editor, Author at Mediastreet

In News

The top design trends for 2020

January 20, 2020 No Comments

As we enter a new decade, we look at where design is heading.

A new decade brings new trends, and the evolution of existing ones. Last year saw exciting developments across the spectrum of visual design that will develop and evolve in the new year.

Here, we look at what’s hot in design right now and how we see it developing in 2020, covering everything from web design to fun fonts to graphic design and UI. Here are seven of our biggest predictions for what we’ll see happening in design this year. You heard it here first.

01. Branded animation

With GIFs now part of how we communicate, anyone designing for digital knows that people love movement. Illustration has become big for social media and web design over the last few years, but there’s now growing demand for the illustrations to move as shorter attention spans need to be satisfied.

GIFs can be a powerful way to bring brands to life. In 2020, we expect to see more fully branded motion graphics, from micro-interactions to moving logos to animated GIFs celebrating milestone events on social media.

Animations will also get more continuous. The safety video from Delta Airlines (above) shows the direction branded animation is going in, with one scene rolling into the next through fluid dynamic transitions that evolve and tell a story. The trend to build each scene out of the previous one takes viewers on journeys through a transforming world. And animation doesn’t only live online or on a screen.

Branded animations designed by London-based Animade were an integral part of Mailchimp’s rebranding in 2019, including the monkey logo that winks when you move the cursor over it, but the animators also created this interactive wall art. Interactive illustrations will offer a chance to reinvent communication and tools and engage with illustration in real-world environments.

02. Ultra minimalism

design trends 2020 — Calendly’s ultra minimalist landing page focuses attention on the call to action (Image credit: Calendly)

Minimalism seems like it will never become passee. It looks clean, sleek and for websites, it reduces loading time and scores better in search results. Services like Slack, Monday and Calendly are aware of this and have been leading the trend for minimalist landing pages that put the focus on the call to action and conversions.

With no distracting background elements, their sites are easy to navigate and make it easy to sign up. The trend is to complement the white space and simple message with an illustration – Calendly uses a modern looking line drawing to add to the clean feel, Monday opts for an animated demo with pots of colour to draw the eye, while Dropbox dispenses even with the illustration, dedicating half the screen to the sign up form. Other sectors are following the trend, opting for simple and direct approach, which will stay with us in 2020.

03. Combining realism and flat design

Recent years have seen a huge trend for flat design, and over the last year, isometric design has been the big thing, led especially by design for cryptocurrency sites, while 3D has been getting better and better. Now we’re starting to see more of a tendency to get the best of both worlds by layering elements of flat design and realistic 3D images. This can be through combining 3D design and flat design or through collages that combine flat design and photography like the beautiful dreamy posters created by Magdiel Lopez.

His work bridges the gap between the simplicity of flat design and the complexity and authenticity of realism, and communicates interaction between the real and digital worlds. The combination of 3D and flat design can also be a way to bring goods to life, such as on the urban trekking shoe company Déplacé Maison website or highlight blended learning experiences like on the Ocean School website.

04. Playing with the elements

In web design, there’s a growing tendency to play with water, air and light to create engaging effects, which follows a trend in design in general towards rejecting rigid geometric lines and shapes in favour for soft, flowing lines. It’s fun and playful, approachable, easier on the eye and still feels new.

The design and text on the Beyond Beauty project’s website seem to float around the space, conveying the sense of freedom that the project embodies. Expect to see a lot more free-floating elements in 2020 as we say goodbye to gravity. The theme for flowing shapes and lines is taken up also in the use of water and lights, for example, with cursor-controlled shimmer and ripple effects like in this site from property developers Azure The Oceanic. The Barovier & Toso website also uses cursor controlled liquid ripple and shimmer effects to give a sense of mystery and luxury to its products.

05. Heavy but simple fonts

The trend for big and heavy fonts is not going to move easily. With people spending more of their time online on small screens, big fonts are practical, but it’s a trend that extends to the world of graphic design and even packaging, since they also look great and give personality to text. When it comes to thickness, the rule for 2020 will continue to be the bigger and bolder the better, with text taking centre stage and overtaking image and video as the main element.

Designers are using bold or extra bold fonts paired with simple backgrounds or much lighter text to create interesting contrast in a design. Text may even go beyond a composition’s edges, and be split into multiple lines. CPGD, a list of direct to consumer brands, is on trend with a site that uses bigger Helvetica Now Display much bolder than most ecommerce sites, which can often suffer from lots of small text.

Large text is not only for headlines and titles, but sites like that of Germany agency Polar Gold show a trend to beef up the size of the text in paragraphs too, and expect to see more incorporation of movement too like in the bold and playful Piano Trio Fest site.

06. Dynamic live data visualisation

Data visualisation has been a growing trend for years. And there’s much more to come. In 2020, complex live data – like dashboard stats – will become even more immediately available, and designers will need to showcase information in a way that adapts to changes and dynamically animates. In the past year, The Economist’s Reimagine the Game offers visualisation of fans’ reactions in the stadium during football matches providing a kind of timeline of the match complete with goals and yellow cards. In 2020, expect data visualisations to go dynamic live, interactive and to cover everything.

07. AR and VR finally go mainstream

It’s been a long time coming but VR is finally coming into the mainstream and is expected to become one of the most consumed technologies of the next few years. What’s exciting for design is that more than being a trend, virtual reality offers a whole new medium to design for. UI and UX within VR is huge area in which to explore not only how we touch a screen but how we move around inside it.

Expect big opportunities in holographic 3D design and virtual reality e-commerce solutions, while AR will increasingly offer more demand for digital animation, with magazines like The New Yorker bringing pages to life through our phones’ cameras and Apple and Google introducing their own AR development platforms, ARKit and ARCore. And whatever happens in the areas of VR and AR is also bound to have an effect on wider design.

By Joseph Foley

Sourced from CREATIVE BLOQ

In News

The major battle of the 2020 streaming wars will be over ads

January 20, 2020 No Comments

By Jeff Beer

Both platforms and advertisers are experimenting with new ways of getting our attention. Can they find the format that will let users embrace it?

If we ran a survey asking people what they do when they pause a show they’re watching on an on-demand streaming service, the top answers would likely be

1) get a snack;

2) take a washroom break.

Then, much further down the list—waaaaaay down,

down,

no, keep going—

you’d find “stare at the screen for 30 seconds to receive a commercial message.”

Everything we know about actual consumer behavior—and heck, logic—from the last decade (and maybe the last four) is that people will do just about anything, and buy just about anything, to avoid ads. DVRs, ad blockers, and Netflix have all seen their rise fueled by a desire for ad-free entertainment.

Yet as we enter the next phase of the streaming wars—with AT&T’s HBO Max, Peacock, and Quibi coming online this spring, all of which have promised ad-supported versions (with some of them even stating that their ad-supported versions would still carry a monthly subscription fee), this pause moment has once again become one of the newest advertising opportunities on TV.

Last month, AT&T announced that its Xandr ad-tech arm is now selling video ad time during pause breaks. Hulu, which is majority-owned by rival Disney, had already been using that pause to post static ad images, but the AT&T announcement signaled that the old-school commercial break was alive again.

The difference here, as Xandr CEO Brian Lesser told Variety, is that these pause ads don’t interrupt your show. “That’s a noninterruptive ad,” he said. “It’s very high value. It’s very brand safe. It’s 100% viewable, and our sales team is in the market now with that product, and it’s gotten great reception.”

Well, that’s one way to look at it.

Within Media Gulch, there’s a reason for that great reception. One, it’s a new ad format. Two, it’s currently for linear and cable TV customers, which means it’s a way to extract more value from the holdouts who have not yet cut the cord. Finally, it points the way forward for perhaps a new revenue source for streaming services.

Traditional broadcast television created predictable commercial break standards; now platforms and brands are searching for ways to shoehorn ad opportunities into the streaming experience.

Welcome to the fight of 2020.

Streaming is an unproven business model

Why? Well, the streaming wars are expensive! There are all the costs associated with running your own technology service—from infrastructure to billing to customer service. Then there’s the content itself. With the expansion in competition among streaming services comes a content arms race; billions are being spent to lure the best and brightest to create content that audiences want to watch. Netflix, for example, has more than $12 billion in debt to fund its content ambitions. Disney has estimated that it’ll lose several billion dollars annually on its effort to establish Disney Plus, ESPN Plus, and Hulu as major platforms. It anticipates turning a profit in 2o23. WarnerMedia, a division of AT&T, which has approximately $134 billion in debt on its balance sheet, projects that its forthcoming HBO Max streaming service will reach profitability in 2025.

What’s notable about almost all of the new entrants in the streaming wars is that they come from the traditional cable television business, where they are used to having the dual revenue streams of subscriber fees plus advertising. WarnerMedia, Comcast, Disney, and former Disney exec Jeffrey Katzenberg (who is Quibi’s founder) are not ready to abandon advertising revenue. Given the unproven economics of streaming media, it’s no surprise that even the most ardent antiadvertising players, such as Netflix, are also experimenting with how they can score advertising revenue without interruptions, with commercial messages that don’t look like ads as we’ve seen them for 70 years.

The $70 billion spent on TV advertising annually has to go somewhere

While it’s easy to blame old media for clinging to a tried-and-true business model and trying to port it into the future, brand advertisers are perhaps even more concerned about how they’re going to reach consumers in a streaming future. A recent study by IPG’s Magna Global found that while 29% of TV viewing is done via OTT services (these are services that reach viewers directly via the internet, bypassing platforms such as cable and broadcast—via streaming, in other words), just 3% of TV ad budgets are spent there. Still, in 2018 OTT ad revenues exceeded expectations, growing 54% year over year, to hit $2.7 billion. That forced Magna to revise its OTT ad spend forecast upwards, predicting 39% growth, to $3.8 billion in 2019, and 31% growth, to $5 billion, by 2020.

This coming year will show just how creatively they plan to spend that money. Whether it’ll be on status quo ads we barely watch—or something much different—could determine some of these platforms’ very survival.

The determining factor in which platforms will survive and thrive—and which will either shut down or get acquired—will come down to finding the right balance between the experience of the three major stakeholders: the platforms, the audience, and yes, the brands. “If there’s an ad experience that makes advertisers happy, allows the platform to further monetize itself, and consumers are down with it and finding utility from it, it certainly sounds like it could be a win, win, win,” says Bill Durrant, managing director of media agency Exverus Media. “But only if it’s done in a way that goes hand in glove with the actual user experience while they’re watching and doesn’t try to force a different type of experience on them.”

Platforms that offer free streaming in exchange for watching ads will obviously continue to do so, and for many this is an attention tax to be paid to see the content. This is the bet that ViacomCBS has made with the free streamer PlutoTV, and Comcast’s Peacock service might be free (with an ad-free premium tier). Just last week, Comcast reportedly was close to acquiring the Xumo free TV app. There’s still value for platforms and advertisers in audiences who don’t want to pay for premium video.

The four emerging ad types we’ll see streaming in 2020

Pause ads may not be interruptive, but they do seem largely pointless and are likely not the answer.

But what might be?

One ad format with potential to, as Durrant puts it, find utility would be the shoppable ad concept. NBC started to use it in broadcast last May. Basically it’s a scannable QR code in the ad, which sends you to the advertiser’s site to buy that product straight from your phones. Moving this to streaming would make a lot of sense.

There’s also the brave new world of product placement, led by companies such as Ryff, which just raised $5 million in new financing in December. Ryff uses computer vision, machine learning, and rendering technologies to identify objects in a scene and replace them with branded products based on customer data. Meanwhile, Branded Entertainment Network uses AI to find the most contextually relevant influencer, streaming, TV, and film content to put a brand’s product in, and a company called Mirriad uses its technology to drop products into relevant scenes.

But according to ad industry insiders I spoke to, the most impressive example of how brands and streaming platforms can work together has been the partnership between Netflix and Coca-Cola on Stranger Things. Here we had a perfect storm: New Coke was already in the script, and the brand ran with it, bringing back the once disastrous formula for a limited run, and then using its own advertising to bask in the halo glow of one of the most popular shows in pop culture.

Of course, not every show has the cultural cachet of Stranger Things, and not every brand has such a clear—and relevant—connection to a show. It’s a relatively easy decision for major brands such as Nike, Burger King, and even the Chicago Cubs to hitch their wagon to a hit. The same goes for Netflix when it’s got a lineup of marquee marketers outside its door.

The billion-dollar question is how Netflix and other streamers leverage the quality of content they’re spending so much money on. Netflix, for example, is working to reverse engineer the ad content transaction, charging brands not to put ad content on the platform but for the right to use Netflix shows in their advertising and packaging outside the platform. Baskin-Robbins was nowhere to be seen in Hawkins, Indiana, but it had Stranger Things-inspired flavors in its ice-cream shops across the country.

As fun and creative as this model is when we’re talking big brands and hit shows, it gets decidedly less exciting, and much more difficult to pull off, when scaled across a wide slate of shows and marketers. Something tells me that the effect would be significantly diluted if we start seeing these Stranger Things-style promos happening with every show. Is Trojan going to make Sex Education-themed condoms? Is Ford going to create its own ads using the focus group guy from I Think You Should Leave?

Okay, those two could actually be great, but you get my point.

The next generation of branded content

A solution that might come closest to the win-win-win among stakeholders is actually a Holy Grail many marketers have been chasing for at least a decade: branded content that is actually part of the production. One of the best examples in recent years is Netscout bankrolling Werner Herzog’s 2016 doc Lo and Behold, but there are plenty of other examples that could point a way forward for streaming platforms’ quest for tolerable brand relationships. As the money spent by platforms on content rockets into the stratosphere, and our tolerance for ads continues to plummet, brands could help solve both by increasingly becoming production partners.

In September, National Geographic debuted a six-part documentary on global activism called Activate, featuring celebrities such as Pharrell Williams, rapper Common, and actors Darren Criss and Uzo Aduba, and highlighting the work of grassroots activists ending cash bail, eradicating plastic pollution, and more. The entire series was underwritten by P&G, and each episode mentioned work the company was doing to help each cause. Hugh Evans, CEO of Activate coproducer Global Citizen, told Fast Company that P&G “is genuinely committed to putting social good at the center of their business model. Activate was a logical extension of that model.”

Back in July, agency Observatory worked with comedian Whitney Cummings to create a three-part video series, funded by VCA Animal Hospitals, that lovingly parodies pet obsession. Observatory pitched the show to digital distributors, with no special emphasis on it being brand-funded, and after a bidding war between four different platforms, Refinery29 acquired the show. “Our economic interests are aligned from go,” says Observatory CEO Jae Goodman. “The show itself is both a great show for viewers who love their pets or who just love to watch shows about pets, and VCA is expressing its brand values through something that isn’t an interruption.”

It’s highly unlikely that the $70 billion spent on TV advertising will suddenly migrate over to producing new shows and movies. The bulk of it will still be spent on the kind of traditional interruptive ads we’ve been seeing for the last 70 years.

But if the successful experiments thus far to bring advertising to streaming tells us anything, it’s that platforms should be imploring brands to make advertising adaptations that treat audiences like actual audiences. If you want people’s attention, you’re going to have to earn it.

Feature Image Credit: [Photo: TPopova/iStock]

By Jeff Beer

Sourced from Fast Company

In News

Simplify Your Innovation Process Into 5 Phases

January 17, 2020 No Comments

By Lisa Bodell.

In a survey from Boston Consulting Group, 79% of executives ranked innovation as a top-three priority for their company. And yet, research suggests that most professionals are unclear about how to bring an innovative idea from concept to market. After more than 20 years in the innovation space, I’ve found that the process can be distilled into five distinct phases.

The first is often called idea development. This is when you gather raw ideas from sources like brainstorms, customer feedback, employee submission portals, etc.

Next is the concept development phase. Here is where you or your innovation team roughly expands the most promising raw ideas into concepts. By “rough expansion,” I mean that spending five minutes on a concept is too little time but investing five hours is too much. Through trial and error, you’ll determine the right amount of time for your organization to spend on this early phase.

During this phase, you’ll determine which ideas are aligned with your business strategy and you’ll apply any other criteria that your org uses to screen ideas.

The focus of your third phase is business development. Now is when you’ll build out the concepts that made it through Phase Two. That means researching and outlining customer requirements; market and revenue potential; competitive analysis; risks; feasibility; and design and patent considerations.

Phase Four is when technical development happens. This refers to design; features and functions; experimentation; prototyping; testing and feed-backing; manufacturing; and so forth.

Today In: Leadership

Your final innovation stage is market development. This is typically when final refinements are made and when your marketing team creates the product or service strategy. That includes the positioning, U.S.P., target markets, sales channels, pricing and more for your new innovation.

The process I’ve outlined has five phases, but other innovators use as few as three and as many as eight. Feel free to customize the structure according to your needs after you’ve utilized it a few times. For now, use it to navigate the innovation process — from the lightbulb moment to launch day.

Feature Image Credit: Shutterstoock Start by gathering raw ideas from brainstorms, customer feedback, employee submission portals, and other sources.

By Lisa Bodell

I’m obsessed with simplification as a work and life hack. As founder and CEO of FutureThink in NYC, I’ve helped people at Google, Novartis and Accenture kill complexity and create space for innovation. When I’m not delivering a keynote or TedX talk somewhere in the world, I’m writing books (Kill the Company and Why Simple Wins) or reading them. I’m a board adviser for the Association of Professional Futurists, council member of the World Economic Forum and a carpooling mom of two. I’ve taught innovation and creativity at both American and Fordham Universities, and the North Pole is on my bucket list because it’s where every time zone converges.

Sourced from Forbes

In News

How to start your own business

January 17, 2020 No Comments

Sourced from Microsoft

Starting your own business. It’s thrilling, exciting – full of hope and possibilities. It’s a time in your life when anything can happen – and anything will. It’s a process marked by creativity, passion, and pure, unadulterated chutzpah. And that’s an exciting thing.

But before you pop the champagne cork, there’s a heck of a lot of work to be done. Because, after all, starting your own company takes more than just a dream and a kernel of an idea.

It takes capital – and plenty of it. It takes fleshed out plans, and roadmaps, and…, and…, and…. But don’t let all of those “ands” bring you down. You can do this! It’s all there – you just need to know how to organize and present it to potential investors, and your customers or clients.

So, let’s take a look at some of those “ands,” so you can start your business on the right foot.

Write your business plan

Starting a small business starts with a plan. And while it may sound daunting, it shouldn’t be. Business plans are fairly formulaic, and they’re designed that way for a reason: To help you understand your direction and attract investors. In general, the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) recommends seven segments for any business plan. They include:

Executive summary. It offers a brief look at what your business does and why it will succeed.
Company description. Gives detailed information about your company, the problems it solves and the consumers, organization(s) and/or businesses it will serve. In it, you should address any competitive advantages, experts on your team, etc. Use this space to talk to your strengths.
Market analysis. Provides details on your industry outlook and target market. It’s the area where you’ll outline what other businesses are doing, what their strengths are, and how you can compete for a share of the market.
Organization and management. In this segment, you’ll explain how your company is structured and who will run it.
Service or product. It gives you a space to deliver detailed information on the products and/or services you’re offering.
Marketing and sales. Here, you’ll address how you’ll market your business and provide details on your sales strategy.
Funding request. If you need funding, use this space to describe how much money you’ll need for next five years – and how you’ll use it.
Financial projections. Here, you’ll tell your financial story, provide well-founded projections, and balance sheets, statements, etc. (if you’re already an established business).
Appendix. Use this optional section to include things like résumés, licenses, permits, patents, legal documents, permits, etc.

If you’re still not sure how to start a business plan, or beginning one from scratch is more than you’d like to tackle, some document creation software offers comprehensive business plan templates to help you along the way.

Research the competition

Whether it’s for your business plan or your own on-going edification, understanding your competition before starting your own business – and throughout its life – is critical. Of course, you can use your favorite search engine to gather data, read trade publications, and follow them on social media, but there’s one other resource you may be overlooking: your word processing program.

Templates every business needs

Achieve your goals with professionally-designed templates for small and medium-sized businesses.

GET BUSINESS TEMPLATES

Depending on which you have, you may be able to perform research directly from your business plan or files. With features that help you find related subjects, and content from reliable sources, you can gain valuable information without ever leaving your document.

Claim your domain & social media handles

Once you’ve finalized your company’s name and gained understanding of your competition’s online (and offline) presence, you can prepare to compete for business – and funding. Which means that now is the time to claim your website and email domain names. By doing so, you’ll be able to begin work on your website, and communicate with clients, and potential investors from a professional email address (rather than a free online service), and begin building your electronic presence even before you’ve officially opened for business.

In addition to claiming your domain names, claim your social media handles. A study commissioned by Infosys found that “brand consistency across channels is a significant factor in consumer spend, with more than 63% of shoppers asserting that brand consistency plays a role in their spending. Additionally, 34% say a high level of brand consistency equates to a greater spend, while a lack of consistency reduces spend for 39% of consumers.”

Note: Ideally, your website domain and your email domain should be the same (or as near to identical as possible), easy to remember, and not too long. And your social media handles should be the same as your company’s name.

Build your financial forecast

Financial forecasting is not only one of the most important steps to starting a business, but it’s an on-going task that can help you understand where you are and where you’re going (financially), and help inform investors’ decisions, as well as your own decisions about certain aspects of your company. But while the idea of forecasting may seem overwhelming, you don’t need to be a PhD in economics to do it. In fact, some spreadsheet software allows you to create financial forecasts with just a few taps of the keyboard. All you’ll need to get started is some historical time- or date-based data, and your software can help you not only predict future sales, but can even go so far as to predict inventory requirements, and consumer trends.

Build your pitch for capital

When you’re asking investors for capital, a business plan and a dossier full of facts and figures can only go so far. Eventually, you’ll have to meet in person – and that’s where a good presentation can really help you shine. Yes, it will have to contain all of the important data, but it can (and should) also give you the opportunity to share your passion, your knowledge, your product and services, and all of your “reasons why.”

Just don’t overwhelm your audience with too much information. According to Forbes.com, a pitch deck should include no more than 20 slides, it shouldn’t be “too wordy” and it should feature quality graphics and a layout that’s easy to follow/understand. And that’s where the right presentation software can come in handy. With templates, easy editing features, and the power to include charts, graphs, words and pictures – and manipulate them to make them look perfect – the software you choose can make all the difference.

There are many steps to opening a business – and the road from your “big idea” to your official business launch can be stressful (and a little bit bumpy) – but it just might be one of the most exciting, rewarding things you’ll ever do. Of course, you may be nervous, and that’s natural, but with the right tools, and support, as well as your passion and commitment, you can make your dream a reality – and not only start a business, but develop one that will grow and thrive over time.

Sourced from Microsoft

In News

20+ Best Free & Premium Email Footer Signature Template Designs to Download for 2020

January 17, 2020 No Comments

By Sharon Hurley Hall

If you’re not using your email signature to promote your business and resources, you’re missing an opportunity. If people read to the end of your email (and why wouldn’t they?), then it’s the perfect place to highlight what’s new and share important contact details.

With millions of emails sent and received daily, make sure your email signature design stands out. That’s why it makes sense to use an email footer template to get recipients’ attention.

In this guide, I’ll share some of the best paid and free email signature templates you can use to make your email signature work for you. If you’re looking for great email signature designs or closing email signatures, don’t miss the premium email signature samples from Envato Elements and GraphicRiver.

Why Use a Premium Email Footer Signature Template?

So, why would you need a premium footer signature template, anyway? Plenty of reasons. Using templates is a real time-saver, especially when there are so many fiddly details to include in your signature.

Plus, you get a great design without the hassle of creating it yourself. A professional template is also easy to customize so you get a unique look for your email signature design.

Download creative email signature templates on Envato Elements

If you’re looking for professional email footer templates, then Envato Elements has a great offer you can try today. Download as many of the best email signature templates as you want, for one low price.

Find unlimited creative assets on Envato Elements including email footer templates

You can also find affordable email footer signature templates on GraphicRiver, for one-off use.

3 Email Footer Signature Template Designs From Envato Elements for 2020

If your budget is tight, you might be tempted to go for free email signature templates. But free templates come at a price. You might not end up with a professional-looking email signature if you opt for a freebie.

Visit Envato Elements to find a range of professionally-designed emails signature templates that work in all modern email clients. To find the perfect template, visit the site and choose Graphic Templates.

get email footer designs on Envato Elements

Type signature into the search box. Use the on-screen filters to choose Websites and UX and UI Kits. Then you’ll see a selection of email footer signature templates you can use. Select your chosen template and click Download.

1. 360 Professional E-Signature Templates

If you’re looking for the best email signature templates, this collection of 360 templates is a good place to start. With modern and professional designs, the templates include 12 colors and 30 layouts. These fully responsive designs work with Smart Objects. It includes well documented HTML files, so you can easily create a stunning email signature.

2. Email Signatures

This email footer template set has 20 email signature layouts with 12 color combinations, allowing you to create a distinctive email signature. Start your creative process with the built-in smart catalog so you can choose and design the perfect email signature fast.

The minimalist designs ensure that your business signature looks professional. There’s in-depth documentation to help you make the most of your new email signature design once it’s been created.

3. Email Signature

Not sure what to choose for your email footer design? You’ll find plenty to consider in this email signature template set. It boasts 50 designs in 20 color schemes, making 1,000 different end of email signatures in all.

Whether you’re using Gmail, Apple Mail, or an app like Thunderbird, your email signature will do your business credit, thanks to these adaptable designs. It’s like a business card inside your email.

These are just a selection of the beautiful premium email footer templates available on Envato Elements. You can also find even more email signature samples on GraphicRiver.

7 Trending Email Footer Templates From GraphicRiver for 2020

GraphicRiver’s email footer templates are a good choice for those who need a single template for one-off use. These professional templates also feature beautiful design.

To find a template on GraphicRiver, go to the Graphics section of the site. Type in email signature. There are dozens of email signature designs you can choose from.

Here are a few to get you started:

1. Email Signature

There are plenty of email signature samples in this template set. That gives many ways to craft the perfect email signature to represent your business. With 43 layouts and seven color variations, it won’t take long to create a standout signature for your email footer. The template is fully editable and includes free fonts and icons.

2. Email Signature

This closing email signature template set includes 1,000 signature options for your emails. With 20 colors and 50 designs, match your signature to your brand or create different email signatures for different purposes. These HTML email signatures use free fonts. There’s also a smart catalog to help you identify and design the perfect email footer signature.

3. Email Signature

There’s a lot to like with this template HTML email signature bundle. The creative and professional designs are available in 20 colors and 40 layouts. The result is hundreds of alternatives for your business email signature. You can easily customize it with social media links or your own logo to make it even more appealing.

4. 360 Professional E-Signature Templates

These professional email footer templates are available in 12 colors so you can match them to your company branding. Plus, there are 30 layout options. Detailed help files help you customize the HTML email signature files to get the look you want. The set uses free fonts and icons and gives you a signature that looks great on all modern email clients.

5. Otrion E-Signature Builder

This email footer signature template includes an online builder, so you won’t need to code to get the perfect email signature. In fact, the designer promises that you can create a signature in two minutes. Customize the template by changing colors and adding images to personalize your end of email signature. This is a fully responsive template set that’ll look great on mobile email clients.

6. Email Signature

This set of HTML email signatures includes 22 layout variations and five colors. It’s fully editable and easy to customize and uses free fonts and icons. A help file is included so you make the most of this set of email footer designs. All signatures have the option of being wide or including white space.

7. HTML Professional E-Signature Templates

Want to keep things simple? Then try the email signature options in this template set.

There are 12 professional email signature designs to choose from. They use free fonts and icons. Create a personalized email signature easily with the built-in smart objects functionality.

18 Free Email Signature Templates and Generators

Premium templates are best for a professional look and unique design. They’re also well-supported by designers, making it easy for you to get any assistance or upgrades you need. But, if your budget is tight, email signature templates that are free to download may be your only option. Here are some of the free email signature templates email signature generators we could find.

1. Black Friday Email Signature Template

The Black Friday email signature HTML template is a free download from Mail Signatures. This two-column template includes a space for a marketing banner. So, you can promote products and services as part of your email signature.

2. HubSpot Email Signature Generator

Create your own email signature design with this useful free tool from HubSpot. It includes six sample layouts. Easily edit your details, change theme colors, or upload images to customize the signature.

3. Designhill Email Signature Generator

Use this email signature generator to create email signature templates that are free to download. Boasting a 60-second creation time, this email signature generator has several templates, works with modern email clients, and makes it easy to add social media links.

4. Exclaimer Free Email Signature Generator

This online generator is an easy way to get an email footer design. Fill in your information via the online builder. You’ll have an email signature in a short while. There’s an on-screen preview so you know exactly how your email signature will look.

5. HoneyBook Email Signature Generator

With this generator, you can choose from a few templates, then use an online form to fill in your details. There’s also an instant preview to show how your email will look. Add social media links to your signature.

6. CloudHQ Free Email Signature Generator

If you’re a Chrome user, then create your end of email signature with this generator from CloudHQ. In a couple of clicks you can add it via the Chrome store and start the design process. This generator lets you include video in your email signature.

7. WiseStamp

email signature html template free download

It’s quick to create an email footer signature with the template designs in WiseStamp. As well as the standard signature details, you can add photos and promotional banners. These are a great way to make your signature stand out.

8. Signature Maker Signature Generator

If you simply want to sign your name at the end of your email, this signature creator will let you do it. It’s an online drawing tool so you can draw your signature and generate a file to drop into every email.

Be warned. This tool doesn’t save your signature. You’ve got just 15 minutes to download it.

9. Convertful Email Signature Template Generator

Convertful has handful of free email signature templates you can use to create a signature. They work with the online email signature generator. Note that you’ll have to fill in several forms to get all your data into your email signature.

10. Pad Box Email Signature Template

Mail Signatures has several email signature templates free to download. Pad Box is a two-column template that’s got room for a company logo on the left. Make your email signature more engaging by uploading an animated GIF.

11. Stream Watch Email Signature Template

This is another of Mail Signature’s free email signature templates. This template is suitable for corporate use. It includes an animated GIF, but you can replace that with your own company logo.

12. Blocks Earth Color Simple Email Signature

Books Earth Color Simple Email Signature

If you’re a fan of simplicity, check out this free email signature design from Mail Signatures. It features three blocks of color in a Windows Metro design style. It’s easy to add your details to this colorful email signature.

13. Opensense Email Signature Templates

There are several free email signature templates in this collection from Opensense. These are colorful and professional, suitable for a range of uses. You’ll have to download them and edit the HTML yourself, though.

5 Quick Tips to Make Great Email Signature Designs for 2020

Before you get started on customizing your email signature, here are some more tips for success:

1. Use a Professional Photo

Email Signatures Reponsive Pack — Choose from several photo email signature layouts with the premium template Email Signatures Responsive Pack from Envato Elements.

A good photo or headshot makes a great impression. This isn’t the time for a selfie. Spring for a professional photo to wow your email recipients.

2. Include a Call to Action

Your email signature is an excellent place to encourage engagement. Use a call to action to drive traffic to your newsletter, or a resource you’re offering.

3. Don’t Forget the Basics

Even if you’re creating a fancy email footer signature templates, remember the basic contact details. Add your name, address, phone, and email address.

4. Include Social Media Links

360 Professional E-Signature Templates — Here’s just one of the many professional email signatures designs from the premium template bundle, 360 Professional Email Signatures.

It’s a good idea to give email recipients another way to connect with you. Add your social media links, and some people will visit your profiles. You never know; you could get a few more fans or followers as a result.

5. Keep the Signature Uncluttered

It may be tempting to cram in lots of links, but an uncluttered design is more appealing. Leave lots of white space so what you DO add stands out.

By Sharon Hurley Hall

Sharon Hurley Hall is a professional writer and blogger. Her work has been published on Jilt, Slickplan, OptinMonster, CrazyEgg, GrowthLab, Unbounce, OnePageCRM, Search Engine People, and Mirasee. Sharon is certified in content marketing and email marketing. In her previous life Sharon was also a journalist and university lecturer (teaching journalism, of course!) Learn more about Sharon on SharonHH.com

shurleyhall

Sourced from envatotuts+

In News

The Emerging Challenges For E-commerce Startups In 2020

January 16, 2020 No Comments

By Ankush Mahajan.

As people are getting to know about this industry, many are striving to carve a niche for themselves

The e-commerce industry is a fast-growing sector with demand going through the roof and more people adopting this stress-free method of shopping. In 2015, the e-commerce retail sales amounted to over $340 billion and by 2019 the total sales are projected to be double that amount. This means more people are getting to know about this industry and so much more are also striving to carve a niche for themselves by opening up online retail stores. The e-commerce industry as a newcomer is bound to face certain challenges ranging from economical to technological down to the social sphere.

Here are the four major challenges faced by start-ups in the ecommerce industry.

Direct Competition with the Big Brands

The big brands are the first and one of the biggest challenges a newcomer will face in this business. Companies such as Walmart, Amazon and eBay, who are giants in the online retail sector will easily knock a start-up off the market. Statistics show that Amazon is doing better as each year passes, surpassing every other online retail store both in sales and popularity.

The solution to this particular problem will be to avoid direct competition with giants in the business, you are advised to choose a less competitive niche and grow your business one step at a time.

Managing Shipping, Delivery and Returns

Newcomers or start-ups in the e-commerce industry face a lot of challenges when it comes to a seamless flow of transactions after orders have been placed and paid for, shipping charges, on-time delivery or return policies may pose a serious threat to your business. Most shoppers also complain about the quality of products they are supplied after payment has been made, to stay in business, companies will have to go out of their way to provide their customers with the best services there is.

There are different order fulfillment models attached to the shipping of products, thorough research has to be carried out, to ascertain which suits your business the most and maximizes productivity.

Expensive Marketing and Advertisement

With the growing competition, digital marketing and advertising is getting expensive every day. Most start-ups made the mistake of spending their entire budget on website development and ignored the marketing aspect. Before you start, all your company expenses should be documented and properly verified to ensure its necessity; you also do not want to spend too much on your Web development. You can start with free e-commerce platforms such as Quick eSelling to save your budget. Along with regular digital marketing activities, you should also try out other means to keep your customers coming back, such as rewarding customers with points which can be redeemed and used on your company; discounts too will go a long way in ensuring you keep customers coming back.

Staying Up To Date

The trendsetters are the big brands, they are the ones who bring up innovations, create new ideas, then smaller companies have to catch up, which most times is capital intensive or just way above their reach. A new company looking to withstand the test of time in the e-commerce industry will have to do all it takes to catch up and stay up to date with the latest technological advancements such as mobile applications, multi-channel selling and automation, among others.

One of the ways to tackle this challenge will be to team up with the right technologically advanced partners who share the same vision as your new start-up company and will work equally hard to keep you up to date.

Conclusion

With all that’s been said, we all agree that challenges are bound to confront newcomers and already established companies in the e-commerce industry, but how you manage to overcome these challenges, say a lot about your competency and readiness to take on and run a business that its profit runs in millions.

Feature Image Credit: Shutterstock

By Ankush Mahajan

Digital marketer & e-commerce consultant at FATbit Technologies

Sourced from Entrepreneur India

In News

16 New Business Books You Need to Read in 2020

January 16, 2020 No Comments

By Leigh Buchanan

From the battle to be king of meatless meat to entrepreneurs’ skirmishes with Amazon and Facebook, expect plenty of dramatic tales in the new year.

If your New Year’s resolutions include “leadership–get better at it,” publishers in 2020 have some refreshingly non-theoretical offerings: one about word choice and one that’s a kind of lead-as-you-go field manual. Big names tackle big subjects (see Michael Porter on politics and Sylvia Ann Hewlett on #MeToo). And in a couple of juicy insider accounts, scrappy entrepreneurs take down enemies (Square beats Amazon) or are taken down by friends (Instagram’s founders exit Facebook, stage left).

JANUARY

#MeToo in the Corporate World: Power, Privilege, and the Path Forward, by Sylvia Ann Hewlett
For decades Hewlett, an economist, has illuminated the practices and power structures obstructing women in the workplace. In #MeToo in the Corporate World she tackles the limitations and unintended consequences of the #MeToo movement, including male skittishness about mentoring or sponsoring junior women. That over-cautiousness, in turn, narrows the pipeline to the C-suite, where we need diversity to end this crap once and for all.

Sizing People Up: A Veteran FBI Agent’s User Manual for Behavior Prediction, by Robin Dreeke and Cameron Stauth
The same tactics used to detect spies and criminals can be applied to the business world. Whom should I trust? Is this guy going to deliver? What did that comment in the meeting really mean? Is she seriously going to buy or is she stringing me along? Hiring and sales should benefit. Sizing People Up co-author Dreeke is a former head of the FBI’s counterintelligence behavioral analysis program.

The Future Is Faster Than You Think: How Converging Technologies Are Transforming Business, Industries, and Our Lives, by Peter H. Diamandis and Steven Kotler
A gazillion books ponder the social and economic effects of disruptors like AI, virtual reality, 3-D printing, blockchain, robotics, and digital biology. What’s intriguing about The Future Is Faster Than You Think is the speculation from Diamondis (executive chairman of Singularity University) and Kotler (a science journalist) about what happens when all that stuff starts coming together. The implication for extending lifetimes is especially intriguing.

Leadership Strategy and Tactics: Field Manual, by Jocko Willink
A field manual is perfect for new leaders, who have less time than anyone to wade through great big books on leadership. The military uses field manuals to provide simple, step-by-step instructions for coping with myriad unfamiliar situations. Willink, a onetime Navy Seal commander, takes that approach in Leadership Strategy and Tactics with subjects like dealing with imposter syndrome, doling out punishment, and giving feedback.

Competing in the Age of AI: Strategy and Leadership When Algorithms and Networks Run the World, by Marco Iansiti and Karim Lakhani
Just as the internet required a fundamental reinvention of business models, artificial intelligence challenges leaders to rethink everything about their organizations. AI processes are more scalable than human-powered ones; the technology creates more scope because it easily connects to other digital businesses; and it greatly amplifies learning and improvement. In Competing in the Age of AI, two Harvard Business School professors explain how to take advantage.

FEBRUARY

Leadership Is Language: The Hidden Power of What You Say and What You Don’t, by L. David Marquet
Language is, arguably, the biggest leadership subject of all. Readers can apply lessons from Marquet, a nuclear-submarine-commander-turned-consultant, simply, immediately and every day. As Leadership Is Language demonstrates, Understanding distinctions between good and bad word choice and phrasing can improve the relationship between you and your team. For example: try delivering information (“I’ll start again at 11 a.m.”) instead of instruction (“Be back by 11 a.m.). See? Simple.

Experimentation Works: The Surprising Power of Business Experiments, by Stefan Thomke
Thirty years ago Peter Senge encouraged companies to become learning organizations. Now in Experimentation Works, a Harvard Business School professor gets more concrete, lauding the power of “experimentation organizations” in which everyone–not just R&D–constantly tests everything from new processes to new business models with scientific rigor. Thomke lays out best practices for creating a strong hypothesis, setting up control groups, and interpreting results. Can you tell a true positive or negative from a false one? Do you ever compare current practices to themselves? If not, you may be blowing it.

MARCH

Competition Overdose: How Free Market Mythology Transformed Us from Citizen Kings to Market Servants, by Maurice Stucke and Ariel Ezrachi
Conventional wisdom says competition is good. Fair enough. But more isn’t always better. In fact, the proliferation of rivals sometimes hurts consumers, who pay less but also get less–unhealthy food, toxic drinking water, hidden fees, failing schools, and an internet stalked by advertisers. The authors, both professors of business law, explain in Competition Overdose how lobbyists, lawmakers, and business leaders conspire to push noxious competition and advocate for something nobler.

The Innovation Stack: Building an Unbeatable Business One Crazy Idea at a Time, by Jim McKelvey
As co-founder of the small-merchant payment company Square, McKelvey spent the early days of his venture not getting killed by Amazon. Square was so good at not getting killed that it actually took out Amazon’s rival service less than a year after its introduction. The company pulled that off using a strategy McKelvey calls the “innovation stack.” Other successful startups have used it too, and the author explains how it works.

The Myth of Chinese Capitalism: The Worker, the Factory, and the Future of the World, by Dexter Roberts
China’s manufacturing prowess is either threat or opportunity, depending where you live on the supply chain. But will it ultimately hoist that country to world domination? Maybe not, suggests business journalist Roberts. The Myth of Chinese Capitalism is a tale of two cities–impoverished Binghuacun, from which hordes of migrants depart; and industrial Guangdong, where hordes of migrants arrive. The struggles of families there predict rising social tension that endanger the giant’s future.

APRIL

No Filter: The Inside Story of Instagram, by Sarah Frier
Journalist Frier landed interviews with Instagram’s founders, executives, and competitors to chronicle the company’s meteoric growth as it hooked the world on visual storytelling, followed by its sale to and rocky relationship with Facebook. No Filter‘s publisher promises previously unreported dramatic details of Kevin Systrom’s and Mike Krieger’s departures from the company they spawned. Also: Marquee users like Anna Wintour and Kris Jenner discuss how they craft their personal brands.

Reprogramming the American Dream: From Rural America to Silicon Valley–Making AI Serve Us All, by Kevin Scott with Greg Shaw
Books on AI are proliferating so fast you’d think computers were churning them out. But Reprogramming the American Dream author Scott should have an interesting perspective. First, because he is CTO of Microsoft. Second, because he grew up in rural Virginia and understands how white-collar disruptions affect back-roads populations. Scott advocates international policy collaboration similar to that focused on climate change, space exploration, and public health.

Always Day One: How the Tech Titans Plan to Stay on Top Forever, by Alex Kantrowitz
The title, of course, refers to Jeff Bezos’s dictum that Amazon employees approach each day like the first day of a startup. Kantrowitz, a BuzzFeed journalist, discusses Bezos, Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, Google’s Sundar Pichai, and other leaders of the colossi that–for good and ill–dominate our lives and economy. In Always Day One he explains how such companies maintain a constant state of urgency and reinvention to avoid stasis and irrelevancy. And he suggests how startups might try to change that.

MAY

The Politics Industry: How Political Innovation Can Break Partisan Gridlock and Save Our Democracy, by Katherine M. Gehl and Michael E. Porter
Remember when it was fashionable to argue that government should be run like a business? Even if government isn’t a company, politics is an industry, and a singularly destructive one with its own skewed forms of competition. In The Politics Industry, HBS professor Porter–creator of the seminal “Five Forces” strategy–joins activist Gehl to explain what happens when competing parties control the rules of competition and how citizens can help fix the system.

JUNE

Billion Dollar Burger: Inside Big Tech’s Race for the Future of Food, by Chase Purdy
As meatless meat colonizes even the shores of fast food, Purdy, a writer for Quartz, reports on the potentially planet-changing disruption that may stave off hunger, endanger farm economies, and make some folks very rich. Billion Dollar Burger‘s center is Josh Tetrick, CEO of a Silicon Valley company developing meat from cell cultures. Tetrick, who is beset by hungry competitors, is a fascinating guy who previously took on Big Condiments with vegan mayonnaise.

Humanocracy: Creating Organizations as Amazing as the People Inside Them, by Gary Hamel and Michele Zanini
Hooray that business authors now talk less about managing workforces and more about managing individuals. In Humanocracy, London Business School professor Hamel and McKinsey alum Zanini lay out the costs of dehumanizing workers in the interest of control and explain how to achieve the benefits of coordination and consistency while letting employees be themselves.

Correction: A previous version of this article erroneously stated that author Alex Kantrowitz interviewed Jeff Bezos and Sundar Pichai for his book Always Day One.

Feature Image Credit: Covers courtesy publishers

By Leigh Buchanan

Sourced from Inc.

In News

Amazon Is a Brand Disaster Waiting to Happen

January 16, 2020 No Comments

By Geoffrey James.

The company is playing fast and loose in some markets where it’s crucial to maintain the customers’ trust.

Brand disasters aren’t the same as business disasters.

Business disasters are transitory problems from which companies can easily recover. For example, a series of bad quarterly results is a business disaster, but the disaster becomes moot after you clock a couple good quarters.

Brand disasters are events that cause customers to no longer trust you. For example, if your product becomes responsible for numerous highly-publicized deaths, your existing customers will jump ship, and potential customers will be all “I don’t think so…”

Last month, I identified Boeing’s 737 MAX crashing-on-takeoff scandal as a brand mega-disaster because it’s created a general impression that something is fundamentally wrong at Boeing and that therefore their products can’t be trusted. That’s an albatross they might never shed.

Similarly, the Wells Fargo fake account scandal fundamentally changed how the public perceives the brand. Where the brand originally said “solid, American, and trustworthy,” it now says “Gee, do I really want to trust my money with these shady characters?” Again, this is likely to prove a very difficult brand image to change or improve.

Unlike business disasters (which can result from bad luck) brand disasters emerge from the corporate culture. At Boeing, for instance, the culture changed from “safety first” to “cost-savings first.” At Wells Fargo, it changed from “serve the customer” to “sell, Sell, SELL!”

While brand disasters can happen in any industry, they’re more serious and long-lasting inside industries where there’s a big downside risk to working with an untrustworthy partner, like aircraft manufacturing, banking, accounting, and pharmaceuticals.

And that’s why the Amazon brand may be headed for disaster.

The Amazon brand established itself by selling a product–books in print–where the manufacturers (the book publishers) do their own quality control. Customers knew that when they bought from Amazon, they’d get what they paid for.

In addition, buying a book has virtually no downside risk to the customer, other than perhaps discovering, post-purchase, that it was written by Danielle Steel.

All kidding aside, Amazon developed an enviable brand reputation as a trustworthy source for a quality product, a reputation that it built upon as the company branched out into additional product categories.

However, Amazon has recently been sacrificing its brand reputation by allowing third-party sellers to offer poor-quality products. According to the public interest group Pro Publica:

“[Our] investigation found 4,152 items for sale on Amazon.com’s site that have been declared unsafe by federal agencies, are deceptively labeled or are banned by federal regulators — items that big-box retailers’ policies would bar from their shelves [including] at least 2,000 listings for toys and medications lacked warnings about health risks to children.”

Amazon justifies substandard products on its site in a manner similar to how social media sites justify distasteful content–that they’re just a platform and therefore not responsible, as long as they remove anything that violates their terms of service.

The problem is that Amazon.com has always positioned itself as a store rather than, say, a flea market. As such, customers may feel that Amazon should guarantees the goods it sells in the same way that brick and mortar stores guarantee the goods they sell.

Put another way, if a product being sold on Amazon.com starts killing people, they public is likely to blame Amazon rather than the supplier.

To make matters more potentially difficult for Amazon, the company has gained a reputation as an employer that doesn’t value its workers. For example, Amazon has been plagued by stories of mistreatment of warehouse workers and was recently accused of giving insufficient safety training to its delivery drivers.

All of these brand image problem apparently stem from Amazon’s focus on growth at any cost, even if that cost might the erosion of public trust. But that’s just the start.

Amazon is also a major player in cloud computing (which accounts for 50 percent of the company’s profits) and an increasingly important player in the grocery industry–both of which are especially dependent upon maintaining the trust of their customer base.

Any widely-publicized scandal in those areas, piled atop Amazon’s already increasingly sketchy brand image, risks permanent brand damage. It may be only a matter of time before I end up including Amazon in my yearly brand disaster list.

Feature Image Credit: Getty Images

By Geoffrey James

Sourced from Inc.

In News

Red flags: How agency execs weed out bad hires

January 15, 2020 No Comments

By Kristina Monllos.

Hiring the right candidate has always been a challenge. But agencies are now competing for talent at a time when unemployment is low — and they are strapped for cash, grappling with extended payment windows and companies offering project work or taking marketing in-house. Sussing out who might be the best fit for a job depends a lot on the in-person interview. Digiday caught up with agency executives to find out their interview red flags — the signs of who’s not right to hire.

‘Jumpers’
My biggest red flags [are] related to how “jumpers” annotate their accomplishments on resumes. While I acknowledge that it’s natural in our industry to hop around, there are red flags in a candidates’ resume where they make claims to launching departments or growing businesses – all in less than a year. I believe it takes six months at least to get comfortable in any new job. So when I see candidates boasting solving or building something in such a short time, my alarm bells go off. — Gila Wilensky, Essence’s svp and head of media activation.

Low risk-taking
When we recruit, we think in terms of “casting” versus filling a specific role, the intention being that just as when casting a play, you have to look at how the individual fits in with the other players as well as the overall narrative. In our case that narrative is about leading change versus following it. So a red flag for us is someone who seems to be married to a linear, obvious path, [who] isn’t comfortable with taking informed risks, or who doesn’t demonstrate interest about the broader economic and cultural issues that influence our clients’ business. —Stacy DeRiso, PHD’s U.S. COO

There is no ‘I’ in team
I ask each candidate, “What’s the best use of your time and talent at an agency like ours?” Most of the time, upon being asked that question, candidates will pause and say something along the lines of “Wow, no one has ever asked me that.” And then they will proceed to give a clear, thoughtful and true answer of how their specific talents could help us here, based on the research they’ve done. If a candidate launches into a prebaked, work-life history, I can tell right away they aren’t very nimble thinkers. If a candidate is an “I”-driven storyteller when it comes to relaying successes, it’s a pretty safe bet that collaborating ain’t their strong suit, which is a deal breaker in a creative-first agency. The candidates who don’t ask real-time (versus preplanned) questions let me know they are likely too rigid to be happy and successful in an environment as fast and iterative as ours. —Sue Gillan, OKRP’s chief talent officer

Lack of curiosity
Here’s my big interviewing “red flag”: I learn more about a candidate by listening to what they don’t say, as opposed to what they do say. My biggest red flag is [a] lack of curiosity in our agency and their career pathway. I love it when candidates ask me a ton of questions about the agency, [its] culture, the work and what their career pathway would look like at DNA. I look for candidates [who] are curious, humble and hungry to build on their careers.
—Charlene Short, director of talent and culture for DNA in Seattle

Evidence and hard data
The older I get, the more disloyal I am to my instincts. What I mean by that is that it’s not just about enjoying someone’s company and liking their resume. Evidence and hard data are key. I heard a speaker recently note that before hiring someone, it would be really valuable to see the candidate’s reviews by Uber drivers, for example. I love that idea. In an interview you want to challenge and probe to see what’s behind the words on a resume and make sure that the individual’s experiences match expectations. Of course, we look for some signs of the things we as a company hold dear — honesty, integrity, fairness, creativity, general open-mindedness and an interest … in the world.
—Joe Kelly, IPG’s svp of talent.

By Kristina Monllos

Sourced from DIGIDAY

In News

How This Social Media Agency Is Revolutionizing The Influencer Marketing Landscape

January 15, 2020 No Comments

By Cheryl Robinson.

Is influencer marketing becoming a strategy of the past? Are influencers worth what brands pay them to endorse their products?

LMS, an influencer and social media agency, founded by Denise Lambertson, chairwoman, with partners Tim Lambertson, co-CEO, and Kelli Reyes, co-CEO, has proven that influencer marketing is providing the startup community the power to reach a larger audience. What sets LMS’ strategy apart from other agencies is the fact that all three partners’ experience in the entertainment industry before starting the agency has driven their business decisions. Before introducing brands to influencers, the product has to align with the influencer’s values and a product that they will actually use. The endorsement of products from the influencers needs to be authentic.

Established in 2009, LMS operated in the influencer marketing space before the term was coined what it is today. According to Influencer Marketing Hub, just in the last 12 months, 320 new influencer marketing-focused platforms and agencies entered the market, and the 2019 industry is estimated to have reached $6.5 billion. For LMS, it has over 35 thousand influencers in its network, and in 2019 alone, its influencer campaigns have generated over 30 million impressions and 1.3 million engagements.

“We quickly realized that influencers were not willing to work with brands who did not have a well built out social media account, specifically on Instagram,” Tim explains. “Instagram was a validator for the quality of the company. We started hiring and building out a social media team.”

“That’s what people get excited to share,” Denise adds, “is something that they’ve discovered and they love. When you’re talking about really big brands, that discovery element is kind of gone. Also in this era, there’s a lot of mistrust of those big brands. The consumers, and therefore the influencers, are like, ‘what is this new, cool thing that is taking the place of this product that in my life I’ve grown to mistrust by this company that I no longer feel connected to?…How is this company doing it differently? I love it so much. How can I share it?’ That just lends itself really well to the startup community.”

influencer marketing agency LMS — Founders and Partners of LMS, Denise Lambertson, Tim Lambertson and Kelli Reyes, at a meeting … [+]

Joseph Bradley, 2019

All the partners understood the value of networking and building a positive reputation. It has been through their connections that they have built the cornerstone of their company. Prior to LMS, Denise interned for a film production company owned by Madonna before transitioning over to Madonna’s team as her executive assistant. During her time as an intern, she met Reyes. At the time that they met, Reyes was already working for Madonna’s manager.

Reyes explains, “I was really drawn to the tour industry. I had never really thought about that for myself. I ended up staying in music and touring with different artists for several years on the artist side. During the mid-2000s, brands were really starting to get smart about implementing themselves into tours, especially seeing the experiential space in the concourse; you have a captive audience before the show and intermissions to be able to talk to them about your brand. I was working for Maroon 5, and Verizon sponsored the tour. After that, the brand team came to me and asked if I would like to manage tours from the brand side.”

Tim’s experience in entertainment began as an assistant in a management office. He then started handling licensing deals for A-list musicians and other artists on the roster. Part of his responsibility was doing A&R (talent scouting) to expand the client roster. On the side, he worked as a digital marketer for a Grammy Award-winning DJ production duo and ultimately began working at a record label. When Denise had the opportunity to move to London while working for Madonna, Tim moved as well. While on a music video set, he met Tracy Anderson, a professional fitness trainer. He left the record label and managed Anderson’s enterprise, everything from fitness DVD’s, production, and studios to business management and appearances.

After transitioning out of Madonna’s management team, Denise consulted for various startups, which made her realize that companies were more interested in who she could connect them with. Her experiences with startups sparked the idea of connecting brands with celebrities.

Fast forward to the end of 2019; the partners have grown their company to over 40 employees and have orchestrated some of the largest endorsement deals in the industry from the Beyonce and WTRMLN WTR deal to the Ellie Goulding and CORE partnership. The LMS programming contributed to the acquisition of CORE by Keurig Dr. Pepper at a purchase price of $525 million. The partners facilitated a partnership between Jillian Michaels and Thrive Market. The promotion generated by Michaels’ Thrive Market activation generated 60 thousand registrants within 60 days.

LMS influencer marketing — LMS, an influencer and social media agency, hosts an annual influencer event at the Expo East … [+]

Kyle Pompey, 2019

Throughout the years, LMS has had to pivot their approach to employee retention, reframe the company’s story, and how they initiate the conversation between influencers and brands (mainly how they set the clients expectations). With each pivot the partners focus on these essential steps:

Don’t wait for the perfect moment to pivot. There’s never going to be a perfect moment. When you’ve mapped out your course, have some money in the bank and feel scared, that is the moment to leap.
Be prepared to run. You can’t pivot and then gingerly walk towards your goals. You have to be ready to sprint.
Take the risk. Learn to fail quickly and move on. The risks take you further along the path of your goals than remaining in the comfort zone.

“I think that our failures have led us to be able to be more risk-takers,” Tim concludes. “I think in business where we are right now, especially on the forefront of marketing and digital marketing, if you’re not willing to take a risk, and then have that backfire, or fail in a way, then you’re going to be missing what the latest greatest thing is. This whole business is risky.”

Feature Image Credit: Founders and Partners of influencer and social media agency LMS. From left, Kelli Reyes, co-CEO, Denise Lambertson, chairwoman, and Tim Lambertson, co-CEO. Leslie Hassler, 2019

By Cheryl Robinson.

Sourced from Forbes