A photographer's tale

Branding and Re-branding – A Photographer’s Tale

After moving to New York City at the age of 18, Mat Szwajkos made his name with his stunning celebrity and editorial photography. He travels all over the world, has worked for Fortune 500 companies and top ad agencies, and contributes regularly in InStyle, Esquire and Nylon. He’s also – as you may have guessed – a loyal MOO client.

In 2009, Mat entered into business with his photographer wife Erin Wigger, joining forces. They created a full service multi-disciplinary media house called Swig Productions, while continuing to maintain the brand image for Mat’s photography, plus their joint wedding photography business E. Leigh.

By 2010, with three companies to juggle, it was time to give their collective branding a makeover. And where better to start than with their Business Cards? Here are Mat and Erin’s branding tips to...

Start a conversation with your MiniCards

At the 2011 WPPI (Wedding and Portrait Photographers International) conference in Las Vegas, we created a set of 6 MiniCards with different messages on the back. We carried markers to match our branding colors for people we met to fill in the blanks.

The idea was to start a conversation instead of end one with "Here's my info, email me." So instead, we made these cards with fun messages like “This Card + One Beer” and “Vegas Makes Me Wanna _____”

Did it work? Well, we made 100 cards and only have about 15 left! We wanted to make an impression with everyone we meet. Using the different MOO MiniCards we were able to have many different conversations instead of just one.

Get Stuck in

Stickers are invaluable to all our businesses – I use my MOO StickerBooks as “leave behinds” after meetings. I have about 7-8 different images on the back of my regular MOO Business Cards and three versions of my stickers. Each page has 5 stickers with images and one sticker with my name/logo, phone number and email.

I also use the stickers on envelopes when sending thank you notes to clients as well as on hard drives when sending jobs out. The feedback has been great – my clients love the stickers, and the cards always get a great response as I use different images to target different clients

For our multimedia production company Swig Productions, Erin and I use MOO stickers on hard drives, thumb drives, envelopes and on our equipment. Whenever we send out a job to a vendor or client we make sure our branding is attached to it. MOO stickers are a great way to make sure a small or large item can have out logo on it.

Basically, if it’s standing still, we’ll put a sticker on it!

Like Mat’s work? Check out his website for more beautiful images. And if you’re after even more inspiration on branding, have a look at this.

Written on:

18 Jun 2013

Categories:

Business Cards, Stickers, MiniCards, Marketing