As a BtoB Top Agency four years in a row, Hodgson/Meyers is used to getting down to business for its roster of software and technology companies. However, recently the shop put its resources to work for homeless young adults of the Northwest.

As part of a pro bono effort for ClimbOn—an organization that provides job opportunities for homeless youth—the H/M team re-energized the brand. Included in the project were a new logo, color palette, position line, business stationery and Web page.ClimbOn works with YouthCare to create partnerships with the Northwest business community to provide career counseling and exploration, job referrals and placements to help homeless young adults move toward self-sufficiency. To sum up ClimbOn’s mission, Hodgson/Meyers developed the position line: Jobs for youth. Hope for life. By interlocking the words “Climb” and “On,” H/M created a logo that suggests partnership and advancement.

Said ClimbOn’s Director of Youth Services, Bill Northey, “We couldn’t be happier with the materials—and the thinking—that Hodgson/Meyers provided. Their work has captured what ClimbOn is about, and has provided inspiration for all involved with the program.”

We beg to differ, Bill. It’s ClimbOn that provided the inspiration for H/M. And continues to provide hope for the homeless youth of our area.

What happens when two giants in the airline industry get together? Well, this.

The United name stays, but the iconic red and blue “tulip” design is no more. Created by legendary designer Saul Bass in the 1970’s, the United logo was simple, elegant, and instantly recognizable. The fact that the logo remained fresh and relevant decades later is a testament to the strength of the design. Please take a moment now to mourn.

What we’re left with is the United name and essentially the Continental logo. The resulting identity makes no effort to break new ground, and instead already seems tired and stale. The Continental globe has some brand equity, yes, but it’s also a symbol that’s long been a commodity in the logo world. Hardly fitting for what is now the largest airliner in the world.

Perhaps this is just a stop-gap branding exercise, and we’ll be surprised by an innovative new identity down the road.  Time will tell.

You might think that there’s nothing happening in Detroit but Hodgson/Meyers has been hired by Fenton, Michigan’s Webasto N.A. for brand, naming, and product launch work around the company’s environmentally-friendly heating and cooling products for transportation industry verticals. Webasto is an international leader in the design and manufacture of anti-idling technology products for heavy duty trucks, commercial trucks, buses, public safety vehicles, off-highway equipment, military vehicles, and trains.

Senior Designer Charlie Worcestor designed this logo for technology company UC4. Check out the before and after.UC4 Software is the global leader in Intelligent Service Automation. The company combines robust automation technology with real-time intelligence to forecast, visualize and automate complex IT and business processes across computing environments, from physical to virtual to cloud.

Read more about Hodgson Meyers’ work in re-launching UC4′s brand.

The answer is a lot. In fact, color can be everything. Just where would Tiffany’s be without blue, UPS without brown, or Coca-Cola without red? Not only does each of these brands make effective use of color, they own that color in their respective categories, hands-down. Granted, it took millions of advertising dollars and years of brand impressions to do it. So what does that mean for businesses that don’t have the marketing budget of a small country? Can your brand still use color to stand out from your competitors? Why, yes of course!

Feeling Blue (or Red)

Here’s a fantastic graphic originally published in Wired magazine that illustrates the color landscape of corporate America. Although a little dated (note the Enron logo), it does a great job of showing just how concentrated the space is for brands using red or blue as their primary color. It also becomes obvious where there might be opportunities for differentiation.

Take a moment to think about where your brand falls on the color map of your specific battleground. Are you swimming in a competitive sea of corporate IBM blue?

Don’t Just Use Color, Own It
Here’s an example of how Hodgson/Meyers used color as a strong brand differentiator for Applied Systems, the largest and most progressive company in the insurance management technology industry. Applied Systems’ previous brand used a traditional royal blue and bright red color system. Ok, not a bad thing in itself — however, most of their competitors and a host of other companies in peer industries were using a similar color palette. Not good if you’re trying to stand out.

As a result, H/M proposed the current warm yellow as one way to break away from the pack and to represent Applied’s focus on cultivating strong customer relationships, as well as their status as an innovative, forward-thinking industry leader.

The new yellow color was designed to be an integral part of the brand, and was applied (pardon the pun) on everything from the corporate logo to promotional buttons. The result is a fresh look that re-energizes the brand and signifies its status as an aggressive, vibrant company.

What do you think?
What companies, brands or marketing campaigns do you think use color as a strong brand asset?  Comment here.

In an admittedly non-projectable examination of one household mailbox, “research” shows that, with five pieces of direct mail a day, the average homeowner receives more than 1,500 items of, for the most part, unrequested mail a year.

With so many letters and catalogs destined for the recycling bin, woe to the direct mail that does not immediately capture the reader’s attention. At Hodgson/Meyers, we’ve found that sometimes the best way to put the wow in your DM is to put the meow in your DM.

Enter the Fat Cat.

Illustrating the problem: Here kitty kitty

With service in 16 states in the southeast, Windstream Communications provides phone and Internet packages to business and residential markets. On the consumer side, Windstream often found itself up against more established, yet more expensive cable providers. To help portray those companies as being more costly, we represented them collectively as, you guessed it, the Fat Cat.

A casting call was put out for filled-out felines to…actually PhotoShop magic was responsible for creating the centerpiece character. Gold eyes gleaming and pleasantly plump, the animal quickly caught the fancy of H/M employees, earning such endearments as Phat C, Heavy C and Puff Catty. Not only did Fat Cat stand out as illustrated, he perfectly illustrated how cable companies profit from charging their customers higher prices.

Windstream vs. Cable TV: A tail of five kitties
Originally scheduled to star in a single direct mailing, the Fat Cat so resonated with Windstream—and its customers—that the client requested a series of five pieces to showcase the savings Windstream offered over its competition.

With Fat Cat soaking in a tub of money, one mailer featured the headline: Are you getting soaked by those Fat Cats at your cable company? Another featured the Cat sporting a diamond-encrusted gold dollar sign collar (think of it as feline bling) in front of a private jet with the headline, Is your cable company getting fat off you?

Fat results
Windstream notes that the first Fat Cat mailing pulled 55% more responses than their average pieces. Which shows that Puff Catty was the purr-fect DM solution.

Depending upon the source, it’s been reported that consumers receive on average anywhere from 250 to 3,000 marketing impressions in a single day. Even taking a low figure of 100 impressions per day adds up to 36,500 a year!

So, if you’re an advertiser, how do you stand out? In the case of Hodgson/Meyers client CSG Systems. Inc. – a customer interaction management solution company – the answer was to come out fighting. Or at least to wear boxing gloves.

How to stand out in the direct mail crowd

In touching more than half of all U.S. households, CSG helps companies such as Comcast, DISH and Time Warner with billing and customer interaction solutions. When the time came to introduce a new product offering, CSG wanted to reach approximately 100 key decision makers in the cable and satellite TV industry.

With such a narrow, targeted audience, a direct mail approach seemed the most appropriate vehicle. However, these influential executives are also the same targets of most every other technology company as well. Thus, the challenge became to create marketing materials that would not immediately be placed in the round file, under W for wastebasket.

As the marketing agency for CSG, we needed to think big and think outside the box. In this case, thinking big meant size. And thinking outside the box had to do with thinking about what went inside the box.

Which brings us back to boxing gloves.

Adapt the mail strategy to the marketing strategy

Cable and satellite marketing managers face the never-ending problem of customer churn, people who leave one provider for another. CSG has a way to help providers eliminate churn with a better customer management solution. We recommended sending life-size professional boxing gloves along with product information to the target audience, allowing CSG to figuratively and literally give marketing executives the tools to effectively fight churn.

The sheer size of the direct mail piece (7.5” x 10.5” x 12.5”) received immediate attention. Inside a handsome box, copy and layout framed a personalized message as if announcing a heavyweight championship bout.

Box copy and Everlast boxing gloves were customized with each individual recipient’s name. These decision makers were encouraged to “K.O. churn with CSG customer intelligence solutions.” In so doing, they’d be able to build strong customer relationships, retain subscribers more effectively and enhance the value of each customer interaction.

Big package. Big Idea. In short, a real knockout!

(Customized boxes for the CSG mailer were provided by MasterCraft.)

How do you hang onto sides of trees?
I have special feet. They have sharp claws of course. But I also have two toes that go forward and two that go back. It’s like having a couple of thumbs to help me grip with. My tail feathers help me too. They are very stiff, and I lean on them for support, like a tripod.

How do you find food?
When I hear an insect under tree bark I peck a hole into the bark with my beak, which being long, straight, and pointy is good for making holes. My tongue is extremely long and sticky and sharp, perfect for impaling bugs, grabbing ants, and licking sap. Because my bill is straight, it is also good for collecting nuts and berries.

How fast is your beak moving when you’re drumming?
Typically between 14.5-16.8 beats per second.

Doesn’t all that hard pecking give you a headache?
I have an extra-thick skull, so it doesn’t hurt.

What’s your favorite food?
From trees – beetles and carpenter ants. From birdfeeders – peanut butter. Love that stuff!

Questions for Spike? Ask here.

Gary Meyers
President

We get asked (challenged might be a better term) by non-marketing folks, such as CEO’s and CFO’s in B2B environments, how to measure ROI for a company brand. Why bother with brand? How’s it make us money? Why the heck should anyone invest in brand building in this lousy economy? Especially a B2B company?

Fair questions.  Think brands don’t have prescribed value?

Top brands are worth millions.

In a bidding war and negotiation in 1998, Volkswagen paid $780 million for Rolls-Royce Motor Cars. But BMW got the Rolls-Royce brand name and logo for $66 million. According to the New York Times, analysts “quickly declared BMW the real winner of the takeover brawl because the name is considered by many to be Rolls-Royce’s most valuable asset.”

Or billions.
The 2008 BusinessWeek/Interbrand Best Global Brands ranking, created by BusinessWeek and Interbrand, ranks the top 100 global brands, and is typically published every September.

How are rankings determined? Interbrand says it evaluates brand value “in the same way any other corporate asset is valued — on the basis of how much it is likely to earn for the company in the future.” Interbrand uses “a combination of analysts’ projections, company financial documents, and its own qualitative and quantitative analysis to arrive at a net present value of those earnings.” Interestingly, Interbrand adds that brand values are “based on data collected during the 12 months prior to June 30, 2008. This means that more recent developments, including the troubles at Merrill Lynch and AIG, are not factored into the brand valuations.
”

Read more…

Gary Meyers
President

Red Roars!

Here’s recent work from Hodgson/Meyers for WatchGuard Technologies. This campaign was designed to give WatchGuard positioning presence and marketing personality in the crowded network security industry comprised of many competitors with “me-too” propositions. WatchGuard is known for its distinctive red hardware.

We developed the campaign positioning platform expressed here.

Get red. Get secured.

Then we created the red animal ad campaign that WatchGuard is using in print, interactive, and trade show environments. The campaign is also running as backlit display ads in major airports around the world, such as the one below in the United terminal at San Francisco International Airport (thanks to Jason Frummet, our Senior Account Director for snapping this photo with his iPhone for us).

Here’s what our client, Margaret Liddiard, Director of Marketing Communications for WatchGuard Technologies, says,

“This campaign is the most memorable one I’ve worked on in many years. We were searching for a way to make WatchGuard really stand out in a noisy, crowded B2B tech market, and this campaign is helping us do that with the catchy tag phrase and arresting images. And it has been enthusiastically adopted throughout the globe by our field marketing teams and partners. WatchGuard is on the move in the market place, and our Get red. Get Secured. campaign is contributing to our growing brand awareness.”

Gary Meyers
President