On National Creativity Day, we’re asking what it means to be creative. Creativity is often associated with the artists of the world; musicians, actors, painters, writers etc, but creativity is something that as humans, we can employ whenever we want.
Whilst some people are naturally more creative than others, we’re all continually being creative most of the time, even if we don’t notice it! Perhaps some of these scenarios resonate with you? How do I come up with a reason to get out of going to so-and-so’s birthday party? How do I manoeuvre my way out of this incredibly tight parking space? What can I do to entertain the kids today?
Creativity is the use of imagination and coming up with original ideas to create something. It’s about being inventive and finding solutions, and this is particularly useful in the workplace.
At Birch HQ, creativity happens every day because we’re always coming up with solutions for our customers. We thrive on providing lots of ideas and expert consultancy and our solutions-driven ethos sets us apart from our competitors.
Why is Print Management creative?
We define ourselves as a print management company, but what does that mean? Everything we do at Birch is Print Management, but if we were to describe it in its fullest sense, we’d say it’s managing your total print requirement, so for example your whole print portfolio.
The only way for us to manage your print requirement efficiently is to fully understand your business and we do this by conducting a print audit, which basically means we will assess your current printed collateral and review each department’s print expenditure.
During the audit, our team will be putting our creative hats on as we start to collate ideas and solutions for improving and enhancing your print portfolio. Our bespoke print management service builds trust and co-operation, and your team will feel comfortable with pro-active suggestions for improvement. Does each piece of print prove its worth? Does it need revising or adjusting to improve? Very often, our team find that items of print will no longer be needed, or we’ll change the format to become more cost effective and more efficient to use.
Our team believe the key to making real savings is to introduce the following:
- More efficient order processing and standardisation of the materials used.
- Planned and combined production – combine print runs to reduce set up costs. Then print and hold stock to avoid running out and therefore rush jobs.
- Ensure each piece of print is fit for your purpose.
- Ongoing cost reduction analysis – analyse usage to predict most cost-effective quantities. (Overproduction leads to wastage and underproduction leads to reduced cost benefits)
- Identifying and reducing hidden costs, alongside reporting.
Creating memorable campaigns
Our campaign management service is a combination of more than just print. This is generally because of a distribution requirement, such as a direct mail campaign, sales campaign, or an employee appreciation campaign for example. From the moment we’re briefed, we’re using our creative minds to interpret the brief, offer ideas and options, provide the most cost-effective approach and deliver the most efficient logistics service, to ensure the campaign is a success.
We’ve had instances where a simple print request such as a display stand, has turned into a full campaign with other printed literature such as promotional giveaways, clothing, installation and then storage of re-usable equipment.
A fun creative project we worked on involved designing a display stand for a kid’s range of sunglasses for Bondeye Optical. We loved getting creative on this project and put forward several ideas including a beach hut and totem pole theme! Their final choice was a large sorbet-coloured ice cream cone which fit their brief perfectly. They went on to use it for their events and as point of sale displays for their optician customers.
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