Fresh, inspired client work comes from staying excited. What happens when you don’t limit yourself to a particular skillset or vertical? If you’re Strategic Insights, it means you stay excited. And eventually, you build a reputation as “the agency to call when you need [insert your kind of work] work.”
If you feel a bit of “brand whiplash” as you view our work samples, that’s by design. But if you look closer, you’ll detect a thread (more like steel cable, to be honest) that runs through each and every project or campaign we produce. Regardless of the industry, audience, product or service, we build everything on a solid strategic foundation. In the haste to “get something out there,” marketers often skip this vital step to their detriment, and end up sounding and looking like everyone else.
By remaining “generalists,” we avoid the trap of growing comfortably stale in one space, keeping our perspective fresh and objective. When you never know what challenges each day will hold, you’re still capable of being surprised. And it’s that sense of wonder we aim to bring to our clients’ brands and marketing messages.
If you can see it, it can benefit from graphic design. Even if you can read it, design is at work in the form of a font. We factor in every aspect of a brand’s tone, personality and heritage so the end product is fully realized. Nature abhors a vacuum, and marketing campaigns can’t function in one. Everything we produce is done so with intent. Typeface choices, point sizes, photos, even the colors of the buttons on your website: chosen deliberately to elicit impact and action.
Screens are addictive. It’s not our job to reduce the amount of time people spend looking at them, but it is our job to make sure they’re looking at something interesting. While it may take more time and require more investment to produce a 2-minute video walking your customers through the details of a new product, your ROE (return-on-eyeballs) will be vastly higher. We are an incomprehensibly busy species, and if we can offload some effort, we will. Because it appeals to more senses, video is simply a more powerful medium. Overlook it at your peril.
Websites are no longer merely “nice to have.” Without one, you’re not in business. You’re that tree that fell in a deserted forest with no one around to hear, react or shred it into mulch. And once you have one, don’t you dare ignore it. Neglected websites will work as hard for you as you do for them–not much. Without regular, relevant updates, search engines (and ultimately, the people relying on them) will regard your business as stagnant and out of touch. Because we’ve been designing and building them since the dark days of animated gifs, our websites employ all the latest best practices, from UI to UX.
For more about our approach to websites, have a look at our free ebook, Fast, Friendly and Findable.
What happens when your big city agency needs a week to design a flyer? Or your in-house design team is on her honeymoon? If you’re a marketing director under pressure, you call us. We’ll work with your brand style guide and direction to deliver what you need, when you need it. And because we like to surpass expectations, we’ll include a measure of visual flair at no extra charge.