Kick-ass design needed a superbly professional, youthful digital marketing company
a logo and stationery project by anandpillai

Creative brief

The buyer added updates to the brief. Read them.

LET ME TELL YOU ABOUT US:

We are a boutique digital ad agency based in Chicago - www.befoundonline.com - our focus is SEO, SEM, Reputation Management.
Our current tagline is 'targeted.online.marketing" – We're flirting with the idea of branding ourselves with a tagline along the lines of: ' The Art & Science of Online Marketing" or are at least incorporate this concept into our messaging.

HERE IS WHAT WE NEED:

We are looking for the design of logo and stationary design that will be used across a variety of mediums. The proposed color scheme will be throughout a refreshed web site and updated collaterals. The colors/ideas/creativity they propose would extend well and cleanly, efficiently into our overall branding, and potentially into our website design. In essence, what we are looking for is a logo/stationary design that incorporates as many of the following aspects of our brand as possible:

-Online Presence/Marketing
-Targeted Efficient Marketing Online
-'Being Found' - Currently , we capture this aspect by using a magnifying glass. We're not 100% sold on the magnifying glass being included in the design drafts, but we're open to the idea if its done much better than it is currently.
- Colors : We are flexible here. In the past we have been using the orange/green theme (see our website for guidance) but we are open to moving away from this.

OUR TARGET AUDIENCE IS:

Our target audience ranges from mid-size business owners to large companies. Generally the audience will be male, between 30 to 50 years in old, and usually tend to be a mix of business owners and traditional marketers. A lot of our website traffic (which is, primarily where the logo will be featured) comes from users who are not yet 'sold' on using our services, so FIRST IMPRESSIONS count a lot. In terms of being different, the three most important aspects of competitive advantage that we want to demonstrate is

a) Targeted - i.e. the work we do is not “cookie cutter”, but it is focused, planned, and geographically targeted work that focuses on helping our clients improve their bottom line.
b) Smart Marketing -. We're not super-technical people who only speak geek, we also understand business and strategy. Our ability to relate to clients at this level is what makes us unique. Our expertise applies to many new mediums and the tactics change daily, but at the end of the day, we’re markets and our ability to combine great ideas with flawless execution sets us apart.
c) Simplicity - We're a believer that cluttered, crowded branding does not make sense, it confuses clients and generally confuses us. While we're trying to get across many messages across a large target group, we'd like that our final logo/stationary (and eventually web design) convey simple, effective RESULTS rather than just funky/cool + targeted.

WE LIKE THESE DESIGNS:

www.yodle.com - Their logo we don't LOVE, but Although there's no graphic to it, its clear, concise and to the point. We like how their website design makes good use of a certain set of core colors but at the same time stands out as bright, and vibrant without overpowering. They are a COMPETITOR
www.chapterthree.com - Like their logo (clean, professional) , like the color scheme (simple, but effective black and white) and love the creative aspects of their website in how it pulls in their 'personality'
http://www.elixirinteractive.com/ - Another competitor. We like how their logo is fresh/cool - maybe a little TOO funkycool for us, but its clean and modern, versus our current logo which looks a bit stale. They seem to be going for a white and blue theme, which seems clean to us, versus our current orange and yellow which is a little stronger.
Orangesoda.com and orangesodaenterprise.com – They are direct competitors of us so we don’t want to emulate directly. That said, the simplicity of their overall design as well as having a theme that can translate into graphical elements is a big plus (i.e. the logo flows into flash overlays flawlessly).

In terms of fonts that we like - the more 'modern' the better, but definitely not anything robotic, futuristic etc. The target clients can still be people who are generally NOT technically savvy, or not too technically savvy, so anything too hip might turn them off. It has to be old school with a infusion of new school to make it cut across the age and tech demographics.

WE ABSOLUTELY MUST HAVE THIS IN OUR DESIGN:

1) The company name should appear as : befoundonline ( words should all be 'joined' and we want the company name to appear in the logo)
2) We don't want the graphic for the logo to 'outsize' the words, i.e. we don't want very small words but very large graphic
3) We want the logo's/stationary to include (as a tagline) one of the two (so MUST have 1 of these) taglines (we are still deciding internally between the two)
a) targeted.online.marketing
b) art & science of online marketing