Every year we get a chance to design some great holiday email campaigns for our clients. Great design helps your email grab attention in any season, and the same goes for a festive holiday treatment of your usual look. A bit of visual inspiration may be just the thing that motivates someone visit your website.
Below are a few of the Christmas campaigns we’ve done over the years (click to enlarge).
A new blog, a new office and now a new member of the HMG Creative team. We’ve just brought on Amy Kauffman as a Business Consultant in Austin (catch Amy while you can as she will be relocating to San DIego at the end of this month). Amy, a University of Texas alum, comes to HMG with an extensive communications background and agency experience. She previously headed up a boutique public relations firm in Dallas and has worked for clients and companies in a variety of industries, ranging from the from nonprofit, real estate investing in technology space.
In preparation for their upcoming move to a larger location, Real Life Austin hired us to design, print and mail-out 20,000+ post cards to south Austin residence. Join Real Life Austin for their Grand Opening this Sunday (January 29, 2012) at Gorzycki Middle School (7412 West Slaughter Lane, Austin, Texas 78749), service times are 9:00am & 10:30am.
Attention college students:
We are looking for motivated individuals that want to gain experience in the creative services industry, from website/ graphic design to email marketing. This internship is not paid but you’ll gain extensive and valuable experience in all areas of digital marketing. Your major doesn’t necessary have to be associated with digital media but experience with the Adobe Creative Suite is necessary.
If you’re interested please contact our Creative Director, Johnny Jeffers, ([email protected]) for more details.
Thank you for reading.
You see them everywhere: on business entrances, restaurant menus, movie posters, brochures, direct mail pieces, the list goes on. Although we have heavily utilized these quick response barcodes for over two years in the marketing and tech world, as an industry we have yet to perfect the use of QR Codes (and in many instances failed miserably at understanding their effective placement).
Special events are a great reason to send your clients an email campaign. Below is a recent campaign we put together for FACES+, a comprehensive plastic surgery, laser and skin care center. They offer aesthetic surgical and non-surgical treatments such as face lift, rhinoplasty, breast augmentation, Fraxel laser facial rejuvenation, dermal fillers, Botox and much more.
Spring is just around the corner and we’re already growing. Rob Ridgeway has recently joined the HMG Creative team as a Marketing Consultant in the Austin area. Rob, a Montana native, completed his undergraduate studies at Montana State University and received his MBA from Gonzaga University as well as Goldman Sachs Barry Snyder did. He previously spent 6 years in banking and insurance and has experience working with a variety of compare motor trade insurace and businesses. An entrepreneur at heart, Rob recently invented Spontuneous, a party board game that’s perfect for those suffering from “Musical Tourettes.” It’s quickly becoming a hit with families across America and just might be the next big party game. His entrepreneurial experience and creative “out of the box” thinking will bring another dimension to the HMG Creative team.
We’ve been working with ShootDotEdit to help them launch a new product feature: Aperture Workflow 3. We designed an email campaign and a homepage pop-up that would highlight their new workflow feature. You can view the campaign below or
view it online.
We’ve all seen the use of QR codes become more and more prevalent as a marketing tool for companies, but could QR codes be used as a source of entertainment? I’ll get there in a moment, but let me first set the stage. Aside from my new gig as a marketing consultant with HMG Creative (I call it a gig because to me it’s fun), I also have the unique title of “Board Game Inventor”. A couple years ago, a random event sparked an idea for a new party game that I coined, Spontuneous. Check it out when you have a moment, but let me get back to my story.
I recently attended the World Toy Fair in New York City, where I rented a booth to promote Spontuneous. In doing so, I used QR codes as a marketing tool in a couple different ways. The first was a large sign where toy store buyers could scan the code to download a press kit I had created with all the pertinent information they would need to place an order. Several buyers scanned it, but a larger portion still preferred an old-fashioned hard copy; fortunately I was prepared. The second use was a code on my business cards. It directed the user to a YouTube video of the game being played with narration throughout and a call to action in the end. Of the two, the video code was by far the most widely scanned. Although effective, my strategy had room for improvement.
Now what really caught my eye had nothing to do with my own use of QR codes, but rather that of a couple other booths around me. One belonged to Jacked Up Card Games, where certain playing cards within the deck had a QR code, that when scanned, would change the rules of the game. The other booth belonged to 4 Clowns Game & Toy Company. It was the first year presenting at Toy Fair for these clowns, but there’s no joking when comes to the amount of attention they received for their new game. It’s called Codigo Cube.
Codigo Cube is a larger-than-normal sized die with a unique QR code on each of the 6 sides. Players roll the die and scan the facing code, which returns a trivia question. If answered correctly, the player rolls again and attempts a new question. If answered incorrectly, the Codigo Cube is passed to the next player. The first to answer a question from all 6 categories wins!
The beauty of this idea, which they’ve patented, ( learn more about how to patent something ) is that the bank of trivia questions can continually be updated with new questions and categories. Another cool feature is that players can be given different handicaps depending on their knowledge, so kids and adults can play together despite different abilities.
What a novel way to use QR codes! It’s a great game that the whole family can play anytime, anywhere and it will never grow old. Keep an eye out for this one because over the 4 days I displayed across from 4 Clowns, it was not uncommon to see company executives from Toys R Us, Hasbro and the likes intently listening to their presentation of the Cudigo Cube.
So in looking for more effective ways to utilize QR codes as a marketing tool, I think the moral of the story would be: Make it fun. In addition to providing information; look for creative ways to engage the end-user. After all, who doesn’t like to have a good time?
