Selene and I founded Eymer Design in 1989. The economy was dreadful, and we had both been laid-off from our corporate senior graphic design positions.

After a quick glance at the bleak business landscape as well as our competition, we concluded that to be successful, we needed to stand out and get personal. To get our name out into the marketplace, we needed to slice through the clutter of direct mail, cold calls, and press releases. We needed to reach people on their person "weekend side" where our marketing propaganda would be reminiscent of an old friend rather than an impersonal business proposition.

Now almost 20 years later, this approach has even more relevance. How many individuals have you heard remark how grateful they are for all of the emails and how quickly and efficiently they can move through them? When was the last time that you made a business call and a live human answered the phone? The barriers for reaching potential clients are becoming more and more difficult to breach.

Today, we still consider this as the best approach to reach people. On a regular basis, we send out a snail mailed propaganda vehicle that causes people (from the mailroom assistant to the executive secretary to the CEO) to halt. What is this piece? I wonder what is in it. I can't wait to see it opened! What is EYMER up to now?

The next step is to provide something of value. From my experience, unless incredibly cool, t-shirts become car wash rags and coffee mugs relocate to the company kitchen before they are accidentally broken and thrown out.

Our latest mailing (which includes our moving announcement) includes a hard-bound book of sticky notes. As our goal was to provide something useful to a broad audience of professionals, we chose this as something helpful and that when finished, would have the recipient returning for a second one, a third one, etc. Hopefully, somewhere along the way, there would be some paid projects in return.

Now we just need to wait for the phone to ring or the email to ping!