Sagmeister speaks

Earlier in May, GDC ABnorth and its Chapter President Lori Billey (also RED’s Creative Director) brought one of the world’s most influential graphic designers to Edmonton: Stefan Sagmeister.

His newest design treatise, Things I have learned in my life so far, offers amazing insight into the creative process and offers everyone – from art directors to account executives – useful thoughts on business and life. Here’s a sample:

Complaining is easy. Either act or forget.
Everybody who is honest is interesting.
Having guts always works out for me.
Everything I do always comes back to me.
Trying to look good limits my life.

With the support of his clients, Sagmeister’s studio transformed these sentences into typographic works, from billboards in France to sign-toting inflatable monkeys on the streets of Scotland.

Beyond focus groups

Creative testing takes many shapes and forms – one of the latest trends involves biometrics. This sophisticated approach measures things like eye movements and pulse rates. Have we gone too far in the quest to quantify advertising effectiveness? You be the judge. This article appeared in the New York Times recently.

How to Thrive in a Competitive Marketplace

Defining your target audience is one thing – divining it is something altogether different. A thorough understanding of your target audience is critical to marketing success. It’s a fundamental principle but one that gets neglected surprisingly often by marketers.

To be truly successful in reaching your target you need to delve beneath the veneer of basic demographic and psychographic data and immerse yourself in your audience. Why? Because everything hinges on them - they drive how your message is crafted, what it should look and sound like, the mental cues it uses, when, where and how it’s delivered – your target audience is the most important factor in the marketing equation.

The most effective way to go beyond the surface is to talk to your target audience. Become friends with them. Seek out opportunities to listen to them. You can learn more about your audience in a handful of five-minute conversations than you can with a pile of statistics.

There’s lots to discover. Where does your audience get their information? How can they be intercepted? What else is competing for their attention? Who are their role models? Who do they listen to? Who influences the people who influence them? And so on.

A “well-divined” target audience profile is worth its weight in marketing gold.

From cool to passé

New research provides insight into how consumers use products to signal membership in social groups, but quickly abandon those same products when the original message is diluted as other groups co-opt the trend. Download the pdf.

8 important consumer trends for 2008

All the trends that are fit to print – from 'status spheres' to 'snack culture' to 'crowd mining', find them all here.

RED gives voters a nudge for Elections Alberta

Elections Alberta is launching a multi-media campaign today that humorously reminds Albertans to get out and vote.

The "nudge" campaign, the first in the organization's history, includes radio and TV spots that run province-wide for the next three weeks leading up to the provincial election March 3.

The 30-second spots feature a man and woman giving a litany of funny and ridiculous excuses for not voting, including a recliner stuck in recline, alphabetizing a spice rack, getting caught up in a staring contest and programming a new cellphone. The spots end with the tag ling "Voting: It's inexcusably easy."

Kristy MacMillan, account director for Red, the Edmonton agency that created the campaign, says it targets the 25 to 44 demographic, the busy age group with careers and families.

"We want the campaign to make them question the validity of their excuses for not voting and say to themselves, 'There is no real reason for me not to vote.' "

Red won the Elections Alberta account, then known as the Office of the Chief Electoral Office of Alberta, in December 2006 and was charged with rebranding the organization and giving it a new visual identity. In addition to changing the name, Red also redesigned the organization's website, says MacMillan, making it cleaner, brighter and more user friendly.
-Norma Ramage

Why should you care about Generation "Why"

18 to 25 year olds are the largest, most socially aware generation to date. They're different from previous generations mainly because of technology.