Develop your Business by Enhancing Your Image

11/17/09 Branding
Benjamin C. Says:

We work with companies every day to develop their image through Branding. There’s a lot more to Branding than developing a good logo or message. A Brand is developed through the combination of a Quality Product, Exceptional Service and Good Design.

First, Develop Quality Product

Whatever Product you are selling, whether it is a tangible good, a service, a luxury item or a commodity the quality of your product is only as good as it is perceived by your customers. Brand Perception is established by setting expectations of quality and then delivering them consistently. At Laughing Samurai we do this by determining the client’s needs up front and agreeing on them through our client discovery process. From there it’s easy for us to deliver a quality creative product because we understand the client’s objectives.

Next, Deliver Great Service:

Most companies try to set themselves apart through service. However, when it comes down to it this is one of the hardest parts of your brand to maintain. Service takes discipline, as well as creating a company culture that is going to withstand even the most stressful times. Great Service is about giving attention to the small details. No matter what your product is, Great service can mean the difference between a long term and non existent customer.

Finally, wrap everything in a nicely Branded package:

The final element of enhancing your image is giving your product a recognizable image. Companies do this through branding, which is a combination of logo’s, package design, collateral and other points of contact to their customers. A well branded company will make sure that every time their customer interacts with their product, that experience is consistently wrapped in nice packaging. This means every stage of the process has been thought through and touched by your brand.

Use Branding to Enhance Your Image.

If you haven’t already, analyze your sales process and determine where you haven’t already branded yourself to your customers. If you have a retail store, focus on your environment. If you have a website, focus on everything from site flow to the packaging you use to ship your product. If you have a service that works in the field, make sure your trucks match your invoices.

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Cedia Design Awards

Benjamin C. Says:

Apparently we recently won an award for the work we did on the user interface design and programming of (Celebrity Deleted)’s Crestron System. While most of our work has to do with Branding, we also have a user interface design company we are helping launch: Guitree.com. We developed the user interface to match the dash of their (Really Nice Car Type Deleted).

That Said, We really wish we could tell you more about this Job, but we are sworn to secrecy.

http://www.cedia.net/awards/industry_recognition09.php

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Discounted Pricing Now Available

09/25/09 Two Minutes
Benjamin C. Says:

From time to time we stumble upon videos or images that cause us to take our creative lasers away from creative production. With all of the amazing videos on the internet we had to create what we call the two minute rule. Basically, the way it works is if one of our designers or other team members finds something on the net they feel everyone has to see, they can send it out to the rest of the team, but you only get two minutes a day. This works pretty well for us, and keeps us on task.

A while back we found this video which is a great satirical view of client vendor relationships. We can’t say that anyone has ever asked us to design anything for them at a discount, or we get a lot of requests for free or spec work. In fact, most of our clients are very happy with the pricing we offer as a boutique creative agency, but we can relate to the implied ridiculousness of this video.

I know you probably haven’t experienced this type ludicracy from any of your clients, so you may not be able to appreciate the subtle humor of this video. We assure you, its a rare occurrence that we run into people that think its OK to ask us to do work for free or at a discount, but this video has done a great job of portraying how those people are perceived in the marketplace.

Okay, this has been a moment with Ben.

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My Twitter Page is Worth $243 bucks

09/24/09 Market Trends
Benjamin C. Says:

Twitter$40.jpg
Our friends over at twitter are in talks to raise 100 million in funding for their site. I don’t know what the exact numbers are, but when a hacker got into the Social Media Micro Blogging service, he found projections for the site to hit 25 million users by the end of the year. Others have expressly disagreed, with research showing that twitter usage statistics will fall closer to 12.1 Million. If you take the valuation implied by the funding, One Billion, it means your twitter page is worth somewhere between $40 and $83 bucks!

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Creating a Culture to Increase Branding

Benjamin C. Says:

starbucksbranding.jpg

As with most Advertising agencies, coffee runs freely here at Laughing Samurai. For drip coffee, there isn’t anything better than Stardust in the mornings, but sometimes in the afternoons we take a run up to Starbucks to refuel our creativity fuel tanks. Despite the trouble they have had in the past few years, the brand that they have developed is truly a part of American culture. A big part of the experience, for people that go there frequently, is using the language of Starbucks to order their drinks. This language has helped them essentially brand the experience of ordering coffee — something that used to cost pennies is now over two dollars.

So we got to thinking, what is the most obnoxious thing you could order using the secret language of Starbucks:

Grande decaf iced triple shot 6 pump vanilla non fat one splenda caramel macchiato.

Maybe we should have a “Order the most annoying thing at Starbucks day?”

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The First Blog Post

Benjamin C. Says:

Blogs don’t just pop out of thin air. Someone, somewhere has to write a first blog post. It’s just a fact of life when you are working on a linear time-line, and this linear time-line just happens to be the awesome chronicles of the most awesome creative agency in the world: Laughing Samurai. You may already know who Laughing Samurai is, but for newcomers, we are a Creative Agency founded on two words: Expect Awesome. That’s it! That’s our approach to everything from Branding to Advertising Design, Creative Direction and Websites. Our mission, is to give your company the communication tools it needs to easily position itself in the marketplace as the brand of choice for whatever product or service you are selling. But seriously, what this first blog post is really about is first blog posts, and as first blog posts go, this could be the greatest first blog post ever written.


The Anatomy of a First Blog Post

When people decide to start a blog, a lot of things can happen. For starters, most people have a message or subject they want to talk about. Other people just want to talk about their lives. For some they just have a blog because a really intelligent creative or advertising agency told them it would be good for their business. Your reasons may weigh-in on what you say in your first blog post, but ultimately you can use any approach to get your blog going. We picked a few of our favorites, as observed in the wild.

The Announcement:

Some people start their blogs with a testimonial to all the things they plan to do with their blog in the future. You can recognize this types of posts because they usually start with phrases like “so I decided to start a blog” and go into things about the person or what they are interested in. This method is effective only if you follow through.


The Appearance:

There are others who just start writing and pretend like the blog has been there all along. This is acceptable if you plan on posting a lot, because after a few weeks or months, no one is going to go back and read your first post. Or are they…


The Random:

Finally, some people will just post something random. Like a picture of their uncle or a list of things that smell good but don’t taste good.

Have you observed other types of blog posts in the wild? Share them with us!

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