(Express Read- 5 minutes)
A new era is upon us and this is the time to challenge convention and adopt different methods of doing things. But how exactly can businesses do this?
Examine the 10 DWHQ methods to help you move your business through design.
Check out our works to explore more ideas for your next marketing campaign!
#1 Forget about Content. Focus on Context (Content VS Context)
What’s more important? In today’s fast-moving, ever-scrolling social media world, the fastest way to set an impression upon your audience is through a bold headline, a captivating image, or a strong keyword.
Don’t get us wrong. Content is still king because you still need to convey your products and services through a blog post, videos, sell sheets, product descriptions, case studies, etc. . But delivering the right marketing message to the right person at precisely the right moment is the key today, and that is the practice of Context Marketing.
At DWHQ, we emphasise context through detailed design touches - bold colours, strong font highlights, and striking keywords.
#2 Making the Intangible, Tangible
A brand that masters the deployment of intangible services is known to be well-positioned and usually outperform their peers. Top brands are investing 2.6 times more in intangibles while the gap between them increases to between 5 and 7 times in sectors such as financial services where competitive advantage is anchored on knowledge.
Regardless of the sector, brands that invest more in intangibles grow more, and likewise, execution is key.
Incorporating a hefty load of design thinking paired with small design touches, we represented DHL through a series of ‘the walking man’ icons and transformed their services to suit every festive celebration and event occasion.
#3 Navigating into the Future
In today’s multichannel, multi-device world, the stuff of science fiction is fast becoming fact. The boundary between real and virtual worlds is a blur. And we can be somewhere and then everywhere in a single click or swipe.
You can now navigate and draw us all a map into your visualised future through a built-up space gallery or transform a digital space into an immersive user experience with videos and AR technology.
At DWHQ, we move your business dreams into a physical design reality.
#4 Prolong the lifespan
Rather than creating collateral solely around a limited number of customer groups and time frames, consider all the people your business touches - from marginalised employees and underserved consumers to members of the local community.
With a clever design, your brand is transformed into high-functioning collateral equipped with a long lifespan of multiple usages and distributed to people whom you never thought could reach.
With the Lexus Chinese New Year festive packet, we designed the red packets holder into a prosperity greeting card and thereafter, can be reused as an auspicious door hanger to welcome the fortune of the new year.
#5 Talk about the BIG Wins
Most people favor modesty and humility over gloating. But in the world of branding and marketing, blowing our horns is key to survival and success. In fact, it can be transformed into a powerful message that makes your customers look up and start talking about your business.
One way is to encapsulate the essence of all your big wins into a dynamic and impactful Key Visual. Voila! You don’t even need to say it out in words.
At DWHQ, we understand your business idea and translate it into bold key visuals to support your product proposition.
#6 Engage a Professional
For brands, design agencies in the world play a crucial role. It is quite important for an organization that wants to grow its business.
If organisations haven’t employed some professional agencies to take care of their marketing strategies, they end up being struggling with the promotion of the product.
Let the professional handle the details. When you hire an agency you’re essentially hiring people – their expertise, experience, and service. By combining creative talent and humanity, we can help you make your products, services, and brands exciting and relevant to the life of the people.
Our expertise stems beyond conventional design campaigns. Here, we worked with DW Workshop to conceptualise the brand design at the very start of their business idea. We took part in every step of its business touchpoints - from curating the customer’s experience and planning the space design layout to enhancing operations through design thinking.
#7 Clever Little Ideas
Telling your story does not need to be complicated or confusing. The job is to find or create a relevant truth and communicate it in an intelligent and fresh way. By integrating design thinking into the thought thinking process, the simplest ideas will transform your business into a world of possibilities.
Do not underestimate the power of a single line for it can transform into personalised messages that create a positive impact on your customers.
#8 Intentional Associations
Associations are much more powerful if you make them consciously and intentionally. Intentional associations are known as a technique to improve memory by dragging the whole network of memory items into conscious awareness.
The most distinctive trait is to use images as associational cues. The images that we create are clear and direct to capture the essence of what we want the customers to remember.
What associations do you see here? Our creative minds expand from a bowl of rice to a gold mountain (金山), a bountiful harvest, a delicious treat, a value-for-money meal, a place for friends to gather, casual dining, and the list goes on!
#9 Repurpose your Designs
Convention is for squares and there is madness to our methods. To produce cost-effective collateral, you have to plan ahead. Driven by design and the backend intention to increase cost efficiency, we create designs where the main structures can be fabricated in bulk while leaving a section to be personalised according to seasons and promotions.
Same design, different festive usage takes a few design planning to incorporate. Ultimately it paid off with Nespresso Corporate Gift Box- with festive inserts printed in small batches to greet customers at different seasons and yet achieve greater cost savings through its main bulk purchase.
#10 Cuteness overloaded
Don’t ever underestimate the power of cuteness. Even big corporate brands ride on this strategy by shrinking their mega-huge products into desktop premiums that create a conversation.
We had fun shrinking the humongous Canon office copier into a desktop-sized post-it pad. This mini version hands out paper too!
