Pink and Red: Valentine’s Day Ads

February 14, 2012 Leave a Comment

Whether you love it or hate it, Valentine’s Day is here once again. From a design perspective, this can be a challenging holiday, as there are a limited number of symbols or images and colors used. And we recently heard a bit of proactive advice from one of our clients: we should be careful not to overdo a theme because it can undermine the effectiveness of an ad.

Below are some of the designs we completed for clients in anticipation of this day dedicated to showing those we love how much we care.

Flowers are one of the most common gifts given on Valentine’s Day. I just heard a statistic on the news that two-thirds of the flowers purchased by men are given to their wives or girlfriends. One-third are given to their mothers! Anyway, featuring the flowers in this ad makes it eye-catching and bright. You can see here the typical approach of using reds and pinks on this holiday (purples are also seen although less frequently).

Valentine's Ad for Flowers Read more of this post

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Designs of the Quarter: Pre-Media and Print Ads

February 7, 2012 Leave a Comment

Once again in Q4 of 2011, we called for submissions to our Designs of the Quarter contest. This time, we did not limit the categories, so all Affinity Express designers could participate. We were pleased with the response and the committee selected these four to feature. For the first time, we had two winning entries from the same person, who is clearly a design superstar in the making!

Oasis Cafe

Check marks the spot—in coffee beans on the cover of this menu, which is an interesting device to incorporate the main product in the design in a fresh way. It is reinforced by the coffee cup at the bottom. The brown, black and white color scheme works well for a coffee-oriented restaurant and the layout is clean and easy to read, despite there being a lot of text.

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10 Steps to Keeping Marketing Communications Updated

February 3, 2012 Leave a Comment

At the start of the year, every marketing department needs to update their materials and documents and make sure they’re ready to use. Now that I’m done with mine, I put together a checklist that you can use too.

Affinity Express Price Sheet

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Editorial Services for Newspapers

January 31, 2012 Leave a Comment

Editorial services from Affinity ExpressIn 2011, we launched editorial services for news publishing clients. I recently had a chance to sit down with Affinity Express Managing Editor Alan Bonini and Vice President of Operations Kristin Meidell to get their perspective on the industry and the future. Outsourcing accelerates publishers’ ability to establish production hubs, re-purpose content, focus on critical value creation activities and cut costs. But I wanted to hear what Kristin and Alan had to say, as they are talking with clients every day and hearing directly about the pain points of news publishers.

What are the current challenges for publishers in terms of editorial?

KM: In markets in North America copy editing and paginating are being combined under one person. Very few papers have  many pure paginators anymore. News publishers have started trimming their own operations and want multi-tasking people. We’ve been able to respond to this demand by starting with pagination and moving into both services.

Has the service been well received by publishers?

KM: Publishers have been most receptive. In contrast, editorial departments do not usually welcome the idea of outsourcing functions. Instead, they want to do everything they can to reduce expenses internally.

For example, newspapers used to have people dedicated only to value-added sections such as travel, food, home guides, etc. Those departments have been collapsing to comprise fewer people. Where there was once a food editor, food paginator, travel editor, travel paginator, etc., now these functions are probably all done by the same person.

Why do you think outsourcing of editorial support services makes sense in today’s publishing industry?

AB: The first reason to outsource editorial is cost reduction. However, quality is a critical consideration. Editors have to be satisfied with the work they receive. In addition, the papers all have a unique voice that must be maintained.

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Enhancing Your Image with Ads about Community Service

January 27, 2012 Leave a Comment

We were looking through some of our best print ads for our newspaper clients last year. We were surprised by how many had a focus on community service and immediately thought, “we have a blog post!”

Just as people are more inclined to purchase from companies they get to know better on social media and relate to, they are more likely to view companies positively that demonstrate their volunteer and charity programs in advertising. That is, if they do it effectively.

There are three secrets to highlighting good works and doing it well:

  1. Create a strong headline.
  2. Feature images of people.
  3. Make ads about giving back (rather than touting product features and other sales pitches).

For example, this ad for Service King lures in the viewer with the headline: “Looking Out for You . . . on the Road and in the Community.” It ties in well with the company’s business, which is performing collision repairs. This effectively turns around a common distrust of car repair services. I’d be more inclined to trust a service that invests in causes I care about. Read more of this post

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New Year Ads

December 27, 2011 Leave a Comment

What comes to mind when you think of New Year’s Eve? Based on the ads we create at this time of the year for our clients, it is fireworks, balloons and decorations, and champagne. Unlike Christmas, there isn’t a wide variety of iconic images from which to choose, which means it can be challenging to stand out in a crowd of New Year’s promotions.

Nevertheless, I think this ad for Jaguar is successful. It gets your attention with bright fireworks that lead the eye to look down at the cars. Wouldn’t it be nice to ring in the new year with a new luxury car? Well, it’s nice to dream . . .

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Christmas Ads

December 20, 2011 Leave a Comment

We’ve written previously about holiday-themed ads and how to best tie into the season to encourage customers to buy products and services. As we approach the winter holidays, let’s take a look at some fresh winter ads.

This is another example of adding an image to a standard ad to brighten it up and evoke the season. It’s easy and, quite often effective with minimal work required. Basically, it is an ad for businesses to do just that: pop in an image and some copy and run it in the newspaper.

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10 Tips on Designing Brochures

December 16, 2011 Leave a Comment

With Mel Fernandez

Even with the prevalence of digital marketing, brochures are common marketing materials, used in both printed and electronic form. We use them to present our company and its products and services in an interesting way that grabs readers’ attention and makes them want to buy from us or work with us. To be effective, a brochure must have solid branding, strong visuals, clear and concise messaging, and effective page layout and design.

When we recently re-wrote and re-designed an Affinity Express trade show brochure (for print) and some posters to display in our booth, we took the time to document the process. Mel and I have worked together on dozens of brochures and come at it from two perspectives: strategy and content for me and design and branding for Mel.

Together, we came up with the following tips that will help you create effective brochures.

Affinity Express graphic services brochure

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Seasonal Ads for Winter

December 6, 2011 Leave a Comment

Every season brings on a slew of new products that need to be promoted. Smart marketers and business-owners also find ways of packaging existing products for different times of year to inspire customers to buy. As winter sets in, let’s take a look at some of the ads our team has designed for our clients while the temperatures drop and the snow starts in North America.

The easiest way to work make an ad seasonal is when there is a natural fit with the products, such as these ads for winter boots and slippers that will keep you dry and warm.

Ad for waterproof winter boots

Ad for Ugg winter boots

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Digital Media and the Newspaper Industry: an Interview with Michael Fogel of Hearst

November 30, 2011 Leave a Comment

Michael Fogel, VP at Hearst Media

We recently met Michael Fogel, vice president of technology development at Hearst Newspapers. Hearst is a client of Affinity Express. Using our services to become more efficient and proactive is just one of the ways Hearst is adapting itself to the growing predominance of digital media and the decline in circulation and print ad revenues.

This blog post lays out Mr. Fogel’s views on the newspaper industry and explains how Hearst is riding the wave and leading the industry.

Digital Media Has Disrupted the Newspaper Industry

According to Mr. Fogel, the split in revenues for the newspaper industry used to be 80% advertising and 20% circulation. That was prior to double-digit declines in print revenues.

Not only have print revenues dropped dramatically, but newspapers are struggling to offer online services. Even as news publishers find ways to create and deliver digital products, margins on online services are lower and publishers need higher volumes to compensate.

How Hearst Uses Digital to Its Advantage

Unlike many of its counterparts, Hearst is surviving and even thriving in the digital world. The company was very close to realizing a year-over-year revenue gain in October. To Mr Fogel’s knowledge, no other news publisher can say this. Read more of this post

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Seven Easy Steps to Outsourcing Advertising and Marketing Production

November 15, 2011 Leave a Comment

While most companies outsource at least one or more processes (e.g., payroll, cleaning services, landscaping, security, and benefits are rarely done in-house), there are many companies who have never outsourced advertising and marketing production, a mission-critical function that can include design of display ads, websites, emails, social media, marketing collateral and more. The idea can seem new and daunting.

Although marketing and advertising production is essential to every business, the outsourcing process doesn’t have to be complicated, especially if you are working with an experienced company that can lead you through it efficiently. Here are seven easy steps to outsourcing advertising and marketing production.

Samples of work Affinity Express has created for clients Read more of this post

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Designs of the Quarter: Online Ad, Coupon, Vector Art

October 28, 2011 2 Comments

The results of this year’s third Designs of the Quarter contest are in, and as always, I’m proud to present some of the best work within Affinity Express.

Online Ad

Designs of the Quarter: online ad

This eye-catching ad was an easy choice for Design of the Quarter because it grabs attention. Regardless of the online newspaper’s headline, you can’t ignore the ad because it surrounds the content. Even better, it earned high praise from our client: “We need to keep maintaining the high quality we’ve become accustomed to through Affinity Express. This is an AWESOME piece of creative built by your team. Keep up this great work.” Read more of this post

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Marketing for the Holidays

October 11, 2011 Leave a Comment

Start preparing for the holidays now!When the weather is warm, the sun is shining and kids are out of school, I think about . . . the winter holidays. It sounds counterintuitive but this is the best time to put together plans, place orders and get ahead of the requirements of the season. I realize the summer has already passed, but hope this post will help you catch up!

The best advice of all is to start as soon as possible. These days, holiday decorations go on sale the day after Halloween with good reason—many people start planning and purchasing early. That’s why, whether you are a B2C or B2B company, it pays to have a roadmap for the holidays before you start hearing carols and seeing inflatable snow men on your neighbors’ lawns. Read more of this post

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Retail Client Achieves 65% Lower Costs and Half the Turn Time

September 27, 2011 Leave a Comment

Design for Retail Client

A design our team created for this client

We support several retail clients and their print design needs: in-store signage, flyers and image editing for product images on their websites are some typical products we work on. One of our clients is a leading grocery and pharmacy retailer with 2,500 stores, 140,000 employees and several well-known brands. In addition, the client also provides supply chain and business services to another 2,200 independent retailers. 

Cost Pressure and Inefficiency

In an innovative move designed to reduce costs, our client centralized production for the retail chains so all requests would come through corporate headquarters for better control and standardization. Yet they still needed a better way to provide support, reduce turn times and improve communication with external customers and internal design functions.

The company was outsourcing to a U.S.-based company, but the service was expensive and not meeting all their needs in the creative services segment. The company needed more productivity, lower costs and greater value for their investment.

As a result, the retailer made another breakthrough and decided to become one of the early adopters in the retail industry of business process outsourcing for advertising and media. The company selected Affinity Express, based on our reputation for transforming production for our clients, to build and operate an optimized onsite, onshore and offshore delivery platform, customized to meet the requirements of the client. Read more of this post

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Eight Tips on Organizing a Great Event

September 21, 2011 2 Comments

Event planning often falls under marketing, whether that means trade shows, client visits or corporate meetings. And if you are a small- to medium-sized business, the chances are you don’t have a budget to hire an outside firm or a consultant. We’re just back from the Affinity Express annual strategy workshop and I’m glad to say that it went quite well, from the hotel to the meals to the events. Based on this recent experience, here are some suggestions to increase the likelihood of success for your event, regardless of the type of meeting or the industry you are in.

1. Visualize the Details

This is probably the tactic that has helped me the most, especially when it comes to large events. You have to know the venues, details and agenda better than anyone. Plus, you should see them from the perspective of your participants. When you envision through how guests will enter, what they will see, what they will need and what they will expect, you can effectively cover all of the details. Your goal is to have the attendees relax and feel completely taken care of, even when you’re having a straightforward business meeting.

This is one reason why you see signs with group names and directions in hotels when there are events. Having people wander around aimlessly, wondering where they are supposed to go, is not the best start to a gathering. The annual event for the Chicago chapter of Go Red For Women was a great example of effective signage. It was a large hotel and there was no doubt where to report, check your coat, find the ballroom, etc. They answered all the questions before they could be asked (and we were proud to have helped design the signage).

Dinner at the strategy meeting

Dinner was a time to relax and have more informal conversations

For our dinners around the strategy meeting, I had perused the menus and arranged for special requirements in advance. Each day, I arrived early to meet the servers, select wine and appetizers, discuss the approach with the staff and ensure everything was set up the way I wanted. Over the course of four days, my boss never started a question with, “Did you . . .?” When our guests arrived, they didn’t have to think, just enjoy themselves, which they certainly did. I’m not naming names but there was spontaneous karaoke at one point! Read more of this post

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Generating New Ideas for Blog Posts

September 9, 2011 Leave a Comment

Blogger's blockIt is blog publishing day and you are staring at a blank screen but your to-do list has reached epic proportions. All of your contributors are mysteriously offline. What can you do to get the creative juices flowing so you can post something other than a blog about writer’s block?

Here is the list I run through when all else fails.

1.     Interview Someone

I know from experience that it is almost impossible to push someone (especially someone who isn’t a professional writer or marketer) into sitting down and quickly turning out an insightful post. Instead, schedule a 15-minute call and submit questions in advance. Then take notes on the conversation. You’ll be able to ask follow-up and clarifying questions much easier this way. Then you can get some supporting research and other opinions while your subject scurries off to other tasks. You can also interview outside contacts, customers, analysts, etc. Just decide in advance what you want to know so your conversation has focus.

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Choosing the ELITE Logo Design

August 16, 2011 1 Comment

With the announcement of our new Affinity Express ELITE initiative to better communicate and reinforce our company’s core values, we launched an internal design contest in July to develop the ELITE logo.

All Affinity Express employees were eligible to participate. Designs had to include “Affinity Express” and “ELITE” (in all caps because it is an acronym). We asked them to take into account the company branding standards and colors, but work to develop an attractive logo that demonstrates our creativity and design capabilities. Individuals could submit designs or teams could work together. And multiple entries were permissible.

I’m happy to say that we received hundreds of amazing designs and this was our most popular contest since our corporate logo was developed several years ago. Entries were reviewed without any names or identification and voted on by a team of Affinity Express personnel, including Human Resources and Marketing representatives.

The first thing we did was eliminate entries we didn’t believe would work for a variety of reasons (e.g., because the colors were off, the designs were not interesting or they didn’t have balance with our logo). We also got a lot of variations on the same theme and had to drill down to one representation of an idea. As we went through our review process, it was important for us to consider how logos would appear in different media: on memos, the website, t-shirts, posters, presentations and more. Read more of this post

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A Five-Step Recipe for Marketing Success

August 9, 2011 2 Comments

Cinnamon pecan buns

My cinnamon pecan buns

You’ve already heard that I work long hours juggling multiple priorities in my role with Affinity Express. When I show up at the office armed with trays of decadent desserts my coworkers, I invariably hear the question: “How do you find the time?” 

The answer is that I make the time because baking not only gives me a welcome break from work but also reinforces the way I approach marketing and gives me an opportunity to think through more complex challenges. Let me explain.

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Designs of the Quarter: Video, Print Ads, Flyers and Image Editing

August 1, 2011 1 Comment

For our second Designs of the Quarter contest this year, we called for entries in the categories of: flyers, print ads, video ads and image editing. Now that we’ve shared the good news with our team in our newsletter, we’re pleased to let you know about the winning designs.

Flyer

This flyer stood out because the image ties in perfectly with the headline, “Healthy Kids” and grabs attention. The boy looks ready to take on the world! Plus, the layout of the text lets readers easily grasp the point: donations are requested for this worthy cause. When you have so little time to engage, it is important that messages come through quickly.

Designs of the Quarter: flyer
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Our Parent Company, Ayala Corporation

July 28, 2011 Leave a Comment

Ayala logoFor those of you who don’t know, our parent company is LiveIt Investments, the holding company for Ayala Corporation’s investments in the business process outsourcing (BPO) sector. Ayala Corp is one of the largest conglomerates in the Philippines. This association has many advantages for Affinity Express, not least being the stability and financial backing that they provide, allowing us to be a dynamic, versatile company.

The 2010 Ayala Corporation Annual Report was released recently and we were featured as a valued company in the portfolio of LiveIt Investments, Ltd.

Here are some highlights from the report. Read more of this post

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