IMAGE UNDER CONSTRUCTION!

Take a look behind the scenes of a graphic artist day job.

I have been lucky to call a local performing arts theatre, Westben, a client of mine for a few years now. This year I was particularly happy to work on their season image that will grace the program and brochure covers, as well as most of their advertising. 

I thought it might be fun to show you guys what can be done with a few stock photos, a good brief, and a 'few' hours in front of the computer.

Westben is a performing arts theatre located in the beautiful countryside of Campbellford, Ontario. The setting is a lovely meadow with a timber-frame barn that was built to be acoustically suited for live music. The performances range from opera to country to comedy, bringing professionals and amateurs together for productions that are international quality and unique only to the Westben venue. A gem for the surrounding area.

The brand positioning of Westben is a happy-nature-infused-performance-theatre, and so the imagery needs to capture and communicate that feeling. The other piece of the puzzle was including a tip of the hat to the world premiere of The Pencil Salesman, Artistic Director Brian Finley's new opera and a season highlight.

We worked through a few concept ideas and finally landed on an image that would capture the essence of Westben while eluding to the performances to come. Now it's time for me to get to work and make this image sing.

Stock Image 1

Stock Image 2

Photoshop Progress

Combine images 1 & 2.

Stock Image 3

Photoshop Progress

Add the sky into the background.

Stock Image 4

Photoshop Progress

Colourize the tree and add texture from Stock Image 4.

Stock Image 5

Stock Image 6

Photoshop Progress

Combine images 5 & 6 and adjust scale to fit around the tree.

Stock Image 7

Stock Image 8

Photoshop Progress

Add in the butterflies and hummingbird.

Stock Image 9

Photoshop Progress

Insert the musical notes around the tree.

Ashley Condon Media Image

Photoshop Progress

Add Ashley into image.

Final Brochure Cover

I set to work finding stock imagery that will help us create our image. To include one of the performers from this season I look through the provided media photos and determine which image has an angle and lighting that will work within our layout. Luckily, Ashley Condon, who will be performing in July, fit the criteria.

Then its long hours of cobbling together the puzzle pieces. I have to make sure the integration is seamless by considering the lighting, angles, contrast, hue, and size of all elements in relation to one another.

By the end, we had an image that brings the brand and season to life.  

Facebook Posting for Your Business Page

As a member of the Marmora Business Association (MBA), I have been asked to explain the best way to link a member's business to page to the MBA's page. I have created a simple guide for you to reference moving forward. I hope this helps!

There are two options for tagging the MBA business page from your posts on Facebook:

1. Posts that are posted directly to the MBA page

Posts that are posted directly to the MBA page will appear in the VISITOR POSTS section of the MBA page. 

Where will the posts live:

• These posts will be visible in the Visitor Posts section in the left column of the MBA page. You can scroll through these by clicking the arrow in the right top corner of this section.

• These posts will not be visible on your timeline.

Who will see the posts:

• They will show up on your followers and the MBA followers news feeds.

 

2. Tagging the MBA page using @MarmoraBusinessAssociation

Simply type @MarmoraBusinessAssociation, and choose the page from the drop down menu, to tag the MBA page.

Where will the posts live:

• These posts will be visible on your timeline.

Who will see the posts:

• Your followers and the MBA page followers will see your post in their news feed.

Note: Only posts that the MBA shares will be visible on the MBA timeline

How do you decide which option to use?

1. Posts that are posted directly to the MBA page

I would recommend using this when the messaging is about the MBA. It should be used as an open engagement with the MBA page, and not used as the primary way to promote your business. This content will be lost to most users once it has cycled through their newsfeed, so you don’t want it to be a message that is of great importance to your followers.

2. Tagging the MBA page using @MarmoraBusinessAssociation

I would recommend using this option when you are speaking about your company. You will want this content to live on your timeline so that people can reference it with ease.

5 steps to help bring customers through your door!

It doesn't matter where your business is, you will eventually have to prepare for a festival, special occasion or holiday. Some business owners have unrealistic expectations of the organizers of these events. The organizers should communicate with the business community, or even involve them in some way, but they are not responsible for getting customers through each door. 

So, to help you prepare for the upcoming holiday season, and the winter festivals that follow, here are some pointers your company can use to increase the number of customers walking through your door.

1. Support the season!

Come up with an idea that will link your product to the season or event. It doesn’t matter if it’s Christmas, SnoFest, Black Friday or Manic Monday’s, your business should invite customers in to celebrate. Sales, workshops, specialty menus, prizes, giveaways are a few of the many ways you can create an affordable promotional experience. If your business is participating, you have automatically connected yourself to the buzz around town. 

2. Communicate with event organizers.

When there is an event being hosted in your community, and you've created an offer to celebrate that event, let the organizers know! More often than not they are happy to share news of your promotion. Plus, you can find out if there is anything similar happening so that you can plan properly. If they don't reach out to you, feel free to reach out to them. This allows a stream of communication that will inform them about what the community needs so they can evolve accordingly over the years. But please, keep your expectations in check. These people are usually volunteers who don't need anything added to their to-do list. In fact, if you think there is a better way of doing something offer to help! 

This is a sample basic work back schedule. 

3. Create a work back schedule.

Give yourself ample time to get everything ready. A work back schedule will help you realize the time that will be needed to achieve your goals. You create a work back schedule by working backward. Start with the date you want to have your promotion in store and ready. Then determine the steps you needed to accomplish your goals while scheduling enough time for each action. 

4. Advertise.

Advertising in a small town has a bad rap. From what I can tell this is because many people have spent money on advertising that didn't work. And there are many reasons why it didn't work. I could write a whole essay on this topic. But here is one thing you can consider: people see advertising everywhere. You have to catch their attention. Have you heard about WIMF? That's the 'What's in it for me' message. Convincing someone to come into your business is a lot easier if there is a WIMF offer. Taking a business card and printing it in a newspaper isn't advertising. It's background noise. Use social media, signage, print or radio - whatever the medium be direct in your offer...which leads me to my next step...

5. Keep it simple.

I can’t stress this enough. Keep your idea simple, and keep your advertising simple. Focus on one idea. Don't advertise a million things your company can do. It’s the time to focus on the one thing that will bring people through that door. If your communication is unfocused people will glaze over and keep walking. 

A ghost town in the making.

This past September I ran a first-time event with my business partner Leigh Nash. It was called Oktoberfest in Marmora. You may have read about it in a previous post. We tried to keep it simple:

1. Throw a party that locals and our friends would enjoy.
2. Raise money for the Food Bank.
3. Cover our costs and perhaps our time for organizing it.
4. Learn something.

I'm happy to say we achieved three of four goals. We didn't get to pay ourselves for the time it took to organize, but we did cover our costs. I enjoyed the party, our friends enjoyed the party, we drank all the beer... we ate all the food... and we raised some money for the food bank: $160 to be exact. Yeah, it's not a lot, but it's more than we were able to pay ourselves. So why was I left with a feeling that I had to explain myself for actually trying to make money? Why do so many people in this town think volunteers should run everything? Why do they believe that if you decide to raise money for charity AND pay yourself that you are some how corrupt? 

How do I combat this skepticism? 

 In small town you see the same people all the time. You run into people on the street constantly that you know. You make friends with the businesses owners of the shops you frequent. You feel like Norm on Cheers because everybody does know your name. It can also be a little daunting to know that you see those same people every day. When you decide to do something for the community you are raising your head above the crowd – what if there is a call for beheading? It seems like an extreme example but sometimes it feels that way. When I became Chair of the Marmora Snofest board there was such a fear of what locals might think that it was difficult to even discuss certain changes. The result is that things become frozen in time because if you make a change you feel people will revolt! And by revolt I mean talk amongst themselves, or whisper as you walk by, or smear your name in some way. But what are we really afraid of? Is it going to be that bad?

Sure, on occasion, I have been stopped and educated on everything I'm doing wrong or everything my predecessors have done wrong... But there are more people who are just happy whenever someone sticks his or her neck out – it means there is change a-comin'. And most people really support change in a town that hasn't seen much of it since 1979. But those few who fear change speak loudest. And angriest. And meanest. I'm not saying that I have been attacked in such a way, but I’ve heard about it happening to others. My dad was Reeve for quite some time, so I'm not blind to how horrible people can be to you when you're in the public eye. 

Have you heard of Dan Pollotta? I watched his TED talk a while back and in it he said some pretty interesting things comparing the for-profit and not-for-profit industries. Here is a brief excerpt from his talk:

Why have our breast cancer charities not come close to finding a cure for breast cancer, or our homeless charities not come close to ending homelessness in any major city? Why has poverty remained stuck at 12 percent of the U.S. population for 40 years?

And the answer is, these social problems are massive in scale, our organizations are tiny up against them, and we have a belief system that keeps them tiny. We have two rulebooks. We have one for the nonprofit sector and one for the rest of the economic world. It's an apartheid, and it discriminates against the [nonprofit] sector in five different areas, the first being compensation.

 So in the for-profit sector, the more value you produce, the more money you can make. But we don't like nonprofits to use money to incentivize people to produce more in social service. We have a visceral reaction to the idea that anyone would make very much money helping other people. Interesting that we don't have a visceral reaction to the notion that people would make a lot of money not helping other people. You know, you want to make 50 million dollars selling violent video games to kids, go for it. We'll put you on the cover of Wired magazine. But you want to make half a million dollars trying to cure kids of malaria, and you're considered a parasite yourself. (Applause)

So it would seem it's not just a small-town problem. It's a disconnect in our perception of right and wrong when it comes to capitalizing on ideas and what should be free and what should come from the high paid private sector. I think it might be totally backwards.

When we opened the doors at Oktoberfest the cover was $8. One fellow came to the door with his $8 ticket and when we told him beer tickets were $5 each he looked at us like we were holding him upside down and shaking the money out of his pockets. He said, "The ticket doesn't cover the beer?" Seriously? He paid $8 so he didn’t have to do a thing but show up and enjoy some local brews at $5 a mug. You can't beat those prices. Leigh and I, however, put in a total of 200 hours between us to make this event happen, plus we paid for everything out of our own pockets and took on all the risk. 

And when Leigh and I were selling tickets in the local Valumart we were simultaneously collecting money for the local food bank. One lady came over and asked us about the tickets and what we were doing and wanted to know where the money would go. When we answered honestly that we were a business raising money for charity and throwing a party she literally grabbed her purse tight and walked away from us scowling until she was out of arm’s reach, as if we were waiting for her to drop her guard so we could run away with her belongings.

Leigh and I selling tickets at the local Valumart. 

Our handcrafted Oktoberfest mugs. 16oz for $5 - pretty much the reason we didn't get to pay ourselves.

With SnoFest Marmora has a tourism opportunity that can really benefit the community. And this year we have made some big changes that we weren't able to make last year, to involve the community more and enable them to participate and benefit from the events. But it is near impossible to get anyone to join the SnoFest board. And frankly I don't know how this tradition will continue in the way that it has for the past 36 years. I personally believe SnoFest is a good thing for our community. Could it be better? OF COURSE! But we are a small group of six volunteers. Volunteers also run the annual fall fair. The Lions have a huge presence in Marmora and are also a large group of volunteers. One of the biggest draws to our little town is the Classic Cruisers night during the summer moths. It’s run by volunteers. The Legion, the churches, the Scouts, sports... everything in this town is run by volunteers, and everyone is getting tired. Old and tired. The young parents volunteer for hockey or skating so that their children have something to do. The old people have been volunteering for decades and are literally dying off. 

Is there a way to turn this excessive volunteer work into jobs? I’ve asked myself this question many times. The events in many small towns aren’t exciting anymore. They hardly benefit the local businesses, and they are rarely marketed. They need professional help, a team of people whose job it is to remedy these shortcomings. I try with SnoFest. The board tries. Leigh, our staff member tries. But one paid person can’t fix all of our problems. We want to do better, and I still put a hell of a lot of time into it: I do all the marketing for free. I spend hours a day trying to make things easier, more profitable, more exciting, more inclusionary, more participatory… just something close to what it SHOULD be. It should be something that brings customers into our stores, fills tables at our restaurants, fills beds at our B&Bs and entertains all of these visitors enough to bring them back next year. These tourism and marketing jobs earn big salaries in the city. People here do it for free because it’s been the only option. 

 We’ve lost sight of the reasons why we hold these events. Most businesses don’t benefit, and the businesses don’t represent themselves on boards for events like SnoFest because it’s enough of a struggle to try and pay the bills without the hassle of volunteering. Or they used to participate with little return and have decided it’s a waste of time. Time that is precious and no one wants to waste. There are so many problems to overcome here.

I don't have any answers, but I know we need change. Until we try new things and figure out what that balance is, we are a ghost town waiting to happen.