I find it very interesting that some companies will brand themselves by the product they produce or service they provide and another company that does the exact same thing will brand themselves by the problems they solve or even long standing  industry terms.

Take our company for example.  We provide design and development services in the realm or web, print, photography and podcasts. You will have advertising agencies that provide the exact same services, you have other companies who say they are “marketing” companies also provide the exact same services. What gives?

It’s true that a bulk of the work we do is web design and web development, especially e-commerce and content management. It’s where we started and and it’s not big secret that it’s one of the easiest businesses to get into because of the low cost of entry. It’s probably one reason we have so much local competition within that realm. In the mid to late 90’s web design was the cutting edge technology and to a large degree it was an experiment in the early days when most people were on dial up and the design specs were restricted to the limitations of the technology at the time. We do consider our web work as a “hub service.” Whenever possible we want our print products to lead people to our clients web site, Podcasts which take on a “life” beyond the a web site definitely call the clients web site home and a majority of the photography work we provide is optimized for the web as a way to effectively tell a story.

If you are looking for a company to design a web site ask if they provide other media marketing services as well/ You may be surprised that they do! If they only specialize in web design what is their mindset in regards to integrated media and consistent branding? Of course we are not talking against other companies who call themselves web design firms, marketing firms or advertising agencies but we do want to make it clear the we provide many of the same services they do but our niches and clientele may be different.

What are your perceptions who you hear the terms, graphic designer, marketing firm, ad agency, web designer, creative professional, etc?  Is it confusing to you?  Do many tend to do the same things from your perspective? Have the industry names not caught up with technology and skill sets of the work force?

What can we do to better communicate SpinningSilk Multimedia doesn’t “fix computers” and how can we make it clearer that we provide more services than web design as some people we have talked with are so easy to latch on to in conversation?

This entry was posted on Monday, April 14th, 2008 at 11:33 am and is filed under Compelling Content, Innovation, Internet, Portable Media, blogging, branding, graphic design, podcasting, web design, web development. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.