Blogging about blogs

At O2 Creative we offer many different services to businesses both large and small – graphic design, web design, marketing and advertising, even promotional products. But did you know we also offer blog writing service as well?

That’s right. At O2 we can create relevant professional blogs that will benefit your business in a number of ways. From a marketing perspective, blogs are a great way to communicate with your market. They create a personal side to your business to which your customers can relate.

Blogs really build your business’s online presence as well. When we write blogs for clients, we include key terms that help to improve search engine optimization (SEO). This means your blog is optimized to make it easier for Google and other search engines to find you, which in turn helps customers find you. Blogs bring a bump to your website traffic too.

What if your business just doesn’t have the time to blog? That’s where our blog writing service comes into play. As an agency, we can research your blog, draft your blog, revise your blog, publish your blog, even take photographs for your blog. We can be your creative agents both in the field and online. We can write just about any sort of blog you’d like as well, from technical and informative to adventuresome and fun.

So if you think your business can benefit from a blog, contact us at O2 today. Trust us – a blog really can help to attract customers and generate attention for your business. After all, you’re reading our blog right now, right?

To contact O2 Creative, call us at 970-726-8021 or email us at [email protected].

Click here to read our other blogs!

Press Coverage for O2

O2 was in the news this week!

Yup, that’s right. O2’s own Eric Van Herwaarden was interviewed this week by Grand County’s Sky-Hi Daily News. The article offers a little insight into what it’s like to do business here in the high country of Colorado, and covers a lot of interesting topics about O2. Eric discusses a little bit of everything, from marketing and design inspiration to living and working in Colorado’s Favorite Playground. Give it a read!

You can read the interview online: CLICK HERE for a link to the Sky-Hi article about O2.

Thanks to the Sky-Hi Daily News for the great writeup!

Of course, if you’d like to discuss the article, or if you have any other questions for us at O2, please feel free to contact us! Give us a call at 970-726-8021 or email us at [email protected].

Click here for last week’s blog: expanding to Summit County!

O2 expanding to Summit County

Big news from O2!

As you know, our office is located in Grand County, as are many of our clients. In addition to Grand County, we’ve always been happy to provide our top-quality graphic design, web design, and marketing services to businesses near and far. That’s why we’re pleased to announce our plans to expand to Summit County, Colorado!

That’s right. We’d like to formally offer our services to Summit County businesses (though we’ll still be working hard for Grand County and all our other clients either way!)

With our years of experience in resort and tourism marketing and design, we’re already the perfect fit for many businesses in Summit County. We’re happy to come meet in Summit, or if you’re ever in our neck of the woods, you’re always welcome to stop by our Fraser office.

So if you know of any businesses looking for marketing or design work in Frisco, Dillon, Breckenridge, Keystone, Silverthorne, or anywhere else in Summit County, let us know! We’re happy to provide websites, mobile websites, graphic designs, marketing, advertising, promotional items, logos and branding, social media, and any of our other services to our Summit County neighbors.

So contact us at O2 for more info or for a free consultation. Your mountain business deserves to work with a mountain agency!

Give us a call at 970-726-8021 or email [email protected].

Click here for our last blog: small business marketing checklist

Credit Wikipedia for the map image

Small business marketing checklist

Starting or growing your small business can be a lot of work. In order to establish the market presence your business will need, there are a lot of bases you’ll need to cover. That’s where we at O2 can help. We’re an agency that works with new and growing businesses every day. Here are just a few things your business will need to be successful:

Your business will need a brand; a logo; an identity – something by which your market can recognize you. We can help develop your brand, and create a professional logo that’ll do more than just get your business recognized – it’ll make your business stand out.

Your business will also need marketing. Advertising campaigns, promotions, a marketing plan, signage, media, execution – all that stuff takes time and creativity. We can do all your marketing dirty work for you, from designing ads and media, to coordinating a campaign, to even researching and creating a marketing plan. We’ll help you figure out the most effective marketing strategies that will make your business really shine in your market.

Your business should also have a professional online presence. Customers these days expect businesses to have a website, and your business deserves a website that serves your needs: online booking systems, blogging features, e-commerce, photo galleries, and whatever other custom features your business can use to achieve success. Your online presence shouldn’t be limited just to desktop computers either – now that so many folks have smart phones, mobile websites are more important than ever.

And more and more, customers want businesses they can interact with online. They want to know what a business is up to; want to communicate; want timely updates and announcements. This can be achieved through blogging and social media. Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and other platforms allow you to showcase your business, interact with your markets. (Oh, and social media campaigns are a GREAT way to attract new customers as well!) We can help you set up blogging and social media pages, and even manage blogs and pages for you, so you can focus on the day-to-day operations of your business.

The point is, we at O2 can help with all the daunting details of marketing. We’ll help your business create the best campaigns, the best designs, and the best websites, and more. Contact us today to discuss all the ways our agency can help your business!

To contact O2 Creative, call 970-726-8021 or email [email protected].

Click here for our last blog – O2 addicted to powder!

Reasons to hire a marketing agency

Folks often ask us, “Why should our business hire a marketing and design agency?”

Well, LOTS of reasons, actually. Between the time, money, energy, and experience it takes to effectively market your business, there are plenty of reasons why your business can really benefit from hiring an agency. Here are just a few:

Experience and expertise: We at O2 have over 30 combined years of experience in marketing and design. We do this stuff every day! If you aren’t sure how to market your business just yet, we can quickly and efficiently help you identify the marketing strategies that will work best for you.

We stay on top of all the latest marketing trends as well, so we can identify marketing ideas much more quickly than someone who doesn’t necessarily think about marketing every day.

Time: Small businesses usually don’t have much free time, and unfortunately, marketing takes time. Devising a strategy, coordinating ads, creating promotional items, writing content, managing a campaign – all that stuff takes precious time. That’s where an agency can help. Let us do your marketing work for you, so you can keep your time focused on operating your business.

Speaking of time – agencies can also complete marketing work much faster than trying to do it in-house.

It’s not as expensive as you might think: sure, hiring the biggest marketing agency in New York City can get pricey, but we’re a small business that specializes in working with other small businesses. We can create marketing packages that fit your needs as well as your budget.

Besides, hiring a marketer in-house can be expensive too. Recruiting, interviewing, training, salary, benefits – all that stuff takes lots of money and time. By hiring an agency to do your business’ marketing, you can contract for exactly the work you need without having to hire a whole new employee.

Objectivism: You know the old adage – “can’t see the forest for the trees.” If you’re busy with the day-to-day details of your business, it may be difficult to think about how to market your business in the big picture. A business can really benefit from the objective outside perspective that an agency can provide, especially when it comes to matters of marketing or design.

Resources: as an agency, we can help with your marketing, but why stop there? We can help you execute every element of a marketing strategy – designing a brand and logos, producing and coordinating advertising, updating blogs and social media campaigns, designing and maintaining websites, and more.

The point we’re trying to make is, there are are lots of ways our agency can help your business. Contact us today to see what we can do for you!

To contact O2 Creative, call 970-726-8021 or email [email protected].

Click here for our last blog: O2 on the Wipe Out!

O2 on the Wipe Out

We at O2 sure are excited for this Saturday. What’s this Saturday? Well, this Saturday is none other than the Winter Park Wipe Out!

So what’s the Winter Park Wipe Out, you ask? Well, it’s  “The Coolest Race on Snow!” Contestants get to race throughout downtown Winter Park completing over 15 exciting obstacles and challenges: snow tubing and sledding, scavenger hunts, games and puzzles, food challenges, obstacle courses, and other fun stuff too!

To make things as interesting as possible, contestants are also encouraged to dress up in costumes while participating. From monkeys to bananas to superheroes to Scooby Doo, the creative contestant costumes make the event even more entertaining!

Contestants have a great time taking on challenges around Winter Park, and also receive a 2-for-1 ski pass to the Winter Park Resort, a coupon for $20 off a snowmobile tour with Grand Adventures, party beads at each challenge, raffle tickets, and other great offers from businesses all around Winter Park.

Winter Park Wipe Out is family-friendly, and it’s definitely a good time for all ages. Hot cocoa and s’mores are provided, and live music will be rocking throughout the event. For folks old enough to drink, beer is available for purchase as well.

 

Of course, the O2 guys will be at Wipe Out, helping out with the event and maybe even participating in a challenge or two ourselves. We volunteered and participated in last year’s Wipe Out, and it was such a good time, we can’t wait to do it again this year!

 

If you haven’t signed up yet, do it quick! Check out www.winterparkadventureseries.com or go to the Adventure Series Facebook page here. Hope to see you at Wipe Out!

To contact O2 Creative, give us a call at 970-726-8021 or email [email protected].

Click here for our last blog post: O2 on the river!

We won a Davey!

Award Winning Avertisng Agencies!

Big news for O2!

Lots of folks already know we’re O2 Creative, that cleverly creative marketing and design agency up in the mountains…but now we have something to add…

As of last week, now we’re O2 Creative, that AWARD WINNING cleverly creative marketing and design agency up in the mountains!

Yup, that’s right – we won a Davey!

Our design and marketing work has been recognized by the Davey Awards, an international creative award organization that honors small firms with big ideas – you know, just like “Davey” took out Goliath with a small rock and a big idea.

We submitted some of our favorite work we did for one of our favorite clients, The Foundry Cinema and Bowl. Our work has been awarded a Silver Award in Davey’s “Integrated Campaign” category, a category that features 2-5 pieces of work from at least two different mediums – print media, website and mobile web design, signage, etc.

To showcase the consistency in branding that we’ve worked so hard to achieve for The Foundry, we submitted 5 different pieces of work:

The Foundry’s exterior signage:

The Foundry’s website:

The mobile website:

Promotional posters for tournament bowling:

And finally, a wood-fired pizza box packaging:

We wanted our logo and branding direction to be an extension of The Foundry’s retro-industrial building design. For the outdoor sign, we created a large backlit neon-style sign mounted atop The Foundry with metal scaffolding, similar to the signage of some of the more classic industrial buildings of days past:

For the website and mobile site, we wanted a very clean, simple design that also retained the retro-industrial elements of other Foundry designs. We incorporated an “eroded” look for some of the web graphics, to give the website an old school, broken-in sort of feel.

The mobile site features simple icons so users can easily find movie times and other info. The website features a rotating photo banner, which is meant to visually showcase the unique guest experience at The Foundry. Up-to-the-minute movie times are also displayed on the website’s home page.

The promotional posters were intended to generate buzz locally for The Foundry’s tournament bowling league. We again kept the design simple. We used the tagline of “Where Local Legends Are Born” to further entice local bowlers into signing up. To help illustrate bowling and to further create attention, we included bowling pins dressed up as characters from one of our favorite bowling movies.

The pizza boxes were again kept clean and simple. We included The Foundry’s logo to consistently bolster brand awareness. We tastefully added The Foundry’s contact info, and also included stylized flames to bring attention to The Foundry’s unique wood-fired pizza.

Almost 4,000 firms from around the world entered their work in addition to ours, so we consider it a real honor to be recognized among so many other talented agencies. We don’t mean to completely toot our own horn about this, but we really are just that excited about being recognized!

With that said – we want this blog post to be a big THANK YOU – to the Davey Awards, to The Foundry, to all our clients, friends, family, and to anyone and everyone else who have helped us become an award-winning creative agency!

Thanks again, everyone!

Contact us at [email protected]

Read about print vs digital media here

Photo files explained

Photo Files explained

At O2, we work with digital photo files every day. There are lots of photo file types to choose from, and it’s not always clear which one to choose. Here are a few of the more common photo files explained.

JPEG: This is perhaps the most common photo file format. A Joint Photographic Experts Group, or JPEG file, is the standard method of “compressing” an image file. This means the pixel variations in the file are “compressed” on a minute level so that the file will take up less memory space. Because they can be compressed, JPEGs are a good option when memory space is at a premium, but JPEG files tend to be a slightly lower quality as well.

PSD: This is the standard file format for a Photoshop image (Photoshop is a fancy image editing program we designers often use). PSD files have an advantage when it comes to image design and editing – a PSD file can be easily edited, layered, colored, filtered, and otherwise manipulated for design work. If you anticipate a lot of editing work to be done on your photo files, PSD is a good choice.

TIFF: A Tagged Image File Format, or TIFF, is an uncompressed high-quality file format. TIFF images maintain the most detail when saving an image, though they also take up the most memory space. TIFF files are good if you need the highest-quality images possible, though they can be difficult if your camera has a small and/or slow memory card.

RAW: This format is used with DSLR cameras. (DSLR stands for Digital Selective Resonance Imaging, which is a fancy way of saying a professional-quality camera). RAW files capture the “raw” image with no digital processing or enhancements. RAW files are arguably the highest-quality file format, though they also take up the most memory space because of it.

There are many other files we could have mentioned, but these are the ones we probably encounter the most. So which files do we prefer? Actually, we’re accustomed to working with any and all file formats. As a rule of thumb, however, we find that JPEG files are easiest to work with for digital media (e.g. designing a website or online ad), and higher quality TIFF files work best for print media.

If you have any other questions about anything we mentioned in this week’s post, from file types to print media, give us a holler! You can call us at 970-726-8021 or email us at [email protected].

Is Print Dead? Read here to find out.

Looking for a sign?

Business Sign Designed in Colorado

For most businesses, proper signage is one of the most important elements of marketing. Signs create an identity and a presence for a business. They’re critical for building brand awareness. And, all things considered, business signs are actually one of the more affordable marketing initiatives a business can pursue.

In many ways, a good sign is your business’s identity. Signs let everyone know who you are and what you do. They get you noticed and make your business more familiar to your customers.

Business signs define your presence in your market. A sharp, professional, well-executed sign communicates to your customers that you’re a sharp, professional, well-executed business. Conversely, if your sign looks dated, cheap, or just cheesy, then your customers will think the same about you. And perhaps worst of all – if your business doesn’t even have a sign, then your market may not even know you exist!

Signs are also invaluable as promotional tools. For instance, a sign that includes your logo helps to build your brand and reinforce your market presence. Signs can convey important information, including info about your products, services, taglines, contact info, or other news and information.

O2 Creative-designed outdoor signage for our friends at Fraser Valley Hot Dog

Signs are always working for you as well. They’re there 24/7 to keep your business fresh in the minds of customers. Even if customers don’t have an immediate need for your products or services, the constant exposure of your business sign will help them to think of you when they are ready to do business.

Indeed, proper business signage is an important part of a business’s overall marketing efforts. Signs are among the most cost-effective marketing efforts in the long run as well. Sure, a good sign will probably cost you, depending on how fancy you get. But signs are a one-time purchase that can provide years of effective marketing.

When you compare the cost of a sign to the ongoing costs of other marketing efforts, signage actually starts to look like a bargain. Whether customers see your sign for the first time and impulsively stop in, or eventually visit your business after noticing your sign over time, signs provide great return-on-investment either way.

So where can you get good business signs? Well, not to toot our own horn, but we can design some of the coolest signs around! We can work with virtually any business and any budget to create indoor and outdoor signs of all colors, shapes, and sizes. We can design signs for any building, location, or event. Heck, we can even put signs on your car! We’ll help you create a sign that helps to establish your market presence and represents the identity of your business.

Give us a call today at 970-726-8021 or email us at [email protected].

Click here for our next post – the business of business cards!