Catalyst Marketing Communications, Inc. - Kennesaw, GA

All good marketing communications must not only be trageted to speak to the target market’s consumer preferenes, they must also be integrated. Integrated marketing communications (IMC) is integration of all marketing tools, approaches, and resources within a company which maximizes impact on consumer minds and which results into maximum profit at minimum cost. The intentional mix of marketing communications aims to ensure consistency of message and the complementary use of media to gain edge over competitor.

The concept of Integrated marketing communications is to see advertising as a sum of many parts. The concept includes online and offline marketing channels. Online marketing channels consist of blogs, any SEO (search engine optimization) , various podcasts, any online seminars, e-marketing programs, email blasts, banner ads, blog, RSS, Internet Radio and Internet TV. Offline marketing channels are more traditional and may consist of corporate branding, sales collateral, trade materials, newspaper, magazine, mail order, public relations, billboard, radio, TV, and much more. Some businesses may choose a mix of marketing communications with the greatest breadth of appeal for the greatest number of attention-getting, branded, and motivational moments. Others marketers may only want communications with the greatest depth of appeal and focus on niche consumer benefits to very select markets.

So, whether you want to hit a broad audience or a narrowly defined group, we can work closely with you to help you craft the right message and look for your marketing communications that best serves your integrated approach. We seek to cultivate a message that appropriately speaks to the targeted audience in a way that connects, resonates and motivates in the quickest, simpliest manner.

Stephen Lee, Owner
Catalyst Marketing Communications, Inc.
www. catalystad. com
steve@catalystad. com
770. 919. 0158
Kennesaw, GA

Effective Logo Design Should Enhance Your Branding

Just so there’s no confusion: A logo is not a brand. But a good logo design should absolutely represent the brand.

One of the 20th century’s most influential designers, said, "The logo is the entry point to the brand. " Milton Glaser

Glaser’s comment could not be more true and clearly identifies the priority that your organization’s logo design should have as well as the essential part it plays in your overall marketing communications effort.

As one branding specialist wrote, “The use of logo design goes back nearly 1, 000 years. Early tradespeople use to press identification marks into gold, paper, pottery and more. These trademarks are still used for the same reason they were established centuries ago: to provide an easy method for recognizing a particular product. These special, distinctive marks on the product made it easier to differentiate a quality crafted product from one that was not well made. It’s still helpful to think of a logo design in those terms: your logo is your symbol — your mark — of guaranteed authenticity. A simple swoosh on a pair of athletic shoes transforms those modest sneakers into desirable, quality footwear with an unspoken guarantee of “authentic athletic performance. ”

Good logo design should be first judged on whether or not it keeps the target market in mind as well as fits well with the company. Secondly, the logo must wear well on the inside. Corporate executives and employees have to see that logo mark everyday, and it better appeal to them as well as say something about the company’s distinctive in it market niche. As mentioned earlier, this logo design will represent your brand and will often lead in the sales process. Therefore, along with a firm handshake, a confident presence, and other-centered relating, your logo brand identity will lead in the sales cycle and should help (not hinder!) to communicate your true brand: your promise delivered. At Catalyst Marketing Communications (in Kennesaw, GA just north of Marietta) , we pursue your story with curiosity and passion so that we can work with you to develop the most appropriate logo design to best communicate your branding promise and leave a good first and lasting impression.

Stephen Lee, Owner
Catalyst Marketing Communications, Inc.
www. catalystad. com
steve@catalystad. com
770. 919. 0158
Kennesaw, GA

Your corporate identity is the front door of your product and service. The logo design or mark of your organization is often the very first impression a potential customer or supporter has of your organization. That’s why it’s important that your logo design is an accurate representation of your marketplace positioning, personality, and mission. And for service organizations with “invisible” offerings (no tangible products) , the various logo designs / corporate identity pacakges often represents their offerings. So don’t underestimate their importance.

• When seeing the brand identity package, the viewer should “get it” immediately and be able to get at least a “sneak peek” into your brand promise. Express the appropriate tone and voice articulated in your brand strategy. The challenge then, is to create a logo / corporate identity that is simple and immediate without being boring or institutional.

• Your logo design should convey a sense of emotion and personality that is contextual to the intended audience. The typography, the symbols, the shapes and textures, and color palette should attempt to tell a story and leave an impression that is in line with what the company, the story sender, means for the receiver to get. And, like a salesman’s need to contextually connect with his customer through his relational attitude and attentiveness, your company’s corporate identity / overall branding can act as the reputation that precedes you into the marketplace.

• The logo and brand identity package should be simple and clean (if possible) , yet impactful as well as illustrious. The logo design shold be easily reproduced (work well in black only if necessary) , use a limited number of colors (for reasons of reproduction costs) , and still look execellent when scaled down.

• Your logo and brand identity package should look different than other branding packages in your same marketspace. Seek to clealy and strongly differentiate yourself from the pack with your branding. We have seen smaller competitors gain ground by investing wisely to cummunicate their brand more uniquely than their rivals.

Stephen Lee, Owner
Catalyst Marketing Communications, Inc.
www. catalystad. com
steve@catalystad. com
770. 919. 0158
Kennesaw, GA

Catalyst leverages our deep website (also web site) design skills to enable you to uniquely establish your brand identity presence online. As an advertising agency with a commitment to overall consistency in your graphic design communications, we will make sure your website design / development nicely ties into to your overall marketing brand image (i. e. your ad design, sales collateral, stationery / letterhead package) . From a small, four-page website design to a large integrated, multi-page website design, we can help you with your website design planning stages through going live! For extensive (and more costly) Google, Yahoo, MSN search needs, we partner with Search Engine Optimization (SEO) consultants who specialize in website search techniques. We also have strategic parnters who focus on website database development to leverage the latest technologies to ensure that your new website design delivers you the critical information and/or tracking results that you desire.

Phase One: Information Gathering
Step one involves a solid understanding of the company the website design is created for. It involves a good understanding of you – what your business goals and dreams are, and how the web can be utilized to help you achieve those goals. It will involve us asking a lot of questions to help us undersand your business and your needs in the website development process, like.

Purpose. Do you want to provide information, promote a service, sell a product…?

Goals. What do you hope to accomplish in this web site development? Two of the more common goals are to make money or share information.

Target Audience. Is there a specific group of people that will help you reach your goals? It is helpful to picture the “ideal” person you want to visit your website. This will later help determine the best web design style.

Content. Will the target audience be looking for specific information, a particular product or service, online ordering?

Phase Two: Planning Your Website Design and Development
We then put together a plan or a site map for your website development. The site map is a list of all main topic areas of the site, as well as sub-topics, if applicable. This serves as a guide as to what content will be on the website design, and is essential to the development of a consistent, easy to understand navigational system. Here is where we will look together at online examples for competitive web sites, inspiring sites, sites with navigation and buttons you like, and much more in order to get as many ideas of what YOU wish to see in the web design / navigation / functionality. Getting your site preferences will serve to “get everyone on the same page” in advance, thus virtually eliminating wasted effort. This gives you more control of the direction, process and budget. It is said that a “picture is worth a thousand words. ” Well, our visual logo design resource is used to accomplish what words cannot. The end-user of the web site (your customer) must be kept in mind when designing a website, after all, the people who will be learning about your service or buying your product. A good user interface creates an easy to navigate web site. During this phase, we will also help you decide what technologies should be implemented. Elements such as interactive forms, ecommerce, flash, etc. are discussed when planning your web site development.

Phase Three: Actual Website Design
This phase is where we determine the look and feel of your website design. Again, we will look together at online site examples for your design preferences to get your critical input on what it is that YOU think will best connect with your target audience (s) . A website design aimed at teenagers will look much different than one made for a financial institution. As part of this phase, we will surely incorporate elements such as the company logo or colors to help strengthen the identity of your company on the web site. Our designer will create a few prototype designs for your web site based on our time together. This is typically a simple layered Photoshop image of what the home page and typical inside page may look like. You wil be sent an email with the initial web designs for your site. This gives you the opportunity to express your likes and dislikes on the website design. We want the final site to match your needs and taste.

Phase Four: Your Website Development
This stage is where our designer will take all of the individual graphic elements from the website prototype design and use them to create the actual, functional site. This is typically done by first developing the home page, followed by a shell or “typical inside page” for the interior pages which serves as a template for the content pages of your site, as it contains the main navigational structure for the web development. Once the typical inside website page has been created, our designer will take your content and distribute it throughout the site, in the appropriate areas. This entire time, our designer will make your in-progress site available to you for viewing, so that you can suggest any additional changes or corrections you would like to have done in this web develoment phase. On the technical front, a successful web site requires an understanding of front-end web development like knowing valid XHTML / CSS / OTHER code that complies to current web standards, maximizing functionality, as well as accessibility for as large an audience as possible. Elements such as interactive contact forms, flash animations or ecommerce shopping carts are implemented and made functional during this phase, as well.

Phase Five: Testing and Delivery the Website
We will test things such as the functionality of forms or other scripts, as well as testing for last minute compatibility issues (viewing the live website development code on different web browsers) , ensuring that your web site is optimized to be viewed properly as many browsers as possible. Upon your approval, we upload the website design files to your server. We will suggest some preferred providers, but we recommend that you research and secure you own Internet Service Provider (ISP) so that you have maximum control. We will work seamlessly with your ISP to make sure that your files are uploaded properly and are ready to go live.

Phase Six: Website Maintenance
The web site development is not necessarily over, because website maintenance must be considered. One way to bring repeat visitors to your site is to regularly offer new content or products. We will be happy to continue working together with you, to update the information on your web site. If you prefer to be more hands on, and update your own content, there is something called a CMS (Content Management System) that can be implemented to your web site developement code. This is something that would be decided upon during the Planning stage. With a CMS, our designer will utilize online software to develop a database driven site that gives you the ability to do website maintenance edits to the content areas of the website.

Stephen Lee, Owner
Catalyst Marketing Communications, Inc.
www. catalystad. com
steve@catalystad. com
770. 919. 0158
Kennesaw, GA

Effective graphic design identity solutions must embody two essential things: continuity of look and fresh appeal. All our communications will maintain a high-level of continuity to portray stability, strength, and consistent style, while still having just enough purposeful discontinuity to avoid being overly repetitive / monotonous. This tension must be held with careful ongoing balance. Trust us to wisely and creatively keep the standards of the look and message in this two-fold tension.

Graphic design is more than just incorporating graphic shapes and flat colors. Great graphic design work is how you creatively leverage all your marketing communications to work for you, and like currency, the smarter the creative investment, the greater the return. Whether it’s your website, advertising, POS / POP, logo design, retail packaging, etc, . we will extend the core graphic design identity consistenly into all your marketing communications / advertising for maximum impact.

IMPACT: that quality in marketing creativity that strikes suddenly against the audience’s indifference and enlivens their mind to receive a message.

Once an agreed-upon graphic design direction is set with your input as the central driving force, we will develop the overall graphic design and/or brand identity and verbage that captures the essence of your consumer-oriented message. Wise graphic design is how you effectively spread out your overlall message and core conceptual to undergird your whole communications approach. All of your integrated communications should work for you. For example, your graphic design identity rollout shoud shomehow hint at the brand message. Every part of your marketing communications must follow suit: your ads, collateral, website design, retail packaging design, direct mail, annual reports, corporate graphic identity, and more.

Our experience after 15 years as a graphic design agency is that most clients had a conscious or sub-conscious, pre-determined set of design preferences from which they judged the design as good or bad. These preferences acted like a filter from which everything was decided. So as our core distinctive service, we decided it would be helpful to have a process that extracts these preferences in an effort to “get everyone on the same page” in advance of the direction setting for the design. It is said that a “picture is worth a thousand words. ” Exploring graphic design examples together accomplishes what words cannot. See step two for this essential step that defines the motto of our graphic design agency.

EXAMINE. the Benefits to Your Consumers. Before the creativity starts, we listen intently to your story to draw out those consumer benefits that set you apart in your market niche. If envisioning the end result of your marketing communications is enough to put the means in motion, get started now.

EXPLORE. the Design and Copy Examples. Our branded approach of leveraging relevant design and copy writing examples on the front-end of each project gives our clients the needed references to adequately envision and articulate their desired end-result to our team. That is what we mean when we say our graphic design agency “gives you the director’s chair. ”

ESTABLISH. the Core Conceptual. From our time exploring many visual samples, we will bring creative graphic design to the strategic thinking in order to develop the core look and feel (and written message if needed) that will serve as the base for all the marketing communication pieces to be designed.

EXECUTE. the Designs and Layouts. With the envisioned conceptual tightly worked out and approved, our agency creative team will develop the graphic design / layout of the actual marketing communication items: logo design, brochure, website design, ad, mailer, billboard, sales binder, etc.

EXPEDITE. the Printing and/or Web Files. At this stage, we load any web files to a server and/or send any print-related files to the assigned print vendor. Our graphic design agency works with top printers.

EXHIBIT. the Communications. Whether it is your printed materials going out via direct mail, or whether it is your website content being strategically crafted for search engine success, we can assist you (or help find the right vendor for the process) .

Stephen Lee, Owner
Catalyst Marketing Communications, Inc.
www. catalystad. com
steve@catalystad. com
770. 919. 0158
Kennesaw, GA