USA,USA

Just read a newsletter from blogger about some of their fancy new add on tools two in particular caught my eye the background upload and the fact within the dashboard you can view at glance your traffic I tried it out and was surprised where my traffic was coming from below is the pageviews by the top 4 Countries

United States
818
Australia
352
United Kingdom
73
Russia

Playing soldiers

For someone growing up I loved playing soldiers and I was even going to join the English army when I left school but my dad been Irish had other ideas anyway I love this, this guy is dressed and sprayed green just like your favourite toy soldier

Christmas Cheer and beer from Zuni

Yes the cases of zuni beer arrived today just in time for Christmas

And the small print on our lager says: A crisp clean refreshing taste that will get your creativity flowing' and thank you to Brewtopia who are the company behind the personalised beer - great service and concept. cheers.

Join the crowd or stay as you are

Well, there you have it. I’ve moved from North Sydney to sunny, leafy Stanmore - not much difference apart from the array of delightful food and as the team from Zuni will testify, amazing dumplings.

I’ve been working at Zuni for over a month now and yes it has flown by - the usual agency stuff, pitches, creative reviews, processes, marketing, our website, blog, twitter and some client work thrown in there too and like any agencies, especially a new fresh out of the wrapper one like Zuni, this has been amplified ten fold.

But here’s were it gets very interesting, imagine as a creative director you didn’t have a team! Blind panic, no team! Yes no team as in physically any teams sitting in the office. No flashguns, creative teams, writers’, techy geeks and all the usual freaks you have in traditional digital agencies.

What if your ‘team’ was a collection of people handpicked who came from all over the world and they were experts within their discipline? Your job was to facilitate and guide the creative process. Yes that’s what CD’s are suppose to do but when you have the ‘team’ operating not just out of Australia but from all over the world, it puts a new perspective on it.

Exciting but bloody scary and from someone who came from a traditional above the line agencies through to traditional digital agencies with internal teams this is a totally new approach in managing a creative floor and yes in tweet world, many digital agencies who were the new guns in town are now seen as traditional agencies - how ironic.

To be honest I was spooked and something that really did rattle me around crowd sourcing was the quality of work and the perception from clients and agencies as a cheap way to get ideas, that’s something I really didn’t want to be a part of, thankfully nor does Zuni.

At Zuni we have been working to refine our platform and how we crowd source our work from a cost and bounty perspective to groups.

Some Zunified crowd sourcing approaches we are looking at:

We have a team here at Zuni with a tremendous amount of experience in their field. As a team we will review and hand select our own crowd - we will invite people we rate and have worked with in the past - encourage them to invite others – with a view to pay a fee for recommendations.

By crowd sourcing our groups into ‘clusters’ with grades and rates from creative concept thinkers, designers, technology, film directors, illustrators, graphic designers &, writers etc., will make the search process easier and more streamlined.

Allow a project to pay in phases rather than one idea with one final bounty payment., by breaking it down into phases throughout the delivery process we feel the work will be stronger as you have a specialist working at that particular phase.

Keep the crowd open at the start as ‘amateurs can bring surprises’ and filter towards the end of the process.
We will grow and reinvest in our crowd – by collating the best work that didn’t get made for one reason or another – and make it - all creative’s worth their salt want their work made. That way we’ll keep the quality and have the best people onboard.

Encourage your crowd to participate and review and over time facilitate meet ups, even hold events in different parts of the world.

Yes it’s different but the world is changing and many people are finding this approach a really effective way in working and in time this could become the normal way in working especially in the communications industry.

I would love to hear your thoughts or if you are interested in becoming part of Zuni’s crowd sourcing team then let me know via email: kevin.ferry@zuni.com.au or on twitter @kevinferry, and who knows you could be doing some great work and get paid well for your efforts

Print is it dead?

Last week I was over at Reactive (very nice offices in the heart of Sydney in Crown Street also they have very nice pizzas too) anyway this was one of our regular creative gatherings at Creative Social this time we had two dudes Murray Bell from Snakes and Ladders and Pete Murray from Semi Permanent talking which was very interesting especially when Murray started talking about the niche magazine Movement Magazine for those that don't know as their Google search describes are: Movement bodyboard magazines official website. All things bodyboarding. Professional riders, with contests and competitions

As the talk went on and as the audience were mostly all from the digital space the question came up as it always does, 'Is your magazine sales decreasing'? and as always digital folk lick their lips in anticipation on hearing that it's all going rat shit, with cobwebs developing on the printing press.

Well the the response was the opposite in that it has remained steady, sales haven't dropped off even with the access of the web especially for this audience you would have thought sales would drop. Murray said that it's changed but the print option hasn't declined so why hasn't sales dropped? Murray's and the Magazines response was; they made the mag more desirable by increasing the weight of the paper, they hired more top draw photographers and upped their content in quality with more substance ,for instance they did a piece on Hawaii not just the tourist side of things but also the number of homeless people living there. They have now attracted a much broader audience beyond just surf dudes- from film, art and culture demographics. Smart move.

The magazine became more of a 'coffee table' magazine which was much more tactile and that's were digital will always lose out - the fact that you can touch and feel the mag and see the images in their full glory will always be a big pull that's not to say digital doesn't play its part for instance; what about video content, comments, and eComm functionality are all better experiences than just using print, so print isn't dead it's just evolved and the most successful brands are working more hand in hand with digital. As always you've got to know your market, and the team over at Movement Magazine certainly know their audience.

Warmest Christmas with a tweet

Spotted this little gem called 'Twitter Knitter' and reckon this is the best agency christmas card so far, as we all know in agency land most people roll their eyes and shudder with the thought of doing a 'cool card' as CEO's like to say. The idea is basically the agency will be selecting the most festive Christmas tweets, containing the hashtag #WarmUpCamden, to knit as messages into scarves.
The scarves will be distributed to people in Camden, (It's were the agency is based and if anyone has been to Camden Town in London parts are how shall we say; bloody scary, they will approach people who look like they need warming up. (Bloody brave but that could be fun filming that while some creative luuvies get bashed by a bunch of old Scottish drunks, that would go viral).
Anyway all of the #WarmUpCamden tweets appear on twitterknitter.co.uk. Visitors can watch the winning tweets being knitted into scarves live from within the agencies via three webcam links. A 'cool' idea that warms the heart around this time of year. Below is a selection of some of the tweets.

Plaster art

Someone who loves art and I love the work of many especially urban artists like Banksy but I came across this dude – he’s taken it to whole new level. Not just using the wall as a canvas he ‘turns the wall’ into the canvas. Lovely work, so next time some old plaster falls from the wall I might just start having a go myself.

Powerful storytelling with music and imagery

Woah slow down

A 3D-like illusion of a young girl playing in the middle of the street it's a campaign by drivers to slow down ironically this campaign was aimed at parents who were dropping their kids off on the school run- very powerful stuff and certainly would stop anyone in their tracks even some crazed hoon in his jumped up Holden but I can’t help thinking that this could be a dangerous road to take (excuse the pun) in that people could mistaken this as one of those adverts and it turns out to be a real kid.

Judging by the road deaths every year and people’s driving skills especially in Sydney,I wonder if a campaign like this would work in Australia?

Social media via your mobile

Another one of those infographics from Flowtown I love their work, this is a cracker, it visual shows how people are interacting with social media via their mobile and yes some very tasty piecharts

Some Work

My Ma always asks: 'What thee beJesus do ya do for a work Kavin?'Well mum and my apologises for the bad Irish accent but here's some work I have done over the last 18 months at Bullseye, hat tip to Rod, Brian, Dave and Tom for bringing all this tomfoolery to life

Blackmores brings the community together

As I'm doing the #bsrf10 half again this year I always like to track how the event is doing. Looking back at the last two events, the online campaign is growing in participation, much of the tone is around support and below is a snapshot from last year's event.

- Training product recommendations
- An online product sales component with a free training singlet
- Registration that assists the user to chose their appropriate event in the SRF
- An online fitness training calendar (tailored to the user's chosen event in the SRF)that delivered a training calendar (provided by the event Personal Trainer)
- 'Ask a Trainer' facility
- Dynamic content (feeding from the BSRF09 Twitter account)
- Course maps and videos

The campaign for Blackmores Sydney Running Festival 2009 was the most successful to date in terms of online engagement, as shown in the comparative data between 2008 and 2009.(Google Analytics)


• Visits increased from 46,626 to 89,433
We did not see an increase in new visitors to the site from the previous year, but we did see double the amount of visits. This demonstrates that we achieved our goal of improving the level of engagement race participants experienced on the site. Much of this can be attributed to the training programs offered – 10,000 people signed up for personalised training programs. This figure represents nearly 1/3 of all race entrants.
• Page views increased from 211,727 to 243,934 (+15.21%)
• A recommended new URL strategy for this years’ site. This helped push a 1046% increase in search referrals from the previous year. (20,661 referrals > up from 1,802 referrals in 2008).

New tools and resources were added to the site to help attract more visitors to the site and engage them more effectively. We also used social media tools to create Blackmores Sydney Running Festival communities.

• Embedded video allowed runners to view live footage of themselves crossing the finish line. The videos were watched a total of 127,957 times. This clearly demonstrates the viral power of online video, as a total of 32,007 people actually ran the race, but they used the Blackmores training site videos to relive their race day glory with friends and family an average four times each!



I think this year will again see a good result or as runners say: a PB

Happy running and good health

157 Mobile App Stats You Should Know About

Check out this SlideShare Presentation: Finally someone who knows what they are talking about regarding mobile apps with some great stats

157 Mobile App Stats You Should Know About

View more presentations from stuartdredge.

Let's analyse this a bit closer, how about sod off!

I saw this and laughed out loud and then thought about it for a split second as I really didn't want to over analyse it too much as I could have fallen into the same trap but it's so true in advertising land we have all these people who some how complicate and look into every tiny detail - humour sells stuff make me laugh.

Social Media is the business

Love this

I saw this and I thought it was wonderful called "Digital Orca" a sculpture in Vancouver by Douglas Coupland. To the viewer simple yet playful and all things combined that I love; art, digital, and killer whales

End of the road for digital

I read this last week and I found it fascinating and have replayed this question many times on my long runs home and it's a question that Martin Bailie head of planning at glue Isobar put in a intro to a whitepaper he has written he states: 'we wondered what would happen if we banned people from talking about "digital", "social", "viral", "mobile", "ATL", "BTL" and "TTL". As an exercise, it's revealing. What do you sell to clients? What do they buy? What do you "make"? What do planners talk about all day? Well I know, lots of people would be scratching their heads from agency folk to marketing departments on how to communicate to people in the real world.Like the picture I reckon they would turn green and turn all spooky. Many seem to forget that these channels are just that, channels or platforms to reach people. they are not the execution and I agree with much of what Martin said. A thought; next time you pitch an idea - decide on the channel once you get the idea. Ooooh! I'm turning green, I feel dizzy.
The full article is here

Curse them all- especially the ref

Something the boy's did at Bullseye after Australia was knocked out off the World Cup - we thought 'curse them all 'was very apt, as football fans we can all feel the pain when our beloved side gets beaten, the English are going through it right now, poor bastards (I think even some of the Aussies felt for me on that one or was that a wry smile from Rod in the corner?)

This type of work is a great tester for the creative department in that you have to work very quickly and the creative still has to be sharp, and from the digital side the collaboration between the creative and development is paramount.

Well done Rod (Liverpool) Brian (ManU) and Steve (West Ham) for their work and effort, shame England didn't deliver the same commitment.

Why do everything in one agency

I was chatting to one of my team members and he asked the question: 'Give us your top ten reasons why you should have all your marketing budget in one agency' - I then remembered that I listed this about three year's ago to the same exact question, I still feel it true today, what do you reckon?


1. Cost efficient : No rework etc. – shoots can also incorporate online comms

2. Time saving: Saves time in account managers/project managers relaying and sending files to other vendors.

3. Minimal risk: Less FU’s(Fuck Ups) More vendors more likely work gets lost in translation, bad artwork, wrong picture supplied etc. Compared to been housed in one shop.

4. Relationships: Better internal comms between agency and client- know who’s doing what and when- build stronger working relationships.

5. Transparent: Offline and Online marketing directors are across all comms.

6. Synergy: Work is truly integrated rather than just ‘matching luggage’ and digital becomes more than just an afterthought.

7. Flexible: Turning around projects quicker- better equipped to do tactical campaigns.

8. Success: Fact – more integrated campaigns have proven time and time again they get the results compared to individual micro campaigns.

9. Less egos: Get straight to the point without harming anyone’s feelings- ‘tiptoeing usually results in stubbing your toe’. Kevin Ferry

10. It’s more fun

I'm interested to find out if you have any others reasons or do you disagree?

It's all mapped out

Now I'm in training for the Blackmores Sydney Half and I have a couple of takers from client side willing to take me on my challenge I thought I would share via MapMyRun and RunnersPlus how my training is going, mainly an incentive to keep the training going and a bit of 'peacocking' to my competitors, now what have you got?

Warm and fluffy display ads

Real people in the real world as in digital world on the whole hate banner ads I think they're on a par of next doors dog craping on your doorstep especially when they are just blanket buys and have no real creative idea usually that's a good 80%, the other 20% are mostly on bannerblog or in OneShow so I'm not saying all but you get my point so imagine my pleasure when I came across this little idea where you replace your banners and turn everyday web browsing into donations that support green initiatives and movement for positive social change.The site is called Do Good I love this as it is appealing to my better nature and trying to save the world rather than save $1 on your next purchase. Since I downloaded the software I have clicked on nearly 20 different banner ads, and shock horror there's no hardsell and throbbing starbursts or type just a powerful targeted message that in most instances I want to find out more, I can't help myself but I know each time I click I'm helping someone else, it's a beautiful thing.

Race a marketing director

Well it's that time again with the Blackmores Sydney Running Festival approaching and now is the time to get some mileage under your belt.

Just finished the Balmoral Burn last week my legs aren't exactly jumping with joy on another run at the moment but as all runners say; 'I have some time to the next one'.

Last year I ran the half in the event and it was great day yes I would say that as Blackmores are one of my clients but this is a must for anyone in Sydney at that time who wants to run a race - and what a race, with the bridge closed and finishing outside the Opera House, you can't get much better.

Anyway to my point as I ran last year live tweeting I wanted to do something different again this year and this idea popped into my head while running home the other night.

CHALLENGE:

As Creative Director and having worked on a vast array of products and brands over the years from soft drinks to washing up liquid I have a bit of experience when it comes to coming up with ideas around marketing. SO get on with it Kev and stop blowing your own trumpet, your point is?

Well, I will give any marketing director a campaign idea for their brand or product IF they beat me in this year's Blackmores Sydney Half in September. Prove will be determined by the 'relive the glory' video that gets posted up after the event.

I will if beaten work and give you a timeframe on a campaign that I will scamp and show how it will work online via a site, social media, rich media and offline if you fancy, up for it? well post here your name and job title etc and confirmation of entry and let the challenge begin.

My best time for a half 1:17 and last year while tweeting ran 1:25

# No ringers will be acceptable only the marketing director can take the challenge also if I get nailed by say 50 MD's I will sit down and work through a timetable on delivery. (And yes this will be all done at weekends).

If I beat you then the only thing I ask would be a suitable donation to my surf club North Steyne Surf Club

Pain no gain

Pain
Originally uploaded by kevin ferry

Just returned from the Balmoral Burn - that is such a hard run - 420m straight up sprint on a very very steep hill on Awaba Street in Balmoral.

Got second again got nailed by the same guy last year - we both were way ahead of the field, but I had nothing in the tank when I needed to kick.

The fittest guy won on the day, well done today but we will return for other encounter.

Chin chin

Consumer engagement - love it

Busy tweeting for your business

There's an on going debate about how much businesses should be using social media channels like Twitter to promote themselves, well if your thinking like this, then stop! You're already in the wrong mindset- the fact you want to 'promote' your company is the wrong tack, instead think of your company sharing knowledge and advice around your profession and that might not all involve around your company on that I picked this up early this morning via Chris Brogan this is all your business needs to know about using social media in particular Twitter, my personal opinion on using Twitter for business is it's vital, without it you can't reach out to your customers in an engaging manner, it's also a valuable channel as a source of research, so here's the first steps in building your business further:

First Steps

1. Build an account and immediate start using Twitter Search to listen for your name, your competitor’s names, words that relate to your space. (Listening always comes first.)
2. Add a picture. ( Shel reminds us of this.) We want to see you.
3. Talk to people about THEIR interests, too. I know this doesn’t sell more widgets, but it shows us you’re human.
4. Point out interesting things in your space, not just about you.
5. Share links to neat things in your community. ( @wholefoods does this well).
6. Don’t get stuck in the apology loop. Be helpful instead. ( @jetblue gives travel tips.)
7. Be wary of always pimping your stuff. Your fans will love it. Others will tune out.
8. Promote your employees’ outside-of-work stories. ( @TheHomeDepot does it well.)
9. Throw in a few humans, like RichardAtDELL, LionelAtDELL, etc.
10. Talk about non-business, too, like @astrout

Ideas About WHAT to Tweet

11. Instead of answering the question, “What are you doing?”, answer the question, “What has your attention?”
12. Have more than one twitterer at the company. People can quit. People take vacations. It’s nice to have a variety.
13. When promoting a blog post, ask a question or explain what’s coming next, instead of just dumping a link.
14. Ask questions. Twitter is GREAT for getting opinions.
15. Follow interesting people. If you find someone who tweets interesting things, see who she follows, and follow her.
16. Tweet about other people’s stuff. Again, doesn’t directly impact your business, but makes us feel like you’re not “that guy.”
17. When you DO talk about your stuff, make it useful. Give advice, blog posts, pictures, etc.
18. Share the human side of your company. If you’re bothering to tweet, it means you believe social media has value for human connections. Point us to pictures and other human things.
19. Don’t toot your own horn too much.
20. Or, if you do, try to balance it out by promoting the others, too.

BBC you have my vote

As most of you will know there was a general election in the UK, now with me all the way over in the 'lucky country' tracking and seeing the votes unfold where else would you go apart from the BBC? As someone who loves data and is very visual this site was a organismic visual and data trip.Just by tapping in your district you get detail from a interactive map, with live streams of the results, with comments from in and out going MP's and all the results in real time with the colour map changing just as fast as the results were coming in. I spent an age pouring over the results, here's my area I lived when I was in the UK of Romford in Essex

This site had everything, the debates,and I particular liked the section called 'make it clear' so for instance when it was announced that it was heading for a hung parliament they had a full chart explaining what will happen and the next steps that will follow, wonderful.

But it was the BBC TV Channel that made the whole experience informative and entertaining the live stream was fast without buffering and they kept changing from one programme to the other without a single judder, for one moment I could be sitting in front of the TV with a beer in hand in sunny old Romford instead of cold wintery Sydney Australia. (It's winter here).

So I thank you the BBC and that's why you'll always get my vote.

Share the love of music

Came across this, a music site called We Are Hunted a online music chart.

They listen to what people are saying about artists and their music on blogs, social networks like Facebook and MySpace, message boards and forums, Twitter and P2P networks to chart the top songs online everyday, neat idea pop pickers almost
a new Top of the Pops.
In the physical world, charts are built on shipped albums. Online charts have been a simple count of digital downloads. This New Model Army is different. They discover new music from around the web and detect sentiment, expression and advocacy to understand what people like and dislike. They also have the ability to buy the track you've played from the site, good business model.

Mix business with pleasure

Social media is a wonderful thing you can keep in contact with family and friends from afar, make some new ones, make friends you never knew you had and some you'd wish you never came across usually this is through Facebook with a dusting of YouTube, on the other side of the social media ladder we have the more business side which usually involves Linkedin and Twitter the same can be said of your business connections, some are worthwhile and good for your network, many are not like headhunters who use you and tap into your network (this is one of the reasons why I booted off most headhunters from my network as it was all one way).

But the question I wanted to ask and something that has happened to me over the last couple of months is that these social media channels are started to merge into one were family now sit happily along side a work colleague or do they? Is my sister in Ireland does she really give an arse if most Twitter users average age is 39 and are media influencers? The same can be said that a CEO of GSK is he really that interested that my sister in Ireland has had another baby and posted them up on Facebook?

I'm confused as to weather to keep the two channels separate or not but with Facebook especially it has become more business savvy in it's approach and took Twitter by its word and 'followed' them, what do you think? Do you keep the two channels separate? or as my sister in Ireland would say; Feck who gives an arse!

For me business social media is:
>Twitter
>LinkedIn
>Slideshare
>Delicious
>YouTube
>Blogger
>Tumblr

For pleasure
>Skype - Keep in contact with family in Ireland
>Mobile -SMS - ditto
>Private email/MSN Messenger

Business with Pleasure:
>Facebook
>Flickr

It depends how you look at

I saw this picture which reminded me when I was a junior art director, I remember I was sitting on a couch in the creative department and a brief came in were the project manager said there's a brief for Woolworths, the problem was, it was a small space ad and even smaller budget.

I remember the look of horror on one of the 'star award winning' creative’s who responded: 'You have to be F'king joking I can't do anything with that, the budget's crap and anyway they'll be doing a TV spot soon, so I'll work on that'

Now this was a turning point for me as I could have thought the same way, but at that stage of my career it wasn't really an option so I put my hand up and said I'll work on it, lots of glares from all the other creative’s followed. (I think I broke the creative code at that time which was don't be too keen. So hear I was, this eager grinning kid with his hand up offering to work on it.

I wasn't trying to impress, I just looked at it in a completely different way than the 'pros' at the time. To me this was a challenge, like a test to see if I could work in a more constrained environment.

The ad was produced and the following year I got my first creative circle award for a print ad for ‘best use of small space’ The idea was for blank cassette tapes(yes it was that long ago) and the idea? The ad was completely blank with a tiny headline that read: Blank tapes at Woolworths only 4.99.

Some things that I learned from this:
1: Always treat every job as an opportunity.
2: Never become complacent and keep the creative fire in your belly.
3: Learn the rules and then break them.
4: You can win awards with bugger all time and budget.

Sexy Social Media Stats

Seen this and it looks beautiful wonderful design it was done by this mob not sure these figures are global but still pretty informative.

Social Media Counts

Long live The Revolution

There’s been a revolution happening and it has been going on for sometime – it started off quietly but over the last two year's has gained a lot of momentum.

The revolution? Many companies are looking a lot closely on how they are perceived and the effects their products are having on the environment. Much of this has been driven by 'people power' with many online groups setting up fan pages or as I like to call them ‘ban pages’ and what a powerful force these communities have become.

Many companies have for sometime had polices in place but much of this was only really highlighted internally and never really pushed outside their own environmentally green walls. In Australia Westpac I can recall was one company who pushed that they're more than just a bank with an obligation to their customers but to the environment as well.

More recently I received via a follower on Twitter that Puma have announced they've redesigned the good old shoebox to save on the environment. The story is told via a video presentation on how Puma will make less impact (excuse the pun) on the environment because as we all know the shoe box once home goes straight into the bin or in my case saved for the kid’s next school project.

Yes I know many of you will be cynically towards many companies who in the past have had a bit of a checkered history when it comes to our environment and are now on the green bandwagon, but in reality who cares? We all know it’s a good thing, if they were forced, so what, the point is they've changed and if it makes the world a much nicer place to live in while wearing our Pumas, then as a man once said let it be as ultimately everyone wins.

Happy Easter

As it's Easter and a time when the good fella rose and handed out lots of chocolate eggs and turned KFC drumsticks into chickens I thought I would post some ads with rabbits in it, sod the chickens - I've seen that ad for Chicken Tonight.



Great Honda and yes we love rabbits



and yes we love big rabbits especially with a track by the Stones




We also like kinky rabbits



Lucky bloody rabbit

Running Story

As you know I love running, I also love great ideas, well this little puppy has both, I watched this video on the history of ASICS and it is an amazing piece of story telling it's so well done in execution and writing after viewing you'll know why as a runner I only run in ASICS, Brilliant work Mabona Origami

Origami In the Pursuit of Perfection from MABONA ORIGAMI on Vimeo.

Blackmores new site is live

Blackmores new site has finally gone live and with the help of a lot of talented boy's and girl's over at Bullseye Digital the vision to build a website that will be Australia's No:1 health and wellbeing site has began, but where did it all start? Well the site itself took 12 months to design and build but prior to that it took a further 6 months to workout the wireframe and designs. We had a vision to build Australia's No:1 health and wellbeing site and we knew what we wanted the site to become so we worked very closely with Blackmores to bring it to life. This was a massive project but what's interesting is the original scamps I did haven't really been lost in the final design, we still have embracing online communities with one to one interactions with relevant content.

Much of this is down to the client and the team at Blackmores yes we guided and advised as we went along, but they had ideas too, it was a really good collaborative. This all makes for a much better working relationship and the end result is something we should be all proud of, the hard work that has been done I'm sure will pay off.

The big fightback in the creative stakes

Interesting this week in that I've been judging New York Festival Awards, and was one of the judges on Banner Blog and Creative Brief who's hot and who's cold in the digital agency rankings

There has been much debate from the many digital agencies who didn't enter 'Hot and Cold' who thought that it was all a bit shitty in that you had a bunch of digital creative's judging the work and it was only judged on pure creativity which is incorrect and as we all know in the digital world it can never be as straight forward as that. I posted on Amnesia's blog my thoughts and why this should continue. Ash the CD over at Soap who kicked started this (I bet the poor bastard wish he never brought it up) he did try to put each agency under different segments from full service, pure digital to production houses,this helps mark out the digital landscape but we all agree it still has some way to go.

But besides all this and the hand bag fighting that has gone on,what has been very interesting is to see that the top end of the chart many are 'full service' agencies, I must state 'full service' and not 'full service digital agencies' this is an important distinstiction we at Bullseye are a full service digital agency as we only do digital.

I also noticed while judging NYF that again the full service agencies seem to be performing well along side more specialist trendy boutique outfits- there's not much in between apart from your AKQA's and Co.


Another little trend that I have also noticed and that I reckon is connected to the above observation is that I'm seeing all these new job titles I have never heard of but they are popping up all over the place at the moment for instance I've seen: 'head of ideas' and 'lead digital advertising division' I bet the person who has this on their business card feels very smug, but what does these titles say about the companies? The companies who invented these 'creative' job titles will fail because they should have had this in place before they kicked started the company. Trying to reinvent yourself sometimes works but on the whole you are so desperate to 'turn the tide' it's to late, either you go under or get bought out.These two new roles created are hardly from the hottest creative shops and there's a lot of agencies who are still trying to find their feet or find new shoes, if you haven't found your niche by now, you could be in trouble.


So what did the full service agencies start doing and why are they starting to make in roads into the digital space? They stopped fooling themselves in thinking they have a digital offering apart from outsourcing the odd banner ad, they went back to what they're good at, and that is; coming up with the ideas. They got the idea and THEN they looked at the channels including digital, if the idea needed to be online they got the talent who could work within that space in bringing their ideas to life by not outsourcing but hiring full digital teams or in some instances buying independent successful digital agencies. That's why I think they are doing well now they stopped chasing the digital bandwagon for a while and they've now caught up.


So what next?

Some of the bigger shops will carry on and grow their digital department and those will be the ones who were a very good creative outfit from the start, the others will struggle and fizzly out in the space and carrying on getting the odd banner to do. The smaller specialist outfits like mobile and SEO companies will grow or get bought out. Pure full service digital shops will grow if they started out as a creative agency most will get bought out or merge with other digital agencies, but a word of warning, they will grow in revenue but if they get too big in the number of employees they have on their books they will go the same way as many production houses have gone, they will need to produce work quicker to substain the numbers they could turn into full production houses and not grow as margins become tighter.

So expect a lot of mergers in the coming months, there's a lot of shifting sand within the industry at the moment so we'll see what the landscape will look like in the coming months.


But there's one thing that will never shift; the idea will always win whatever company you work for, interesting times and exciting depending which corner you are in. Ding ding.

Let us know what you think, agree? or disgree?

Black Balloons - Without the hot air

I like simple ideas, and I especially like simple ideas that tell me something I didn’t know in an engaging manner. I’d saw this campaign on TV first and, on first viewing, thought; “What a great idea!”.
If you haven’t seen it, it’s the TV ad where they use a black balloon to visually show the amount of energy we waste around the house. It’s all part of the Government’s ‘You have the power. Save Energy’ campaign.
From viewing the ad I learned that a balloon can hold on average 50 grams of greenhouse gas, and from someone who was never good at maths and more of a visual person at school, this execution dramatised the damage we are all doing to our environment really well.
Now here’s the strange bit: I went from the TV and typed in the URL. Yes, a digital guy who lives in the online world, typed in a URL from a TV spot, shock horror! I can hear the tweeting frenzy now.
TV isn’t dead as many industry folk would lead us to believe. What’s dead is wasting energy telling or selling something that doesn’t connect to people. This TV ad connected with me because it offered relevant content and compelling imagery.

So from that initial touch point I went onto their website and they continued the engagement. The site was very clean, the use of colour was well placed and the navigation was easy-to-use. One slight gripe is that social media connectors should have been included to a Facebook group or a Twitter account, but besides that it had everything else; from useful online tools, energy calculators and energy facts to what your community is doing, a checklist of facts, and energy saver incentives and discounts. The site had everything I needed to know about saving energy.

So I’ve joined ‘Save Power’ and made a pledge, read the posters and tweeted this campaign for some time – simply because it’s true integration without the fluff. And reading some of the blog posts and tweets around this campaign, a lot of energy is being used to praise the site. Thankfully, it’s not wasted.

I have man boobs

Came across this and I've been playing with it ever since, wonderful interface and design- and a great concept, it’s called The Profiler the idea is wonderfully simple It allows you to combine data from your Facebook with your YouTube and Flickr accounts, the website allows you to discover things you and your friends find interesting all in the one location.

Look, share and view your profile as a mosaic, great interaction and I love the design and interface even though my mosaic profile seems to have given me some man boobs.

YouTube You Beauties

Well YouTube with this site called YouTube Disco have done it again and came up with this, what a stroke of genius so simple,where you just Find> Mix> Watch> just type in your fav artist or tune and it comes up - nothing new indeed but I haven't seen anything like this apart from Pandora where your taste in music can been seen and played in the one location, music to my ears.Yeah baby!

Seamless experience

There I was when it happened snail mail had arrived most mailers especially at work I throw in the bin but this one was different the 'outer' as they like to say at direct marketing agencies read: 'To the very talented Kevin Ferry' - with some niffy illustrations too it grabbed my attention - the mad fools, talented in what? I needed to find out what they thought I was talented in so I opened it up and discovered a newspaper (recycled I might add) size full of illustrations which was wonderful all contrasting styles from Jacky Winters Illustrations and my talent? apparently I'm pretty good at spotting talent, well in this instance they're right.
What I particularly liked about this mailer it lead me towards their URL and to their show-reel- the website Well designed, good user experience and not to fancy - let the work do the talking which it did so much so I told the rest of the design team- good work Jacky Winters you know your audience well

The Jacky Winter Group 2009 Showreel from Jacky Winter on Vimeo.