One Brief. More Possibilities. Less Pass the Parcel…
Anyone contemplating using several different suppliers will know how quickly things get complicated!
Marketing projects have an irritating habit of growing arms and legs.
A business might come to us because it needs a brochure. Fair enough. But that brochure may need some new photography, a little copywriting, artwork preparing for print and perhaps a digital version for the website. Then there’s an exhibition coming up, so the same creative needs adapting for a pull-up banner and a display stand. Somebody decides the sales team could do with some leave-behinds, and suddenly we’re producing postcards or flyers as well.
None of that is particularly unusual. The reality is that marketing rarely arrives in the tidy little boxes that websites put it into. A print job becomes a design job. A design project needs a website. An event needs signage, printed material and something useful for people to take away. A direct mail campaign needs creative, data, print and fulfilment. One thing tends to lead rather naturally to another.
That’s why having access to a broader range of skills can make life considerably easier. At Wodehouse we work across graphic design, direct mail, web, social media, digital and litho print, leaflet distribution and wider marketing support. The point isn’t that every client needs all of those things. Most don’t. It’s that when a project starts expanding - as projects have a habit of doing - you don’t necessarily have to start looking for three more suppliers.
Less passing the parcel
Anyone who has commissioned marketing work involving several different suppliers will know how quickly things can become complicated. One company has the artwork. Somebody else is printing it. Another supplier is producing the signage. The website is being handled somewhere else. The person supplying promotional merchandise wants a different file format. Somebody has an old version of the logo. Nobody is entirely sure whether the red is supposed to be that red.
Before long, the person who originally wanted a few things producing has accidentally acquired a second job as a project manager.
There are times when using different specialists absolutely makes sense, but there are also plenty of projects where keeping more of the work together makes things simpler. The design can carry consistently from the printed page to the exhibition stand, from the mailing piece to the landing page and from the business card to the branded bag somebody walks away with. If something changes halfway through, everyone involved is already working from the same information.
That’s not particularly glamorous marketing thinking, admittedly. It is, however, enormously useful.
Sometimes the brief is simply: “Can you sort this?”
It may not be the most sophisticated brief ever written, but we rather like it.
Clients are busy. They don’t necessarily want to become experts in paper weights, print finishes, exhibition systems, mailing formats, merchandise minimum quantities or the difference between various large-format materials. They generally just want the thing to look right, on-brand, arrive when it is supposed to and not create six unnecessary problems along the way.
A fair proportion of good service is simply removing those problems.
We can work from an established set of brand guidelines or help create an identity from scratch, then carry that identity across the different things a business needs. Printed material, signage, exhibition graphics, digital work and merchandise can all start from the same place rather than slowly drifting apart as different suppliers interpret the brand in slightly different ways.
Although we’re well known for our work with charities and the public sector, Wodehouse has a proud history of working across a much broader mix of sectors. Over the years our clients have ranged from heavy engineering and construction to leisure, hospitality and professional services, each bringing very different audiences, challenges and requirements. That variety has always been part of what keeps the work interesting — and it means the same design thinking, practical experience and attention to detail we bring to charity campaigns is just as at home in a commercial environment.
And after more than twenty years of handling design, print and marketing projects, we’ve encountered most of the usual surprises — including deadlines that were apparently perfectly reasonable yesterday and have somehow become urgent this morning.
We’ll get it done. Is what clients most need to hear. There’s a mantra here of say YES, then think of the solution.
Good design still sits in the middle of it
Breadth only really works if there is something holding it all together, and for us that has always been design. Whether the end result is a website, a brochure, a mailing pack, a banner, a sign, a T-shirt or something destined to spend the next three years living in somebody’s desk drawer, it still represents the organisation whose name is on it. It needs to look right, communicate clearly and feel recognisably part of the same brand, whatever form it happens to take.
That’s why we don’t particularly see print, digital, exhibitions and merchandise as completely separate worlds. They are simply different places where somebody encounters your organisation, and every one of those encounters contributes to the impression they take away. A beautifully designed brochure loses something if the exhibition stand beside it looks unrelated; equally, a great-looking website can only do so much if the printed material being handed out tells a slightly different story.
Across print, design and web, our job is to bring out the best in your business or cause and carry that thinking through wherever your brand appears. Sometimes that means creating something completely new; at other times it simply means making sure everything you already have works a little harder and hangs together rather better.
Before adding another name, another email chain and another moving part to the next project, it may be worth asking what your existing creative partner can do.
Sometimes the easiest way to simplify a job isn’t to find another supplier. It’s to discover that the people you already know can do rather more than you thought.
What can we help you with?
We love good design and aesthetics and don't feel it should cost the earth either. Across all areas of business and the charity sector Wodehouse have delighted our clients with graphic design, high quality print and direct mail solutions since 2003.