This year I decided to enter the APAC Insider Business Awards and the Community Achievement Awards. Why? Because I thought it would be interesting to benchmark our agency. I wasn't submitting our work, I was submitting our business. On one hand, it's the whole APAC region, and on the other, I looked closer to home - and I thought it was a good way to learn who else is out there, what is considered valuable in business leadership and change management, and just where are we on the grand scale of post-Covid change. I was absolutely thrilled to win not one, but TWO, awards in the 2022 APAC Insider Business Awards, 🏆and a finalist in the Community Achievement Awards (winners announced later this month).
🥇 Best Full-Service Marketing & Design Agency - NSW
🥇 Most Impactful Small Business - NSW
I had only entered the category for Marketing & Design Agency, so had a further surprise with the Most Impactful Small Business category win. I don't normally enter awards, but winning absolutely validates all the hard work the entire Banter team put into their work all day, every day.
So this really is a proud gloat 😊 to tell you we're ace and now we have trophies that say so. What a way to wind down the year! Wish us luck for the next awards night, 25th Nov.
Valentina xxx
Google Data Studio is now Looker Studio
Google's Data Studio launched in 2016 as a data visualisation and reporting platform that connected all your marketing data and turned it into good looking and useful reports. Since then, the platform built in more than 800 data sources from 600 unique connectors - and it's now time to introduce the all new and shiny offering of Looker Studio. 😍
Looker Studio brings in all the business intelligence of Google Data Studio plus core Google technologies like artificial intelligence and machine learning. Data Studio is now Looker Studio. Looker Studio is still free, and has the same features as Data Studio. You can check out all the latest improvements in this blog.
Tiktok's integration with Salesforce
You heard 👂🏼that right. There's a new partnership in town, with Salesforce Commerce Cloud buddying up with the Tok, enabling commerce merchants to seamlessly and efficiently build their presence on the social platform. The features are packed in, and at the centre of the integration for Ads enables B2C Commerce customers to:
- Launch TikTok for Ads experience from within their B2C Commerce Business Manager.
- Publish an entire site catalog (and product updates/deletion) into TikTok.
- Install and connect a new (or existing) TikTok Pixel to send key Shopper Activities from their storefront into TikTok.
Get your hands on the full list of integration features.
Earth Property: Branding, Website, SEO & SEM
When Katie and Adam Marsden came to us to help brand their buyers agent business, Earth Property, they came with a definite sense of style and a beautifully professional presence✨.
The brief: to communicate their genuine nature, premium service and innate sense of elegance. And then: to use all our technical skills to share it with their defined audience.
We were thrilled with the result - and so were Adam and Katie. Their immediate positive feedback was a highlight of our day. “Champers at the ready,” said Katie! 🍾
We created the logo from a custom typeface completely unique to the Earth Property brand. The minimal, organic colour palette is the essence of elegance.
From there, it was a breeze to roll out the brand in a new website. In Banter’s typically collaborative way, we took care of the design, copywriting, and web development - and we implemented further strategies to complement the strength of the SEO power we built into the site, as well as Google Ads to ensure the SEM activity drives visits whilst Google's algorithm works its indexing magic.
Thank you, Adam and Katie, for your warm kindness and a terrific brief that was a joy to work with! 🤩
A new brand: from mild to wild
We've worked hard to deliver a brand refresh for Think & Grow - who have multiple facets to their business. They support innovators to connect more productively to their people and their industry, while also preparing executives and professionals to move toward with their next growth stage. 🙍🏻♂️🙍🏼♀️
This established and impressive business needed a brand refresh that embodied their core services, and targeted different audiences.
Banter’s approach was to deliver a 'Mild to Wild' level of design that could speak to Innovators as well as Executives & Professionals.
The comprehensive brand playbook includes the brand’s manifesto, architecture, beliefs, and values as well as design examples to bring this all to life. It’s not for the faint-hearted either - at 77 pages, this is the masterful brand guide to take the business forward with sophistication and consistency.
The application of the brand can be seen across the new website, and also in the 2022/2023 Australian Start-Up Salary Guide that we also designed. It's complete with insights about roles and salaries that will guide the future growth of the start-up ecosystem.
Less than 5 min reads for you
This section: Short reads, 👀 not just about marketing.
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On the blog: Make email marketing convert for you
Next up in our series on ✉️ email marketing, the art of conversion. A conversion doesn’t have to be a sale – it can be a video watch, a share, or download of an infographic or a case study etc. Whatever you determine to be your conversion, email marketing delivers the click - but what are you able to do to increase your chances of the conversion? On the blog I'm giving away design tips and tricks to give you the best chance of conversion success.
And just to back me up, here's a great blog from MarTech showing how the Welcome Email tactic has the best click-through rates. email marketing!
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Michael Hill goes 3D with digital out-of-home
While many Australians were locked in their homes through parts of 2020 and 2021, beyond their four walls the out-of-home advertising sector was going through a quiet revolution, as site after site was converted to digital screens. Michael Hill Jewellers saw this change as the catalyst for making small things really really big - like 3D big on billboards. Brilliant. 💍
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Glasses using AI to recognise and describe surroundings for vision impaired
Envision smart glasses use artificial intelligence to recognise and describe surroundings for users who are blind or visually impaired. 🤓 Smart glasses from Envision are built on the enterprise edition of Google Glass. The company also offers a smartphone app that can scan and text users descriptions of their surroundings by using their smartphones' cameras. Truly remarkable.
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30 Great ways to drive website traffic
💭 Wondering what types of content are best for driving traffic to your website? Wonder no longer, because HubSpot is giving you 30 free and paid tactics that will deliver you a visitor quick smart.
Lego-like stackable housing
I find architecture fascinating at the best of times, but when it starts to solve a real problem, it's spell-binding. Shipping container housing solutions aren't new, and neither are stackable cubes for housing. PolyRooms are multi-functional spaces with flexible configurations that provide airy, well-lit living arrangements in the form of a studio apartment 🏢 . Shaped like shipping containers, the long rectangular shapes allow for a range of door and window placements. Cutwork Studio’s design includes a bed that can be lofted during the day to reveal living space below, a table with built-in storage to make it useful for dining and working, and a compact yet comfortable bathroom. All these awesome features are designed to tackle urban housing and speed of construction. The full feature list is pretty incredible too.
Now if they could just add this vertical forest concept from Stefano Boeri, we could be helping to re-green our planet at the same time. 🌳
Catch you next time 😃
