Promotion ideas & Multidiscipline studios - Competition & Inspiration - Taking Care of Business

Promotion ideas & Multidiscipline studios - Competition & Inspiration - Taking Care of Business

Understanding your competition is as important as recognising target audience and there requirements, our focus is combining our disciplines as a collective to create well informed outcomes that communicate with the target audience by exploring a wide range of concepts and ideas using different techniques and process's through digital and analogue mediums. 

DR ME
One studio I have been following for a while now is Manchester based Dr Me, an agency that incorporates multidisciplinary approaches into all its work with a very abstract aesthetic. They don't follow trends they just make work how they see relevant to the concept and idea. 

Something we could learn well from, all there outcomes are diverse in the use of material, image, process, technique, use of colour and type often incorporating moving image video media or still photographic media with analogue image, type and collage to create gritty and slightly weird outcomes. 

Something me and Niel have spoke about before for our own personal external recognition was holding a print exhibition, it came up in conversation to pitch this idea forward for North by North's promotion opportunities. 

Niel initially mentioned basing an idea around 365 days of something like Dr Me do with there posters that sell out instant at £10 a go, over the space of a year this adds up to £3650, this could pay for 3 iMacs saving us on needing financial support! 

The idea I suggested for 365 directions of North could be carried out by us all producing a piece of work everyday for 365 days where we collaborate all our specialist techniques into a piece of print, digital or physical piece of work. This shows our multiple direction approach and could be promoted under the hashtag #365directionsofnorth on Instagram with an aim in receiving viral recognition. 

These products could then be sold on to raise potential startup costs or just go towards extra material and equipment. 

Another opportunity within this or similar concepts could work through throwing exhibitions if we chose a studio with exhibition space, either that or pop up stores at exhibitions or similar events like Leeds print festival, this also aids external recognition as well as promotions of our services.

Frost* Collective 
Frost collective is a Melbourne based agency made up of 7 creative professionals with varying specialist disciplines, these range of skill-sets allows them to create extremely versatile work that fits the requirements of there huge client base, everything is very concept driven and doesn't share a very similar aesthetic, a common trend in multi disciplinary studios their at home creating work fro web output, logo design all the way to landscape design and way finding. 

Rather than seeing them as competition i would sooner us learn from this very successful agency in terms of there diverse approach and there ways in which they can stretch a concept idea over as many possible mediums as possible to enhance the clients image, recognition and overall satisfaction by hopefully cutting down on costs if we can cover more areas than just standard web & print. Not only does this save them the effort and money in finding someone who can do these other jobs, it also adds extra income to us, more weight to our portfolio, better client relationships and further enhancement and development of our skills. 

Base Design

I love there take on design, they specializing in not specializing, by experimenting with a range of techniques methods and process's the International studio produce a very diverse body of work.

The concise description of there services sums up there diverse process behind producing work, covering all areas rather than just an idea and production. They really do approach all areas to create effect work and this is something we all agree on should be took into our business model/plan.

The work they produce is diverse in its physical 3D forms, web forms and printed media showing its consideration to all these output methods alongside there extremely strong idea generation methods. 

They have even bigger aims, they are very future oriented, something important for us to consider when maintaining a sustainable work ethic and production of our concepts. Pitching work for branding identity for Nasa is one example of this. 

Nendo

Need is a Japanese design studio that is the definition of multi disciplinary when it comes to diverse creative fields it covers within the work the studio produces, exploring ideas within the fields of interior design, product design & graphic design to answer a clients needs. 

Our disciplines are quite limited to the general Graphic Design & Digital design sector but learning from this studio and how they approach ideas without just presuming the answer would be to produce a logo or some print material, it could require something else. This diverse method of thinking would really benefits the work we produce for clients, giving them the best possible solution based on there needs.

Considering package design as well as graphic design and brand identity is one thing we understand as a group so this isn't a real issue but learning from the concepts this studio uses will benefit our sustainable image and concept driven work. They really consider the target audience in equal measure to the clients needs when creating concepts and ideas for there work, going this extra mile and adding our own input to the clients requests will show dedication to producing good work for them rather than just doing exactly what the client says and not trying to benefit there initial visions. 

TU Design

Not too keen on the actual work these guys produce, its a bit on the commercial mediocre side of graphic design. Quite corporate or garish, but I like there vision for the company and the purpose of there working style they present too potential clients. 

I like how they describe there work as creating experiences, this kind of hides there corporate and cliche aesthetic and gives a very good first impression on the ethics of the company. The company image is as important as the work they produce, so considering this in the way our brand image is portrayed is important. 

Like us they specialist over print, digital and illustrative media. Be it in a more corporate and sell out way as opposed to our focus on smaller business's to give the clients a genuine personal experience rather than false promises. 

Catalogue 

Catalogue are an agency we would see as competition due to them been quite local to us and share the same multidisciplinary approach we do within digital, web, print and branding. 

I see them as quite trend driven in there aesthetic and they don't really have a specific focus on web or digital work so I see opportunity here to push our multi disciplinary approach with consideration of future oriented mediums like digital and web design. 

Our work will be more focused on sustainable and concept driven ideas, and not focused on print mediums when incorporating multiple disciplines we will think about more physical & tactile productions, interactive work, digital work and work that has mileage and sustainability. 

Passport

Passport are a duo who graduated a few years ago setting up in Duke studios and are doing very well at the moment, they are similar to us in the fact that they are very concept driven when it comes to there ideas, they don't seem to follow trends either and the work they produce does have sustainable aesthetics and ideas. 

So in this sense they are very similar to what where wanting to do and carrying it out very well, the area I see they lack in though although it's only very minor is the digital side of things and traditional illustration, if we pushed the illustration both digital and analogue within our concepts and brought in future oriented digital and web design our work would stand out a little more. 

Promotion ideas

Creative social blog covers a few alternative methods of promotion and advertising of business services without going down the typical website, business card, leaflet and poster route in areas that reach out to our target audience, magazine & newspaper ads and social media. All these are very effective and have already been implemented into our business model. 

Using viral recognition as a marketing tool is an effective and often cost effective method of getting our name out there, we created a viral campaign last year in a collaborative brief achieving some success, so going back to this and considering exhibitions, artwork/print fairs and using social media and photo media accounts to go viral will be one direction to go. 

We could produce videos of us undergoing our design process to aim at audiences interested in seeing behind the scenes of a business.

Run a print fair selling our work. 

Start a blog that features our interests that resonate and influence north by norths practice. 

Producing one off prints to show we consider traditional as well as future oriented design, me as a creative believe there are many more future oriented routes print can go with the use of modern techniques to advance the process. So producing work exploring this ideas would resonate well with my own manifesto and the companies vision. 

When working for a client, we should think carefully about how we present the work to there target audiences not only for meeting there needs but also bringing in attention from other potential clients through high impact and intriguing design. 

This has already been discussed so i am happy its actually seen as a popular marketing technique showing it has some success, the studio we work out of The Art house in Wakefield has exhibition space and often holds events so contributing to these will help us reach out there to more potential audiences, with a focus on the creative industry expanding on our initial targets of new business's and local business's. 

The Computer Arts blog Creative Bloq makes some very good points on promotion as a freelancer, but the same rules apply to collaborative practices like us. 

"A brand is not what you say it is, its what you say it is" says Marty Neumer, suggesting and supporint Creatives bloq's points on honesty and ethics. 

Taking points made on focusing on strengths is what we will take from this, focusing on our multi disciplinary approach and presenting it in an honest manner using our friendly and personal communication and professional yet informal tone of voice to create good connections and first impressions with potential clients. 

Creating an online portfolio will be an extension of our online presence, again very cost effective and something many potential clients may turn too. I know we want to focus on local business and this is a method of reaching clients further afield but its an excellent way of going viral and achieving recognition and feedback on work which is always good for progression of the company and our work. 

I stumbled across Robot Foods Behance portfolio recently noticing he was based in Leeds it seems appropriate to include his portfolio here and show how much of a large following he has and how many appreciations he has had on his work.