About a month ago, a lovely lady by the name of Queenie contacted me to see if Splinter could help out with a charity event she had coming up this summer. After discussing their list of wants and needs and learning more about the benefiting charity, we gladly jumped on board. (We just might need to dust off the pitching wedge and hit the range before the tourney)

For starters, the Arizona chapter of “Water for People” needed assistance with the design of a flyer and entry form. I mean, you gotta have the basics in order to get groups interested and signed up for a fun filled day of golfing, drinking and eating, right? Needless to say, they weren’t too picky about the free help, and gave our designers the freedom to do something awesome when putting together the flyer. To the right is what @patty_cake came up with… Pretty killer, no?

The ladies and gents over at Water for People were stoked. Now they had the initial marketing piece that would allow them to start hustling and make the 13^th Annual Tourney one to remember. The only things left were to finalize the sponsors and get some golfers signed up. If you are interested in becoming a part of the event as either a sponsor or golfer, please contact Queenie Tsui by clicking here.

According to their website, Water for People helps those in developing countries improve their quality of life by supporting and developing locally sustainable drinking water resources, sanitation facilities and health and hygiene education programs. You know, the stuff we all take for granted on a daily basis.

What came as a shock to me, is the over 800 million people across the world who don’t have access to the clean nectar of Mother Nature, and more than 2.5 billion that don’t have a sanitized place to take care of business. Add those together, and you’ve got about 6,000 people per day that are losing their lives to water-related illnesses… most of them being children. Pretty sad, terrible and unacceptable if you ask me

So without giving you the hard sell, if you’re looking to take some co-workers out for a day of fun in the sun, or you want to schmooze/impress some clients, look at this as the perfect opportunity to help others, escape the office and support a great cause in the 13^th Annual Water for People Golf Tourney.

If nothing else, you get one of these super cool t-shirts to sport around town letting others know you’re down with helping those in need. Seems like a good enough reason, no?

Thanks to popular folks and networks such as Ashton Kutcher, Oprah, Barack Obama, CNN and ESPN, twitter has officially blown-up in mainstream media. While many people are hopping on the band wagon to follow their favorite celebs, there are others using this hip new social site to brand their business and more importantly, themselves.

With over 1 million users and 3 million tweets per day, twitter alone is the perfect little tool to market your product or service, meet new people, gain a few leads, or land that next big job. They key is beefing up the profile information with intriguing content that gets others to engage in conversations and learn more about you. Just make sure you have that oh-so-important link to either your Linkedin profile (an online resume for you job-seekers), personal or corporate blog, or directly to your company’s website. Not only can this drive traffic to your business or free lance expertise, it helps educate those starving to obtain more information about you online. No point in making those juicy details hard to find, now is there?

Once you’ve got the content locked down, and you’re keeping pace by actively participating in the ever changing conversations that are happening online (tweets, blog comments, status updates, etc) it’s time to give your profile a professional look and feel. However, for reasons unknown, I see more and more users and businesses that aren’t taking advantage of the impact a custom designed twitter background provides. With some basic contact information, a rad color scheme and a couple cool photos or illustrations, you or your company can have a stronger presence in your social network and stand out from the crowd. Just get creative (or hire a creative, cough-cough) and make the most out of your online wardrobe.

The ultimate goal for any type of networking is to get out there and make more connections in the business world, but until Obama changes the length of a day to 36 hours, many of just don’t have time to hit every networking event we would like. Thus why having a unique online appearance, sharing your story, connecting with others, and engaging in the conversation gains trust and credibility from others (which is what building a brand is all about). So while you may have ¾ on lock down, keep in mind that an interesting look conveying your personality traits and/or a little bit about your business, can gain more qualified followers and friends then you ever imagined (click on image to see a custom background we did for @charshaff). Who knows, maybe you’ll even become the next big twitter star!

Just remember to stick to the basics – whether you’re marketing online, in person or through print, a cohesive look is the key to “great success!”

Every time I hear the word guarantee, or someone is giving me the hard sell on a product reaffirming their guarantee, I can’t help but think of Chris Farley’s spiel in the movie Tommy Boy…

Tommy: Let’s think about this for a sec, Ted, why would somebody put a guarantee on a box? Hmmm, very interesting.
Ted Nelson, Customer: Go on, I’m listening.
Tommy: Here’s the way I see it, Ted. Guy puts a fancy guarantee on a box ’cause he wants you to feel all warm and toasty inside.
Ted Nelson, Customer: Yeah, makes a man feel good.
Tommy: ‘Course it does. Why shouldn’t it? Ya figure you put that little box under your pillow at night, the Guarantee Fairy might come by and leave a quarter, am I right, Ted?
[chuckles until he sees that Ted is not laughing too]
Ted Nelson, Customer: [impatiently] What’s your point?
Tommy: The point is, how do you know the fairy isn’t a crazy glue sniffer? “Building model airplanes” says the little fairy; well, we’re not buying it. He sneaks into your house once, that’s all it takes. The next thing you know, there’s money missing off the dresser, and your daughter’s knocked up. I seen it a hundred times.
Ted Nelson, Customer: But why do they put a guarantee on the box? 
Tommy: Because they know all they sold ya was a guaranteed piece of shit. That’s all it is, isn’t it? Hey, if you want me to take a dump in a box and mark it guaranteed, I will. I got spare time. But for now, for your customer’s sake, for your daughter’s sake, ya might wanna think about buying a quality product from me. 
Ted Nelson, Customer: [pause] Okay, I’ll buy from you.

As this may be the case with some companies (guaranteeing a poor product simply to make the consumer feel all warm and fuzzy) it is most certainly not the case with 3M. In case you didn’t know, 3M is THE fabricator of the finest over laminates and adhesive vinyls in all the land. I refer to them as THE fabricator of such materials because they aren’t just slapping a guarantee on a box. They warranty their products to the fullest extent to make sure each and every client is completely satisfied with their materials.

For example, about 9 months back we wrapped 2 SUV’s for a local client. The wrap designs turned out absolutely killer, the quality of printing was phenomenal and the installation was flawless. Needless to say, a few months went by and the client began to see a few issues with the vehicle graphics peeling up in various crevices on both vehicles. As both sets of vehicle graphics were printed from the same roll of material, it wasn’t hard to believe that they were experiencing the same issue.

The crazy part… In the over 400 vehicles Splinter has wrapped, we’ve never seen material from 3M act this way. Luckily, our local 3M rep took the time to come down and examine the vehicles to see what was happening. The determination was made the material was faulty (when you’re producing millions of square feet of vinyl, this is going to happen once or twice) and our 3M rep gladly supplied us with a new roll of material to print on and re-wrap the vehicles. His level of service was second to none, and it saved us a few thousand dollars by not having to reproduce the graphics on our dime.

The moral of the story? You get what you pay for when it comes to a guarantee. The extra few bucks spent on 3M materials were well worth it just knowing the 3M crew has got your back. Adam, if you’re reading this, thanks for making our lives that much easier and standing by your quality products.

It was a quiet Thursday night, and good ole Cox Communications decided to stick it to us with a cable outage in our neighborhood, so my roommate and I headed over to Hollywood Video to see what kind of entertainment we could drum up.  I know, who goes to a video store anymore with redbox and netflix available, but we were in search of entertainment higher than a movie.  We needed something to activate our carpel tunnel syndrome.

As we entered the store (it had been months, if not a year since I rented a video game) I couldn’t help but take notice of all the great product packaging and point-of-purchase displays.  Even though most of the games seemed lame or not my style, I was sucked in by, A: the audacity that there was such a video game, and B: the great design used in product packaging… Then again, it may just have been my passion for how awesome ninjas are, but that’s a completely different blog post

While perusing the aisles, I noticed every wall, corner, nook and cranny had some sort of advertisement for video games.  I entered with the intention of renting “MLB The Show 09” and getting out as fast as possible, but I quickly became distracted by video games relating to television, movies, music artists, etc.  Did you know the TV show “Lost” has its own video game?  How about 50 Cent?  Clearly, the big marketing execs know what they’re doing to get America’s younger crowd hooked in more ways than one.  I was impressed with the way brand standards were followed when transitioning from television, movies and music to product packaging for video games.  With just a glance, I knew I had seen it before.

What blew me away even more were the P.O.P. displays throughout the store.  I have and always will hate the game “Halo,” (thank my college buddies for that one) but the four foot tall cardboard cut out with awesome graphics stole my attention within seconds.  Everywhere I turned there was a static cling, magnet poster or P.O.P display for a video game staring me down.  Hell, even Hollywood Video did a great job with their signage to entice America’s youth to rent multiple games and receive a discount.  Whether the consumer is paying attention or not, these ads were for the most part unavoidable and well placed.

The moral of the story and inspiration for this post: Good Design Goes a LONG Way.  No matter what your product or service is, your initial impression on the consumer can be easily won by communicating a message effectively.  Just ask ME.  I went in with the intention of renting one game (I even called ahead to make sure they had it) and ended up walking out with not one, but four video games.  What can I say, even as an Advertising Junkie, I’m still a sucker…