Desygner Talk Series Interview with Techstars
Desygner Talk Series is a collaborative testimonial interview with our clients and customers around the world on how Desygner helps to improve their internal marketing and graphic design processes.
In this episode of Desygner Talk Series we talk to the Techstars marketing team on just how Desygner has helped refine their internal marketing processes as they publish edible graphics to thousands of event attendees around the world.
We interviewed Jessica Ford, Brand Communications Manager, Sorawi Phongsakonsunthon, Customer Success Coordinator, and Kerri Popperwell Launchpad Community Curator at Falmouth University and recent winner of Techstars Startup weekend.
Techstars is an American-based startup accelerator company that was seeking the right solution to streamline its design and marketing asset management workflows. Before using Desygner their teams felt they were on their own, creating different materials in different languages and they were struggling to keep all their materials for events on-brand.
Read on and watch the full interview video to learn more:
1. Can you describe the Techstars journey before and after incorporating Desygner?
Jessica: So in the beginning, all of our event organizers were having to create the materials on their own. We didn’t have a centralized way of providing them with the platform or providing them with anything other than some brand guidelines. I really feel like it’s helped just bring everything under our updated branding and that’s really helped us with the process of completely doing a brand change on our own, which was huge. Now by incorporating Desygner and bringing it to our community, it’s really giving them resources to be able to build the materials, which in the beginning they were having to do all on their own. Now we are able to provide them with this great tool, and it all follows our own guidelines. So that’s been super helpful.
Sorawi: Previously we used to have just a basic template for our community leaders to use on Canva, just basic ones with little guidance, and obviously that can take up quite a lot of time for the team just to design the materials, as well as having to look for venues and look for sponsors. So being able to give them access to Desygner with the different templates that are super easy to use, they can just go on without having any knowledge of being like a professional designer to create a great event promotional materials. I’ve also been working closely with community leaders and they have been seeing how simple it is to use.
2. How does Desygner help Techstars overcome some of the really big internal marketing challenges?
Jessica: It has definitely taken a lot of load off of the design team that we had. It allowed us to really give those tools to people who are not technically designers and have them build marketing materials that are on-brand. So it’s made a huge difference for us. Instead of always having to go to one of our designers and request a little thing or a little item to change we’re able to do this all on our own now. So that’s really helped us follow more of a centralized marketing process throughout Techstars. Now, we’re able to train and implement the Desygner tool to different departments and allow them to be able to create materials on their own.
3. How have you found using Desygner to organize and actually promote your events with Techstars?
Kerri: I’ve been using all of the Techstars templates to sort and produce our social media graphics and to produce posters that we will print out to put around the local area. Nearer to the time of the actual event, I’ll also use templates for signage. The great thing is that everything is there in one space ready to go. So all you need to do is to drop in your text, drop in your logo, drop in your image, and save it. So it’s super easy, which is good and which is what you want especially when you’ve got so many other tasks going on.
4. How have you found the process of using the restrictions feature of Desygner? Was it a problem before not having restrictions for creating your marketing materials?
Jessica: So that was a huge problem for us. We were having a lot of people create materials that were off-brand. So this has really allowed us to have our fonts used correctly, and also have people use the correct color palette, just simple things like that that were really becoming an issue for us. Desygner has allowed us to bring all of that together and build materials that are always on-brand. And it’s just taken a lot of the load off of our team and allowed more time and freedom for other tasks.
Sorawi: With Desygner, they don’t have to worry about where they are going to put the logo, they don’t have to even think about if it should be on the left-hand-side, or on the right-hand-side, it’s all automated. By having that lock option, they know exactly where it needs to go. They just need to choose the colors or the image background and they can finish. I also think the platform is particularly helpful for new teams. We also work a lot with young University students as well that host the events. So by having these templates with these locked elements, they don’t have to worry about having that professional designer skill within them. They can literally just create it. Anyone can create a great logo and marketing materials using Desygner templates.
5. Techstars creates events in over 150 countries. How have you found Desygner helps the process of creating marketing materials with the added challenges of different languages and different cultures?
Jessica: So having everyone on one platform and on Desygner has really allowed us to provide just one cohesive experience because as I mentioned before, when we didn’t really have a tool to provide them with, it was just people all off on their own, creating different materials in different languages, and our branding was all over the place. So having this tool has allowed us to get our global community events under our new branding, and now it’s allowed us to expand into the other events that we have at Techstars. All of our accelerator event programs put on their own events and we have a pipeline that fits their business and so there’s a lot of pipeline events where we’re trying to meet new people. This has allowed us to expand from just our community events into our other types of events that we’re putting on where we’re catching a lot of different aspects of the business, and this has allowed us to have everything be really cohesive.
6. How do you train your community to use the Desygner platform and what has been their feedback in adapting to the tool?
Sorawi: Once their application has been approved we move straight away to educating them and training them on using Desygner and showing them the resources that Desygner has produced to step you through using the platform. Desygner has a lot of information and customer support already set up for people to navigate through the tool, so I just normally advise them to have a play around and start using it. Desygner is super intuitive, so it’s super easy to use.
Kerri: It’s really easy to use and I’m not a Desygner. I work in Marketing Comms but I’ve always had a design team I could brief jobs into, so at first, I was a little daunted about learning how to be a designer but it couldn’t be more easy to use. It’s very intuitive.
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7. How have you found the Desygner graphics and templates to assist you for your specific topics of interest for your events?
Jessica: That has been really helpful for me on the marketing side as we do have specific themed events. We have different themed initiatives where we have a month of events happening around the world on the theme of sustainability and we have organizers around the world all doing events on sustainability, so it’s allowed me to pick images that’s going to represent sustainability in that vertical and no matter where that person is located that can access the correct image. They can look at the collection that we have picked and it allows us to tie in all the events globally and be on-brand without having to have lots of meetings. It’s all just there and it’s all cohesive.
8. Can you expand a little more about some of the new features your team is using like animation and automation and how they are using these to create marketing materials for your events?
Jessica: We have been looking at the animation feature with the team for social media materials. We love how this new feature can easily make Instagram stories come to life and pop with just a few clicks. And the teams are having a lot of fun with this feature. With automation, this has been more helpful on my side in the marketing department when I’m setting up different marketing campaigns in the verticals when I want to easily change something and it’s quickly and easily updated across all the collections. It saves so much time not having to recreate a whole new designed template each time I need to make a small change.
9. What’s next for Techstars and how do you see Techstars and Desygner working together in the future?
Jessica: We are looking at expanding our community events and our accelerator events around the world so working with Desygner will allow us to provide tools to the different programme teams around the world and keep them on-brand. It’s extremely important for us to stay on-brand and spread the various materials to all the teams where they can build materials for their events with confidence. It’s really allowing us to do our jobs faster and easier at Techstars, so we love working with the Desygner Enterprise tool.
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