“Green” with envy over your friends super slick packaging? Thinking “gosh, that’s cool, but I really don’t want to spend that much per piece!” Introducing the best kept secret in wedding packaging … Kraft and Jute!

Kraft and Jute is a Pennsylvania based company making simple, beautiful eco-friendly packaging solutions catered to fit your business needs. Their main focus is for photographers, but many of their products I’ve used for wedding films. They have also customized products I’ve sketched on napkins and helped them design!

For what they offer, their price point per piece is very fair. Their customer service is off the charts and their facebook page is loaded with images of products. You will want one of everything when you are done browsing their online store. The best part is, you can dress up or dress down the “eco friendly” kraft look to be more modern or more earthy. It’s really a versitile style that many companies could implement… just see for yourself.

Filmed by my “high school  helper” Alex (more about interns/helpers in this post, here.)

Images and Stitching Video Clips by Kraft and Jute. Follow them on Facebook here, and Twitter here.

Music provided by: The Music Bed (Untitled by Ben Rector)

Meg Simone

Wedding filmmaker, avid skier, and travel enthusiast!

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Branding… It’s who you are and what you are about. It is what defines your company and separates you from your competition. Your branding is what attracts potential couples to you. Do you have your best foot forward? Is your branding consistent? Are you maintaining your brand the way that you need to be to make sure that the best representation of your work is out there?

Today’s post focuses on a checklist of items that you need to keep maintained in order to make sure that potential brides are seeing the best that your brand has to offer.

TarynP

Taryn Bills attended Arizona State University and graduated Cum Laude from the Walter Cronkite School of Broadcast Journalism. She worked in community relations at the Phoenix NBC affiliate, then moved on to an account executive position for Infinity Broadcasting where she discovered her passion for Sales and Marketing. After 3 years she left radio for a 3-year stint in pharmaceutical sales, during which time she and her husband started Serendipity Videography. She has served as the sales and marketing director of award winning Serendipity for 6 years as well as with their baby sister company Simply Cinema. When she is not busy growing her own businesses, she offers marketing and consulting services for various companies who need assistance in growing their brand and increasing their sales.

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You’ll want to provide your couple with an experience, not just a disc. Enhancing your packaging and providing your couples with a pleasant viewing experience will be something that they won’t soon forget. Put yourself in the couple’s place, what is going to enhance their first viewing experience? Consider adding some popcorn, candy, tissues, or a giftbasket. Anything you can think of that fits the couple and is consistent with your brand. Don’t forget to include a hand-written thank you card.

Comment below and share some of your packaging ideas; things that have worked or not worked with your company in the past.

Thanks for watching!

Mentioned websites:
Great alternatives to standard DVD/Blu-ray cases
jewelboxing.com
loktah.com

Websites for packaging and shipping ideas/solutions
uline.com
packagingsource.com

Jet

Jet Kaiser saved up enough money to by his first camcorder at the age of 14 and he's been creating films ever since. He eventually created the Indianapolis-based, Jet Kaiser Films where he collaborates his with his lovely wife, Dani. Together they produce cinematic, story-rich, "motion pictures for those in LOVE™ "

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Giving your clients a digital copy not only creates a convenient off-site back up, it also enables them to share your work more easily. There are tons of online companies that offer custom flash drives, I’ve had great luck with Flashbay & usbmemorydirect.com.

Do you offer digital copies on flash drives or other medium? Feel free to share your experiences by commenting below. The IN[FOCUS] community would  love to hear what works well for you and your company.

Jet

Jet Kaiser saved up enough money to by his first camcorder at the age of 14 and he's been creating films ever since. He eventually created the Indianapolis-based, Jet Kaiser Films where he collaborates his with his lovely wife, Dani. Together they produce cinematic, story-rich, "motion pictures for those in LOVE™ "

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So you just completed a wedding film and it looks awesome. You are now very excited to share it with the couple. How do you present your finished product to them? Do you invite them over to your studio for their official first viewing or send them a package with their film inside?

Think about it. Where are you going to achieve the best first impression? Put yourself in their shoes. If you (the couple) are going to watch a movie about your relationship and wedding, it’s probably going to make you cry, where would you want to be for this?

If you’ve done your job correctly, they are going to love their film no matter where they watch it, but enjoying it from the comfort of their own cozy living room with add to the emotional experience. If you were to ask your couples how and where they want to view their film for the first time, you will find out that they will choose their own homes.

Many of us have beautiful studios with a lot invested in providing a great viewing platform and we’d love to host the couple for a viewing party, BUT If we think about what our clients truly want, and not so much what we want, we will choose to not do this.

Putting your couple first and creating an experience for them to enjoy within their own home is essential for a powerful and lasting first impression of their film…and, more importantly, will lead to more excitement, referrals, and bookings.

Jet Kaiser
Putting couples first since 2005

Jet

Jet Kaiser saved up enough money to by his first camcorder at the age of 14 and he's been creating films ever since. He eventually created the Indianapolis-based, Jet Kaiser Films where he collaborates his with his lovely wife, Dani. Together they produce cinematic, story-rich, "motion pictures for those in LOVE™ "

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So you just finished up a beautiful 20-minute wedding feature and you are so excited to send it off to the couple. You create and upload a trailer to tease everyone and everybody cannot wait to see the final product. But wait! The full wedding film is on DVD…only.

But there are dozens if not hundreds of individuals eager-to-view, what about them? How will they get to see it? One solution is for the couple to buy some extra DVD/Blu-ray copies, but for the most part, couples are unmotivated to do so and have more on their plate.  If the full wedding film is restricted to optical media only, most of the guests at the wedding will never have the chance to see the full, finished masterpiece that you spent the last 2 weeks piecing together.

Making your longer edits (features, short forms, or whatever the kids are calling them now-a-days) available online creates an open avenue to display your true talent and product to anyone connected to the happy couple. The video above shares some ideas and some basic how-to’s to get you started if you haven’t already began sharing your longer edits online.

The couple is going to be thrilled that their film is online and easily shareable. You can offer full wedding video hosting as an addition to a package or surprise the couple with it after they receive their package. It’s up to you as to how you’ll offer it, but the key is to understand how important it is for the couple to have it sharable online. Happy couples should always be your top priority!

Since everyone’s sites are setup differently, I can’t tell you the best way to add an online checkout to your site/blog. We use PayPal because it easy and most web-savvy folks have a PayPal account. I’d encourage you to explore some of the options that PayPal has for merchants. Google Checkout is another popular online selling tool which has grown in popularity the last couple of years. Definitely worth looking into as well.

Has sharing your features online worked out for you and your company? Let me know. Have some concerns? Lemme know your thoughts

Jet

Jet Kaiser saved up enough money to by his first camcorder at the age of 14 and he's been creating films ever since. He eventually created the Indianapolis-based, Jet Kaiser Films where he collaborates his with his lovely wife, Dani. Together they produce cinematic, story-rich, "motion pictures for those in LOVE™ "

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At IN[FOCUS] 2011, Ray Roman of Ray Roman Films opened the “Book of Ray” once again to share his thoughts on high-end marketing.

In this clip, Ray challenges you to think outside the box regarding how you select your studio space.

You can go deeper with Ray by attending one of his acclaimed intensive seminars and/or by checking him out (along with many others) at Exposed Down Under in Australia in July.

This is a taste of the 10+ hours of seminars we have online from our 2011 event. You may buy these 8 seminars by clicking on the button below. The price remains at a discounted rate of $197 until we get them all uploaded and polished ($250 thereafter). To know more about which seminars are included in the bundle, and to login to view them, click here.

The Reporter

Team IN[FOCUS] believes that there's no better life than living it as a filmmaker, and we empower you to survive, thrive, and serve in that capacity through the most progressive means of education and community.

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At IN[FOCUS] 2011, Steve Zugelter from Studio Z Films and John Moon from NorthernLight Filmworks brought it on all things branding, and gave a lot to think about in how we use words to define ourselves and tell our story.

Our brand experience is found within the words we use to communicate who we are and what we do.  Never underestimate the power of the semantics that we choose to use in every aspect of an encounter with a potential client…ahem, couple.

This is a taste of the 10+ hours of seminars we have online from our 2011 event. You may buy these 8 seminars by clicking on the button below. The price remains at a discounted rate of $197 until we get them all uploaded and polished ($250 thereafter). To know more about which seminars are included in the bundle, and to login to view them, click here.

John and Jennifer Moon

A brand is many things, and when we do not realize the scope of all that a brand encompasses, we do not develop our brand experience as fully as we need.

At IN[FOCUS] 2011, Steve Zugelter from Studio Z Films and John Moon from NorthernLight Filmworks brought it on all things branding, and gave you more to think about in your branding journey beyond your logo and website.

This is a taste of the 10+ hours of seminars we have online from our 2011 event. You may buy these 8 seminars by clicking on the button below.  The price remains at a discounted rate of $197 until we get them all uploaded and polished ($250 thereafter). To know more about which seminars are included in the bundle, and to login to view them, click here.

John and Jennifer Moon

John and I have been talking about branding for some time now and have gone through the transformation process from our old logo/website last year.  This year we have been focusing on the transformation of our studio to reflect our rebranding process, and while not yet complete, we still have some changes to show you that can you thinking about how to re-brand your space.

In the photo above, notice one of the very first things we had changed, the logo on our door.  Our old logo had green and purple and lots of black, so changing to white, bluish green and orange was a noticeable difference!

After getting the new logo put on the door, the next thing we did was pick out paint color for the walls.  The color before was a very light sage color.  I took my business card to the paint store and was able to pick out a color that was identical to the lighter part of our logo.  The next step was a trip to IKEA where we picked out white furniture: a new credenza, desks and printer stand, candles, and the white and orange boxes.  The book shelf you seen in the photo will either be painted white or we will buy a new white one.  You can also see the white Christmas tree and blue ornaments to stay with our brand.

(For some reason the tree looks pink in this picture even though it really is white.  But when I balanced for the tree, all the other white was very blue.)

We opted for the sleek and simple white desk.  This is our main workstation.

This is our second workstation area.  The wall space between the two workstations will have a screen for our new HD projector.  We briefly talked about getting 1 long desk and have both workstations on it, but sometimes you need your space!

For our client meeting area, we explored several options for this and decided to go with the more economical and just re-cover our hickory bench with new fabric (which I did myself) and buy new pillows for the back.  The sofa we were wanting cost $500, so I felt like a deal-maker when I only spent $40 for the fabric, $40 for the new foam cushion under the fabric, and $60 for the pillows.

I purchased the white chairs from Overstock.com and got them both for $150.  I kept the pillows from before and placed them on the chairs because they have our colors (blue and orange) in them.  I special ordered the rug from Home Depot and it is the exact dark color of our logo.  At some point, we will be adding a coffee table to the center of the meeting area.

While there are some changes that remain, when our clients walk into our studio they can see the connection between our logo, website, and blog.  We have a brand and it is reflected though out the client experience.

John and I are looking forward to seeing everyone at IN[FOCUS] 2011 next month in New Orleans.

Jennifer Moon
Northernlight Filmworks

John and Jennifer Moon