At the upcoming “Future of Marketing” event in Boston there are over 35 different presentations, panels, meet-ups and summits at different venues throughout the city.  One is at Weymouth Design at 6 p.m. on October 6. It’s a panel discussion on “The Future of the Web User Experience”  and we are very pleased that Bill Albert, who heads the Design and Usability Center at Bentley University, and that Moira Dorsey from Forrester Research are speaking.  Registration just opened at the Future M website.  Space is limited, so check it out, and register early!

Katherine and Sophie opened for business on Valentine’s Day 2008. Two weeks later they were featured on the front page of the Washington Post. As word spread, so did the lines of customers - first out the door, and soon after down the block. The sisters were selling 800 cupcakes a day. Less than two years later, Georgetown Cupcake opened a new flagship store in the heart of Georgetown and a second location in Bethesda. Today the shop bakes over 5,000 cupcakes a day.

With the shop’s meteoric success and increased visibility from local and national press coverage, a new website was needed. The site had to reflect the elegance and sophistication of the Georgetown Cupcake brand while providing a more streamlined and intuitive online store and ordering process for pick-up, delivery, or overnight shipping. The launch deadline was the week before the premier episode aired of their new show, DC Cupcakes, a six-part TLC series that aired in July.

New site features include a homepage Flash banner, cupcake menu with photos and descriptions of each everyday, daily special, seasonal flavors, and an FAQ section which answers common questions received by the shop. In the new online store, customers can choose from an assortment of pre-packed dozens or they can assemble their favorite cupcake flavors and customize further with any number of fondant decorations. Numerous merchandise items are also available.

The back-end of the online store is a powerful platform which enables Georgetown Cupcake to report on orders by type (pickup, delivery, shipping), batch payments, add promotional codes valid at checkout, and export orders to their FedEx shipping software. Advanced gift wrap and customized decoration option reports are available, giving store managers all relevant details necessary for streamlining order fulfillment.

To provide maximum impact and drive users to key sections, a scrolling homepage banner was designed featuring the flagship store, Katherine and Sophie, the menu and their show, DC Cupcakes.

From the beginning the client asked for something different to showcase their first annual. We knew the black and white images and headlines from their ongoing ad campaign were to be used for the book, but they wanted something special for the cover. Their “Excellence” theme, taken from the campaign, was very important to the client and they asked us to consider it as a possible cover.

After a few experiments with images and consideration of slip cases or die-cut letters, a stylized typographic treatment was chosen for the cover art - glossy black copy on deep purple Curious suede-like paper. Texture is a prominent feature throughout the report, combining uncoated papers with translucent full-page vellum photographs.

Designer Amy Richard noted that the client was very open to a tactile experience. Richard collaborated with co-designer Aaron Scott and creative director Robert Krivicich on the multi-month project.

The report features a fold-out time line of the Medical Center’s 200-year history, as well as sections devoted to the Medical Center’s 2009 accomplishments, an overview of NYULMC, and donors. The donor section received special emphasis, as substantial 2009 contributions allowed the Center to finance many important initiatives and renovations in a challenging economic climate.

An accordion-style time line supplemented information presented in the AR.

“We worked closely with Dynagraf to print the final version of the report, which utilized fast-drying co-cure inks,” Krivicich explained. “And with all of the printed elements, including the silkscreened cover, vellum flysheets, timeline, and the full-bleed tritone images, it helped to have the printer very involved throughout the process. I think they provided key input for the tritone press tests and color curves, as well as the critical silkscreening and coating for the cover of the report. With the upfront planning, the entire printing process went very smoothly and the final product printed extremely well. Once it was delivered to NYU it was very well received by the client.”

We’re pretty excited about a first-ever event in Boston called “Future M,” focused on “what’s new and what’s next in Marketing.”  The week long event is taking place at locations throughout the city – including the newly spiffed up offices at Weymouth Design.

We picked up the future theme and have a panel that will discuss “The Future of the Web User Experience” on Wednesday evening, October 6th. 

The event is targeted at CMOs, web strategists and marketers thinking about the next five years of web technology and marketing evolution.  What does the future user experience mean for design and content?  Given new forms and functions, how are we even going to assess usability? What should the innovative marketer do now to prepare for the future web user experience?

The panel includes two Internet visionaries we’ve had the opportunity to work with in the past, Moira Dorsey from Forrester Research, and Bill Albert, who directs the Bentley University Design and Usability Center.  Moria’s published a report on “The Future Online Customer Experience” and continues to research and analyze this topic.  Bill’s been at the forefront of user experience testing and has organized panels in the past on “The Future of Usability.” I’ll set the stage for the panel and act as a moderator for the Q&A. 

More on this later - including registration details. Space will be limited.  You can look at the entire array of events on the Future M website. 

Tom Anderson

The jury is still out as whether this is a wise move or not. But what I do know is that things happen. For example, the first ad ran in the Chicago area. This was intentional because I wanted to see what a “non-art” market would produce. The two most noticeable effects were a spike in my web hits, from about four a day to 30-40 daily, and more sales from Amazon. Not a lot, but still enough to indicate that the ad worked. At $.60 a click, it remains unclear whether or not the small profit margin on the book was eaten up by the cost of cumulative clicks.

The first ad appears below (click to enlarge), and I have since created several more:

A click would take you to my Facebook page, where you could click on the full information related to the tip. And if you so chose, to buy the book. See the following example of a full tip (click to enlarge):

Mike Weymouth, Founder

(Click to enlarge photos)

A few years ago it was Leonardo Di Caprio and Matt Damon looking up at the other side of our offices, from the alley.  The climatic scenes from The Departed were filmed in the two buildings right behind us.  There were crowds then too, and we were shooed from our fire escape by security, partly due to our staff photographers morphing into shameless paparazzi.

(Click to enlarge photos)

Between the stars: our own productions. Not playing at the Cineplex or on NetFlix anytime soon, unfortunately. And the Boston movie bus tour still just points out Congress Street and The Departed alley. But maybe if we can get Tom Cruise to do that Proteomics voiceover, or Diaz to host a CEO interview, or Leonardo to chat with that international sales team… I’m thinking Oscar.

Tom Anderson

]]> http://blog.weymouthdesign.com/2010/07/heres-lookin-at-you-congress-street/feed/ http://blog.weymouthdesign.com/2010/06/vote-for-jennifer/ http://blog.weymouthdesign.com/2010/06/vote-for-jennifer/#comments Fri, 25 Jun 2010 19:29:34 +0000 swalters http://blog.weymouthdesign.com/?p=3118

As I was building this fence around a small veggie garden on the Cape to keep the rabbits and deer out, I got to thinking about how similar it was to building a website, insofar as much of what I was building would never be “visible” (and appreciated). The concrete posts, for examples, have to go below the frost line and most of the labor goes into digging the holes and mixing the concrete to fill the sonatubes. Then they are covered up, never to be seen or appreciated. Sound familiar, programmers?

Mike Weymouth

]]> http://blog.weymouthdesign.com/2010/06/can-you-dig-it/feed/ http://blog.weymouthdesign.com/2010/06/niri-boston-40th/ http://blog.weymouthdesign.com/2010/06/niri-boston-40th/#comments Wed, 23 Jun 2010 20:04:00 +0000 Thomas Anderson http://blog.weymouthdesign.com/?p=3080

NIRI Boston recently celebrated its 40th anniversary with “a walk through the decades” at its celebration at the State Room in Boston. For some reason -the hair? the music? - we helped them celebrate the 80s with a display of IR communications in that pre-Twitter, pre-mobile and, dare we say, pre-Internet age. The display included quotes by IR communicators on what’s been gained and lost in communications over the decades.

Some background and disclosure. NIRI is the “National Investor Relations Institute.” The Boston chapter is one of the most robust in the country in terms of size and programming. We’ve worked with members of NIRI Boston over the years on annual reports, quarterly reports, executive speech support, videos and websites. We’re a member and a sponsor of NIRI Boston.

The backdrop for the display we constructed was a highly entertaining article by Mike Weymouth that appeared in the 80s, talking about his design and photographic approach to creative work for organizations such as Lotus, Damon Biotech, Prime Computer, Biogen, and Millipore. There were samples of those 80 reports, and quotes by the people who worked on them.

The quotes and images tell the story. Thanks to our 80s commentators, and to NIRI Boston!

“It was a great privilege to be present at the dawn of the biotech revolution that has helped and offered hope to so many patients and future patients and become a multi-billion dollar industry. In those early days, we did spend a lot of time on messaging – visually and verbally – and on explaining a new science to multiple audiences. The Annual Report helped us do that, and over the years, Annual Reports became an ongoing history of the industry. Obviously, things have changed significantly. The Annual Report has become the Daily Report. The good news is that everything is timely and accessible to all. The only thing I bemoan is what we’ve lost in overall quality and longer-term perspective.”

Marcia Kean, Chief Executive Officer, Feinstein Kean Healthcare; formerly Senior Vice President, Communications at Damon Corporation and Damon Biotech, one of the first 4 biotech companies in the Boston area.

“Lotus Development in the early 80s . . . software was so new that we were still figuring out the business model while trying to educate investors about its potential. If annual reports hadn’t existed we would have had to invent them, because there was no more effective way to make an intangible product tangible for those who hadn’t yet encountered software on a daily basis. Case studies involving actual Lotus users communicated through powerful graphic design and photography – brought our value proposition to life. It’s easy to dismiss those annual reports as artifacts from “back in the day.” But the lesson they teach is as valid in 2010 as it was a quarter century ago. There will always be perception gaps between shareholders and the companies they invest in. Whether the technology we deploy is Gutenberg’s or Google’s, our key role as professional communicators is to creatively combine art and logic in bridging those gaps.”

Sharon F. Merrill, CEO, Sharon Merrill Associates, Inc.; formerly of Lotus Corporation

“Early biotech was all about branding science, since we knew we would loose money for years until we launched our first product. So investors would have to trust us and believe in us, and the key branding tools for the emerging industry, which was then only a handful of companies, were informative, finely crafted annual reports. It is hard to look at the overly wordy wrapped 10K’s today and not think them inefficient means of transferring complex information to investors. The annual report of the 1980s has been replaced by inventive and creative corporate websites, while the printed annual report has morphed into an inscrutable legal document.”

Peter Feinstein, General Partner, Bioventures Investors; Formally Founder, Feinstein Kean Health Care; Co-Founder, Mass Biotech Council; IR and Communications Head, Biogen.

“In the 1980s, before websites, blogs, tweets, and all the rest of today’s media noise, a corporation’s annual report was one of the few opportunities it had to tell its story. Its words and images were chosen with care, because they really mattered.

“Today, I’d argue that a company’s choice of words and images matters even more, because to break through the clutter, they have to be even sharper and stronger. The reward is that when you make the right choices, you can get to more people faster — and with a more integrated message.”

Jean Gogolin, Principal of WordWright Communications. Formerly of Prime Computer. Northrop, IBM, and EMC Corporations.

“I look back at the 1985 Millipore Annual Report and realize how much things have changed for that company, for the customers and employees in the report, for the people who produced the report. And how much the context has changed in terms of transparency and the business climate. But there are constants in better communicating a company story: a coherent, straightforward message; repetition, of course; and creativity. You need great words.You need great visuals.You want people to get an emotional connection to your company – as well as an intellectual connection. Online, offline – who cares? I want both. Tell the story right.”

Tom Anderson, President and CEO, Weymouth Design, Formerly of Millipore Corporation.

And finally, a view of our great city from the State Room where the event was held.

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Some highlights of the redesign include:

* Senior Leadership as Thought Leaders. A short, high-impact video tells the Viropharma story from the senior leadership perspective. The video - filmed and edited for web use - provides a quick insight into the vision, values, thinking and commitment of senior management, important for analysts, partners, patients, and the media.

* New patient and physician resources for Cinryze and Hereditary Angioedema. Updated site content was needed to convey the new capabilities of Viropharma. These included a  video on how Cinryze represents a solution to HAE and an animated “mechanism of action” video of the way C1 functions in the human body.

* Targeted User Paths.  The information architecture was designed to meet the needs of the patient, physician, media and investor audiences, and each audience has their own targeted user path.

* Interactive Product Pipeline. The updated product pipeline provides an easy, interactive and effective means of relaying information on Viropharma’s product portfolio to analysts and the media.

* World Class CMS.  Based on the content management needs of Viropharma, a robust Sitecore CMS was developed, one that provides the flexibility to manage current and future product sites, as well as the corporate site, and one that provides the scalability for international and product expansion.

Take a look at the final result: www.viropharma.com