Luminus, located in the heart of downtown Buffalo, NY, is a creative agency. To understand what that means, let’s go back to the foundation of the advertising industry. There are three main pieces to the advertising puzzle – strategy/creative, media buying, and public relations. Each piece plays a role in executing marketing and advertising efforts to a brand’s audience. “Full service” agencies combine all three pieces, while others take a boutique approach and offer specialized skills in one area.
A creative agency focuses on creating strategic engagements with your brand’s audience. These engagements range from internal (culture, collateral, and processes) to external (selling and exposure marketing pieces). Creative agencies help shape every interaction between an organization and its audience. They also support business owners and marketing directors as strategic allies for current and potential branded engagement plans.
The bread and butter of a creative agency is creative production. Every creative piece of collateral and each campaign, they all start with branding. A properly branded organization sets the foundation for the strategic planning and execution of a campaign with the proper collateral driving the engagement. The brand drives an informed process to approach every project within a campaign to stay on message within a unified vision.
You want a holistic brand that understands its place in the market. A brand that confidently defines its core beliefs and adheres to a unified visual identity. Creative agencies offer a valuable outside perspective. We help build brands from scratch, or reassess existing brands, ensuring they align with their mission and market space. Through interviews, observation and collective brainstorming, Luminus challenges your preconceived notions about who you are as an organization. The results? You’ll probably learn something new about your business, and we get an immersive education in your company and industry.
Words are the glue that hold the creative aspects together. Good copywriting matches campaign objectives with a unique brand voice and tone, crafting meaningful messages that inspire action. A controlled vocabulary guided by values and mission provides a sincere connection to the target audience of a campaign.
Creative campaigns drive each strategic engagement with your brand’s audience, ensuring the right people are aware of and engaging with your organization. Campaign objectives can be as straightforward as “sell this product,” or as abstract as “brand exposure.” They can be print, digital, multimedia, or all three, as long as it’s a unified effort.
Creative agencies help brainstorm campaign ideas that match your objectives. We identity the target audience and suggest creative services and outlet channels to effectively engage them. Then the fun begins: the creative itself.
Graphic design creates that visual cohesion and applies it to every aspect of your brand, further controlling the message and influencing your audience with sharply tailored colors, graphics and atmospherics.
At the heart of any great campaign is a distinct creative vision. Your brand should have a unified visual identity that’s implemented across all core collateral, from business cards and brochures to signs and wall graphics. This process begins with your logo, an identifying mark that paves the way for your visual strategy.
Marketing a product isn’t just about the product itself. Its long-term success relies on quality, and its ability to stand out derives from its presentation. Product design and packaging are critical to making an impact in a saturated market. Visual and experience-driven differentiators are as important as functional differentiators. A positive introduction and unboxing product experience breeds connection and loyalty in customers.
Visual imagery is a vital element of rich content. Creative agencies can shoot original, high-resolution photography and video to complement the copy and design of a campaign. If original visual content isn’t the right choice, we can source and edit appropriate stock photography. Either way, the end result is a professional, crisp piece to capture the attention and interest of your audience.
A fully-formed, comprehensive and professionally-designed website is one of the most important demonstrations of a brand. Your website will likely be the largest piece of collateral your audience is presented with. It’s imperative that your website has unified visuals and consistent messaging.
Luminus was born from this segment of our industry, and web design and development will always have a special place in our agency. Our web design processes surpass the typically-available skillset of most creative agencies, allowing us to provide distinct value to our clients when web is integrated into your brand and campaigns. We take particular pride in the thought and care we put into doing web right.
Creative agencies communicate effectively. We create visually-stunning designs, compelling brand messaging, and coordinated, targeted engagements that come together to successfully engage and motivate your audience. Marketing strategy considers the right campaign audience, and determines where they are, at what time, and which conversion goals can be measured to gauge success. These data points are all researched, planned and reported.
Many brands benefit from the creation of useful content for online resources, such as blogs, opt-in newsletters and paid promotions. Digital marketing unobtrusively engages your audience in an interactive way. Creative agencies can cultivate high-quality, highly-effective content that makes the most out of the promotional dollars spent.
Effective marketing spans both digital and traditional channels. Print, direct mail, radio and television advertising are still major factors in the exposure game. A combination of traditional and digital channels creates an immersive experience designed to keep your brand top-of-mind for your audience.
Successful creative agency services are driven by a holistic and informed brand. Investments in collateral and campaigns should follow a clear vision and work together to achieve tangible objectives beyond simply completing the projects. As a creative agency, Luminus helps plan, execute, and optimize these projects into strategic interactions with an organization’s audience. Because anything else is just expensive noise.