Sales Graphics Blog

As 80 percent of businesses reach for the iPad, Apple is making serious B2B strides. The introduction of their Business App Volume Purchasing Program delivers exciting opportunities for not only CustomShow, but for every apps oriented business in existence.

For the first time businesses like ours can host our apps in a private, business only environment. Unlike the previous model where CustomShow had to live alongside other presentation apps open to the public, we now have the flexibility to create a custom site for clients.

This means a more custom experience, volume pricing, and the ability to deal with app purchasing for an unlimited number of employees through a common business account.

Apple’s new webpage for the program reads:

Whether you’re providing apps to two employees or ten thousand, the Volume Purchase Program makes it simple to find, buy, and distribute the apps your business needs.

The Volume Purchase Program also provides a way to purchase custom B2B apps built by third-party developers to meet the unique needs of your business.

Watch for us in Apple’s new, customized business environment soon, as this is just one of many updates expected for our presentation app in the Fall of 2011.

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After multiple years of consecutive growth, BIO has proven that they are a strong cable channel serious about story and narrative. A&E and BIO’s SVP of Marketing, Guy Slatterly, won CableFAXIE’s Marketer of the Year Award in 2009 when the channel grew an impressive 23 percent. And then there’s the fact that BIO is consistently nominated for (and is a frequent winner of) the most outstanding nonfiction series in the Emmys.

As the company that makes upfront presentations for A&E, Bio, Lifetime, and History Channel (snippet from the BIO presentation pictured above), we wish the channel and their sales team continued success both on air and in day-to-day meetings.

In the past few years the online video landscape exploded. 86 percent of the American population has consumed an online video in the past month, representing a 706 percent growth in the space since 2006. This represents a significant opportunity for brands who want to use video to augment their marketing objectives.

Some brands take this journey by way of Old Spice style promotions, but every video must fit the personality of the brand, and the best video create some kind of call to action.

One example of this is the latest video we created for L2 Think Tank. A couple weeks ago L2 approached us to design a video infographic that demonstrates the findings in their latest Digital IQ Magazines report.

Because their research is a lead generation vehicle for their memberships, the objective of the video is to increase exposure and put the report in the hands of more people.

We sprung into action and created a video that briefly explains how they ranked the digital acumen of 87 magazine brands (many of whom are our clients). We also animated infographic style findings that demonstrates the most pivotal realizations from the report.

Our animations create an approachable introduction to the research, providing the firm with the lift in downloads that increases lead generation opportunities. For more information on how we can help your brand create marketing videos that align with your business objectives, drop us a message.

The newest version of CustomShow is well on its way to completion, but before the latest iteration hits prime time we’re rolling out aspects of our presentation offering in small chunks. This paced rollout will build up to one significant update, but current clients and early adopters can already enjoy our enterprise specific online presentation viewer. What does this mean for presenters and sales team? These five features break down CustomShow’s online presentation capabilities for business:

1. Aligned with your workflow. We think about presentations all day everyday, but just because we specialize in everything from design to slide management, doesn’t mean we have to do it all for every client. We work with design teams to give businesses version control and other special presentation features with our presentation software CustomShow, help corporations transition to the iPad, or work specifically on animation design. Whatever the case, our fluid business structure makes it easy for our business to pick up on your business workflow effectively.

2. Built for business. Our secure viewer is run through a secure login system. Sales teams invite viewers to online presentations via email. From there audiences can log in and view their presentation at a scheduled time or whenever it’s convenient.

3. Fit for any situation. Our online presentation viewer works as a standalone product, leave behind, or even in conjunction with CustomShow Web Meetings.

4. We take security seriously. We put managers’ minds at ease with hefty security measures that keep insider presentations confidential. One example of this is our automatically changing encrypted linking structure. Private presentation URLs change every few minutes so even if someone tries to share an unauthorized presentation it will hardly exist before it’s safe in the hands of the company.

5. Everything is trackable. Presentation administrators have access to detailed dashboards with realtime insights on presentation viewership. Data points let managers decipher who has logged in, how long they spent on each slide, and much more. This isn’t just sales team performance measurement, these are the kinds of statistics that can inform client or consumer interests and product development.

Try the Online Presentation Viewer Now

Want to give the online presentation viewer a spin? Follow this link and request an invite. You’ll receive an invite via email and within about thirty seconds you’ll be viewing a sample presentation we created for Bravo.

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Television channels with true personality require upfront presentations that speak for themselves. Static charts and problematic PowerPoints don’t convey true excitement, and so this year we delivered upfront presentations for A&E, Bio, Lifetime, and History Channel.

In some cases we took existing creative for the channels and brought it to life in our presentation software CustomShow, but for some clients (including A&E pictured above) we designed upfront presentations from start to finish. Our creations don’t just talk about what it feels like to tune into a favorite television show, they reproduce the feeling. The new generation of television presentation upfronts starts here.

A couple weeks ago on the Sales Graphics news blog we offered a glimpse into the presentation we prepared for Telemundo’s upfront party. Our blog readers were presented with a teaser of the intergalactic video reel we created for the IMAX screen at the Museum of Natural History, but for those interested in the scope of the event, Empire Entertainment just added their own writeup and image gallery from the party.

Here’s how Empire Avenue described the moment our work went on display for the Spanish language network:

A powerful opening video sequence featuring moving graphics, animations and programming highlights kicked off the show and took the audience for a lightspeed ride into the Upfront presentation.”

For more examples of presentation videos we’ve created for clients, visit the Sales Graphics portfolio.

Three Sales Graphics clients won top ten spots in Adweek’s most recent annual Hot List, with Food Network Magazine taking the cake. As one of 2011′s hottest magazine brands, Food Network approached Sales Graphics to create a high energy video that shows off the consistency of Food Network’s image across platforms.

In the same way that we bring together creative from other clients like Disney, we gathered the best of Food Network’s glossy pages with the most compelling from the Food Network website and added life to static creative with professional animations. From there we weaved in some programming highlights from Food Network’s television channel.

The result achieved Food Network’s desire to showcase everything that makes the brand so satisfying across platforms. We congratulate them for their well deserved place in the rankings and wish nothing but the best for the Food Network in the second half of the year.

Other Magazines in the Top 10 Who Use Sales Graphics For Presentation Software and Design

• Vanity Fair – Read about an iPad presentation we created for them.
• Elle Decor – Elle Decor uses our presentation software to manage a compelling library of images, videos and slides. Presenters can grab the creative they see fit and add it to any presentation to create a customized experience for each of their advertisers. They also take advantage of our web presentation feature built specifically for large companies.

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Take one step inside Disney Land as a child and the place feels like a wonderland. Walk in through the gates as a marketer and it looks like the work of masterminds. Disney understands the power of brand translation, and the way they weave their image through everything makes them a perfect Sales Graphics client.

Disney came to us initially in hopes of creating a Media Sales & Marketing image for all the Disney Media brands including Disney Channel, Disney XD, Disney Online, Radio Disney, Disney Family Fun, and Disney Jr. Because every division of Disney has its own nuances, it was our responsibility to pin down the essence of every part of the whole.

Disney sent us a collection of whatever creative they had on hand, from web graphics and Keynote presentations to videos and more, and from that we took what we’ve learned over the past 50 years of presentation creation to create a unified look-and-feel for the group.

The logo morph above is an example of our easy and seamless presentation design work, and for brands who want to take their presentation management a step further, we also specialize in scaling this creative across corporate sales teams so marketers and sales teams stay on the same page.

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When Cablevision spun AMC and WEtv into their own company last year the two sales teams were confronted with a challenge that even the most consistent and longstanding brands face. They needed to figure out how to present a solidified brand image.

When it comes to large organizations making sure everyone is on the same page is difficult enough, but for two brands who had just merged, it seems the challenges would be numerous. AMC uses widescreen for example, while WEtv prefers to stick with the standard 4:3 presentation layout.

Fortunately for everyone involved, a few members of the team had a bit of experience with our presentation software, CustomShow. Before long the sales teams at both WEtv and AMC had signed up and they recruited us to work on their upfronts.

AMC commissioned us for the second year in a row to create their presentation. Our goal was give viewers a taste of each property and then delve deeper on demand into the content that’s necessary for making buying decisions. WEtv, on the other hand, enlisted us to adopt some of their existing creative into a compelling animated presentation.

Today everything both teams need is accessible on demand through a unified slide library. Managers control which presentation slides are editable and which are indispensable, updates can be sent team-wide, and perhaps most important of all, the sales and marketing teams at WEtv and AMC have become unified by a slide library that lets them keep their brand image intact.

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This year the Telemundo upfront event swung into action on high definition IMAX screens in New York City’s American Museum of Natural History. The wall filling graphics that covered the big screen during the event jettisoned viewers into a Telemundo experience highlighting the network’s most significant accomplishments to date, but thanks to CustomShow, the presentation from that night lives on in the hands of the Telemundo sales team.

It all started when the Spanish-language broadcast network commissioned Sales Graphics to create a “Welcome to Our World” space themed multimedia experience. We designed the graphics for their online media kit and created a consistently branded look-and-feel for their Museum of Natural History event, but the space flying didn’t end when the IMAX screens turned off for the night.

Instead, our presentation software CustomShow let the Telemundo sales team re-use and reintegrate the stellar space experience into everything they employ to sell the network across multiple devices. Everything that exploded off of Internet browsers and the IMAX screen at the upfront was ready for delivery the next day on laptops and iPads.

Telemundo didn’t miss a beat. In fact, their “Welcome to Our World” presentation on CustomShow turned out extremely well. The sales team that uses it in the field might say CustomShow handles like PowerPoint on steroids, but for everyone who has seen the cinematic experience on the iPad or an IMAX screen, the brand’s upfront feels more like a movie.