Marketing and Identity
I had a very constructive and interesting conversation today with a design agency about working towards a more coherent identity and marketing strategy for Zorrino.
It was a difficult conversation to have because it's not particularly clear what steps should be taken at this point, if any. We're looking for a couple of things and there is more than one road to take in order to get to where we need to be. We need to determine some sort of brand identity for Mentor - a uniform look for all marketing materials from business cards to the website - and we need to develop and implement a successful marketing strategy in order to make sales.
We could spend a bunch of money and do both of those things at the same time - going through a lengthy process of market research and so on. Or, we could get some sort of brand identity going first and get the marketing together at a later stage, when the product and our operations are ready for it.
At this point, it's not certain that doing any definitive marketing would be worthwhile. It's my contention that we need to sort out the branding sooner rather than later. The question is whether it's constructive to get the identity right without going through the lengthy process that would be necessary if we were building a complete marketing strategy now.
It's a thorny issue which is made more complicated by the cost of doing it. The design agency would rather do things "right" at this point but I'm not entirely sure that we need to go through that whole process in order to sort out the branding.
Anyway, in the meantime I'm back in Photoshop trying to rework the Zorrino website. Look for the results soon. It's a bit bland and unfocused at the moment and I need to get all the content together before we unleash Mentor upon an unsuspecting world.
Oh, and I got a bloody parking ticket after being ten minutes late getting out of the meeting. Which is poor.
