AARDVARK REFRESH

We’ve been a bit busy. Here’s a look at what we’ve been up to.
		Steezy Endevors Steez, a popular East Coast ski and snowboard magazine taps Aardvark. The magazine, which began in 2007, has quickly earned the respect of winter enthusiasts throughout New England. Steez may be best known for their winter sports events held at various mountain destinations, drawing huge crowds of fans and followers. Aardvark is working with the Steez staff to ramp up design of the magazine. It’s an exciting opportunity for the folks at Aardvark, especially during the summer break as we await next season! Get a closer look at Steez Magazine
		Giving Medical Some Soul American Association for Thoracic Surgery (AATS) is an international organization consisting of the world’s foremost cardiothoracic surgeons representing 35 countries throughout the World. AATS has retained Aardvark to design print and marketing communications. The first effort will focus on the 2010 Annual Meeting, a five-day medical conference bringing together world’s leading professionals to discuss the latest clinical and research efforts. View the work
		B2B Blogging Once again, Aardvark has been selected by the Greater Providence Chamber of Commerce to design the 2009 Expo website. Expo is largest Chamber-sponsored business-to-business exposition in the country, featuring more than 300 exhibitors and trade professionals. This year, Aardvark and the Chamber decided to raise the bar. Utilizing a fully customizable blogging platform, Aardvark built an interactive online community for exhibitors, presenters, and attendees. While acting as the focal point for all Expo information, the blog also incorporates other well-known social networks, such as Facebook and Flickr, dramatically increasing the Expo’s exposure and visability. Aardvark will be exhibiting at the Providence Business Expo. Come visit us at booth 901. Check out the Expo Blog
Got a new project in mind? Drop us a line at hello@aardvarkdesign.com. We would be honored to speak with you.

ORIGINALITY IS DEAD…HEY, I WAS GONNA SAY THAT!

The difference between being an original and an effective thinker.

I’ve been picking my brain all week and I’ve finally come up with a kick-ass concept for a marketing campaign. With great bravado, I show it to one of my co-workers looking for the level of admiration given off by a religious zealot. “Oh yeah. That’s just like that ad campaign that [insert your favorite brand here] ran last year.” Five minutes later I awoke from my shock induced coma, slough-fully returned to what I thought was my drawing board, but apparently is a scrapbook of other people’s ideas, and tried to keep my shoelaces in their rightful places.

Now-a-days you have a higher chance of winning the lottery than coming up with an truly original idea. That said, we as designers have had to come up with a way to cope with our near impossibility of being original.

Instead of striving for original ideas, we embrace the materials that subconsciously make up our thought process. Anything that we have come in contact with – old movies, music, literature, ad campaigns, a high school lecture – we internally reference during our bouts of creative development. The result is well-informed concepts that aren’t independent from our inspirations, but rather created by them, filtered through our personality, and squeezed into effective ideas.

Related Reading
George Lois on His Creation of the Big Idea

GETTING EMBED WITH OTHER SOCIAL NETWORKS

The dirty little secret about sharing web content.

We’ve all seen a YouTube video seemingly out of place on another website. Staring us in the face with a big, fat YouTube watermark. “Why would someone promote YouTube on their own site?” I never understood why some would use another company to display content.  That being said, I can say that I have recently become an advocate for sharing web content and embracing the power of the all-mighty watermark.

The reality is that the ability to share content between a number of social networks is one of the easiest and most powerful ways to leverage online marketing. In fact, by reading this article you’re making my point. Whether you are reading this on our blog or our company facebook page, I am using one piece of content to populate two different channels. By doing so, I am doubling my company’s exposure and reaching a much larger population of readers.

Along with sharing your own content there are many benefits to sharing other peoples content in your social outlets. First of all it gives you creditability. Sharing other peoples content demonstrates that you are active in your field and often read other blogs, watch videos, and visit websites that have the same views as you. This ability to collaborate with others is the foundation of social web. Second, it saves time and money. If you can’t say it better than someone else, why try. Endorsing the work of another author saves you the useless time of paraphrasing. Conversely, when you create a great piece of content, being endorsed by another individual gives you highly-praised exposure to a whole new audience.

SHAMELESS SELF-PROMOTION: Use the share link in our sidebar to share this article within your favorite social networks.

5 WAYS TO IMPACT YOUR EXHIBITION PERFORMANCE.

Plan Ahead – What sets your business apart? What are your top goals for the exhibition? How long does it take to print 200 tri-folds and 500 white papers? Where’s your booth? If you haven’t started to think about your strategy for the exhibition, START NOW! You should always be thinking about what will give you a competitive edge. Remember once you have an initial idea, the necessary time that it takes to critique and refine your strategy is invaluable and the more the better. Remember once you have a solid exhibiting strategy you also need TIME to produce all the supplementary materials. Allowing your company the adequate time for planning and production will yield the most promising exhibition experience.

Promote your Presence – Let people know that you’ll be there. Your commitment to exhibiting is important and must be promoted. Tell your clients, friends, prospects, and colleagues. Pre-event marketing, whether it be online or in print is a great way to draw attention to your booth. People are most likely check out a display that already has a crowd, don’t be afraid to better your odds and hopefully get the ball rolling.

Look Professional – Meaning look the part. Remember that you are the best person to endorse your brand. Also make sure that any supporting elements are well made and give of a professional image. More stuff in your booth (i.e. elaborate lighting, curved walls, or HD displays) doesn’t make you look better if people mistake your toothpaste company for the latest home theater experts and you ran out of money to have a take-away printed for your visitors.

Cl+hear Mess +age+N – Clear and concise messaging is one of the most important factors in a profitable trade-show experience. Trade shows are the business equivalent of speed dating. You have to exhibit your company’s value immediately and clearly in order to reach the highest number of prospects. It is also important to remember that this is a mostly visual message. Your display is the first impression for potential visitors. Make sure it’s sending the right message.

Channel James Dean – Being authentic will go a long way in communicating with prospective clients. The biggest danger is over-selling. Having actual conversations about common interests disarms visitors and takes them away from the land of used car salesmen. The booth is there to display your product; you are there to display the company. More important than moving product in an exhibition based environment, is fostering potential business relationships.

Social What Now?

Social Web has hit prime time. Every company and their mother is trying to decide whether they need a blog, vlog, flickr, twitter, plurk, Friendster, or that thing where you upload a picture of yourself and it tells you what loser celebrity you look like. And every design firm is publishing their own Social Web bible, with featuring the gospel according to Facebook and the psalms of Myspace. The World Wide Web has evolved into a massive transit system of communication with no route map, leaving the average marketing manager bewildered.

Relax and take a step back. We’re not trying to write the Social Networking bible according to Aardvark. In fact, it’s already been written by thousands of other organizations that have “unlocked the mystery of Social Web”, trust us, we’ve read them. We’d rather hear what you have to say.

Do you have a question about that “thing” everyone is talking about?  Have you stumbled through whitepapers and PDF downloads and come out of the mess with 6 Facebook accounts, 27 blogs and a Flickr account full of photos from your last trip to Wally World? Don’t worry we’re willing to help and it’s also not as daunting as it may seem. If you’re reading this, you have already walked face first into Social Web.

Take the next step.  Post your biggest social web conundrum  (click on the word below this article called “comments” with that little hand) and we’ll make your marketing headache disappear.

If you are an agoraphobic and the idea of receiving a response has you reaching for you keyboard disinfectant. Here are some links to our favorite PDF downloads that may already be making a mess of your desktop.

Glossary of Social Web Terms
What is Social Media courtesy of iCrossing