Crafting your brand

For those who don't know, my husband Will is a super talented photographer. Although he makes his living shooting commercial and product photography, he has recently re-introduced himself to the family, wedding and newborn photography scene. When an opportunity came up to participate in a fair at the Bellies and Babies Grand Opening (a maternity and baby store in Peterborough), he jumped at the chance.With only 5 days to pull together a booth and get everything ready, Will and I got straight to work. William Charles Photo is still a fairly new undertaking, so without business cards, flyers, posters, etc. we had to improvise. Obviously my first response was to begin crafting his brand.Crafting his brand? What the heck to I mean by crafting his brand?Glad you asked. What I mean by this is using craft ideas and tools to create budget-conscious, creative pieces to add to the booth display.There are three main ways that we "crafted Will's brand" in preparation of the show. Two of the ideas we came up with were sustainable ideas that we will continue to use in the future, and the third is one we will definitely do again for the next show, as it was a huge hit with the families we met that day.1. Create a rustic booth signWithout time to design a poster and get it printed, we had to think outside the box for how we were going to create a sign for our booth. With just a logo and website to work with, we decided to get creative.I have a Silhouette Cameo machine (aka a super fancy pair of scissors), which takes a design, creates a vector drawing from it, and cuts along the path that you create. This came in very handy when it came time to make our signs, and saved us a ton of money on printing costs. I simply cut out the design for Will's logo onto vinyl and transferred it to some frames that we had for the show.  2. Stamp and punch your own business cardsFor the same reasons we decided not to rush the design and printing of the poster, we decided to create our own business cards to hand out at the event. With time not on our side, we pulled out my tag punch, got a rush order on some stamps, and got to work.Stamps are one of the best marketing tools you can have for your small business. If you don't take my word for it, check out a post by (one of my favourite bloggers) Elise Joy, who explains why stamps are her favourite branding trick. In short, stamps are customizable, can be used on virtually any marketing materials you're sharing, and are super affordable. 3. Bake cookies!Need I say more? Who doesn't love a good cookie, and what better chance do you have to get your logo into the hands (and mouths) of your audience. Cookies are memorable, yummy, and will make you stand out (especially in a room full of pregnant women and young children).Although this was my idea, I am so proud to say that Will executed every part; from the baking of the cookies, to whipping up the icing, to the actual piping of the logo. These were a huge hit with everyone at the show, and was a perfect ice-breaker for starting the conversation. All in all, it was a fabulous show and we had a wonderful time. Even with the short notice, we managed to pull off a fun, rustic and creative booth with crafty ways of displaying his brand.