peeps capabilities cards

peeps creative // o.330.867.7337 // peepscreative.com57 east market street // second floor // akron, ohio 44308

2WHAT ARETHESE GIANT CARDS?

We do a lot of sweating over our own promotional materials; we can’t afford a mitsake as we do our best to show you writing and work that is at once witty, edgy, elegant, clean and classy.

So, what we’ve got here is a giant deck of cards filled with our work and philosophy that we hope will hang around your office for a while as a sort of silent, 11-inch tall salesperson.

Because our space and your time are limited, we’re only giving you a little taste of our thoughts. We’ve got a lot more to say on each topic, so we provide a URL to a blog entry that does it better justice.

Also, we’re a to-the-point bunch and we hope that’s reflected here. Along the way we’ll let you in on a few of our favorite stories, analogies and maxims that help us eschew agency-speak and boil down our philosophies to easily digestible nuggets.

For instance, we’re fond of saying:

*It was no anomaly that mistake was mispelled in the first paragraph. Also, anomaly and misspelled in the preceeding sentence are incorrectly spelled as is preceding just a few words back.

CUSTOMERS ARE NOT INNOVATORS: Focus groups have legitimate and useful functions, but one of them is not as a tool to fuel innovation. Consider that if Edison had relied on a focus group, he’d have spent his life trying to invent brighter candles.

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‘peeps creative is a creative firm specializing in digital and print communication. We specialize in integrated lifestyle marketing, brand exploration and digital development.


‘Peeps offers a full range of services allowing for content development and creative communication across all media including print, digital, interactive, social and environmental spaces. We collaborate with our partners, clients, colleagues, tommy (our mailman, see photo below) and the occasional passerby to concept and execute marvelous marketing.

Founded in 2005 by leslie sutula, ‘peeps has grown from a couple of people working on laptops from a couch in her living room to a vibrant, energetic and fast-paced studio teeming with artists, designers, strategists, writers, interactive architects and digital developers headquartered at the intersection of commerce and culture in akron, ohio. 3

ABOUT ‘PEEPS

IT’S A LONG STORY: The apostrophe before the peeps stands for ‘polkadot’, but it also has the unintended benefit of placing our name first in any alphabetical listing. It was either that or AAAA peeps creative…

“TOMMY” the Mailman


‘peeps was never purely digital. We’ve always been ideators first and our technical proficiencies in development were borne of the tactical necessity for bringing our ideas to life without the creative, communication and quality struggles inherent in farming out production to a group that is not as passionate about the underlying concept.

Pushing new concepts through new technologies is really our sweet spot. We’re accustomed to playing nice with the agency-of-record, but you should know that we’re thinking about the strategic lead-in and the wider effects of how our solutions add value to our to our clients’ businesses rather than just building out the solution and launching it on time and on budget.

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CONSIDER THIS: An agency that offers only tactical digital services is like a cleaning company that offers only vacuuming. You have to depend on the ‘traditional’ cleaner to suggest using the vacuum to clean the baseboards.

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5DIGITAL EXPERTISEOur ‘Digital Capabilities’ are not best expressed in a list of tactical

applications because tactically speaking, all digital expertise has its roots in a handful of foundational disciplines.

Just as experienced musicians can play a piece they’ve never seen before because they’ve mastered their instruments as well as music notation and theory, digital proficiency is a function of a number of well-rounded specialists coming together with a mastery of programming methodology, marketing principles, creative energy and an appreciation for elegance. Everything else is ideas.

Because we’re actively spotting trends, taking part in development sandboxes and just trying out new technology, our ‘capabilities’ literally change every day. The important thing to remember is that it’s not about the pieces, but how those pieces fit together.

The web is everything you’re willing to make it. Branded content, properly planned and delivered, works online just like it does in a custom publication. It disseminates information, provides entertainment, suggests solutions and – even more than a magazine does – it mobilizes your customers.

We can help you figure out how to fit those poeces together.

THE PIECESProduct microsites

eCommerce

Interactive development

3D and Motion graphics

Web design

Search Engine Optimization

Content management

Mobile Marketing

Digital Display Advertising

Content development

Database design

Email marketing

Web-based applications

Customer entertagement*

Social media and brand strategy

User Interface design and testing

Multimedia integration

Research

ENTERTAGEMENT: Check out wikipedia entry for ‘customer engagement’ – or just Google it and read ANY entry. Holy cow! Marketers are so concerned with defining, analyzing and measuring it that it hasn’t seemed to dawn on anyone that the best way to engage a human being is to give them something fun to do or cool to look at. That’s what we call Customer Entertagement; the idea that if content is entertaining, then people will engage with it. It’s not as impressive as this: peepscreative.com/reduciblecomplexity but we bet it works.


6According to Consumer Reports, Americans encounter over 3000 messages per day – one every 20 seconds or so. Most of these messages are ads that whiz by unnoticed because humans deal with clutter by blocking it out. The stuff that gets in is the stuff that stands out with clever, useful, interesting or otherwise stimulating content. If you’ve ever woken up singing a song you haven’t heard in 10 years you know that the mind resists getting rid of the stuff it has taken notice of.

Magazine advertising works because magazines linger. Custom magazines linger even longer. They get read. They get handled and perused and passed around. They build meaningful connections by delivering entertainment and information just like regular magazines, but the content is finely targeted. That makes them powerful tools in your effort to solidify and mobilize your customer base.

We ideate, design and produce relevant, branded content centered around your message that your customers will tweet over.

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HAVE YOU EVER NOTICED: Custom magazines never seem to get dog-eared. They’re passed around just as much as other mags but there’s a big difference in who they get passed to. Readership for a regular magazine is mostly casual (someone’s sitting there and picks it up). Custom pubs get actively passed along: meaning that they’re getting in front of prospects with an active interest in the content. As a result they get treated with more care.


PROFICIENCIES IN PRINT Creative direction, art direction, design and production.

3D direct marketing

Point-of-purchase

Product packaging

Out-of-Home

Print collateral

Catalogs / product circulars

Custom publications

Trade show materials

Copywriting

Media planning and buying

Make no mistake, we’re committed to the digital revolution, but if we had to pick sides in a real match between Berners-Lee (inventor of the internet) and Guttenberg (moveable type), we’d pick Guttenberg because at least he’d be able to hit his opponent with a physical object.

Packets of electronic information aren’t very good as weapons in a fight. Nor are they very useful as retail packaging, point-of-purchase displays or 3D environmental advertising.

You could make arguments that printed pieces beat the digital alternative for out-of-home, direct mail, some catalogs and custom publications. Business cards are essential – even as ubiquitous as smart phones are, most people couldn’t send or accept a v-card (could you imagine getting invited to a family wedding via an html email?)

There’s still something about the printed piece that just feels good; the texture of the paper, the way it holds the ink. There is an ethereal quality to print that, for some things, can’t be digitally matched. For instance, a website can’t convey the same tactile sense of quality that a simple die-cut or emboss can.PR

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PRINT 3D direct marketing

Point-of-purchase

Out-of-Home

Print collateral

Catalogs

Custom publication

All things trade show

Copywriting

Media planning and buying

POSITIONING Brand strategy

Creative direction

Identity

Market research

PIXELS Product microsites

eCommerce

Interactive development

3D and Motion graphics

Web design

Search Engine Optimization

Content management

Mobile Marketing

Digital Display Advertising

Content development

Database design

Email marketing

Web-based applications

Customer entertagement*

Social media and brand strategy

User Interface design and testing

Multimedia integration

Research

Need a full-blown interactive strategy? Need to rethink your brand identity and position? Want to produce a database-driven Flash micro-site? Social media? Macromunication Protocols? Want to do something that there’s not even a word for yet? Like whatever Macromunication is? Cool. We’ll walk you through every step from strategy to launch and beyond.

PEEPS PROFICIENCIES IN PIXELS, PRINT & POSITIONING

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