Our Portfolio

Don't get Trashed Business Card Video for National Pen Company

2010-09-10T06:15:00.000-07:00

This is a video we created for National Pen Co. to promote a special product that they are currently offering. Its a cool video that shows you how to keep you from having your business card "Trashed." Watch and enjoy. Thank you

Beautiful Brick: Official Music Video. Watch it Now!

2010-08-03T06:32:00.000-07:00

This was probably the most interesting way I have ever spent a Saturday: running laps on a unicycle while playing the guitar and singing. The end result is just as I had envisioned it. Share it with your friends, and let me know what you think about it!

New Single Sketches

2009-12-18T18:00:00.000-08:00

While waiting to perform at shows, I'm going to bring along burns of my new single and sketch my random doodles on to the blank cds. My plan is to give these away for free to everyone who signs up for my mailing list. Each person will get a unique and different design, and I have very little cost invested in the blank disks. So come to one of my upcoming shows, and get your cd!

Lym'ricks logo and Website

2009-12-08T17:31:00.000-08:00

Lym'ricks: a site that allows you to order a customized, framed portrait for a loved one. Included in the frame is a photo of them (uploaded by you) and a poem personalized for the occasion, or tailored to their personality or life story .

Clint and I were given the task to create a website for Lym'ricks. We also had to establish a logo, and make an interactive Flash catalog.

We are both very pleased with the end result. Clinton designed the logo, and did an excellent job I might add, and I designed the flash portion of the site.

It is really a lot of fun to play around with. I suggest you follow this link and click around on different matte and frame colors.

And with it being the holidays and all it would be a great time to buy a gift. I'm sure Patrick (Lym'ricks creator) would appreciate some business. Just fill out the form if you are interested.

Check out Lym'ricks>>

Making Ava's Cake

2009-12-08T17:30:00.000-08:00

My daughter turns four years old tomorrow, and for her birthday cake over the weekend I designed a little something to go on top of it.

She is a huge Max and Ruby fan, so first I found a good high-res picture of the characters.

Next I decided I wanted to replace Ruby with Ava - she likes Max more anyways - so I dug up a good picture of Ava to use as a reference.

Then I sketched her characture in a way that resembled the style of Max and Ruby. I scanned the drawing and colored it in illustrator. Then replaced Ruby's head and bunny features with Ava.

Then printed it out and took it to Kroger, and then they print out a sheet that is a mixture of corn starch and die, or something, and viola!

Wish I had a closer image of the cake, but her birthday party was two days ago now, all that is left is a little corner piece. Happy Birthday Ava Flava!

Jimmy and Sarah Wedding Invitations

2009-10-30T18:00:00.000-07:00

I really like Sarah's color choice of red black and white. These are going in red envelopes by the way. This was very fun, very fast, and I really like the romantic elements in this design.

New site design for ChasePerryman.com

2009-10-08T18:00:00.000-07:00

Check out the new flash landing page newly designed for my ChasePerryman.com site. I'm working on making it load faster, and its not the easiest thing in the world to navigate. Aside from those sacrifices (however) it is pretty fun to play around with. The three separately moving layers create a believable depth, and the icons Clinton set a very cool tone.

I embedded an mp3 player within the design that allows you to listen to the songs, navigate the tracks, pause and play, move through the time line, and control the volume. Looking for some feedback on the new site; right now its kind of a test before the full album is out, to see how people feel about it.

Cd Design for Out of the Kiln

2009-10-08T17:59:00.000-07:00

This is the cd cover I designed for my new single. Everything I design these days (for the most part) is done digitally, so it was a lot of fun to get my hands dirty (literally) and sculpt the setting for the cd. They are very crude and elementary, but that was really what I was going for, as well as what I knew I could do. Let's face it, not like I was going to sculpt another 'David.'

You can purchase the new cd here

Shirt Design for Chase's new single

2009-10-08T17:58:00.000-07:00

Used my little clay people a second time in designing a simple black and white t-shirt to try and take up a little more space on the Chaseperryman.com store. It looked awful lonely with the one little audio cd all by itself. I envisioned this simple design and it didn't take too long, so here you go. Cool thing is, already sold one. Thanks Sam!

The text on the front says: "if your heart is yours..." The text on the back (underneath ChasePerryman.com) says: "...it can never be mine." These are lines from my song, 'Out of the Kiln.'

See them at Cafepress:
Men's t-shirt
Women's t-shirt

Audax Strategies Business Cards

2009-09-15T18:30:00.000-07:00

This is a two color business card design for Audax Strategies. They were wanting a vertical layout, and a front and back. We were given the logo and two pantone swatches to use in the design up front. Audax is a new emerging printing and media group, so they don't have a defined corporate identity at this time. So I referenced their site and email signatures to develop something that fits their theme of their business.

Kermit Davis Sixth Man TriFold Brochure

2009-09-09T18:19:00.000-07:00

After waiting for the opportunity to design MTSU's Gameday book, Chase and I were asked to design for a different division of MTSU Sports. We designed the newest edition of the Kermit Davis Sixth Man Enrollment Brochure. Please tell us what you think.

A new Myspace page for a Rapper

2009-09-09T18:10:00.000-07:00

We just recently designed a new Myspace Music page for a local rapper named JOJO. Along with designing the layout of the page we also take and manipulated all of his newest photos.
Check him and the new design out at myspace.com/jdoclick

Audax Hand Sanitizer Labels

2009-09-08T20:00:00.000-07:00

Clint and I have a great relationship with the president of Audax strategies, Fant Smith. Fant is going to give his clients - as a promotional item - a bottle of hand sanitizer (in lieu of the swine flu scare.) He asked us to design the label.

I made two designs; one with the very corporate, simple, promotional-item-feel. The other design, I just had fun with it.

Talent in Border Proposal Forms

2009-09-05T19:30:00.000-07:00

A great friend of mine, Lindsey Borders, has her own booking agency for musical talent. I owed her more than one favor for all she has down for me and my own music, and decided that I could help her by designing a nice proposal template for her to use when approaching new venues, new clients, etc.

I chose to keep the design very subtle and unobtrusive, and for those of you who don't design you don't have any idea how much restraint it takes for us designers to keep things simple when we have as many tools in our box as we do. Picture a child who loves coloring and has a huge box of 150 crayons. Now challenge him to picking only three colors to use on the picture, and to not dump the whole box on the table during the selection process.

In essence I designed a letter head she could use, but added a cover to make it even more professional when submitting her proposals. I also designed her a very simple logo in the process, as well established a color pallet: a very warm and inviting pink with light browns.

George Smith Campaign Collateral

2009-08-13T19:15:00.000-07:00

We recently designed George's blog site that he is using to promote his run for senate in 2010. The next thing George needed was a little collateral to use on the trail., i.e. business cards, letterheads to print statements on, and brochures explaining his policy positions.

Consistency is great in two ways:
1) It makes the pieces seem profession if they have a central governing theme - no political pun intended.

2) As a designer, you don't have to go back to the drawing board. You've already decided on fonts, colors, and graphic elements you just have to re-work them within a new set of dimensions and function.

Thomas Magnet School Mascot

2009-08-10T18:36:00.000-07:00

Since my Girlfriends kids both go to the new Magnet School here in Shelbyville, we were afforded the opportunity to design their mascot and school logo. The way it work is, people will submit their logo design ideas and when school starts back after the Horse Show the kids will get to vote on the design they like the best. We will be submitting 2 options. Keep your fingers crossed!!!

Birthday Party Caricature

2009-08-04T18:00:00.000-07:00

I love the opportunity to draw a caricature. Especially now that I have a defined style with the cartoons, it's fun and it doesn't take too long. This drawing was used for a birthday party invitation card. I give you one guess on the kind of restaurant at which they celebrated her birthday.

Wash on Wheels Logo

2009-07-20T19:00:00.000-07:00

A lot of bubbles right? Clint and I designed this for a local car wash that drives to your work and cleans your car. He let us come up with the name.

MTSU Program Cover Redesign

2009-07-20T17:30:00.000-07:00

Clint and I were recently approached by MTSU for the possibility of doing design work for their sports programs. They wanted to see a sample of our work in order to consider us for the job, since we have not done a whole lot of design for sports we decided to do a quick redesign of their football program cover.

The original:

The redesign:

We are patiently awaiting their consideration, wish us luck.

Common Sense Blog Design

2009-07-13T18:30:00.000-07:00

A good friend of mine, George Smith, has recently decided to run for state senate. When I found he was writing a blog through out his campaign, I talked him into letting me customize his blog template. I am very pleased with the end result; very clean, very patriotic, very professional.

Here is the site: http://www.district28commonsense.blogspot.com/

Rotary Club Pin

2009-06-08T18:10:00.001-07:00

The local Rotary Club in Shelbyville are supporters of the National Walking Horse Celebration. So every year the request a lapel pin be designed for them so they can wear it and be recognized while walking about the show grounds . This year i had the pleasure of designing it. Out of the three showcased above they chose the middle one.

The pins are made of brass, which is the gold color in the art, and a colored lacquer, the colored areas in the art.

New Out-of-Plumb Shirt

2009-06-05T13:44:00.000-07:00

Clint and I just got finished designing a new shirt for the Out-of-Plumb site. In surveying, the term 'floating' appears when the GPS equipment they are using can not acquire enough satellites to perform properly and accurately. So the depiction here, is somewhat of a double en tendre. He is floating in space, in addition to 'floating' trying to find satellites.

View the shirt on Out-of-Plumb

Barney the Tow Truck Driver

2009-05-27T11:55:00.001-07:00

This is a little something I did for a co-workers husband. He looks exactly like Barney Rubble, so we thought it would be funny to make a decal for his truck. He is going to heave this printed in vinyl and placed on the side of his trucks.

A pretty fun quick project for me.

Daniel vs Monday... Prototype.

2009-05-21T21:18:00.000-07:00

Daniel is about to embark on a quest to start a web comic. This a prototype I drew up to try to inspire him in terms of defining his style. The main character will be Monday, well a personification of Monday. Monday's are evil, that's all I'm saying. I had a little too much fun with this, I have to be honest.

New Video Layout for Songwriting Blog

2009-05-21T09:27:00.000-07:00

I started a songwriting blog about a year ago once the band I was in kind of fizzled out. It was my way to not lose that side of me: the musical side. The blog has evolved, and I have went down many different paths. I have been recording videos. These videos however rich in musical ability, are void in any kind of visual excitement. We are talking about me in my bedroom playing the guitar... blah.

I'm excited that I have finally come up with a way to fuse those two elements of my creativity: music and art. Part of the problem is I don't have a good camera, and it is not like I really want to make an entire music video with plot, additional actors, etc. The purpose of the blog was to keep it simple, and just do live acoustic recordings.

It took a while to come up with, and many versions, and a lot of editing, but here is a screen capture from the new video layout. It stays staionary the whole time, except for on the tv. On the tv is the video of me playing the song.

I really like this style alot and I have since came up with how I am going to present all of my new songs based on this style. Here is my new criteria:

Interesting camera perspective, one that creates nice angles
The scene will be in black and white
Except for where there is text, video, and symbols (ie the poster)
In which case the color pallet will only consist of blues and oranges
Text will always be in 3d perspective corresponding with the scene
The videos will always be playing indirectly, as opposed to being the main focus
An example of this would be seeing the video in a rain puddle, or through a window of a neighboring house

Here is the video on my songwriting blog: "Out of the Kiln"

'Ponce' Ambigram

2009-05-20T07:06:00.000-07:00

I'm not sure why, but ambirgram's make for great tattoos. Clint and I designed this tattoo for a friend. Her last name is 'Ponce.' We wanted it to be legible when read right side up, and upside down. Go ahead, flip your monitor around. See?

Our Red Fish Blue logo is an ambigram, that is why the font is so unusual. I first heard about ambigrams about 4 years ago when I read Dan Brown's Angels and Demons. In his novel the 'Illuminati' have 5 famous ambigrams: Earth, Wind, Fire, Water and Illuminati. I recently watched the movie, and I liked the way they did the ambigrams in it.

An ambigram as defined by wikipedia:
An ambigram, also sometimes known as an inversion, is a typographical design or artform that may be read as one or more words not only in its form as presented, but also from another viewpoint, direction or orientation. The words readable in the other viewpoint, direction or orientation may be the same or different from the original words. Douglas R. Hofstadter describes an ambigram as a "calligraphic design that manages to squeeze two different readings into the selfsame set of curves." Different ambigramists may create completely different ambigrams from the same word or words, differing in both style and form.

Charactures

2009-05-18T06:59:00.000-07:00

This is something we've debated doing, drawing charactures of people. The above is my friends Daniel and Chad. It is pretty easy and fun to do, we are just not sure how to promote it yet. A lot of people would probably like to use these as avatars for their facebooks, myspaces, or online forums.

The problem is figuring out how to promote this. I think I am going to make a posting on Craig's List: Get a Characture of yourself or a friend: $50!

Red Roosters Logo

2009-05-11T17:50:00.000-07:00

A quick and fun logo designed for a local Babe Ruth Baseball team, the Red Roosters logo came more naturally than most logo designs. For some reason when I was told the name of the team, I could instantly visualize the finished product:

Reveille, A story of survival, family, and war

2009-05-11T14:32:00.000-07:00

We recently finished one of the largest design jobs we have ever undertaken: designing and illustrating the cover and inner page elements for a novel by my friend George Smith. The novel is called 'Reveille', and it is an historical fiction novel based off George's great grandfather: Charles Andre. The story takes place before and after the Civil War, and though he travels with the war, the most central location is Louisiana.

We helped do a simple site for George's last book, 'Uncertain Times.' When he began work on the new book he thought of us, not for site design, but for illustration and design of the book itself.

I decided I wanted to do the drawing for the cover in scratch board. Scratch board (or clay board) is a piece of masonite - in the case of the one I used- painted white, then a thin piece of clay is covered over that and painted black. When you use one of the scratching utensils to remove the black clay, the white board shows through. It is more akin to carving, than drawing, and when using the black clayboard the other tricky thing is you are drawing the highlights, not the shadows. When you draw with black lead on white paper it is the shadows you are collecting on the paper, when drawing on black with white it is like 'opposite drawing'

Here is the picture I drew for the cover, maybe it will help this make sense. You can click on the image to make it bigger:

The next steps were as follows: paint the drawing, and design the full cover: front, spine, and back with title, text, and additional images. This was all done in the Adobe Creative Suite:

I felt like the muted reds and yellows, and the scratching/rough textures created a style that seemed to fitting with the story and the era in which the story takes place.

At first George wanted us to do illustrations for each chapter, a scene from each one that could go above the chapter heading. We both came to the conclusion, however, that with 34 chapters detailed scenes for each one would be very time consuming. Then I had an idea for doing icons for each chapter. Something small, that could either symbolize something in the chapter or directly reference it.

I wanted the icons to feel like the cover, but not take so long to draw. Secondly, clay board is expensive, about $8 dollars a sheet, for 34 chapters we are talking close to $300. The obvious solution was to illustrate using a computer program (Adobe Illustrator to be exact) but I had to define a style, and then I had to emulate that style 34 times.

In my mind I seen the icons as logos that might have been used in newspapers from 150 years ago. It wasn't until my third or forth one that I finally settled on a style, I was trying to make them look like woodcuts:

This process was working really well, it only took about an hour to draw one (as opposed to 6 like the cover) and I could teach Clint (the other designer) how to emulate this style so we could both draw them in order to meet the deadline in time.

The only problem with this style is it was too computer-generated looking. So after we made them I added some distress marks in Photoshop and brought them back into Illustrator and colored them the same muted red as I used with the cover. This made them look more authentic:

Next I added the chapter number and name to each icon, and the chapter heading pages should looks as follows:

We are finished, now after it prints it just needs to become a New York Times' best seller!

Toadily Fun: Toadily Customizable

2009-04-20T14:18:00.000-07:00

I recently re-designed a website for a company we do a lot of work for: Toadily Fun. Toadily Fun is a play center for children and adults similar to a Chuck E. Cheese. We designed their logo, building sign, and their first website last summer. A year later both Christina (the owner) and myself mutually agreed that it would be very effecient if we could design her a new site that she could edit and update her self.

The problem is the software I use to design and edit sites is neither cheap nor intuitive, so up until now I have had no solution for people that wanted full control over their sites after the initial design. I have recenly spent a lot of time with blogger, a free google browser based application that allows you to... ahem... blog (what I am using right now to tell you about this). It occured to me that I could design a blog site for Christina, and instead of pages she would have categories.

The nice thing about blogger is it is really easy to use from a posting stand point. From a desiging stand point, it can be very tricky and code-indusive to customize the overall look of the blog. Typically I start out with a free, pre-designed blogger template (as in this case) then edit every single element of the template to create a new design that fits the look and functionality I am looking for.

So far Christina seems to be enjoying doing all of her own posting and editing, and being the first client I have done this for I am making her my guinea pig so that I can perfect this style of web design and market it to more people.

The site we created last year: Toadily Fun designed in Dreamweaver
The new 'client-edit-friendly version: Toadily Fun modified in Blogger

National Pen Design Contest

2009-03-30T19:01:00.000-07:00

The company I work for is having an employee only design competition for their best selling pen. There will be 4 finalist that will receive $250 each and one finalist that will receive an additional $750. This should be easy for me as I have designed so many pens in the past for my company and know what they are looking for. The designs i am submitting are below:

Hopefully I will win something. I will keep you posted. ;-)

Black History Banner

2009-02-24T20:05:00.000-08:00

This was a project for a local not-for-profit organization. They were having an essay and poster contest. The winner of the essay contest will be awarded a scholarship. The winner of the poster contest will receive this beautifully designed and printed banner to display in their school with pride.

The design includes both Martin Luther King and our Master in Chief Barrack Obama. The design displays both of these men doing what they have always been best at, delivering their messages. Also incorporated in the design is a small portion of their individually inspiring yet equally impacting messages.

The banner is 7 feet long and 4 feet tall. It was printed for us by The B's Tees in Columbia TN.

Surveying on Mars

2009-02-06T09:14:00.000-08:00

I could get in trouble for showing this a month before its publication, but Clint and I had fun with this and I wanted to share it. To clear up the survey jargon, canopy is any obstructions to the view of satellites, i.e. trees, tall buildings, etc.

For those of you who don't know, on the side of everything else that I do I draw a surveying cartoon for a surveying magazine. I don't expect you to find this humorous unless you are a surveyor, I just liked their little space suits.

A quick shout out to Daniel and Kevin at Hayes for helping me brainstorm.

G.I. Jesus

2009-01-13T08:55:00.000-08:00

I give you "Nativity de la Army Men"

Clint and I made this with Exacto knives, a glue gun, and three bags of plastic army men. We did this for a Christmas ornament contest at a holiday get together with friends. Just look at the attention to detail. Mary, for instance: her hair and bountiful womanliness do not come standard, we had to work a little extra for that.

WCHE Holiday Catalogue - Customer Retention

2008-10-28T23:05:00.000-07:00

Well we got it again...
One year ago we won a bid to design and layout a catalogue for World Champion in Shelbyville and won the bid. They came back to us this year and didn't even ask for a competitive bid. They just asked us when we could start.

The 2007 Holiday Catalogue

The 2008 Holiday Catalogue

This year we decided to go with a different style and layout. For the cover and interior. The inside always, of this particular catalogue, contains a lot of products in the least amount of real estate possible. So we went with a grid style layout.

Evolution of a logo: Bedford Gym

2008-10-12T13:50:00.000-07:00

A local gym in town was bought out, and the owner's approached me to do a logo for them. The name of the gym would be changing in the process, and they needed a logo that they could print on the sign, and for t-shirts, etc. We had a very short window to work in, the new sign was going up quick, the entire breadth of work that follows took place only over a couple of days.

Originally the owners wanted to name the gym 'Gym Rats.' Honestly, I wasn't real thrilled with the name, but I decided if that was the name my rat was going to be one bad ass gym rat. This was the first logo I presented them:

The font was interesting to make, it doesn't exist anywhere I made it. The rat body was illustrated from royalty free stock, but I customized a rat head and made him look 'furry' as well as 'ferocious.'

The owners thought my stone-cold-killer rat with work-out glove, was maybe too intimidating. So with a new facial expression, and a less abrasive font I give you the second attempt:

Okay, I'll admit. Maybe he is a little too goofy now, but I think it helped them to see the difference. I went with two different extremes to try and get a sense for where the middle for the client would be. I personally really enjoy this version. I think it is fun.

Then at the last minute, the owners decide to change the name of the gym. They didn't feel comfortable with the quirkiness of 'Gym Rats,' so they settled on Bedford Gym, named after our county.

This leaves me scrambling for imagery, at least with Gym Rats I had a character to visualize. I then had the bright idea to modify the Rat to look like a Horse, since our little town is the Walking Horse Capitol of the World. Version three:

It was after this third version that the clients finally admitted that they were'nt real keen on the 'character' included into the logo, and wanted something more subtle and less cartoonish. At this point we had only a day before the sign was printed. So I stripped everything down to the basic essence of the logo, and now I give you the final Bedford Gym logo:

At the end of the day it's not about what I would want for my business, obviously I liked the big muscular animal (I tried using it three times) but it didn't jive with the personality of the owners. The end result is something very clean and general, that they felt comfortable with on business cards, shirts, etc.

Word of mouth... well... 'Post.'

2008-09-30T12:24:00.000-07:00

I have a contract with Professional Surveyor magazine and I draw a strip each month. In addition I have a little online store with calendars, shirts, etc. It is a lot of fun and recently (and with the help of Clint) I have moved to doing the strips in color.

I get my ideas from my experience of marketing to Surveyors over the past three years. A lot of the people I work with at Hayes are surveyors as well, so of course I use them a lot for resources.

Anyways, a competing magazine (P.O.B.) has a very popular message board for surveyors. They can come and post all of their problems, solutions, ideas, or general thoughts on the board. I just finished a full year of doing the site and cartoon before the board noticed my work. A couple of days ago however, someone made a post on the board about my cartoon.

Saturday's post | Monday's post

Within an hour more than 200 visitors flooded my website, Out-of-Plumb.com, which is more visitors than I have seen in over three months. Nobody bought anything, but that is my fault. I have to do a new calendar, Christmas cards, etc. before people will want to buy anything. And on all of the posts the feedback was always positive.

The point that I am not making very well here is this: the outcome to this scenario could have been completely different, seeing how I am not a surveyor, have never surveyed, and have only affiliated with the industry for a couple of years. After so many surveyors witnessed my brand of humor applied to their profession they could have ripped me a new one. They could have said things like, "He obviously has never surveyed a day in his life." But they did not. They found the humor relatable and appreciated and supported the continuation of my work.

Whew!

Etchings from College

2008-09-18T16:03:00.000-07:00

I found this in my desk recently, it is an etching I did while I was in college.

This was done on clay board. It works like this: they take a piece of masonite board and paint it white; then cover the masonite in a thin layer of clay and paint that India ink black; then you use these little tools to scrape off the black clay, revealing the white board underneath.

Very cool stuff. It makes you draw in reverse. Normally you draw shadows, with this technique you draw the highlights.

Asher's Album Art

2008-09-12T10:31:00.000-07:00

For Asher's next album, and it is a long ways away, I already have a vision of the album art. Several months ago I was walking through my Florida room when I stumbled upon the picture below (figure A) tacked to a bulletin board. I had seen this picture several times but for the first time ever I noticed the strange symbol in the picture.

Figure A:

Clinton took this shot (and several others) inside of an abandoned train in our hometown. So I looked through the other shots, and I seen it in there as well. From what I can determine, it is not a logo, but rather decoration for the train. And the train itself was probably 50-60 years old... at least.

It was a very strange feeling when I seen the symbol, I instantly seen the cover of the next album in my head. I jumped on the computer and whipped this up in about 20 minutes.

Figure B:

Now this looks like a photo, however it is all digital. I created this from scratch, armed only with the photo in figure A. If you were to buy the cd in the store this is what the front of the jewel case would look like.

I like the mystery and intrigue I feel when I look at this image. I like the simplicity and the texture. I came up with a title of the album to go with the icon: "Up and Away."

Hope Logo

2008-08-08T18:56:00.000-07:00

This logo was designed for The Hope Organization. The are an organization that the helps the hispanic community in the northern part of middle TN. The do a lot of good work for the community and help get a lot of people on the right track that wouldn't be able to do it on their own. We were very happy and proud to design this logo for an organization that does this kind of work.

Toadily Fun Logo

2008-05-20T15:01:00.000-07:00

We recently designed the logo for Toadily Fun, a play center for children and adults similar to a Chuck E. Cheese and located in South Carolina. I had drew the logo, then scanned it in to add the colorful textures:

Originally they wanted to name the place, Monkee Bizness, but they were unable to due to copyrights on a similar business. That was of course, after we designed this:

Awe... I like our little monkey. Too bad he has no home.

Identity

2008-05-08T21:23:00.000-07:00

Identity: Any materials whose sole aim is to promote brand awareness. There are two critical questions to ask: "Who am I?" and "Who is my customer?"
examples: logos, static web pages, business cards, signage.

At the base of every marketing strategy should be an identity. This identity is one that should correctly portray a company's set of values, goals, or mood. So before jumping right into what everyone sees as the first step of defining an identity - the logo - we challenge you to first think about what do you want your company to be like. It could involve cutting edge technology, or be a local small business, or it could be simply that you like to have fun, or maybe that you take matters seriously. Take a moment to jot down what your company is.

More importantly, who is your company for. Who is your customer? Address who it is that is either inclined to by your product, or that you want to buy your product. Everything after that point should stem from asking these two simple questions: "Who am I?" and "Who is my customer?"

Infiltration

2008-05-07T21:33:00.000-07:00

Infiltration: Any materials whose main purpose is to produce sales of a product to new and/or existing customers via indirect means.
examples: ads in magazines, web banners, e-blasts, postcards.

Indeed this category is intended to sound aggressive. Infiltration means sending creative pieces driven by your identity out into the world to smoke out from the bushes any potential customers. Magazine ads are a great representation of this. Indirectly your customer comes into contact with your brand. He buys a magazine. That magazine has your ad in it. That consumer flips through said magazine and stumbles upon your ad.

The important thing to remember about infiltration is that it is the most competitive form of marketing you can do. What are you competing for? Attention. On an average day we are bombarded by all kinds of images. It is for this reason that it is so hard to grab people's attention. A good campaign takes not only its competitor's ads in the magazine into account when devising a plan, but also all other visual forms of entertainment that surround us daily.

Another thing to remember is if you pay a lot of money to get an ad in a magazine, newsletter, or website, just because you've paid money for placement doesn't mean anyone is going to see it. It is better to assume that they are not going to see it, and that you should give the ad itself more focus. Advertising is one of the most expensive forms of marketing you'll do based on placement price alone. If you are spending that much money upfront, the message and stopping power of the ad better get people's attention.

Collateral

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Collateral: Any materials given directly to existing and/or potential customers that are a continuation of brand awareness, but with a stronger focus on product sales.
examples: e-newsletters, catalogs, brochures, info dvds.

You can think of collateral as being anything that you can give to a customer directly that would encourage a sale. Collateral pieces are geared to have a long shelf life, say a catalog you can use all year, or a flier that has information still pertinent three months later. The reason of this has its roots in printing. The more you print the cheaper it is per piece. But if you print a whole lot of something and then give it away slowly over time, you can not have any time sensitive promotions. The piece should be a very general look at the products and services you offer, much like an Identity piece, but with a lot more focus on selling your products and services.

Collateral pieces can also be used as a pivotal point for a sale. Your customer may be almost ready to purchase and you give them the collateral piece to send them one step closer to buying. They may be concerned about all of the functions a product offers, but their confusion is laid to rest when you give them a brochure that explains all of the products functions.

Retention

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Retention: Any materials designed to encourage new sales from existing customers.
examples: member discount promotions, thank you cards, coupons after point of purchase, and of course great customer service.

Though it may not seem like a form of marketing, having a good retention strategy in place is crucial to the growth of your company. With as many different companies available today, and especially online, why should a customer continue to do business with you? They may find you online on a whim, but after getting the product they needed your company as an entity disappeared from their mind.

One indirect way to have a good retention plan is to have a good identity. If customers see clearly your unique image they can separate you from all of the other companies that sell the same stuff as you, but are not as well defined as you.

Also, it is widely known that good customer service is the best form of advertising. This is not a myth. People are naturally inclined to share good and bad experiences with other people. If they felt like they were treated with excellent service, as if they were the only customer your company had, they will share that experience with a portion of their network. Inversely if they were treated badly, it will actually spread faster than if they were treated good. So, good customer service will lead to not only new sales from that customer, but other potential customers as well.

Member benefits and thank-you programs are also key to keeping customers with you. If they feel like you are really grateful for their business and 'give-back' they feel better that they have spent money with you.

Like all of the other services we provide, we help you decide what kind retention strategy is right for your business.