2020: Your Core Values are Now Your Anchors
April 2, 2020 |
Written by: Louis Marchand
We are amid a global experience unlike anything seen in our lifetime. While healthcare professionals and essential workers dedicate time and energy around the clock to save lives, our simple instruction to just stay home seems trivial. But our role to play will have huge impacts on the future of our lives and communities. As we push forward through this difficult time, we must pause to reflect on our values and priorities – as organizations and individuals. For EDG Creative, this process begins with brand identification.
A brand isn’t built in a day. It is defined, redefined and redefined again to reflect a set of principles, beliefs, aesthetics or values. Your brand will drive everything you do; it’s the root from which every message, strategy and campaign stems. Through these tenets, the authenticity of a story can be amplified and heard. Your brand defines your purpose and priorities; it defines you.
As we produce content, especially in uncertain times, we must ask ourselves crucial questions like “what is important to say today?”, “what type of energy am I putting into the universe?” “does this strategy speak to our brand and the global consciousness?”. Our social landscape is shifting every single day; staying aware of the world is imperative. The message of your brand should reflect awareness and a willingness to produce positive, impactful content.
During the creation of EDG Creative, we chose five values that define us and serve as our anchors, now more than ever: Echo Your Purpose, Design with Intention, Imagine Beyond, Pause to Appreciate, Remember to Laugh.
Our goal is to provide effective communication, marketing and innovation to our clients. EDG Creative seeks to create positive impacts in the community by telling your stories. Our focus is on helping to keep your ship steady in rough waters.
You can also call this our alibi, creatively speaking of course. Every single pixel should be accounted for in each design we create. This means that alignment, color and typography should directly sync with the content and the message, leaving little room for confusion and ill connotations.
This also presupposes the idea that our intention is to design for good. This echoes our purpose of positive impact by telling stories the right way.
We can break this down in both a strategic and a creative way:
Creatively, we always want to push the envelope on what we can do. We want to hear every wild idea, consider every alley and encourage the input of every team member. Brainstorming is one way to put it, imagining beyond is another. A storm will eventually end but beyond is limitless!
Oftentimes, what is just over the horizon is something never accounted for, good or bad. While strategy and plans are a necessary start, the best-laid plans can often implode at implementation. But, if we imagine beyond, we can begin to account for more outcomes and create stronger strategies.
EDG Creative is a proponent of stopping to smell the roses—and listening to the birds and breathing consciously. Taking the time to listen and step back to appreciate the ideas, the words and the visuals we are crafting is an opportunity to understand the projects’ need at the microscopic level.
As the world we knew has ceased its normal functionality for the time being, we can all pause to appreciate the little positive things in our new workflows and the time we have.
An essential aspect of the workday, even the virtual workday, is to find humor in the process. Laughter is key to remain happy in our perhaps lonelier surroundings these days. Spreading cheer and goodwill to our neighbors and coworkers can induce a ripple effect with further reach than you might imagine.
If you’re unsure how to proceed with your company’s or municipality’s external communication, it’s okay. These are uneasy times; it’s okay to feel a bit lost. Take a moment and reflect on the foundations of your brand. What is your core message? Who do you want to reach? Move forward, conscious of the world around you. Find your anchors. If you’re lost at sea and need some assistance with communicating, EDG Creative is here to help. Most importantly, we wish good health for you, your family and your community.
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