Somewhere in development, we had a “duh” moment… not only did we all enjoy working together, we realized the benefit of bringing strategic, creative, and technical expertise together on marketing endeavors. Why not offer this to our collective clients?

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by Phil Black

There are times within platonic relationships (often between opposite sexes) when one person begins to realize that there may be potential to be more than friends with the other person. Awkward, yes. But perhaps the start of a very good thing. All hand-holding aside, that same dynamic between firm and client can sometimes come into play when there is both chemistry and synergy.

Enter Highland Solutions, referred to us by matchmaker and business guru, Brad Farris of Anchor Advisors. As we worked with partner firm White Gazelle to clarify brand attributes and create a new website, we all shared a “duh” moment: Not only did we all enjoy working with each other, but together we represented a unique cross-section of strategic, creative, and technical know-how. This elixir of awesomeness presents a potent panoply of benefit that we are now offering to select clients. For now, we’re calling it the “Duh” team.

Ah, but don’t miss the project details I posted in the The Process of Progress.

View The Process of Progress

Ps. Not to kiss and tell, but… ever have this happen with your business? Shoot us a note and let us know.

• If you’re not talking to your customers in the slow economy, somebody else certainly is

• Converse with customers now while competitors are cutting back on marketing to save money

• Blogs and e-mail newsletters are a low-cost and effective way to open lines of communication

In times of economic woe, many businesses are tempted to kill the lights to save on electricity. The inherent peril is that if your business operates in the dark, your customers will not see you or, worse yet, forget about you.

The advantage then falls squarely on the one business that remains aglow for those who still want and need to spend money. Times are tough, but remember that many of the greatest companies fought to the top by staying visible and accessible during economic slowdowns. Their competitors, meanwhile, sank with reactionary measures and self-fulfilling prophecies.

So how can you keep the lights on without draining scarce funds? The answer lies in the one resource that’s always inexpensive to share: your expertise as a product or service provider.

Making customers more aware of your abilities creates interest in new sales and upgrades. It also reinforces you as trusted resource in your market when the competition has fallen silent.

To generate interest and maintain an audible voice at a low cost, one of TripleSpoke’s clients, The Big Picture (also our featured brand), recently launched a new blog and e-mail newsletter.

Entitled State of Integration, it reaches out to clients by featuring the owner’s insights into current industry trends in a blog’s warming, conversational tone.

For the meager cost of an e-mail marketing client such as Constant Contact and the upgrades to the website, The Big Picture has opened an exciting and informative dialog with its clients.

The website’s blog has also been rejuvenated with a simple but powerful element: the current date. And within a culture of uncertainty, perhaps nothing does more than that to say, “That’s right, I’m here—and my lights are still ablaze.”

Recently TripleSpoke collaborated with 37signals to give user testimonials for one of their newest product offerings, HighRise. Filmed over the course of a morning, Phil, Clint and Liz spoke about how HighRise helps keep the team on track by allowing us to record critical client information. A Rolodex on steroids, HighRise keeps us up to date on more than just addresses and phone numbers; with it, we can track anything from communications and histories to a client’s favorite cookie brand and birthday.

To manage projects, we use 37signals’ flagship product, Basecamp. As the name implies, it’s a base of operations for project oversight. It gives everyone collaborating on a project the ability to view a calendar of milestones, broadcast messages, upload files and assign tasks.

Both products combine to give us the ability to be up-to-date and transparent with our clients, keeping both sides in-sync and satisfied.

Watch the video now!

“ABC Partners”
Type: Flash Animation
Polished and snappy, it brings the company into focus | view it here

ICe Bar
Type: Identity
An identity as cool as the clientele | view it here

The Montrose Room
Type: Identity
Recalling an earlier era for some night club ambiance | view it here

S Notes
Type: Identity System
A multi-faceted system for internally branding a new company vision | view it here

Pipeline Diagram
Type: Illustration
A complex business idea is made crystal clear | view it here

Based on a provided script and production notes requesting elements from the world of photography, we created this Flash-based animation to open and close a presentation of the company’s capabilities in the world of internal branding. Snappy and sharp, this animation casts the company’s vision to prospective viewers in an exciting way with visuals that enhance and support the message of a world brought into focus through branding.

To aid this effort, the name S Notes was developed to sum up the four S’s of the key brand differentiators (Scale, Scope, Systems, Service). A parent logo was designed along with four sub-logos to represent each extension of the system and integrated into booklets, posters and a website. Together, this family creates a rallying point that the entire company can gather around, reinforcing the company’s internal brand culture and by extension, the way in which it presents itself to the outside world.