There significant challenges of creating logos, images, and designs that are memorable, attention getting, and grab-worthy regardless of the product or company the images or design are trying to promote. What image will most resonate with the customer base of the company being promoted? What types of promotional items will get your client company’s customer base heading to their booth? As marketing professionals, all these questions and many more are ours to ponder. The situation becomes significantly more complicated, however, when our client provides a product or service the thought of which does not exactly send visions of puppies and rainbows dancing through our heads. In other words, what can we do if the subject matter that is addressed by our client makes people squeamish or carries unpleasant associations?

For example, let’s suppose that a company that provides products and services related to eradicating bedbugs hires you to help with marketing, logo design, promotional products, etc. As you begin work, you quickly realize that your initial ideas involving pictures of bedbugs and stuffed bedbug toys are not exactly appealing to the majority of the population. What to do? Eliminate images of the subject matter from the major collateral and promotional materials altogether? Not likely. Somehow try to make the subject seem cute or less creepy, maybe a bedbug in a tux? Not only is this not particularly helpful, but it also detracts from your client’s main angle, which is that bedbugs are terrible, disgusting, and must be eradicated. Not as easy as it might seem at first.

Experience shows that the best strategy in a case where one of the major associations to the product or service being offered is an unpleasant one is to create imagery that depicts the conquering of the offending component, in this case bedbugs. For example, an image of a tiny, scared little bedbug being scrutinized by an intelligent-looking, self-assured inspector/exterminator is humorous while also immediately inspiring thoughts of conquering the pest, not just of the pest itself.

Another example might be creating promotional materials and promotional products for mental health services. Mental health services carry unpleasant associations for some people, as they can be associated with mental instability, depression, and other such generally unpleasant associations. By focusing on the flip-side of these phenomena (mental health rather than mental illness), or positive mental health tools that have equally positive effects whether one is perfectly healthy or not, the best results can be achieved. For example, instead of focusing on depression and treatments, promotional items should focus on prevention and stress-relief. Aromatherapy salts, positive daily mantra cards, uplifting music, etc would be appropriate promotional items for a mental health service provider.

As a rule of thumb, if your client’s subject matter is difficult or sensitive, use images and wording that is all about conquering the difficulty. Such images inspire confidence while softening some of the harshness that can accompany subjects that are not based in the more pleasant parts of life.

Read More…

• Back to Basics Marketing
• Marketing as Company Wide Responsibility
• Mobilization: Reaching Outside the Marketing Department
• Advanced Lead Qualification: Sales and Marketing Work Together
• Sales’ Feedback into Marketing: Profiling Prospects and Their Problems
• “Inside Marketing”: Marketing to Your Own Sales Organization
• Developing Unique, Customer-Focused Value Propositions
• How to Train an Entry-Level Marketing Employee
• When Return on Investment Doesn’t Paint a Full Picture
• Defining and Presenting Value Propositions in a Competitive Market
• You Are Here Logos and Promotional Product Designs for “Difficult” Subjects
• Defining and Refining Value Propositions for Luxury Items
• Evaluating Return-On-Investment (ROI) for Tradeshow Activities
• Management Mistake in Small Business: No Investment during Trying Times