Barack Obama came to my church today to give his testimony. I was able to fire off a few pictures of him with my cell phone’s built-in camera, but as you can imagine, the quality was a little less than spectacular. I want to be able to post these to my MySpace page, but they need some serious work before I’ll be satisfied enough to show them off. So here’s a few easy steps to quickly tweak your cell phone photos.

First, open up your picture in Photoshop. Click and hold the Eyedropper Tool until the tool’s option window pops up select the Color Sampler Tool. Move the Color Sampler tool over your image until you find the darkest black in your image (Tip: the Info Palette displays the corresponding RGB values for the pixel the Color Sampler Tool is hovering over. To select the darkest value in the image, look for the lowest RGB reading in the Info Palette. 0 is the lowest value for any RGB output). Click to set the value which will appear on the info palette as RGB #1.

Next we want to select the whitest white in the image. Using the Color Sampler tool again, find the lightest white value in your image. In the Info Window, light colors will have a higher RGB reading - 255 is the highest value for any RGB output. Click again to set this value which will appear as RGB#2 in the Info Palette.

Now to correct the color of the image. Go Layers>New Adjustment Layers>Levels and then click OK. You should be looking at the Levels dialog window now. Change your channel from RGB to Red. Enter the R value from your RGB#1 reading top left box to set the image’s black point and the R value from your RGB#2 reading in the top right box to set your white point. Now you can use the sliders to fine tune these settings to your liking and hit OK.

Flatten the images next Layers>Flatten Image.

Now let’s sharpen the image a bit to add a little clarity. Choose Filter>Sharpen>Unsharp Mask. A good place to start with sharpening a photo is Amount - 120%; Radius - 1.5 pixels; Threshold - 10 levels. Every photo is different so feel free to adjust these settings to your liking for your photo.

And finally, it’s time to sample different color variations. Go Image>Adjustments>Variations. The resulting window will show you several different color variations of your image, from here just pick the one that you think is best.

Heres my final product!

It may not be as good as a pic coming from a hi-res SLR camera with a good zoom lens, but it certainly looks better than the original!

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From large corporate conglomerates and global organizations, to small High-Street stores and independent retailers, the one thing they all value besides their customers is their unique brand identity.

Having a familiar, recognizable brand is priceless in consumer culture and really can’t be underestimated. Given a choice between a known brand and a new brand, a consumer will invariably go with the one they are familiar with.

Of course, the bigger organizations have whole departments dedicated not so much to promoting individual items, but to promoting the entire brand and ensuring its reputation and integrity is protected. But these are organizations that have millions of pounds at their disposal, and can afford television, radio and magazine advertising campaigns.

So, where does that leave the rest? How can the smaller organizations get their message out there and create a brand identity?

Well, there are many promotion and marketing strategies that can be employed that won’t need a blank check to fund it. The key is to simply get their name in the public domain, whether it’s on flyers, websites or newspapers. The more exposure a brand has, the more familiar the public will be with it and subsequently the more likely they will be to use their wares at some point.

Branding promotional products such as pens, bags, keyrings and other commonly used items is a good way of getting a company’s name widely circulated. And producing promotional mugs, in particular, is an effective way of getting a company’s name onto the desk of existing or potential business partners.

The great thing about such promotional methods is that they are relatively inexpensive to produce and it can all be organized with minimal hassle. With promotional mugs, for example, the type of mug (ceramic, china, glass etc), size of mug, colour of mug and quantity required, can all be requested.

Of course, it isn’t only the smaller organizations that use such promotional items. All the big names in the business world produce such items in addition to their media campaigns to help maximize their presence and ensure their brand identity is preserved.

With so much competition in the consumer world, even the smallest of advantages that can be gained over a rival is worth every penny. Brand recognition is central to any successful business, so whether it’s keyrings, bags, pens or mugs, getting the brand name circulated widely is crucial.

Questions on how to start branding your business or organization? Contact us!

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An effective marketing strategy identifies and targets your customers and prospects with the appropriate materials to communicate your company’s “value added” proposition. A strategy that, when it is well articulated and clearly charted, ensures that all your marketing and promotional materials are on target to your audience, have a consistent look and feel appropriate to your brand, and have the correct tone and tenor to communicate your unique selling proposition. If these elements are in place then all the oars of your marketing boat will be in concert, pulling your marketing efforts in the right direction.

The first step in developing a comprehensive marketing communications plan is to write out and clearly articulate what products and/or services your company is selling, to whom, why and what differentiates you from your competition.

Having a firm grasp on these concepts is a requirement to creating a strategy that will elevate your marketing effort to the next level. Capitalizing on this strategy what successful marketing is all about.

With so much competition and an uncertain economy, raising the visibility of your brand above the clutter is key to growing your business. In a constantly changing business environment, measuring results and charting successes and failures of your marketing efforts will show you how to adjust and react to this changing environment. Being armed with measured results and being flexible, you can reinforce the winning efforts and rethink or abandon ineffective and under performing ones. Go with the winners!

Periodic reevaluation of your entire marketing effort will enable you to stay on top of the changing business environment with an active rather than reactive approach. It is far better to be setting the pace rather than chasing your competition. By constantly monitoring and assessing the results of your program and then making adjustments as appropriate with updated and fresh ideas and images, programs and initiatives, you can make sure your company puts its best foot forward with customers and prospects.

Often overlooked and just as important as your customers and prospects, your staff and employees must understand your brand, internalize and deliver on your unique selling proposition. Without buy-in from your staff, you will not have a level of delivery on your value added proposition to keep true to your brand and keep you competitive in the market place.

How much should you be spending towards your marketing efforts. You should consider committing 2%-7% of your gross sales towards your marketing efforts. If this seems like a lot of money, remember this is an investment that will keep the orders and sales coming and keep you profitable.

Finally, get some professional help.

Professionally prepared ad copy, an excellent website, or a great brochure all require the expertise of professionals. While you or your staff may be able to create some of these materials, truly professional marketing can make all the difference in how your customers and potential customers view your company.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Jeff_Gellis

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Marketing is not a one time solution where you go all out and stop at a certain point. Rather, it is an on going process to sustain regular customers or to expand your market. It’s not enough to acquire the services of a large format poster printing company at one point and stop as well. It is a relationship you must keep - both as your business partner and service provider.

• The same thing cannot be said truer with your marketing strategies. It is too a relationship you must keep with your clients and build new ones with your prospects. Sending out a few brochures every now and then or handing out flyers when you feel like it isn’t enough.The only way to retain your hold on your consumers is to remain visible. Planning the right time, for the right products and services, to the right audience are just some of the several things you should consider. Communication is always the key and with which will propel your large format posters well.
• Large format poster printing is a way to anchor your advertising materials. It is the backbone your marketing can build upon. Large outdoor advertisements create the visibility you need to stay on top of your customer’s consciousness. Although it barely scratches the surface, it places a big foot in fast closing doors.

Marketing with Posters For whatever purpose you may think of, large format posters can generally do it for you. Brand your products well, build up your image, announce your promotions and increase your sales.

1. Use posters as a spring board to your marketing plan. Nothing would help establish your campaign better than large posters that can effectively dominate any landscape. Large posters give your other marketing materials a sense of credibility. Being viewed by a large audience, it is accountable to more people to get their facts right and promotional legitimate.
2. Call your clients to action. Poster slogans might be short, but it can be powerful. Suggest actions they can do immediately and conveniently. “Ask your Doctor (or dealer, mechanic, etc)” or “Visit our website”.
3. Use posters as your foot in the door. They can be patterned not just to make or promote direct sales. As illustrated in the previous paragraph, you can use posters to motivate your clients through more information, increase your visibility, and drive clients to your websites or events like trade shows and more.
4. Hammer in the message with repetition. It may be the same message over and over, but it works to build your brand and your customer confidence in your products. Consistency translates to dependability, and dependability sooner or later becomes trustworthiness.
5. The beauty of large format posters is that it is a very low maintenance advertising solution. You have it printed, you put it up and you forget about it, but it still keeps advertising.

Achieve these and more through the expertise of a large format poster printing company who can give you a variety of possibilities - from materials, designs, print options and more.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Carla_San_Gaspar

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Developing a brand strategy can be exciting, but at the same time intimidating. Your brand image is a major part of your marketing plan, but executing it may be a tad more difficult. Building your company’s brand image and identity is a very important step and you want to do it right the first time.

Your brand strategy is something that you will want to implement and promote throughout the life of your business. Branding your image throughout your store can involve the smallest decision, such as which hangers you choose. For a retail clothing store, the hangers you choose can tell your customers if you are a high-end high quality wooden hanger boutique, or if you are a discount plastic hanger outlet. These decisions affect your business in a variety of ways, for example, suits being sold on wooden hangers consistently sell for more than the same suits on plastic or wire hangers. This just gives you one scenario of the type of thinking that should go into branding your image.

A good brand image should communicate something to your customers. The message should be clear and concise. You don’t want your image to be all over the place, but to the point. If I want to offer the best products, then I also want it to be clear that they are the best. I want courteous and professional staff. I want dressing rooms with good lighting. I want everything that you see in my store to give you the impression that you are in the highest quality store around.

Giving a vibe of a certain image helps you connect with your customers. If they feel a type of emotional connection with your store, then they are more likely to return. Connecting with them can motivate them to spend more money. They want to take that feeling that they get in your store home with them. They also will experience the emotion that you evoked every time they wear the item that they purchased from you. When that feeling wears off and they want it back, then they will want to return to the same place and find a new item to renew the feeling.

Coming up with an effective brand strategy isn’t an easy task, but it’s worth all of the time and money that you put into it. Communicating your intentions with your customers can be done through branding. Your unique branding strategy sets you apart from your competitors. Do your research and decide on a major theme that you want to promote. Research your target customer base and find out what makes them tick. Most importantly, what makes them spend money and what makes them come back for more. This could be an emotion that they feel in your store, the type of products that you offer or the deals that they get at your promotional sales. Whatever the motivation is, you need to find out and push the brand image on to everything in your store. Once you do, you’ll enjoy the identity that you create and reap the benefits for the life of your business.

About the Author: Ron Maier is the owner of The Hanger Depot, a leading provider of high quality hangers,including wooden hangers. For more information, please visit http://www.thehangerdepot.com

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Ron_A_Maier

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Favicons aren’t new in the web design world, they do however add another level of professionalism to your site. It only takes a few minutes and easily extends your brand one step further. Favicons are relatively simple to make, essentially all you need is a 16×16 pixel image saved in the correct “.ico” format (more on that a little later) and then the proper code inserted in the head tag of your web pages.

To start your favicon project, first grab the image you’d like to use as your favicon and open it an image editor such as Adobe Photoshop. Keep in mind that your favicon will be small, so it’s better to choose a simple graphic rather than something like a photograph, which could end up just looking like a blob. Create a new file in RGB colorspace with the dimensions of 16 x 16 pixels. Copy your image into your new document and using your transform tool, scale your image to fit into the new 16 x 16 pixel document.

Once you’ve got your image into the new document and positioned just way you’d like, save your image using the name “favicon.” SIDENOTE: Incremental saves are crucial to not having to repeatedly recreate work that’s been lost due to a software or system crash or some other catastrophic event that would cause you to lose your work. See our previous posts on autosaves and backups.

Now, from this point there are two schools of thought. If you don’t have an image editor that can save to the .ico format, you can save your image as a .bmp (bitmap image) and then after saving, simply change the file extension from .bmp to .ico. This will work for this project, however won’t work for some uses, such as if you’re making a call in a C app and your filetype needs to be .ico, even though the file was renamed with the correct extension, the call will fail. The alternative here (and the one I prefer) is to use an image editor that will allow you to save as an .ico file. Photoshop users can download this nifty plug-in from telegraphics that will allow it to manage .ico files natively.

With our new .ico file saved, all we need to do now is upload it to the site. Using your favorite FTP client or website development tool such as Adobe Dreamweaver upload the image to your site’s root folder (usually “www” or “public_html”)

Now that the favicon is in place you’ll need to add a small snippet of code just after the </head> tag of your page:

<link rel=”shortcut icon” href=”favicon.ico”>

Pasting this code into the head of a template is a good idea. This will make sure that any new pages you create with your template will display your new favicon.

Make sure to save your changes and upload the new page to your site. You may have to clear your browser’s cache and reload your page to force your browser to reload the link to the favicon.

That’s it! Enjoy your new branding extention!

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Every organizer aspires to throw parties that are the talk of the town for weeks to come, but when word-of-mouth is a little slow to spread, it may need a little push. Send full color club flyers as an invite to tease your guests and create the buzz.

These are a cross between a postcard, a flyer, and an invitation. It looks like a postcard, sounds like an invitation, and are handed out like flyers. It is printed in full color and made of the same cover paper stocks postcards are made of.

Here are some ways club flyers help stoke the fire to create raging events.

1. Two important things to remember when designing your club flyer: people are quick to judge and they have a short attention span. They can decide in a glance whether your event is worth dressing up for and going to or not.

2. When you want to win people’s confidence, sometimes you have to strut in like a peacock and display what you’ve got in full color. Beautiful, professional looking invites give a preview to the amount of attention and sophistication the party has. Design them to make the knock-out first impression that will seal the deal.

3. Give your clients confidence. Word-of-mouth happens because people want the reassurance that in that moment, they have confidently made the right decision. Asking around is simply to confirm that other people feel the same way.

4. Never underestimate the power of curiosity. Flyers tease and flirt with the guests. Giving them enough to spike their curiosity in one effective way of reeling your clients and other interested parties in. Include a little introduction about the DJ you hired for the party or about the popular chef you made delectable and exciting hors d’ oeuvres for this even alone.

5. Club flyers are the perfect visual aid and conversation catalysts about your party. An intriguing and captivating invite is quite irresistible, more so a unique one. Discover plenty of ways you can enhance your club card flyers and edge out the rest of the competition. There are a variety of materials and accessories you can work with. From envelopes to accompanying stationary and more.

6. Always remember to make yours consistent to your event or themes. Make sure that all details embody the concept you had planned out for the party. This helps your recipients gather in what sort of event it’ll be, the type of atmosphere present, and just an overall feel of who the crowd will be.

7. His and hers invitations aren’t exactly new but keep in mind that strategies such as this can help make your parties or events more interesting. Personalize invitations in this manner and more.

Club flyers go a long way to get the conversations about your party going. It is something they can carry around or tuck into their planners or pin on their cork boards. Let your guests know just how hard you intend to party. With your club flyers, you’re party can be as good as done.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Carla_San_Gaspar

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Think of your customers, or group of customers, as a dart board. I am sure at some point in your life, like me, you have played darts. Whether you know the rules or not does not matter for this example. However, like a dart board the closer you get to the center of the board the more valuable the points will be.

As you throw the darts you are trying to hit the center because that is where the most points are. The more often you hit the center, the more points you “rack” up.

Your customers are like that dart board. The customers you are striving to grab are closer to the center, with the best customers being the center spot. Those are the customers that will, without a doubt, buy your products and hire your services.

If your advertising is only reaching the outer rings of your customer dart board then you already know you are spending more money than you have to. You are because the empty space like on a dart board represents people that have no interest in your business, products or services. They have no interest, not because you do not have something good to offer, they have no interest because what you offer is something they have no need for.

For example, a friend of mine runs rental property repair business. What do you think would represent the center of his customer dartboard? Landlords and proptery managers right? These are the individuals that actually own and operate the real estate he is looking to supply his service for.

As he moves further away from that center, he will reach people that may or may not own rentals or investment properties. Now they might own their own properties or have things to fix in their houses or apartments they rent, but that is not the market he is targeting.

So does it make much sense for him to run an ad in a newspaper? Sure he might get a customer or two, but if you break down the cost per customer, it really would not be worth it. His ad is hitting too much of a broad general audience that may or may not reach the customers he is looking for. In other words, that ad in the newspaper would be considered hitting the outer rings of the dart board.

So in order to hit the center of his dartboard he needs to go right after the landlords and property managers directly. One technique he uses is to go to the courthouse in the area where he does business and obtain the mailing address of individuals he knows rents out their properties. Then he send them a postcard, a flyer etc. He has now hit the bullseye.

His advertising hit the center which is a customer he know can use his service. So as you can see all of his advertising money is being spent to hit as close to 100% of his market as you can possibly get.

Wouldn’t you like your advertising to hit 100% of your market? Of course you would. You need to find out what customers, areas, etc. make up your bulls eye. Then you need to find the best way to throw that dart and hit it.

For my friend his dart was the postcards and flyers he sent out, hitting the center which was the landlord or property manager on the other side.

First find your center target, then next create your “dart.” The vehicle by which you will hit the center. Finally, throw the dart and hit the center and start “racking” up the points.

By: Bruce A. Tucker

About the Author:
Bruce A. Tucker is the Associate Director of http://www.Indocquent.com, an online resource that allows businesses and individuals to post their products and services for sale in 20,000 cities throughout 200 countries around the world.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Bruce_A._Tucker

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In building your business identity, it pays to invest in your print materials. They are likely to come in contact with your clients before they enter your store and will make the first impression. Outsourcing your business printing to a commercial advertising company is your best bet to getting high quality print outputs that will surely impress your customers.

Your marketing materials and advertisements are a crucial factor in building your identity or business brand. It communicates intentionally or unintentionally promises or standards your products or services are set to deliver, or connect emotionally to your customers.

When you are building your brand remember to create a unique selling point or USP that differentiates your product and service offerings from those of other businesses. Your brand gives your customer of what to expect from your business. Do this and observe these following points, for both you business and printing concerns:

1. Educate your niche market with brochures and catalog printing

a. Innovate or market your business in a way that it meets highly specialized needs your customers are willing to pay a premium price for. The niche market is often a market segment large corporation with thick layers of bureaucracy and mass production fails to address.

b. Small businesses that innovate new ways to expand on current offerings find that they have to orient their customers about their products and services. Brochures, leaflets, and other print resources are the preferred marketing materials as they can be laden with tips and information.

2. Create emotional value with outdoor advertising

a. People associate themselves with the products they use and the services they hire. The brands of these businesses often communicate a set of attributes and values that reflect the customer’s own personal beliefs. These values are often unrelated to the products and services themselves, but influence the customers’ experience with the business and thus affect their purchasing decisions.

b. Posters, billboards, and other print materials that emphasize on images that resonates their emotional content are often the choice advertisements. They market their products and services as part of a lifestyle or a subculture that your customers are already predisposed to believe in.

c. Popularly, posters or print designs communicate notions that appeal on beauty, sex, distinction, confidence, and so many other facets that can attract clients. This gives them something to aspire for or lead them to believe that such products and themselves share a common ground.

3. Build Credibility with One-to-One Marketing

a. Your business brand creates and maintains the prevailing perception about your business. This reputation is a reflection of customers experience with your business or what you intend for them to expect in your products or services.

b. Credibility and building a reputation is a result of sustaining a relationship with the customers themselves. Enhancing the customer’s experience requires special treatment and personalized service. Postcards, greeting cards, and other one-to-one direct-mail-strategy are best used to build long term relationships and build credibility.

Brand management requires a sustained advertising effort. Dominating the consumer consciousness means saturating the market with marketing materials that affect your customers perception.

Having your marketing materials custom printed with business printing services allows you to create a premium brand for your small business. It reflects the amount of professionalism you place in every aspect of your business that will win your brand customer loyalty.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Carla_San_Gaspar

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People look like their dogs. I say this based on my non-scientific sample of fellow pet owners I have met while walking through Oz Park in Chicago with my own (handsome) dog, Kelsey. My informal assessment is supported by researchers at the University of California at San Diego. Dog owners, the researchers theorize, pick pooches that reflect the owner’s disposition–happy, moody, tough, etc.

What does this have to do with marketing? Well, marketers should foster the same type of match between their brands and channels as pet owners do between themselves and their dogs. If your company’s brand stands for “productivity,” that’s what your channel should deliver. If you promote your “inventiveness,” your channels should be similarly creative. If your company is known for its “high style,” your customers expect to see that cutting edge image when they meet your resellers.

While this might seem intuitive, I am amazed by how few companies take proactive steps to ensure that their channels reflect the brand image the manufacturer is trying to present. In our brand implementation work with clients, Frank Lynn & Associates uses a detailed checklist to review all of the potential “touch points” between customers and the brand. While advertising, Web sites, product literature, and other media clearly play a role, the channel is frequently the most influential brand communicator on the list.

One of our industrial clients is working hard to promote a brand image that stresses cost-cutting and efficiency (by promoting the use of its products in six-sigma manufacturing processes). The client has educated its salespeople, enlisted industry consultants, created an online knowledge base, etc. Unfortunately, most of the client’s distributors are primarily “order-takers.” The distributors’ salespeople do not know how, and are not motivated, to make a consultative, engineering sale. Having visited our client’s Web site, or hearing our client’s CEO speak, a customer would be significantly confused when they visit one of the distributors.

The situation reminds me of the (possibly apocryphal) meeting between Albert Einstein and Marilyn Monroe. Monroe gushed, “Gosh what do you say, professor, shouldn’t we marry and have a little baby together? What a baby it would be–my looks and your intelligence!” Einstein then quipped, “Yes, but dear lady, it might be the other way around.”

Fearing such a result, our industrial client is taking steps to rectify the situation.

Before we get into the steps that any manufacturer can take to align brand and channel messages, we first need a sidebar on the issue of channel power. When I bring up the issue of brand/channel alignment, many clients complain they do not have the power to compel their channel partners to behave in a certain way. Sure, if you are John Deere, Lexus, Coca-Cola, or IBM you carry some clout in the channel relationship. But, even these companies cannot command adherence to a brand strategy. And, at the other extreme, manufacturers of tertiary products, those who might represent less than 1-2 percent of their partners’ business, sometimes feel powerless.

I do not believe the situation is as problematic as some companies might believe. We have developed a significant list of tactics that can help. While each tactic might not apply to your company, or a tertiary-product company, I am convinced there is something for everyone in our list.

Before pursuing any of these tactics, companies need to make sure they have a powerful brand message. Without going into much detail here, we tell clients to think about brands using an approach we call UCC–unique, compelling, and credible.

With such a brand position in place, companies can create a strong brand/channel alignment by adopting some combination of the following tactics:

1. Channel Selection. Perhaps the most powerful tactic to deploy is making brand alignment one of the criteria you use to select channel partners in the first place. If, however, you are already stuck with channel partners that do not exactly fit the brand message, then add even a few new partners that do fit, and promote them as a model. Competitiveness and guilt are wonderful motivators to the existing partners.

2. Company-Owned Channels. While we do not generally advocate that manufacturers open up their own dealerships or distributors (especially in competition with existing channel partners), this tactic is sometimes necessary. When IBM launched the first PC, they opened up IBM Product Centers, in no small part to demonstrate to new, independent dealers what a retail facility should look like. Sony, Nike, Viacom, and other companies have opened up their own dealerships for similar reasons. Some of our clients have even opened up company-owned channels, on a temporary basis, to get across their brand message–then turned around and sold the business to an independent dealer who understood the value of the brand.

3. Activity-Based Compensation. You may already know that Frank Lynn & Associates strongly advocates activity- or functional-based compensation, in general. You can tie some portion of the channel’s discount/rebate to performing activities that relate to brand alignment, e.g., training salespeople, using your promotional materials, or any of the other tactics in this list.

4. Store-within-a-Store If you sell through a retail channel, consider the store-within-a-store concept to bring a bit of your brand directly into the retailer. Perfume companies pay their own reps to work behind the counters at department stores. HP and Microsoft teamed up to create unique display areas within retailers, where customers could gain hands-on experience with products in a variety of appl