Posted by Dale Berkebile on Wed, Oct 12, 2011
This is a 2/3 page full color ad for The Garden Continuum running in the fall issue of the WellesleyWeston Magazine. The Garden Continuum is a landscape design firm in Medfield, MA. Since some of their clients/prospects are in the Wellesley & Weston area of MA, they thought it might be good to advertise in this local geo-focused magazine.
There were two goals for Brandwise when doing this ad:
- create an ad that sets TGC apart from all the other landscape companies
- make an offer that will drive traffic to the website
We very much helped TGC create a look and feel that no other landscape firm was doing. We stayed away from beautiful yard shots and went instead with a simple graphic shot of a Red Maple to promote the fall planting TGC can do. We also added an offer to try to make the readers do something… Go to the website and download an eBook on how to pick plants.
Since this was the first ad like this, they got some traffic to the website. They did not however get any leads from people downloading the ebook. This leads me to believe that the traffic was probably competitors wondering who this new advertiser was and what they offering. It is good to get the competitors wondering what you are doing.
The next step is to continue running a similar campaign. Advertising is a medium that takes time to break through the clutter. It takes campaigns and not just 1 or 2 ads to get results. So if you go this route, commit to the campaign approach. I would say it will take 13-15 ads to start getting through to people. That being said, either do multiple ads in one magazine and/or an ad a month for the next year or two (for monthly magazines).
Posted by Dale Berkebile on Fri, Jun 17, 2011
When it comes to most businesses, we would recommend against yellow pages advertising. A flooring company, plumber and HVAC company can probably still get some good business from the yellow pages but the key is standing out.
FloorPartners needed an ad design that would grab attention, stand out and get straight to the point in a small ad. Brandwsie recommended an ad redesign to make things more direct - Got UGLY floors? If you answered yes, read on and the ad tells you to "Get FloorPartners flooring" as an answer and giving you your next step.
Our goal here was to preform better than the previous years ad of the same size. The only difference was the focus (being more direct, and telling people what to do if they read the ad) and adding color. Although this is a black and white ad, white backgrounds and open "whitespace" in an ad really stands out. Black really pops on this white background.
Since we will be able to track the calls next year and compare them to the last several year, before FloorPartners worked with Brandwise, we will be able to test annual results. If the ad does not perform twice as good as previous years we will need to reevaluate ad yellow pages ad spending. Testing is important and allows you to make educated advertising marketing decisions. So test in any form of marketing you do.
Posted by Dale Berkebile on Thu, Jun 16, 2011
Serve Legal Process needed to produce and ad design for a trade publication. High-Tech Communications Consulting, working with Serve, requested Brandwise help them out. This was a quick turn ad design, but we were able to deliver a quality ad within 24 hrs. We do not recommend performing advertising design in this time-frame, but sometime we get in a crunch.
The best thing is to bring in the professionals in crunch-time. Since we have 15+ years experience with ads we were able to guarantee the client got a professional and branded ad even in a time crunch.
Serve Legal Process should make a strong impression in their trade publication and trump most of their competitors with this clean, professional, attention getting ad.
Posted by Dale Berkebile on Thu, Aug 20, 2009
When Toni&Guy do any design work it is extremely important to stay consistent with their cool, hip, trendy and maybe even edgy brand they have created.
Since this ad would be appealing to prospective salon directors, stylists and the like we had to speak their language. We started with the headline using the Toni&Guy logo in order to grab attention. We also used one of the hair collection stylings of this years ad. Both of these items are pretty well known within the industry. Beyond this, we focused on a strong typographic style to make things a little unique. This ad was focused only on their Texas locations.
