device Discomfort: Users might have to rotate their devices or zoom in to view landscape content, which can be inconvenient. Text Line Length: Longer lines of text in landscape can be harder to read, especially for users with visual impairments or those who might need to use screen readers. Complex Layouts: While landscape can be useful for large tables or images, it can also lead to complex layouts that are harder to navigate and may not be accessible.  When Landscape Might Be Useful: Wide Tables: Landscape can be used to display wide tables of data that wouldn’t fit well in portrait.  Images: Landscape is often used for displaying wide images or graphics.  Specific Content: Some content, like virtual reality or certain apps, may require landscape for proper display.  Key Considerations: WCAG 1.3.4: Orientation: This WCAG success criterion states that content should not restrict its view and operation to a single display orientation unless a specific orientation is essential.  User Needs: Consider the needs of all users, including those with disabilities, and design your content to be as accessible as possible.  Device Independence: Design content that is adaptable to different devices and orientations.  Email or call us TODAY on 01 832 5683

Packaging: the fifth P of Marketing Packaging design is a specialist niche within the graphic design/branding field…. Read More Wil Lyons explains why what’s on the box can be just as important as what’s in the box. Depending upon which survey you read, at least 66% and perhaps as much as 80% of all grocery purchase decisions are made at the point of sale – right there in the aisle as you fill your trolley! Not that one buys four times more than originally intended (although a whole set of supermarket layout strategies are designed to help achieve that objective too!). These findings relate to brand selection. Thus you may plan to purchase sausages, tea and ice cream, but there’s a wide selection of each and four times out of five you’ll decide exactly which brands to put in the trolley only while in the shopping situation. You can probably relate to that if, like most people, you come out of the supermarket with rather more than you originally intended and if, like most people, you browse to a certain extent while shopping rather than rigidly sticking to a favourite brand of absolutely everything. One U.S. survey has shown that, on average, people spend 10 seconds viewing each product category and in that brief time only get to see some two thirds of the goods displayed in that category. So fully one third of what’s on the shelf does not even get noticed. Thus, after all that product development, all that media advertising, all that distribution and shelf positioning – most purchase decisions are made in that last few seconds. The customer’s hand hovers briefly, then picks. Mostly, it picks out the product that best projects from the shelf, standing out attractively from the surrounding clutter. Although more comprehensive marketing models have largely superceded the well loved ‘Four P’s’ of marketing, they still strangely gloss over what always was and still remains arguably the most important P of all – Packaging, and specifically packaging design. On the face of it, such startling survey findings as those quoted above might be calculated to lead manufacturers, distributors and marketing companies to scale back a little on the enormous expenditures undertaken to differentiate their product through tweaking the recipes or product features. One might expect them to cut back on inordinately expensive advertising campaigns. Why not target the elusive half that doesn’t work for starters! Conscious that most purchase decisions are made in the final few seconds, a concerted effort to win the packaging endgame is indicated. While the aforementioned findings and similar ones from many surveys world-wide are quite well known, it has been my experience that, thanks to the scant attention paid to the power of packaging in marketing training and literature, most marketers and designers alike have a poorly formed view as to what constitutes effective packaging design. Intelligently conceived and well-executed packaging design is not just about art or aesthetics. Its primary function is to sell the product by means of visually communicating not just one ‘notice me’ message, but up to several distinct messages which range from statements about positioning and likely price to statements about quality, status, dietary considerations, environmental correctness and more. Intuitively, it is difficult to appreciate the capability of a simple piece of packaging to convey a complex set of messages in an instant. Due to the sophistication of the human eye, however, it is indeed possible to achieve this. At its simplest, you can look at a flat, two-dimensional representation of any object on paper and instantly ‘see’ the real world object. You can glance at a painting in an art gallery and have an instant gut reaction. If you look away immediately, even though you have only seen the painting for a second or two, you will be able to articulate not just one, but several reasons for your reaction. Subconsciously, the same process is at work as we fill the shopping trolley. In a sweeping glance we survey, say, the pre-packed cheeses. Sometimes we will know exactly what we want and will seek it out and select it. Mostly though, we like a bit of variety and will quickly scan what’s on offer – just whatever catches our eye. A brightly coloured generic or ‘own brand’ may catch the eye because it is designed to do so. It is also designed to suggest basic, processed, perhaps not of the highest quality, economy price. That’s fair enough and, if it suits your taste and pocket, go for it. Sometimes the marketing line associated with these products is that they can be sold cheaper because money is saved on packaging. Not so many customers believe that, or the competing brands would be wiped out. There are a lot of cheeses in that chiller cabinet and, if you don’t want the economy brand, you may spot another whose effective packaging design has managed to rise above the clutter and attract your attention. The quality wrapper in traditional looking ‘natural’ material, the upmarket name, classical design lines and labelling combine to say – at a glance – ‘quality product, natural, trustworthy company, suitable for putting out before guests, bio-degradable pack, expect to pay more!’ The ability to effectively achieve that immediate complex of signals through a piece of packaging design is a specialist niche skill within the graphic design field. Really good packaging designers are hard to come by. Once found, they are highly prized by customers who have discovered the difference good packaging design makes to their sales figures. There are important functional aspects attaching to packaging design. It should enable the customer to understand what the product is, how to use it, how it looks (when displayed at its most attractive of course!). It should possess appropriate functionality as a container, be it a cellophane wrapper, box, can, bag or bottle. Structural qualities may also be built into the packaging design in ways which can enhance brand equity and which, indeed, can

How to grow your sales when business is slow? When business is slow, for whatever reason, it is often a short-sighted, knee-jerk reaction to cut marketing budgets! However, the opposite is actually true. Most SME’s don’t realise that 50% of their activity should be involved with income generation. If marketing is done effectively and consistently, with innovation and creativity, then is usually results in more income, more customers and more profit. You have to look at the whole marketing mix and your brand image may need a revamp if it’s not having the desired impact. Having a well designed, fully SEO optimised website is essential but often too much faith is put into online marketing. Sometime working the phone, networking, sending out professionally designed brochures and adverts that specifically target your customer can be more effective. Email marketing generally has a very low conversion rate (around 4%) as does social media marketing (depending on who you talk to). Yes there is a cost involved, but you need to see this as an investment in your sales growth. You cannot make an omelette without cracking open a few eggs. It can be cost effective to outsource your marketing activities by using a professional agency do two or more hours a week for you. Telemarketing and outsourced appointment setting is also a good option. Many sales people are good at closing but dread the idea cold calling.. Using a prospecting firm can allow you set up prospects or appointments that your salespeople can close. One of the best uses of your time is to be on the phone to customers. Delegating the marketing or sales call prospecting to a company can grow new clients either through meetings or marketing which can will cost you less that trying to do it in-house. Most businesses struggle with inconsistent sales. Outsourcing to a marketing / telemarketing company will give you consistent leads to more sales and thus lowering your company salary overhead. Many in-house marketing staff or sales people are often distracted doing other tasks than income generation, so this is another good reason to use a dedicated outsource team. Lets face it, your business is either going forwards or backwards. If you are not actively and creatively finding new and better way to generate new or recurring income, then you are going backwards. Need help to generate income? Email or call us TODAY on 01 832 5683

Does your brand have a USP? We are constantly working on client rebrands or new branding projects. Many people are decided to start their own businesses due to affects of the poor economy, but many company brands or product brands feel the need to upgrade because much of the strategic and research work was not done previously to properly evaluate the brand positioning, the unique value offering and target market before hurrying off to create all of the marketing material. This is very common. Unfortunately, these brands now find themselves with a brand message that’s not working as it should and not communicating their unique proposition effectively to seperate themselves from the competition. Strategic brand positioning and a USP(unique selling proposition) in the market is often overlooked at the early stages. Many people don’t understand the difference between these two crucial aspects of developing a successful brand. A clear understanding of USP can make the difference between selling lots of product or not. The USP is a device, not a strategy. Promoting a product’s benefit does not differentiate the product in a significant enough way. If a particular campaign doesn’t work or gets stale, you ask the agency to come up with another USP. Positioning: the Battle for Your Mind, likes to say it’s the single word that comes to mind when the brand is mentioned. For Volvo it’s “safety”. For Whole Foods it’s “organic”. These words come from the essence of the brand. It begins with the corporate mission and the vision for the product. It incorporates corporate values and culture. It’s the brand story, the brand platform, the brand presence. It’s the people associated with the brand at all levels of the supply chain. It’s the leadership of the company and of the brand champions within and outside the company. And it’s the word-of-mouth and status the brand enjoys. The USP does not normally communicate a genuine product position. There needs to be more than a benefit at the root of the brand and its position. Suffice to say that positioning is a strategic activity and developing a unique selling proposition is a sales or advertising tactic. Need to re-vitalise your brand? Email or call us TODAY on 01 832 5683

Moments of Truth Jan Carlzon, former president of SAS, Scandinavian Airlines took the old phrase ‘the moment of truth’ and applied it to business in a very powerful way. The airline had been performing poorly when he took it over but within a very short space of time he had turned it around to become one of the most successful in the industry, respected as a model of how things should be done. Then (don’t they all!) he wrote a book. He entitled the book ‘Moments of Truth’ . He proposed that every critical point of customer interaction with the company is a moment of truth. For most businesses the most critical moment of truth is the actual transaction and that’s why Artefact raises the topic at this point in the strategic marketing model. But there are moments of truth before the transaction which may prevent the transaction from ever taking place, like if the prospective customer asks you a question and you don’t answer it. There can be moments of truth after the transaction which may prevent the customer from ever coming back again, like if he/she requires some after sales service only to find that you’ve lost all interest now that you’ve pocketed the money. Carlzon defined moments of truth thus: ” Any time a customer comes into contact with any aspect of your business, however remote, that customer has an opportunity to form an impression.” When you phone to make your flight reservation, it’s a moment of truth. You get efficient, friendly, speedy service, or you get music played at you, recorded messages, long delays and you come away totally frustrated. When you go to check in for your flight, there’s another moment of truth. The service provided by the cabin crew is another, and so on. Every single one of these – and the many other major and minor – key points of interaction between the customer and the supplier provides an opportunity for you to shine or to disappoint. Each is a moment of truth. Carlzon’s airline operated in a culture focussed on the product, the package, the engineering, the scheduling. All of these are necessary but the customer must not be incidental to the process. Carlzon’s achievement was one of marketing. He put the customer at the centre of the process. So, when it came to the transaction – check in and fly to your destination – the objective was to give the customer a great experience. Sure you had to make the plane fly safely and on time and with the baggage going in the same direction as the customer. These things were essential, but not the objective. They were incidental to the objective! So staff smiled, the food improved, the check-in lines were shorter and faster. Staff were anxious to avoid problems for customers and if there was one, to fix it flexibly, creatively, quickly! What a difference! When the customer transacts with you it may be a good, bad or indifferent experience. You know which one it has to be. Examine the points at which the customer comes into contact with your business on the following basis and ask in relation to each point of interaction “is there anything at this contact point which might make my customer’s experience less than excellent?” Artefact provides just a few examples to get you started, but you should make the list that’s right for you. Do not allow any part of your customer’s total experience with you to be any less than a magical moment of truth. That goes double for the transaction, the most critical interaction of them all. MOMENTS OF TRUTH – EXAMPLES Pre-Transaction: Point of Transaction: Post-Transaction: . When the customer…. Sees your banner ad Wants an easy payment method Needs help with assembly Sees your website Wants quick delivery Needs a problem put right Seeks information Wants no errors in specification Needs maintenance Tries to place an order Wants batteries included Needs parts/accessories Wants a test drive Can only collect on the weekend Needs advice   Contact

Enhance your bottom line by enhancing your brand image. Over the course of some 25+ years working at the forefront of brand development and graphic design, I am often struck by how some companies don’t fully appreciate the strategic importance of strategic brand positioning. Some still have a narrow view and see their brand as simply having a logo – often created by amateurs. But of course, seasoned marketers fully realise that the greatest asset of any company can be a expertly developed and innovately marketed, fully integrated ‘brand system”, so much so that in many cases the brand has a financial value attributed to it on some corporate balance sheets. Coincidentally, from my experience, the brand savvy companies are usually the most successful leaders in their field and quite often are the largest. Online brands have rapidly become established to the point where some are household names. Think of Google and Amazon. If I want to buy a book you’ll most likely head straight for Amazon or Barnes and Noble. They may or may not be the best on inventory, price and service – but they certainly have the strongest brands. Coca Cola, Google, Ferrari, Gucci, BMW, Harley Davidson, Nike, Apple… would be other good examples of top brands you would trust. Why risk going for a brand you don’t know when you know the brand you want is there waiting for you? That’s the power of branding – it’s not just the name but what the name says about the people you will be dealing with, the value, the consistency. The good news is, you don’t even have to have a huge marketing or advertising budget to create a successful brand, you can succeed by being highly effective at communicating and delivering your product/service to your chosen market. These days, in such a competitive environment, it is taken as given that a product and service quality has to be 110%, otherwise you’re not even at the races. Product (or service) functional attributes are important of course, but they are not solely what purchase decisions are based on. Artefact is fortunate that we have the privilege of working with some of the leading Irish and International brands (particularly in the food, drinks and pharma sectors) who go to great lengths to promote and protect the integrity of their brand image. A lot of companies are good at creating a product or service, but often are not nearly as good at promoting it through effective branding and creative marketing strategies. A realisation of the importance of Brand is vital for success. As consumers, we mostly buy on brand and less so on price, even in today’s economy. It is very difficult to convince us to move to another brand because familiarity leads to feelings of connectedness. People who feel they know you are more likely to deal with you than with someone they don’t know. In short, we need to help our customers develop a relationship with our product/service through the net effect of promises, statements, images and impressions we deliberately put out in the market place. This is not the same as selling our product/services on functional attributes only. If it becomes strong enough your brand can allow you to charge a premium price. People like brands. Sometimes the brand is used to deliver psychological values of status, image or just plain feel-good – that’s why people like the idea of owning a Mercedes Benz. A car just gets you from A to B but a Mercedes Benz car says something about You! Developing brand loyalty takes time, regular, clever marketing and truly expert visual execution done by seasoned professionals. It is the ‘perceived image’ of your product or company, in the minds of your target customer, that can often be the ONLY differentiator between brands, and as a result, can make the vital difference between a customer purchasing or not. Your market positioning should be mirrored in your branding, whether you’re a low cost, high turnover business, (think Ryanair or Aldi) or a high quality/luxury based model (think Gucci or Rolls Royce). Unless your ambitions are very modest indeed, you have to start thinking brand from Day 1. Crucially, the problem with many media or design agencies is a bit like the X Factor… many contestants believe they can sing, but as we all know, less than 10% genuinely can or have any real talent. This is why it can be a costly mistake to trust your branding development to pure creative agencies or just graphic designers, who although can be artistic, seldom have the high level of branding and marketing expertise you require to help you raise profile. Also, product branding (and consumer packaging) is a very different animal to corporate branding and is a highly specialist niche within the design field, requiring years of experience working with top brands to develop expertise. Creating top performing brands requires more than creating nice logos or pretty graphics. As brand and design consultant at Artefact, having focused a lot of my career to date on product brand development in particular, (including what constitutes good design) constantly researching books, studies and publications on brand behaviour, strategies etc, I am convinced the effective branding is without question, the main key to building loyal customers and building profit. Undercutting the competition on price as a general way of operating is not the answer for most businesses in the long term. It can be a shortsighted mistake that many companies and inexperienced marketers make and is often a knee, jerk reaction based on sales pressures. Clever branding is a long term courtship, not a hard sell. It is based on trust and consistency at every touch point. All of your communication channels need to project a cohesive and individual set of values and you should have very strict guidelines around the reproduction and usage of your visual brand identity. Often, this requires a fundamental change in corporate culture to achieve an alignment

How to write a good creative brief Good design is a collaborative problem solving process, as much as it is a purely aesthetic one. Good design out-performs bad design – fact! The good design brief, therefore, should clearly communicate a clients understanding of the problem that needs to be solved by your design/communication agency. ‘Garbage in garbage out comes to mind’ It should focus on the specific objectives of the project, on the particular deliverables, rather than on its purely aesthetic or creative aspects, which are the responsibility of your design company. It is against this written document, constructed in partnership between the client and the design company, that the effectiveness of the design solution can be measured. A creative brief is not the same as a proposal document, which is usually submitted to the client by the design company in response to the former’s written request for one. Both documents, however, can be incorporated into the design brief, once the design company has been awarded the project. No two design briefs are the same. There are, nonetheless, certain questions that should be asked in the development of most briefs. Here are some of them. • Why are we doing this project? • Why are we doing it now? • What specific outcomes, or results, do we expect from this design project? • Who are we designing for? Do we have a single target audience, or multiple audiences? • Who are the client’s key organisational stakeholders in this project? • What are the phases of this design project? • How much time should be devoted to each phase? • What will each phase cost? • Who are the client’s competitors? • Who will approve the final design solution? • What criteria will be used for this approval? • How will the design solution be implemented? • How will the results be measured? The time invested in a well-considered, well-constructed design brief yields great return. It is a road map through the design process. It allows you to track your project, from the creative stages through to implementation, as well as providing a tool for measuring the results of the creative project. Finally, it acts as a reference document for similar future projects.   Email or call us TODAY on 01 832 5683