Service List
Brand Positioning
Positioning is the science of differentiating products and companies from their competitors by targeting specific audiences in relevant ways, based on valuable attributes. The magic we bring is knowing what will cause a customer to care. It is a meticulous blend of truth and aspiration, virtue (yours) and desire (theirs). Done passionately and accurately--a positioning can inspire a thousand campaigns...and even greater returns.
Marketing Planning
For Torque, successful big-sky planning comes from careful consideration of the business and marketplace fundamentals. It begins with an evaluation of existing resources, objectives, target audiences and competitive threats. Writing the plan involves selecting the appropriate communication vehicles that efficiently reach audiences and goals. It also includes considerations for how best to guide the creative process and campaign execution.
Product and Company Naming
The name of a company or product represents infinitely more than the sum of the words or letters that compose it. For Torque, naming is word poetry engineered for business, raised to the Nth degree by the challenge of the limited availability of trademarks. We race the naming gauntlet, bringing perhaps the toughest standards of all: our own. Add to that client meetings and organizational input and you get the best ideas and a commitment from all parties.
New Product Launch
Do not go lightly into the market. The strong launch of a new product has a permanent bearing on its success. In fact, launches can improve lifelong sales volumes by as much as 30%. We like to begin planning a launch as early in the development process as possible. Torque embraces the accountability of the launch discipline. We believe that no new initiative should enter the marketplace without being given the proper sendoff. To make the most of each launch, we require precise goal setting and optimal communications, realized through marketing planning.
Marketing Research
In today's media-saturated environment, strong marketing planning depends on solid research. For Torque, research focuses on understanding precise target audience segments (which we call "Tribes") as well as conditions and behaviors of consumers at the point of purchase. We employ the services of external research experts to gain retail intelligence, competitive analyses and consumer profiles.
Media Planning and Placement
When it is time to advertise, selection of the appropriate media is critical, as is the management of media schedules, coordination with editorial content, regional and national mix and planning. That's why Torque brings in the experts. Using an expert media partner allows us to remain focused on developing and communicating the brand. Our partner, SMY Media has been serving the communications industry since 1969, and has experience planning a wide range of media in markets across the country.
Brand Identity
Brands represented through consistent graphic standards generate awareness and grow strong in crowded markets. Often, companies are too loose with their identity standards, or too creative in extending and modifying them for each new campaign. At any encounter, your customer has your brand in view only for a brief moment before moving on. Our obsession is to maximize that moment.
Packaging, POS, and Retail Merchandising
Our approach to retail merchandising and display is guided by the psychology of why consumers buy. Consumer activity in retail environments is behavioral. We apply this understanding differently at mass merchant retailers, specialty retailers and convenience stores, respectively. Each is unique, and a system of decisions must be followed when developing point-of-sale design. We design the retail experience to be a high-energy product launch pad geared towards consumer interaction. Torque designs for retail from the product out, allowing the brand expression to radiate from the packaging and across POS displays, environmental signage, in-store promotions, and planograms.
Information Graphics Development
With the ever-increasing volume of information, the need for clarity is at a peak. From years of translating business concepts into meaningful and memorable terms, we have developed a proprietary and powerful process for communicating complex information in simple, meaningful terms. Producing well-conceived and designed information graphics requires equal parts analytic and creative skill.
Web Site Design
Having emerged from the bursting of the Internet bubble, online communications take their seat at the marketing table again, and are surprisingly close to the head of the table. Producing a Web site is a multi-disciplinary effort comprised of information architecture, content development, navigational design, and visual branding, all in service of a dynamically interactive user experience. The commerce and community sites Torque have developed employ dynamic back-end data technology and sophisticated programming to support complex functionality.
Copywriting
People impersonate copywriters more than any other professional. Our moto: accept no impostors. Simply because people write term papers in college doesn't qualify them as creative writers, or even as capable writers. We divide the practice of commercial written communication into four essential areas: naming, headlines, body copy and technical copy. Multiply those applications by the number of industries we work in and you can begin to appreciate the level of writer-specialization we look for. In addition to our staff writers, we frequently enlist the talent of contract specialists to further focus the accuracy of the messages we produce for clients. After all, good communications should feel like poetry.
Print Advertising
The statistics are changing, but advertising still works. However, it takes more than a media buy, a clever image and a killer headline. The Torque ad recipe: creative concepts driven by strategy, integrated across all other communications with the intention of generating sales. In the end, if we win some awards together, that's a bonus.
Radio Advertising
From concept, copy, sound editing, music and audio effects--we generate the complete radio spot under our own roof. Producing national campaigns has given us the experience to tailor ads to each market, economically and efficiently, making radio a high-value medium and an excellent complement to other advertising activities.
Online Advertising
Still a viable option in internet marketing, Torque uses banner ads to compliment link purchasing on search engines and other paid endorsements to effectively reach large, targeted audiences.
Trade Show and Event Support
Tradeshows and events are a routine part of many businesses' sales process. Because they are recurring and consistent events, exhibitors become numb to the process, turning up each time to do just another show and stand in the same old booth. We like to take advantage of the face time you have with your market and exploit those opportunities to create genuine interaction and impact. With Torque's help, your can refresh the booth and your message, create an outreach to media contacts, include sponsorships and throw in an interactive stunt to generate attention and turn laggard shows into productive events.
Public Relations, Publicity and Media Relations
We believe media exposure is essential for launching brands. "Publicity builds brands. To get something going from nothing, you need the validity that only third-party endorsements can bring. The first stage of any new campaign ought to be public relations." Al Ries and Laura Ries: The Fall of Advertising and the Rise of PR, ©2002.
Torque employs a systematic public relations program, targeting publications, assembling kits and submitting releases. But we are nothing short of possessed when it comes to devising newsworthy angles, aligning potential stories with the readership and journalistic style of the reporters we target to pick up our stories. Yes, getting coverage through "earned media" requires newsworthy substance. But finding ways to make information compelling is a creative art in its own right.
Direct Marketing
Test, measure, refine. Only systematic implementation and modification over time will reveal what works and what doesn't. Even advertising and broadcast should be managed with some sort of response mechanism
Direct marketing was cited by a pole of marketers as generating the greatest dependable return (AdAge, October 2003). Throughout our marketing planning, we focus on accountability for generating sales and growth rather than the general awareness goals of traditional advertising. Direct marketing is a powerful, measurable tool for doing this.
Email Campaigns
New business nurture programs and CRM communications require consistent, ongoing contact. We design and manage cost-effective sales support e-mail programs, consisting of messaging, design, technology production, server and list management, and results-tracking. It pays to keep in touch.
Sales Support
Excite your sales force and you excite your customer. Torque can help you guide the people who talk directly to your customers, an activity that couldn't be more crucial. Events, incentives and presentation materials combine to educate and inspire this lifeline of your business's future. When your sales force gets passionate about your brand, they will be able to effectively sell it with the same passion you have.
Channel Communications
Even a salesman needs to be sold. Consumer marketing often begins long before the customer ever sees the brand. Marketing to the channel can be the crucial link in driving consumer purchases, and has been the source of many successful launches. Torque builds channel communications into the product marketing process.
Internal Communications
We plan and implement our clients' messages to grow from the inside out. If the entire staff sales team and customer support group is not well versed and fluent in a company's value story, it cannot move smoothly into the marketplace. In today's business environment, so much of your company's story comes through word of mouth. Benefits must be concise, consistent and easy to convey. If we do our job properly, the new communications will distill into a single meaning and will be echoed by management, sales and marketing alike.
Search Engine Optimization
Visibility of your business on the web almost entirely depends on your page rankings in the often vast search engine results. These rankings are continuously fluctuating and must be regularly optimized. We begin by designing Web sites that are visible and friendly to Google and other search engines, using the Google algorithms to identify and rank content. Then we further support Web sites with systematic and thorough keyword submissions and tagging.
Search engine optimization is an integral part of the any online marketing effort. Because search results are viewed as third-party endorsements, click-through and customer engagement can be significant.
Promotions and Sweepstakes
Everybody wants to be a winner! Torque utilizes promotions and sweepstakes to generate urgency and excitement for marketing campaigns and launch initiatives. They are an ideal way to drive involvement and reinforce brand messages. Sweepstakes and promotions have proven to be highly effective calls to action for many of our clients' campaigns.
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