DESIGN PEEPS HATE THE SEARCH ENGINES

Yeah, I know we’ve been bashing the search engines on this blog. Flash isn’t good enough for them – so what is a creative, design driven business to do? I guess we’ll just have to bore you with a description of what we do – with every key word and meta-tag we can think of. We’ll have to stop just looking at the work – and assuming folks know what we do – and how we do it. We’ll have to actually think about how we define – or maybe redefine – ourselves in this ever-changing media landscape. And that, we have discovered, is not nearly as easy as just showing our work.

In talking to our writers about how they would write about us to optimize for search engines – we had to take a hard look at who we are – or maybe in our case, just who we had become over this past turbulent year. We also had to remind ourselves to quit talking about us – and start thinking about the benefit we provide to our customers. What makes us relevant to them. What’s the value add? It’s the lecture we give all of our customers. Stop talking about you – and talk about how you matter to them. Now we had to drink our own Kool-Aid – and it wasn’t all that sweet.

So, we started the process by rambling about what we do – and what makes us stand out from others who do what we do. For instance, we said, T2 is a post production company that has unusual talent and emphasis in visual design and story-telling. Our guys are masters at mixing live action with design and animation – and re-purposing that content to achieve multiple exposure on multiple media platforms. Oh yeah, and T2 started a new Experience Lab – which is all about creating an experience, which purposefully, we have designed to  live on through word of mouth marketing.

Then we tried to define our other division, Back Alley Films. We said it was formed for the live action part referenced above. We wanted to be able to do the whole thing from concept to finish – because that gives us more control over the creative product so we know it will be effective – and it saves time and money. But it’s also true that Back Alley has grown beyond just that – into this ragtag team of multi-talented artists that are writers and directors and musicians and documentarians and photographers and viral message experts.

Bottom line, the message we ultimately charged our writers with communicating, was that when the BAF artists team up with the T2 designers and editors, we have a creative powerhouse of talent and expertise in storytelling – mixed with a broad knowledge of how to go to market – with traditional media, on-line media, experiential and viral platforms.

So, what does all that mean to our customers, they asked? The all important question.

It all boils down to this, we said. Video content can show up anywhere today – on any platform – television, on-line, mobile devices, billboards, buses – you name it. But “effective” video content and successful media distribution is what matters to our customers. They don’t care about the “art” of what we do — or how many “awards” we have won. We care about that.

They care about whether we can do what we do successfully, and save them time and money along the way. They care about how much we know about marketing in today’s complex media environment. It matters to them that we have the creativity and talent to produce an engaging message – but they also care about whether we know how to drive people to it – and then compel them to pass it on. Everyone cares about viral marketing these days. It’s fast and its cheap – but its not that easy to achieve. So, our customers want to know that we know that we have had success in creating viral campaigns.

So, if video content is king in 2010 – is marketing and distribution knowledge the value add? Is it really that simple? Does seeing our work matter at all – or is it really the case studies of the work that are relevant to the customer? The debate goes on. Weigh in.