Studio moves.

We have decided to move the studio to a larger, ground floor office, within the same building which will give us the opportunity for some street level branding, a cooler (temperature!), larger creative studio, and also provide more parking for clients visiting the studio. It may also mean less of a strenuous stepping workout for clients climbing up to our current top-floor offices. We will keep our existing offices at the top, so you can still enjoy a good workout any time you visit.

Time for a summer branding pit stop?

Whilst the summer months can be a little quieter for some business sectors, it can provide the ideal opportunity to make changes to your brand, effectively bringing it in for a pit-stop, enabling your positioning and communications to be right on target for the last two quarters of the year. A good idea to start, is just to look at your visual communications, quite literally - lay it all out on a table, including a print out of your website, and try to look for any signs of drift, any areas in need of attention. It is a good discipline to get into in general, but if you are in a position to make some improvements, this point in the year is an ideal time to get to work. The other question to ask is, what new ideas can we generate? Ask your staff for a few ideas, it may be a surprise to hear some of the great things that can be thought up. The next stage is action, start immediately getting the things done and implemented. Come back after the summer with new tyres, a full tank and no more stops needed...Oh yes, the racing metaphors are because it's obviously the British Grand Prix this weekend, apologies if you're not a racing fan.

Here's a Dr. Pepper ad, just brilliant... and what's the worst that could happen?

What makes a great promotional product?

Here are a few ideas of what we think makes a promotional give-away a worthwhile marketing tool.

A, Getting it cheap enough
B, It being as useful as possible
C, It having desk stickability, i.e. it doesn't start bugging you.
D, Having a slightly higher perceived value.
E, Being a good fit for what you do as a business/ organisation
F, Your logo prints well onto it
G, Getting your hands on it quick.

So there you are, our favourites are hexagonal pen holders and you can't go wrong with a nice USB drive, (just don't skimp on the memory).

MVLB - Marketing on a Very Low Budget.

When it's tight, you can probably still squeeze out a few small initiatives, but what about when it's really, really tight? Rather than face total marketing paralysis, you can try thinking up, and actioning, small ideas to get your marketing out of flat line and back into a normal sinus rhythm. It is always a good idea to speak with your agency in these times, as we are experts in creating something half reasonable, from very little. MVLB is about dipping into the expanse of your imagination and getting new ideas. Not without a little money being needed, but also about maximising leverage, creating disproportionate results from your tiny investment. Main tools: phone, letter and piggybacking/ sharing opportunities with others who are in the same predicament.

This week in the Apple Studio.

This week we have been working on a wide range of projects, we are currently designing signage for a number of locations around Blackpool, for Blackpool Council's Young Peoples services. This follows the recent rebranding samples of which are displayed on our web home page. The locations vary from a training and resource centre, to a main office in the Town Centre. We also have a number of web projects coming to final stages, including Ashton, Wigan and Leigh NHS Trust and hairdressing salon, Urban Hair. We will get samples of these up on the website as soon as completed.