The creative platform is an exciting, stimulating, and often surprising stage in the
brand development process.

It’s where the brand comes to life; where high-level notions, imaginative yet critical thinking, and thematic concepts are explored; where the core creative essence that will drive the emerging brand vision is defined. The creative platform includes a variety of stealth tools used to gauge and elicit feelings and impressions of the brand.

These tools include:
- In-depth storytelling that explores the use of myth, legend, voice, and narrative to help create context and relevance among various audiences.
- Mood boards that explore concepts, notions, relevant themes and motifs using graphic palettes and collages. These boards showcase a selection of brand concepts, using colors, typography, imagery, iconography and language. They help establish the look and feel of the brand as well as ensure that more specific design applications are consistent with the overall vision.

Application may include the following:

• Name
• Tagline
• Logo design
• Graphic standards
• Brand bible
• Touch point design on signature brand pieces (e.g. annual reports, website, environmental graphics)

Careful consideration of a consumer’s overall experience is the single most important factor in deciding whether a brand is successful. This experience, which also determines what a consumer remembers about a brand, is based primarily on interaction. Ask yourself how consumers are interacting with your brand. Where are the interactions taking place, through what channels, and are these interactions even benefiting your brand?

For a brand to rise to the top of consumers’ minds, it has to connect with them. The brand must establish trust with consumers and reflect their needs, wants, and desires.

Clark + Huot helps brands to connect with consumers and develop memorable consumer experiences through:

• Environmental Design – designing interior and exterior living spaces that reflect brand values and characteristics
• Product Development – designing and creating on-brand products and services derived from our brand innovation process
• Signage – producing visual materials such as street and building signs to expand brand presence
• Integration plans
• Architecture – collaborating to create iconic buildings that drive a brand’s position
• Packaging – designing customized packaging solutions that reflect brand character and style while maintaining functionality

All of these forms of brand activation work in conjunction with each other to form a consistent and holistic consumer interactive experience. This provides a brand with a clear identity and allows it to build long-term relationships with
its consumers.

At Clark + Huot, we approach brand activation and built-form projects on a client-by-client basis. We start by researching the brand and exploring who uses it, how they use it, and why they use it. Using this information, we then draw upon our experience and understanding of consumer behavior to create a customized activation strategy that brings the brand to life. By incorporating all points of consumer interaction into the strategy, we can create an integrated consumer experience through design and architecture that embody the brand’s values and ideology.

Brand activation isn’t simply about good design; it’s about conveying an idea. Our designs speak to consumers through a visual language. Product design, office layout, and architecture are all visual representations of a brand. These representations enable a clear visual communication of the ideas and values inherent in a brand.

Everyday the average American is inundated with over 6,000 messages. Not surprisingly, many people are beginning to tune out conventional forms of communication and advertising. With this in mind, how do we ensure that people are actually hearing what we have to say? In order to effectively engage with consumers, brands must open to a greater form of dialogue.

By understanding the symbiotic relationship between brands and their consumers, we are able to create targeted channels of communication that break through the noise and encourage long-lasting collaborative relationships. Clark + Huot provides its client companies with the means to dynamically connect their brands with new and
existing consumers.

Static online ads are dead. Taking their place is a new form of media which delivers broadband video, audio and a higher level of user control that engages consumers in an experiential manner. Interactive elements that give the user control are what make rich media advertising unique. Adding photos and graphics can improve the look of an ad, but they are still static and call no special attention to themselves.

In contrast, rich media allows an ad to expand from its confines when a user clicks or rolls their cursor
over it. The interactive possibilities are endless. Users can watch videos, play games, or even vote. Never before have brands been in such a unique position to engage with their consumers through technology.
This engagement encourages users to develop relationships with brands that are not only targeted,
but responsive.

Rich media ads have also proven more effective at raising favorable brand awareness, driving traffic to websites and increasing purchase intent compared with static ads. Such positive results can all be traced back to the root idea of interacting with consumers. Clark + Huot works with companies to develop interactive rich media campaigns that maximize results and foster long- lasting relationships through a two-way dialogue between a brand and its consumers.

When you least expect it, expect it. Consumers are more sophisticated than ever, which means brands have to work even harder to create a compelling and consistent user experience. All elements of a brand leave a mark on the subconscious minds of consumers. As a result, interface design has never been as important as it is today.

When it comes to your digital touch points, Clark + Huot helps ensure that all your channels are working together to deliver one seamless branded experience. This has become increasingly important for mobile devices. Although originally designed as a communication tool – voice, text messages, e-mail – the mobile device has evolved into a conduit of content that enhances both pleasure and productivity. The advent of mobile applications has created the opportunity to develop highly branded content that fosters continuous brand interaction with consumers and helps brands to deliver on their promise.

As the proliferation of brands continues, consumers have come to expect a highly customized interactive experience. Traditional notions of branded applications – e.g. inserting a logo and adhering to a color palette – are simply no longer adequate. Applications must not only be interactive but must also facilitate an ongoing dialogue with the user through compelling design and customizable elements.

Clark + Huot designs user interfaces for mobile applications such as iPhone and BlackBerry apps, computer software, and any other digital product that a brand may offer or require. Our approach to interface design focuses on achieving a delicate balance between functionality and design while always reflecting the brand’s values and characteristics.

With more than 100 million Internet-enabled mobile devices currently in use, the importance of developing a brand’s online mobile compatibility is indisputable. Clark + Huot works together with its clients to ensure that their brands’ online content performs as well on mobile devices as it does on desktop computers.

dotMobi is the industry standard for mobile optimization. We take a brand’s existing web content and expand it to include a dotMobi site. Having a dedicated dotMobi site ensures that users are not only able to view websites properly on smaller mobile screens, but are also able to view web content quickly and efficiently.

Key Mobile Usage Facts:

• Mobile Internet usage is projected to hit 50% of the U.S. population by 2013
• Mobile Internet usage is expected to grow in Europe from 17% to 36% by 2014
• Worldwide, there are currently over 4.6 billion mobile phone contracts in effect
• Tracking alpha users and their influence is nine times more accurate on mobile devices than traditional online usage

Clark + Huot offers appropriate brands the opportunity to capitalize on the popularity and functional benefits of iPhone and BlackBerry applications. Through developing a mobile application, a brand can create a compelling interactive channel that allows consumers to engage with the brand experience anytime, anywhere. The mobile phone is the world’s first truly interactive device that a person carries with them at all times. As such, mobile applications present a powerful means of fostering ongoing user interaction with
a brand.

Good applications provide users with information, entertainment, and utility, which in turn encourage users to develop long-lasting relationships with the application. Frequent usage of an application provides prolonged
and repeated brand engagement. In contrast to other forms of brand engagement, mobile applications are used voluntarily and therefore not generally perceived as a vehicle for intrusive advertising. As a result, consumers tend to be more comfortable engaging with a brand through mobile applications than they may be with other forms of advertising.

Clark + Huot provides website database integration services that allow clients to gather valuable and timely data with respect to who is visiting their sites and how to contact them. Our database integration service provides access to consumer information and statistics through queries, but can also include update capabilities which occur in bulk, real-time, or near real- time.

A client database provides brands with the capability to perform simple and complex data searches, technical analysis of the results and data mining. It also presents further opportunities for developing specialized applications to query, transform and manipulate data. Access to a robust database of client information enables brands to gauge, address and meet the unique needs of their consumers at any time.

Websites have become the primary first point of contact between consumers and brands and, as such, have an enormous responsibility to communicate a brand’s values and character. A website has approximately five seconds to establish credibility, value, and trust with a user. Therefore, it is imperative that the website design functions as an extension of the brand and fits in with the general look and feel of the overall brand.

At Clark + Huot we work together with our clients to determine what web designs work best for their individual needs. From color palettes and imagery to navigation tools, each website is designed to reflect a brand’s values and core ideas. There are no standard web templates or cookie-cutter layouts. Each website we create is a brand-specific web solution that is built from the ground up to provide users with an interactive and informative channel into the brand.

The landscape is changing, and people are changing with it. Traditional broadcasting channels – the 30-second primetime spot, the product placement – have become incapable of breaking through to consumers. But we can. Clark + Huot approaches branded entertainment as part of an overall marketing strategy that aligns perfectly with brands’ attributes and personalities. Our insight and experience enables us to create brand-focused entertainment that resonates with your audience and is capable of reaching them in a more effective way.

Consumers have become increasingly fragmented by the explosion of online content. With nearly unlimited access and choice, consumers are watching what they want, when they want, where they want. They are no longer bound to the content of major networks. This presents brands with a unique challenge and opportunity. While the entry to market costs have been significantly reduced when compared to television advertising, reaching your audience in a highly fragmented landscape is increasingly difficult.

Clark + Huot partners with strategic research firms to identify and locate your target market, allowing us to develop experiential branded entertainment that motivates and resonates with your audience.
We understand that it is not only important to know how to create compelling branded entertainment, but also how to deliver it.

For many brands, investing in television advertising is a waste of time and money. The high cost of production and inability to create highly targeted campaigns make television an impractical choice. However, as a growing number of people are spending more of their time online instead of in front of a TV, a whole new arena for video campaigns has emerged. Websites like YouTube, Hulu and Vimeo have grown into unprecedented successes driven by consumers’ demand for video content.

Enter the webisode.

Webisodes are a creative and interactive way to develop a brand’s online presence as well as encourage user interaction. The benefits of developing highly branded webisodes are clear. A series of webisodes makes for a sustained brand experience, encouraging consumers to develop an attachment to the storyline and characters, and come back for more.

The success of webisodes relies on a compelling storyline to draw consumers into the narrative. If done successfully, webisodes can take on a viral element, spreading over the web through various channels such as YouTube and Facebook, all the while carrying the brand name with them. In this manner, webisodes provide the potential to achieve millions of exposures for a fraction of the cost of a single TV spot.

Clark + Huot offers webisode concept generation and production as part of an overall online
marketing strategy.

Social media is arguably the most important and powerful tool brands have to understand and reach consumers. Websites such as Facebook and Twitter are filled with users describing exactly what their preferences are – what they like and don’t like, and what they want to see, not to mention volumes of other personal data that has historically been available only through expensive market research. Social media sites publish all of this data for free while simultaneously providing a platform for interaction and communication between brands and their consumers. Are you using it?

Social networking sites allow a brand to listen in as users share their opinions of it with their friends. Facebook and Twitter enable users to review, share, and comment on their favorite brands. Flickr provides a venue for sharing images and similarly allows for comments and discussion. YouTube is the go-to site for user-generated video content as well as branded video content such as webisodes and commercials.

Clark + Huot helps brands capitalize on the popularity of these social media sites and foster direct interaction with their consumers. Through these interactions, Clark + Huot works to help companies understand their audiences, gauge how their brands are perceived, and target opinion leaders for future
marketing endeavors.

Consider the following question: How in touch are you with your brand?

Our research services function not only to create a clear picture of the present state of your brand, but also as an analytical tool which can forecast where your brand is headed. We know that, for the first time, a new generation of consumers is overtaking the traditional consumer in size, scope, and brand savviness.

Are you prepared to win them over? We are. We can help you to understand and engage them.

Clark + Huot believes that all the best brands are guided by knowledge. We generally break our knowledge gathering research process into two categories. Both use a spectrum of research tools to help uncover data that will direct our planning decisions.

Quantitative: We use the data gathered to measure behavior, attitudes, satisfaction, and awareness of your brand. We use quantitative research to provide the empirical statistics needed to understand many factors, including but not limited to your customer, your brand’s relationship to the world, and the best ways of connecting with your customers.

Methods include electronic data capture, online surveys, telephone surveys, computer-assisted personal interviewing software, self-completion questionnaires, and face-to-face exit surveys. Qualitative: We understand the need to employ direct, face-to-face contact with those that touch and connect with
your brand.

We believe in the power of in-depth examination of small-scale samples and unstructured interviews. These direct experiences guide decision-making on many levels. The intuitive relationship your brand imparts on the world is examined up close in this research.

Key questions include:

• Mobile Internet usage is projected to hit 50% of the U.S. population by 2013
• Mobile Internet usage is expected to grow in Europe from 17% to 36% by 2014
• Worldwide, there are currently over 4.6 billion mobile phone contracts in effect
• Tracking alpha users and their influence is nine times more accurate on mobile devices than traditional online usage