What OPC do:
CREATE (verb): to produce through imaginative skill
INNOVATE (Intransitive verb): to make changes to, or do something in a new way
Octagon Projects want all our visitors and community members to get the most possible information from our website. Nothing on here is clickbait.
The internet is for everyone, so we want the visually and aurally impaired visitors together with those with reading difficulties to be able to use our sites efficiently.
You don't need a screen reader because everything is available in three forms: Video, Audio and Text.
Every article is available in MP4 video and on Octagon Projects NewsTube on YouTube
Every article is available in MP3 audio.
Every featured article is available as text as well, if you want to quickly flick through the topics. The text is aimed at helping the reader using fixation points. Visit the Human Zone for more information on this reading enhancement
The buying public can be very cynical when confronted with the standard type of marketing blurb!
That You must win them over is obvious, but how to do it is not.
The buying public can be very cynical when confronted with the standard type of marketing blurb! That you must win them over is obvious, but how to do it is not. See Major shock at product launch! for details.
Anyone can follow the latest trend and look like everything else out there. It's more difficult to stand apart from the crowd and do something different, but in the long run, the rewards are far greater.
There are no sure-fire winners when it comes to marketing, but using an innovative approach is about as close as it gets.
Master marketeer, Steve Jobs highlighted "Marketing is About Values" in the THINK DIFFERENT campaign. This image campaign was nothing like anything around at the time, and helped to build Apple Inc in to the monster today, that we all love to hate (or hate to love!) In marketing terms, it has it all. It's thought-provoking, memorable, and tech jargon free. Brilliant.
Our passion and excellence-driven mindset gives the brands we work with, their own creative voice. We create storytelling marcom campaigns which strengthen your presence in your target markets.
Our method relies on good communication lines that can give the answers to what, where, how, why and when. We start by asking searching questions in enough different ways to get to the core-goals and crystallize your responses in to practical working solutions which meet your target audience's needs and expectations.
It is a constant, that "all customers remember the bad and overlook the good", so most of your target audience is at best, neutral to your company, products, and services. What we aim to do is wow them with the good, and move them from neutral prospects to positive buyers!
Your target audience may be design engineers, or media creators, and their influencers, but they are all individual human beings. Yes, individuals who all want the best potato peeler in the world. But most of all, they do not want more work, they want to work more efficiently! Human beings are resourceful, and your target audience are human beings, who buy and use products “if” they see it benefits them so, talk to them as people, not dummies and leave out the "marketing-speak".
We believe, work that you don't believe in or can't defend in isn't worth doing. We think "People that tell you what you want to hear just to get some work are the most dangerous people you'll ever meet!"
OPC provide seamless marketing communications programs, which aim to exceed your goals. Using your demographic data, we can design a full strategy, series of pushes, or a single push depending on your goals, requirements, and budget.
Starting in 1993, our years of digital expertise can help you drive dramatic performance outcomes using targeted adverts, videos, websites, leaflets, data sheets, brochures, social media micro-copy, blog posts, or any other media.
Octagon Projects are your dynamic partner for today’s agile marcom needs. We provide consulting, writing services, graphic design, web design, and document automation with an emphasis on human interaction (H2H) in the B2B space. We focus on the things that are important for you: empathy, creativity, great service, and reliability to generate the maximum return on investment in national and international markets.
Think about this scenario: A product launch failed, why?
You can have the best "widget-thingy" on the planet, with the best supporting docs which are full of features, benefits, facts, and figures. But, if you haven't examined the science behind the buy-decision, no one knows about it, cannot find the information, or (most importantly) cannot understand it, then you’ve just got gigabytes on a server and boxes in a warehouse!
The ultimate goal is to sell lots of product, not waste resources supporting them!
Octagon Projects©™ are a pan-European, digital-orientated marketing communications (marcom) agency. We tailor our creativity and services to meet your needs and the needs of your customers. But, this is what you'd expect from an agency.
What makes us really different, is our commitment to the science of Emotional Marketing as the tool to reach your customers!
Every one of your customer's, be they, accountants, artists, designers, engineers, musicians, photographers, scientists, writers and so on, make purchases based on emotions, not facts.
UCLA and George Washington University, jointly performed experiments to test the role emotion plays in decision-making, and conversions to sales. The brain activity of the test subjects was tracked while they looked at advertisements. Some ads used a factual approach (the facts and figures) behind a product to sell. For example, “This Computer has 16 Gigabytes of RAM”. Other ads were more esoteric and vaguer, featuring fun scenes that seemed to have nothing to do with the product.
The ads with facts and figures caused higher activity in the decision-making areas of the brain. That's to be expected. However, those areas covering decision-making are also related to behavioral inhibition. Put simply, ads featuring facts and figures actually prevent the buy-decision because they stimulate the analytical and inhibition centers of the brain!
The more esoteric ads caused an insignificant amount of activity in the decision-making centers of the brain but heightened activity in the emotion centers. These vague ads lead to less restraint on the buying process.
That doesn't happen in my industry or market! Yes it does because your customers are all individuals! If the basic feature/benefit combination looks ok for a set of products, people go with the one that makes them feel good. You are selling emotional choices.
Science behind emotional purchases
Many studies, using fMRI tests, show that when people evaluate products or brands, their limbic systems (where our feelings, memory, and value judgments originate) light up like a Christmas tree. While the data processing and analysis centers of their brains are largely unstimulated. This is a clear illustration that most purchase decisions are emotional, and not practical. So, people make buy-decisions based on how they feel!
Appeal to the person, not the buyer.
Our first tip is ignore the decision-making centers altogether. Go right for the emotion centers of the limbic system. Show your prospects something fun and invoke an emotional response, making them more likely to buy.
Our second tip is to drop all the positive superlatives from headlines, such as best, ultimate, greatest, always and so on. Outbrain found that headlines with negative superlatives are 30% better at getting your attention than a headline without a superlative at all.
Headlines with positive superlatives do much worse than headlines without a superlative. In terms of click-through rates (CTR) for the two groups, the headlines with negative superlatives had a 63% higher CTR than their positive counterparts. The bottom line is, negative news gets clicked and read, but happy news gets shared more.
Our third tip is make 'em laugh! Humor sells because people always share amusing content, and want to show their own sense of humor to people they connect with. Make people laugh with your content, and watch the shares increase. More shares equals more exposure. More exposure generates more prospects and ultimately, more buy-decisions.
Use the right images to increase conversions
Our final tip is define a strategy that emphasizes a sense of inspiration in the area of the brain seeking a connection and a sense of belonging. As humans, we are still slaves to our emotions and our primal brains, which rely heavily on aural and visual stimulation.
We don’t salivate at the sound of a ringing bell like Pavlov's dogs, but the right image and sound trigger emotional responses. Understanding the degree to which our brains rely on emotions when making decisions, enables you to appeal to the feelings of customers and boost leads and buy-decisions. Checkout these Jaguar ads featuring Ben Kingsley, Mark Strong in a Jaguar F-Type R, and Tom Hiddleston and featuring Ava Green in a Jaguar I-Pace. What emotions do they generate for you?
OPC provide seamless marketing communications programs, which aim to exceed your goals. Using your demographic data, we can design a full strategy, series of pushes, or a single push depending on your goals, requirements, and budget.
Starting in 1993, our years of digital expertise can help you drive dramatic performance outcomes using targeted adverts, videos, websites, leaflets, data sheets, brochures, social media micro-copy, blog posts, or any other media.
Octagon Projects are your dynamic partner for today’s agile marcom needs. We provide consulting, writing services, graphic design, web design, and document automation with an emphasis on human interaction (H2H) in the B2B space. Our focus is on the things that are important for you: empathy, creativity, great service, and reliability to generate the maximum return on investment in national and international markets.
Now we've got your attention, creativity is often quoted as "99% perspiration, 1% inspiration" and and Albert Einstein reflected, "Creativity is just intelligence having fun." But, both of these statements don't describe the complexity that is creativity.
If you’re an accountant, artist, designer, engineer, musician, photographer, scientist, or writer, you’ve probably been called a creative person at some point in your life.
At OPC, we use our empathy with your customers and our inner child to develop creative solutions to your challenges.
What do we mean by our inner child?
Humans are born creative, and taught to be less creative as we grow up. In our early years, say one to eight, the emphasis is on creative learning, art classes and “learning is fun".
But, by the end of your primary schooling, the emphasis switches to math, and language with creative studies taking a backseat. Later still, you are told to think of a career, pass your exams, get real, take the straight and narrow path, don't make waves, and pay your taxes. To remain creative, you need to make a conscious decision.
This is not some wild assumption; research proves that left-brain analytical behavior is learned overtime. Based on the Creativity Test designed by George Land, young children are creative geniuses!
He studied a group of 1,600 five-year-olds, and tested them to see how creative they were. 98% were deemed to be creative geniuses. Thinking in novel ways similar to the likes of Picasso, Mozart, Einstein and so on. He tested the same group again at 10 years old, and the number had decreased to 30%. By age 15, it had declined to 12%. The same test was given to 280,000 adults and found only 2% remained creative geniuses.
This illustrates clearly that our creative potential declines over time.
Creative individuals are not always appreciated in the workplace because they are said to have left-of-field ideas and lack the know-how for "real" business innovation. But the best creative innovations often come from these people!
According to a study at Exeter University, the belief that creatives are born, not made also inhibits creative solutions. The idea that geniuses, such as, Isambard Kingdom-Brunel, Christopher Wren, Shakespeare, Picasso, and Mozart were born gifted is a myth. Researchers examined outstanding performances in the arts, mathematics, and sports, to find out if “the widespread belief that to reach high levels of ability a person must possess talent.” The study concludes that creative excellence is determined by opportunities, encouragement, training, motivation, and most of all, practice.
Creativity gives you a competitive advantage by adding value to your company, product or service. With it, your business stands out from the competition.
Rising complexity in markets forces entrepreneurs to lead boldly, with creativity and connect with customers in imaginative new ways.
Entrepreneurs aren’t afraid to be different, so they are always asking questions, coming up with creative solutions to a problem, and exhibiting playfulness. They have heightened emotional sensitivity, and are usually seen as non-conforming. Does this description bring any people to mind?
Playwright George Bernard Shaw sums it up, “Some people see things as they are and say why? I dream of things that never were and say why not.”
OPC use the widely-known Garage rules to ensure we work in a culture of creativity and innovation.
OPC provide seamless marketing communications programs, which aim to exceed your goals. Using your demographic data, we can design a full strategy, series of pushes, or a single push depending on your goals, requirements, and budget.
Starting in 1993, our years of digital expertise can help you drive dramatic performance outcomes using targeted adverts, videos, websites, leaflets, data sheets, brochures, social media micro-copy, blog posts, or any other media.
Octagon Projects are your dynamic partner for today’s agile marcom needs. We provide consulting, writing services, graphic design, web design, and document automation with an emphasis on human interaction (H2H) in the B2B space. Our focus is on the things that are important for you: empathy, creativity, great service, and reliability to generate the maximum return on investment in national and international markets.
Water sold for a stunning 22 bucks a bottle, in some parts of the US!
Water is a resource that every human needs to live. Yet it has become a commodity product. Water is, well, water. It is a transparent liquid containing various minerals and salts that hydrate.
How did different companies manage to sell bottled water as a product, and convince savvy consumers to buy their bottled water instead of the competitions? They created brands based on an aspirational lifestyle, some “reasonable sounding geology” and standout packaging.
Another example is a carmaker. It is widely reported that they make terrible cars that cost a fortune and spend a lot of time being serviced, or repaired. But their image is one of freedom and control of power. So, what we have is a product that people aspire to, which is slated for poor reliability but has a very strong brand image. The result is good sales.
Branding is the tool that helps people to quickly identify and experience your brand, while giving them a reason to choose your products over the competitions. Your brand is the core of what you do. What feelings or emotions does your business inspire in your customers? Most people's decision to buy is based on emotions, not facts.
Ok, so you don’t sell water or cars. But your markets are just as complex, and full of competitive opportunities. Anything that can be offered to satisfy a want or need, such as goods, services, experiences, events, people, places, properties, organizations, information, and ideas can be branded. OPC uses our creativity and experience of human interaction to help you brand your company, product, or service. Branding aims to attract and retain loyal customers and other stakeholders by delivering a product that is always aligned with what the brand promises.
Your brand goal is to create a positive image for people so that when they think about your company, products, or services, their response is both emotional and practical. It is not just the product features that create a brand, but also the feelings that consumers develop towards the company or its product. Ideally, exposure to cues such as the name, logo, visual identity, or message should trigger a physical and emotional response.
A strong, memorable, compelling and meaningful brand is essential to successful marketing. OPC's creativity is your "foot-in-the-door".
OPC provide seamless marketing communications programs, which aim to exceed your goals. Using your demographic data, we can design a full strategy, series of pushes, or a single push depending on your goals, requirements, and budget.
Starting in 1993, our years of digital expertise can help you drive dramatic performance outcomes using targeted adverts, videos, websites, leaflets, data sheets, brochures, social media micro-copy, blog posts, or any other media.
Octagon Projects are your dynamic partner for today’s agile marcom needs. We provide consulting, writing services, graphic design, web design, and document automation with an emphasis on human interaction (H2H) in the B2B space. Our focus is on the things that are important for you: empathy, creativity, great service, and reliability to generate the maximum return on investment in national and international markets.
How people interact with data on electronic devices often suffers from quick fixes, "that's good enough", and design expedients in the rush for more features. However, it is one of the main areas that annoys people. What “Ease-of-Use”, “Intuitive” and ”User-Friendly” mean to your target audience is not necessarily what they get.
Ease-of-Use is how naturally an action can be achieved. Thus, avoiding the need for vast swathes of documentation. It is worth remembering that there have been many failed attempts by companies like IBM, Google, and Microsoft. There will certainly be many more attempts to reach the nirvana of perfect ease-of-use.
It is the most talked about, and least well implemented aspect of software design and document design, mainly due to a lack of empathy with customers. There are many thousands of studies on ease-of-use, but the wheel gets re-invented nearly every time. In software development, “Ease-of-Use” is often talked about as “user-friendliness”, or “intuitive” design, but it is rarely implemented from the target audience’s reality . . . . from the "other side of the mirror", so to speak.
Accessibility is not exclusive of “Ease-of-Use”
Accessible Rich Internet Application norms for disadvantaged people is an additional aspect of overall ease-of-use, which needs to be integrated in to every front-end. Accessibility is not exclusive of “Ease-of-Use”, it is complementary to it.
Human interaction and Octagon Projects
Octagon Projects want all our visitors to get the most possible information from this website. The internet is for everyone, so we want the visually and aurally impaired visitors together with those with reading difficulties to be able to use our sites efficiently.
The Human interaction used on this website aims to give people three methods to access its content: video, audio, and text using readability concepts suggested by the company: Bionic Reading.
Bionic who?
Yeah, that's what I thought at first glance. Unsubstantiated claims of increased reading speed (I speed-read anyway) and improved comprehension pseudo-science didn't make me feel comfortable with this idea. After checking out some highly technical texts using it, I think it helped me. However, as with other placebo types, the effect may be illusory.
A plus point was that technically, I found it relatively easy to implement (without their API or Chrome add-on).
But to-date, this method has not been (fully) scientifically tested, or for that matter, evaluated by a sufficiently large test group. I would be very wary of handing over my hard-earned cash on this basis. I'm trialing it for now, but you are the judge as to whether it helps you.
Why bother with improved readability, it's better than most already!
I've spent over 25 years writing and designing documents. During that time, I've spent a lot of time trying to get people to read, and understand them onscreen, rather than printing them out. Many people are challenged when it comes to reading comprehension and speed from onscreen sources.
I've been searching for years for a possible solution that helps people.
Bionic reading is a technique which uses artificial fixation points in a text to guide your eyes, allegedly allowing your brain to complete the words, and improving your comprehension of a text.
Cognitive psychology evidence over the last 20 years indicates that we use the letters in a word to recognize the word using the Parallel Letter Recognition model [1].
Our conclusions
This method has already been disputed by some from the point of view the "typographic industry has spent hundreds of years working on readability. They know best". But, I should also note that the typographic industry has a history of holding back technical advancements that change their role.
However, in my view, with its bold text everywhere, Bionic Reading is an imperfect solution from a classical design perspective. But you quickly get used to the text style. If the design issue is offset by faster reading speed, message retention and human ease then it's a winner. You're the judge.
This is only one of the areas of human interaction OPC are exploring
[1] See "The Science of Word Recognition"; 06/09/2022
OPC provide seamless marketing communications programs, which aim to exceed your goals. Using your demographic data, we can design a full strategy, series of pushes, or a single push depending on your goals, requirements, and budget.
Starting in 1993, our years of digital expertise can help you drive dramatic performance outcomes using targeted adverts, videos, websites, leaflets, data sheets, brochures, social media micro-copy, blog posts, or any other media.
Octagon Projects are your dynamic partner for today’s agile marcom needs. We provide consulting, writing services, graphic design, web design, and document automation with an emphasis on human interaction (H2H) in the B2B space. Our focus is on the things that are important for you: empathy, creativity, great service, and reliability to generate the maximum return on investment in national and international markets.
Today, there are over 1.8 billion[1] sites on the worldwide web. That's a lot of digital forest for potential customers to cut through to find your website. It's a daunting prospect when you think about it.
Is it worth the effort and cost?
Yes, your website is the only, and the best 24/7 salesperson you will ever need!
If you are a startup, an established SME, a government ministry or even a large corporate player, you must find a way to stand out! Your website says everything about your brand, values, business, promotes your products, services, and pricing. It attracts prospects and must convert them to leads while answering the questions they have about your company or products like any other salesperson. But, just as you need to train and invest in your salespeople year-on-year, you need to invest in content, measure your site’s sales performance, making changes and updates to ensure it continues to convert visitors.
Still, a great looking website design won't get you very far, if it is not seen! To drive traffic to your site, you need to make it search engine optimized. That's a little more complicated than just adding a few meta's with keywords to the page <head> element. 
One easy way to achieve this is to make blogging part of your content strategy. Websites, are 434%[2] more likely to be ranked highly on search engines, when they have a blog. That's the good news.
The bad is Google moved to mobile-first indexing, which means it uses the mobile site version for indexing and ranking. This change has made it very important to ensure that content quality isn't compromised on smaller screen sizes. Hiding content in a mobile view but showing it on the desktop view is the equivalent of clipping a bird's wings so, it won't fly away!
When you do this, web crawlers can't explore the full depth of your website, and gain enough context of the value of your content. Search engines also heavily weigh the mobile friendliness of your website. Design your site for mobile devices first.
Navigation needs to be easy-to-use, easy to understand, and easy to navigate. Mega-menus are better than multiple levels of sub-menu, but they are still horrible. Design with the visitor in mind, not the developer. The better your navigation is at guiding your website structure, the better crawlers can discover content and understand what your website is about.
Clear navigation isn't just for bots, it helps visitors navigate your website to find interesting, relevant content. Think about your own experiences visiting websites for the first time. A well-organized website makes content readily available to you.
Under the WebServe©™ brand, OPC provide web design using a range of CMS products; Virtual disk CMS set-ups for development, testing and deployment with WordPress, Hugo, or Wagtail installed; Product configurators; and ecommerce integration using python and Django or Wagtail.
Notes: [1][2] Source: quantitative values from Hubspot
OPC provide seamless marketing communications programs, which aim to exceed your goals. Using your demographic data, we can design a full strategy, series of pushes, or a single push depending on your goals, requirements, and budget.
Starting in 1993, our years of digital expertise can help you drive dramatic performance outcomes using targeted adverts, videos, websites, leaflets, data sheets, brochures, social media micro-copy, blog posts, or any other media.
Octagon Projects are your dynamic partner for today’s agile marcom needs. We provide consulting, writing services, graphic design, web design, and document automation with an emphasis on human interaction (H2H) in the B2B space. Our focus is on the things that are important for you: empathy, creativity, great service, and reliability to generate the maximum return on investment in national and international markets.
Why should you use Octagon Projects (OPC)?
OPC provide seamless marketing communications programs, which aim to exceed your goals. Using your demographic data, we can design a full strategy, series of pushes, or a single push depending on your goals, requirements, and budget. Our focus is on the things that are important for you: empathy, creativity, great service, and reliability to generate the maximum return on investment in national and international markets.
You want your company, products, and services to standout from the crowd, be recognizable, trusted and memorable. That’s what OPC deliver.
We offer service groups called "Serves". It's just like picking products at a supermarket, you only select what you need. Costs are only booked to those services you've contracted. This makes sure your invoice is transparent and easily understandable.
ConsultServe©™: Is the C of OPC. It covers the on-site activities of OPC, which include all of the following services and are supported by a current Good Conduct Certificate (VOG) from the Dutch Ministry of Justice for financial services.
ProjectServe©™: Covers initial briefing(s) and site visits, and all additional administration (excluding internal project management). It is a fixed price element charged in a minimum of 2-hour blocks. Contact reports after each meeting clearly indicate the services used up to that point.
CreateServe©™: Is where the ideas and originality happen. It covers all brainstorming, visualization, and prototyping required by a project.
DocuServe©™: Is the writing activities of OPC, which cover everything related to creating and maintaining all types of B2B marketing, and technical documentation. In addition, it covers DMS-based automated publishing of documentation collateral in XHTML, Markdown, DITA, EPUB, PDF and so on.
Marketing activities cover, web content, micro-copy, image brochures, product brochures, data sheets, flyers, and so on;
Technical documentation activities range from small quick start guides to large administration reference guides.
ImpServe©™: is the graphics, house style, and graphic design activities of OPC, which cover 2D/3D illustrations and animation; house style and logo graphic design including Microsoft Office templates; design of LibreOffice Open-Source templates and so on.
MediaServe©™: is the video and presentation activities of OPC for Websites, Intranets, YouTube, Vimeo, Instagram and so on. It provides video concept and story boarding; instructional product and training videos; promotional mixed-mode image videos for products, services, and companies; voice-overs and incidental music; slide-shows; and Google or social media ads.
WebServe©™: is the web-based activities of OPC, which cover web design using several CMS products; Virtual disk CMS set-ups for development, testing and deployment with WordPress, Hugo, or Wagtail installed; Product configurators; and ecommerce integration using python.
SignServe©™: Signage is a crucial part of your brand. It helps you market your products, and communicates your values to customers. It can drive sales, increase brand loyalty, attract prospects, and set you apart from your competitors. There are many types of signs and just as many materials. Each sign provides a different level of visibility depending on if they are static, or digital. Typical sign types are interior, monumental, backlit, way finding, custom, and LED (neon). OPC have in-house Laser cutting and CNC services to meet most requirements. We can handle various materials such as vinyl films, wood, plastic, and metal plate including low grade stainless steel.
GiftServe©™: Custom-branded gifts with your logo, or a unique design, are an important part of an effective marketing strategy. OPC can personalize gifts to show your appreciation of team members, customers, and suppliers. When you give something useful, you are guaranteed your brand is “top of mind” every time it’s used. There is no other form of marketing material that is literally in the hands of your customers, clients, and team for years. OPC can rework your gifts by personalizing them or supply a gift from our hand-picked premium selection.
EyeServe©™: OPC add our creativity, innovation, and style to exhibition, public, and private spaces. We aim to have our eye-catchers decorating office walls and spaces, exhibition booths, homes, and so on. Our unique combination of practical expertise and creativity enable us to deliver stunning artworks that do more than just catch the eye. We create experiences.
PosServe©™: Point of sale can be as simple as digital signage or a service kiosk, ranging up to fully integrated systems providing payments, stock control, employee control and so on. OPC, primarily, aim at the service kiosk and digital signage market.
Time ripens everything. No one is born wise; wisdom comes only with experience!
Some years ago, a consultant was in a sprint planning meeting which wasn't going very well. A group of experienced people suddenly "didn't know how to estimate the time required". It was a difficult time, but going AWOL and not making key decisions wasn’t the answer.
Sometimes you cannot avoid thorny issues, you’ve just got to grasp that pineapple the only way you can, and do what needs to be done!
Some projects run smoothly, some have hiccups along the way, and others are better not started, YET! Key is knowing what are real blocking issues and what is the usual noise. No matter which project method is used, good project management is indiscernible from the general workflow. However, every project will inevitably have numerous pain points (hence the pineapple) which reduce productivity, efficiency, and team success.
Cost control is vital whatever business you're in!
Project cost control is a way of increasing bottom-line profitability. Effective agile teams, and processes are key-enablers of this cost control. But, add suppliers in to the mix, without the required commitment or time investment, and problems will arise, causing delays and cost overruns.
Projects can be viewed as a dance. Everyone needs to be in-step, and doing what they should be doing, when they should be doing it. Otherwise, things end badly.
Many of the pain points Octagon Projects have seen with projects stem from:
Some costs can be negotiated away, but everyone's work has an inherent value, which is covered by the projects they work on. It is unlikely that a large write-off will be accepted for any of these issues.
As the saying goes, "Only the sun rises for nothing".
A fixed price is an answer that gives you the security of knowing that a project should come in on budget and on time.
However, under the circumstances described above, would a fixed price work? The answer without a doubt is no!
Can project pitfalls be avoided?
In our experience, the only way to avoid them, is to not let them take root in a project
I’ve banged my head on the obvious more often than I care to remember. But the pain reminds me not to do it again, so this negative experience, while painful, is actually very positive. OPC prefer to rely on practical expertise when offering solutions to customers. We don’t use the term “experts” because it has become so devalued. Today, anyone straight out of university or anywhere else for that matter, is an expert. OPC are more interested in what expertise someone brings to the table.
Where do you want to be? The winner or an also ran?
If you’re an accountant, artist, designer, engineer, musician, manager, photographer, scientist, or writer, you’ve probably been called a creative person at some point in your life. You felt good at the time because everyone likes to get a compliment every once in a while, and that response is the key to succeeding in your markets. Your customers are people, like you, and OPC understand people.
Since 1993, OPC have used our empathy with customers, and our inner child to develop creative solutions to your challenges. The media is secondary to the message. But, we offer a full range of services for targeted adverts, videos, websites, leaflets, data sheets, brochures, social media micro-copy, blog posts, merchandising, or any other media to get the right message across to your customers.
At OPC, our emphasis is human interaction (H2H) in the B2B space. Our focus is on the things that are important to your customers and you: empathy, creativity, great service, and reliability to generate the maximum return on investment in national and international markets.
How? Using our commitment to Emotional Marketing, we aim to reach your customers in the best CTR possible. But to get there, we need to gather information by asking the right questions.
Our clients demand and get confidentiality
Most of Octagon Projects work is done under non-disclosure agreements (NDA) which has the positive effect that we are always working on products at the forefront of the latest technical wave. The disadvantage is we are not permitted to discuss anything about who we work with, or show what we work on. It is sufficient to say that our collaborators value our confidentiality and it is key to our business model.
Sectors as diverse as Hi-tech, financial, and general services work with Octagon Projects because of our proven reputation for innovative and creative solutions, confidentiality, integrity, enthusiasm and our human user experience knowledge.
Documentation review plan and review responsibilities (applicable to all project management methods)
Octagon Projects©™ (OPC) are a digital-orientated marketing communications (marcom) agency, who also offer other marketing collateral for exhibitions and public spaces. Our emphasis is human interaction (H2H) in the B2B space.
OPC are your dynamic partner for today’s agile marcom needs.
Key specialties include: consulting, writing services, graphic design, web design, and document automation
We focus on the things that are important to your customers and you: empathy, creativity, great service, and reliability to generate the maximum return on investment in national and international markets.
If you are looking for this type of partner, contact us.
Most of Octagon Projects work is done under non-disclosure agreements (NDA), which has the positive effect that we are always working on products at the forefront of the latest technical wave.
The disadvantage is we are not permitted to discuss anything about who we work with, or show what we work on. It is sufficient to say that our collaborators value our confidentiality, and it is key to our business model.
We undertake projects on-site, and remotely, or as a combination of both depending on the collaborator and security needs.
Sectors as diverse as Hi-tech, financial, and general services work with Octagon Projects because of our proven reputation for innovative and creative solutions, confidentiality, integrity, enthusiasm and our human user experience knowledge.
If you are looking for this type of partner, contact us.
No, but anyone who says they can, isn't believable!
Your brand goal is to create a positive image for people, so that when they think about your company, products, or services, their response is both emotional and practical. It is not just the product features that create a brand, but also the emotions, that consumers develop towards the company or its product. Ideally, exposure to cues, such as the name, logo, visual identity, or message should trigger a physical and emotional response.
The perception created by your marketing communications output has a greater effect on your bottom line than what you actually sell. Brand recognition generates sales. It is that simple.
It is a question of perception. In business markets, perception is everything. For some brands, this axiom is truer than for others. Taking Apple as an example. Yes, they make great products, but they sell huge numbers of them because they are perceived as speaking directly to the customer, not pushing a product.
A strong, memorable, compelling and meaningful brand is essential to successful marketing. OPC's creativity is your "foot-in-the-door".
We have the tools, vision, drive, and expertise to help you meet your goals!
Always an elephant in the room, especially when discussing price.
People often discount, de-value or downplay that which they do not really understand. This is very common for service industries, such as writing, layout and graphic design.
"Writing - no problem, everyone can write; drawing - we'll use CAD; layout - let's use word and get someone to do a quick tidy up; and let's put it out as pdf. See it's easy and doesn't cost much!"
— Anonymous manager
Anyone can do that? Right? Hmmm, no that is a very serious misconception. Especially, the cost estimate.
If it wasn't, then why do the likes of IBM, Microsoft, HP and many thousands of large concerns have professional writing departments, with authors, editors, illustrators and defined standards (not the Google style guide). It is not because it is sooo 1990s!
Those concerns that do not have internal departments, often outsource to trusted suppliers with access to this infrastructure.
As an example of how the content of a range of documents are kept uniform:
Professional writers and graphic designers are trained to adapt their style to the needs of a target audience (often using a style guide). Various "knowledgeable" sites recommend “branded” style guides from the Chicago Tribune, Google, Microsoft and so on.
Style guides are living documents but using a marketing-orientated branded style guide will make it a little too alive because it is aimed more to the changing marketing needs of the company, not the needs of the target audience.
A language standard that is often referred to as a style guide is
ASD-STE100, the aviation/defense industry standard for Simplified Technical English (STE). But, it is not a style guide. It is a standard for the type of language that the steering committee find acceptable. Use it in addition to a style guide, not in place of one!
Everyone who must write needs a style guide to ensure their text and documents are readable and uniform. The best style guides I have found and regularly refer to, come from the petrochemical industry. Why the petrochemical industry and not a software company? In a word, maturity.
Most software companies invest heavily in producing a product, and documentation comes a very low second. In the petrochemical industry, people can die, if the documentation is not good enough. This means the style guides are very mature.
Anyone can do that, right? No, experience is OPC's added value!
The short answer is look at, or listen to, the Mandatory working method: input, reviews, and acceptance section of our Terms and Conditions, which is available under the "The how, why and what of OPC" part of this web page. But in reality, OPC is all about collaboration.
Collaboration means to us that we have the integrity to point out where we think you would be better, taking a different approach — even if it’s not what you sometimes want to hear. You're kept up-to-date with project expenditure, so you don't suddenly find a black hole in your budget. Our competitive pricing models are based on effort required to meet the delivery time, the required quality level, and the prospect of repeat buying.
What does that make us?
An excellent collaborator because we won’t just take the money and run. You guide us on specifics, and in return, we offer guidance in our specialties. The perfect match.
We approach challenges with a "let's get it done" attitude because Octagon Projects are a dynamic organization. Our ethical values guide our day-to-day behavior, how we act, the decisions we make, how we work with each other, all our stakeholders, our clients, and suppliers. Our values are expressed in terms of Integrity, Respect, Passion, Energy, and Excellence, but service and quality always come first.
Enthusiasm drives our work, coupled to our entrepreneurial spirit ensuring we strive to provide the best quality, value and human experience to and for our collaborator's customers.
Yes! But, we can also use other project management methods.
We ensure that every clearly defined objective and deliverable is tracked and measured against success. All trackable, all visible, all tangible.
Using well known project management techniques, we strive to create the right conditions to deliver maximum value results for your marketing investment. You get what you need, when you need it.
OPC draws on a team of experienced professionals who are strongly committed to our client's success! OPC provide seamless marketing communications programs, and using your demographic data, we design a full strategy, series of pushes, or a single push depending on your goals, requirements, and budget.
You want your company, products, and services to standout from the crowd, be recognizable, trusted, and memorable. That’s what OPC deliver! Every one of your customer's, be they, accountants, artists, buyers, designers, engineers, managers, musicians, photographers, scientists, writers, and so on, make purchases based on emotions, not facts. We use this fact to your advantage.
We create and manage high-impact, results driven campaigns using targeted media, merchandise, signage, gifting, and any other media.
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