President Virgilio introduced our speaker, Ramon Peralta, the founder and Creative Director of Peralta Design, located in Shelton. Mr. Peralta has over 20 years of experience in the development corporate identities and marketing design. Ramon and his family live in Shelton.
As part of the creative team responsible for the launch of Priceline and its brands, Ramon learned early on how effective the creation of a corporate identity can be. The focus, when creating a brand, he says, is to first determine, “what makes you different”. Priceline created in him a passion for starting new companies. After it moved to Norwalk, he spent 10 years working at a business which started companies.
The advent of the financial crisis in 2008 ended that venture, and taking into consideration the difficulty of “catching lightening in a bottle two times”, he started his own company. After not that many years, Peralta Design has its offices in downtown Shelton, with six employees. Ramon decided not to outsource the work and considers the company’s in-house experience in the creative process to be a distinguishing characteristic of his brand (most companies outsource). He describes the differentiating concept of a successful brand as being indicated by, “what people say about you when you’re not in the room”. You need a compelling reason why cusomers should come to you.
Priceline’s brand used to be “name your own price”. Ramon asked whether anyone remembered Trump’s slogan, and most did, but we couldn’t remember Hillary Clinton’s slogan, indicating that it needs some work! He reminded us that nobody has to read anything to associate the golden arches with McDonalds.
Peralta Design’s services include website design, development, print design, interactive media, video and animation. The company’s clients include many large corporations such as NBC, Disney and Sikorsky, and he has created educational websites and branding aimed at children for the Chicago Cubs (major league baseball branding) and for Warren Buffett (to teach financial literacy to kids).
Locally, Ramon has worked with many non-profits, he just launched the Barnum Gestival website {In collaboration with Bob Abate Marketing}, and is in the process of setting up a website for The Workplace. “Everybody needs good branding”, non-profits along with other businesses!
Thanks to President Virgilio for persuading his friend, Ramon, to speak to us about Peralta Design. And thank you to Ramon for such a great presentation.
