Humans think they act rationally but generally they’re driven by the heart, and their purchasing decisions are influenced by “what feels right” despite their attempts to be analytical.

Emotional advertising is huge at the moment. The biggest brands are striving to connect with consumers on a much deeper level, way beyond the superficial talk of their products and services.

So, we thought we’d show you five great examples. Tissues at the ready…

5. Pfizer – More than medication

4. John Lewis – Christmas 2011

3. Google – Chrome

2. John Lewis – More than a woman

1. Proctor & Gamble – Olympics

Having only opened our new office in Clerkenwell a matter of weeks ago, we were thrilled to kick off our presence in London with a really fun project to redesign her fashion and style blog, AtFashionForte.

The revamped version of the site has already received tens of thousands of hits from fans of the show and is attracting attention from leading advertisers.

Surprisingly, we met Rosie after a chance conversation on Twitter and we’re pretty proud of the feedback she gave us.

Rosie said: “There was no shortage of agencies who offered their services when I said I wanted help with my website.

“But rather than being just another client for another account manager I’d rather deal with someone one to one who looks after the work themselves.

“Warm & Fuzzy really understand what I’m trying to achieve and have already been great fun to work with on the project.”

AtFashionForte was launched last week at a star-studded party at the King’s Road’s Proud Gallery, with cast members of the cult E4 show in attendance.

Our managing director Lee Flanaghan, who cut his teeth working on luxury accounts Cartier and Chanel, believes the project underlines the changing nature of celebrity endorsement.

He said: “More and more brands are tapping into genuine and authentic product recommendation via the social media websites of people in the public eye.

“That’s especially true in structured reality shows and their online spin-offs, which increasingly blur the boundaries between the viewer and the viewed.”

Made in Chelsea, currently in its second season, follows the exploits of a group of well-heeled socialites frequenting the bars and boutiques of the King’s Road.

Rosie, who attended the same boarding school as Kate Middleton and supermodel Sophie Dahl, hopes her blog will lead to collaborations with leading fashion brands.

]]> http://warmandfuzzy.co.uk/news/reality-tv-star-chooses-warm-fuzzy/feed/ 0 http://warmandfuzzy.co.uk/top-tips/top-three-tips-for-successful-exhibiting/ http://warmandfuzzy.co.uk/top-tips/top-three-tips-for-successful-exhibiting/#comments Mon, 25 Jul 2011 17:05:17 +0000 leeflanaghan http://www.warmandfuzzy.co.uk/?p=1079 We’ve learnt a few useful lessons about how to make exhibitions really work, and you can read our Top Three Tips here.

 At Warm & Fuzzy, we do a fair bit of exhibition work, right from the planning phase, through the visual design and production stages, through to stand building and set-up and even manning clients’ stands and conducting post-show follow up.

1. Don’t put up barriers

When designing and building your stand, it should be as open and welcoming as possible. Visitors are discouraged by both objects and people in their way, making it off-putting coming onto your area. In a standard non-end shell scheme, there is only one way in, so make sure you don’t block it with furniture, leaflet racks and worst of all, a row of intimidating looking sales people all in a line!

The aim is to encourage people to feel relaxed enough to step into your space to engage with you. Place things at angles, and maybe stand in the aisle rather on the edge of your stand. Think of an inviting shop where people are comfortable to just browse.

2. Prep The Team

The staff on your exhibition stand are going to be the very visible, public face of your business, so they need to look and act the part.

Organise a briefing meeting a week before the exhibition starts and another one the day before. Make sure everyone knows how smartly they should be dressed, and exactly what is expected of them. On the day, get everyone on the stand well before opening time for another quick run through. Ensure they leave their laptops at home or in their hotel rooms, and put their mobiles on silent. There is nothing more annoying to that potential new customer than a sales person too busy to talk to them because they’re answering calls on the stand.

3. Qualify and Follow-up

The most common error for companies exhibiting is the failure to do anything effective with the leads they collect during their trade show.

If the exhibition lasts for more than one day, it’s often possible to evaluate and qualify the data at the end of each day. You may have picked up some really warm, interested contacts who need further information as quickly as possible, maybe samples or a quote. If you can filter those out, pass them to your office team straight away to deal with,  your hot prospect will be very impressed.

As for the other enquiries, they still need a good follow up, promptly after the exhibition ends. They will only remember you for a few days at best, so don’t take weeks to get that letter, email or phone call to them.

Good luck. Remember, if you are planning to exhibit at a trade event or consumer show, we’d love to help.

As a result of this, it also seems to have more than it’s fair share of Creative Industry organisations, support systems, networking groups etc; plus a few creative industry buildings like Bank’s Mill and the building we are in, Friar Gate Studios.

Over the last three years or so, I’ve been to quite a few creative industry events, some organised by CIN, plus a few at QUAD, and they have generally been of a high standard, well organised and with interesting speakers. But they have all shared one massive problem… They were completely full of creative industry people.

Let me explain. These events are almost always full of the same faces. And in a big room full of 100 creative business owners and their staff, trust me – you are never going to find your next client. Sure, the organisers of these events will bang on relentlessly about collaboration. It’s all about collaboration. That’s a worthy and valid point, but still these events are a colossal waste of an opportunity.

Explaining our trade. Demonstrating our value.

As people running creative businesses we all face similar challenges every day. Many clients simply do not understand what we do. Or how we do it. Or why it costs what it does. Or why it takes the time it does. So, time and time again, individually with our clients; we try and educate them. We try and show what goes into what we create, how much thought, love, care and attention is expended to give them the fantastic result they see at the end of a project.

So why are these events full of creatives, and have only a handful of “real” business people. You know, the owners, the marketing people, the folk running companies large and small in and around our city?

I really wish I knew. Maybe people feel safer in a huddle among their own kind. But as an industry we are really missing a trick. If we invite non-creative business owners and managers to our events, we can really prove our worth. We can explain how we do what we do. Our clients will place more value on quality design once they understand it, plus they will become far easier to work with when they have grasped our processes. We all know that when agency and client really put the effort into working together to help each other, that’s when the best work is produced. Usually on time, and on budget.

This post came to mind as I’ve noticed another new, young creative group getting together to start organising events. I think they were called Creative Boom, and are now renamed as Hatch’d I think. They’re bound to be brimming with energy and enthusiasm. I just hope they stop and think for a minute and don’t repeat the mistakes of all the others.

Last week I had the pleasure of attending New Adventures In Web Design, a one-day conference in Nottingham organised by Simon Collison featuring 10 speakers, all of whom are leading figures within the web design industry.

This was the first web design conference I had ever attended, having grown up working mainly in print over the last decade and a half, and only really getting stuck into web projects over the last couple of years.

I really didn’t know what to expect, and was a little worried it might be a load of geeks speaking about code which would have flown straight over my head. Luckily, I was wrong. Very wrong.

All the speakers talked at a very conceptual level, about broad ideas, rather than practical details. This approach of course is great for getting web designers to step back from their ingrained patterns of working, and to encourage them to stop and think about the fundamental thought processes that shape any good piece of design.

I enjoyed most of the presentations, and there appears to be a huge amount of gushing praise for the event on blogs everywhere. The fact that the event was so well received makes it a little hard for me to try and offer up some constructive criticism. But here goes.

The organisation of the event, it’s visual identity, it’s personality – were outstanding. And surprising. To see such attention to detail, great copy, beautiful typography, particularly in the specially produced newspaper, was a delight. Yes, there were some organisational flaws – massive queue on arrival, too much Tuna at lunch, not enough Gents’ toilets, but overall it was clear this event has been painstakingly put together by Colly and his team, and the massive amount of hard work to make it feel just right, was so evident.

A couple of the speakers did leave me with a sense of disappointment. I just don’t think Tim Van Damme and my ears clicked, and I struggled to find his piece useful to me. Greg Wood’s time on stage was for me a lesson in the bleedin’ obvious. He really didn’t need to bother with that experiment of his. Anyone who has worked in advertising or marketing in the last 50 years could have brought him up to speed. In fact I think Monastic Scribes from around the thirteenth century had twigged that plain text was a little dull, and people would pay a lot more attention if they brightened up their pages with a little “illumination“. Sorry Greg.

The two standouts for me were Andy Clarke and Brendan Dawes. Andy’s talk referenced comic books to illustrate the notion of pace to the reader, and it was really enjoyable, although I think he struggled to offer up any real or practical web examples to take his thoughts forward into something most of us could use. However, he is clearly a fine and confident presenter, and captivating to listen to.

Brendan Dawes was the final speaker of the day, and truly the star of the show. To be honest, it wouldn’t have mattered what he was talking about – his style and delivery are a joy to experience. The crowd had plenty of laugh out loud moments, and much has been written already about his presentation, so I won’t bore you with details. This man is genuinely entertaining and was by far the highlight of the day.

I left this event thinking more about the web design industry in general rather than the individual speakers’ talks. Looking at the twitter hashtag, I kept seeing talk of it being “grown-up” and starting a new chapter. Being a relative new boy, I am struck a little by the naivety and the apparent recent discovery of some very old principles.

The overriding themes seemed to be that great web design should be about taking a lead from print design, good use of language, better typography, strong art and editorial direction, and the use of emotion. Again, I can’t helping feeling that these things are nothing new and that other areas of the design, advertising and marketing world have known and embraced these principles for decades.

Perhaps older web technology combined with the relative younger age of the web design industry has been the limiting factor until now. Maybe with HTML5, CSS3, SVG and all the other great things I’m slowly learning about, web designers have now had a whole new toolkit opened up to them, giving them the freedom to think in ways they simple were not able to before?

If that’s the case, then the web is going to become a lot more interesting, and a lot better looking.

Well done Mr Collison. A fine fine job.

But, sometimes we yearn for the old ways, and like to take time out to be inspired by true skills and craftmanship and see how things used to be done.

This film called Up There about the amazing guys that still produce hand painted advertising in New York is simply wonderful. Enjoy. (and do watch right to the end!)

This week we spotted the launch of Flipboard, an ipad app that creates a personalised magazine, populated with content from your twitter and facebook friends as well as other selected articles based on your interests.

It looks absolutely fantastic and a whole better way of consuming all those links that get thrown up by your friends. Instead of visiting a web page via a link in your twitter stream, this app crafts a beautiful magazine style layout for to you browse through. You can also comment and share right from within the app. Try and imagine a real magazine, but one that every time you pick it up and flick through the pages, a load of new stuff has magically appeared. I have a feeling that this is going to be big.

These kind of aggregators are great for finding stuff that fits your personal interests, but there is always the possible downside that you never discover new things that live totally outside of your current tastes. It’s a bit like only eating your favourite food or only listening to your favourite band but never being open or able to try out something new. I guess you just need to have a load of friends that are diverse and interesting enough to always be sharing cools stuff that you might never have found yourself.

Do check out FLIPBOARD, we reckon they are onto a winner.

Working closely with their PR agency (Paskett PR) and with leading branding agency Pearlfisher, the timescales were challenging to say the least.

Delivered on time of course to a happy client. To our great delight at the end of the event, they were awarded the prize for Best Exhibition Stand, and we couldn’t help feeling just a little bit proud.

This is great news if you are maybe starting or expanding your business and are looking to Business Link or the East Midlands Development agency to try and obtain some kind of funding or grant. Simply by speaking to your Business Link advisor you may find you can access financial help which can then be spent only with accredited providers like us here at Warm & Fuzzy! Just email us if you need pointing in the right direction.