panik were proud to attend (and supply cupcakes!) the 2009 Leeds Twestival, a celebration of Twitter! The idea behind it was that 175 other cities would all host a Twestival at the same time, to raise money for charity, and spend the evening Tweeting to and about each other!
The evening was a great success, with food, entertainment, excellent raffle prizes, and of course, a lot of Tweets!
Visit Leeds Twestival for more information about the event, as well as pictures and reports from the night!
panik is proud to have been asked to provide cupcakes and be a sponsor of the Open Coffee Club on Tuesday 3rd February 2009. The Club is a chance for a wide range of digital media and technical types, to mingle together over coffee, and generally make use of the fantastic facilities at the Northern Technology Institute (NTI Leeds).
Visit the event site for more information.
A report and pictures will follow, we hope to see you there!
In a nutshell, a brand is the supporting images and ideas such as the name, logo, slogan, design
scheme, as well as the intangible assets related to a business which symbolise all the information
connected to a company, product or service. A good brand will confirm the credibility of the com-
pany, connect the target market’s prospects emotionally, motivate the buyer and concrete the users’
loyalty. Branding is not about getting your target to choose you over the competition, but to get the
target to see you as the preferred solution to their needs.
Here are our five must do’s when it comes to branding:
1) Define your company/product/service
The brand represents what the company is, so identifying some key points about the company will
enable the brand to represent exactly what is intended. A few useful questions to ask are, what
services are being offered? What is the company mission statement and aims? What does the
company specialise in and what is the target audience?
2) What do you want your brand to do for your company?
Answering this question will help decide how to go about achieving the brand’s objectives. It may
be a small business who want to gain more clients, or an international company who want to be-
come the leader in their line of work. Knowing the underlying aims of the brand will help to shape
the brand campaign and market strategy, however large or small.
3) Know your target market:
This is probably one of the most important things to consider when defining the brand. The best
way to start is to conduct an informal market analysis, looking into the location of the business,
what the target market knows about the current brand, how the brand is to be perceived, what at-
tracts the target market to the brand and who are the competitors in the market. If the brand is
wrong for your target market, your customers will soon let you know!
4) Know what your competitors are doing…and then be different.
There will be many things to face when designing a brand with the most important being the com-
petition as well as issues such as location, financing, persuading clients etc. The best way to
counter the competition is to spend time researching into them, finding out how they operate, what
they do differently to you, how you would improve on what they do and what they do better. Once
these questions have been answered, you are a lot clearer on what you need to do to get ahead of
the game. Keeping up to date with the current market will also be a great advantage and this can
easily be done online by registering for internet updates, trade publications, news alerts and elec-
tronic newsletters as well as applying for their brochures and browsing on their websites. Differen-
tiation is the key to competing in today’s marketplace and will therefore contribute to the brand’s
longevity.
5) Branding isn’t just about creating a logo…
To view branding as naming, design or advertising is too myopic and will shorten the brand’s life
expectancy. Consideration of all the other aspects linked to business such as quality, efficient pro-
duction, high service levels, effective selling, strong supply chain etc will contribute to the effective-
ness of the brand and appeal to consumers more. Markets are also dynamic, not static, so
branding strategy needs to be flexible in order to adapt to external factors placed upon it such as
consumer response.
This week, panik has been concentrating on the SEO aspect of the business, working for a couple of clients to help increase traffic to their sites. The key lesson learned in this task has been thus:
- DO NOT underestimate the power of Search Engine Optimisation!
A bit of thought and effort applied in this area can really increase search traffic to your site. You can very often bypass the expense of Google AdWords by utilising this method, and it’s surprising how many of your competitors are not capitalising on it either.
If you want an SEO Audit done on your website, contact panik – we’re currently offering this service for FREE, so make the most of it!
Creativity and design play a very important role within marketing, A good design will stand out from
competitors, be memorable and promote the business in a good light. Creativity is therefore
important for the initial inspiration and individuality which will set you apart from your competitors.
DESIGN
In design, planning, simplicity, usability, refinement and practice are all key areas to look at. Before
you begin anything, it is advised to get things down on paper and experiment with ideas.
Planning is the first step on the road to a great design, and starting to sketch out what the final
production will look like will help you gain a stronger overall concept.
Simplicity is also a key to good marketing designs. Flamboyant or gimmicky designs may cast the
attention away from the product/service and confuse or overcrowd the website. Having too many
complex ideas could also cause confusion when designing and if an element or an effect has no
net gain on the overall design, remove it. Take away the superfluous parts of a design and the
core components will stand out stronger, making for a more cohesive identity.
“Usability is design. It’s not just about how your marketing strategy looks, it’s about how it works”*.
Making the relevant information to the product easily accessible is arguably more important than
the initial design. If the consumer cannot access the information regarding the product then they
will never know about the product!
Good design takes time. Deliberate over your work every chance you get, ask yourself questions -
how could this be better? Is it obvious how this works? What does this represent? The entire de-
sign process is little more than the conception of an idea – your initial sketches – and the continued
refinement of that idea into the finished design. Be persistent and do not settle for things that are
average just for the sake of getting the project done. Take great care in the final stages of design
and leave plenty of time for tweaking.
“The uncreative mind can spot wrong answers, but it takes a very creative mind to spot wrong
questions.”- Anthony Jay
Creativity plays an important part in marketing but don’t overshadow what is being marketed with
too many extravagant ideas. Marketing is about making something out of nothing and creativness
will benefit the process greatly and, unlike popular belief, everyone has the ability to be creative.
Don’t be afraid to try out new ideas, but remain objective throughout and always be open minded.
It is the creativness behind a marketing campaign which will set you apart from your competitors.
Last night panik attended the O’Reilly IGNITE North UK event at the NTI in Leeds. The format of the evening was twenty, five minute talks (each encompassing a series of slides that automatically rotated after 15 seconds), on subjects relating to different aspects of technology. Topics included:
- Perfection in Design
- Could hardware hacking save us?
- IT in Africa
- Digital graffiti
- The future of search
It’s worth visiting the NTI site for more information on the topics, as well as links to some of the speakers’ sites.
A live stream of the talks is available here, but stay tuned as standard definition edited footage will be available in a few days.
Welcome to the blog of panik marketing ltd!
We will be using this page to keep you updated with all the projects and activities going on in the world of marketing and communications, from the panik perspective. We will provide links, photographs, and anything else we think you will want to see, so you can see what we get up to, and what we could do for you!
So join us in making marketing a habit.
