IBM, HP, AT&T, GE – all behemoths in their respective industries. The names are powerful and easily identifiable, even as a simple set of letters. Before they were Fortune 500 companies, however, they paid their dues as International Business Machine, Hewlett-Packard, and so on. Unfortunately, there are still no shortcuts in branding – especially in today’s crowded marketplace.

No longer as easy as ABC.
There was a time when dubbing your business something as simple as ABC Plumbing was a tricky way to get listed first within the phonebook. Unfortunately, people don’t reach for phonebooks anymore. They go to Google (over 90% of all consumers research online before making a purchase), and Google’s algorithm doesn’t settle for alphabetical order. You are more likely to earn a top search engine ranking with unique, proprietary terms that capture your brand essence and stand out from the online clutter.

A case of mistaken identity.
Sure, you are proud of the name your family gave you. You want it represented in your business title. But do you know how many organizations share that same set of initials? You may end up accidentally associated with some unwanted company. Two- and three-letter acronyms are a dime a dozen, especially in this era of txt msg shorthand and online acronyms. Some of those acronyms may also be NSFW – which is the mindshare you may have to compete with, depending on the Internet savvy of your customers. Just type that acronym into Google and see how much competition there is, and therefore, how much potential for confusion.

 Cost of creating awareness.
You want your name to have contextual meaning and positive connotations. Convenience. Power. Elegance. Value. What is it you have to offer? When you forego descriptive forms of words for abstract terms or initials, it can take a lifetime of constant reinforcement or intensive advertising efforts to bring your meaning home. Do you have the budget of an ING to introduce Americans to your brand through a clever campaign? Do you have the history of a major fast food chain to make the transition from Kentucky Fried Chicken to KFC? Opt for the more immediate payoff when naming your business, and don’t assume your customers will simply “get it.”

FDR and JFK were Franklin Delano Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy long before they became known by their monograms. It was only after they had won office – essentially, become #1 in their industry – that the media and the public began using their informal nicknames. That’s a major reason a leader like General Electric can be GE, but Two Men & a Truck (a business born in the 1980s) has to rely on something simpler, more solution-oriented. Will they be TM&T 20 years down the road? Time will tell…

If you’re looking for inspiration for naming your company, be sure to identify your brand values first. Then you can begin building a list of possibilities by playing with simple twists on dynamic verbs such as today’s tech startups, performing word association exercises and of course, consulting old reliable: a thesaurus.

Your business’s name should be easy to remember. It should be something as uniquely identifiable and as uniquely yours as your logo, tagline, URL and even phone number. And the ultimate test – if you remove any other brand elements, will your clients (or potential clients) still know what you stand for?

“We are fortunate to be experiencing a growth in our business and are happy to have Brian join our team,” Dan Holmgren, Creative Director of Imagemakers, said.

Brian John, Front End Web Developer

John, 23, is a graduate of Chanute Christian Academy and Oklahoma Wesleyan University, in Bartlesville, where he graduated Magna Cum Laude with a B.A. in Graphic Design and Marketing Dynamics. After graduation John worked in graphic and print design at Copper Cup Images and Turning Point Productions, both in Bartlesville.

“I have been trained for both graphic and web design and use the same software to design for both, so the transition to front end web development has been an easy one,” John said.

John said a cousin, who goes to school at Kansas State University, brought Imagemakers to his attention, and after going online to check them out, found the agency was looking to hire a web developer.

“After talking to Dan I knew this would be a good fit. The culture at Imagemakers is one of efficiency and productivity, and we are encouraged to push ourselves while having the freedom to be honest about what we most enjoy doing,” John said.

Another plus of joining Imagemakers is the Culture Shock benefit. After one year of full time employment, team members can apply for a grant, up to $1,500, that will help offset some of the expense of overseas travel. John loves to travel and learn about new cultures, countries and cuisines, so is excited about eventually being able to participate in this program.

“We believe that a healthy curiosity about other cultures helps feed our team members creativity and allows us all to see with new eyes, which can be a huge benefit to our clients. That’s why we encourage traveling outside of our comfort zones and want to help our team to experience that,” Holmgren said.

Imagemakers is an award winning ad agency located in Wamego, KS, offering print design, video production, and highly custom website development. They can be reached at (785) 260-0146 or through their website at www.imagemakers-inc.com.

The war that raged along the border of these two neighboring states seethed with such an intensity of violence and hatred that the echoes linger to this day. But if this relatively small area of the western frontier was the birthing ground of a conflict that would split a nation asunder, it was also the proving ground of a national healing. It was the epicenter of the rebirth of a nation – a nation that would grow to become the greatest force for freedom on earth. It was freedom’s frontier.

From a Regional Battleground to a National Heritage Area

Beginning in 1854, 7 years before the national Civil War began, anti-slavery forces in the Kansas territory were at war with pro-slavery in forces in Missouri (Kansas became a state in 1861).

Some of the most well known names from that dark era in American history came to prominence in the Kansas-Missouri Border Wars. Fiery abolitionist John Brown, leader of the Pottawatomie massacre in southeastern Kansas in 1856. Rebel raider William Quantrill, viewed by some as a bloody butcher, and by others as a Confederate hero. And veterans of Quantrill’s Raiders Jessie and Frank James and the Younger Brothers, who forged their fame after the war by continuing their lives of violence.

It’s the history of this region, so influential upon the course of national history and so little understood by most Americans, that the Freedom’s Frontier National Heritage Area seeks to preserve and make available to all. This history encompasses 41 counties of eastern Kansas and western Missouri, covering more than 30,000 square miles and drawing upon the shared stories of the nearly 3 million residents of the area.

The grassroots effort that became Freedom’s Frontier began in 2002 with just a handful of volunteers. The volunteer network eventually grew into a force of thousands of people, their work leading to president George W. Bush signing into law legislation designating Freedom’s Frontier as a National Heritage Area in 2006.

But to accomplish their goals, Freedom’s Frontier volunteers had to put to rest 150 years of animosity, prejudice, and even hate. It wasn’t easy.

“They Believed in God?”

150 years of deep-seated enmity doesn’t just disappear overnight. Though the Civil War ended long ago, the bitterness and hatred that had been generated among the Missouri-Kansas neighbors was far too intense to be dissipated by a truce. And in many cases, the hatred and distrust that many of the citizens of the neighboring states felt each for the other was passed down through the generations. “My father hated them, and my grandfather hated them” is the reason often given for lingering animosities, according to Ralph Monaco of the Jackson County Historical Society.

Long-held prejudices and misunderstandings were also passed along from parents to children. Eileen Robertson, Freedom’s Frontier staff member, was struck by the depth of her prejudice one day when she was looking at some historical artifacts. She spotted a Confederate prayer book, and thought: “They believed in God?”

But the very process of working together to bring a violent past to light helped to finally begin the healing of old wounds. “There was a little bit of animosity for a while,” said a Freedom’s Frontier volunteer. “But once we started working together, going to meetings together, talking together…and hearing their stories, it’s amazing how that divide vanished.”

Deanell Reese Tacha, FFNHA Board of Trustees Founding Chair says that Freedom’s Frontier offers a “legacy of understanding freedom in ways that give everyone the room to believe what they believe personally, and yet live in a civilized society.”

Every Story Needs a Storyteller

Freedom’s Frontier is comprised of a network of more than 100 historical locations in Kansas and Missouri. Each offers its own unique story and historical perspective of the Border Wars period. The Freedom’s Frontier Board of Trustees wanted to offer their historical stories and the valuable lessons they teach to a global audience. And these days, that means getting online.

So the Board turned to a group of accomplished storytellers – Imagemakers, a design and advertising agency based in Wamego, Kansas. The Imagemakers team, working hand-in-hand with Freedom’s Frontier Board members, created a state of the art online repository of a regional history that helped shape the destiny of a nation.

Freedom’s Frontier’s interactive website offers hours of interesting browsing for the casual visitor, and also provides a valuable historical resource for scholars. Visitors to www.freedomsfrontier.org can pay virtual visits to dozens of the historical locations of the Freedom’s Frontier network, stay abreast of regional news, and learn of upcoming events of interest – including many historical holiday tours and activities.

And perhaps most importantly, visitors to the website are invited to share their own stories, thoughts and feelings. Family stories that have been passed down through generations within families can be shared and preserved for future generations. Family photos that help to document the history of the region can be uploaded. Experiences and photos from visits to historical sites within the region are also welcome. And sharing is as easy as clicking the “Share Your Story” buttons found on the pages of www.freedomsfrontier.org.

Each visitor’s input adds an important thread to the tapestry of our shared history, making it fuller, richer and more complete. History, after all, is nothing more than the sum of all our individual stories.

“Autonomy and Freedom of choice are critical to our well being, and choice is critical to freedom and autonomy. Nonetheless, though modern Americans have more choice than any group of people ever has before, and thus, presumably, more freedom and autonomy, we don’t seem to be benefiting from it psychologically.” —quoted from Ch.5, The Paradox of Choice

As marketers, we hope to sell more goods, right? Can we do that by giving buyers a better shopping experience? I think so.

In The Paradox of Choice, Schwartz explains that eliminating choices can greatly reduce stress and gives examples of how to limit choices to a manageable number. Following is a summary of some of our favorite points in the book.

Familiarity Breeds Likability

People rate familiar things more positively than unfamiliar things. The effect has been demonstrated with many things, including words, Chinese characters, paintings, pictures of faces, geometric figures, and sounds. In studies of interpersonal attraction, the more often a person is seen by someone, the more pleasing and likeable that person appears to be.

This is why bad advertising can work. When people see something enough times, they remember it. They start to like it. However, our goal should be to create advertising that people remember even if they see it once. This creates a much better return on your investment.

Sunk Costs

You buy a pair of shoes that turn out to be really uncomfortable. The more expensive they were, the more you will try to wear them. Eventually, you will stop wearing them, but you won’t get rid of them. And, the more you paid for them, the longer they will sit in your closet.

At some point, after the shoes have been fully “depreciated” psychologically, you will finally throw them away. But, the cost shouldn’t matter after the purchase if the shoes are useless to you.

We charge new customers a 30% deposit on a new project for this reason. Once a person is financially invested in a project, they are also emotionally invested and will put more energy into the process. This improves the final product.

Decisions with Trade Offs

Conflict induces people to avoid decisions when the stakes are trivial. Schwartz uses the following example. He originally wrote about DVD players:

The third offer flags the good deal as obvious by offering a not great deal with it. And, more people bought overall!

Trivial Decisions can be Important

Even decisions as trivial as renting a movie become important if we believe we are revealing something significant about ourselves.

How we setup choices for our customers will make a big difference in how easily they make buying decisions.

We highly recommend this book for anyone selling goods or services (and for those that buy!). You’ll think a lot about your rational and irrational buying habits.

Buy the book on amazon.com:
The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less

We’ll also send a free copy of the book to one or two people that leave comments below.
Let us know your thoughts!

Telly Awards honor outstanding local, regional, cable television commercials and programs, the finest video and film productions, and web commercials, videos and films. Winners of the award represent the most respected advertising agencies, production companies, television stations and corporate video departments in the world.

In addition to Imagemakers and S&N Design, this year’s winners include Turner Studios, Nickelodeon, Walt Disney Parks & Resorts and Time Warner Cable.

“We are thrilled to have partnered with S&N Design and the Manhattan CVB to produce this video,” Dan Holmgren, Creative Director for Imagemakers, said.

Because Imagemakers has proven experience in the creation of videos, as well as films, it was tapped to help in strategic planning for the video, directing the emotional appeal to those looking for a retirement community, second home or planning a move to Manhattan.

“We wanted to produce a video that truly highlighted the best of this area, featured Manhattan’s strong economy and the wide variety of entertainment, shopping and outdoor opportunities available in this area,” Mary Foster, Project Manager for Imagemakers, said.

“Imagemakers and S&N Design were so easy to work with. We really appreciate their expertise and vision as we helped tell the story of Manhattan – a young, vibrant and inviting community,” said Karen Hibbard, Director for Manhattan CVB.

“This was a very fun and yet challenging project for us. But with Dan’s background as a movie producer most of this video was shot in a more cinematic style than another agency might do,” Foster said. Adding, “Steve’s script writing experience made for great chemistry.”

“The videography was shot over the course of a year and features over 100 locations. In the process of writing the script we were able to enlist the help of a number of people with a great understanding of the Tallgrass Prairie, the Flint Hills and Manhattan. We are grateful to the many volunteer actors who donated their time to the project,” said Steve Lee, Creative Director for S&N Design.

Different versions of the video have been created for different audiences. Combined they have already been viewed over 10,000 times.

Pictured from left to right: Steve Lee and Nancy Raleigh, S&N Design; Karen Hibbard, Manhattan CVB; and Dan Warner and Mary Foster, Imagemakers

This isn’t the first American Web Design Award Imagemakers has received. They were awarded one in 2010 for their design of the Manhattan Regional Airport website as well.

However, this is the first time the company, which in addition to award winning websites has also created award winning videos, logos and marketing efforts for a wide range of clients over the last 10 years, has been recognized for the design of their own company’s website.

“We are usually more focused on helping our clients and designing powerful, well-organized and easy to use websites for them than on our own needs. But with our 10-year anniversary this year we decided it was time to create a new Imagemakers website,” Dan Holmgren, Creative Director of Imagemakers, said.

Imagemakers website wins award

The new website, launched in May, features links to Imagemakers’s client’s projects, bios of the Imagemakers team members, some useful tips for those wanting to make an impression online, as well as employment and partnership opportunities. Its clean, professional appearance coupled with the ease and simplicity of use clearly impressed the judges in the American Web Design Award competition. It is just that kind of well-designed websites that Graphic Design USA recognized in its award statement.

“This annual award is a celebration of the power of well-designed websites and online communications to attract audiences, disseminate ideas and information, generate response, and promote products and services,” states the introduction to the awards on the Graphic Design USA website.

The Imagemakers team has received other awards over the last decade. They have been honored with two Summit Creative Awards. One was for the WTC logo and the second was for the creation of the Manhattan CVB video. The WTC logo has also received a Mazie Award, as has the Imagemakers’ design of the Cambridge Place logo. Mazie Awards are given by the prestigious Trademark USA, which honors those who create “amazing pixels.” Both of the Imagemakers-created logos will be featured in the next LOGO book by David E. Carter.

“It is always nice to be recognized by our peers, but we believe our true success comes from helping our clients reach their goals. When many new businesses last only a few years, we are grateful to be celebrating our tenth anniversary this year,” Holmgren said.

Imagemakers hosted an Open House on May 12 so it could celebrate its 10 years in business with its clients and partners.

“We couldn’t have had these last 10 years without the support of our clients. They are what we are really celebrating. Each one has played an important part in our growth and success. We hope we return some of that to each of them with our hard work and dedication to listening to them, then helping them reach their goals,” Holmgren said.

To check out the award-winning Imagemakers website, as well as the work the Imagemakers team has created for others over the last 10 years, go to www.imagemakers-inc.com.

Among thousands of submissions from 22 countries, our creative scored among the very best.

We love working on videos and enjoyed this project very much.

If you haven’t read about this project, you can check out a previous post about it here.

Congratulations to the Manhattan CVB, the Retire to the Flint Hills committee and our partners, S&N Design! We are honored to have worked with you and to receive this award.

When many new businesses last only a few years, we are grateful to be celebrating our tenth anniversary. We couldn’t have done it without the support of our clients.

It was fun to see how many of our clients know each other!

We cleared our conference room to make way for the food table!

Every event needs a little swag, right?

Steve Lee from our partner agency, S&N Design.

To answer everyone's question: No, our desks are not always that clean!

We confirmed that our clients love imports and micro brews, just like us. Stop by for one anytime!

We had around 150 people stop by, and we loved seeing every one of them!

Some comments about the event:

1. How easy is it to create and send an email?
   Most of the time, we gauge this in time spent working on the design and copy updates, plus the sending process. After all, time is money, right? While you should spend ample time developing your copy and message, in most situations, the time to execute should be less than one hour.
2. How easy is it to customize the email to match your brand’s look and feel?
   When you’ve spent years establishing your brand, you should never compromise the style. Your email marketing should be consistent with your brand look and feel, as well as your communication style (formal, casual, etc.).  Do the emails match your brand perfectly, or are they just a little off?
3. Can you send text-only email?
   Some messages are more important than others.  Sometimes a message really needs to get through.  To improve deliverability and readability you may want to send a standard text based message.  If the text in an email has multiple colors, is surrounded by a border, or contains images, that’s a red flag that the email is trying to sell you something.
4. Does your email marketing provider offer a dedicated IP address?
   How are you protected if another customer sends spam using the same email sending service that you do? Can the recipients differentiate between your email and the spammers?  If not, you may also get blacklisted.  Not all email marketers need a dedicated IP address, but many do.
5. Can you use your existing customer database?
   Or, do you have to use a separate database for emails and maintain them both? If you tie into your existing customer database, you can mail to customers based on interests and actual past behavior, without being limited to specific mailing list categories.
6. Does your provider use image embedding?
   Most email clients (Microsoft Outlook, Gmail, etc.) by default do not display images that are linked. However, images that are embedded in the email are often displayed.
7. Can you tell if a click-through resulted in a purchase?
   Tracking email open rates are not always accurate because they typically rely on image loading, which could mean the email showed in someone’s inbox just long enough for them to delete it!  What we really want to know is if an email resulted in a true change in behavior (what happens after they click?). Can you mix these results with your existing stats so you have one place to compare email marketing, online ads and other sources of traffic?

If we can help you in your email marketing efforts – whether you want to customize an existing sending tool or explore other options – give us a call.

Questions or feedback? Please leave a comment.

Manhattan is a college town with just over 50,000 permanent residents. Our objective was to show the beauty of the community alongside the variety of activities and resources it offers.

We shot over 100 locations and enlisted the help of nearly as many volunteer actors.

The music was edited by a Grammy nominated sound engineer.

This project was a lot of fun to work on and we think our videography and planning skills were put to good use.

Please feel free to share the video with anyone who may wonder why on earth you would live in Kansas! We hope it’ll change their tune.