We’re just about to ship the 2012 Market Aces holiday card and we thought we’d share them with you. Designs were done by Aalok Trivedi and were printed at a local print shop. We think they turned out great!

“Brands more often than not go wrong because they lose touch with their roots and the values and qualities that made them successful.” Sir. John Hegarty, Advertising Legend

Consumers care about more than what you’re selling or how you’re different.

People care about why you do what you do – what is the passion that moves your product or goal? Getting to that core concept and marketing from that central point of passion is what we have coined as Core Concept Marketing Strategy™. It drives how we market all of our products and services, building brands and campaigns for our clients.

“Why” is now the single most important part of consumer decisions. Why does your brand, whether a business or organization, do what it does? Why do you get up in the morning to go to work? These are the deeper and emotional questions that go on in the minds of consumers.

Does your marketing and branding answer these questions? Do you sell yourselves telling the specifics of your products/services, or do you tell a story?

Consumers want to be part of your core message – not just a product feature.

Almost as much as answering the “why” question, consumers now want to participate. Consumers want to form relationships with brands; today, this is key to growing your customer base. In the past, on the other hand, brands could stick to focusing on a single action for consumers: making the sale. Those days are over.

Today consumers want to go beyond the sale, they engage. They “like”, they tweet, and do countless other forms of direct interaction with brands, other fans, and the entire popular perception of brands themselves.

How can you encourage consumers to engage if fundamentally you don’t communicate your passion and answer the “why” question?

This is why we are so passionate about Core Concept Marketing Strategy™, our method for communicating the deepest concepts about why you do what you do. Market Aces is about marketing your passion and what you believe in. Core Concept Marketing Strategy™ is strategy for passion.

Without outstanding strategic direction, effort and creativity is wasted.

With Core Concept Marketing Strategy™ Market Aces creates a focused, consistent marketing and branding for clients centered around the core of the client’s passion, the “why.”

With CCMS we change the relationship between clients and us. It’s not based on the money (clients) and us (the creatives) but instead it’s a relationship of people working together to communicate the deepest passion of our clients.

Combine our game-changing approach to marketing with our love of great technology, and you have a digital, strategic, and tactical firm that’s lives every day to be the most energetic, passionate, and innovative web marketing, design, and software development firm in the U.S.

Passionate about your business? We’d love to chat about it.

We are proud to announce that Market Aces’ CEO Jared Fuller is a finalist for the American Enterprise Institute’s ”Morality of Free Enterprise” video contest!

Market Aces is a company that stands for freedom online and off and this all comes from Jared’s vision  When he heard about AEI’s contest he decided to enter both to promote capitalism but also to see how far he could push his passion for video production. We think he’s done a great job on both fronts, including producing an accompanying website, moralpaperroute.com  Check out his video below, and don’t forget to look at the other great entries at AEI.

Some logo and branding designs from our senior graphic designer, Ben Edmonson.

Click here to get a free quote on what Market Aces can do for your design needs.

With last Tuesday’s announcement of the addition of “header images” to Twitter, another graphic design dimension has been added to the social network, but this time it’s different. Gone are the days when focus could be placed on designing graphics for social networks solely with consideration to the traditional web browser. Today, every platform must be considered, from smartphones to tablets.  It’s a changing web out there.

The recent twitter changes produces two challenges for designers.

1. Designing a profile icon that is recognizable and scales across multiple form factors.
2. Designing a header image that works on multiple form factors.

The new header forces a change in the default profile photo size; on any twitter page with headers, the profile photo is now smaller. Because of this change, we are no longer able to use the old Market Aces profile photo. We designed a new one with emphasis on being recognizable whether someone is on the web or on a smartphone.

The photo went through a series of designs.

With these early designs, recognition was still an issue, particularly when scaled down on smartphone apps.  A few designs later we came up with this:

It scales across devices, but is distinctly recognizable as being a Market Aces property.

The next challenge was the profile header. The header needed to contrast the bio text, which is automatically white, and to catch the eye.

The total package scales to multiple devices but maintains the Market Aces brand look and feel, a cross-section most organizations will have to feel around for.With many more likely changes coming how we connect digitally with people, designing for a multiple devices will be critical. See the whole effect on the MarketAces twitter page.