Tag: branding Glasgow

We always say at the loft, to ‘design-with-soul,’ you have to have a soul so we were absolutely delighted, humbled, honoured, all-of-the-above to have some of the incredibly gifted students from MCR Pathways join us for a Talent Taster. MCR Pathways are one of the organisations that we love helping the most at the loft and it was a real privilege to work with their young students this morning as part of a ‘Talent Taster.’ MCR Pathways are an amazing charity doing great work at a phenomenal pace for the kids of Glasgow and beyond. We highly recommend getting involved, there are details at the bottom of this post.

Just in case, you don’t know…

Who are MCR Pathways?

MCR Pathways are predominantly a Glasgow-based organisation. They acknowledge that there is amazing potential and talent in young people. Varied, unique and inspiring. Is every single one. But for many, that potential has yet to be discovered. Life experience has knocked the confidence out of some, firmly locking away those seeds of flair and hope. It is their aim to uncover, nurture, develop and help to realise the skills and capabilities in looked after young people. They know that each person has a specific set of abilities and passions and they want to see them flourish in the arena that is right for them. MCR Pathways support looked after young people practically. Guiding them on pathways to education, employment and fulfilling lives.

What’s A Talent Taster?

Talent Tasters provide a unique opportunity to experience the world of work in a way that is more engaging and inspiring for young people, and sustainable for the organisation and staff delivering it. The tasters are designed to motivate the young people and help them make positive choices about their future careers.

Think of Talent Tasters as concentrated, high quality work experience. Three hours to get to know more about a company and a particular job it offers. There are 2 other levels to see what a manager does and even time with the boss.

Perhaps it will be the defining moment in a young person’s life. The moment when they say: “I could do this”.

Talent Taster

Wendy Jordan, Project Co-Ordinator extraordinaire for MCR Pathways wrote a blog post this morning. One that is going to appear on the MCR Pathways website later today but we thought we’d steal a march, pinch her words and get it out there as a guest-blog post first. I am sure she won’t mind.

Over to you Wendy…

It’s a clear autumn morning in October. I’m waiting outside South Block, an artist’s collective based in Osborne Street near Glasgow’s Merchant City, for today’s Talent Taster students.

The four young people are from secondary schools across Glasgow. All have an interest in art and creative industries. They’re here for a ‘Design / Web design’ session at The Loft run by creative entrepreneur Benedetto Bordone. Benedetto is going to help the young people design their own personal brand. This is going to be great!

Talent Tasters, by MCR Pathways, are two to three hour sessions for secondary school students who want to learn more about the jobs they think they might want when they’re adults. The Talent Taster team is working with organisations like Wheatley Group, the Citizens Theatre, The Loft and many, many more to deliver these sessions. The aim is to create a spark in the young people that will make them want to stay on in school, gain qualifications and get the job (and life) of their dreams.

Back to the Loft…

We all make our way upstairs to the airy, bright studio where Benedetto and his team work. They work with organisations like Alexander Dennis, Percepta, worldwide software companies, whisky distillers and global automotive companies on their brands, websites, publications and videos. The team of 5 does the work of 20 but they’ve set aside the whole morning to work with our Young Glasgow Talent to help them find, grow and use their talent. We can’t thank them enough.

Benedetto first takes the group of young people on a tour of South Block, showing the youngsters what a creative work space is like. It’s an amazing place – there’s even a ping pong table.

Then he pairs each of the young people up with one of his designers: Reiss, Aiste, Charlie and Adèle. They’re given an introduction to the creative process from mood boards to finished products.

It’s amazing to watch. The young people come out of their shells, start chatting, interacting, engaging, having fun. This is what we at MCR Pathways have always known. Young people just blossom when they get one to one attention from someone who cares. That’s why mentoring works.

The personal branding exercise starts with a questionnaire. What’s your name? What’s your favourite colour? What’s special about you? What logos can you think of? What are your hobbies? This is followed by a creative exercise as the young people start to design their logos based on who they are. Suddenly the room is quiet. You can hear the scratching of pencils. Quiet laughing. Intense discussions between the designers and young people. Everyone is smiling.

It’s time to fire up the Macs – we’re going to use Adobe Illustrator to make the young people’s sketches real. There’s some amazing, really inspired work here. We’ve got one young man whose personal brand is his glasses and hairline. It looks amazing. A young woman on the Taster has created a flowing, stylised version of her first initial – K – cutting through a bevelled rectangle. It’s really beautiful. The designers scan in the sketches by the young people and start work on making the finished, professionally-designed product.

You can see a light in the young people’s eyes – they’re watching the designers closely, taking it all in. It’s such a buzz for everyone. Their designs are becoming real.

And all too quickly, it’s over, but the young people have something great to take back with them – their own personal brand – and a more realistic view of what it means to be a designer. You get the feeling some lives might have been changed for the better today.

Wendy Jordan is a Project Co-Ordinator for MCR Pathways. She has the best job in the world, helping Glasgow’s talented young people find their purpose in life, raise their aspirations and create an amazing life for themselves.

www.mcrpathways.org
info@mcrpathways.com
0141 221 6642

Get Involved!!

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25
Oct

Frictionless Experience In a Disruptive World by Alan Meldrum #GYPSeminarSeries

Posted by benbordone / News

At the loft, we get involved in so many different things in and around of design, branding and business and one of those things is ‘Professional Development.’ Growth is actually one of our values and everybody in our company is a learner in one way or another! We love learning and one of the most fun things that we’ve been involved in the last 12 months has been the Glasgow Young Professionals #GYPSeminarSeries which the loft helped to start-up, organise and assist with creative support.

One of our favourite events was several months ago – Alan Meldrum, Global Vice-President for Strategy and Client Services for Percepta, shared some wonderful ideas with the GYP audience about why – in an increasingly disruptive world it’s never been more important for businesses to deliver a frictionless stakeholder experience. It was the 4th part of a fabulous #GYPSeminarSeries at SocietyM and Alan was terrific in sharing his views of a great customer and staff experience. We were so happy with Alan that we asked him to do a follow-up in front of the camera and that camera was very kindly provided by Gylen of Boardman Media. What you are now watching is the first part of a new video series of Alan Meldrum’s #GYPSeminarSeries.

We are delighted to be involved with The GYP team, Boardman Media, The Percepta Team and most of all Alan Meldrum who gave his time and also some brilliant insights into modern-day customer-experience.

Part 1, Vision – At the Heart of ‘Frictionless’

We were very careful to use the word ‘stakeholder’ above as Alan says that empowering and engaging employees is every bit as important as engaging the customers themselves in creating a frictionless customer-experience. He speaks of the need for companies to have a vision with everybody buying in and contributing to that vision. Alan talks about empowering staff and goes as far as saying that sometimes admitting that you got it wrong as a provider and looking to right that wrong goes a long way to building long-term relationships with a brand.

For anybody that is truly interested in any part of the brand/staff/user/stakeholder/customer experience, this is well worth a look and keep an eye out next week for the follow-up in the series.

You can also check out the people who helped to make this clip below…

With thanks,

The Loft Team

Alan Meldrum of Percepta >>>

Boardman Media >>>

GYP >>>

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17
Oct

Social Media, A Practical Guide

Posted by benbordone / News

Social media is quite possibly be the most important part of a company’s brand presence nowadays. Getting likes, being seen and having people engage with you can radically transform your company’s marketing success. A coherent, joined-up and ideas-led social presence will help you attract more clients, staff that share your values and new supporters from all over the world. This is the power of social media.

At the loft, we love social media. We love sharing details of our work, the way we help our clients and also some of the interesting things we get up-too in our studio. We use social media a lot and have therefore picked up some gems that we apply regularly and despite there being many more technical guides online we thought we’d put our feet right in the shoes of those that post on social media to share 10 quick ways to optimise your social posts.

1. Start with the Underlying Message

Before posting, always think… ‘What am I trying to say?’ This is important. Every post says something, consciously or sub-consciously, about your brand. What are we trying to say about ourselves or what we value with the post? We are helpful? We are qualified? We have more experience? Our service is faster?

Marketing is the communication and sharing of values and culture in an interesting way. Make sure what you are sharing displays the values you want it too.

2. A Positive Extension of those Values

As a rule of thumb, the majority of social posts should be sharing something positive! It should be something which people want to read. You have the opportunity to present the best side of your company, your products, your services, your team. Whether it is a client testimonial, something altruistic your team has done in the community or just sharing a very positive benefit of one of your services – more positive posts get more likes and therefore capture the attention of others.

However, more than being positive, consider whether what you are saying aligns with the culture your company is promoting. Doing this will help you be more authentic. Fun posts for fun companies, highly technical posts for highly technical companies, posts about ‘innovation in sustainability’ for companies that value ‘sustainability’ and are innovative around this area. Find the value or the idea and build your post around it. The really great companies do this very well on Social Media.

3. People Love People

Human stories tend to be particularly popular. Celebrating technical attributes or showing thought leadership are both good directions to pursue with social media but human stories such as celebrating ‘service landmarks,’ ‘new-starts,’ or just the good work your team does tend to be more appreciated on social media. Even the most technical companies will have service benefits that apply to human-beings. The more able you are to present the human side of even a highly technical subject – the more likely you are of engaging people with your social posts.

4. Image Tells a Story

Make sure the image you use really tells a story about the post itself. This is important. If you are posting about a particular product, is that product in the foreground of the photo? Does it stand out? If you are posting about an event you are hosting, does the image reflect the nature of the event? One further thing – a more professional, polished image has value, but a slightly rougher image which tells the right story has a greater chance of being understood and properly appreciated by your online audience.

5. Use your Polish Strategically

Despite this, a little polish is definitely going to help. Your posts will grab more attention. Whether it’s some info-graphics to bring a statistic to life, more professional photography of your team members or some video graphics to illustrate a story. Content that has been presented with more care and attention does stand a greater chance of helping you to engage with others. It is worth getting a designer, photographer or videographer to bring some of your content to life for important posts.

However, the real value is in thinking past one post! If you are going to engage a professional – think how you can extend the value of their service? For example, if you hire a photographer to capture the investment your company has made in a new assembly line – then while the photographer is on site – get multiple images which shows different facilities in a little more detail and instead of a single post – create a small campaign from these 6-8 images. This will help you get a better return on investment and a full campaign worth of content as opposed to one individual post.

6. Use the Loft Social Cheat Sheet

At the end of the day, a lot of this is trial and error – but there are some rules you can use to your advantage. To really help you maximise your posts – we have created a quick cheat sheet which shows the best times, to post, optimal image sizes and character counts. Download this sheet and the information will provide a further boost to your social posts.

7. Headlines should be to the point

If you read our cheat sheet, you will notice that the first few lines of any social post are far and away the most important in grabbing people’s attention. There are definitely some points to be gained by writing a title that everybody understands straight away. Different brands will communicate in different ways but in the absence of any doubt – simple language works best. Understanding over flair.

8. Use all the channels

Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, Snapchat, etc… There are so many different channels now, and it is important to pick the one that works for you. Tools like LinkedIn work well for Business2Business audiences. Instagram or Facebook works better for Business2Consumer audiences. Some are more targeted than others.

However, in all honesty, we recommend using all of the channels all of the time. Once you have picked the right image and drafted the right message – you have very little to lose by taking the time to post in all the channels. Plus, it is interesting how often more light-hearted, authentic, less technical posts are liked on LinkedIn and how often the crowd on Instagram will appreciate something a little more content-rich. Just remember to use the correct-sized images as stretched images tend not to do favours for anybody. You will get this information from our cheat sheet 🙂

Aggregate softwares such as Hoot-Suite can occasionally be helpful here too.

9. Maximise your Content

On that note about maximising all of the channels – make sure you re-use your content too. We spoke earlier on about investing in images, graphics, videos, etc. Once you have these assets, stretch them as far and wide as possible! Get them on your website, use them for your newsletter campaigns. If necessary – use them for print documents such as your annual report or other brochures. This will give you a much greater return for any investment on your marketing outlay.

10. Repeat

Once again, you have invested the time and energy to create content, got a great image and written a strong post. Your postings may be as successful as you want, they may not be. However, you do have the opportunity to have a few more goes. So many people will have missed your post first time round – don’t be shy and give them another opportunity to engage. You may even wish to hone your posts a little – to see if you can make it stronger 2nd and 3rd times round. You have very little to lose and much to gain.

A bit of a whistle-stop tour in how to optimise your social posts – you will find many more technical posts online but we hope that the guide above gives you a practical guide on where to start.

As always if you need any advice…

contact the loft >>>

Benedetto

Benedetto is an enthusiastic Creative and Business person.

‘Design with soul’ may be the company tag-line, but to Benedetto, it is also a way of life. He believes that creative and commercial enterprise is about purity of thought, honesty of construction and boldness of execution.

He believes in bringing out the true essence of human endeavour and considers his job of articulating the great work of people and companies an absolute privilege.

His journey has taken him from a career in car design through to his current role as the Founder of the loft, a design and branding studio based in Glasgow.

He is honoured to manage a great team, work with great clients and have a lot of fun mixing with so many great people in business.

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11
Oct

Creating Your Values

Posted by benbordone / News

Values. They’ll help you hire the best staff, retain the best staff and win tight pitches. They’ll help you make quick decisions and give you the best chance to grow.

At the loft, we’ve worked with several companies – helping them to develop their values. Sometimes with company owners in isolation, sometime with management teams and sometimes with entire organisations. Questioning them, getting to know them and eventually trying to define who they are.

There are many ways to create a set off values, some ways require more time than others, some are more long-term than others.

But for this post, we’re sharing a simple method that will allow you to create your very own – right from the get-go.

Here we go…

1. You don’t have to call them values!

Not everybody likes the term values – or its sister term – ‘Mission Statement.’ If that’s the case – let’s go for ‘Beliefs’ or how about ‘Who We Are & What We Do.’ Different companies will have different ways of speaking to each other. Choose the language that feels right for you and your company.

2. What do you like about your company?

Yes, it is as simple as that. What do you like most about your business? What are the action/behaviours/results that please you the most?

Here’s a real tip – look out for are the simple things that people in your team does.

a) The staff in our accountancy firm always take the time to walk guests back to the exit in the other side of the building even though there are signs everywhere and they wouldn’t have any problem getting out.

b) Our creative team always delivers to tight deadlines – always! They actually seem to revel in the challenge of a tight deadline.

c) Our IT staff are so helpful to customers that when they’re out on-call, they even fix things that aren’t theirs to fix. They just can’t help themselves.

d) The analysts in our software company are usually more on-top of legislation changes than the legislators themselves.

You can have some real fun by writing them down – you may have hundreds of them. Get them down. (Post-it notes and a big board can be a great prop for these types of exercises.) It’s a great exercise to carry out and you’ll love your business even more after this.

3. From behaviour to value…

Once you have your list of favoured behaviours all down – its time to think of the value that person had that has caused the behaviour. This is how we get your values.

a) The staff in our accountancy firm always take the time to walk guests back to the exit in the other side of the building even though there are signs everywhere. (behaviours) = show me don’t tell me (value)

b) Our creative team always delivers to tight deadlines – always! They actually seem to revel in the challenge of a tight deadline. (behaviours) = love of a challenge (value)

c) Our IT staff are so helpful to customers that when they’re out on-call, they even fix things that aren’t theirs to fix. They just can’t help themselves. (behaviours) = going above and beyond. (value)

d) The analysts in our software company are usually more on-top of legislation changes than the legislators themselves. (behaviour) = A pro-dative approach. (values)

If you take the time, suddenly you will have a very impressive first draft.

4. Drafts 2-3-4

Now you have your list – you have to decide which ones are most important to you and how many you want? Most companies have between 5-7 values.

5. Use Them With Pride

The way you decide to use your values depends on what kind of company you are? You can use them on your website, the entrance to your office, the second page of your tender or on the introductory slide of a presentation. They do help you stand out from others and you are more likely to attract the kind of people and relationships you want into your business.

6. Live them and update them

Every company will use their values in different ways and some will take them more seriously than others. Real values-led companies hire/fire/assess staff performance all based on their values. Your values should be updated in-line with the people in the company, within the management team and your own business journey too.

We wish you well in creating your values, we hope you get something out of this post and you know where to find us if you would like some help?

contact the loft >>>

Benedetto

Benedetto is an enthusiastic Creative and Business person.

He believes in bringing out the true essence of human endeavour and considers his job of articulating the great work of people and companies an absolute privilege.

His journey has taken him from a career in car design through to his current role as the Founder of the loft, a design and branding studio based in Glasgow.

He is honoured to manage a great team, work with great clients and have a lot of fun mixing with so many great people in business.

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28
Sep

Professional Service Websites – 7 Tips

Posted by benbordone / News

Where to start when building that website for your firm can be a bit daunting. We thought, we’d take a moment out of our day and see if we can help?

These are 7 tips to help those who are considering how to build their next professional services website or those who simply want to refresh what they currently have.

1. START WITH CONTENT

Many traditional website designers used to create layouts, structures and then create content to fit. We suggest the opposite – create the content first- and create a responsive structure to suit. The reason being is that content list can be a bit daunting and sometimes it is difficult to know where to start? The list may include – staff bios, service benefits, specific methodologies, images, news items, etc. It may include information on culture, values, vision, etc. Get all the information down in one place – post-it notes, scrap sheets of paper, etc. Anywhere, you can look over it all in one go.

Then work out what’s important? Prioritise which bits of content you want to emphasise? These are the bits where you use professional photography, copywriting or even video. By starting with content, you build a more user-friendly site and are more in control of the areas of your company that draw the most attention. Another really great tip is to use leverage and use the images, videos or articles (content) to share on Social Media channels such as LinkedIn, YouTube or Twitter – obviously a critical part of your digital presence.

2. PEOPLE, PEOPLE, PEOPLE

Professional services are all about people and relationships – your website should be big on this. Bring your people to life online, this usually means – great images of your staff, personal stories, anecdotes, anything that builds the human story. Some like technical but most don’t so keep specialist information in a separate place to more general information.

The simple act of creating a simple clean layout with just the right amount of information that a client needs to know is an effective way to build a good professional site.

3. TESTIMONIAL SHEET

Not just a website one, but definitely one that will enhance any Business Development activities – the client testimonial sheet. Many professional firms are wary about publishing testimonials, especially on their website, in fear of having their clients poached. We believe that showing others that you do a good job is more than worth the risk.

The most significant improvement to our sales process has been the introduction of a ‘client and testimonial sheet.’ More testimonials gives you greater credibility. You cannot have too many of these. Have them on your website but also a simple doc or PDF file to E-Mail to show new people that you are trying to do business with can be helpful.

We don’t believe you can really have enough testimonials.

4. BESPOKE REQUIREMENTS

Most organisations will have services that are similar if not completely identical to their competitors. Whether it is advising on selling a business, providing an insurance specification or creating a will – we nearly all do the same things on paper. However, ‘it’s not what you do but the way that you do it.’ Being able to talk authentically about the differences demonstrate greater value-add and will help you stand out compared to others.

5. TELL A STORY

As a follow-up to the last tip. Your website should have a basic message, theme or a range of ideas that differentiate you in the marketplace. 95% of professional service firms rightly say that client-service is at the heart of their offering – this is a good message – but when everybody says the same thing, you may want to consider going a little further.

How do you serve those clients better than everybody else? Are you faster? More dynamic? More friendly? More precise? Do you have more specialised knowledge? More useful partnerships? A joined-Up Approach? Obsessed about the detail? Pick a couple of ideas and tell a few stories either with your web-copy or images that will help to emphasise and bring these ideas to life.

6. MAKE CONTACT EASY

A very, very simple one but something which can be neglected at times. It is YOUR duty to ensure that the person looking at your content can reach you easily. This means contact details in all the right places – on the home-sliders, on the menu, an easily-accessible contact-page, a good quality enquiry form, social media links or numbers directly to partners. You decide what that line between ‘accessible’ and ‘desperate’ is but it should never be a chore to contact any organisation. Otherwise you don’t deserve the business.

7. CONTEXT

Professional services are all about reputation and relationships. The majority of your clients will have come through referrals.

Try wherever possible and with whatever means to tell a story – even a short one about the kind of service you provide? There are so many tools out there such as video which allow you to introduce a little more of the human side of yourself. Take a chance and get yourself out there. You’ll be one of the few that do and fortune favours the brave.

If you’d like some help – contact us >>>

Benedetto

Benedetto is an enthusiastic Creative and Business person.

He believes in bringing out the true essence of human endeavour and considers his job of articulating the great work of people and companies an absolute privilege.

His journey has taken him from a career in car design through to his current role as the Founder of the loft, a design and branding studio based in Glasgow.

He is honoured to manage a great team, work with great clients and have a lot of fun mixing with so many great people in business.

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28
Sep

Your Social Cheat Sheet

Posted by benbordone / News

More likes, more engagement and eventual enquires are the holy grail for social posts – and that is true whether you’re posting images, videos or text.

Well content is still king, but there are a couple of additional things you can do to turbocharge your social posts.

Start with the right channels!

Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn or Instagram? What works the best?

Nail the Image size!

Nobody wants stretched or soggy images. Clean, crisp and impactful images have a much better chance of being noticed. Get the image-sizes right.

Copy lines!

Or more importantly, the beginning of the copy line. This is what the majority of people are going to see when viewing your posts?

Timing!
Posting at times your audience are actually there, makes a massive difference.

Setting up a successful social post is a bit like lighting a fire. You want the flame to stay alive long enough in at the beginning to ignite the next bit before really getting it all going. The basics above give you the chance to keep that flame alive as long as possible. Most social channels reward content that is liked by others so getting those initial likes is crucial. The best posts sit at the top of other people’s news feeds longer and crucially gets you seen that little bit longer in this busy world.

Our latest ‘Cheat Sheet’ is the result of our own experiences with social media. It is based on what we know – works. It has been designed to be printed out and sit at the back of your notebook, stuck on a wall or just be read digitally.

Its free and can be downloaded from here >>> 
Or contact us if you think we can help you out >>>

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25
Sep

‘1000 songs in your pocket’

Posted by benbordone / News

Creating a brand is a never-ending job, there are many things to be done – getting the messaging right, building your digital presence, ensuring there is consistency through all the channels, getting buy-in from multiple stakeholders, etc, etc.

And with each of those questions.

Do we do a new website? Is it time for an E-Mail campaign? Shall we revise the photography of the team? What shall we do with social media?

Where do we start???

At the loft, we believe that the question is usually more important than the answer.

Once you have a clear idea of the question you are asking, you suddenly have a focus and a much wider range of options to play with. And that question is always, always, always better when it starts with people and the type of relationship you want them to have with your brand.

Great questions are the first part of great solutions. Here are some great examples.

“We want to increase our sales with existing customers in Canada because we have the operational capacity to serve more people out there.”

“We have a brilliant opportunity for clients who are looking to scale and we want them to know about it so they can take advantage of it immediately.”

“We want to build a brand so well-known that customers have heard off us before we’ve even finished telling them our company name.”

“We want our customers to benefit from the full suite of services available with our software.”

“We want to do something to unite our team and show the outside world our company is on a new and exciting path.”

Each of the outcomes above have come from projects we’ve worked on – questions that we’ve developed with our clients.

They’ve come from people and brands we’ve worked with -helping them to build better relationships with their customers, suppliers or staff – helping them to achieve their commercial goals.

Strong and worthy questions based around people can only lead to effective solutions. As a company, we wholeheartedly believe in ‘pleasing results over pleasing methods.’

One other person who believed in this was Steven Jobs, and after having read his book, there are similarities.

What made Apple great in the first place? FaceTime gave people easy face-to-face video calling, the original I-Phone gave people an ‘internet communicator, revolutionary mobile phone and I-Pod all in one device.’

And my personal favourite – ‘A thousand songs in your pocket.’

When Steve Jobs presented the original i-pod in 2001, he had a slide which showed the question he asked his team to answer? How can we make a device that gives our customers a 1000 songs in their jeans pocket. What a great question. One which was relevant, worthy and had people at its core. Unsurprisingly, a brilliant start to what became a completely game-changing product.

Like Apple, solutions also have to be flawlessly executed and there has to be a commitment to answering the question properly but nothing will help you achieve successful outcomes quicker.

Not sure about the answer? Think again about the question.

Or we’ll happily help – contact us >>>

Benedetto

Benedetto is an enthusiastic Creative and Business person.

He believes in bringing out the true essence of human endeavour and considers his job of articulating the great work of people and companies an absolute privilege.

His journey has taken him from a career in car design through to his current role as the Founder of the loft, a design and branding studio based in Glasgow.

He is honoured to manage a great team, work with great clients and have a lot of fun mixing with so many great people in business.

23
Sep

6 Things I’ve Learned

Posted by benbordone / News

A few days ago, it kind of felt like I was the only person in the world working. A combination of Glasgow Fair, staff being on holiday and the whole South Block Building having a bit of an empty eeriness to it. As I worked away – I couldn’t help but be distracted with a conversation I had with our team the day before. I asked them to take some time and study each other to look for just one thing that they thought they admired and could bring into their own games to be that little bit better as professional designers.

Of course – as I asked this of them – my mind raced to some of the brilliant lessons, ideas and habits I had picked up from colleagues, mentors and some inspirational people that I had listened too in previous years and how much certain ideas had helped me.

I’ve credited the people who shared these wonderful ideas with me at the end, and they are in no particular order. But for keen followers of Scottish Business – you can probably guess who said what?

“People don’t care how much you know, until they know how much you care.” Quite possibly my favourite bit of advice and one that completely transformed my attitude to sales, customer service & business in general. I was the guy that would arrive at the client’s office or boardroom and send the prospect to sleep with 40-50 slides of what they were doing wrong and if they only, only listened to me – they could do it so much better. I am sure my arguments were intellectually sound but you can probably guess how much business I won. A big fat zero. I got used to hearing ‘don’t call us – we’ll call you.’ Once I learned to shut-up and learn what the client was wanting to do and spend my energies helping them to find a solution to their challenges that we started to get some movement.

As a neat follow-up – “Don’t sell to the company, serve the individual.” Maybe not the exact words but the message was similar to the previous one. You have to look after the individual and not the entire company – unless your proposing a company strategy – that is their business and not your problem. Have faith that the person you are looking to work with understands their company and their requirements better than you ever could – you must remember that it is a human that signs off the order at the end of the day and you had better build a rapport with them. The better you serve and understand them – the more quickly you’ll be trusted with more.

“Don’t take health advice from a doctor that is always ill.” Another brilliant one – it is amazing how much we open our minds to the opinion of the day or the person that shouts the loudest. Quite simply – if you want to be good at sales – learn from or ask somebody who is good at sales, if you want your company to be financially robust, ask somebody who has a financially robust company, if you want rapid growth – ask somebody who has done it. There are so many talkers, gurus and ‘thought-leaders’ out there. Analyse their results in a particular area and decide for yourself whether that is what you want for yourself in that area. Otherwise, question any advice they give you.

“Go out and speak to 100 customers now!” Absolutely brilliant – it is amazing how often we fall off-track by falling-in-love too much with our own products and services. Brutally honest feedback from customers is usually the much-needed bringing back down to earth that helps us all to improve our businesses and get better.

“Treat your clients budgets as if they are your own” I think this one is absolutely brilliant for anybody that wants to build long-term relationships with their clients, and long-term business is usually the holy grail. If you are prudent and offer value to your clients in the short-term, you will more likely to be trusted with more in the long term.

“See your business in three time-zones. Too many short-term decisions and you’ll make less mistakes but never grow, too many long-term decisions and you’ll never get any momentum and you need momentum. You have to work to succeed in the present day, a month ahead and in a quarter’s time.” This one was a real eye-opener about the importance of balancing long-term and short-term success.

And finally, a little analogy that I absolutely love…

“Building a rapid-growth business is a bit like building a racing car. You want everything to be poised on the absolute limit. If you put too much horsepower in one go, you’re going to blow everything at the same time – there won’t be adequate cooling, the tyres will blow, the suspension won’t cope – it will be an absolute mess and you won’t know what to fix first. Go the opposite direction and over-engineer each of those things for power you don’t yet have – and you’ve got a tank and not a race-car. I think there are a couple of messages here – firstly, do everything in logical increments – do them quickly – but have some kind of order. And fix today’s problems today and worry about tomorrow’s problems tomorrow – if you’re really going to go fast – there will be new problems for you to solve every single day.”

I absolutely love these and hope some of my fellow entrepreneurs find them handy too.

A huge thank you to (and these are in no particular order…)

Jim Duffy, E-Spark
Stuart Macdonald, Seric Systems
Jim McColl, Clyde Blowers Capital
Bob Keiller, Ex Wood-Group
Colin Robertson, Alexander Dennis
Iain MacRitchie, MCR Holdings

If you’d like to work with the loft – please don’t hesitate to contact us>>>

Benedetto

Benedetto is an enthusiastic Creative and Business person.

He believes in bringing out the true essence of human endeavour and considers his job of articulating the great work of people and companies an absolute privilege.

His journey has taken him from a career in car design through to his current role as the Founder of the loft, a design and branding studio based in Glasgow.

He is honoured to manage a great team, work with great clients and have a lot of fun mixing with so many great people in business.

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05
Sep

HAPPY FACES

Posted by benbordone / News

“We start with happy faces and work backwards…”

This was the answer I gave to a young business person who asked me recently how the loft was so busy and why we are working on so many new projects at the moment.

It is devastatingly simple when you think about it, so simple I have missed it myself, a few times in the past.

“Nobody cares how much you know, until they know how much you care.”

We picture happy clients, we visualise them giving out their business cards, showing off their websites, sharing their info-graphics on social media. We make storyboarding one of the most important parts of our creative process. We don’t start with typography or graphics or technology or what others are doing.

We take a positive scenario and work backwards.

I know this approach sets us apart from many other agencies and many other service providers.

In the loft, we leave our egos at the door, we practice and sometimes obsess about ‘context.’

How can we make our solutions work for the client? What do we need to do to achieve an effective result for them? How can we make them happy? Delighted even?

The client provides the framework and it’s our job to shine within that framework. This regularly takes us off the beaten path but it does help the people we work with, to shine.

It allows them to pass their business cards to others with absolute confidence, to provoke a person to go to the ‘contact page’ on their website or to tempt a person to pick the bottle off the shelf.

We are relentlessly focussed on those details because they are the things that matter. They are going to help our clients and by helping our clients, we know they’ll come back again and again, and sometimes refer new people too.

The method changes, but the result always remains – happy clients.

Richard Seymour’s, ‘How Beauty Feels’ in my favourite TED talk, he discusses creating things that are just wonderful for people – our ethos is the same.

Most people don’t remember what Steve jobs said about the technical spec of the new I-Phone in 2007, but they do remember him calling a local Starbucks and using the new device to order ‘4,000 lattes to go!’

This focus allows us to deliver solutions quicker, we are able to maximise client budgets, it allows us to concentrate on what’s important. The process also gives us endless scope for creative solutions.

Thankfully, we have a team of exceptional designers and suppliers who can mould their considerable talents around those bespoke requirements, talented people who have the humility to understand that the best way they can be the stars is by shaping their skills to the benefit of those that they serve.

Our approach is effective but it does require people with open minds, good intuition and exceptional basic skills. Thankfully we have just those people.

Some (crazily I believe) ask if it can be tiresome hearing how good you are all the time?

It doesn’t.

People using the word ‘love’ when talking about things you have done for them or seeing their materials shine on social media is a tremendously uplifting experience. And one that generates its own momentum to keep on going.

The Advert we created for Petroleum Experts, found its way onto this very large 3-Dimensional, glass paperweight, something they gave to their clients for their 25th anniversary.

Or how about working with a client who in 25 years, having never worked with a creative agency, loving their design so much that they re-produce it in glass to give to their clients on their own 25th Anniversary Dinner.

That last moment is one that happened recently when Hamid Guedroudj and James Woodrow of Petroleum Experts pulled me into their office and presented me with a blue box and inside was one of the biggest paperweights I have ever seen – and one with the design that we co-created with them. A bit of a favourite moment amongst many.

When you start with happy faces and things like this happen you cannot help but have a happy face yourself.

Benedetto

Benedetto is the founder of the loft, a design and branding agency based in Glasgow.

The loft helps its clients build more effective brand communications and operates in a diverse range of sectors, specialising in technology, packaging design and professional services. The company is proud to include Petroleum Experts, The Wood Group, BenRiach Whisky, The University of West of Scotland and Glasgow City Marketing Bureau amongst its clients.

The loft offers people-centred brand solutions created using imaginative thought processes and delivered with a consistently high-quality and bespoke client service.

The loft is looking beyond traditional creative services and has begun to produce more integrated brand journeys for its clients – tying together disciplines such as digital, social media and customer experience – in addition to sales & marketing to help companies attract and retain customers & staff. Essentially, building a stronger bond between the person and the brand.

The loft was setup with assistance by PSYBT in 2012 and received Growth Funding the following year. Benedetto is the regional ambassador for the Princes Trust in Glasgow and also provides support to other charities including Young Enterprise Scotland, SMART STEMs and MCR Pathways.

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08
Apr

People Make Glasgow

Posted by benbordone / News

Bravo Glasgow!

Anybody that’s ever been to see their favourite band play will know all about the crowd singalong – be it Oasis and ‘Don’t look back in anger,’ Snow Patrol and ‘Run’ or Paul McCartney with ‘Hey Jude;’ the big ballad unites people in a wonderful way and it doesn’t just happens at gigs – social media channels provide live and interactive commentary to people watching their favourite programmes or sporting events too. Everybody can be involved.

Brands must perform a similar role. They are there to empower and inspire, but more than that, they must be representative of the people that live them. People must be bought into a brand and want to shout about it. Even more true when so much of a brands noise is now made on social media.

With that in mind. We must say ‘Bravo’ to Glasgow.

Recent winner of ‘the Transform Awards.’

‘People Make Glasgow’ is more than a slogan; it is an accurate and compelling description of what the city is about. It is simple. People get it, people like it and people buy into it.

It can be easily shared on social media as a #tag to a tweet, it can be adapted for photography and can be expressed in an infinite number of different ways by the people of the city itself.

It is no surprise that it has been so successful and won so many awards recently.

We can’t wait to get the stickers for our windows so once again.

‘People Make Glasgow’

Bravo!

Benedetto

Benedetto is an enthusiastic Creative and Business person.

He believes in bringing out the true essence of human endeavour and considers his job of articulating the great work of people and companies an absolute privilege.

His journey has taken him from a career in car design through to his current role as the Founder and Creative Director of the loft, a branding consultancy in Glasgow.

He is honoured to manage a great team, work with great clients and have a lot of fun mixing with so many great people in business.

branding Glasgow branding process design Glasgow design with soul Glasgow The Loft

Tag: branding Glasgow

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