Genesis Private Equity Limited

Genesis Private Equity Limited

Genesis Private Equity Limited (GPEL) is a serious business specialising in serious business.

Founded by highly respected commercial finance professionals Kieran O’Hagan and Nathan Mills, GPEL establishes a success elevator between private investors and small to medium enterprises by deploying a unique package of equity capital and the real-world commercial acumen of GPEL Directors and Shareholders through precisely structured limited partnership models.

JFM loves the challenge of delivering work which meets the high standards of a leader in a particular field, and our relationship with Kieran and Nathan is no exception. Not only have we been privileged to learn about their incredible depth of experience in the financial sector and their ambition for GPEL as a trusted business promise, but we’ve also been inspired by the esteemed and affable personalities behind the brand.

As a result, we’ve worked closely with Kieran and Nathan to create a brand identity and marketing collateral which we think reflects their gravitas as commercial finance advisors but also their ability to connect with individual people on a very human, very rewarding level. The more we understood about Kieran and Nathan and the GPEL promise, the more we realized that the brand offers a truly unique blend of investment, strategic advice and inspired leadership which we felt was best summed up by saying “GPEL realizes business potential”.

Please feel free to meet Kieran O’Hagan and Nathan Mills and view our latest work by visiting their website www.gpel.co.nz

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High-end student accommodation…

High-end student accommodation…

JFM has been working with Student Space on a range of new marketing tools and promotional items. Student Space offers a high-end student accommodation service, particularly suited to the needs of overseas students in Christchurch.

The accommodation itself is unique in terms of it’s colourful style, custom facilities and excellent security options. A critical factor in designing the communication pieces was to make sure all the visual messages portrayed the real essence of the trustworthy and stylish service.
 
A key marketing tool for any business is an effective business card. Business cards are a great way to make a really good first impression. If you can wow somebody when you first give them your business card, your brand has already made a favourable imprint in the mind of the recipient. We decided to go with a black background for the front of the business cards to ensure the vibrant colours of the brand identity really “pop” off the card. The printed card features a heavy silk “feel” in the hand which also helps to convey the right message about quality.

We also created high quality and colourful presentation folders to create a high impact visual which helps to reinforce the impression of superior service for those tenants receiving the folder which contains all their accommodation documents.

Promotional items are an excellent way to grow and enhance brand awareness. By giving someone a unique and useful product which features your logo but also carries a meaningful connection to your brand, you embed your brand in the hearts and minds of customers who use that product in future. As an accommodation expert, Student Space decided to give their tenants bright and colourful keyrings holding the key to their new rooms along with multicoloured pens which the students could use to finalise their tenancy paperwork and continue using for their lessons.

Talk to JFM about creating communication pieces and branded promotional items that really connect with your target markets! Call the studio today on 03 308 6272 or email Jo Foster on info@jfm.co.nz.

How do you “show up”?

How do you “show up”?

Have you ever wondered why some people have the knack of always “showing up”, fully attentive and bursting with energy, even knowing full well they’ve just walked out of a meeting which, more than resembled a hurricane…

Last week, a colleague introduced me to the work of Dr Adam Fraser, one of Australia’s leading educators, researchers and thought leaders in the area of human performance.

He really got me thinking; every person we come into contact with truly deserves the very best from us, whether that’s our most junior employee right through to our companies’ CEO, but most importantly our partners and children do too.

Dr Adam’s insight on how to reflect, rest and reset, creates what he describes as the “Third Space”… I encourage you to watch Adam’s video; it might just change how you walk in the door tonight and greet your family, it certainly made me think!

The Third Space: Managing how you show up
Click here to view Adam’s video.

 I’m keen to hear how Adam’s engaging message might have made you think differently… please do share your insights – jo@jfm.co.nz.

Go well,
Jo

Dr Adam Fraser

Dr Adam Fraser

Discover how creating the “Third Space” could work for you; take a moment to view Dr Adam’s keynote presentation.

Click here to view presentation

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“Work harder, Work longer” was an adage that was easy to subscribe to before your business was at full capacity. But this old business model just doesn’t cut it any more. The greatest challenge in business within the next decade is not the amount we have to do, as this shows no signs of lessening. Instead it’s the way we transition between tasks.

Your job as a manager, your job as a leader, your job as a sales person is to adapt your behaviour to meet the needs of the next role/environment/task. However too often one setback, one bad meeting, can derail a persons day by having a domino effect that robs them, and your company, of energy and focus.

Dr Adam’s cutting edge research with Deakin University explored hundreds of people with demanding jobs, ranging from palliative care nurses to sales people to surgeons to leaders to Special Forces soldiers to elite athletes. What the high performers all had in common was that they used the Third Space to overcome setbacks and assume a mindset to get the most out of what is coming next.

The Third Space is the transitional gap between “what the hell just happened?” and “what’s next?. High performers use this space to decompress, jettison the negative and bring new focus and energy to the next task at hand.

Discover how creating the “Third Space” could work for you; take a moment to view Dr Adam’s keynote presentation.

Click here to view presentation

Established brands – to change or not to change the marketing message

Established brands – to change or not to change the marketing message…

As an established business in the hands of new owners, Tom and Jaimee Kearney, Canterbury Feed Assessment faced a crossroad in terms of its marketing message. 

Do the new owners “not rock the boat” by continuing to speak with existing customers as if nothing has changed in the business, or do they communicate the fresh enthusiasm and increased opportunities they’ve just added into the mix?

In learning about the personalities and business goals of Tom and Jaimee, the team at JFM created a strategy for communicating the best of both worlds to new and potential customers. By continuing to use the existing brand name the business doesn’t alarm the current client base too much, but by adding a shortened version of the full business name to a prominent position in the brand identity, there’s an immediate suggestion of a fresh dimension being added to the already trusted platform.

Direction set for an optimal communication strategy, creating the look and feel of the updated brand identity was a challenging balance between reflecting the scientific nature of the business, its (literally) down-to-earth connection to the land and the personal style of the new owners.

The strategy dictated that the brand identity would combine the capital letters of the brand name AND the supporting full name to help explain the shortened version, it was also essential to make sure any new logo didn’t fail by becoming too complicated to view at a glance. The final result is a balanced eye-catching logo and icon combination which is easily understood and certainly gets remembered for all the right reasons.

The power of colour

The power of colour

Colour is the catalyst that can spark the sale, define the space and create the magic and the mood.

When designing any product, knowing what colours to use is critical to your success. Brands and colours are inextricably linked because colour offers an instantaneous method for conveying meaning and message without words.

Colour is the visual component people remember most about a brand followed closely by shapes/symbols then numbers and finally words. For example, the real McDonald’s is easy to detect in the image above. Many of the most recognisable brands in the world rely on colour as a key factor in their instant recognition.

See for yourself and take the “Recognisable Brands Test”, click here.

Why Colour Matters

Research has reinforced that 60% of the time people will decide if they are attracted or not to a message – based on colour alone! Colour increases brand recognition by up to 80 percent. (Source: University of Loyola, Maryland study)

An example of Colour Branding Natural and Universal Colour Symbolism for Brands FedEx’s two different colour schemes are the best examples of the “universal” symbolism of colors. Green communicates ground services; orange communicates the high energy and speed of air transportation.

 

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A brand for a company is like..

A brand for a company is like…

 

“A brand for a company is like reputation for a person. You earn reputation by trying to do hard things well.”
– Jeff Bezos (CEO Amazon)

A more balanced and solid brand…

A more balanced and solid brand…

Growing pains are a big challenge for many businesses and this was the case for Ellesmere Agriculture Ltd.

With an established market reputation and a well recognised brand identity, one of the concerns for Ellesmere Agriculture Ltd was updating their brand communications to reflect an evolved business offering whilst ensuring they did not lose the loyalty of existing customers and team members. We worked closely with the leadership of Ellesmere Agricultural Ltd to explore the possible directions for developing their brand, and ultimately established that the most effective strategy was to stay true to the heritage of the business by simplifying the brand name and evolving the logo – rather than introducing a completely new look to the market. By shortening the brand name to “EA”, a description already commonly used by the market, and adding the letter L for limited, we ensured the business did not suddenly become an unknown entity to the market. We widened the suggestion of EAL’s business offering by adding the description “AgriServices Group”, which allows the market to understand that EAL offers more than one service. The word “Group” was included to describe that the business extends well beyond it’s original Ellesmere location to include team members based in another service hub. In essence, we’ve simplified the name down to a summary of the complicated evolution of this hard-working and successful business. 

To ensure staff, loyal customers and the wider market instantly recognised the new brand name and continued to apply those positive associations previously attached to the Ellesmere Agriculture Ltd name, we felt the look and feel of this simplified brand name had to retain a recognisable link to the established logo. The new logo needed to be seen as an evolution rather than a revolution. By retaining the “feel” of the old logo, but redesigning the line widths and structure of the three letters in the new main icon, we suggest a more balanced and solid brand. Viewers feel comfortable seeing very familiar shapes and colours within the logo, yet will also feel that the brand has “more to it” now.

Veehof Dairy Services Ltd – a company leading the way in hoof care!

Veehof Dairy Services Ltd – a company setting the standard in New Zealand Hoof Care.

It has been with great pleasure to work along side Sandy & Fred Hoekstra to launch their fresh new website last week.  When Veehof asked JFM to design and build a new website for their business, the brief was to create a website that was fresh and aligned with their professional customer service and product offering, which they’ve come to be known for. 

One of the first steps of a website build is the wire framing of the site (how will each page look and feel, what information will we put in front of a customer at any point in time, how can we engage them further with a product, service or our brand promise) this ultimately creates the conversion path to sale or contact.

For Veehof, this meant three key areas of focus; ease of navigation, a platform for education and information sharing along with a product showcase. Providing farmers and Veterinarians a website experience which makes building their own Wopa Cattle Crush (Standard, Mobile, Pro and Pro+) with all the bells and whistles (20 plus add-on’s) was a challenge our creative team were up for.  Our approach to communicating all the important points like always, centred on the end goal goal in mind; building brand awareness and contributing towards business performance without forgetting the addage features tell, benefits sell.  

The website forms one cog of a much larger wheel for Veehof.   Their website is also used as an information and application portal for their ever popular one-day workshops and advanced courses.  With website data connected to a series of cloud based software integrations, this enables streamlined communication, registration and administration processes with course participants from throughout New Zealand; a key ingredient in striving to gain operational efficiencies and enhancing the customer experience. 

Consumers are becoming more educated about a product or service before purchasing decisions are made; all the information in the world, is at their finger tips.  What does it take to make B2C or B2B interactions more timely and more relevant than the competition? It can often mean changing the perspective at which we look at our businesses; it takes courage to innovate.  Price will always be a consideration, but by demonstrating a business understands what’s important in the lives of their consumer it shows they’re more relevant, responsive, and connected.  

If you have a moment, feel free to connect with Veehof and browse around their webiste – www.veehof.co.nz

 

An awesome feeling…

An awesome feeling…

It’s an awesome feeling when you make someone’s day. It’s even better when you bring a smile to a complete stranger’s face, and encourage them to do the same for someone else. 

That’s the genesis of the Pay It Forward movement: doing a random act of kindness that inspires another and multiples into many more. So when our marketing team came up with the idea of Xero paying it forward for small business owners (#xeropaysitforward), I thought it was an awesome way to get behind this social movement. We get to give something back to small businesses and their customers (and get them to pay it forward too, of course). 

Here’s how #xeropaysitforward played out: 

▪ We asked Xero staff in every Australian office to nominate a business (and amount) they wanted to pay it forward to.
▪ We visited these businesses – ranging from cafes and eateries to barbers, gyms and even Bondi Icebergs Club – and paid it forward to them.
▪ When customers went to pay, they were handed a card and told that “this one’s been paid for by Xero”.
▪ We filmed/photographed peoples’ reactions, and encouraged them to pay it forward.