This job will drive us to drink...

Where does the time go? Over a month since my last post but hey ho that's just because we've been so so busy.

We're glad to say that we have finally seen the launch of Inspired Wine 's website. Together with our good friends Netfocus we have shed blood, sweat and tears over this (well two of the three anyway). Some jobs get log-jammed while we try and get on the client's wavelength and for a while we couldn't work out why, creatively, this was giving us such a headache. Only when we took a step back from the brand guidelines did we finally understand what the client really wanted. Sometimes you need to take a step back to go forward and so it proved here. But while it was certainly testing at times we all think it's the better for it.

Inspired Wine reckon they've spotted a gap in the UK market and are selling premium quality wine in boxes, delivering direct to your door or using customer collect via ByBox. A big problem for them is having to change people's attitudes to boxed wine which was traditionally cheap plonk you'd buy for parties at New Year. Anyway this is different, it's good stuff (my favourite is the Block Shiraz but apparently the Big House Zinfandel is a winner too) and we needed to make sure the website helps get that message across.

There's plenty of stuff to look at on the site but the main focus is the products so we wanted to push them right up front. The Meet the Wines feature was originally much bigger but we had to scale it down to get more content on screen, still I think it works. Social media, video and interactive jQuery elements all add to the user experience but Phill will no doubt bore you with the technical stuff in a follow up technical post.

Best thing to do is go take a look for yourself...and even better try some of the wine.

www.inspiredwine.co.uk

Just brilliant...

Sometimes the web just throws up the most useful, simple stuff.

How to Peel a Head of Garlic in Less Than 10 Seconds from SAVEUR.com on Vimeo.

The one that got away...

Here's a job that we didn't win but we like the concept and the design so much that we've decided to share anyway.

So just to give it some background we were approached by our client to take part in a competitive pitch for the rebrand and new website for their architect focused Lumaglass product. It's essentially their Reglit architectural glass with a thin electroluminescent tape which runs up the side. This makes the glass glow with an even wash of colour determined by the tape which can be matched to any colour you like. The colour effect is much better than conventional spotlighting and uses a fraction of the energy. It's a pretty amazing product and we were pretty keen to do it justice.

Anyway we didn't want to simply create a new logo, that's not what we're about. The brief called for a rebrand so we thought long and hard about giving Lumaglass a unique theme, something that they could build on and that could underpin their marketing efforts. We wanted to inspire their customers and fire the imagination, paint pictures with words and all that kind of stuff.

So we came up with a line that we thought captured the spirit of the product, 'We bring glass to life...' We thought that pretty much said it all, it turns ordinary architectural glass into something quite different, gives it another dimension and well...brings it to life.

So far so good we thought, we did a little animation that illustrated the theme and moved on to the website.

Lumaglass is specified by architects. A design conscious, visually sophisticated audience - well so are we so we're pretty certain that if we design something we like, the Lumaglass customers will like it too. Lights look better in the dark so it was a no brainer to opt for a dark theme to help project the colours and we gave it a bit of depth with a subtle spotlight effect on the background. Inspirational images and case studies appear near the top and these could be updated regularly to keep the site fresh. We wanted to highlight some of the site content on the homepage which also helps with SEO so we specified a nice typography style in a single column. This approach means that Lumaglass could have 3, 5, or more text/content blocks and it gives the whole site a nice, modern, blog feel.

We were happy with the theme, the logo was nice and the website we thought positioned the brand perfectly. The client asked us to send them our proposal ahead of the presentation...and that's where we made our mistake.

We like to surprise clients at our presentations, we like to see their faces when they see the work for the first time. We want to explain our thought process and the thinking behind what we do, it's as much about our performance too and getting the audience excited. We definitely don't like to send our work by email because even with a lengthy written rationale we know that people look first and read later, if at all, it's only natural.

So we decided to send a teaser document, like launching a new car design. We showed bits of the design, we showed a corner here and a bit of text there. We wanted to hold back the whole concept and the design for the great unveiling...and we never got the chance. The client didn't ask us to present and it turned out they felt we hadn't done enough work. Other submissions were more complete and they felt we hadn't done as much work as the other guys so we never got to explain and they never got to see our proposal.

It's a lesson learned in so far as we took our eye off the client perspective and thought they'd be intrigued if we showed them less. Would we do it any differently? Probably not, we still think it's right to present in person and we still want to see the clients face when they see the work for the first time.

Time to get sociable

Internet marketing via social media is all the rage at the moment and the constant buzz word on everyone’s lips, well should you, the answer is like most things in business, yes / no / maybe. Basically the more mountain tops you can shout from the better, especially and if, you can manage these as part of a co-ordinated link management and internet PR / marketing campaign you could be on to a winning combination. If you have a marketing department it's time get them trained and expand their job description. Social media will help inform users of what your brand offers, stands for, support offered and the experience they can expect for minimum initial cost and its here to stay even if the channels go out of favour.

Just because it appears to be the must have extension of everyone’s business does not mean that it should be embarked upon without the same level of analysis as any other marketing activity. At least from a technical aspect it appears fairly simple but how do you evaluate it and what are the gains and potential issues.

The most important question is, are your clients on it and what do you expect out of it. The bottom line is more business / enquiries but remember unless you develop a business based app to run within the network of your choice then its a standard marketing / PR and support exercise. This is when you will hear the words 'going viral' start to appear, and yes it is the holy grail of any campaign.

I am going to concentrate however on establishing your presence within some of the available social sites, what you do and where you direct your users. You can think of these channels, FaceBook, YouTube Linked In etc. as mini webs within the web as they are set up and encourage users to remain in their world and this is why you need a presence if your target audience is here. You will need to think carefully about what you can offer and how you will generate the content to keep users interested, engaged and visiting regularly.

The very least you should do is brand your presence within each provider and expand its offering as much as you can. In YouTube this is easy, firstly create your channel link here then brand it with a custom background and tailored colour scheme, there are plenty of guides on how to do this (http://mashable.com/2009/08/02/customize-youtube-channel/ ) but again its about relevant content. Generating video content for YouTube if a great way of creating material which can be used time and time again while offering the potential to become viral, this is best left to the pro's which is why we partner with Macmillan media for such tasks.

Facebook can be a bit more complex and again I will not go into it as there are many tutorials and apps which will help you such as: http://www.facebook.com/apps/application.php?id=190322544333196 . It's on facebook that we have had the most success to date by integrating clients existing website content within facebook pages, the best example is Kingdom Shopping Centre's Hippo competition (http://www.facebook.com/KingdomShoppingCentre - note that after 25 likes you are able to have a proper URL with your name company name in). Kingdom's marketing department quickly identified that the best place for entering this competition was Facebook and its success has been because the prospective users are already using Facebook, familiar with it and have a reason to use it and as a result it's not even on their own site. The forms, results pages and coding do however reside within the the main sites CMS – Activedition (http://www.activedition.com) which allows for a single point of management for updating the content using familiar tools. End result has been greater traffic and likes which has expanded Kingdoms internet presence and exposed visitors to other marketing messages.

With Persia (http://www.persiaglasgow.com/ ) we have created a mini version of their core site and allow users to make reservations from within Facebook, this is set to expand as Persia becomes more proactive over the next few months. Persia is a good example of the other social networking systems available with time spent maintaining and updating their presence on such sites as Urban Spoon, Google local and Tripadvisor all of which can cross link and help increase your exposure. Such user review channels do require a degree of reputation management and it is important to encourage and offer incentives for your client to submit reviews otherwise there is a danger that only those who have an issue will feel bothered to submit reviews. Do not be too afraid of bad reviews as long as you can address them, internet users expect and trust such variation and are cynical of anything too perfect, especially with the development of internet marketing companies manipulating these results.

The big issue all this raises is do you have the time to manage your social networking? While we can get you started, branding and adding useful tools, the day to day running is best coming from you as only you know your industry and clients. Be wary of agencies offering automatic feeds as these can easily overload your tweets / RSS feeds which although semi-relevant in content just becomes noise for your followers. Yes I know the auto re-tweet software can be tailored but think carefully before using them. When it comes to general internet exposure and blogs do you trust a student stuck in an office somewhere answering and commenting on your behalf? Unless they are qualified in your field and understand your corporate culture / brand I am not sure I would trust them, once published that it's out there for good.

Ideas belong to the creative...

I was interested to see the T-mobile viral they produced to celebrate (or exploit - depends on your point of view) the royal wedding. Whether you like their marketing or not you have to admit it is quite well done and I did smile when I watched it. But it's not their idea, at least the concept isn't although admittedly they have put their own spin on it. The original idea as far as I'm aware came from another YouTube video called JK Wedding Entrance Dance - go watch it, it's very funny.





Now on the face of it you might say T-mobile have taken something that's in the public domain, adapted it and created something new. Well Shepard Fairey might be inclined to disagree with you there. Who he? He's the guy who 'created' that iconic illustrated image of Barack Obama, used extensively on merchandise during his presidential campaign. He's the guy that Associated Press sued over the rights to use the photograph that he based his illustration on. I'd post the image here but I'm frightened we'll get sued so here's a link http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-12720159

On that basis it would be fair to assume that 'Jill and Kevin' could sue for fees due for the creative idea or at least for a substantial donation to the charity they support?

I'll be interested to see if anything happens on the T-mobile front. They may make a donation to deflect any criticism or there may be no objection from Jill and Kevin. Of course if they decided to sue and T-mobile decided to fight, it would be a reversal of the Shepard Fairey case and we'd have the little guys going after the big guys.

Good enough to eat...

We’ve just launched the website for Glasgow’s premier Persian restaurant...aptly named Persia. It’s been an education that’s for sure. Persian food isn’t something we’ve come across before but we’re all about learning new things and if you can have a good lunch along the way then we’re all for that.

The restaurant has been open for about a year and has received rave reviews in the press so we had a certain responsibility to do the restaurant and the food justice. We were keen to capture some of the colour and variety of a cuisine that few Glaswegians will be familiar with and while we hadn’t intended to photograph much of the food, when we saw the results we knew it had to be an integral part of the design.

Now that the site is live we’ll be working with Persia over the next few months to promote the site, integrate an online takeaway system and do some work on the social networking side. Of course this will mean a few more meetings at the restaurant, around lunch-time, as usual.

Take a look - www.persiaglasgow.com

Whats next for 2011

2010 may be the year of the app and when social networking becomes truly integrated into our daily lives, for good or ill...but what next?

2011 looks like more of the same although this time the apps are going to follow social networking as an extension of our daily routines providing entertainment, networking, managing the home and supplying user centric information. This all looks more likely due to the convergence of technology and portability of apps using a common data source and cloud storage / computing. (Cloud computing is another of these new technologies which is also going to be adsorb unconsciously into daily life during 2011) Apps stores have now migrated to smart TV's, e-books with the current crop of smart phones and tablets running existing app friendly OS's. This will potently be Android's greatest strength as it could easily be used to drive all these platforms whereas Apple (the current app leader) relies on their propriety hardware solutions.

http://www.androidguys.com/2010/10/12/sony-starts-developer-inquiries-google-tv-apps/

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-09-07/samsung-electronics-may-use-google-s-android-software-in-tvs.html

I fear Symbion may have missed the boat, hence Nokia taking it back in-house but then I thought that about RIM. RIM's survival shows Symbion the way with its roaming data USP while trying to expand its media libraries, although 2011 looks difficult. Windows look set to make progress with the release of Windows 7 mobile operating systems and combined with its strength in the PC and games console market shows potential. 2011 looks set for a great battle of the universal sub PC OS's which can run your all appliances in some scalable form.

Apple will still thrive of course as no one can manage desirability, loyalty and ease of use like the big 'A', if your grandparent's going to get into new technologies and you don't want to spend all evening talking them through it for the umpteenth time them tell them to get an Apple TV. On a personal note after nearly 2 decades of using Macs I do get tired of users criticising Windows for backwards compatibility where Apple drops users at will with new OS and hardware requirements. The power of the brand!

Android's price (free), features, scalability and ability to reach across the whole market should mean its going into 2011 as the favourite and although there are other new OS such as Brew it looks like Google's timing is spot on. It will be interesting to see Android 3 release versions to see how they view its development, lets hope they keep the core hardware requirements realistic.

This battle is all important as it will determine the dominant mini OS for the app development platform, who 5 years ago would have bet on anyone other than Microsoft?

Lets just hope some industry standards evolve to make this easier so my kitchen app turns my oven and dishwasher on (I know the load my dishwasher app isn't going to happen in 2011 but what about 2015) while optimising the energy use from my fridge via my smart energy app.

Have to admit that a denial of service attack could have all new connotations in the future.