Most agree that marketing is essential to growth. However, there’s no simple formula to determine your marketing budget. Today, most spend an average of 2-10% of their net profits; some spend up to 20% of net sales. This may seem like a lot. Or perhaps, you are willing to spend more. To determine a comfortable investment, define your business objectives. Then create a list of potential marketing and advertising options and their price points. From this list, which options have the highest positive impact or return on investment? This revised list can act as your baseline budget. While this list may go up or down, it offers a starting point.

In the end, it has to pay off. The final part of the exercise is assigning value to your return, whether it be short-term revenue or brand recognition, a long-term objective. Our best advice: review your ROI as often as possible so you can make adjustments and evaluate your budget and plan each year.

There’s a lot of information out there. Below are just a few examples of the conventional wisdom out there.

http://www.imageworksstudio.com/client-lounge/articles-tips/setting-a-marketing-advertising-budget.html

http://www.gtms-inc.com/tip_salesandmarketingbudgetbenchmarks.htm

http://www.marketingprofs.com/ea/qst_question.asp?qstID=10089

When Tropicana changed their logo in 2009 and Gap in 2010, there was public outcry, the loudest heard on social networks. Were these attempts at change missteps? While both brands reverted back to their original logos, they successfully engaged consumers in lively dialogue while re-igniting passion for their brands. In this case, change (or change-back, as the case may be) seems good.

The latest brand to update their logo is Starbucks, in commemoration of their 40th anniversary and a further evolution of their brand, to include social media, expanding to grocery stores and non-coffee products. For me, my morning cup of coffee just got better. The siren has always been the focus, but the new design brings her front and center – inviting, enticing and sophisticated. Starbucks’ brand has come to represent a high quality, bold, rich coffee. Check out this video from Howard Schultz, CEO, about the logo and future of Starbucks. You can also see the old logo progression and cups throughout the years.

We’d love to hear what you think. How does your Starbucks “taste” with the new logo?

The typeface FF Meta, designed by Eric Spiekermann, was part of the first group of digital typefaces ever acquired by The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) for it’s Architecture and Design Collection. Why should we care? Well, we’ve been using this contemporary sans serif font for several years in our identity and as a key element in all of our communication materials. Its blend of simplicity and subtle character is a perfect match for our design style.

The selection was made in January 2011 and celebrated in March with an AIGA New York panel discussion that included two designers responsible for more than half of the collection and the museum’s A+D curator. Read on for more on MoMA’s digital font collection.

And since we’re talking type, have some fun with Pentagram’s test “What Type Are You?”

They’ve also created a new creative conversation. Are QR codes a new design element? Or are they themselves the design – think Jet Blue’s winter campaign. Certainly, the codes come with challenges, like when real estate is at a premium on a fractional ad.

We just produced a rack brochure for the V&T Railroad that includes a QR code on the back panel. The code resolves to a YouTube video of the train in action. Through a unique URL, we are able to track how may visitors came from the QR scan. Our goal – to allow potential riders to experience for themselves and hopefully go on to buy a ticket.

What’s your opinion on QR codes? Are they helpful? Are you more engaged? Do you even notice them?

Heavenly Ski School Poster campaign - Heavenly Mountain Resort enlisted us to help them increase private lesson attendance through an on-mountain poster campaign. After supplying various concepts, Heavenly chose the concept that focused on how skiing can become a lifelong tradition and help keep families together. At last report, the campaign has been a big success and a big attention getter around the mountain. Designed by Gregg Gibboney and the account is handled by Alanna Crete.

The revamped GoTahoeNorth.com website incorporates the latest web functionality into Gregg’s clean, image  driven design.  It combines to sell the destination with beautiful imagery while making the key site drivers easily accessible.  The slideshow and content slider are built in jquery and pull in the latest social media feeds, special events and lodging options.  The navigation is streamlined and broken out into a Summer / Winter split.

The Fire Safety Council received a federal grant to promote defensible space around the Tahoe basin. We created a print campaign for them the prior year that created a great buzz and also won Gold Addy awards. The client wanted to create a local television commercial but had very little grant funding remaining. It was a tough task to create an award winning spot with a limited budget. We ended up using stills from the print campaign with a cleaver voice over.

Every year we produce multiple travel planners for our client HD96. This award winning planner was created for the LTVA in South Lake Tahoe. It has the job of providing local information to potential visitors. It is 72 pages with quite a huge coordination task. Everything came out beautiful and has hopefully helped travelers book their travel plans and activities. Designed by Gregg Gibboney and the account is handled by Kelly Houston.