UXIdeas blog

I can’t say it’s always true, but many times we come across situations like this one:

I went to the Engage for Branding half day conference with the IAB yesterday. It was basically all about how the Internet and mobile can be used to build brands – not just for direct response and transactions. All presentations will be uploaded here in the next couple of days: http://www.iabuk.net/en/1/eventsarch.html

It started off with a study completed by aevolve research and the IAB on the success of OLA for retail brands. Slightly depressing facts like only 5% of the perception we have of retail brands comes from marketing communications. Good news for digital though – as 40% of this 5% comes from online advertising, but OLA only constitutes 2.5% of the marcoms spend of retail brands on average. Websites and ecommerce were also huge factors in building perceptions. I am going to get the woman from aevolve in as they have an interesting tracking methodology that involves qual to define metrics, then quant, then modelling that takes into account channel effects and weights each metric. Please let me know if you would be interested.

Next up were AOL who talked about their “Brand New World” research on how brands are built online. Find it here online: http://www.digitaltrainingacademy.com/research/AOL_Brand_New_World.pdf

The a guy from Worth who has been looking into the use of online video and pre-rolls on video sites. Nothing groundbreaking, just a case study from McCain who put their TV ad online. He did borrow heavily from the following EIAA Media Consumption report however, which is interesting. Key highlights available online: http://www.eiaa.net/Ftp/casestudiesppt/EIAA%5FMediascope%5FEurope%5F2007%5FPan%5FEuropean%5FExecutive%5FSummary%2Epdf

Next was the founder of Pigsback who banged on about how great his portal was as a place where people want to actively engage with brands. Pigsback supposedly has over 400,000 active members. He did have an interesting case study from Baileys however which you can look at once his presentation is uploaded. What I found interesting was the fact that they could trace redeemed coupons back to individuals so they could then survey them on their experience of the product. They can also survey people who printed the coupon but never redeemed and found many still bought the product anyway – interesting for Burger King!

Next a boring case study about Lucazade Sport. He did reference a good speech from Jim Stengel (Some big wig at P&G) at the AAAR last year which asserts that marketing should now be about understanding NOT controlling behaviour. See it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b7MzPJJDPmc

He also referenced the MEthod brand of cleaning products in the US, who have used digital well and made cleaning high interest and “sexy”. I have saved a Datamonitor case study here: S:\Digital Planning Resources\Research New\Industries\FMCG\Method Cleaning Products Case Study 2008 Datamonitor.pdf

Finally there was a talk from the Digital Strategy Director of Lowe on their creation of the newish Stella Artois site which has won countless awards. His basic idea was to make navigation into a dramatic narrative experience NOT just a flat way to display information. Take a look for yourself: http://www.stellaartois.com/agecheck.php?from=http%3A%2F/www.stellaartois.com/ Beautiful use of interactive video and another great example that it is a little traditional story telling that can make brands interesting.

He also mentioned a word of mouth marketing company who seeded the site to bloggers. They provided them with special silk screen posters and coasters. Nice bit of blogger relations. The company was called 1,000 Heads – check them out: http://www.brandvocal.com/1000heads/

http://emptybottle.org/bullshit/

The idea of using a bullshit generator to appear clever and trendy in any client meeting could be tempting for some people! I just found it a bit limited… Some examples are (and you’ll probably get similar expressions):

• remix semantic communities
• post podcasting communities
• capture rich-client network effects

It’s not difficult to create your own web2.0 bullshit like “fostering new ajax based mashup aggregators in user generated content”. It probably means something for someone

And just to update you on my Cyber Lions shortlist post here is the link for the Cyber Lions winners:

http://www.canneslions.com/winners/cyber/win_1_1.htm

It’s amazing that there are so many Brazilians in the shortlist every year

http://www.canneslions.com/winners/cyber/short_0_1.htm

http://www.tex-server.org/

This link came into my inbox yesterday. It appears to be some sort of a portfolio site for a guy who I think is called Marc Kremers. His site makes it difficult to know exactly what he does. It’s absolutely chaotic and goes against all user experience design stands for. It’s impossible to find the content you’re after and its not at all clear how you are supposed to interact with the site. Despite this, playing with it becomes addictive interactive experience. It’s like looking through a jumble sale with some absolute treasures buried there somewhere.

Kathryn has sent this though our internal email list today:

Gartner defines a disruptive technology as one that causes major change in ‘the accepted way of doing things’, including business models, processes, revenue streams, industry dynamics and consumer behaviour. They are:

1. Multicore and hybrid processors
2. Virtualisation and fabric computing
3. Social networks and social software
4. Cloud computing and cloud/Web platforms
5. Web mashups
6. User Interface
7. Ubiquitous computing
8. Contextual computing
9. Augmented reality
10. Semantics

Look here for more detail: http://www.gartner.com/it/page.jsp?id=681107

On the 8th, 9th and 10th of May, I went with a group of colleagues to the Offf festival in Lisbon, a ‘cutting-edge festival exploring the latest in digital aesthetics and software language’. The event was situated in a fantastic warehouse called the LX Factory, which was an amazing setting to spend three days in. The food, beer, people and atmosphere were all great, not to mention the insights of all the many artists who presented their work and thoughts. Here are a few of my highlights from the 3 days:

Erik Natzke – Uses Flash to create absolutely beautiful motion graphics and print work. He allows the computer to draw strokes and decide the outcome of a piece, while maintaining control by selecting defining the palettes and behaviours the computer can use.

Erik Natzke blog 1

Erik Natzke blog 2

Erik Natzke on Flickr

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rAndom International – A collective of RCA graduates; Stuart Wood, Flo Ortkrass and Hanneswith a view of ‘creating unique and experiential design projects’. Although they come from a product design background, most of their work revolves around new media. They have a very lateral way of thinking and I noticed they use a similar brainstorming method to the Design Interactions MA course at RCA, where ideas are drawn rather than simply written. Koch established

rAndom International blog

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Joshua Davis – Similar to Erik Natzke, Joshua Davis creates illustrations, which have a Flash-generated random element in the process. Davis randomly places drawn elements according to rules that he writes in Action script. He will then continue to play the Flash movie again and again, hundreds of times, until he sees a composition he likes, before he exports or prints it.

Joshua Davis website

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Alex Trochut – A typographer and illustrator, equally passionate about disciplines. In a festival full of massive egos, it was great to see this guy show us through his simply amazing work and be so humble about it. He received a very warm reception. Intricate doesn’t come close to explaining the detail of his work, and the processes he follows to arrive their.

Alex Trochot website

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Group94 - A Belgian based digital team, who specialise in creating portfolios but also work on commercial sites. They take a fresh approach to each project, not sticking to one style. I liked the fact that, when their new website was delayed because of the amount of work they had on, they sat their Head of Project Management on o chair and forced her to admit that it was her fault the site was late. They kept doing this and putting it up as a placeholder until the site was finished.

Group94 website

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There were so many other brilliant other designers there too. I well recommend Offf for anyone with an interest in new media creativity and interaction design.

Nicky Cheshire, Sales Director of ‘Alive’ gave a talk about the opportunities for outdoor advertising that they provided. ‘Alive ‘ are an arm of ‘CBS Outdoor’ who are media owners of several outdoor display mediums, most memorably seen around London Transport. These mediums include DEPs (Digital Escalator Panels), XTP (Cross-track projection), 57″ LCD displays and LED bus displays.

According to ‘Alive’, the time people spend travelling is on the increase (the current average commute being 45 minutes). This makes it important to reach consumers as they move around, for example in a city like London, between home, work, shops, evening entertainment, etc. Digital media allows brands to reach these travelling consumers in a more exciting and dynamic way.

‘Alive’ claim that the delivery mediums they offer have been well received by consumers (brightening up the otherwise mundane experience of public transport. They also can provide a great advantage for companies who need a quick turnaround on a campaign (for example the National Lottery who need to quickly spread the word of a rollover jackpot), or for companies who need to appear cutting edge (Digital companies like Sony will benefit from pushing their products through digital mediums).

The mediums also provide new creative opportunities, which Advertising Agencies can take advantage of. The positioning of the LCD screens down the escalators has been used to effect but brands like Sony Bravia, who had the coloured balls from their famous Ad bouncing down through all the screens to the bottom of the escalator. There are also locative advantages to the media. Campaigns can appear in locations relevant to the product they are selling (for example a ‘Britain’s next top model’ campaign at oxford street tube station, next to Topshop). Also GPS allows the content on the LED bus displays to change depending on the buses location.

Furthermore, there is potential in the technology to expand on these advertising opportunities. It is possible to involve RSS feeds, allowing advertisers to create interactive, dynamic work using information sent by the consumers or sourced from the Internet. Currently transport authorities are nervous user-generated content offending and this functionality is rarely adopted. However, ‘Alive’ see this social interaction as an integral part of the future of ‘outdoor advertising’. Channelling conversations and interactions though the medium can provide a ’social glue’ to bind the campaign and the consumer together.