However, to get the best results you have to trust your chosen creative partner, believe me they will appreciate it and feel doubly responsible
for delivering a good creative result . Creatives also do like to be inspired by the client’s product vision but NOT to be tethered to a preconceived idea,
which can be stifling and will not deliver the bold innovative campaign that will help sales explode.  It will instead only serve to stifle creativity and exasperate
both the client and the creative team.
Like all of us, if we feel ownership for the creative direction, we commit to it for all we are worth and that’s how great ideas are born!

So work in a team with your creative, give them the freedom of a tight brief and then sit back and prepare to be startled…woof. woof!

The Big Stick Consultancy package offer is a potential easy option. An opportunity to outsource the function(s) you need,
for one day a week or several days a month, as and when you need it. So you have the skills on hand without a permanent overhead.

Big Stick’s award winning Creative Director can help formulate your strategy, write it, deliver the creative spark and generate it’s
production into the marketing vehicles you need to develop a successful campaign.
Be it online or offline strategy, Big Stick can provide creative solutions and provide hands-on consultancy
to help build your brand with the right USP and benefit messages.

Sometimes using an outsider as sounding board helps give you the perspective and confidence to realise your instincts were correct!
So if you aren’t ready to invest in a full time marketing/creative person, talk to Big Stick about a bespoke consultancy package designed to suit your needs now.

First she had botox treatment, teeth whitening, make-up and hair styling. The result was a shot of the modest Claire looking stunning. (*judge for yourself-see the before and after shots below)

It makes it all the more enjoyable when the subject is an ‘ordinary’ person and you see them bloom under the lights as they become more relaxed with camera and photographer. The unpredictability also makes it exciting, with a professional model you know exactly what you will get and to be fair you generally get a good result pretty quickly.
With an ‘untested’ model it is all down to the subject feeling confident in the surroundings and trusting the photographer won’t make them feel foolish or embarrassed. Consequently the shoot takes much longer but the results are often startling and you realise not only that the subject has latent model potential but that they have a naiveté which lends the picture a unique charm-
a potential models first time under the lights can be an empowering experience for the ‘model’ and not having to suffer the diva moments of a professional helps the photographer feel 10 years younger too!

Claire's portrait before she gets the full beauty treatment

portrait of mag editor Claire

a model is born!

However, when the site is done and it has awesome functionality, great navigation, all the connections to social networks, a whizzy visual device to hold attention, a contact on every page twice! and more key words than you can throw a stick , ask yourself this…

Does it help position and differentiate your brand?  Does it provide a platform for you to us the same visuals and messages on your other marketing vehicles, so you have a cohesive campaign across all your marketing activity and  have you planned a campaign of activity to market your new site?

I ask this because designing a website is not simply a graphic exercise demonstrating this years fashions in type and the latest web tools. It is potentially a platform for your whole marketing campaign. Consequently the brand values should be clearly differentiated and the whole website considered in the context of your total ‘marketing mix’.

The marketing mix helps you define the marketing elements to succssfully p0sition your market offering.  Essentially, delivering the right product in the right place at the right price at the right time. To determine the optimum mix, consider the 4 P’s as they are commonly referred to;

Product (or service) Place, Price, Promotion.

The Product decisions involves establishing exactly what the customer wants, which need your product or service fulfills. Place is researching exactly where your ‘target’ looks to find your product or service. Price is determining  the value the customer is prepared to pay for your product and Promotion is where and when can you get your marketing  message across ie via Direct mail, TV, press advertising PR, Web or a combination of all of the above. Get this formula bang on and you have major success on your hands. Get one element woefully wrong and you can miss the boat entirely.

So when you consider the redesign of your website think about differentiating your brand, think about creating a cohesive marketing platform that will work cumulatively, giving your target audience greater opportunity to recall your brand values and buy into your positioning. Think about  all the ingredients in your marketing mix and most of all think about using a Big Stick!!

Kings Road Garage is a Jaguar specialist which runs both a showroom and a service department from it’s Kings Road base. However to create more space Kings Road decided to move it’s service department a mile up the road from the Kings Road showroom location.

This would create space for upgraded diagnostic equipment in the service dept and a larger more diverse range of prestige marques on display in it’s showroom. As a longstanding local business in Berkhamsted they needed to communicate the changes and market their new enhanced facilities.

Solution

Big Stick updated the Kings Road Garage  branding and created a new marketing platform message ;

’It’s not just Jaguars that PURRR at Kings road Garage’ . 

Branding imagery for the new service dept and showroom was created and featured on banners, posters, direct mail and e’mailers to help communicate the key messages. As part of the strategy a new website was created which also reflected the corporate images and messages.

Result

The result is a cohesive brand delivery across all marketing vehicles and a successfully launched new facility

“You can see why they have won design awards, they think outside the box’
MD Kings Road Garage

The brief from The Dacorum recycling team was to create a campaign to promote recycling on their refuse vehicles, which would not only appeal to the public but also motivate the refuse collectors themselves.

Solution

Big Stick used humour based illustrations featuring the refuse collectors themselves on the poster creative.

They were portrayed in heroic situations, all supporting the recycling efforts and asking you to do the same. Amongst the scenario’s shown were  a refuse collector with a rose in his mouth for garden waste, bin men doing the ‘can, can’  (see illustration above!) to promote steel can recycling  (Yes! you can, can!) , and riding a motor bike to jump a wall of recycled cans ( in the style of Steve McQueen in the much repeated film ‘The great escape’).

Results

The refuse collectors felt very much part of  the successful campaign which, achieved excellent awareness in the Dacorum area and boosted recycling figures in the region.

“The Big Stick recycling campaign hit the mark in appealing to our staff and the public, it was a job well done!”

Sheila-Dacorum Recycling team manager

3 Rivers Council wanted to achieve improve on their recycling figures by using poster sites on the sides of refuse vehicles to increase awareness, particularly of food waste but also to encourage the recycling of paper, plastic and glass .

Solution 

A series of impact full images were used deliver astonishing facts about unnecessarily wasted materials.

Materials that could easily be recycled with a little more effortfrom all of us. Big Stick researched the market and found out why housewives, for example, were a little reluctant to recycle waste food… ‘It’s smelly and encouraged rodents!’ they said. However, when we told them that  a third of the food we bought was wasted (remember when you have meals and cook that extra pasta , just in case?) and that if we all recycled our waste food, it would be an equivalent saving in terms of the harmful gases released by wasted food  being  buried in the ground to taking ONE IN 5 CARS OFF THE ROAD. This seemed to change attitudes markedly and consequently was one of our featured poster messages.

Results

The result was a series of informative, entertaining and arresting posters which, stimulated re-evaluations of public attitudes to recycling, Food recycling in particular. Recycling in the 3 Rivers region hit the 50% mark which is one of the highest returns nationally.

“It was refreshing to see so many amazing ideas presented” Marketing Manager 3 Rivers Council

The challenge was to create a website aimed at 13-17 year old school children to help them widen their career horizons and maybe consider Higher Education for the first time. Big Stick were asked to come up with a name and a website design…

.

Solution

The concept was based on kids being able to try on a career for size by entering the “JobPod’ . Then choosing an avatar and answering questions
to focus on the career sector of their choice. Within the “JobPod” were job files describing different jobs, the qualifications
required and the different routes to achieving those qualifications. The avatar characters encourage multiple visits to raise the
awareness of the different career routes available. Big Stick provided literature,  promotional T-Shirts and post- cards to incentivise
school children to visit and compare notes.

UniPod- Advice for University students
This project was followed up with a ‘UniPod’ website which, was to support 15-17 year olds and give them the answers to their questions about University.This was supported with a folder to teachers and individual inserts to copy and distribute to their students in support of the website.

Result

UniPod is now used in schools to explore career choices and the newly launched UniPod provides all the answers to diffident teenagers looking for reassurance before taking the big step into HE.

Create a brand which would get Essex active! Led by Sport Essex the project was to launch a brand that would facilitate people getting back into sport, whatever their age.

 It was to be a new brand created by Big Stick and launched on a website. Big Stick were charged with coming up with a name and design style to apply to the website and supporting literature.

Solution

‘Get Energised in Essex’ was the campaign line created by Big Stick with a slick sporting looking logo!
The target audience were split into groups and the activity levels from ‘gentle’ to ‘competitive’ split across the groups appropriately.
The website allowed people to explore, why they should exercise and how they could fit it into their lifestyle. It made suggestions of new sports
They could try, provided taster sessions to try them and even an interactive map, where you could search for the nearest sports facility which,
covered the support you were interested in. There is even a nutrion page and a sports adviser to give you advice and guidance  to help you get started.

Result

The result was a site launched in Essex with a massive bike ride and a website which helps every age group in Essex find the activity of their choice to keep fit and healthy!