Insights

Safe. Generic. Blends in. Nothing a company would want to be associated with regarding their brand identity. Unfortunately, many companies suffer from a lack of uniqueness, memorability, and diversity within their branding strategy. This can be attributed to several different factors including struggling to keep up with customer demands and competitors, a lack of purpose behind branding efforts, and playing it too safe or oversimplifying branding efforts. When it comes to a successful branding strategy and digital experience, many say that “simple is always better.” However, this thought process often oversimplifies a company’s brand assets and customer experience.

As this year’s ASAE Annual Meeting came to a close, we sat down with Yes& President and CEO, Bob Sprague, and Director of Production, Sara Rassi, to learn more about the event, Yes&’s role, and this year’s take-a-ways.

2022 conferences are back in action! Fall is busy and Yes& is thrilled to be back in person at some upcoming events across the D.C. area. We hope to run into you at one of these events. Please stop by and say hello!

There are many ways to measure time… cycles of the earth, sun, moon, and planets; darkness and light; the changing color of leaves. If you’re like me, a busy working mom of two with an early morning Peloton addiction, marking time by Starbucks’ seasonal coffee drink offerings seems about as good a way as any: winter is Peppermint Mocha season; spring is Iced Toasted Vanilla Oatmilk Shaken Espresso season; summer is Nitro season; and fall is, obviously, Pumpkin Spice Latte season.

Fall is officially in full swing. The leaves in your neighborhood are changing and slowly starting to fall. Your family is debating how soon is too soon to start decorating the house for Halloween. And all anyone can talk about is pumpkin: pumpkin spice, pumpkin bread, pumpkin pie, and pumpkin picking.

Andrew Teie, Yes& Vice President of Brand Strategy & Customer Experience shares about a day in the life working on the Yes& strategy team. No two days are the same in the world of brand marketing—particularly a full-service agency like Yes& where we pride ourselves on tackling a wide array of challenges for a variety of clients and target audiences. We embrace these challenges with positivity (Yes) in order to unlock new possibilities (&) that take the brand to new heights.

The headlines swing like a pendulum of doomsaying, driving businesses to the brink of a pit of despair.

Everyone should be concerned about cybersecurity, especially as adversaries launch a wide range of cyberattacks on the nation’s businesses and institutions, disrupting how people live, work, conduct business and seek services from the government.

Calling all associations! You're invited. We have good news & bad news. The bad news is - the associations community has been battered by the economics of the pandemic; being faced with very real hurdles and a need to transform business models, offerings, and resources. The good news? We can help. It’s not too late to face these challenges head-on with confidence. Disruption = Opportunity – let’s focus on what opportunities we have to do things differently. Join us for a three-part workshop, curated just for associations on Tuesday, October 25. Industry experts from Yes&, Joyn, and Membership University are teaming up for a workshop curated just for associations. Learn about factors that drive member activity and engagement, how to boost your retention metrics, and how to curate unforgettable experiences for your community. The workshop will have 3 interactive sessions: Building a Tribe:  How to turn your member retention numbers into growth and revenue (Presented by Joyn) Creating Unforgettable Member Experiences (Presented by Yes& Agency) The End of Membership As We Know It: Where Do We Go From Here? (presented by Membership University) Meet The Speakers Jordana Well, Yes& Vice President, Director of Experience Design Tracy Betts, Yes& Senior Vice President, Digital Innovation Dane Blackburn, Senior Sales Director, Joyn Olly Matthews, Head of Sales, Joyn Sarah Sladek, CEO & Chief Strategist, XYZ University

Alexandria, VA, Oct. 05, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Yes& continued to expand its integrated advertising and marketing services to clients by creating a branded content studio. Content has long been a strength for Yes&; now with the acquisition of EFX Media, an established Washington, D.C.-area provider of video and motion graphics and Big Picture, Inc., a Chantilly, VA creative media production company, Yes& has significantly boosted its capacity to provide the types of rich media proven to increase engagement. “Content is a building block for any future-focused marketing strategy,” said Bob Sprague, Yes& President, CEO, and founder. “Formalizing our content studio—and building it around the EFX and BPI teams, who are already making a huge contribution—makes our content development and production even more seamless for clients. We are now even better equipped to provide them with outstanding written, graphic, video, animated, and experiential content, quickly and from one integrated source.” Yes& clients, ranging from commercial brands to associations, not-for-profits, and government agencies, are frequently sitting upon massive volumes of knowledge and information. To deliver tangible business value, it must be developed into multiple forms of content in order to meet audiences where they are. “Create once, publish everywhere,” adds Tracy Betts, Yes& Senior Vice President of Digital Innovation. “The Yes& content studio gives us the capacity to transform clients’ content strategies, creating micro-campaigns that drive engagement across platforms.” “We found the appetite for content is insatiable. And it is essential to building a consistent brand experience. Our content studio will be a great resource to marketing and communications teams who need both high quality and rapid response,” said Josh Golden, Yes& Chief Creative Officer. “We’re thrilled to introduce our clients to the expanded capabilities and the outstanding talents we have added. It’s all part of our quest to reach audiences with meaningful, valuable, and crave-able content.”

The creative process is inherently nonlinear, and there’s certainly no right or wrong way to get to a final design result, but there is a ton of opportunity along the way to discover new possibilities. Diving into the process of research, ideating, sketching, and refining is unique for every creative and every project. There are no set rules or guidelines to the creative process that we can share with you to guarantee success. However, there is plenty of structure in what we do at Yes&. We are always thinking and working with the mindset of “&” that takes our work to its full potential. We sat down with Yes& Creative Directors, Brian Domenici, Jen Fose, and Claudia Barac-Roth to interview them on their own personal creative process and how they incorporate “&” thinking into their design.

We often hear about the stress of finding a job or even just enjoying a job—the culture, corporate politics, jargon, expectations, and the relationships established—but what we should be talking about is opportunity and growth within a company.