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Marketing Case Study

I have a print brokering client who is a fashionista. She produces color swatch books based on her proprietary color system. These little books, very similar to a PMS swatch book, help her clients choose colors for makeup and clothing that will complement their hair and complexion.

Effectively, my client is selling beauty (or rather beauty enhancement). That’s powerful, because among other things it also enhances her clients’ sense of self worth.

With this in mind I produced mock-ups for her of an advertising campaign I had suggested to sell her swatch books and other ancillary products and services. It involved images of beauty and strength in women throughout history, myth, and legend. I positioned the images (mostly from famous paintings) as being powerful and dynamic because of their roots in archetypes. These images are aimed squarely at the viewer’s subconscious. They also tie the archetype of the strong, beautiful woman to my client’s proprietary color system. (For instance, "What colors might Lady Godiva have worn if she had been clothed?")

When I shared these 12 ad mock-ups with my client, I made the following suggestions as to how she might use them for maximum effect.

I said that she might want to run the ads (or her own versions thereof) in an online version, "pushing" them to her client's email on a weekly basis for a specified number of weeks. I said she might even want to make the ads build upon one another, leading to a final offer (art prints, holiday cards, clothing, swatch books, chin cards, drapes, books, classes, or individual color analyses).

I also noted my belief that she should check with her clients (like an online focus group) to see if this ad campaign is going in the right direction. After all, it’s far too easy to find something you like and miss the mark because you’re not taking into account the buyer’s personality and needs.

I told my client that this also involved envisioning "the buyer persona" and that the more developed she could make this mental picture of exactly who her buyer is, the more powerful her ad campaign would be.

Then I said she needed to consider the CTA (or call to action). What did she want her clients to do once they received the ads. This might be as simple as emailing her company for more information. Or, as noted above, it might involve actually purchasing one of my client’s products through her online storefront.

Finally, I noted that tying everything together (both the message and the brand elements) would be very important. That is, all of my client’s materials should be congruent: her definition of the buyer persona, the marketing message, and the action she wants the buyer to take. And all of this should be consistently reflected through the use and position of the logo, logo colors, typefaces, and every other design element in her online and physical marketing materials.

The Power of the AI-Generated Image

This very same client has recently discovered AI-generated imagery. She is an illustrator, among other things, and developing illustrations for her 28 master copies of her seasonal color swatch books has taken a huge amount of time. With AI-generated images (that look like photos), she has been able to populate her website and illustrate her proprietary color system far more quickly and easily than heretofore. She may actually go further at some point and market just these images as a related side business connected to her color swatch books and clothing.

That said, I recently reviewed perhaps 20 of her AI-generated images of women with different hair colors and complexions, of various ages, and representing various races. I saw a marked difference between these and the glamour photos in most catalogs.

First of all, the diversity of age was encouraging. After all, beauty is not just the province of those under 30. It is a conscious, skillful creation that arises from the depths of one’s character.

More importantly, all of the women in the pictures were looking directly at the observer. This creates an immediate bond between the viewer and the subject of the image. In contrast, whether the image is a painting or a photo, when the subject of the picture is looking away from the observer into the "world" of the photo or painting, the observer is not a participant. She or he merely observes but doesn’t interact.

So in my estimation, my client’s AI-generated images are different from the images in traditional glamour magazines, and as a business, the main thing that sets one apart from the competition is one’s USP (unique selling proposition). What do you offer that no one else does?

Here are more thoughts.

First of all, the overall presentation is "softer" than most glamour publications. The AI-generated models not only look directly at the observer, but their pupils are slightly enlarged and in slightly soft focus, suggesting a dreamy, romantic tone. Romantic is the key word, rather than sexy. And I also notice that the whites of the model’s eyes have often been slightly lightened and are sometimes visible beneath the irises, suggesting intensity and engagement.

In addition, there is an overall color key for each of the images tied into my client’s proprietary color scheme. For instance, one image includes an abundance of peach and salmon colors both in the model and in the background scene. (I know Alfred Hitchcock did exactly this in his movies, such as Marnie and The Birds.) Controlling the "key" of the overall color is a powerful tool on a subconscious level.

Finally, my client included rather extensive background imagery. The models are set within an environment. For instance, one in particular is wearing gray, and she is holding onto an iron gate with a large gothic castle in the background. You get the sense of an individual within a scene, with a history, going about her daily business. You become intellectually, emotionally, and physically tied to this person.

Interestingly enough, all of this comes from my client’s typing descriptors into the AI search engine. The more specific my client can be, the more precise and potentially more relevant to her colors and seasons the images the software generates will be. I’ve even encouraged her to type lines from various poems (perhaps from the Pre-Raphaelite era) into the AI software.

Artificial Intelligence is the future. No wonder Alexa loves to go on and on about "the technological singularity."

Think Inside the Box

They always say, "Think outside the box," but I’ve always believed rules should be broken.

Many times in past articles and blog posts, I’ve written about the "unboxing" experience. That is, what it feels like to receive a package and then have the experience of opening it and taking out all the goodies. It’s like Christmas or one’s birthday or Hannukah again.

Within this context, my fiancee recently received a corrugated box. On the outside was brown sulfate (kraft) paper printed via flexography with blue type. Nothing special. However, once you get inside the box, the background sheet is white with black hand-drawn illustrations related to the holiday season. It’s a Lands’ End box, and even the blue type on the outside is about Santa Claus. There’s even a note from Santa on the outside of the box.

So it brings back good memories from childhood. And this is a major hook that makes the "unboxing" experience so powerful.

That said, how was it produced?

Corrugated board is light and strong because of the fluting (the back and forth, or up and down, sinuous paper between the two liners). On this box there’s a white liner and a brown liner. These are printed separately (unless they are inkjet printed) from the fluting and then attached to the fluting with adhesive. Once completed, the box wall is like a series of hundreds of parallel straws fixed side by side, sandwiched between the two flat liners.

At this point everything is still flat. Then the flaps are die cut and the panels are scored, and the box is finally assembled (called converting the box), which involves hot-melt gluing the panels and then opening, folding, and assembling the box.

The walls of fluted corrugated board are easily squashed by the pressure inherent in offset lithography, so the two liners (outside and inside the box) are printed separately and then attached to the fluting. Often they are printed via flexography, with inked, rubber relief plates, in a process that’s good for large flat areas of a single color. But if the job is 4-color, the exterior liner can be printed via offset lithography and then laminated to the fluting. (The liner is just a flat sheet of paper and, by itself, would not suffer compression under the weight of the offset press rollers.)

With digital inkjet printing, however, the inkjet nozzles never touch the box, so this is ideal for short-run (and therefore versioned or personalized) boxes. The key is the short run. In this case you can print directly on the combined corrugated surface of the exterior liner, the fluting, and the interior liner. Then the flat box can be converted.

[Steven Waxman is a printing consultant. He teaches corporations how to save money buying printing, brokers printing services, and teaches prepress techniques. Steven has been in the printing industry for thirty-three years working as a writer, editor, print buyer, photographer, graphic designer, art director, and production manager.]