It really is quite amazing to look at topics, which if written in figures would have the potential to bore you to tears, that become fascinating and intriguing represented as shapes and intricate flow diagrams.  The other advantage is that my 7 year old became obsessed with learning all the facts on every page showing that, when teaching people, young or old, about a new subject sometimes presenting it slightly differently can really pay dividends.

Why not have a think about how you present information about your company, and whether the graphic touch could help get the message across in a more beautiful way!

You can buy the book here

This is a classic case of the importance of being flexible in your approach to brands requiring an update. Some brands, it is true, just don’t work for the organisation (they may have done once, but not in every case) and no amount of re-jigging, font changes, layout changes, motif updates and other design tricks, will help improve the situation. That signals a time to draw a line under the old and build a clear brief for the new. This isn’t always the case; sometimes we’re approached by companies who have the essence of a good brand – it just needs some TLC to make it sing.

That was the case with the Liphook in Bloom logo – as a community based scheme, the logo style needed to reflect that. So, we first set about work on trying to improve what was there already to see if this took the logo to the right place. As you can see below we re-created and updated all the elements of the logo (the font, the watering can, the water drops and the flowers), and used a subtle ‘brush stroke’ to frame the letters softly, and finally removed the detail within the letters which we felt was distracting, instead opting for a solid colours in a varied pallette across the lettering.

Carolyn from the Liphook in Bloom team had this to say: “It was a great surprise when Mzuri Design contacted Liphook in Bloom with an offer to refresh our logo and ‘brand’, but it has been a delight to work with them through the various stages.  They have shown great originality and patience, and the final product is wonderful.”

So, the moral of the story? Take a critical look at your logo and see if it is something that can be built on, adapted and updated to more accurately reflect where your business is now, or whether it has had its day and it’s time to start from scratch. If you’re unsure and looking for inspiration, why not contact us to get a copy of our ‘brand identity questionnaire’ – designed to get the creative juices flowing and help you in your decision making process! Email me for your copy.

Before and after logos for Liphook in Bloom

As we approach the summer the inevitable marketing of pretty much everything we buy and do will think to feature some reference to the Olympics.  However as a business there are some pretty stringent rules to adhere to before you start sticking the Olympic rings on your marketing collateral.  IPC media have recently sent a very informative email about the restrictions, given that they have had to reject adverts submitted to them featuring references to the Games.

Below I have included their links to the London Organising Committee for the Olympic Games (LOCOG) website pdfs so that you can read all about it in detail if you need to.

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________

The Facts from IPC Media:

It is important to be aware that explicit or implied reference to the Olympic Games or the athletes is governed by specially enacted laws and regulations that are very restrictive to anyone but official sponsors. These Olympic Association laws go well beyond and are much stricter than what would otherwise be permitted by the CAP code  (Committee of Advertising Practice) or any other relevant advertising law.

The London Organising Committee for the Olympic Games (LOCOG) have indicated that they will be very vigilant in enforcing violations of the Olympic association laws particularly as the games approach. A basic summary of how these laws may affect your business can be found here:

http://www.london2012.com/documents/brand-guidelines/guidelines-for-business-use.pdf

More detailed guidance here:

http://www.london2012.com/documents/brand-guidelines/statutory-marketing-rights.pdf

And for those companies that have supplied the Olympics, Team GB or any other official British team competing in these games the supplier protocol must be adhered to – this effectively prevents suppliers from making references to the fact that they are a supplier in their ad copy:

http://www.london2012.com/documents/oda-publications/no-marketing-rights-suppliers-protocol-dec-2007.pdf

In accordance with the Olympic Symbol Protection Act and the London Olympic and Paralympic Games Act, any ad promoting an item of Olympic erchandise must feature an officially licensed product approved by LOCOG and must carry the official merchandise hologram.

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Happy reading!

We’ve received some really fabulous feedback over the years (as well as been told about areas we haven’t been so great at and which I hope we have now improved accordingly), and I just wanted to highlight the testimonial below, re-discovered after a recent review of client feedback, that really summed up what we hope to achieve for our clients.

‘I would like to extend my thanks to Katherine and the Mzuri Design team for their speed and professionalism in delivering a brand and supporting corporate literature that set the tone and positioning of my wife’s newly launched Reiki Practice.

In today’s massively competitive market place many brands have flooded the Health Care sector promising the world but in reality often delivering very little of value. Much more attention is now being focused on the natural benefits offered by Complementary Medicines/Services and so in order to appropriately differentiate these offerings it was critical to adopt a brand position and ‘look’ that captures all the elements that go into providing the ‘holistic experience’ clients look for when choosing alternative medical solutions.

‘Soul healing with feeling’ verbally sums up what the various treatments provide, but it is through the use of the natural, earthy and balanced colours of the brand identity that the business card visually sets the appropriate level of professionalism, allowing this to then be taken into the corporate brochure where the client’s desire to learn and understand is satisfied by fluid copy that ticks all the boxes.

The result so far has been that appointments are being booked in direct relation to the number of corporate brochures picked up from the Centre of Complementary Medicine, a testimony to the instant impact of the brand.

Thank you Mzuri for taking the time to get this right.’
Nick Hawkins

If you have any feedback on the service we provide, positive or negative, I would love to hear from you. As an organisation we are always changing and evolving and so we are open to ways we can be better. Email me on katherineb@mzuridesign.co.uk If you would like to know what your clients’ think about you, have you considered an online survey? We have run several for client’s recently with some really interesting results. Somehow the beginning of a new year seems to be a great time to take stock.

Ann's brand and brochure

To give you an example, I created a media plan for one of my clients with their annual advertising budget of £20,000. From the initial rate card costs of £21,700 I managed to negotiate a reduction over all the publications of nearly £9,000 allowing them to increase their exposure with additional advertising in their chosen publications as well as adding some new ones to the mix.  I also managed to secure regular editorial coverage as they could see we were
committed advertisers.

Whilst there is a lot to be said for a great last minute space deal, you are subject to the restrictions of fitting into the particular ‘space’ they have for your
advert and perhaps being persuaded by price, rather than logical thinking and planning around your target market.

It is notable that these rules of social media etiquette differ between each social media platform. For example how you should act on Facebook isn’t necessarily equally acceptable on Twitter and LinkedIn and so forth.

Confused? There’s no need, here’s a simple guide to minding your social media manners…

1. Business not pleasure – Keep your business and personal lives as separate online as you do in real life. That means separate business and personal social media accounts (where possible). As shown with recent high profile legal cases, business and pleasure do not mix well online.
2. Politeness pays – The basic tenets of social interaction apply online – be polite, honest and helpful.
3. Be accessible – Make it easy for people to find and identify you – it’s important to complete your profiles as fully as you can. Use your own photo too; you need to be as recognisable as possible.
4. Build your reputation – Social media platforms are not well suited solely as a direct sales medium. Boost your business by offering information of value, building your reputation and generating interest in what you can do to help others.
5. Remember who can see you – It’s easy to forget the extent of the audience that you have online – be careful what you write and never say anything that you wouldn’t want everyone to see.
6. ‘I’ before ‘e’ except after ‘c’ – Make sure your posts are spelt correctly and are grammatically correct, basic errors can really damage how contacts see and rate you.
7. Horses for courses – There are some key differences in how you should use different platforms. Twitter and Facebook, even in a business context, are less formal in tone than LinkedIn and so your posts should reflect the differences. Don’t forget that, if you have your social media accounts linked to update each other; your posts should be written with all audiences in mind.
8. Privacy – Privacy is important and private matters should be dealt with by email or using the private message function attached to most platforms.
9. Respect – while social media is still relatively new the etiquette governing its use remains in flux. Respect how other people choose to use their accounts, whether to ‘friend’ or ‘follow’ you or not and remember that you also have choices in how to represent yourself online.

These pointers are a broad brush summary of today’s social media etiquette – for some more in depth detail you may like to check out the following link or find out more yourself…

http://socialmediatoday.com/michaelblueeyeddigital/338078/how-practice-social-media-etiquette

Ok, so I’m joking but I wanted to show you exactly what can be achieved with a few hours and some carefully and expertly applied vinyl. One of our clients, Mountjoy, had a fleet of silver vans which didn’t fit well with the new brand we had recently developed for them. No problem, we just fully wrapped them with their new corporate colours and logo and hey presto! A blue van with the Mountjoy brand clear and bold for all to see.

While they still have a long way to go in terms of achieving the buy-in that Facebook and Twitter have (Facebook alone has ten times more members, than Google Plus), if anyone stands a chance at knocking them off their perch, it’s Google.

Think about it; you might have a website and ezines that all link to your Google Analytics account. Now, you can integrate your brand page with that analysis too. Got an AdWords campaign running? Why not link that up too. Google is so much a part of our lives that this new functionality, potentially, offers a complete picture of your performance, which is something Twitter and Facebook will unlikely ever manage.

True, Google will still need to rely on people setting up accounts and using the social media platform – as well as all the others they use - but we think that this is an opportunity that companies and brands shouldn’t ignore….

So, there I was, a little on the fraught side, but ready to attack the mission at hand. What I needed was a helpful steer in the right direction, then efficient service as I had a limited window of opportunity before the task became mission:impossible (I refer you back to the buggy comment above).

One of my mantras at Mzuri is to treat all clients as individuals and each project as unique so we can tailor a bespoke solution that achieves the very best outcome for our clients’ needs. This is a philosophy that the shop assistant at LK Bennett who served me on Saturday could have usefully taken on board.

She did so many things brilliantly, that if she had dotted the i’s and crossed the t’s it would have made for a sublime shopping experience, but a few basic errors in my customer experience let it down. It led me to think about how it is the small things that can make all the difference to our experience of and perception of the companies that we patronise, so thought I’d jot down my top tips resulting from this less than perfect shopping experience:

1) Ask the right questions and listen to the answers. I wanted a dress and possibly a coat. I didn’t want persistent attempts to be upsold a bag, scarf, jacket, shoes and boots. One gentle introduction of these options would have been fine (I want to know the options available to me that would enhance my basic objective!), but she was a woman on a mission and it put me off.

2) Don’t change the keenness of your approach when you realise the customer only wants the dress may be persuaded on the coat, but it’s an absolute no on the other stuff. Engage my interest, show your skill at combining other elements of an outfit and respect my clear signals that I’m not here to break the bank by buying it all; exceed my expectations by not taking the traditional ‘I’m gonna sell you as much as I can’ approach and you’ll win more of my respect. And probably have me saving up my pennies to rush back and get the boots when I can afford them, and telling my friends how great the shop is (instead I’m blogging about the fact that it irritated me!).

3) Make sure you ‘hold the baton’ until the transaction is complete. Don’t dump my clothes (that you handled so carefully and presented so beautifully in the changing rooms) on the counter then rush off to serve another customer while I stand at the checkout with an irate child and I just want to pay and get on the move. I stood for 5 minutes waiting to pay for the goods. If I hadn’t needed the dress for a specific meeting, I would have left.

4) If you offer a discount (20% off splashed across the windows), then make sure this is applied at the till without having to be reminded (when I’d realised half way down the high street!) then having to wait another 5 minutes while you get the store manager to come and process my refund.

I left feeling slightly let down that I’d gone from feeling a million dollars in the changing room in the lovely dress, to feeling a bit annoyed at having been ‘processed’ in a horrible salesy way.

In telling this little tale of my shopping adventure, I have concluded that customer service is a bit like an essay – it has to have a beginning, a middle and an end to be great. And if you neglect one element, the whole thing is much less persuasive and doesn’t leave the lasting impression that it could have.

It is basically inherent to our jobs that we love communication in all its forms, especially brilliant communication which leaves a lasting mark. Day to day, this means copywriting for brochures, advertising and press releases, or designing websites which invite the browser to sample all the pages (not just the first). 

I have always been an avid reader; even now my parents remark on how, when I was a child, they’d buy me a book on our Saturday morning trip to the shops, and I’d have finished it in the car by the time we got home. On holidays, I have to take a massive stack of them lest I run out (not such a problem now I’ve got my beloved Kindle). And then there’s that smell when you walk into a bookshop….is there anything like it??

 As part of my obsession, I applied (and was accepted) to be a giver at the inaugural World Book Night in 2011. The book give-away comprised 40 000 copies of each of the 25 carefully selected titles, and were given away by 20,000 ‘givers’, who each distributed 48 copies of their chosen title to whomever they chose on World Book Night. The remaining books were distributed by World Book Night itself in places that might otherwise be difficult to reach, such as prisons and hospitals. The twenty-five titles were selected by a wide-ranging editorial committee, chaired by James Naughtie.

 The 2012 campaign to find givers is now underway and, if you have a love of books, have a look at their website and think about applying: www.worldbooknight.org  It’s really easy, you get a load of books (hopefully one of your favourites), and most importantly, the opportunity to get more people reading. To whet your appetite, we did a quick straw poll in the office of what we’ve got on our bedside tables:

Katherine
Currently reading….  I’ve just read One Day which was suitable holiday-reading fodder, but thought the ending was a bit weak. Have had a John Grisham number since Christmas but I haven’t got past the first page yet!
Favourite book of all time?  Would it be weird to say the Oxford English Dictionary!? On a lighter note, at the moment I would have to answer that the whole Julia Donaldson range (Room on the Broom stands out) as I love reading it to my daughter. Silly voices at the ready!

Phil
Currently reading….  Nothing, I’m too busy! the nearest I get to any form of reading is a book on typography that I delve into every now and then.
Favourite book of all time?  Nearly nigh on impossible to answer because there are so many brilliant books but, as you’ve put me on the spot, the first that comes into my head is Lord of the Rings. Why? Suggest you read it and find out.

Zoe
Currently reading….  ‘My Last Duchess’ by Daisy Goodwin. Loving it.
Favourite book of all time? ‘Perfume’ by Patrick Suskind. Given to me by my GCSE English teacher, and was totally different to anything I’d ever read before. It’s been a favourite ever since.

Lara
Currently reading…. In between books at the moment. I did start on ‘Sense and Sensibility’ as I love Jane Austin and thought it’s about time I read another book of hers, but I’m afraid I haven’t got very far!
Favourite book of all time? I loved ‘Empress Orchid’ by Anchee Min – it’s a beautiful book to lose yourself in with the level of detail and an intricate love story within the Forbidden City.

Paul
Currently reading…. ‘The Girl Who Kicked The Hornet’s Nest’ by Stieg Larsson. I’m finding it long……
Favourite book of all time? Probably ‘Silence of the Lambs’ by Thomas Harris just because I couldn’t put it down.  Red Dragon by him wasn’t bad either.

Victoria
Currently reading…. ‘The Best of Everything’ by Rona Jaffe. Thanks to Sali Hughes and Twitter for finding this one. Like Mad Men and Sex & the City rolled into one. I’m totally hooked.
Favourite book of all time? ‘The Time Traveler’s Wife’ by Audrey Niffenegger. An amazingly thought out story, and one of the few books that has actually made me cry.