Read how Sorted helped promote a Tristan Mackay gig and his new album.
Sorted News
23
Mar
2012
13
Feb
2012
Sorted Media hosted Jungle Jam at Mint Warehouse, read what we did for them!
20
Feb
2012
Flyer advertising is proven as one of the most cost effective ways to promote products and services. In almost any sector from large corporate giants such as Tesco, who may include a leaflet in a national paper, to a local nightclub distributing in a city centre on a Saturday night, flyer advertising forms a significant chunk of their marketing budget. It is therefore extremely important when planning your flyer printing needs that you maximise your return on investment. Here are a few tips that will help you do that:
Promote your brand
Brand awareness is an important factor in any flyer printing & distribution campaign. Your brand isn’t just your company logo – it’s the whole feel of your flyer, including colours, paper quality and the tone of your text. A strong brand helps build up trust and reputation which can lead to repeat business, so: think about what makes your business unique or special, and aim to reflect and highlight these qualities in your branding. A good designer will also need to know who your flyer needs to communicate with, as this will impact upon the overall design. Don’t forget to include details of your Twitter or Facebook presence too, as this will give people more chance of finding your business products and services online.
Simplicity is the key
Keeping your flyer or leaflet design simple will ensure key messages are conveyed to your target audience. Identify no more than 5 crucial points of information you’d like to communicate to your audience, and avoid overloading your design with large chunks of text or too many small images. Try to opt for double sided flyers, placing key messages on the front and saving more of the detail for the back. Most print companies don’t charge more for a double sided flyer, so you may as well go for it!
Find a suitable supplier
Finding the right company to print your material is essential. Here at Sorted Media we offer highly competitive prices on a range of print products, with varying options on turnaround time, paper quality, additional finishes and delivery. If you’re looking for more than just print, we’re more than a print company: we can help plan your campaign, then design, print and distribute your material. Our dedicated campaign managers can help you identify and target specific audiences through distribution methods, monitor the progress of your campaign and help you measure the success of your spend.
Talk to us
Starting a campaign can be scary, and that’s why we offer a free 45 minute consultation to help you take the first steps. We’ll use this time to find out about your company and what you want to achieve, then we’ll put together some steps which we believe will help you achieve your goals. We consult with a wide range of customers, small and large, so don’t hesitate to get in touch for a chat.
17
Jan
2012
As well as being a friendly and beautiful bunch, all of our promotion and distribution staff are fully licensed to distribute material. A licence to distribute, you say? Why on earth would anyone need to be licensed to distribute? Well, we’re glad you asked…
Ever since technology was capable of printing leaflets and flyer onto paper, they have played a pivotal role in Britain’s economic, political, social and cultural life.
From night club flyers to kebab takeaway menus and special offers, we receive hundreds of flyers each year in our hands and through our doors. The potential for this flow of paper to become a nuisance is very real; when distributed by the wrong firms, these flyers are often dropped or dumped, transforming them from crucial marketing tool to litter in no time.
In recent years councils up and down the country have recognised this potential issue and have taken steps to regulate the distribution of printed material within their wards. Using the Clean Neighbourhoods and Environment Act of 2005 many councils, including Leeds’, have now introduced licences which permit companies to distribute leaflets and flyers in designated areas. This allows the council to keep a check on the flow of paper the public is exposed to, and to trace any issues of littering directly to the individual licence holder for enforcement. We’ve seen the beneficial results in Leeds – fewer “rogue” distributors willing to incur fines for dropping their flyers in a bid to get rid and go home early!
On the downside, the cost to become a licensed distributor can be prohibitive, with Leeds City Council building an “escalator” into its pricing strategy to discourage people from applying for multiple licences. Business forums across the country reflect bad feeling about this move to regulate flyer distribution, with some contributors seeing it as a curtailment of their “civic freedoms”. The issue is, therefore, a tricky one: flyers remain an excellent way to market your business or event, but no-one wants to see mountains of litter left by unscrupulous companies.
So, falling short of going to the expense and hassle of becoming licensed yourself, what should you do? Talk to us about flyer printing, our flyer staff and flyer packs, of course! For less than the cost of a licence, we provide an experienced and licensed promo person to distribute flyers and act as a brand ambassador. Our staff are there to make your company look fantastic – no littering, no ditching your flyers en mass, just friendly and reliable service delivered by experienced promo people. Flyer packs are even more cost-effective – our leisure-orientated packs are distributed across Leeds directly to students and young professionals, and will cost you as little as £15 to feature your flyer. So direct marketing via flyers and leaflets is still an option to small businesses and those promoting on a tight budget – you just need to get it Sorted!
04
Jan
2012
Billboards and outdoor adverts plastered with racy images of scantily dressed models are to be banned in a bid to prevent the sexualisation of children.
A long campaign by a number of parents to remove this type of imagery from outdoor advertisements and billboards has been successful. Sexually explicit images of mainly women will no longer be on billboards near schools. A total ban isn’t in place apart from the most X-rated images which will be banned altogether.
The move follows reports from the Mothers’ Union which called for the ban to be tightened to prevent children being sexualised. The Advertising Standards Authority is currently putting measures in place to ensure all advertisers are compliant.
The new rules set by the Advertising Standards Authority's, models posing in underwear may be banned, although posters of models in bikinis will only fall foul of the regulations if they are posing in a provocative manner.
This could include models posing with their hands in their hair or on their hips. They could find themselves removed from outdoor advertisements near schools or colleges. Furthermore a banner of a fully-clothed couple could be forbidden if they are shown in a 'passionate clinch.'
Posters such as the Sophie Dahl's Yves Saint Laurent perfume advert and Eva Herzigova 'Hello Boys' ad for Wonder bra, in which she posed naked on a fur rug, would be banned.
The Advertising Standards Authority announcement comes after representatives from the authority spoke to parents and children in Cardiff in June in a bid to find out whether the rules governing billboards should be tightened.
Lord Smith Chairman of the Advertising Standards Authority said: 'Our engagement with parents and young people in the UK has been an interesting and important task. Many lessons have been learned. We know that we do not always get it right – the strength of feeling about untargeted adverts of a sexual nature was on the whole telling and that feedback is already being taken on board.'
Source: Daily Mail
Posters such as the Sophie Dahl's Yves Saint Laurent perfume advert and Eva Herzigova 'Hello Boys' ad for Wonder bra, in which she posed naked on a fur rug, would be banned.
The Advertising Standards Authority announcement comes after representatives from the authority spoke to parents and children in Cardiff in June in a bid to find out whether the rules governing billboards should be tightened.
Lord Smith Chairman of the Advertising Standards Authority said: 'Our engagement with parents and young people in the UK has been an interesting and important task. Many lessons have been learned. We know that we do not always get it right – the strength of feeling about untargeted adverts of a sexual nature was on the whole telling and that feedback is already being taken on board.'
Source: Daily Mail
04
Jan
2012
- Ensuring your message always promotes the benefits of the service or product being offering is critical. By making the reader feel an emotional attachment to your product or service it will more likely result in a sale. In addition, ensure the message is concentrated on your products and services rather than your company name.
- A leaflet or flyer should deliver a message to the customer about the benefits it can bring. Do not make the mistake of focussing the leaflet on a particular feature of a product or service.
- If you are carrying out a street leaflet distribution campaign, your leaflet or flyer is small enough to go into your potential customer’s pocket. Smaller leaflets or flyers have a tendency to work better as people can then put them inside their wallets or purses instead of throwing them away. In addition, distribute the leaflets in a busy narrow area where your target audience will pass so that people cannot avoid you.
- The message needs to be clear and remember a suitable image or photo says a thousand words.
- Include essential information which is not critical to the sale of the product or service on the back of the flyer.
- Choose a method which fits with your budget. If you are targeting local customers then a door to door or street leaflet distribution campaign may suffice rather than sending leaflet in the post via royal mail.
- A method for a reliable door to door leaflet distribution campaign can be using the local newspaper. The main benefit of having your leaflet inserted into local newspapers is that deliveries of these tend to be very reliable.
- Understand the demographics of your targeted audience. If you are selling a project or service that students will purchase then distributing leaflets in a city centre at the weekend may not be as effective as distributing at the University ground.
- Having the correct authorisation to distribute leaflets or flyers is a must. Local councils, universities and large malls tend to have strict policies saying who can and who cannot distribute flyers. Failure to comply can lead to fines or even a prosecution so check your local council policies.
- Sharing the distribution costs with another company may be a viable option if a strict budget is in place. However, this method is not seen as being as effective as Solus distribution where your leaflet is delivered on its own.
05
Oct
2011
Now we’ve had a week to recover, regroup and regain
our sense of balance it’s time to reflect on the dizzying week that was
Leeds’ Fresher’s. Sorted HQ has got to say that for us, Fresher’s 2011 was
our best yet….
As well as Sorted mobile billboard advertising and a bevvy of Sorted promo staff in action all week, we piloted a new addition to the Sorted armoury. We made the wise move earlier on this year to team up with the wonderful team over at Pink Gorilla (www.pinkgorilla.co.uk) to create our Fresher’s Calendar, which was seriously stuffed with enough exclusive offers and essential listings to keep any cash-strapped student happy. We braved the fairs, halls, society events and various other locations to distribute 10,000 student calendars and leaflets inside our nifty Sorted Fresher’s Flyerpacks, and the response was incredible. Not only was the calendar pronounced ‘ indispensable’ by students getting to grips with a new city, our Sorted Flyerpacks flew out like hot cakes – we even had students asking to take more for their friends (…the free shot voucher @ Call Lane Revolution definitely had something to do with this!). We’ve got big plans for our calendar concept, so keep your eyes peeled for more this December…in the meantime, we’d like to conclude that Fresher’s 2011 got well and truly Sorted!
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A parting thought about Fresher’s Week…
If you’re a student, you know the drill – 7 days of making new friends, going to new clubs, bagging free swag and basically setting the trend for the next 3 years of your uni life. But spare a thought for the people on the other side of the Fresher’s fair table - the people trying to grab attention for their particular brand of energy drink, those attempting to bulk up their mailing lists or just trying to swerve bewildered students into their club.
It can be a chaotic battle for attention when the new student crowd arrives in town, as anyone who took part in the Halo Fresher’s Fair can readily attest. So how to stand out from the madding crowd of promoters and businesses? Shout the loudest? Strip your staff down to their undies? Squeeze so many pop-up banners into your tiny 2 x 2.5 metre Fresher’s fair pitch that your staff can’t move? Maybe just buy a tank and stop traffic?? Fresher’s week is no time for brands to be coy, but the resulting promotional scrum can look daunting to new students and achieve exactly the opposite result to the one we all want. Being confronted by too many promotion teams in too small a space isn’t anyone’s idea of fun. I wonder how much good all this really does the brands involved? Next year it would be great to see an alternative Fresher’s fair with more space and less hard sell, so students can really appreciate the very many clever promo hooks and offers out there without the pressure-cooker atmosphere…
06
Sep
2011
So it wasn't the warmest bank holiday since records began, but the Sorted team shipped out of Leeds with a spring in our step and headed for the beautiful Yorkshire countryside last weekend. The 4th Limetree Festival was our ultimate destination and, despite damp tents + a BBQ that refused to BBQ, we had a brilliant time. Sean + the Limetree team did a cracking job yet again - the fields looked great (with Dance Music Therapy making a valuable addition to the usual attractions), the music was diverse yet entertaining, and the atmosphere was friendly, creative and welcoming.
If Limetree hasn't already popped up on your festival radar, take note: it's totally independent, with a real grass-roots vibe about it, taking you back to the way festivals used to be (where else would you find pints for £3.50? Probably not Leeds Fest, we reckon!). But that's not to say you'd be 'roughing it' at Limetree - we enjoyed cocktails and jazz whilst sitting at our own candle-lit table in JB's tent, band for anyone looking for some spiritual healing after a heavy night there were daily yoga sessions in the stone circle. We were especially delighted with the Sorted Dance Tent which was a huge honour to be associated with + kept us entertained into the early hours. Hosted in a giant tipee with coconut carpeting, our festival tent actually felt a bit more comfy than our office. Venturing away from the Sorted Tent we discovered some excellent music in the Joyscout tipee, especially I Call Shotgun who provided the highlight of the festival for us. We definitely recommend checking Limetree out next year, especially if you're looking for a complete festival experience + are open to new music.
Bleary eyed and a little worse for wear after our Limetree escapades, the Sorted team headed back to Leeds on Sunday to engage in a little more music @ the Technique + Asylum Circoloco Garden Party. This is one of our favourite events, especially when the weathergods are kind (as they just about were on Sunday!). After a good few hours mingling with Leeds' most beautiful (and some rather orange! why are beautiful people so often orange??) people, we co-ordinated our flyering team to distribute exclusive Sorted flyerpacks at the event, which featured some very tasty upcoming events across Leeds. One of our favourite flyers in our exclusive pack was for Love Fingers @ Wire - we'll definitely be showing our support for what promises to be a small but perfectly formed foray into heavy disco + stripped back house every Sunday night. But for now, there's just enough time for the Sorted team to put the finishing touches on our upcoming Fresher's campaigns and steel ourselves for the promo madness of Fresher's Week...
17
Aug
2011
It's been a long time since anyone at Sorted HQ was a fresher (ahem).
However, every September we make sure we're in the centre of the student action, orchestrating some excellent promotion amidst the apparent chaos of the new wave of students moving into halls, discovering the city and embracing their first week away from mum + dad.
This year will be no different. As well as the usual services, we've been focusing our attention on a couple of new things which we're really excited about rolling out on the 19th of September. First off is our nifty calendar - a fold-out and pin-up keepsake perfect for the student fridge/bedroom wall. We've sold 90% of the ad space to people like Harvey Nichols, Vodka Revolution and EMG, so we're feeling quite pleased with ourselves (especially Tom, whose baby this is). Just a couple of ad spaces left, and our calendar will be fully loaded in perfect time for distribution amongst the mad freshers crowds. We really think this one's a winning idea, and hope to make it a regular feature of the Leeds (and beyond?!) student survival kit.
Then there's our Hyde Park billboard, which has been an ambitious - but so far successful - project. We've got our freshers clients booked in, and we're looking forward to having a cheeky celebratory cocktail at LS6 towards the end of freshers so we can admire our efforts. We're not resting on our laurels, though, as we've already started filling the billboard for the post-freshers period and beyond - no rest for the wicked, eh!
So freshers is shaping up to be as busy as ever at Sorted HQ, and (like last year) we may have to go the whole week on only a few hours of sleep - but we'll love every minute of it! And we'll look forward to a bath, a bit of CSI: Las Vegas and an early night come the 1st of October to re-charge our batteries...
17
Aug
2011
Sorted HQ has moved! We're only round the corner from our old office, but it's been a huge change. We'll miss the lovely people @ the Faversham (and their tasty burgers - check them out!), but we outgrew our little space + it was time to move on. Our new pad is a crazy building - maybe an old firestation, originally, before it became a piano warehouse (we're a little scared about falling out the second storey doors that the pianos were pulley-ed into). Now it's known as Red Eric Studios, and we've built a small network of offices above a multi-use creative space (possibly the venue for our belated office warming party). It's all pretty exciting, and we've got some amazing new office buddies in the form of the lovely Ticketarena and Voodoo Events crew. No doubt the office-warming party will be immense with such high-calibre party people involved! Now, to finish laying those carpet tiles...
Testimonials
"We asked Sorted to put together a strategy to help promote our website. After consultation, we opted for a combination of Sorted's distribution services, flyer packs and a campaign on the Moving Target advan to drive exposure amongst the student population. We were pleased with the result and will continue to work closely with Sorted for future campaigns."
Reshad Hossenally, Director, www.ticketarena.co.uk
“We’ve always liked working with Sorted – they’re a reliable team who give good value for money and are always happy to help”
Luke Hodson, Moustache
