I recently came across an interesting study that looks at the power of brand from a little different angle. Anyone reading this is probably familiar with the concept of the placebo effect. The subject of countless articles, it was first defined over 60 years ago. It identified the important role that perception plays in physical […]
You only need to do two things to have a great website. 1). Make shopping your website as intuitive and simple as possible. 2) Tell the story of your brand and your unique selling proposition, without interfering with the above. Simple, right? Riiiiiiiiiiiight… In search of that elusive combination, I found three eCommerce websites that tell their story […]
Sadly, we’ve lost a couple more music legends recently—Merle Haggard and Prince. It’s the latter I’d like to talk about. There is no doubt that Prince was a musical genius. And there are actually many branding lessons we could learn from him. The importance of being different, of standing out, of being true to who […]
What does it take to make a great catalog cover? Do you have the backbone to put some big ideas into practice?
$#%^#@*%)! I recently changed to a new phone service provider and within hours of my new phone number being connected, I started receiving sales calls for the “owner of the house.” Yes, within hours!!! This is direct marketing on a steroids with a healthy dose of rudeness. I was not offered any “opt-out” of marketing […]
Is the location of your business important to your brand message? Are you using it to your advantage? Consider a brand like Starbucks, who made Seattle (where the brand originated) part of their brand story. Need help finding your brand message? Email our CEO, Lois Brayfield, or call 913-236-2988.
The research stopped me cold. And I seriously thought our team had it right … we didn’t. Let me back up to the beginning. At J.Schmid one of our mantras is that catalogs should DISRUPT, DELIGHT and DRIVE. I’d like to focus on the latter. Catalogs should DRIVE customers or prospects to DO something. In […]
Well…literally almost everything. Their search engine has indexed over 30 trillion websites and executes billions of searches each day. “Google” is now used as a verb, joining the ranks of brands-become-eponymous terms like Kleenex, Band-aid and Frisbee. So what can Google teach us about human behavior online? Literally almost anything. Let’s do a thought experiment: […]
https://youtu.be/5bJL7wL_Y14 Ever wonder what it takes to manage a photo shoot? Take a peek at the Relax the Back photo-shoot for the 2016 catalog. Thanks to the talented Joe Carlson for filming this (www.joecarlsonstudio). And thanks to Jadie Card for her excellent Art Direction! Interested in receiving the catalog? Sign up here: http://buff.ly/1SRIjzr
