Identity: Bold and Playful

How do you create a new brand when the old brand is based on a childhood toy that the client loves?

To keep a personal approach (while creating a bold and recognizable identity), we created a silhouette of the iconic sewing machine toy and added a knitting needle to the baseline to promote her two areas of expertise. The rounded font is easy to read and playful, too.

Caro even liked out alts and went with the circle version for her store and (possible) future product logos.

Website Design: Fun and Informative

To reveal her new identity, Caro also wanted a website re-design. Originally, she just has a simple TypePad powered template that featured little customization. The new site was to be a CMS website where she could post thoughts, tutorials, showcase her products and interact with friends and clients. Our overall goal with the design was showcase a wide range of content on the home page without overwhelming a visitor.

To enable a more robust set of features, the new site is built in WordPress. (See our previous post about why we love WP.) We approached the design by utilizing a ‘magazine-style’ template called Arthemia.

This magazine style layout displays a main article with thumbnails for latest news, a small side bar with the latest product info, blurbs of the latest posts, category browsing, ad space, Social Media integration with Twitter and a widget-ready area for RSS feeds. The main Splityarn site linkes to her store, RSS feeds, info about Splityarn, and her full photo gallery from Flickr. (She’s an avid photographer.)

Store Design: Powered by Big Cartel

Splityarn uses BigCartel to power online shoping. This is our first time using BigCartel and we love it – you can create you own store, upload product photos and text, set discount codes, add sale and clearance items, manage inventory and you can customize one of their templates or design your own using their API. They help integrate with Paypal to process your order payments too.

Thanks, Caro. We can’t wait to watch your brand gain even more momentum.

Around 240,000 people will benefit from the most recent Annual Appeal from World Bicycle Relief. If you don’t know them, WBR is a smart and well-run non-profit that provides sustainable transportation to help people go farther, carry more and cut their travel time considerably.

You can see our full case study here.

A lot of hard work and strategy went into this endeavor – a true team effort between Stalelife and the Communications and Development groups at WBR. Our approach was integrated with old and new tactics, and the results will make us stronger for years to come.

In the end, we surpassed initial goals by 25%, raised the total donation amount and nearly doubled the amount of advocates on the WBR lists. But most important, we helped the group that helps so many. And that feels good.

Public perception might not matter to a super established brand like IBM – wait, no, they really want people to like their products and services too.

Mid-sized companies, they need it.
Same with the SMBs.

So how can you improve perception? How can you show yourself as a company that cares, a business that has a human side that makes prospects and competitors say out loud “you know what, I really like them.”

Try social media.

It can be tricky – there are a lot of rules to it. Your presence has to be fun and upfront, caring, compassionate and you’ll need to contribute to your community. Your product or service must be up-to-par and able to withstand criticism (sounds like a general rule to me).

But the end results far outweigh the budget – social media is cheap and should be apart of your marketing plan. Especially if you’d like to find brand advocates who tell their friends why they enjoy what you bring to the table.

It’s almost like FREE advertising.

Here are some additional tips:

• Track your campaigns. All major blogging software can provide results on FREE Google Analytics pages. Plus sites like LinkedIN, Facebook, YouTube and Twitter also have tracking or search available. You can even create links that people can share with others, and you can track the usage.

• Let people comment and talk about you. Think about cultivating, not controlling. Encourage discussions on this two-way street.

• Watch the goodwill spread. It will take some time – you won’t see immediate gains. But like any part of a campaign, it needs to blossom to help build your name and your brand.

Here’s one example using something we love, the bicycle. The companies involved are MASH, an innovative cycling products company, and Mellow Johnny’s, a bike shop in Austin owned by Lance Armstrong.

Yeah, that Lance.

We’re not sure who started this conversation, but somehow these two places got together and before you know it Lance is riding a fixed-geared bike all over the city of Austin with guys from MASH. The only real sign about the shop is his hat, but it’s in there.

And once the video was up, it spread like gangbusters. Blogs. Forums. Twitter. 25,000 people saw it on YouTube. Eventually people all ended up at MASH and probably said, “what is this company?”

Now they know. And they think it’s once cool place, that’s for sure. Who knows, they probably even bought an innovative new product or signed up for email alerts.

Yeah, neither did we. That is until some of our friends on Twitter started chatting about it. Next thing you know, the local community is rallying around this great cause and supporting the Capital Area Food Bank with the HAMup TweetUP. Immediately we thought, “how can we help this social event, but with our own spin?”

A coffee’s worth of brainstorming
with Robert Gilbreath of Adomatica and several ideas rose to the top. But none stuck out as much as picking up donations on September 13th and transporting them via bicycle straight to the CAFB. Our goal is to make it as easy as possible for you to donate if you can’t make the event yourself.

There are plenty of ways you can help feed the hungry. Here are just a few:

• Collect donations in your office, church, school or social events
• Spread the word about Hunger Action Month – here are some examples of avatars people have created for their social networking sites
• Take a “Hunger is unacceptable” image and upload it here. Then share it with your friends.
• Volunteer your time at the HAMup TweetUP on 09.13
• Attend the HAMup GrillUP Happy Hour dinner at Whole Foods on 09.11
• Grab your bike and join us on 09.13 as we take a slow stroll from North Austin to South, picking up food goods along the way

If you can’t make the HAMup TweetUP – but you know that you’ll shop for groceries this week or next – let us bring some of these needed items on your behalf. We will even pick up checks made out to the CAFB.

To schedule a pickup, please email us at HAMup@stalelife.com.

Our convoy will leave from Burnet and Justin area and pick up any donation (and riders) between the highways all the way down to CAFB. If you live East of I35 or West of MOPAC and can collect in your area and join us, that would be great.

Let’s feed even more people this year while laying down less of a carbon footprint! You can make a difference in the lives of hungry Central Texans, so please consider helping out.