In the marketing business, deadlines are common. Tight deadlines are somewhat common. Extremely tight deadlines are usually avoided at all costs, but in the case of FORMO’s client Stokes Industries there was simply no option. The company had developed an extraordinary business opportunity – in Russia.

But rewind the story a bit, FORMO just recently started doing work for Stokes and had yet to really develop the materials necessary for a project of this magnitude. As a matter of fact we had yet to develop anything, we just started! Nonetheless, they needed help so we got together and considered the options for delivering materials to support their sales effort. Out of the FORMO archive we pulled the “blogazine”, an original FORMO developed magazine-style collateral piece that aggregates blog content & imagery to create a highly customized print piece. Secondly we hit on the idea of creating a companion Keynote (Powerpoint) to create a multi-slide presentation that would support and enhance the content in the blogazine. Oops, the clock has been ticking already, time lost, need to hustle. Oh, did I forget to say that we determined it would be very beneficial to Stokes if we could deliver the pieces either partially or fully translated into Russian?

Total timeline:  20 days from concept to delivery in Russia.

The team: Me, Aeron Myers, Alfred Hall, Wentworth Printing in Columbia, TranZlations in NJ and of course Stokes Industries.

The results:

1. A completely customized 12 page, color brochure (blogazine) with content written and specifically targeted for their potential client.
2. A 31 slide presentation complete with integrated imagery again with content that is both complimentary and an enhancement to the blogazine.
3. A fully complete article by article translation of the blogazine into Russian.
4. A fully complete version of the presentation entirely in English and a second version entirely in Russian.

20 days from concept to delivery

Even creating the illustrations

31 slides all in Russian

1. Analytics – Scour your analytics in minute detail. Understand the real strengths and weaknesses of your current site from the perspective of your Users (clients). Luxury marketing is niche marketing, applying broad generalizations about your discriminating clientele will fail.


2. Understand your users (audience) niche – What type of mobile device to they use, what will they use a year from now. What are they looking for in your site? How do you make it sticky and bring them back? Do you really know them? Do your personas reflect real knowledge about the audience and their online habits or simply base demographics.


3. Understand and aggressively employ great ideas in design – Pay attention to what is happening in web development and information architecture. Listen to the conversations and then apply the points to your project. Don’t rely simply on your own expertise but be humble enough to accept that you don’t have all the ideas, there are a lot of great thinkers out there talking about fascinating and relevant topics that can measurably improve your site, challenge conventional wisdom in your marketing team.


4. Visual comes last – If you get the strategy and architecture right, your site will perform very well. Visual design is important but it does not precede the absolute of getting the foundation right. A great building does not begin with a rendering, it begins with engineering and planning. Web Development is no different.


5. It’s all connected – The web is giant cobweb of information about your brand. Your job as a strategist is to find those connections and make logical sense of them. Your website should be at the center of this “cobweb” and your branding the silk that links it all together. Your site must seemlessly provide and connect to all of the content and related content chunks that exist in your brand’s universe.


The result: The site for the Turks & Caicos Sporting Club at Ambergris Cay that we launched last week in collaboration with our digital partners at {e} house studios.


Click here to visit The Turks & Caicos Sporting Club at Ambergris Cay

Chance of copy being read

Excellent blog post on the top 10 myths of UX. We’ve placed several prior posts on this site about the importance of the user experience in defining the web architecture for a brand. That being said the chance that you read all the way to this last sentence is about 2.4%

TryonPlaza.com

FORMO in conjunction with Blue Ion launched a new website for Tryon Plaza, an historic commercial office building project located in a near perfect location in uptown Charlotte, North Carolina. The Tryon Plaza Building is owned by our client The Simpson Organization of Atlanta, GA and is the second Simpson Project to be awarded to FORMO.

In rebuilding the site, FORMO approached The Simpson Organization with a very simple premise: generate sales leads for the building which had languished for over a year with very few sales leads. FORMO demonstrated that the opportunity lay in a new marketing strategy, not lamenting over economic conditions.

The problem in lead generation for Tryon Plaza was due to a stale and conventional marketing strategy. FORMO developed a new strategy based on extensive research of the existing owners and tenants in Tryon Plaza and then pushed that forward in a cloning strategy to find more prospects just like the current owners. As a result the strategy became centered on providing tools and straightforward information to entrepreneurial small business owners.

The launch of the site was timed to match the first of a series of Professional Entrepreneurial Events to be held in the beautiful conference facilities at Tryon Plaza.  Not coincidentally the first series was titled, “How to Grow your Business – Leasing or Buying your commercial space”. The Speaker, John Bly with The Charlotte-based accounting firm of Toler, Bly & Associates actually referenced and used the Lease-Buy Tool embedded in Tryon’s new website to demonstrate the inherent value and benefits for a small business to own their commercial space. A resounding and qualified endorsement of the technology and the strategy.

Check out the site, Tryon Plaza

2.0 Blog & E-magazine

FORMO in conjunction with our amazing digital partner {e} house launched the 2.0 version of the blog & emagazine for the Turks & Caicos Sporting Club at Ambergris Cay, Life on the Cay. The new blog replaces the original version launched in 2009.

When we first proposed the concept in 2009, the client’s initial response was that affluent people don’t blog or read blogs. Fortunately the results proved our theory to be overwhelmingly correct. Since its launch the blog has rocketed to the top of the list in terms of lead generation among the super-affluent clientele of the Sporting Club. The client experienced a 12x increase in qualified, lead generation during a period when the real estate market was in precipitous decline.

We think the reason is simple: Authenticity. The affluent clientele targeted by the Sporting Club are not only discriminating, they are immune to the typical hyperbole of real estate marketing. They ignore it and as a result it has very little influence in terms of generating actions (sales leads). However, when authentic, real world content is served up in a technologically savvy and sophisticated environment…engagement happens.

Of course there is more to the strategy than the summary of the preceding paragraphs, but suffice it to say that it works and it worked so well that the client funded an upgrade and expansion of the platform. All of this further validates FORMO’s proprietary digital strategy, “COBWEB”.

Ok, it’s big headline and I don’t expect a waiting list for seats. I had breakfast a few weeks ago with Greg Furhman, Founder and Chairman of the Luxury Marketing Council. Greg and I were discussing some applications of positioning with luxury products and services when he suggested that I participate as a speaker for an upcoming event they were planning on the Aesthetics of Luxury through Design & Print. I was honored by Greg’s invitation and humbled by the opportunity to speak to such a prestigious group. Nonetheless, I have a very relevant and fascinating case study to share with them. I’m going to talk about the positioning process and application that we implemented for the DPS Sporting Clubs. This is a fascinating and highly relevant case study not only for the real estate development industry but also any product or service that requires a very precise marketing model.


The event is May 20 at Madam Tussauds in Manhattan. For more information click here.

Saks Fifth Avenue uses Soviet-inspired art in its spring marketing campaign, inspired by the bold graphic designs and propaganda spirit of Constructivist art.
via New York Times


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Summary showreel from Moving Brands on Vimeo.

I found this on Fubiz.net today. Beautiful executions.

“Elegant work of identities to transform and make evolve/move marks throughout the world.”-Fubiz.net

In this video, Alex Evans, Co-Founder of Little Big Planet developer Media Molecule discusses the thinking that went into creating the “game.” His discussion of user generated content and the untapped need of users to create is very interesting. I remember seeing the first glimpse of this game when it was announced at E3 a few years back and it is very exciting to see it becoming so successful. I am huge fan! To me this game is like playing inside the mind of Michel Gondry or something
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