Marketing
As a centaur shooting an arrow, the constellation of Sagittarius is believed to represent Chiron, a student of the archery god Apollo. This distinguished him from his kin, as he came to be considered very wise and knowledgeable in many disciplines. He famously became a teacher to a great number of heroes and figures in Greek myths.
While I do not boast to be anything like this great educator, my marketing projects generally have the goal of teaching the audience something. Sometimes it’s a literal skill or procedure and others it’s just to offer a better understanding of a product or brand.
A brochure of offers for gift card packaging and marketing material sent to beauty salons.
The challenge
Needing to liquidate space-consuming stock, we had to present packaging – essentially superfluous luxury items – as something attractive that can actually help boost gift card sales in our customers’ salons.
Highlight
Being familiar with many salons on our mailing list, I looked up which ones had never purchased physical cards and used their logos on life-size images of our card designs. The idea was to create a strong this-can-be-yours-feel. It totally worked – one salon even ordered the exact design suggested after seeing the brochure!
Room for improvement
While quite happy with the end result and its impact on sales, I wish I’d had a bit more say in the final version. I mostly curated content from our existing publications, but I did write a title I prefer to the one settled on: “Give gift card sales a boost” as opposed to the current “Buy gorgeous packaging for gift cards.” I still feel strongly it’s better to tell the reader what’s in it for them instead of what to do.
A sheet of offers for car and travel accessories.
The challenge
With audio inputs becoming common in new vehicles and the demand for audio transmitters quickly declining, it was crucial for us to liquidate stock to retailers before it became obsolete.
Highlight
After it circulated a while, I realised that it was difficult for buyers to understand the differences between the products on this sheet. Revising it to include a sort of checklist of features helped emphasise the benefits of each product and showed how they were more practical than a car’s basic 3.5 mm audio jack.
Room for improvement
My instincts at the time were to favour making something look cool over it being 100% user-friendly, whereas I’m a bit more balanced now. I feel like the font and colours on the revised version make the text on the radio difficult to read, so I would like to improve the contrast here.
A brochure for beauty salons on how to set up online booking.
The challenge
Salon owners are generally focused on treating customers and not working with digital tools. We needed to emphasise the importance of online booking for strengthening their business while also explaining the process as simply as possible.
Highlight
Although I did not write it, I worked hard at simplifying and structuring my colleague’s text. After careful analysis, I found several ways to visually divide up the content – particularly with the use of tip boxes – avoiding what could’ve easily been just an overwhelming wall of text.
Room for improvement
Understanding the target audience better now, I see that the inner spread might be understimulating to an artistically-inclined salon owner. A photo or two of customers in salons would’ve subconsciously strengthened the importance of online booking for a healthy business and lightened an otherwise information-heavy brochure.
A sheet of special offers for car and travel accessories.A set of 12 sheets with special offers to help retailers stock up for the Christmas season.
The challenge
Creating a template that would showcase wildly different products from very different brands. Since we were sending out one of these a day, they needed to convey a bit of a sense of urgency for the buyers as well as be simple and quick for me to edit.
Highlight
For consistency in presentation, I came up with the idea to start describing each product with "...makes the perfect gift because…". This made it much easier to write up a list of benefits and made them stand out from our competitors’ products.
Room for improvement
I’ve grown adept at visual communication over the years and I see that there’s a lot going on with all the dates and times that should’ve been simplified. Removing the mini calendars and replacing long form text dates with icons or boxed numbers would’ve accentuated the days and make them easier to catch at a glance.
A newsletter to update our dealers and sales representatives about new products, literature and events.
The challenge
We regularly output an almost overwhelming amount of content – price lists, special offers, product announcements, etc. We needed to consolidate all of that into an easily-digestible format where buyers and sales reps could check that they hadn’t missed out on anything relevant to them.
Highlight
As long as the products I featured were readily available, I had the freedom to write about whatever I thought was interesting. Writing informally and playing with the language was a lot of fun, and allowed me to create something that was easy to read and piqued interest without making it feel like we were pushing to make a sale.
Room for improvement
In today’s landscape this would be a digital newsletter – not crammed onto a printed page. I’d split the content and send it bimonthly to better suit everyone’s busy lifestyle. No longer confined to a single sheet, I’d also make the product photos much larger to help grab the readers’ attention and get them excited about what’s to come.
A complete beginner’s guide on how to string and tune a guitar.
The challenge
Creating a training presentation for electronic store employees while knowing as little about how to string and tune a guitar as they did! This was before you could easily find anything you could dream up on YouTube, but luckily our company had a guitar workshop and one of our technicians taught me how to do it.
Highlight
Managing to divide up the steps into bite-sized pieces that don’t overwhelm the student, and creating illustrations that clearly and simply show them what they need to do.
Room for improvement
Neither the electronics store’s employees or the customers were likely to understand the specifications on the first few slides. I should’ve presented their benefits instead of technical details to help the employees sell the product, even though this wasn’t the point of the presentation. I’ve grown much better at considering the impact of all elements in a project and seizing this kind of opportunity.
A guide on small audio speakers for employees in a home decor retail chain.
The challenge
Making this guide simple enough for newbies, yet informative enough that the employees could later explain the product benefits to customers and answer any questions they might have.
Highlight
Starting this guide by explaining the distinctions between an iPod speaker and a regular one, as well as the differences between iPod models and how to distinguish between them. Compatibility was likely to be one of the most frequently asked customer questions.
Room for improvement
Keeping things as simple as possible resulted in similar product descriptions and this made it difficult to properly tell the difference between them – why is one better suited for you over another? Being better at organising information today, I would’ve included a comparison chart to give a clear overview of what each product could do.
An introduction sheet to a new brand of headphones and iPod products.
Click the preview to zoom and view more images from this project.
The challenge
With a saturated iPod case market, we needed to make it clear to our sales reps and retailers why this brand was a better choice to have in stores.
Highlight
Pulling together a surprisingly long list of advantages from a simple and straightforward line of products with a very limited set of features. It’s an unusual amount of pros for simple cases, and I think that really helps sell the brand as being a notch above its competition.
Room for improvement
I’ve developed an instinct when it comes to communication using information hierarchy. I see now that most of the points would’ve had more impact by being split in two: the key point in bigger text as a sort of headline, followed by a smaller, short explanation. It would've had the exact same content, but felt easier to read.
A brochure to train retailers about computer speakers.
The challenge
Conveying that our seemingly unremarkable speakers had top notch audio quality. Since it’s not possible to do a sound demo in a brochure, we needed to find another way to convey the accuracy of our speakers.
Highlight
JBL’s rich history in a diverse range of industries around the world always made a big impression on me. I tried to bring that history forth in order to convey professionalism and trust in the brand as a leader in all things sound and music related. It was all about creating a sense of awe.
Room for improvement
Using bigger text and a filter over the photos here to tone them down would’ve made everything more readable. Increasing the size of the key words in each section would’ve also made it easier to distill the message of this brochure if you’re quickly flipping through it. Finding ways to emphasise text is a skill I’ve expanded over time.
Store displays for iPod speakers.
The challenge
Without a budget to do anything fancy with the construction of these displays, their ability to draw in the customer relied on the artwork and key points.
Highlight
Turning each feature into a tangible and easy to understand advantage for the customer and following it with a simple explanation. While both products had very similar points, I also managed to find a different tone for each of them.
Room for improvement
I worry there’s a bit too much text for the customer to get a quick overview. With the better attention to typography I have today, I might’ve been able to alleviate this a bit by increasing the spacing between each point and making the small explanations a slightly lighter colour in order to better emphasise the advantages.
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