KEEPING UP WITH THE TIMES

“Do you want to spend the rest of your life selling sugared water,
or do you want a chance to change the world?”

– Steve Jobs

Fifty years ago, graphic artists didn’t have the amazing tools and software that we are lucky enough to have now. I can only imagine how things will be fifty more years from now. It is so important to keep up with the times when it comes to design. People don’t want to see the same design techniques over and over. It may be nice at first, but after a while, it becomes boring. Monotonous. Cliché. (Think of how many times you have seen that poor Papyrus font splayed across a billboard or magazine ad. If you haven’t noticed it before, I’m sure you will now. That sucker is everywhere.) We are creatures that are in constant motion, always changing. You don’t want to eat a banana for every meal do you? We love things to be new and fresh. It’s imperative in the design world to keep this in mind.

We are so technologically based in this day and age. We’ve got constant access to phones and computers. People are so used to using technology to our advantage, it’s inevitable that it should be reflected in our art. Design is a combination of Art and Science, and the understanding of how to blend the two into an aesthetically appealing piece of work. Busson understands this, and has come a long way as we get ahead of the curve by utilizing the technology world with mobile platforms, websites, videos and more.

In this industry, if you don’t move forward, you will fall behind. We have to know our competition. Stay on top of what’s going on in the world. Find out what is trending and what is getting stale. We have to continue to educate ourselves, and learn the newest software when it comes along.

This world never stops changing. We are constantly moving on to bigger and better things. I remember holding my first iPod and thinking, “This is the most amazing thing I have ever purchased!” Two months later there was a new version. And then another a year after that. Pretty soon there was this thing called an iPhone. “There can not be anything better than this!” I thought. Now, Apple has released the iPhone 5. The point? Don’t get stuck in a world of comfortable and familiar. There are always new, edgy and exciting things on the horizon!

Article written by: Mary Steele

GET INSPIRED

“I think everybody can agree that you can hear a certain song and it will put you in a certain mood, and that’s just the beauty of music and I am so inspired by that.”

–Shaun White

“I am inspired by life, past experiences, what’s to come, women around me, art, colors, paintings, and emotions.”

–Rachel Roy

You’ve probably heard the saying, “There’s nothing new under the Sun.”  And you’ve probably experienced that awkward moment when you are staring blankly into the soul-sucking time vortex – better known to humans as The Blank Canvas. Sometimes finding inspiration can be a tough feat to overcome. Today, I thought I’d share a few of my own tricks.

1. Listen to your granny – Draw from what you know. It’s a simple concept that has been handed down through the ages. And it works. The better you know a subject – the more you’ll be able to work with it, whether it’s writing, designing, painting, or what have you. Your granny’s a smart lady.
2. Don’t be a thief – Taking someone else’s idea is not only lazy and pathetic – it’s illegal. BUT there’s no harm in being inspired by their work. Put your own spin on an old idea. Jazz it up a little. See what happens.
3. Shaun White is right – (See the quote at the top) I’m glad to see that underneath all of that crazy red hair, and sweet snowboarding skills, Shaun’s got some brains. Sometimes silence is deafening. Put on some music to fit your mood and see what inspiration comes your way. You should be able to find inspiration in a good tune (As long as it’s not Justin Bieber…). Many times I find it best to listen to something new. You can do that easily on Pandora or through Spotify.
4. Go out on a limb – I’m not gonna lie, I have used some silly stuff for inspiration before. I’m exposing my inner geek here, but I’m a huge Doctor Who fan (If you’re a fellow Whovian, you probably caught my time vortex reference!) I’ll admit I’ve let that work its way into some of my designs. Don’t get me wrong; I didn’t smack a T.A.R.D.I.S. onto a business card or anything (Although… No, no! Too geeky! Focus, Mary!). But I did draw some inspiration from colors and sounds and ideas from the show. And I came up with a pretty sweet tri-fold design from it, if I do say so myself.
5. Quotables – If you have read my other posts, you might have noticed a motif. I like to start my blogs with a quote (or two in this case) that goes along with whatever topic I’m approaching. Looking up inspirational quotes is quite (wait for it…) INSPIRATIONAL. I know, shocking, right?
6. Pinterest – If you’re not on the site already, I would highly recommend it. Pinterest is a great place to store loads of inspiration. There are tons of ideas, pictures, and quotes to browse through. You can create your inspiration boards and collect whatever pins you like. (Fair warning: Prepare to become fully obsessed.)

These are just some of my silly little ideas. I’d love to hear some more! Leave a comment with some of your ideas below!

Article written by: Mary Steele

The Marketing Lessons from My Wife’s Travel: Day 8

Well I have made it half way through this experience.  With 8 days until my wife returns, I have become acutely aware of my incompetence around the house as relates to the things she handles.  It is interesting to note that while I have managed to not burn the house down, it is not nearly the same dwelling it was just 8 days ago.  There are major and minor challenges I have admittedly created and I feel as though I am powerless to prevent them.  Instead, I am left to deal with them.  Here are a few of the lessons learned thus far:

• The scuff marks pans leave in the sink are building up.  I have never noticed them before and I have no clue how to get rid of them.  Surely she uses a product that eliminates them because simply scrubbing them doesn’t get it done!
• Every piece of casual clothing I own that was once white is now some shade of pink.  I was informed just yesterday that had I simply used a product we already have, I could have prevented this.  Color catcher?  What?
• Dog hair really builds up if not handled frequently.  My plan was to vacuum just before she returned.  Even I cannot live with this much dog hair floating around!
• The lack of diligent coaster use under drinks is a problem.  This seems to create more work than I had anticipated.
• The better the meal I prepare the more mess it creates.  Health vs. convenience is tough decision.  Left to my own devices for a prolonged period of time, I would weigh 400 pounds and be an excellent candidate for open heart surgery!

I am left to wonder why my wife knows how to prevent or solve all of these challenges and I don’t.  Clearly, some things are passed down from mother to daughter but many of the products she uses are relatively new.  So how does she know about them and I remain clueless?

I suspect the answer lies in marketing.  Manufacturers of these products have targeted my wife.  Both in terms of the channel they select to deliver messaging and in the way they package their products.  On its face, that seems smart given the fact that my wife handles these issues around our house but I think these companies are missing something.  The divorce rate is sky high in this country leaving many men my age newly single, right?  Many of them are raising kids.  Does it still make sense to target the same audience they did 25 years ago?  Have things changed enough to justify a new approach?  I think the answer is obvious.

Many companies employ the “ready, fire, aim” strategy in their marketing endeavors.  I think “ready, aim, fire” makes more sense.  Emphasis on the placement of “aim” makes all the difference in the world.  Additionally, taking into account paradigm shifts seems to be the easiest thing to do given they occur so slowly.  Plus (and this is important), it would be nice to have white clothing in my wardrobe still!

*Side note- If individuals in business made the same assumptions companies do about gender, they would be litigated out of business, right?

Article written by: Jason Wood

The Marketing Lessons from My Wife’s Travel: Day 3

Be afraid, be very afraid.  My wife is out of town for two weeks on a business trip leaving me, and my three dogs on our own.  My wife and I operate very much like a partnership as it relates to the division of duties in our house (she may disagree just a little with the term division).  But for the most part, I am expected to pull my weight around the house.  There are no June Cleaver moments in my house.  You remember the scene, the man comes home from work while the dutiful wife scurries to pour him his evening cocktail, with dinner on the stove and the kids quietly washing up for dinner.

Yeah, right!  I wouldn’t know what to do with a woman like that but I can tell you, it would be extremely creepy for me.  Extremely!

I have a wife; a partner.  At 36 years old, my mom spent a career in business and I just wasn’t raised to have that expectation.  I suspect most men my age have a similar perspective on this.  The only similarity between the TV wives of the 50’s and the current paradigm within which most of us live is the division of duties.  They have drastically changed over the years but most married couples have settled on specific set of tasks each is responsible for around the house.

You don’t really realize it until your spouse goes out of town.  Then, you become immediately and acutely aware of exactly what your spouse does within that division.  Either I am a much better negotiator or she made the decision early on that I was not to be trusted to accomplish certain tasks.  I suspect it is the latter of the two.  I wonder if her behavior changes as much as mine when I am travelling for business.

Clearly, with my wife out of town, I have reverted back to my bachelor days.  Not nearly to the same extreme, though.  After 11 years of marriage, I like living in a clean home.  I like not looking at a pile of dishes in the sink.  I prefer clean sheets and clean…. Well you see where I am going.  That level of conditioning makes me think to myself that she holds me back quite a bit.  She holds me back from my worse and less competent self.  There is real learning here.  The ability to affect this kind of shift in my thinking, my preferences and more to the point, my willingness to change my behavior to have the household I enjoy when she is home, is nothing short of miraculous.  My parents spent the first 18 years of my life attempting to accomplish the same but with little success.  Why is that?

However, there are still very different behaviors on display.  I didn’t watch the Monday night game at home.  Oh no…  With my wife gone, it provides an excellent opportunity to hang out with the guys, tip a few cold ones and enjoy the game in a public setting with my buddies.  A rare treat for a married guy.  Not that I couldn’t do that with my wife in town, but I likely wouldn’t.  Why is that?  And more to the point, what does that say about me, my wife and the marital dynamic as it relates the marketing challenge BW3’s (for example) has in attracting my demo?  How do they get me off the couch and out with my buddies on a Monday night?  Clearly, we are the ideal demographic.  We have a few bucks, we don’t get into fights, we tip well (most of us), we don’t drink until we fall off the bar stool yet we drink enough to pad the bottom line and we are far more likely to be a loyal customer because we simply don’t bar hop.

How can my experience with my wife’s absence benefit a place like BW3’s?  More to the point, why don’t businesses take their successes and endeavor to better understand them.  Doing so allows them to better engage customers by delivering more relevancy for the customer, right?

Over the next couple of weeks, I am going to post articles chronicling these very different behaviors, how companies should leverage the understanding they provide and why it all matters.  Stay tuned, this could be very interesting…

Article written by: Jason Wood

Technology Driven Marketing Isn’t Coming; It’s Here!

It’s time to face facts. If you aren’t already leveraging technology in your marketing approach, you are behind the curve. Chances are your competitors are and every day you don’t, you allow them to adopt the actionable insights that come with technology. The excuses are running out given the necessity to engage customers. The days of pretty marketing and brand awareness driving customer contact and opportunity are gone. Don’t believe me? Consider this:

• Dish Network comes out with the Hopper; a device capable of eliminating commercials from TV altogether. Why would they come out with such a device?  It’s simple; consumers want it. 
• Satellite radio has grown in leaps and bounds over the last 5 years partly due to deals with car manufacturers but in large part due to largely commercial free radio. Consumers love it. Consumers demand it. 
• Readership of the nation’s largest newspapers have fallen dramatically. Even local papers have taken hits in their readership. Why? People are getting news online more than at any other time in history. We have smart phones, tablets and internet access virtually everywhere we go. 
• As recently as 3 years ago, email campaigns generated responses and delivered a cost effective means of communicating with customers. Today?  Email garners a whopping 4% open rate and an even smaller take rate. Slightly higher with opt-in lists. In that case, we see an anemic 5-7% open rate with a smaller take rate. 

I sat in the office of the director of marketing for a local firm recently and she was explaining to me how traditional marketing was still the best way to communicate their value proposition. We were interrupted by a text message she received from her local ad rep. The commercial they had cut earlier that week was ready for viewing. She stopped, read the message and replied. Oh, the irony. A smile crept across her face and she got it. Right there on the spot, without another word from me, she got it.

Not every technology driven platform available is a good idea. Your customer demographic should dictate the channel. But that’s the whole point, isn’t it? Delivering relevancy to your customers with both the message and the communication channel is king.

At Busson, we are not a mobile marketing company, a social media company, a data analytics firm, a video production company, a market positioning firm, a design and layout firm, a website developer firm or even a printer. We are a customer engagement firm helping our clients leverage the technology their customers demand!

Article written by: Jason Wood

ACEDEMIA VS. THE REAL WORLD

“I am not young enough to know everything.”

–Oscar Wilde

Yup. ^ That would be me.

When you’re young you think you know it all. Then you graduate from college and join the real world. That’s when it hits you. You really don’t. There is a whole world of knowledge yet to be discovered.  But you have the degree. You have the diploma. You are expected to be a virtuoso!

Thank God for internships, yeah? Those few months I spent interning at Vision Marketing in Virginia taught me more about the real world of design than I thought it would. I remember clearly the moment that reality hit me. My internship supervisor asked me: “What is the number for that pantone?” I had no idea how to answer him. I racked my brain trying to remember what in the world a pantone was. I honestly didn’t remember learning much about that in school. Was I sick that day? Was it just too long ago?

As my supervisor said: “That’s why you’re here. To learn these little things.” I felt like an idiot. I should have already known how to answer his question! As soon as he walked away I pulled up Google (thank God for Google too, right?) and searched the word ‘pantone.’ Duh. It finally came back to me. But it had been a good two or three years since I’d heard the word used in any of my classes.

So, are our schools flaking out when it comes to teaching us everything? Or are there some things you just NEED to experience and use to actually understand? I’ve always been more of a hands-on learner, so being thrown into the real-world atmosphere helped me learn a lot, fast.  And I’m still learning. Everyday, I learn something new.

I guess we just need a combination of the two. The technical, book training is important. But getting that hands-on experience, even being thrown in with the wolves can make all of the difference.

Article written by: Mary Steele

RUNNING ON EMPTY

“Nothing’s a better cure for writer’s block than to eat ice cream right out of the carton.”  – Don Roff

It’s half past one in the morning and you’re on your way home from a friend’s house. You stayed much later than you had intended and that little red needle is indicating that you’re about out of gas. Do you stop to refuel? Or do you just keep trying to chug along, hoping you’ll make it there on fumes?

Only an idiot would say the latter is a better idea. Yet, most times, that’s just what we end up doing. “It’s so late, and I’m not that far from home. I’m sure I will make it.” You’ve just made your night an even later one. In a few moments, your car will make that hollow noise, you will lose all power and you will have to coast to a stop and call a friend with a gas can for help. (What? Speaking from experience? Me? Noooo…okay, yes.)

We live in a culture that says to keep going. Don’t stop. If you stop now, you will get behind. But we obviously need to stop and refuel now and then. It’s so easy to get caught up in the fast pace of our society, but it is so important to stop and take a second to breathe.  If you push yourself past empty, you will break down.

Every artist has experienced the creative block. Staring at the impossibly bright white of the blank canvas, that extremely empty Illustrator file, that horrid little flashing cursor of a Word document… And it has driven many to the point of giving up.

I know I run out of steam now and then. More than I’d like to admit, quite frankly. So, when my brain is screaming “let me catch up!” I like to pause, take a couple of deep breaths, put on a good song, and close my eyes for a moment. Or if I’m looking for a muse of some sort, I’ll hop onto www.moodstream.gettyimages.com for a little brainstorming. It’s always good to step away from your own work for a few minutes, and sometimes that’s when your best ideas will just come to you!

What if Mozart had said, “Forget it! I quit!” What if Van Gogh threw down the paint brush? What if Shakespeare never fought through the creative block? I, for one, would find this a very depressing world.

So, fight through it. Take a minute to refuel. Sitting at a computer all day can take its toll on one’s eyes. And brain. And soul…  So, take care of your mentality. Push yourself, but don’t push too hard. No one else is going to create that masterpiece, you know…

Article written by: Mary Steele