Trade Show Displays and Marketing Materials: the Perfect Opportunity to Showcase Your Products and Services

Preparing for trade shows

A trade show is meant to showcase and demonstrate new products and services within an industry. When you have members of the press, as well as members of your trade as well as the general public, at some trade shows, you really need to make a strong impact. Of course your company or product is very important, but it’s making people notice it which is really key.

When you’re already investing in space rental, travel and accommodations, it makes sense to invest appropriately in the design and construction of the trade show booth. Starmedia can help you get the best design for your money by finding the right path for your display, and help you decide what size of display best suits your needs. As a full-service advertising agency, we can also help with other promotional materials such as brochures or presentation folders, as well as guiding you which trade shows may be coming up in your industry that you want to promote your company in.


Don’t wait for the last minute

If you’re thinking of entering a trade show a season or two away, it’s a good idea to get in touch today. This will help you judge what sort of investment is required to get a high quality final product, and you’ll avoid any rush charges for printing or shipping of your trade show display. We can create a design that fits with your existing company brand, or if you have no company look, we can suggest one for you.

We can design or redesign your logo and stationery, as well as other promotional materials from informative print materials to items as seemingly minor as a coffee mug, but which people will remember you for. It’s important to have all of these designs work seamlessly together to create a strong brand. Let Starmedia push your image to the next level for your next trade show!

CNDNSED SOUP

Efficiency. We all strive to achieve it. We are all proud when it happens in a way which benefits us at work or with chores, yet we all make fun of it or are embarrassed of it when it comes to pop culture or things we deem to be frivolous.

What I'm thinking of most in this latter category is text messaging. It's widely accepted now and perhaps even expected that "too" or "to" will be abbreviated with the number "2". Remember learning about homonyms in the second grade? It's already a confusing concept to a 7 year old without incorrect examples being given daily by adults. In a generation where we have work-related disabilities without ever lifting anything, just because we sit poorly or have an incorrect keyboard setup, text messaging shorthand has become thought of as an unfortunate necessity, but a necessity nonetheless.

I was in New York City recently and was intrigued by two separate things which reminded me of this new shorthand. The first was the layout of different subway station names. Names such as Brooklyn were frequently shortened to fit on to pillars in the stations. The signs on the walls, where there was much more room, still had the name shortened, yet lacked consistency. "B-K-L-N" would appear on a post while "B-K-L-Y-N" would appear on the wall. Were they the same, it could be argued that the abbreviation on the wall was to match the post, but this inconsistency matches up much better with the text messaging make-your-own-rules mentality than a learned shorthand approach.

Also of interest to me was a pamphlet, about a dozen pages long, entitled "Notehand and Other Labor-Savers" from 1942 by Melvil Dewey, inventor of the Dewey Decimal System. Notehand, to oversimplify, is a streamlined relative of shorthand, intended for personal use instead of for stenographers. It doesn't save as much time as true shorthand, but it requires much less time to learn it and it can usually be read by people who have not studied it. Since half of any English writing is made up by the 100 most common words, a lot of time can be saved with little practice.

"About" is abbreviated to "abt", "neither" becomes "nei", and "every" becomes "ev". Some notehand abbreviations, such as "biz" instead of "business" and "yr" to represent "year" or "your", have found their way into the our everyday lives. After the basic abbreviations are learned, it is encouraged to create your own abbreviations based on the words which come up most often in your own writing. In this sense, there truly is an anything goes approach to notehand, much like with text messaging, but notehand is not intended for others to read. A search for more recent mention of notehand showed that people would sometimes use notehand to save time in school, but would then write the notes out in full later on, both as a review and as a way to have a "proper version" of the notes.

Despite the fact that most notehand practitioners would wince at "gr8" being used to represent the word "great", the similarities are striking. I find it amusing that the 10 year old who is text messaging their friend is likely unaware of notehand. And unless they happen to be browsing the Logotree blog on their iPhone, I doubt they ever will become aware of it.

All of this is to say that simplicity is key to good corporate branding. Reebok deciding to abbreviate themselves to their distinctive "rbk" look was a bold move, catering to their youth market, already full of abbreviations. The effectiveness of their branding is due largely to the minimalism. They lost their Union Jack and half of the letters in their name, and introduced a new stylized logo of only a few scant lines.

When working with a design company on a logo or corporate naming, keep your customers in mind. Although you may want to show that your company has a global presence, by adding a globe into the design, it doesn't take much before your logo becomes cluttered and weak. At that point you also have to wonder if it will size down legibly on a website or a business card. A good logo is an important part of corporate branding, but there is only so much you can ask of it. The rest has to be taken care of through the copywriting for your promotional materials. If you're wanting a logo that states "we've been in business for 80 years" or "you can trust us", consider stating such things in a tagline or as a heading in a brochure or presentation folder. Keep your logo simple and memorable.

Innie Vs. Outie – Navel Gazing In-House and Outsourcing in the New Marketplace

OK, you are a young upstart company, looking to give yourself a logo. Say your company name is Frankenscents, because you sell refined scented oils and your name is Frank. You decide that while your myopic secretary may have some great ideas about how your logo should look you don't think her proposals, all including crude drawing of her 2nd favorite cat in varying compromising positions, are the proper representation of your company's core principles.

It appears that you will be in the market for a logo design company. There are lots of them on the internet and they all seem to be offering a similar product, so you decide to base your decision on price. For what you are paying you get 6 concepts and 6 revisions. That sounds alright. And the price is certainly right.

Your logo design professionals promise you the moon. Unfortunately, what you get ends up more like a cardboard cutout, and you don't like it. If you don't start to like it within the 6 revisions granted you're going to be stuck with it because there are no refunds with this contract.

The secret as to why a lot of logo design companies can offer such a low price on the product and services is because they are outsourcing their labor. Essentially the company that you hired does no actual design in-house, they are merely middlemen between your company and cheap labor.

For something as important and all encompassing as a logo, you would really want a company to devote all their resources to the creation of such. Not to say that the outsourced product that is being created is inferior. I'm sure there's lots of hard working, talented individuals capable of creating logos for your company. However, if an advertising agency bases their core philosophies on profit, it gives a slash and burn aspect of profiteering to the whole affair. You have a business that offers quantity over quality.

A logo design company with their designers in house would take the time to research your company and judge the competition, helping your logo to be not only a representation of your company but a shining exemplar of what your company could be. It could be like buying those jeans that you one day intend to fit into.

As is often the case if life, if it appears too good to be true it often is.

Dealing With Creatives in Business

Scientists claim that the two hemispheres of our brain process information in different ways. The right side is more random, intuitive or non-verbal while the left side is more linear, logical, reality-based. People are said to typically have a more dominant hemisphere.

To illustrate the differences here are some facile examples: Seeing lightning off in the distance, a left brained person would listen for the thunder, calculate the time-lapse, than triangulate the relative distance of the storm. A right brained person would watch the lightning in wonder, only to remember the experience years later channeling it into an interpretive dance.

The advertising world operates like a whole brain, dividing its two main processes in to halves. On one side you have the account executives and business managers. These are the people who deal with the clients, wooing them with expense accounts and crunching the numbers. Then the other side are the creatives, the copy writers and art department that creates the concepts that are then sold to the clients.

If you’re a company inexperienced with dealing with a creative business, here are some helpful tips so that you get all you can out of the experience:

Choose a company that can DO what you want:
Advertising can be achieved through many media. If you are dealing with a company that specializes in direct mail campaigns and you ask them to design an internet campaign, don’t be surprised if you’re disappointed with the final product. Ask to see samples of what they’ve done before for the media on which you want to advertise.

Be specific about how you want to present your company:
Do some research on your own of the companies in your field or others that you see as having a good ad campaign. Most agencies would gladly explore whatever direction you want them to go. You are paying for the advertising. It is your company in the end that is being represented.

Create a flow chart with regular progress updates:
To ensure that your vision of your company is not veering off course or over-budget, ask for project updates. You don’t want an agency running roughshod on your company’s dime. Setting specific meetings or dates for updates on the project can keep everyone on task.

Oh, and a side note; If you are a right brained person, you need not be frightened of dealing with the left brains of the advertising world.

Promotional Campaigns – The Art of Swag

Corporate swag dates as far back as time itself. Of course there is no way to measure this claim as the passing of time went largely unnoticed before the introduction of promotional calendars. The usage of promotional swag began with the inauguration of George Washington in 1789. Commemorative buttons were distributed to mark the affair. Nowadays, look around any house in North America and you’re bound to find pens, calendars, tote bags, golf shirts, teddy bears, keychains. Yes tchotchkes, swag, promotional items, whatever you call it we’re swimming in it and by all accounts the water is just fine because people love getting free stuff.

Promotional items are a great way to get your company’s brand in to people’s lives. The effects of print or TV advertising last a relatively short time compared to the twelve months that a promo calendar has been hanging in somebody’s room, with your company’s name being seen every day of the 365.

55% of people keep their promotional items for more than a year. The general rule for people keeping their swag is that the more expensive and unique design the swag, the more likely they are to keep it. If you design an ergonomic mouse pad with your company’s name on it, you are giving people an item with benefits. Most people would gladly use an item that is going to give them some benefit.

76% of respondents could recall the advertiser’s name on a promo product that they had received within the past 12 months. Of course they could, they were wearing or using it everyday. A fetching logo design or a catchy custom slogan would greatly improve your chances of brand recognition in situations like this.

Stand Out in Pay-Per-Click

Shakespeare asked famously of his character “To be or not to be? That is the question.” The question for the new media set is “to pay or not to pay…ahhh…per click.” It doesn’t quite have the same existential ring to it that Shakespeare does, but an important question for any business advertising on the Internet nonetheless.

Advertising on the Internet is all about visibility. People don’t have time to look through 1078 pages containing the keyword they searched. The consumer trusts the search engine to cull from the vast dump of information out there, to find the needle in the haystack. In this type of environment where you rank on the listings is often as important as important as the information you choose to put out there. You don’t want to be the proverbial tree falling in the forest.

Pay-Per-Click enables you to list your site at the top of search engine results by advertising on keywords that best describe your product or service. Generally, PPC is a dynamic marketplace, the higher you bid, the more prominent your advertisement. However, with Google AdWords, your ad placement is dependent on a score that comes from Google’s calculation based on keyword bids, ad copy, landing page relevance and more. A good thing is, you only pay for clicks or click throughs, this means you only pay for the traffic to your site; there are no other hidden costs.

Here are some helpful tips to follow for a Pay-Per-Click campaign:

Do not necessarily go for the number one spot. Some people click on the top spot automatically, even if it clearly does not provide the information they are looking for. The conversion rate for the number 2 and 3 spots, i.e. the number of actual buyers per click-through, may be higher.

Remember that a PPC listing is a text ad. As for all ads, good copy sells. Make your site description enticing. Remember though, that a PPC search engine like Overture will not accept false advertising or pure hype.

Advertisers need to be wary of PPC search engines that offer clickers money or incentives to click through their results. Our advice is to steer clear of these search engines or programs as the clicks you pay for may not be the best quality.

If you are bidding on Yahoo! Search Marketing (formerly known as Overture) you must be in the top 3 to get listed on the first page of results on the major search portals. Note, however, that the US Yahoo! portal, will list new Yahoo! Search Marketing results on the second page of listings, meaning that you may get some valuable traffic from that directory, even if you do not reach the top spot. Also, those positions are less expensive.

As long as you pay for click-throughs only (and not ad views), you may bid for as many variants of potential search queries as possible. Rare keyword phrases are much cheaper than the most popular queries. Moreover, they are often more targeted, meaning that the searcher is more likely to find what he or she is looking for.

Animated Logos: The Final Frontier

We live in an exciting era for companies looking to invigorate their logo design, and to a larger extent their entire brand. Before the advent of multimedia advertising, trying to get a service like an animated logo design was a privilege available only to those with seemingly unlimited marketing budgets. You could use a large animated billboard (like the famous Coca-Cola in Times Square), or you could hire an animation studio to create a commercial for TV. Both these are indeed as expensive as they sound. Of course you could always draw your logo on various flip cards and make the customer watch you flip through the pictures as you make your logo move.

Now with new media, animated logos are a relatively inexpensive and viable option. They can give your company a modern look and feel. As the logo works through its three-dimensional route, the customer will think that this is a company on the cutting edge. What better way to show the global capabilities of your company than to have your logo moving about itself like a planet on its axis. And like the earth, these animated logos can have a gravitational pull, drawing the eye to the logo and letting it sit there as it virtually breathes, giving the logo a new life.

The problem with animated logos is that used incorrectly or without proper placement, they become more of a hindrance than a help. One can get the feeling that they’re in some kind of horrible discotheque rather than a professional website. It is a rather precarious balance between drawing in a viewer and repelling a viewer.

To draw the viewer the animated logo must be placed prominently but not in the way of any information. The colors and shape of the logo should blend well with itself and the rest of the site. With an animated logo you also have the option of sound which adds a whole new wrinkle to the experience. The animation could either be used as flash intros, banners, animated gifs. The options are vast and should not be overloaded.

Less is more with animated logos.

If you’re advertising on the web, animated logo design is an interesting and inventive way for your company to stand out above the fray.