O2 Creative Is Rebranding!
O2 Creative is Rebranding!
Why? After a few too many people thought were an oxygen bar we decided to develop a survey to identify our brand’s identity.
The survey results confirmed that we needed to rebrand in order to better convey what we do as a business, what we are capable of, where we work, and the types of industries we work with.
Here is some information on the process –
- We met to discuss direction: We like our color scheme of lime green, black, and white. (Good thing too because it matches our office and none of us enjoy or are great at interior painting.)
- We like our name: (Phew! That would be a lot of documents, addresses, etc. to change.)
- We are web-based: We’ve realized that in the past few years, our business has changed to be more web-based – (websites, web design, online marketing, SEO, etc.). Our new branding needs to reflect, and convey that…our current branding, logo, tagline, etc. doesn’t.
- Solution: We’re going to take on a whole new look, put ourselves first and develop a responsive website, design and develop handouts, business cards, etc. (We are getting a makeover folks!)
While our rebranding process is still underway, our team and designers have made great strides in giving our current logo a “facelift.”
Here is a sneak peak!
Our Old/Current Logo: We like it, we used to love it…but we need a change. We need something so FRESH and so CLEAN…like OutKast. Something that will clarify and convey who we are and what we do.
Our New Logo: The goal was to develop a simpler logo that has a greater range of use. When it comes to logos, the simpler the better. That way we will be able to “manipulate” our logo in order to fit each of the particular uses we have for it. (Fun Fact: Logos are getting smaller and simpler these days to conform with mobile sites, social media, etc. Just one of the many trends we are staying on top of!)
So our designer Jason started at the drawing board…
Then moved onto Illustrator where he took the concepts to create vector drawings derived from the sketches and ideas. (This is where the magic happens…)
Our team identified a direction…which we are excited to unveil in the next few weeks. Stay tuned!
The Importance of Branding
Branding is one of the most overlooked aspects of a business, yet it is perhaps the most important.
What is Branding?
Brand is key to developing and facilitating perception of your business. It is what you are promising your customer and is what helps to differentiate your product and/or service from those of your competitors.
How to define your brand?
- What is the mission or goal of your business or organization?
- What separates your products or services from others?
- What is the current perception of your business or organization?
Take time to identify accurate perceptions through the use of surveys, interviews, focus groups, etc.Include all stakeholders that are involved and don’t assume.
- Consumers
- Community
- Employees
- Board members
What do you want the perceptions to be?
Next Steps
Design:
- Logo – come up with a great logo! – Don’t skimp on this, your logo will be the “face” of your business/organization
- Identify color schemes, layouts, placement, etc.
Brand Message:
- Write down key messages and attributes you want to convey with all individuals you come in contact with.
- Share these messages with employees so that they can incorporate them when representing the business/organization.
Voice:
- Create a “voice” for your business or organization that reflects your brand
- Use this voice in all written and verbal content
Create a Tagline:
- A tagline is a short, concise statement that captures your brand
- The tagline should be simple, yet memorable
Incorporate:
- Encompass your brand in all parts of your organization (Everything from answering your phone, email signatures, business cards, blogs, website, etc.)
Be Consistent:
- Consistency is key
- Remain true to your brand
Brand consistency in all Bike Granby Ranch collateral
A level of consistency remains throughout all Granby Ranch collateral
Think it is time to consider branding your organization or business? O2 Creative is here to help you should you need any help along the way. We can help with the entire branding process or just pieces of it. We specialize in defining brands, designing killer logos, creating visually effective websites, and more!
Contact us today: 970-726-8021, [email protected]
5 Benefits of Rebranding
Rebranding’s in the news again this week.
Pizza Hut unveiled a comprehensive new rebranding complete with new logo and new menu offerings – anyone else curious to try that honey Sriracha sauce? The news from Pizza Hut prompted us at O2 to hold numerous discussions this week about rebranding (we’re marketing nerds like that). With rebranding on our minds, we thought we’d use this week’s blog to discuss the ways a business can benefit from a rebranding. Here’s a quick list of 5 benefits of rebranding:
Rebranding keeps your business up-to-date. Perhaps your current brand is looking a little dated, or just doesn’t attract customers like it once did. Rebranding helps your business keep up with the times and helps you stay fresh in the minds of your customers.
Rebranding differentiates your business. Maybe your brand has been around for such a long time that you just don’t get noticed like you used to, or maybe your branding is just too similar to the branding of another business in your market. Rebranding creates individuality for your business. It helps you get noticed and stand out again, which leads to our next point…
Rebranding can revitalize your business. When your branding is new, it makes customers curious to see what’s new with you. Updating your brand both re-engages existing customers and catches the attention of new customers too. Consider a rebranding to breathe a breath of fresh air into your business, especially if a new strategy is involved. Speaking of which…
Changes in business strategy should be accompanied by changes in branding. If you’re making changes to the marketing strategy or to the product or service offerings of your business, consider a rebrand to go with it. Updating your brand acts as an illustration to your customers of the updates in your business’s offerings. This is especially true if your brand has or recently had a merger or acquisition in the works.
Technological innovations need branding innovations too. If advances in technology has changed the way your business operates – for instance, maybe you do a lot more business online these days – then a fresh rebranding is a good way to reflect your business’s operations.
These are just a few quick reasons why rebranding can be beneficial to your business. We could go on, but for now we’ll keep it at 5, for the sake of the blog. Of course, rebranding is frequently much more than just a new logo. It often involves a new marketing strategy and ad buys, new target audiences, new products and services, and more.
It can get overwhelming, and that’s where we at O2 come into play. We’ve branded and rebranded all sorts of businesses over the years, including even ourselves. We can help you through every step of the branding or rebranding process, and we’d be happy to do it for you. So if you’d like to discuss the benefits of rebranding your business, let’s have a chat. Please contact us soon!
To contact O2 Creative, call 970-726-8021 or email [email protected].
Click here for our last blog: O2’s local media survey.
Holiday Cards from O2
Halloween already came and went. That means we’re in the midst of holiday season! Thanksgiving is fast approaching, which makes Christmas and New Year’s Eve just around the corner.
That also means holiday card season is just around the corner as well. Holiday cards are a great way to keep in touch with family and friends. They’re also a fun way to spread some seasonal cheer, whether you’re celebrating Christmas, Thanksgiving, New Years, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, Festivus, or another holiday yet.
O2 can create the coolest holiday greeting cards for your business, or even just for you personally. We’ll design cards that truly reflect your holiday spirit, whether you’d like to include fun family photos, or even a custom-designed graphic.
The card creativity doesn’t have to end there either: we can design cards of all shapes and sizes, with all sorts of finishes, on all sorts of different materials. You can go big, small, matte, glossy, square, round, or just pick your own custom shape. We can even print cards on unique papers or other specialty materials. The choices are virtually endless!
In addition to providing professional graphic design services, we at O2 are what you call print brokers. We have close working relationships with several different wholesale printers, which affords several advantages. Since we don’t own our own printing presses in-house, it allows us to keep our overhead lower, which keeps the price lower for you. Since we work with several different wholesale printers that offer a variety of unique printing services, we can quickly and cost-effectively source a variety of print products.
In addition to holiday greeting cards, we can create lots of other stationery for you or your business as well: business cards, brochures, letterhead, posters, you name it. For the best print products, and the most eye-catchingly memorable holiday cards, contact us today.
Happy Holidays from O2!
To contact O2 Creative, call 970-726-8021 or email [email protected].
Click here for our last blog: hiring a marketing agency vs. marketing in-house
Hiring a marketing agency vs. marketing in-house
Hiring a marketing agency vs. marketing in-house – which is better for your business? We at O2 believe that hiring a professional marketing agency can benefit your business in a number of ways. Here are just a few:
Time: Ah, precious time. This can be a premium for many businesses. Marketing takes time too, from devising strategies to coordinating campaigns to creating ads and promotions to…you get the idea. Hiring an agency means the agency will worry about marketing for you, which saves your business precious time.
Expenses. Hiring an in-house marketer can expend a lot of money (salary, benefits) and expend time too (recruiting, interviewing, hiring, training). Hiring an agency can often be less expensive than marketing in-house, especially when you consider that O2 specializes in working with small businesses – we’re a small business too! We can create marketing packages that will fit your needs as well as your budget.
Experience. At O2, we have over 30 combined years of marketing experience, and we’re undertaking new marketing endeavors every day. We can provide you with expert direction if you aren’t sure how to market your business. Our experience also contributes to our next point…
Efficiency. Since we’re extensively experienced, we can quickly and efficiently identify the best marketing initiatives for you. We do this stuff every day! We’ll help you create the right message for the right business at the right time.
Perspective. Small business owners must often keep a narrow focus on their business. While this can be necessary for the sake of the business, it can also make it difficult to step back and think about your business in the big picture of marketing. Hiring an agency can provide a much broader perspective on marketing and other matters. Let us handle your marketing so you can focus on the operations of your business.
Resources. We’re a comprehensive professional agency with a large variety of services to offer. In addition to marketing and advertising services, we can also provide graphic design, web design, promotional products, printing services, and more.
Fun. Okay, why does this matter? Well, we really think you’ll enjoy working with us at O2. In addition to being experienced professionals, we’re actually friendly fun folks too. For instance, even though we’re in the office working hard on Halloween, we still took the time to have a little holiday fun. To prove it, here’s Brad dressed up like Joe Dirt, and Sophie dressed up like a ladybug:
Happy Halloween!
To contact us at O2 Creative, call 970-726-8021 or email [email protected]
Click here for our last blog: Dolls for Daughters
Professional Communication
At O2, we work with all sorts of clients in a wide variety of markets, industries, and locations. One of the biggest factors in successfully working with such a variety of clients is successfully communicating with each client. We think professional communication is important for every business, so we thought we’d share some tips and tactics that have helped us become better communicators in our business:
Meet regularly. This is perhaps the best way to communicate. In-person, face-to-face meetings help us to get on the same page with the client and really get the creative ball rolling. You’re always welcome to stop by the O2 office, and we’re also happy to come meet you at your business. Or, if you’d like to get even more casual, we’ll gladly meet with you over a drink somewhere around town.
Communicate across multiple mediums. In addition to in-person meetings, we’ll regularly talk to our clients over the phone, via email, Skype, or even on social media. Each of these mediums can be convenient and effective ways to communicate, and can even offer their own unique advantages.
Address issues immediately. If there is ever any confusion or misunderstanding, we try to clarify the issue ASAP. Multiple mediums of communication come into play here too: for instance, if we’re not sure about something in an email, we’ll contact clients by phone to seek quick clarification.
Be timely. Communication should always be timely! This is especially important when keeping a campaign or other project on track. When we fall behind in communication, we fall behind in the campaign.
As a creative agency we genuinely care about the success of our clients. We want each of our clients to be as successful as possible in their respective market, and the success of a project is directly related to the quality of professional communication. This is why we put so much effort into communicating, and encourage our clients to effectively communicate with us as well. If you don’t communicate with us, we can’t work as hard for you.
So whether you’re a current client, or you’re just curious about working with us, please communicate! We’d be pleased to discuss all the opportunities we might have to create a more successful business together.
To communicate with O2 Creative, call 970-726-8021 or email [email protected]. Or contact us on Facebook or Twitter. If you’re in our area, just stop by our office at 345 Zerex Street in downtown Fraser, CO. You can also mail us at PO Box 1349, Winter Park, CO 80482. Or, feel free to Skype us too!
Click here for our last blog: Facebook insights
Top 5 print products from O2
We at O2 are your printing specialists in Grand County, Colorado. We’re always designing new print products and using those products in all sorts of different marketing initiatives. We can create a virtually endless variety of print media for all sorts of businesses and campaigns. Here’s a quick list of some of our top 5 print products that we can create for your business.
Business Cards. We can create the coolest business cards for you, from clean and simple designs, to glossy finishes and materials, to even unique shapes and sizes.
Stickers. These print products really make you “stick” in the minds of your audience. They’re a great way to build brand awareness and establish an identity in your market.
Posters. Putting up posters around town is a good way to make your presence known. Whether you’re advertising for your business, campaigning for a specific cause, or promoting your event, posters can really communicate with your community. Speaking of which…
Banners. Like posters, banners really catch the eye of your audience. They’re especially effective at establishing your presence at a specific event, and can also direct traffic to your business within your physical area.
Stationery. This one’s sort of a catch-all, since stationery includes LOTS of different print products. Whether you want office supplies, greeting cards, postcards (direct mailers work!), envelopes, letterhead, brochures, invitations, gift certificates, or any other sorts of stationery, we can create it for you!
This is just a quick list of five of our most popular print products. Of course, the list really does go on and on, from business signage to vehicle wraps to promotional products to…you get the idea. So for all your printing needs in Colorado and beyond, contact us at O2 Creative today!
To contact O2 Creative, call 970-726-8021 or email [email protected].
Click here for our last blog: O2 on the set of a shoot
Winter marketing
Summer is gone, September is here, and the seasons are changing yet again in the Colorado Rockies. (Labor Day really just came and went?? How’d that already happen!) We even had a dusting of snow along the Continental Divide this morning.
With the summer tourist traffic winding down and shoulder season just around the corner, now is the time to think ahead to winter in Grand County. The snowy months mean skiing, snowboarding, and lots of other cold weather fun. They also mean some of the heaviest traffic of the year, which means the busiest time of the year for many local companies.
To be prepared for the winter season’s business boom, your business needs to begin planning its winter marketing today! Getting your marketing and advertising initiatives in place means you can be fully prepared to capitalize on the snowy season’s tourist traffic.
Good marketing takes time. There’s plenty of planning, research, and coordination that can go into a campaign, not to mention graphic design, production and printing that may be involved. Starting early also means you’ll have time to fine-tune your campaign; to get your marketing message just right. This will not only help you attract more customers once they start arriving this winter, it can also make your customers aware of your business before they even get here.
Want to attract new customers with some posters and flyers, or a social media campaign? Want to increase your brand awareness with promotional products? Want to improve your online presence with blogging and search engine optimization? To have these and other marketing initiatives ready for the winter season, start preparing today.
We at O2 are about to launch a little marketing campaign of our own: we’ll be sending out direct mailer postcards to our clients and leads.
These postcards are a friendly reminder to get your marketing lined up in time to make the most of the upcoming ski season. When you see them, remember to contact us so we can get started soon!
Whether you have something specific in mind, or you just need help creating some effecting marketing initiatives, we can help. Contact us at O2 to start planning your winter marketing today!
To contact O2 Creative, call 970-726-8021 or email [email protected].
Click here for our last blog: a year in the new office!
D&M’s promotional products mix
O2 recently had the pleasure of working with Grand County’s own D&M Roofing Company on some design work. Specifically, we created a comprehensive collection of promotional products for D&M – shirts, hats, water bottles, magnets, even a big banner. To ensure consistency in branding, we kept the logo design consistent across D&M’s promotional products mix – same font, same blue letters, same recognizable red roofing hammer.
Once the designs were determined, it was time to get creative with the promotional products themselves. First up were the hats: we selected a high-quality New Era trucker-style cap, custom embroidered with D&M’s logo. Here’s Sophie the O2 office pug proudly modeling a D&M roofing hat for us:
Next up, shirts. We created cool V-neck t-shirts complete with D&M’s logo on both the front and the back. The shirts, as well as the hats, can be used as uniforms for D&M’s employees or as promotional items for their clients.
We also created branded water bottles for D&M Roofing. Promotional products such as water bottles are great items to give to potential leads. These branded items help your leads remember your business, which can ultimately turn leads into customers.
Branded magnets were also in the mix. We created white oval magnets complete with D&M’s logo (a logo that you probably recognize by now – see, all this promotional products marketing really is working!). The magnets also feature D&M’s contact information, including their phone number and website. Here’s the O2 office refrigerator with D&M’s magnets on display:
Finally, a banner. We created a durable outdoor vinyl banner for D&M to display, again with the same familiar logo; again communicating the company’s contact information. Here’s O2’s Jaryd displaying the D&M banner while pensively gazing off into the distance:
The shirts, hats, magnets, banner, and bottles are all part of a consistent mix of promotional products we created for D&M Roofing. From retaining existing customers; to converting new ones; to increasing brand awareness at job sites, trade shows, and even around town; these promotional products are tangible items that D&M can now use to make the most of their marketing efforts.
Promotional products can work as marketing tools for just about any sort of business as well. To discuss the benefits of promotional products for your business, or to learn about all the different kinds of promotional products we can create for you, contact us at O2 or visit www.o2promo.com today!
To contact O2 Creative, call 970-726-8021 or email [email protected].