Business cards as a marketing tool

Businesses in Bath could be forgiven for thinking that, in these difficult times, that marketing efforts should be cut in order to provide savings for their business. Not true as it is more important than ever to be putting your message in front of customers but it can be difficult to justify marketing materials during difficult times for businesses in general. Consider more cost efficient printed marketing materials such as business cards. Business cards are not just for exchanging contact information; they can play a big role in the marketing of your company. Aside from exchanging the expected information such as company names and contact details, your business card can now to be seen to include your company USP or slogan and the major customer benefits of using your company.

The printed style of your card can make it stand out from the crowd. Recycled materials can appeal to consumers, information printed vertically rather than horizontally can stand out and fold over cards are increasingly popular as they allow your company to display more information. The quality of your business card speaks volumes about the type of company that you are and it is important to keep the quality in mind when designing a business card in terms of fonts, styles and colours and also when you are looking to print a business card. There are local companies who will be able to quote on business card printing in Bath and ensure that your creative efforts do not go to waste in the production process.

POS materials reinvigorate brand

Consumers in Cambridge will be seeing a change in their local Lakeland store as the kitchenware retailer looks to overhaul its window displays across the country. The retailer is looking to reinvigorate their window displays and point of sale display materials along the themes of ‘home baking’ and ‘grow your own’, which are felt to reflect the current trends in these difficult times.

Lakeland is working with the agency, Gratterpalm, to develop their new point of sale and window display materials. The overall theme is to reflect the British summertime using pastel and citrus colours and cardboard cut-outs of season produce, cupcake cases and images of scrapbooks in rustic, homely styles. This will be backed up with a commitment to value [Read more]

Leaflets cause salon a potential fine

A Lancashire hair and beauty salon has come under fire from council officials after they used printed leaflets to promote their business. Coast Salon, located in Chorley, Lancashire, wanted to promote its services to the local community and had some leaflets printed up to distribute their offers and discounts to customers.

However, salon owners Sarah Hayes and Anne Nolan placed the leaflets on parked vehicles around the town centre area in order to drum up trade and were threatened with a £75 per vehicle fine from council officials unless they [Read more]

Planning permission for banners in Loughborough

Businesses looking for companies offering banner printing in Loughborough will recognise the impact of advertising banners and the flexibility of the format. Advertising banners offer a great opportunity to allow a company to stand out and, due to their temporary nature, they can provide a fantastic targeting opportunity – particularly if you want to catch people on routes to specific events.

However, as great as banners can be for giving companies a perfect opportunity to target just where they want, it is important to remember the necessity to get the appropriate permissions for erecting banners or your brand may suffer. Particularly by the side of high traffic roads, banners may come under fire from health and safety regulations due to being so close to the side of the road.

Taking the example of a charity fete in Reading this month; their banners came [Read more]

Glasgow gets anti-knife poster campaign

Learning from an advertising campaign that ran in the last year in Inverclyde, the Scottish government is now rolling out its ‘anti-knife’ message to young people in the city of Glasgow. Last year, the government piloted a scheme to raise awareness amongst young people in the Inverclyde region about the dangers and consequences of them carrying a knife on the streets. The ‘No Knives Better Lives’ strap line ran across a cinema advert creative execution, but also ran on a poster campaign in phone boxes. Phone boxes are a great way to target young people due to their city centre locations and their high street presence in local areas with a proximity to locations where young people hang out.

The creative execution was designed by The Leith Agency and the campaign also included [Read more]

Posters drive London commuters to Costa

Commuters around London tube stations, such as at Potters Bar, will start to see an abundance of advertising and marketing activity from Costa Coffee around the city as the coffee shop chain hopes to raise awareness of their launch of new stores to rival competitors, Starbucks.

Costa Coffee will be pushing their new ‘metropolitan’ stores in their marketing efforts. The stores are aimed specifically at City customers and their lifestyles and, as the strap line for advertising says, it is “Something a little different from Costa”. The new store opens in London first and it is hoped that through express queues, loyalty cards and free Wi-fi, the ‘metropolitan’ stores will encourage Londoners to visit to either conduct a business meeting or get a coffee on the run.

The stores are to rival Starbuck’s ‘retro’ stores and the services offered by Costa are based on [Read more]

Outdoor advertisers support Olympic Games

A major outdoor advertising sales company has signed a deal with London 2012 to exclusively supply outdoor advertising media space to London 2012 between now and the Olympic Games. CBS Outdoor, which has advertising space on the London Underground including the Docklands Light Railway, buses and tram systems nationally and rail stations across the country. CBS also has advertising space in the relatively new and upmarket shopping centre, Westfield, in London.

CBS will provide London 2012 with media space across these environments for all their major marketing campaigns in the run up to the games, including the recruitment of volunteers, gathering a fan base for the games and generating awareness of tickets and launching the sales for the events.

CBS will be a Tier Three provider for the Olympics, including the Paralympics – Tier Three [Read more]

Specsavers was ready for England’s World Cup exit

It seems that Optician retailer Specsavers had anticipated England’s early defeat at the World Cup and was ready with a campaign to cash in creatively on our departure from the football competition. Specsavers’ campaign creative used humour in its advertisement and focused on England’s disallowed goal in their final match against Germany, which ended in England’s defeat as they crashed out of the World Cup losing 4-1, before even reaching the quarter finals.

Specsavers’ in house creative agency devised the strap line “Goal line technology…. from £25” with an image of Specsavers glasses. The advertisement was devised for press and had to be ready in time to make the deadlines for the national papers, including The Sun, the Daily Mail and the Daily Star a few days later. Missing print deadlines can be a costly [Read more]

Posters tackle prejudice

A campaign to raise awareness of issues surrounding facial disfigurement has been launched at the Welsh Assembly in Cardiff Bay, with Falklands War veteran Simon Weston helping to launch the campaign.

Mr Weston, who was very seriously burned and disfigured during a bomb attack in the Falklands War, is supporting the campaign to try to bring about fairness and equality when dealing with people with disfigurements. Mr Weston claims that society’s preoccupation with perfection with regards to body image is part of the problem.

The campaign is called Face Equality and the charity, Changing Faces, hopes to tackle the existing prejudices in today’s society against those people who have suffered from facial disfigurements. It is claimed that there are close to 1 million people living in the UK who have serious facial disfigurements. Many people are not aware of this fact and the campaign is aimed at [Read more]

Manchester agency creates sport brochure

The major sportswear brand UMBRO tasked a Manchester creative agency, Love, to design and produce a new UMBRO brochure to display their ‘tailored’ range of football kits.

The football kits are to be aimed at local grassroots football teams, encouraging them to wear the UMBRO football kit and the brochure, created by Love, is hoped will appeal to the amateur football teams and give them a positive impression of UMBRO’s gear. The ‘tailored’ range of kits is also worn by some top-flight teams, plus England’s national side, and so it is hoped that this will further encourage local teams to want to wear similar football strips.

The new brochure will show players such as Michael Owen and [Read more]

Next Page »