9 ideas to grow brand awareness at lightning speed
A typical week at Toast
We’ve created a nice shiny rebrand for the Tornado Boiler Co.
Have you noticed how some brands seem to have popped up out of nowhere? – We look at how this has happened.
We’ve illustrated what goes on in a typical week at Toast towers.
Slice 3 0
Ideas | Stuff | Creative | Goodness
OCTOBER 2014
What We’ve been up to
Wah ha ha ha…… Welcome to the Halloween edition of SLICE – a newspaper designed and published by the creative ghosts and goblins at Toast. Pull up a chair, sip your witches brew and dig in to what we’ve conjured up for you. 5 minutes of escapism from your busy day, where we hope you find something new to help you on your way. Of course, let us know what you think, we’re dying to hear from you! ‘till next time!
What We’ve been up to recent work by toast
The Tornado Boiler Co. asked Toast to light a fire under their existing branding and reposition them inline with their true values. Alex Mathieson, one of the men behind the design and manufacture of “The Tornado Kettle” contacted Toast when they needed a design partner they could trust to help move this established brand forward. The new brand design needed to reflect the core values of the brand, which included fun, passion, creativity, at the same time being environmentally conscious and ambitious. Alex worked with Chris Tymon at Toast to outline the requirements for a more professional, responsible and overall stronger brand platform. Chris investigated the existing brand; focusing on the best elements and combining them with the requirements outlined in the creative brief agreed with Alex. The focus was expanded to include the supporting elements of the brand and not just the logo, this included considerations for point of sale and packaging etc. This broader perspective allowed for a much more inclusive solution to arise and through a range of sketches and developments, the new identity emerged including the development of the strapline “Evoke the adventurer”. The new identity was an immediate success, Alex instantly saw the potential of the new look and feel and instantly asked for it to be applied to the first of what would become an extensive range of applications. The new identity was applied to the website and social media platforms, stationery and packaging. Feedback has been unanimously positive.
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“A big thanx to @toastdesign You have pushed us up to the next level with our wicked new branding! You guys are the bomb, we salute you!” Tornado Boiler Co. @evokeadventurer
“Here at Toast we truly appreciate the trust that our clients put in us when putting their brand into our hands. The Tornado Boiler Co. is a great example of this as it was an established brand that needed to be taken to the next level to help achieve the hopes and dreams of its owners. Their products speak for themselves but the brand needs to put those products infront of potential customers and introduce them in the right way. We’re over the moon about how the new brand has turned out but take pride in the reaction it had with Alex and his customers alike – we have empowered them all to become adventurers!!”
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Chris Tymon, Creative Director at Toast. 4
EVOKE THE ADVENTURER
1. Final brand identity. 2. Roundel sleeves. 3. Packaging sleeves. 4. Brand styling. 5. Staff T-shirts. 6. Packaging & Tornado Kettle
Other September News From Toast Towers 2 / OCTOBER 2014 / SLICE 3
Our friends at Peach Pubs opened their 17th pub, The High Field in Edgbaston. Check it out, it’s a beautiful top quality gastropub.
In addition to their recent 8 great taste awards, our client The Artisan Kitchen have made it into Coolbrands list for 2014, an amazing achievement for an artisan producer!
Our friends at Ross & Ross launched their new product, The Home-made Bacon Kit with packaging and branding by Toast www.rossandrossfood.co.uk
We completed the brand design and event guides for Imperial College’s SpaceLab, a conference in space science, engineering, medicine and business.
Yelp
Uniqlo
KISSMetrics
A Japanese company that ensures it provides casual clothes for all kinds of people.
A web analytics solution that helps you to increase customer acquisition and retention rates.
Idea: Partner with Other Brands Uniqlo sponsor free admission to the Museum of Modern Art every Friday from 4pm - 8pm. This gets their name in front of a brand new audience that they may never have reached before, and generates positive word of mouth from people who get to enjoy the museum, compliments of the clothing company.
Lesson: Partnering with another brand will help you inherit their image and reputation, as well as creating brand evangelists outside of your customer base.
Idea: Create Infographics Creating 47 infographics has gained KISSmetrics 2,512,596 visitors, 41,142 backlinks, and 3,741 unique referring domains. (Source: KISSmetrics) They consider infographics to be one of the main reasons they have grown their blog from zero to 350,000 readers a month in 24 months. “If you can make complex data easy to understand in a visual format, you can get millions of visitors to your website.” – Neil Patel, KISSmetrics
Lesson: Experiment with the right formats for your audience. Infographics worked awesome for KISSmetrics, but something else may work for your brand.
IDEAS
TO GROW
BRAND AWARENESS AT
LIGHTNING
SPEED
Have you noticed how some of today’s biggest brands seem to have popped up out of nowhere and become overnight successes? Ever wondered how that was possible? Is it just a matter of having one genius idea that no one else has thought about, ever? Or is it that these hugely successful companies are started by billionaires who have the money and contacts to create something that we could only dream of? As it turns out, no is the answer to both of those questions all we really need is a bit of creativity! Article courtesy of www.hubspot.com
A user review and recommendations site for restaurants, shopping, nightlife, entertainment, etc.
Idea: Make it Social Yelp made each reviewer human by building a profile behind each one. This made reviews more trustworthy and reviewers felt like they were becoming part of a community and building their reputation by using the site. Members can interact with each other by becoming friends, chatting online, or meeting at offline events. Yelp has since accumulated over 47 million reviews.
Lesson: Make your customers’ experience human and personal. Build communities that enable your customers to communicate with each other, allowing them to learn from their experiences and interact over a shared interest.
Dropbox A free service that lets you bring your photos, docs, and videos anywhere and share them easily with others.
Idea: Refer a Friend Dropbox made it really easy for users to refer Dropbox to their friends by having sharing options for email, social, as well as a link to share via any other method the user preferred. Users did this to aquire space, which Dropbox offered for every referred sign up. This helped Dropbox increase their signups by 60%. (Source: Dropbox)
Lesson: Consider how your product can help promote itself. The Dropbox product created a heap of referral signups because people wanted to obtain more space. What would your users want in return for referrals?
Buffer
Qualaroo
Upworthy
A pop-up survey for your website to help with user experience on your site.
A website with curated, viral content.
Idea: Conversion Optimisation Qualaroo has ‘Powered by Qualaroo [?]’ featured on every customer website, unless the customer upgrades to a paid account. The question mark is clickable and leads to a signup page for a free trial of Qualaroo.
Lesson:
Lesson:
Use your freemium product in clever ways to get your brand name in front of people. Leverage your customers for marketing real estate.
Idea: Guest Blogging By writing 150 guest posts, Buffer grew from zero to 100,000+ users in nine months. They had to start on smaller sites and work their way up to the most popular in their industry. They got their name everywhere by creating really valuable content even though it wasn’t on their own site. Content marketing accounted for over 70% of their daily signups.
Lesson: Be everywhere in your niche. Providing valuable content on other sites outside of your own will build an engaged audience. Once they know, like, and trust you, you can then market your product or services to them.
Coming up with an attention-grabbing headline for your content can help maximize the reach of your content, and your brand.
HubSpot
Uber
A social media publishing tool.
Idea: Test Headlines At Upworthy, the curators need to come up with 25 headlines for every piece of content. They then select their favourite four, and the managing editor selects two, which are rigorously tested. Upworthy saw nine million monthly unique visitors in just nine months.
A mobile app that connects you with a taxi driver within minutes.
Idea: Freebies to WellConnected Influencers Uber provided free rides to well-connected attendees of local tech and venture capital events. They knew that these people would be very likely to share the experience with tech press and social media audiences, getting Uber’s name in front of their target audience.
Lesson: Provide a wow experience to your ideal customers free of charge bonus points if they have a large network they can share the experience with.
An inbound marketing software platform that helps companies attract visitors, convert leads, and close customers.
Idea: Marketing Grader A free tool that grew out of Website Grader, it allows visitors to input their website, URL, and receive automated suggestions on where they can improve their marketing. In the first week alone, it was used by more than 140,000 companies. To date, it has graded over 4 million websites.
Lesson: Thinking outside the box to create a tool that offers immense value to the user will help grow your audience.
Some of our recent branding work:
The indian coeliac
Freida’s Pantry
imperial college space lab
The Tiffin Box
The beefy sausage co. SLICE 3 / OCTOBER 2014 / 3
What we love THIS MONTH
OCTOBER
1 Hiut Denim Window The Hiut Denim Co “tech hacked” a stockists shop window using Conductive Ink technology to tell the story of the brand.
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Found by Chris: “I love this, an interactive window graphic using Conductive ink.”
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www.weareknit.co.uk/en/blog/hiut-window-hackusing-conductive-ink 2 Allot in a box Graze for Gardeners.
Found by Adam: “Since Graze has been around you can get a box for most things. Here is another”
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www.allotinabox.com 3
Thom Yorke Album
Tomorrow’s Modern Boxes released via peer-to-peer file-sharing service BitTorrent. Found by Chris: “More game-changing ideas from the Radiohead front man, choosing to release his new album via BitTorrent. More than 1 million people have paid $6 to download the album, BitTorrent get 10% and Yorke gets the rest. Why is this big news? – Traditionally record labels would normally get 70% of record sales, not anymore!”
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https://bundles.bittorrent.com/bundles/ d0b4beba8efc4b46f6dba119b511a5b2d 5cabc96168c0dc097ee9d514059ab63 4 Liam Neeson Kill Map For anyone who has ever said to themselves, “I know Liam Neeson has killed a lot of people, but I don’t know where exactly.” So, pretty much everyone.
Found by Adam: “Infographic of everyone Liam Neeson has ever killed… in his films of course!” 8
www.buzzfeed.com/expresident/the-liam-neesonkill-map?bftw&utm_term=4ldqpfp#2s0pwxs 5 Car of the Future? Designer and inventor Dominic Wilcox has unveiled a life-size concept car design for a future where driverless technologies make the roads safe enough to drive vehicles made of glass whilst sleeping.
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Found by Andy: “I might trade in my SEAT for this!” www.dezeen.com/2014/09/18/dominic-wilcoxscar-future-driverless-stained-glass-dezeen-minifrontiers-london-design-festival-2014/
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6 Great British Bake Off Illustrations The guy who illustrates for the Great British Bake Off, Tom Hovey.
Found by Adam: “Brilliantly detailed illustrations” www.itsnicethat.com/articles/illustration-tom-hovey 7 24 Sunsets around the world in a day Watch brand CITIZEN roped in British photographer Simon Roberts and former NATO pilot Jonathan Nicol to show how it’s done in a short film titled ‘CITIZEN Chasing Horizons’.
Found by Andy: “Brilliant photography” http://designtaxi.com/news/369862/In-A-DayPhotographer-Chases-Captures-24-SunsetsAround-The-World/ 8 Adobe Shape CC App No more scanning or live tracing photos in Illustrator.
Found by Chris: “Really nice new app from ‘Adobe. Shape CC’ allows you to create Illustrator ready vectors from your iPhone. (No Android version yet)” 9 Kibooki Cult Collectable Figures.
Found by Adam: “Re-imagined figures from popular culture – I want them” https://twitter.com/kibooki
Team instagrams of the month
4 / OCTOBER 2014 / SLICE 3
GET YOUR
DUCKS IN A ROW ORDER AND PROCESS – WHY IT’S ESSENTIAL TO GETTING THINGS DONE Here at Toast we have delivered 1000’s of projects over the last 17 years and have become very good (even if we say so ourselves) at delivering creative projects on time and on budget whatever the size or complexity of the job. We achieve this by using a range of tools and processes from online web tools such as basecamp or our own bespoke job management platform, combined with our inherent experience in delivering complex communication projects. It is this last element that we believe makes all the difference. When we complete a job we not only design a creative solution we also apply the experience gained by doing a thousand similar projects. This knowledge allows us to avoid any of the usual pitfalls or recognise potential issues before they arise. Good planning always allows you to avoid problems rather than have to deal with them. So when considering the design team for a creative project, look for the ones that are looking to get their ducks in a row rather than the ones happy to deal with them as and when they arise!
“In creating these materials day in day out we come to rely on a good creative brief to allow us to stay focused on the core deliverables of the project. In doing this we never lose sight of the primary goal and ensure that the project will always hit the mark. A good creative brief is worth its’ weight in gold. If you haven’t got one, you should talk to us and we will put one together.”
Some of our recent PRINT work:
imperial college space lab
English Garden Tea
Blue Cap Coffee
LCMB
BPF SLICE 3 / OCTOBER 2014 / 5
6 / OCTOBER 2014 / SLICE 3
Biscuits, sweets and CAKES consumed
DoorBEll RINGS
Amazon is mainly to blame for this statistic and also people forgetting their keys!
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Shortbread: 6 | Digestives: 4 Bourbons: 11 | Doughnuts: 7
We only listen to BBC 6 Music in the studio here at Toast and this is only a subjective statistic, but only those songs that we all agreed were really quite bad were included.
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Bad songs on the radio
Battles with the printer
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84
This is not a statistic we’re proud of but who has time for washing up as well as being creative genius’?
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Dirty plates and mugs left in the sink
It’s a fact we all go to the toilet, so this statistic can not be avoided.
Trips to the toilet
So what happens in a typical week at Toast? – How many cups of tea do we get through? What’s our favourite biscuit? – Come on, these are important questions that need to be answered. So, we’ve collected the data and put together a handy infographic detailing this critical information, designed to give you a better idea of what happens behind the orange door here at Toast towers. Enjoy.
A TYPICAL WEEK AT TOAST
SLICE 3 / OCTOBER 2014 / 7
How did we get anything done before broadband?
emails SEnt
Phone Calls
Green Tea: 14 | Builders Tea: 36 Peppermint Tea: 12 | Earl Grey: 10
72
Mugs of tea or coffeE consumed
We’re constantly winning overseas lotteries that we don’t enter.
We love speaking to our clients, as you can see we do alot of it.
347 562 824
Spam emails Received
All we can say is it’s a good job we dont have a swear box!
Swear Words spoken
273 73 The most important people are you the clients and we like to spend plenty of time to make sure you’re happy.
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A layout pad is essential for all the designers at Toast as we love to sketch out our design ideas.
Layout Hours pages Spent working used on client work
Paper Jams, wrong size media and out of toner, are just a few of the daily problems our printer likes to throw at us.
IF toast did... ...a fresh produce brand
Veg & Salad Growers
8 / OCTOBER 2014 / SLICE 3
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This, the second of the ‘If Toast Did.....’ projects, where we feature a ‘made-up’ product to show our creativity and passion to create something different to the norm. We have some fun, do what we want, with very little restrictions, but show our thirst for the IDEA. For this one, we have branded and labelled a fictional fresh produce brand, ‘Nature Boy’. Designed by Andy Illingworth, Junior Designer at Toast.
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You aren’t getting the results you want.
Is your website gorgeous, functional, and pixel-perfect? Awesome! But if you still aren’t getting the results you want, it’s just useless web real estate. Your website exists to build your customer base, and your data should show you’re trending toward that goal. If you aren’t happy with your results, it’s time to redesign.
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The purpose of your site has changed.
If you’re like most companies, your marketing strategy is fairly fluid and reflects changes in results. While you clearly don’t need to do a full site redesign each time you adjust your marketing goals, it’s a good idea to check every so often to be sure your site is still aligned with your newest marketing plans. Of course, if you haven’t altered your marketing strategy in a while, it might not be your website that is the problem. ;)
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Excellent
Reasons to Redesign Your Website These days, your audience’s first impression of your business is based almost exclusively on your website ... so redesigning your website isn’t a task to take lightly. It requires a good deal of thought, time, and potentially money, but the upside can be enormous.
It’s important to note here that “redesign” doesn’t necessarily mean you need to change every single one of your branding and graphic design elements. In fact, redesigns can just entail making functional modifications that help your website work better and assist you in reaching your marketing goals. After all, your website is one of the foundational elements of your marketing strategy, right? While you can find many excellent reasons not to revamp your site, here are eight great reasons why you should get your redesign plans off the ground. Article courtesy of www.hubspot.com
Your website just doesn’t work.
This might seem obvious, but you’ve probably stumbled on websites every now and then that are dysfunctional, to put it lightly. Your site might not be on that level ... but it might still not be as user-friendly as it could be. The truth is there can be elements of a site that aren’t effective – and you may not realise they’re making your site less effective. Functionality should be a paramount focus for you – if it’s not, your traffic and lead gen efforts could suffer.
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You have an effective web design strategy.
If you’re already considering a redesign, it’s likely you’ve learned a fair amount along the way about what doesn’t work well in the design process. Instead of having one massive goal of a website redesign, take an iterative approach. Having this approach can help you use the information you’ve gathered about what works on your current site and plan accordingly. In other words, you’ll be able to tell if your current users’ needs are being met. You probably don’t even notice the small changes some of the sites you visit frequently make on a regular basis – major brands have entire teams dedicated to iterating on every little detail.
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Your site isn’t responsive on mobile devices or tablets.
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You want to incorporate a better content strategy.
More than 17% of all web traffic comes from mobile devices. If your site isn’t responsive yet (some content management systems like HubSpot’s COS are responsive out-of-thebox), the chances you’re losing leads and maybe even customers are high. Mobile users have made it clear they want to have a great UX on their devices – the same ones they have on desktops – so this should be a chief priority for your company if it hasn’t already been made one.
Having fantastic content on your site can improve everything from customer retention to SEO – and with continuing changes to the algorithms of search engines, you’d be smart to implement a solid content plan. That said, quality content is useless if your visitors can’t readily find it. So, if you’re planning to make some big changes to your content strategy (perhaps boosting your blog production?), a web redesign may be wise.
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Your competitors changed their site.
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Your third-party tools are outdated.
Obviously, you don’t need to give your site an overhaul every time one of your competitors changes theirs. However if you spend some time on a competitor’s site and realise it could meet your goals far better than your own site does, it’s time to roll up your sleeves and get busy.
If your site is like most out there, you’ve embedded third-party tools that improve its functionality, such as shopping cart widgets. But, if some (or all) of these tools on your site aren’t up to modern functionality standards, you’re best off updating them. Identifying with one of the eight scenarios above shouldn’t cause you to go into panic mode and dive deep into a redesign, but if you relate to a few of them maybe it’s time to get cracking on a new design. Your website is meant to bring you business. If it’s not doing that, it’s time to determine why not and make necessary changes. Do you think you’re in need of a website redesign? Which parts of your site do you want to update most?
SOME OF OUR RECENT WEB WORK:
www.charlottedennis.com
www.creative-media-skills.com
WWW.sugarandspicefood.com
www.ovaflow.com
www.sausageandroll.co.uk SLICE 3 / OCTOBER 2014 / 9
“ If you chase two
“Run Rabbit Run Rabbit Run Run Run”
rabbits, you will lose them both.” A Native American saying...
Here at Toast we are occasionally asked to chase two rabbits, figuratively that is! We are asked to create something that can be used to achieve multiple goals, or address a variety of audiences. We make a point of saying that it is possible to do so, but they may have to compromise on effectiveness or prioritise the intended goals. A piece that is very clear on its goals is much more likely to be effective than a piece that is not so focused or has a number of expectations on it. The first step at Toast with any project of this type is to clarify the requirements using our tried and tested creative brief. Our creative brief template asks a range of pertinent questions on the: who, what, where and why of any project and clearly identifies how the success will be measured. All are important but the measurement is a great way of addressing the real needs of the project as it makes it clear what the end result needs to be – increase sales, increase enquiries, advise, educate etc. A well-designed piece of communication can achieve more than one goal, but the best-designed pieces are the ones that have a clear and agreed primary goal from the very beginning. If your project does not have a clear and agreed primary goal, then you will end up chasing two (or more) rabbits and you will catch neither. Our advice, choose your target and ensure you achieve that before you consider secondary needs and wants or you may find yourself chasing your tail(s)!
10 / OCTOBER 2014 / SLICE 3
10
things that
clients say that scares thE HELL out of designers
01 “Can you make the logo bigger?”
02 “I want it to look designed”
03 “Can I have it in Word format?”
04 “It’s a bit flat, can you make it pop?”
(Just for a bit of fun!)
05 “If you do this you will get lots of exposure – so can you do it for free?” 06 “I found this image on google images – I want it on the cover”
07 “We don’t have
copy or images can you design it and we will add them later?”
08 “Can you show us a few different designs to help us make up our mind?”
09 “I’ll know what I’m looking for when I see it” 10 “There’s too much white space!”
Draw your Halloween monster here...
2 3 1
5
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….and win a Toast Mug Would you like to win a Toast Mug? – You could you know! All we want you to do is to get into the Halloween spirit and draw your own Monster/Ghoul/Goblin in the space above. Take a picture of it and tweet it to us @toastdesign using the hashtag #iwantatoastmug Our favourite will win a shiny Toast mug!
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Fancy Dress with the family
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Pumpkins - Because they’re Orange of course!
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An excuse to watch Beetlejuice again - a great film!
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Pumpkin carving. It’s an excuse to make a lot of mess!
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SWEETS!
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Watching The Evil Dead for the millionth time! SLICE 3 / OCTOBER 2014 / 11
BOO!
Toast 16 North Bar, Banbury, Oxon, OX16 0TF Call: 01295 26 66 44 Email: hello@toastdesign.co.uk www.toastdesign.co.uk facebook.com/wearetoast twitter.com/toastdesign