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January 10th, 2011
by Teri Rogers
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Interactive and Experiential Design Abound in Best Creative Ad Campaigns

Interactive and experiential design clearly dominate AdAge’s Creativity Magazine’s just released of the top ten best creative campaigns of 2010. This speaks volumes about the future of design and makes us rub our hands together in delight, since we’re all about interactive and experiential design.

In case you can’t remember all these experiential design beauties and others (that happens this time of year), the campaigns identified by Creativity Magazine as the cream of the crop featured this great body of work:

The Old Spice campaign, which was not only brilliant, but relied on consumer generated video and social media to hit it out of the park–interactive experiential design at it’s most basic level;

The Pepsi Refresh campaign, which again relied on social to support its cause-focused effort;

Domino’s Pizza, which relied on consumer input and social media channels to help improve its brand and turn the corner following a disastrous event;

Conan O’Brien’s Team Coco and their tremendous online effort that included leveraging Twitter, Foursquare, Facebook, web craziness and some traditional advertising to focus eyeballs on the star’s return to TV on a different station.

Space Chimp, the World Wildlife Fund Australia’s compelling environmental message , produced in collaboration with musician Ben Lee;

Nike’s experiential design campaign for the World Cup, which included user-generated content integrated into the digital outdoor production, interactive film and a healthy dose of social media to spur awareness and participation;

Jay-Z’s promotion of his new book, “Decoded,” that was again an interactive, experiential design piece, literally bringing the book to life for fans in a myriad of different locations. This campaign produced by Droga5, also included an online element sponsored by Bing, that allowed fans who couldn’t physically participate in the outdoor extravaganzas the chance to do so online.

Mitsubishi’s virtual test drive harnessed technology for their Live Drive, the first of its kind by an automaker, and an obvious nod to the experiential design decade we have entered;

Dare Labs’ Remote Palette is nothing short of brilliant in the realm of app development and its popularity was spurred along by web video and social channels.

And finally, the release of Arcade Fire’s Wilderness Downtown campaign was an example of collaborative genius that combined music video production for the band’s “We Used to Wait” song, with Google Earth and created a musical experiential design piece.

The interesting thing about all of these campaigns is that they typify the massive changes in the world of advertising that are leaning so heavily in the direction of experiential design. Notice how many include consumer-generated content and/or provide an opportunity for interactivity with consumers? And how many rely on a variety of social channels to help spread awareness. And how experiential design is being tapped again and again to allow consumers to be a part of a campaign, not just passively watch from the sidelines?

As a digital media and creative services agency, the success of these campaigns is nothing less than pure delight for us. It confirms that we made the right move in expanding our brand beyond production and post-production into the fresh (and fun) new area of experiential design. This kind of substantive transformation has not been easy these past few years – new jobs and new people replacing the old model – lots of change can be stressful for sure. So it’s nice to end the year with news like this that lets us know that we are in a good position as we start 2011. Here’s wishing all of us in this battered industry a prosperous new year!

December 2nd, 2010
by Teri Rogers
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Experience Design – The Future of Online Search

Qwiki - Experience for Search

Experience design is not just the hottest thing in marketing and for brands trying to drive engagement and sales, it’s soon to be an even bigger part of our lives. There’s a great new search tool, Qwiki, that was introduced during TechCrunch Disrupt this past September that brings experience – and experience design – into the search process.

Currently, when you search for something you get a list of links that may or may not provide all the information you seek. And it’s not always a very dynamic way to find what you need. Qwiki provides interactive video presentations with dynamic information pulled from a multitude of sources. What’s better, is that each information element that’s pulled into the presentation is interactive. So, if you click a video or photo while watching a Qwiki information experience you can interact with that piece individually. Also all related maps, timelines and other elements are highly interactive as well.

Qwiki at TechCrunch Disrupt from Qwiki on Vimeo.

Right now Qwiki is a very cool interactive reference tool, but it is actively working on developing products for small businesses and social media users. Social media users will be able to create Qwikis based on their social data aggregate, while small businesses can aggregate reviews from sites such as Yelp, Gowalla and others. Regardless of the end user, Qwiki CEO, Doug Imbruce says their ultimate goal is to become “a ubiquitous layer that augments the traditional web.”

You should definitely go check out some of the sample Qwikis available on their site. The Eiffel Tower Qwiki is a great example of a simple search and infinitely more interesting than what you get from a Google or Wikipedia search. There’s also a Qwiki about Gregory Smith that shows how social media information can be aggregated

Qwiki founders believe that the best ideas are experienced – so if Search goes experiential – what’s next? Since experiential projects and experience design are a big part of what we do – and since we believe that any information is better when it is experienced by the user, we will love seeing how quickly Qwiki will change the way we all search for information. Love, love, love it.

November 4th, 2010
by Teri Rogers
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Experience Design at Its Finest – In the “Limelight”

A Limelight "performance"

This Friday, Nov. 5th there will be a very special happening at First Fridays in the Crossroads – and you know how much we love experiential happenings. “Limelight” is a live public art installation that is coming to KC after its initial installation in Glasgow, London and Arlington, Va.

For this work Sans façon, have taken a different approach to city street lighting by replacing two existing streetlight heads with theater spotlights, inviting passersby to temporarily transform the street into a stage. According to their press release, the theater spotlight is a universally familiar symbol of performance — both recognizable and appealing. This intentionally subtle alteration to the street lighting transforms an ordinary sidewalk into a stage where the passersby become both the actor and the spectator. A few dance steps become an instant spectacle, a few sung words become a musical and a kiss turns into a film scene. And the thing that I love is that a public space, a street, becomes a place — a place that showcases the creativity and vitality and energy ever-present in a city, but rarely shown in a public space. And that’s nothing short of magical.

Why Kansas City? Kudos to David Dowell and El Dorado Architects for making this happen. Turns out David met the two principals of Sans façon a few years ago and the two firms have since collaborated on multiple projects. Sans façon is a collaborative art practice formed between British artist, Tristan Surtees and French architect, Charles Blanc.

David contacted them about bringing “Limelight” to Kansas City as a public outreach event for 20th St. Streetscape Project – which is an El Dorado project that is working to transform and redefine 20th Street into a “Great Street.” Definitely check out 20th St. Streetscape Project which includes some sustainable elements as well as changes to sidewalks and street lighting. I can’t wait to see the whole plan for 20th Street…but I digress. Bottom line, Dave Dowell went out and raised the money to bring “Limelight” to KC. He made it happen and I’m grateful for his tenacity.

Suffice it to say, I will be hanging out at 20th and Main Street at dusk on Friday so I can be a part of the experience. I might be too insecure to perform but I’ll have fun watching. Then again, who knows. That’s what is wonderful about experiential projects. And I hope I’ll see you there.

November 2nd, 2010
by Teri Rogers
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Online Video Facts That May Surprise You

Occasionally I get sucked into the Internets. You know what I mean. You start out looking at one random thing and, before you know it, hours later, you’re off on a tangent and discovering things you can’t get enough of. This week, stats about online video hooked me. I started reading some stats from comScore’s annual video matrix that was published in the spring and, well, they’re pretty compelling. Here are a few:

• The average U.S. Internet user watched 186 videos per month.

• 183 Million Americans watched a total of 33.9 billion online videos in the month of   May alone.

• YouTube, naturally, is the top dog when it comes to online video content viewed at 143.2 million unique viewers, with Yahoo! Sites coming in at 55.1 million unique viewers.

• Facebook is rocking it as an online video portal, coming in third overall, with some 46.6 viewers (only a million more than Microsoft sites.

• Americans viewed nearly 3.6 billion video ads in July, with Hulu generating the highest number of video ad impressions at 783 million.

• comScore calculated that video ads reached nearly half (44.5%) of the total U.S. population an average of 27 times in the month of July alone.

• More video is uploaded to YouTube in 60 days than all 3 major US networks produced in 60 years.

• From 2005 to 2010, Online video grew at a phenomenal rate of 910%, versus 114% for the Internet and 0% for TV.

910% growth? Oh yeah, video is everywhere. And now you know why I spent so much time checking this out. It’s an optimistic sign for our industry – and certainly our experience in the work we’ve been producing this past year back all this up. These ad spending stats from eMarketer back all this up as well.

eMarketer Online Video Stats

And the world of video content production has changed significantly. Back in the day, the agency world (and thus my world), used to focus on the :30 spot. Today, there are less ads and more branded content. We see less advertising produced by creative teams at agencies and executed by motion graphics firms and more content produced by way of partnerships between advertisers and content producers. For consumers who live in a fragmented world and who are constantly bombarded with stimuli and messages of all kinds, one piece of content (e.g. that :30 spot) just isn’t enough. Smart marketers are adopting a strategy of enveloping their audience in a fog consisting of a variety of messages rather than hitting them over the head with just one message.

And the reason for the messaging has changed. The website has become the hub of a brand’s business operations and a significant place for brands to engage their customers. Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and other social media outlets are becoming equally as important, and viewed as a complement to a brand’s website. Thus, it’s critical that branded video content is created with these different venues and varying strategies in mind. Sometimes the content is developed for brand enhancement purposes, sometimes it’s to entice them to a site, sometimes it’s goal is to engage website visitors once they get to a site, and keep them there longer. And other times, it’s developed for lead generation purposes. And more goals mean more content.

I think the future of video content is pretty clear. I bet at T2 + Back Alley Films, we’ll just keep producing more of it and doing it less expensively. It only makes sense.

August 20th, 2010
by Teri Rogers
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Citizen Brand Ambassadors – The New Norm?

Gillette's Razor Guys
Gillette’s “Razor Guys” are the latest in a series of brands turning to consumers to help market or launch a product.

This isn’t new – other brands have done similar campaigns, but it is a new strategic move for P&G, which often taps famous athletes or other celebs to align with its products. For this particular product, the Fusion razor, the desire was to reach a younger demographic. By tapping a couple of young, hip, “every dude” kind of guys for this once-in-a-lifetime experience, P&G shows some savvy when it comes to buzz building and understanding how younger consumers both consume – and generate media. For P&G, the Gillette campaign is an example of a significant social media initiative. The Razor Guys (selected by winning a contest), traveled the country, did a ton of blogging and microblogging, posting reactions on the company’s microsite along the way and even tossed in some celebrity interviews for good measure. They created a lot of buzz, gave away over 10,000 samples and got the Gillette Fusion brand out there, in front of their desired audience, in a big way.

Creating campaigns that allow consumers to be a part of the brand experience is rapidly becoming a tactic that just makes sense. I think this kind of consumer outreach is but one of many “new norms.” More importantly, positioning your business – no matter what it is, so that you are open to change, and regularly adopting and testing different strategies is a critical component of growth and success. Especially when it comes to new media and a consumer group that is technically savvy and as used to creating their own content as they are consuming it.