Our Monroe Bank design wins prestigious Maxi Award—again
Monroe Bank recently received its second Maxi Award from the Indiana Bankers Association (IBA) for its website designed by Cairril.com Design & Marketing.

For 28 years, the IBA has recognized marketing and advertising excellence through the Maxi Awards. It's a high honor to receive a Maxi due to the intense nature of the competition.

Monroe Bank swept 3 awards for banks with over $500 million in assets, more than any other institution in the category. Besides the website, Monroe Bank won Maxi Awards for point of purchase and print advertising materials.
Read the full press release

Get the most from your rewards program
Does rewarding customers for referrals actually work? It depends on how your rewards program is structured. Here are a few things to consider:

• Do you need to reward your customer? Customers will make referrals to close friends without any reward (think of how many times you recommend a restaurant or doctor or mechanic to a pal). Research shows, however, that customers are more likely to make referrals beyond their intimates if they receive a reward.

• Whom do you reward? If the referral is between friends and family, reward the new customer or both people. If ties between existing customer and prospect are weak, reward your existing customer.

• How do you get more referrals per customer? Increase the size of the reward as the number of referrals increases, or reward customers who make a certain number of referrals.

The Holy Grail of rewards programs is, of course, to maximize qualified referrals. Make it easy for your best customers by telling them what qualities you look for in prospects—and reward them based on whether their referrals lead to a sale!
Source: "A Penny for Your Thoughts: Referral Reward Programs and Referral Likelihood" by Gangseog Ryu and Lawrence Feick. Journal of Marketing, 2007.

Why white space = sophistication
Want to communicate how swank your brand is? Don't fill every inch of your ads with clutter.

Customers viewing ads with considerable white space perceive the advertised product as more prestigious, sophisticated, trustworthy, and higher in product quality—and lower in risk than the same ad without white space.

Stripping things to the essentials says you have nothing to hide. Unlike "scientific" ads that use columns of tiny text to promise to help you lose weight overnight, simple ads show confidence in your brand and sophisticated style.
Want more sophistication in your brand? We can help! Contact us for a free initial consultation. Source: "How Nothing Became Something".

This month's winner: Elizabeth Barrette!
Our champ wins a digital print featuring this one-of-a-kind design. Have a favorite quote or saying? Send it in! If your quote is chosen, you'll receive a digital print of your custom design, suitable for framing! Check out your competition here.

Olympus Properties
In a town defined by a university, how do you reach a non-student market? This was the challenge for Olympus Properties, our long-standing client with classy, upscale residential and commercial spaces for rent and lease downtown.

We helped set the tone for The Mercury as an apartment community for the "urban sophisticate."

In our latest ad, we go to The Ryder Magazine, a monthly journal of culture for the Bloomington-area intelligentsia. Their July issue focuses on "summer reading for hipsters."

Picking up on that theme, we created a striking ad with the tagline "downtown space as hip as you are." The understated design catches the eye, the composition hits key marketing messages, and the color scheme picks up on the "summer hipster" feel with a sophisticated bent.

Olympus point person (and all-around fabulous human) Tyler Ferguson was delighted with the ad and immediately began looking at other avenues for placement. Multiple impressions of a striking ad are what make any ad campaign successful—pick up the July Ryder to see this one in action!

The ad designed by Cairril.com: