WORK: Verizon Media
Have you heard of Verizon Media? Obviously, Verizon alone is huge, however their digital media arm is behind some of your favorite sites like including Tumblr, Huff Post, and Yahoo just to name a few. Back in 2018, we were hired to help VM develop the look for an internal program focused on increasing leadership and cultural competencies. This project included multiple phases and is still on going.
Prior to rolling up our sleeves and getting busy with Phase I, we worked with members from their team to study Verizon’s 100-page brand book (that’s a joke, but not really LOL). It was important for us to understand how far we could go with design. We also took the opportunity to review what other VM internal programs did when it came to design and branding. This initial process wasn’t all fun, but it’s necessary to help us learn about the client, team and project.
In summary, we helped with:
- Logo and Branding
- Impactful Tagline
- Merchandise Design (Apparel & Accessories, and
Printed Materials, just to name a few) - Content Creation
- Photography & Videography
Phase II of our engagement culminated with a trip to California to document the start of the program and to develop content to help them tell their story. Now this… is the fun part!
The Artoholik Team had to determine which resources, including team members, would be needed to accomplish the job. We had to review things like which light kit to pack, cameras to bring, how many, where we’d stay and what we’d do once we got there. Stressful right?
The event was hosted at the Yahoo Sunnyvale Campus which was only a few miles away from the infamous Silicon Valley. During our daily commute, we passed the offices of Google Cloud, Microsoft and Texas Instruments. But the real highlight came once we stepped foot on the Yahoo campus. We got to tour each building and it’s offices while scouting shooting locations.
During the workshop sessions were it felt like we documented word for word. There were so many interesting dialogs and events, so we just tried to cover every. After a few sessions, we were reminded that the added bonuses of working with our lineup of clients is amount of new information we are exposed to. It’s a lot easier to create content for brands when you can really get behind what they’re “selling”.
After spending the workdays documenting for VM, we made sure we took advantage of being in Cali. We braved the traffic and headed north to San Francisco. We stopped off at the Painted Ladies, took a walk down Haight Street, and then hit the Mission district for some Urban Exploring. The other evenings we made our way through downtown San Jose and fell in love with a two Mixology bars Paper Planes and 55 South. Both known for their innovative cocktails and good vibes.
Overall, the trip was a success! And in case you have a strange affinity for workplace food options like we do, you should know that we gave the Yahoo cafeteria, URL’s Café, 5-stars! They literally serve everything, like everything… There were so many options that we won’t even bother to give you a short list.
Sounds fun right? Here are a few fun facts about this project and our trip…
- It was Rasheedah’s first trip to Cali
- We shot over (1000) images and over (200) video clips
- We ate at Carl’s Jr. twice and didn’t go to In-N-Out Burger (in case you didn’t know, it’s a unwritten law that you must stop into an In-N-Out Burger during a Cali trip. Especially if your eating fast food)
- We went to bed every night after 1AM and got up for work at 6AM
- We sat in traffic for a combined 60 minutes each way (yup, that’s Cali traffic for ya’)
Stay tuned for a more in-depth showcase of the project. We’re still working with this awesome team!
WORK: Pokka Pens
Everyday is a Pokka Day
the cutest project ever!
Back in June, we started working with the beautiful couple behind Pokka Pens, and since then… We’ve helped with their website, e-mail and ancillary graphics to support their latest activations.
ABOUT THE PEN
The Pokka Pen is an everyday tool created for people on the move. While you can use this pen any and every where, it’s designed for those typical moments like the bank, in the car, shopping etc. The beauty of this pen is that it fits in your pocket without stabbing you in the junk. ha!
Our first task was to integrate Mail Chimp with the Pokka Website.
The second step was to brand the automatic Shopify emails and then create templates for the Mail Chimp emails.
It’s crazy how a simple change of color and an add-on can change the day. But people forget about these little details all the time. What make’s us happy is when the customers and friends notice…
the updates and notifications are really impressive – straight out of the amazon playbook
In addition to the graphics and pretty stuff, we also helped with some of the strategy (because design can’t sell by itself right?). We put together a few automation features that perform actions to communicate with Pokka’s potential and existing customers.
40
40% Abandoned Cart Opens
50
50% Opens on Welcome Emails
17
$17 Average Order Revenue
We didn’t leave off there. We hate to be mistaken for a ‘design agency’, because we cover so much ground with all of our clients. Within the three month span of working with Pokka, we assisted in Content Creation by developing written copy, photography, video editing and just general consulting to ensure Pokka is taking the correct steps to grow their brand.
As of September, we’ll begin helping Pokka with their social media platform by posting, creating content and managing their social profiles. We hope you enjoyed this post, now go grab some Pokka’s!
WORK: Simply Pooka
Sometimes a new outfit (look) makes a big difference...
In January we wrapped up the first phase of a project with Pooka Pure and Simple, a skin and hair care product line. When Pooka approached us, they were already an established business with a look and a loyal customer base and had already set up shop in Whole Foods, kind of a big deal. Right?
Pooka came to us in need of a new look. The owner of Pooka wanted to maintain the heart of the brand while giving it a feel that made it stand out from its competitors. Boy did we deliver! We crafted a new logo and branding that spoke to the liveliness and vitality of Pooka Pure and Simple.
We are now working with Pooka to select the perfect jars and bottles for new packaging solutions. So, standby… Pooka will love it, and we’re sure you will too. ?
WORK: LA Matcha
We love cafés and consider ourselves well versed when it comes to the café experience
this was a fun and beautifully executed project...
In January, we completed work for an amazing café opening in Los Angeles. This project was like a match made in heaven.? Aside from the fact that we love cafés and this client of ours is THEE MAN when it comes to everything café, this project gave us the opportunity to pull ?out all the stops as we took the La Matcha brand from concept to manifestation.
When Royce (check him out in Urban Exploring Season 2, Episode 1), our client from LA, came to us for help with building his dream café, we were super excited. We developed three logo and brand concepts, each just as dope as the next.? We crafted a brand that fit nicely with the parent company Table Diaries. We wanted to ensure there was seamless integration between the two correlating brands.
We dove into the project head first. My two hittas, Iquan and Aaron, approached the design from two different perspectives. Iquan and Aaron, the two illest designers ever,?? approached the design from two different perspectives. We wanted to make sure we considered every angle as we created the perfect look, feel, and voice for this LA spot. Between the two of them, Iquan and Aaron crafted a selection of stellar concepts. Royce loved them all but of course decided on one. That was easy. (Disclaimer, creating through your passion can add a level of ease to nearly anything.)
Fast forward a little, Aaron and Migdale, our junior designer, were doing some research, scoping the scene for inspiration and BAM, they found a gem. Inspired by a small spot in Central Jersey, came the creation of the sketch treatment seen in the La Matcha branding below.
This project was definitely had the fun-factor, playing on our obsession with cafés and our love for design.
MY 10 RULES OF BRAND-BUILDING
You know I used to beat that block, now I be’s the block.
Iquan shares some of his experiences to form a down and dirty version of how to grow your small brand.
Earlier today I received a phone call from a friend stating that she needed some inspiration. I thought, “Cool, how can I help you”. She then rambled on about an idea she has and a commitment she needed to make in order to pursue that idea. Turns out, she didn’t really need inspiration, she just needed to vent. I get it, everyone wants to do things their own way. Unfortunately, today a lot of people want it their way and very quick too. What saddens me about my friend’s rant, was that she had already made up her mind and didn’t sound confident at all about the decision she arrived at.
Somehow, everyone in my age group is an entrepreneur. I call this the Puffy/Jay Z era. They made it cool for us to want to start our own, which is very dope! Over the last 10 years, I’ve seen my friends who were rappers start music labels, artist and designers start clothing lines, cooks become chefs, and so on. We all jumped aboard of the Entrepreneur Express, with the strength of our talents but forgot the knowledge of business; but perhaps we never had the knowledge to begin with.
You know i used to beat that block, now I be’s the block. The truth of the matter is, you can be more talented than the next person — the better DJ, Chef, or Artist — but unless you’re super awesome and can pretty much sell water to a fish, you need to learn a few things that will transform you from hustler to entrepreneur.
I’m still very active in the struggle, everyone knows I can design, take a pretty photo, and build a decent website. But what good is all of this if I’m not generating the money I want to make for myself and the team? After 10 hard years I’m finally here and I decided to write this post to help my friend I mention above with her decision.
Here are the 10 biggest lessons I learned while building the artoholiks:
number 1
Be clear about what you want. Have an idea on what you want do, who you want to do it for, and why. With the resources we have at our fingertips, anyone can make a t-shirt or two. A friend of mine, a martial arts instructor created a line that inspires other martial artists. That’s a voice! He’ll get support from the first tier of supporters which is friends and family; the second tier, is the Martial Arts industry. He’ll be in Dojo’s all over if he follows the next 9 steps.
number 2
Adjust… Find your industry competitors and know their next steps. Also, know your customers! With this knowledge, you will always be able to craft your business to grow with the times.
number 3
Consistency… Being consistent sounds easy but it’s not. In the process of changing up in order to keep up, you could easily lose you core VOICE or make it confusing and nearly impossible to identify. Do everything in your power to maintain steadiness. Do not lose your voice.
number 4
Stay Hungry! Not Thirsty… Just because you can, doesn’t mean you should. You’ll be tempted to expand or try something else. Chances are, if you didn’t perfect your initial idea, adjust well or maintain a level of consistency with your original idea then there’s no way you’re going to get it right in your expansion. Stay put for a moment, and master what got you here.
number 5
(infiltrate) OK, I may have slowed you down, that’s good! That was my goal. Here’s where being the best that you can be comes into play. Educate yourself, work for or put yourself in the presence of someone who is doing what you aspire to do and get schooled. Take this info and use it to get your business over the hump and into that next step.
number 6
My Favorite… If you have passion, then you’re doing the right thing, because without it, at this point you would have given up. If you had time to infiltrate, then you aren’t making real money. But that’s OK, you have passion, you’ll figure it out! Be patient, take the money you are making and reinvest it back into your business and you’ll be fine.
number 7
At this point, you’re not in it to make friends, you’re in it to make ends. You gathered some info, sacrificed the new Jordan release to get that new piece of equipment, and you’re almost there. Meanwhile, shorty is over there stepping on your toes trying to do what you do. You’re not hating if you keep your resources to yourself, you’re not hating if you choose to keep your next move to yourself. You learned everything you need to know by working hard, getting up early and staying up late to research, and building relationships; you earned it, you keep it.
number 8
Manage your growth… You might feel a little successful at this point because you are starting to break even and may even have a team, some support, or a little help. Stay put, chillax, just like everything else it will grow, don’t rush your fate. Continue to work with it and have faith, before you know it, that shiny storefront won’t be out of your price range.
number 9
STAY LEARNING… The girl above, didn’t ask me one single question. See she’s aware that I’m successful and have being going at it for 10 years. However, she didn’t ask one question. Me, I am the complete opposite, I ask MAD questions. Like a whole bunch! So many questions, you might be lowkey annoyed. Read, ask questions, find a mentor, and never stop wanting to learn.
number 10
You may laugh at this but I mean it when I say it… Have FUN! Having a job is WHACK and it’s probably the reason why you decided to start your own business. Remember that! Hire people who love working with you, people who will ride with you. When you’re having fun, it makes that empty bank account less depressing. People will want to be down, to buy from you, and to support you, because good people love happy people. #FACTS
KEEPING CONSISTENCY WITH BRANDING
a quick lesson on brand consistency
our creative director, Aaron Brand is ready to school you!
Whether your brand has been around for years or your brand just recently launched and hit the market, brands usually strategize to maintain brand consistency. For example, Heinz is one of the most famous condiment brands in the world, not only have they kept their brand consistent, but they have managed to also have fun with the brand’s packaging at the same time.
A good brand is built over time and requires thought, strategy, and consistent implementation. Let’s take a look at Heinz, a great example for taking your brand to the next level!
From the name to the logo, from the product to the messaging, everyone knows Heinz. It has been said that Heinz Brand is one of the most widely recognized brands worldwide.
Interestingly, their logo has remained largely unchanged since the 1900s. The Serif font and classic shield with green and gold stripes remains consistent.
A few helpful tips to help you maintain brand consistency:
- Don’t associate consistency with boring. Do you think working on Heinz ad campaigns is boring? Consistency actually paves the way to creativity with impact.
- Communicate to your team the importance of your brand. Start the conversation by asking them to name a few companies they admire and why.
- Create a Brand Standards Guide – the guidelines that map out how your logo, fonts, colors, tagline, etc. will be used. Make it visual with proper and improper usage examples. It has to be simple and easy to follow, or it won’t have the intended impact.
- Go through the Brand Standards Guide with your entire team and provide print and PDF copies for them to reference as needed.
- Provide access to the proper logo file types to anyone who needs them. Your team members shouldn’t be recreating your logo on the fly.
- Hold your people accountable and retrain if necessary. It’s okay to appoint some team members to be the “brand police” who flag down offenses and keep the peace.
Now that’s how you maintain brand consistency. I’m just saying.
Introducing the CLAV
We got that good good, we call it the CLAV. After over 278 trips to outer space, we’ve got it figured out; to produce results for your brand, you need the CLAV method: Confidence, Look, Approach, and Voice. We’ve been killing it, beaming light and life into brands for over ten years now. If you do anything for an extended period time, you get good at what you do, you perfect your craft and you notice themes and commonalities throughout. For us Artoholik folks, we started to realize that we were consistently slaying them (translation: we were producing great results).
We noticed that our confidence in our abilities were rubbing off on our clients — good vibes are difficult to ignore — some of whom came to us during the infancy stages of their branding and others were well established. What we noticed was, our clients were being fueled by our excitement to dive into their brands and produce the results they sought us out for.
Not everyone gets the CLAV; but those clients who do, we manage them all around in their confidence, look, approach, and voice. It’s like a full-service car wash, undercarriage, wheel shine, vacuum, and air freshener included. Lol. The CLAV method is a framework for building a strong brand. These four components add up to a solid brand identity. Every client that comes to us is different. Undoubtedly there are many clients to whom we apply our handy dandy CLAV method but there is a small population of those who are already confident in their look, approach, and voice and exude confidence in their product. The confidence these cocky brands flaunt is what we aim to equip others with when we slap them with the CLAV.
As I mentioned above, many walk in the place with CONFIDENCE but may lack in other areas, such as look, approach and voice. This is where we come in. A little swag can make all the difference in the world. We take that confidence and apply it to the new look we create, the approach we plan out, and the voice we craft. An example of a brand we’ve worked with that has extreme confidence is Scotch Porter, a men’s grooming product line. When we began our relationship with Scotch Porter, they had confidence in their product and what they were on a mission to accomplish. In crafting the perfect look, approach and voice to communicate the SP brand message, their confidence went through the roof, leaving very little to be desired. Our work on their brand identity has made them whole by giving them a new tier of confidence, confidence in their look, confidence in the approach, and confidence in their voice, allowing them the space to flourish as a premier men’s grooming line.
Moving along to LOOK, this has proven to be a common struggle for a lot of brands. Many struggle with creating a cohesive look that gives them the distinction they are seeking. Leading up to a recent political election, we worked with a local politician, Councilman Jerry Guarino. His look at the time he hired us left much to be desired. There was no evidence of any effort put into the look of his brand (image), a critical component in solidifying his candidacy. We took the time to craft a look that expressed the confidence he already had in his political platform. Needless to say he won the election. Afterall presentation is everything. Although we don’t have a correlation analysis to prove it, we can say with great confidence that the look we equipped Councilman Guarino with played a large role in securing his seat at the table. We gave him a look that matched his voice and confidence, something the people could believe in.
APPROACH is critical, it’s the plan. Failing to plan is planning to fail. A brand can have confidence, a great look, and a voice that communicates the brand but all of these minus an approach that works is like having peanut butter and no jelly, bread and no butter, spring roll and no duck sauce (I like sauce), or all looks and no substance. Venturez, a record label we’ve been CLAV-ing out, came to us with vision, an approach that just needed some finessing and of course some correlating C, L, and V. Venturez had some knowledge on the direction they were going in and an idea of how to get there but just needed a comprehensive identity and some coaching surrounding their approach and how to mesh their approach with this new identity.
We recently finished a project, thefivewards.com, a HYCIDE magazine project. This project resulted in a resounding VOICE and overall confidence, culminated in the site we developed for them, showcasing the look and approach we meticulously crafted. For a project like this, mission heavy and community oriented, their voice is essential, with this in mind, we made sure the voice we brought out hit every necessary pitch and frequency.
In the delivery of proposals and pitches, we developed and continue to develop looks that WOW, utilizing approaches that work. Our style of active communication with our clients has resulted in strategic plans that lay out phases and actions that we get behind and our clients have no trouble believing in. In developing an identity for their brands and an approach for delivery and engagement, our clients subsequently develop a brand voice that speaks in tandem with their newly crafted look and approach. Kind of like the first day of school, you roll up in the place with your new outfit and fresh kicks, ready to flex on cats, that’s the swag our clients walk away with. So to recap, remember:
If a dope brand is what you desire…
Try spittin that CLAV Method fire.
Confidence in your Look, Approach and Voice
will make sure you never feel a void.
drops mic…
HOW TO RE-BRAND A PRODUCT: BK Chicken Fries
When a brand is reshaping how to sell one of its products, they usually come up with a strategic marketing plan to have it compete with other rival brands. For example, fast food chain Burger King not only gave chicken nuggets a cooler name by calling them chicken fries, but they re-branded this product making it fun, yet nondisruptive once it re-entered the market.
According to Food Business News,
“Comparable sales at Burger King increased 5.4% for the year and 3.9% for the quarter on a constant currency basis, behind successful new product launches and promotions, including new Chicken Fries.”
Now that’s how you re-brand a product and take it back to market. “I’m just saying.”