Author: Brittany Crockett

Kevin
Welcome to the Content Machine, I’m Kevin Adelsberger, and this week we are joined by Katie Howerton, who is a graphic designer at Adelsberger Marketing. We want to talk to Katie about some stuff in the graphic design world. Katie, you are known for your hand lettering and your love of all things that is type. Can you give us a rundown of some of the basic terminology that people should know when they’re thinking about type?

Katie
Most people, when they think about type, the first thing they think is font, which is valid. But that can encompass a lot of different things. When you’re talking about fonts, there are three main groups: sans serif, serif, and slap serif. There’s also hand lettering and calligraphy, things like that. But essentially, serif is French for feet. And so sans serif means without feet, serif means with them. So essentially, that’s going to be your difference between a Helvetica and a Times New Roman. That may mean nothing to someone listening, but essentially something that has curved edges, like a Roman look, versus something that is nice and sharp and modern. Slap serif is a good in between in that it has those edges to it, but they’re nice and sharp and not… They’re a more modern look. So essentially, when you’re… That is the three kinds of fonts you can choose from. Obviously, within that, there is bolding your type, italicizing your type. Often, there are different weights, which essentially means how skinny is letter, is it condensed, is it spread out? And often, there’s a lot more choices there than you necessarily need to make. But essentially, when you are picking a font, you are trying to pick something that matches the tone of your business or of specifically what it is doing in that moment. So there’s going to be a difference between what is easy to see and read and matches the voice of a title versus an entire website’s body copy. So, yeah. So those are a few things, as well as font size. That’s something we’re all familiar with. But there are a few rules within that, unspoken rules about this is too small to read, this is too big to fit a word across the line. There are obviously also specifics that you can get into that the designer will get into, but probably not the client, of letter and line spacing. And then your biggest question in the end to ask is, is it legible? Which seems really like a silly question. Legible means you’re able to read it, i. e. your handwriting, Kevin.

Kevin
My handwriting is very good.

Katie
But then there’s also readability, which is technically different in that once something is in a body of text, can you read through it without having to pause and check it. Legibility is ‘can I see what the letters are’, readability is ‘if I see a paragraph of this text, is it easy to read? Or is it clunky or takes longer than it should’.

Kevin
Now I’ve heard in books that you always use serifed fonts because it’s easier to read and then on your phone, you’d see a sanserif font, your text messages.

Katie
I don’t know the science behind that, but it’s true, in that things are easier to read on a screen if they’re sanserif, serif if they’re in print. I don’t know if it’s just muscle memory, honestly. There’s also the difference of light text on dark, how easy that is to read. And that will affect as well how… If you have something really ornate that’s light on dark, it’s going to be a lot on the eyes.

Kevin
That makes a designer’s choice more complicated or something to think through. I’ve heard the phrase font family before. What does that mean and why is that important for a brand?

Katie
So a font family, it sounds silly, but just imagine it like a family. So, primarily what people think of is like, here’s the font, here’s the bold version, here’s the italic version, there’s our family. But many fonts go far beyond that as far as they will have, like I mentioned earlier, a condensed version, a super bold version. They’ll have something called book, which means essentially the way that is easiest to read in body copy. So the great thing about if you have a very large font family with lots of options, is often you can build an entire brand off of one font family. So just like a family, they look different, but they have similarities. So they work together. There are also, I think of two fonts, Mr. Eve’s and Mrs. Eve’s, that are essentially the same fonts, but one is sans serif, one is serif. So they have integrations that make them work well together. So whether you’re picking multiple fonts or you’re working from one font family, you want to make sure that they call back to each other and they work together well.

Kevin
So that would be a phrase we use as pairing fonts together? Okay. All right. And then, if someone has a brand-specific font, how should they handle fonts? Because sometimes a brand-specific font, maybe in what we call the logo mark, you might not be able to replicate that in email or your word document. How should you approach … if your brand has a very specific font, how should you approach selecting a font for your email or your word documents?

Katie
Yeah, so, it’s a real struggle. I will say that in the design world there is a unspoken that a logo should never be just a font. It should always be a variation. Whether that’s incorporating imagery into the letters or tapering things, people shouldn’t be able to pull it up, type it, and say, Is there a logo? That’s what makes it unique. So often what we’ll do is, if you do have access to that font, you can use it for titles and stuff. You don’t want to overuse the main font because then it’s everywhere and your logo doesn’t stand out. But it’s subtitles, things like that. Those are really important to incorporate throughout your website or different areas. We usually work within Adobe fonts because Adobe programs are what we use.

Kevin
And most of the design world has access to.

Katie
Yes. Unfortunately, most clients don’t. They’re not doing their designing. I send them a brand package, they have their fonts, and they realize, oh, we’re using Canva, we’re using Google, we’re using things that don’t have access to these fonts.

Kevin
So this is an interesting point. Not every program that you have or not every computer that you use has access to the same sets of fonts.

Katie
Yeah, and fonts have changed over the years as far as how you use them. It used to be very standard to purchase a font, and that can still be done, but it’s just different, and it’s old school as well. It’s also a very expensive process if you want to own a very prestigious font. I’m trying to get better about using Google fonts on the front-end. Basically trying to say, these fonts are accessible everywhere. You can… The good thing is, too, unlike with adobe, it’s like a subscription system. If you have the access, you get it. With the google font, you can download that at any point and hold on to it.

Kevin
And it’s free.

Katie
Yeah. And it’s not a sketchy… This is a free font website that might give you a virus. So I try to work primarily off of those. If I really am attached to an adobe font, but I know they need something similar to be able to produce things on their own, then I will go into Google Fonts and just mix and match. Often, there are better designers out there who I can google, Hey, what’s a similar font to Helvetica? Because it takes a long time. So I’ll do that. And then also, something that I hadn’t really thought about until recently is a client using their Gmail, like you mentioned. I don’t think about fonts and email a lot, but if you want it to match the brand, that’s a very limited set, as well as a limited set within Microsoft, different things. So really, we’re trying to provide the client, ideally, with a font they can use anywhere, but if not, a really great backup that essentially creates the same effect.

Kevin
And I would say for email or Word processing, it’s really more important for legibility. Or readability, whichever I’m supposed to be saying. Thanks for tuning in to the first of two episodes with Katie Howerton talking about type. Stay tuned to your feed for the future episode where we finish this conversation.

At Adelsberger Marketing, we typically focus on digital marketing for our clients, but we also recognize the value of physical items in marketing. Whether this is something for inside the company or something to give out to the community, both have some finer points to consider. Let’s jump in with internal use first. As a business owner, I love giving my team new swag. Well, why? I think it accomplishes several goals. One, it makes culture practical. One of the great values of swag is that it can allow you to make the components of your workplace culture practical, like making stickers or clothing that emphasizes the core values of your organization. Two, it can make you feel like part of a team, sort of like sports jerseys. Swag can help people feel part of a larger group. Feeling like you belong is an important part of great workplace culture. It can make them feel valued. Giving gifts is a great way to help people feel like they are valued somewhere. And it can be used for recognition. Some companies use special gifts to recognize special accomplishments or longevity in a position. While we get some indirect marketing benefits from equipping our staff with swag, we also see it as a valuable tool for marketing our business as well. Top of mind awareness can be created by swag. It’s hard to measure top of mind awareness, but it certainly plays a role in customers’ purchasing behavior. We’re in Jackson, Tennessee, and there’s actually two safari parks close by. But I bet if I polled our community, 9 out of 10 would only know about one of them. And it’s actually one that is a few minutes further away from us because they invest heavily in top of mind marketing. Swag, when selected and used well, can help you create top of mind awareness in your target market. It’s a physical reminder of your company. We love to give our clients and friends things that make them think about us when they use it, whether that be a sweatshirt or maybe even socks. And it’s late marketing through affiliation. If you do a good job with Swag, People will wear it in the community or they’ll give you a shout out on social media for it. You gain a few marketing points by affiliation with those folks or just as a visible recognition of your brand in the community. Either way, if you’re trying to do internal or external with physical gifts, here’s a few things that you should think about. One, make it unique. Thinking beyond just your logo on things, engage a graphic designer to create something fun for your brand. But also, sometimes unique items will leave more of a mark. Also, make it useful. If the item is useless to the target, it will end up in the trash. Thinking through how people will make it useful will make it a better gift for those people. Or make sure that it’s target market adjacent. So if you have dog people who are customers, maybe create some dog toys. And then quality items. Getting good quality items will increase the likelihood that others will utilize it and therefore increase your ROI on the purchase. A good pen will be used more than a cheap one. Here at Adelsberger Marketing, we’re ready to help you think about building culture with swag. But if you’re really getting into ordering some new gear, I would point you to our friends at IMS Promos here in Jackson. They will hold your hand through the entire process, and we’ve gotten some great sweatshirts and socks from them in the last year. My question to you would be, what’s your favorite piece of corporate swag that you’ve gotten, internal or external? I’d love to hear about it. Send me an email at kevin@adelsbergermarketing.com, and stay tuned for future episodes of the Content Machine podcast, where we’ll talk more about marketing culture and leadership in the small business environment.

What is the value of a mission and vision statement? It’s difficult to put that on a balance sheet, just as workplace culture is difficult to put on a balance sheet, but both of them can affect your bottom line. Mission and vision statements are part of the core identity of any business. In previous episodes, we talked about core values and how they operate. Today, we will look at mission and vision statements. Now, both of these statements can play a role in shaping the culture and the future of an organization as it continues to grow and change. It sets a theoretical standard for behavior, a rubric for actions and goals for the future. Mission and vision statements allow for shared meaning that can also be referenced as an anchor in the turbulent seas of business. Shiny options might come by to distract, and disruptions in the marketplace can happen, may try to change your path even, and personnel can change your capabilities. But these strategic statements can be help to put your eyes on a North Star during all those changes. I think a mission statement is the focus of a business that shouldn’t be moved away from. It can keep us focused from distractions and gives us a rubric to judge whether we are being successful and really should be true for a 10 to 20 year long time horizon. The mission statement for Adelsberger Marketing is to make creative work that grows our clients’ businesses in a culture that values our team and community. Our mission incorporates several elements that I hope will be true of us for the future of this company. First of all, We don’t just make work, we make creative work, and we believe that creativity is important. Also, we don’t just make creative work. We’re not just artists. We make creative work that grows our clients’ businesses because there’s a commercial into our work. All of that is done in a culture that values our team and community because we recognize that our people are not just robots on an assembly line. They are real humans with feelings and feelings and thoughts. Our community allows us to exist, so we want to be good members of our community. All of those things are things I think are important for us to remember as we grow and change. As a business, it’s all so short enough that hopefully our team can think about it and digest it easily. We’ve operationalized it by going over it in detail in onboarding. We generate cool stickers with it to make the idea sticky and visible in our team members’ lives. And then annually, we do a year-end review where we use it as a rubric to see if we accomplish these things throughout the course of the year. We go through each point as a team to make sure that everybody can see that we’ve accomplished these goals. Vision statements, in my view, are what would happen in the distant future if you were successful in pursuing your mission statement. That’s the big picture accomplishment. And so for us, our vision is to be the best place for creatives to work in West Tennessee. Now, I know you can’t define that with a set of scores, and there’s no authority giving that grade out, but I have worked by operationalizing it and making a list of things that make a great place to work and have worked on including those in our strategic planning. Additionally, I think it’s helpful for the team to know that that’s the vision that I’m pushing towards. It’s very important that companies work on operationalizing these things. And when I say operationalize, I mean make it relevant to their operations. As a business, how do they make it more than just a statement that lives on a piece of paper in a three-ring binder in HR’s office? How do they make it alive and relevant to the people that work there? So we work as mentioned, including it in orientation, but not just saying it and explaining it, showing what it means. We include it in our annual reviews, and our core values are in our quarterly reviews with team members. We’ve also done our best to make the idea visible and available for our team to review. And ultimately, it’s on my plate as the leader of the company to ensure that these ideas are visible and active. And so I need to return to the practice I used to do, where once a week I’d review a core value, a mission or vision statement with the team so they can remember what it means to be successful beyond our monetary metrics. What’s your favorite mission or vision statement that you’ve ever come across? Send me an email. I’d love to hear about it, kevin@adelsbergermarketing.com. Thank you for listening to this edition of the Content Machine podcast. Stay tuned for future episodes where we talk about marketing, culture, and leadership in the small business environment.

A few weeks ago, Adelsberger Marketing celebrated 10 years in business. And on today’s episode of the Content Machine podcast, I want to look back at a few lessons that I’ve learned over that decade. The first couple of things have to do with leadership. It is an interesting thing to learn about the value of leadership as someone who’s went through a lot of leadership development classes in high school and college. Hearing it so much, it can become blasé or devalued or just common, that leadership is really important. But as I’ve continued this business and observing things in our society, leadership becomes more and more valuable, and that burden for the company largely falls on me. Seeing the value of leadership is definitely something that I’ve learned. But it’s also because the burden of that mostly falls on me, I’ve learned that it can be a lonely endeavor. All the problems I run into in this business are not unique to me or Adelsberger Marketing. They happen to most anyone leading a business or within a company. I have a responsibility that no one else shares, and so I don’t think that I would have guessed that that would have felt like a burden 10 years ago like I do today. I also would not have guessed that the most joy I find from the business comes from helping my team members create a life for themselves and seeing them grow and develop and see their families grow and change. I’m not the best business owner, but I’ve gotten to see my people buy their first houses and have children buy cars, and that is some of the favorite things that I’ve gotten to do as a business owner. In business, it matters a lot that you are paying your bills. But I’ve also grown a bigger appreciation for the amount that people matter. Caring for developing the culture that cares for people may be the thing that sets our business apart from so many others. Because as our theme was a few years ago, if you want to go fast or go alone, if you want to go further, go together. And I can see that even more clearly now. There’s a limit to the work that I can do, the amount of effort that I can put in and how hard I can push on a goal. But when I bring others to the table, we can do it together and go further and accomplish more. I have been fortunate to find people who are capable and good culture fits and willing to work And hopefully, I’ll be able to continue to find people that help us do that. I’ve learned a lot about marketing in a world that’s moving faster and faster. And in our society, niching and differentiation becomes more and more critical. Niching is about finding a horizontal or vertical niche that helps you be special and defines who your customers are or the services in a way that allows you to be successful. I think the future for niche services is growing, and I think it’s a lot clearer to me now how important it is than it was 10 years ago. And so I’m trying to reckon with that from inside our own company, working through what that could look like for our future so that we could be more niched, so that we can be more competitive. Differentiation continues to take on a bigger and bigger role in our marketing plans for our customers. Having niches is a differentiator, but that also applies to all the clients that we have. Clients who try to compete with every person who sells the thing that they sell everywhere are going to not succeed like those who have a niche. And so we are increasingly pushing our clients to help differentiate themselves and find ways for them to set themselves apart from the crowd. Not just your typical marketing ways, but in a very crowded market, being able to separate yourself from everyone else is crucial. And then one added responsibility I found for myself is that I need to be working six months or a year or two years ahead of the rest of my team. Because of that, finding a project manager to help manage the day-to-day gives me the flexibility to focus on the bigger picture things, which is also something I never would have guessed when I opened the company. And finally, I’ve come to realize that burnout is a real thing. I would hear people talk about burnout, but I had never experienced it. And so I wasn’t sure that if I was just getting older or the work was more stressful. But now I’ve realized that I’ve nearly burnt out several times. But now I can identify when it’s happening. The last time I felt it, I could feel it coming. I could identify it, which is new to me. So I was able to take precautionary measures to ensure that I didn’t completely burn out and leave the company in a bad spot. And now I know that I’m out of that spot and I’m ready to rock and roll again. Business is way harder than I thought it would be, but fortunately, we’ve got a great team of people that is helping to build this in a way that it will be sustainable. Hopefully, we’ll see you again in 10 years, where we can talk about what I’ve learned over 20 years in business. Thank you for supporting Adelsberger Marketing. Thank you for listening to the Content Machine podcast. If you found this episode interesting, share it with a friend, and stay subscribed for future episodes where we talk about marketing, culture, and leadership in the small business environment.

Kevin Adelsberger

Welcome to part 2 of the Content Machine podcast with Chad Wilson, President of Foundation Bank. We had the pleasure of working with Chad on a rebrand recently, and this is the rest of our conversation with him about that project. Foundation Bank has been around for a while, right? Almost 100 years? Yeah.

Chad Wilson

1934, so we’re 90 years old this year.

Kevin Adelsberger

90 years old. Things maybe in the recent past wouldn’t… Like a rebrand would never have been on the table in the last couple of years, probably. So this is a different thing for you guys to think about. How has that… How has been the response been internally? It’s been good for the culture or bad? Or how’s it?

Chad Wilson

It’s been very good for the culture. I think that people are happier to wear the brand now. That was a real priority for us is we wanted it to be a brand, the color scheme, the fonts, the look. We wanted it to be something they’d be proud to wear. On Fridays, we encourage branded material to be worn. I think it’s landed very well with that. The feedback has been, I would say, almost uniformly positive within the team. There have been a couple of folks. One of our core values is absolute honesty, and we want to be able to hear-

Kevin Adelsberger

That’s a double-edged sword, right?

Chad Wilson

We want to be able to hear contrary opinions, and I’ve appreciated some of the input for, I’d say less than 2%, but a couple of folks that had some concerns, and that actually has fed into maybe the way or maybe the mix of colors and the kind of branding we’re using in different places because of some of the input that they gave about color combinations and things like that. Even though we were on the back end of it by the time we got that input, it’s still helpful in the way we represent the brand going forward. You guys provided us a great brand guide where we can mix and match a lot of these colors and looks of the logo. That’s something I learned is that you’re not just picking one representation of your logo and your logo type and your icon, you’re really getting a palette of things consistent with your brand to use depending on the setting, depending on what works for that particular audience. So Yeah, internal input, generally positive. External input has been good, too.

Kevin Adelsberger

Now, if there was a company listening to this that’s thinking about doing a rebrand, what would you… Just say they came to you and said, Hey, I need a rebrand. What should we be thinking about if we’re going to do that? What would you set them up to think about?

Chad Wilson

So I would ask them, Are you worthy of your brand already? Are there bigger problems? Because you can have a beautiful façade, so to speak, But once people get inside it, if they’re not having an experience that’s what they expected just from what they saw on the outside, you don’t want to whitewash your business. And so I think that there’s a real need to look internally, what are the biggest operational challenges, culture challenges, morale challenges? Hey, just are we making money in the first place? Make sure that the guts are good, the bones are good. And I think once that’s the case, there’s a necessity to turn to, Okay, what is the message we’re sending through our external marketing? Yeah.

Kevin Adelsberger

Well, let’s talk about banking for just a minute here. So what are your thoughts about marketing for community banks? So you’ve talked about making sure that you know who your niche is and what your service you’re providing, but anything else comes to mind when you think about marketing for community banks?

Chad Wilson

I don’t think community banks do it well. I think community banks do the relationship side of banking really well. But I think there’s another piece there that we’re missing as an industry on being, I would say up to date. Community banks at times can seem, I’m speaking of us too, can seem a little behind the times, maybe a little old fashioned. And I think there’s some great things about being old fashioned, but I think what community banks have an opportunity to do is hold on to everything good about being old fashioned, about being traditional, about down home family values kinds of institutions, but represent that in a way that looks current, that looks like you are on top of things, that you are not stuck in another day, but you’re trying to tease out all the great things about the past, but you’re trying tweak that looking forward to the future, because people need to know that community banks are future-oriented. I think the degree to which you can represent that will allow you… There’s going to be a lot of community banks that sell over the next decade. In my career, we’ve gone from 9,000 banks down to less than 5,000, and that’s just in a 20-year period. And so more and more community banks are going to be selling if they’re not future-oriented. And I think a brand is one aspect of making sure that you’re forward-oriented.

Kevin Adelsberger

All right. Give you one minute just to pitch on Foundation Bank.

Chad Wilson

So we absolutely love building long-lasting financial relationships at Foundation Bank. So if you felt overlooked by your financial institution, or if you felt like you’re just a number, if you felt like you don’t know anybody at the branch in which you do business anymore. We want to be the alternative to that experience. We want to know your name when you walk in the door. We want to be available to help you in all the financial decisions of life. There’s home buying, there’s investing for the future, there’s managing your assets currently. We’ve invested a lot into technology to help those be tools to help you do those things. But at the end of the day, we provide financial solutions, not just financial products. We think there’s a difference. It’s the way in which you go about teaching people how to use those tools and helping them make good financial decisions for their future. If that’s something folks are looking for, we think people are starving for that. But most don’t have the time to set aside to make a change in their financial life. But we think it’ll be worth it. A little time now could lead to tremendous dollars and time in the future.

Kevin Adelsberger

Then you have a podcast, so I want to give you a chance to promote that, too.

Chad Wilson

Okay. We do have a podcast we put out every couple of weeks. It’s called Money Matters. And we try to talk about things that are going on in the economy, but boiled down into layman’s terms. I know that when we read things in the media, sometimes it can be overwhelming. It’s hard to tease through some of the data and the jargon. And so we just try to boil it down to this is what it means, and this is how it might affect you in how you make daily financial decisions. It’s a quick one, 10 to 15 minutes, and really accessible for folks that just want to know a little bit more about what’s going on in the economy.

Kevin Adelsberger

Well, Chad, thank you for taking the time to join us on this episode of the Content Machine podcast. We’ll be back with future episodes, so stay subscribed to see what’s next.