Best Design Online Newsletter Campaign

frog Design Mind is an online forum for idea exchange at the intersection of design and business, intended to illustrate the breadth of frog’s knowledge across disciplines that range from corporate strategy, economics, and consumer culture to art, design, and technology. The publication serves as a mouthpiece for industry observation, as well as company promotion, selling our services with the quality of our thoughts, rather than the slickness of our marketing.

Each issue, a feature story highlights a business or design development of the author’s choice. One column is devoted to the methodologies of our strategists and researchers, another to the observations of the technology team, another to strategy and economics. A case study features an inside look at a recent frog project, and an events listing offers readers a quick look at upcoming conferences, awards competitions, and discussions.

In 2007, we began to frame each issue around an individual theme, chosen for its relevance to frog’s business development goals and employee interests. The first of these, the Green Issue, gave us the opportunity to showacase our thought leadership in the environmental space. Its cover article, “The Designer’s Dilemma,” presented a call-to-arms for the creative community around issues of environmental responsibility – a proposal that has since gained industry-wide support and expanded into an online community, the Designers Accord. A related “Trash Talk” initiative, in which employees recorded their experiences living without creating garbage for two weeks at a time, attracted significant media attention, including NBC News and the New York Times.

Design Mind has helped us to initiate conversations with clients looking for evidence of frog’s expertise. Already, one leading US insurance provider chose to partner with frog on a major brand development project after receiving the Green Issue.

Readership is diverse and includes current and prospective clients, journalists and members of the media, industry peers and students. Subscribers have grown with each subsequent release, and the Design Mind micro-site has hosted over 13,545 unique visitors since its debut. The most recent issue captured a click-through rate of 35%, far surpassing the industry average of 5-15%. Articles have been picked up by BrandChannel, CNET, Core77, and Gizmodo, among others, and the publication was awarded the 2007 IAC Award for Best Newsletter in the Industry of Design.

Contributors:

FROG DESIGN INC.

Location: USA