I discovered fairly recently that you can shop that the cute little boutique-like store in the mall, Francesca’s, online. They have the cutest stuff, and here are a few of my favorite things I found browsing the site today.
I got the idea to “upcycle” my Glossy Boxes into something I could reuse by adding label holders.
I found the label holders on eBay (the 5/8×2 1/2 size), and they came with tiny screws. Even though the screws were super tiny, they were still to long for the thickness of the box. I knew that glue would secure the labels holders to the box just fine, so I headed to Michael’s to find something that looked like a screw to give the finish I wanted. I settled on tome tiny brads.
I bent the ends of the brads sideways so that they would be flush with the label holder when I glued it to the box. 
The person helping me at Michael’s suggested Gorilla Glue for securing the label holders to the box. He explained that super glue would not adhere to the box because it was paper and therefore porous. I tried the Gorilla Glue first box, and it didn’t turn out. I switched over to super glue, and it worked perfectly. 
I put the super glue on the ends of the brads and in two small dots at the bottom of the label holders and pressed it in to the box. I held for a few seconds, and the label holders were secure. 
I’m really happy with the way these turned out. Now all I have to do is decide what to keep in them!
Thanks for reading!
Read MoreI had a great time at the Great Richmond Chamber’s event this past Tuesday, Bad Words: Build A Bulletproof Brand Voice To Increase Your Profitability.
Read MoreBayonet, a local branding agency, gave some great tips about brand voice that definitely come into play in what I do for a living. Here they are:
1. Decide on your company’s celebrity soul mate. Then don’t tell anyone this information. — Finding the person who embodies your brand can help you put the brand into words.
2. Figure out what language your customer is speaking, and speak that language back to them. “English” doesn’t count. — Speaking to your customer means you are also choosing not to speak to other people who don’t fit your market. Wal-Mart uses different words than Nieman Marcus.
3. Settle on a tone. Use personality descriptors for an easy way to get this into words. — Birch Box, a subscription service that sends out upscale beauty products, said in its style guide to avoid exclamation points whenever possible: “it makes us sound a bit like teenyboppers,” the guide said. Since you know who you are talking to, you need to use a tone they will relate to.
4. Take the time to make some style rules. Vocabulary, sentence structure, syntax, and, yes, grammar and punctuation. — How you structure sentences says a lot about your brand, Howson said. Le Meridian, the upscale hotel chain, looks to avoid commands in its marketing materials. Aloft, a hotel group looking to appeal to young, hip travelers, focuses on action verbs and evocative language.
5. Enforce across all possible channels. It takes many hours to build a brand voice, and one tweet to destroy it. — The voice on Twitter should match the voice on your website.
The lyrics in Aaron Tippin’s country song also put it well. “You’ve got to stand for something or you’ll fall for anything.”
Thank you, D’Andre Henderson, for including me on this piece. “I think it’s hard, like so many things, to find that balance between, ‘I want to stand up for what’s important to me,’” said Dick. “But I also need to figure out the right words to say it.”
Read More
