Hile Design has been selected to create an updated website for Brighton, Michigan–based GKI Foods, a candy making company founded in 1972.

Over the past six years, Hile has provided ongoing package design services for the company. This includes assistance with presentations and sales for GKI’s clients, which include small retail outlets, convenience stores, grocery stores and “big box” chains.

Since their modest beginnings, GKI has grown into a major candy and granola manufacturer. The company currently maintains a 66,000-square-foot plant capable of producing 30,000 pounds of chocolate confections and several tons of granola a day.

I went to a seminar last week on how to market to your customers. Besides tips on messaging, the speaker stated definitively how to connect with your prospects: exclusively through email and social media. The presenter pronounced that these are the only two media that are effective for reaching today’s busy CEO (or whomever you are targeting in your marketing efforts).

The problem is that when marketing gurus become dogmatic, they are setting themselves up to be proven wrong, and based on our clients’ experience, as well as that of my own company, the presenter’s opinion is untrue.

Over the past few years I’ve questioned if my openness to using traditional print for marketing today is generational. Is it because I started in advertising nearly 30 years ago, before the Internet was used by anyone except a few universities and government agencies?

To clarify, I am not a tech-curmudgeon. I fully embrace all the digital and analytical tools available to connect people with brands. Currently my company has over 600 followers on Facebook, and we are active in over a dozen social media sites, some of which you’d recognize and others that are unique to the advertising industry.

My point is this: as advertising professionals, let’s keep our minds and options open to as broad a toolbox as possible because people access information in different ways. Here are a few facts that help present the case that direct mail is still alive (from a 2009 survey by the US Postal Service):

• Over 14 billion dollars were invested in direct mail in 2009, followed by an increase in 2010.

• 79% of direct mail recipients either read or scan their mail, which is higher than for electronic mail.

• Only 19% of retail catalogs are discarded without being read.

• 2.3: the number of weekly advertising mail pieces that affluent households (those earning $150,000-plus) intend to respond to.

Other factoids are also compelling; for instance, the belief that going interactive is the greener solution. In order for our digital world to exist, we consume huge amounts of electricity driven by power plants and massive data centers running 24/7, requiring the burning of enormous amounts of fossil fuels. And electronic consumption is increasing by roughly 24% per year. In contrast, paper producers are among the greenest industry in the world. Trees are renewable. Paper and forest industries plant about 1.5 million seedlings a day (much more than they harvest) and nearly all municipalities in the US have effective recycling programs.

Another myth is that young people aged 18 to 34 (an important demographic for advertisers) want all their information and transactions to occur online. Not so, says a recent Epsilon report. They found that 43% of the young people surveyed preferred receiving insurance information in the mail compared to 21% desiring digital delivery.

Still need convincing?

• A United States Postal Service press release points out that a market study by comScore shows that among visitors to retail websites, twice as many catalog recipients made a purchase as those who did not receive a print catalog—more than doubling the online conversion rate. A revenue increase of 163% resulted from a comparison of purchases and money spent by catalog recipients versus those who did not receive a catalog in the comScore study, and catalog recipients ordered 28% more items.

• Magazine ads? Who needs them? Well, that depends. One of our clients is in a specialized market with only several hundred prospective customers in the entire country. But all of the CEOs and managers of the companies they need to reach subscribe to a single trade publication. So the print ads we create appear prominently and regularly in the magazine—often with multiple ads in a single publication. This has been one of their major and most successful marketing media and we are happy to report that our client has not only weathered the recession during a time of rapid change within their industry, but has grown their market in the US as well as developed overseas sales (for which we have also created print ads).

• My own company walks the walk and talks the talk we advocate to our clients. Even though we are on the first page of Google for the keyword terms we have targeted, we continue a robust direct mail campaign. And our proof of success lies in the fact that our most predominant keywords remain our company’s name (with plenty of variations—hile, hile design, hile design ann arbor, dave hile, and even hill design), which indicates that people are responding to our direct mail appeal to visit our website. I know because I track the campaigns through Google Analytics and measure the increased traffic after each of our mailings.

Of course, websites, social media, digital marketing and search engine optimization are essential to growing your business and defining your brand, but let’s keep all our options open—which includes print promotions. Print creates an emotional connection with customers that digital doesn’t. Consumers hold it, view it and engage with it in a manner different from their online experiences.

Finally, since I receive over 100 emails a day, going to our mailbox to collect the mail has become a treat. As a matter of fact, I daily have to attempt to outsmart Lindsey, our Production Designer, since she also enjoys collecting the mail. And with the overall decrease in direct mail over the last several years, the print mail I receive actually gets my attention. Perhaps snail-mail is the NEW, “old” advertising medium!

Hile Design LLC has been selected by Imperial Marketing of Southfield, Michigan, to redesign the company’s website. Hile’s redesign will include implementing a Content Management System (CMS) as well as a homepage banner slideshow.

Imperial Marketing is a premiere full-service sales and marketing firm with innovative core competencies in dealer development, process solutions, promotional merchandising and award recognition systems. Their clients include Chrysler, Ford, Volkswagen, GMAC, Tecumseh, Hino Trucks, Rexair, UPS and State Farm.

As a long-time partner of Hile Design’s, Chris Hippler develops powerful, strategically-driven copy for every writing project we send his way. After a 20-year career in the creative departments of ad agencies that included J. Walter Thompson and BBDO Detroit, Chris has refined his expertise in the B2B arena. He was the Midwest Office Manager of Pratt & Buehl, an Atlanta, Georgia B2B ad agency, where he managed the Yazaki North America account as well as the Yanmar America account in Chicago.

The difference between B2C (business-to-consumer) and B2B (business-to-business) language is night and day. And not knowing the difference can make your nights awfully long. Glad-handing and cajoling may be a part of the relationship between a salesman and a client. But in B2B copy, it’s all business. Here are five keys to make sure your B2B copy gets read—and acted upon.

Be an Expert. In B2B copy, you must position yourself as a credible expert. People don’t want to be sold; they want information that is relevant to their business. If you talk with authority about the subject you’re writing about, people will read with interest.

Be Real. Don’t be cheesy. If the copy gets an employee excited but he’s afraid to show it to his boss, you’re never going to get the order.

Be Believable. If you’re selling to engineers, accountants or lawyers and you over-promise, you’re dead meat. As soon as you say something that’s not believable, they stop reading. Consumers will put up with hype; business people won’t.

Be Rational. Business people will buy on emotion, but not on pure emotion. They need to justify their purchases to each other, so your marketing materials must give them sound reasons for it.

Be Factual. In B2B, you have to back up everything you say with hard facts. Otherwise you will be perceived as a blowhard.

Jesse Den Herder is the owner of DenHerder Design, an award winning “working class” design studio located in Northern Michigan. By striving to bring an unpretentious approach to design and a strong work ethic to every type of project, he has been able to work remotely for clients from coast to coast.

When Dave first asked me to write about my approach to logo design, I thought it would also be an opportunity to discuss my thoughts on the current state of such a valuable craft. With the rise of crowdsourcing, websites that claim $99 logos and everyone with a Mac trying to be a designer, creative logo design has the possibility of becoming compromised. This has however created an opportunity for good designers to re-affirm the value of their expertise to clients.

However, just being a good designer isn’t enough to get viable work anymore. As designers we have to constantly plead our case that good design = good ROI, which is easier said than done. One of the ways I’ve been able to separate my skills from low-ball logo designers, is by educating my clients concerning my design process. Much like a math teacher sharing their process for an algebraic equation, so I believe the designer should lay out the route from which the successful logo design is achieved.

Here are some steps I use when creating a new logo/identity:

1. Get a clear objective of what the logo needs to accomplish. Understand who the company/brand is:  past present and future, mission statement, etc.  Whenever possible I like to have the client fill out a “creative strategy” form, to help guide their vision and minimize development time.

2. Market Research: After reviewing the client’s needs and objectives, I study competitors’ logos, and industry trends in general, both past and present.

I’m always surprised by how many clients neglect this step when considering their corporate identity. While as a designer I’m not technically hired to be a business consultant, a good designer owes it to the client to understand the market for which they are designing.

3. Preliminary sketches/brainstorming: I always take a typographical approach to creating a logo, be it a logotype (a logo that includes a graphic) or wordmark (a type-only design). For at least 30 minutes I’ll sketch on paper all the ideas that come to my mind: words, illustration, whatever.

4. Take the best 5 sketches and continue to refine. Then I bring the sketches into digital form. I prefer to start logo projects in Adobe Ilustrator. I try to find a typeface family close to my sketched concepts, or I’ll create a font from scratch.

5. Even when designing a multi-color logo, always make sure the logo will reproduce successfully in black and white.

6. Present 3 good options for first review. It really depends on the client, but I have generally found that showing more than 3 options can be problematic.

7. Testing: Finally I make sure the client’s logo will translate well into all types of media including print, web, corporate identity, etc.

Over the years I’ve refined this approach and applied it to many other types of projects as well as logo design. It can be sometimes be tempting to skip a few of these steps, but I’ve learned the hard way that my end product is a direct result of adhering to my process.  Weak process = weak work.

I’ve often heard excuses from fellow designers that “I’m not getting paid enough to be really creative,” or, “It’s up to the client to do the market research.” From my perspective, if a client isn’t going to compensate me to do my job thoroughly, it’s not a project worth taking. In the long run a designer’s reputation is more valuable than a quick payout. It’s important we always view our work as a valuable business asset for our clients, and it’s equally important that they too see our value as well. I think the famous designer Primo Angeli said it best: “…time and money. Without them, design is mere decoration. Neither good design nor fine art.”

To learn and see more, visit http://www.denherderdesign.com/ or visit Jesse’s blog at http://www.workingclassdesigner.com/

Hile Design has been hired by Coy Laboratory Products Inc. for rebranding and ongoing marketing and advertising services. In order to create a stronger brand identity for Coy, Hile will implement their Key Discovery marketing strategy process, a part of which is the brand perception survey they will be administering to Coy’s customers. Among ongoing deliverables, Hile will develop a new website for the company.

Coy Laboratory Products Inc. has manufactured anaerobic chambers and controlled atmosphere glove boxes for over 30 years. Based in Grass Lake, MI, the company manufactures and quality-tests their products onsite and sells to a worldwide market.

I am very happy to interview the well-known Toronto, Canada based illustrator Charlene Chua. She is someone that I have kept my eye on over the past several years, and I am a big fan of hers. A couple of the things that impress me about Charlene are her clearly defined style(s) and her ability to promote herself so successfully; landing a steady flow of assignments is not an easy task in today’s competitive illustration market.

Dave Hile: Hi Charlene. Could you give me a brief summary of your background? How did you end up making a living as a working illustrator?

Charlene Chua: Hi Dave! Thanks for including me in your lovely interview series!

I started work over 10 years ago back in Singapore. My first job was at a company that produced CD-ROMs and later, websites. I started out illustrating and designing screens for CD-ROM content and later moved on to designing websites. Later, I got a job as an interactive producer and interactive project manager.

I originally wanted to be an illustrator but there were no schools for it in Singapore, and my family could not afford to send me overseas to study. At the time there were no grants for that kind of thing, either. I more or less forgot about it until I met my future husband, who encouraged me to make a go at illustration. It was tough giving up my job and a stable income, although by that point I was quite tired of the office routine.

I took to drawing comics for no-name independent companies that offered little or no pay. In retrospect it was not the best idea, but it did get me back into the groove of drawing (I’d stopped drawing for about 3 years at that point). Eventually I started to get a trickle of illustration jobs, and after some time I had enough work to support myself through such projects.

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Ann Arbor, MI, April 22 – Since 2006, Hile Design has served two Tata divisions in the U.S. (Autodesk and PLM). They’ve now been selected to provide advertising and design services for Tata Europe. Tata is a multinational conglomerate based in Mumbai, India, and its technologies branch operates in 14 countries. The European division includes England, France, Germany, and the Netherlands.