Articles from: LBi

The gentle art of seduction

Every day I talk to clients about how digital solutions can be particularly good for nudging and exciting their customers. It’s all a bit like dating but without the Casanova ending.

As was later the case with 20th century marketers, Casanova often repeated the same pattern in his pursuits. He would discover an attractive woman (customer) having trouble with a brutish or jealous lover (competitor brand). And then three acts would follow.

Act 1: The seducer ameliorates his lady’s difficulty. Act 2: She shows her gratitude, he seduces her, a short and exciting affair ensues. So far so good, but then comes… Act 3: The seducer gets bored and orchestrates a rapid exit. The end.

For Casanova, life was an open field of sexual opportunities without consequences. For the marketers, it was an open field of transactional opportunities without post-purchase responsibility.

Persuasion without information is as unsatisfactory as information without persuasion, but together they beget seduction.

The best thinkers in User-Centered Design have long claimed that information and persuasion are two opposite modes. Some content is labelled as persuasion or even manipulation, and is associated with advertising and marketing, while other content is understood to be information and therefore virtuous. But maybe persuasion and information are not mutually exclusive. Maybe we just need to re-write Act 3 so that persuasion + information = seductive strategies.

Here’s an example: a week before Valentine’s Day I went online to find something nice for the lady in my life. I tried my best to appear susceptive by freely giving away my personal details in the hope of attracting some targeted offers relevant to my needs. I entered competitions to romantic holiday destinations; I saved several virtual shopping baskets full of flowers and chocolate, and so on. I even returned to several websites, just to show how keen I was. But maybe I was too keen, as instead of tailored suggestions for romantic gifts all I got were the usual Viagra spams, dating and gambling adverts, and an offer to join a new gym.

Persuasion design is dead. Long live seduction design!

Seduction design is all about nudging and exciting the customer, rather than using an all-or-nothing strategy. The most elaborately designed experiences inspire people to adapt their behaviour and engage with new features and functionalities. In other words, the customers allow themselves to be seduced and buy into the proposition that the product or service is worth their time and money.

Designers, marketers, and creatives need to design for seduction as much as for aesthetic impact and usability. Methods of seduction can sell a genuine offer through the combination of motivational psychology and careful preparation. To convert this into a website, a mobile application, an email, or a banner, each element – graphic or verbal – must be given a seductive value that deepens into a suggestive relationship over time.

Had Casanova known that, I’m sure his romantici evenings would have ended happier both for him and his ladies.

Marcus Mustafa - Head of User Experience - twitter.com/dacrumb

Factually this is out of sequence but the results will be ready to see next Thursday. The idea – buy cheap art in the charity shop – make new art on top of it. Some remarkable results already – see this little ditty from Jnr.

The grand opening is on Thursday 26th November – the culture press are clambering for an invite – will finally put Brick Lane back on the artistic map…

Another one of those, not quite the normal Friday fun but this definately happened on a Friday posts. Our various technical teams decided to hold a brew off and LAN party as part of our one up-man-ship series.

From the magic keyboard of Big JR: The beer brewing competition drew an eager crowd, keen to test the age old adage of being able to organise a particular activity in a brewery. And also to watch the faces our esteemed judges as they tasted the various potions on offer. Trevor took it all in his stride, using his poker face to good effect but Amy had more trouble concealing the really foul tasting ones as she spat out at least 4.

The beer tasting was scored with the following criteria:

1. Aroma - looking for bitter, sweet, salty or sour. Has it taken on the a malty sweet caramel-like quality or a more spicy, piney odour of the hops?  Does it smell good enough to drink?

2. Appearance - looking for colour, clarity and head retention. No particular colour is better than another but does it have charm and personality? Any beer should be able to form and hold a head, even if it is little and held briefly.

3. Taste - The result of aroma and taste is flavour. We are open minded about the range of tastes of homebrew beers but are looking for the way it feels in your mouth. Is it rubbery because the yeast stayed too long during fermentation or sour due to bacterial contamination. Is it pleasant to drink?

4. Aftertaste - this depends on personal preference and with 3 judges a balanced view will be formed. Is it dry, sweet, lingers or is gone quickly. The aftertaste will normally amplify the good and bad qualities of a beer.

5. And finally… to judge the tag line for your beer.

The joint winners romped in with 35 points:
Not London Pride - a “very professional presentation“, including capped, boxed and labelled bottles and Badly Behaved Babes “an excellent all round beer”

Other beer names and comments included: the predictable Brewers Droop being very bitter but not unpleasant, CSDM Crystal smelling like a car closed for a while, Swine Brew, Agarmeister tasting like vegemite. With the following two bringing up the rear: Alans Dashboard tasting like a flip-flop and Loopy Juice smelling like a combination of babies nappies and puke.

Once the beers had been judged those brave enough to drink the home brew ‘got on it’, while everyone else got involved with the LAN party, shooting and fragging away. It was welcome to all-comers with ‘bouncy castle rules’ in play (apparently…) of jump on, have fun, jump off, feel sick.

Is this enough evidence to suggest LBi can in fact organise some kind piss up in a brewery? Quite clearly yes based on previous parties, but perhaps not with its own home brew beer.

Following the official review, there was much banter back from our creative department who are always looking for a line to corrupt…

“with lots of people fagging each other” - Is that how you get a good froth?
“installation in the basement for a lunch time frag-fests”  …lost my appetite

Leading to an inquisitive:
And then swapped joysticks? Weird stuff going on in that basement.
Apparently some pervert had auto-fire switched on!

Further pictorial evidence can be found here http://www.flickr.com/photos/bigjonrussell/sets/72157621998853348/

As a warm up to a BT show and tell, we decided to go back to the time of tapes and answer phones. To celebrate the ‘I’m not here speak after the beep’ message that was once a mainstay of every boozy bachelor pad that has now been replaced by that annoying voice from your network operator.

Cue a challenge; create an answer phone message for 3 celebrities, picked at random. Somehow we managed to select the recently departed Michael Jackson, the entertainer Boris Johnson and that annoying band Raygun, who had their own viral pulled by their record company. And yes on reflection we could have picked a better selection.

Michael Jackson
Night creatures call, your butt is mine, your talk is cheap
Something whispers in my ear and no message could be clear-er
I’m bad
Answer right now
If you don’t like what I’m saying just beat it!
It doesn’t matter if you’re black or white
Whoo hoo!
You’re out of time

Raygun
Sorry we can’t get to the phone right now, we’re probably drinking cocktails in the morning or something equally outrageous so please leave a message and we’ll get back to you
To leave a hate message, dial 1
To return a recently bought album, dial 2
If you’re our annoyed record label boss dial 3
Or hold and our manager will be with you shortly

Boris Johnson
I can’t get to the phone right now as I’m probably relaxing in my new summer house enjoying a drink with my best mate Dave, laughing at the former mayors expense…
[ Crashing sound of shed being demolished ]
This number is no longer available hahahaha [in the voice of Ken Livingstone]

LBi was proud to host the UK Umbraco meetup on 6th August 2009, organised by consultant and Umbraco enthusiast, Darren Ferguson, and attracted a 55+ people crowd enough to fill the auditorium. With a guest appearance with the man himself and Umbraco’s founder, Niels Hartvig, this was surely to be a great day.

So exactly what is Umbraco? Simply put, Umbraco is an open source .Net Content Management System (CMS), dubbed “The Friendly CMS”, with an ever growing dedicated community that are always willing to help.

Darren opened up the event with the days proceedings, with yours truly giving a warm LBi welcome and introduction into the wonderful things we do. Not wanting to hold-up the proceedings, we swiftly moved on with Niels giving a recap on this year’s Codegarden ‘09 back in June (the annual Umbraco developer conference), reporting on latest developments and milestones on the Umbraco roadmap.

The morning session continued with a presentation from Douglas Robar on “What I Wish I’d Known in my First 30 Days with Umbraco” - an extremely insightful look at best practises, techniques and concepts for all levels of Umbraco developers.

After lunch, Paul Marden gave his lively account of developing a multilingual website, followed by Niels and Darren building a ‘mystery’ application in Umbraco - a great live demonstration on building a package to export and import members from the attendees list. By creating a simple app that randomly selected attendees, swag was handed out to those lucky enough to be selected, a “Everybody loves Umbraco - Except Chuck Norris” t-shirt. Unfortunately, the LBi crew did not get chosen.

The rest of the afternoon consisted of an open mic session with presentations from Adam Shallcross, Chris Houston and Gregory Roekens. We finished off the serious part of the day with an open Q&A session with Niels, Doug and Gregory on the panel.

Then the fun began. We headed to the Vibe Bar just across the road at Brick Lane and, despite the rain, we discussed the joys of open source, XSLT, projects that we all deliver on time and on budget and much much more…

A big thank you to Marcus McDonnell, LBi Office Services Manager, for ensuring that everything went smooth; to Darren Fergusson, for his enthusiasm and hard work promoting the event; and to the speakers and participants.

So not content with being in this week’s OK Magazine (yes, really), the CRM team have been busy sharing their thoughts on segmentation and the like with NMA in last week’s Customer Relationship Management special.

It’s an interesting article that looks at the (relatively) long established discipline of CRM with a fresh pair of eyes and asks “what’s more important to customer relationships: triggers or Twitter?” It discusses a view shared by the CRM team here - that ‘traditional’ CRM needs to evolve and make use of new, social communication methods, media and technologies.

“CRM 2.0″ or “social CRM”, as some are calling it, is about engaging with consumers on their own terms - joining their conversation. It means talking and listening to your customers at times and in places and in a way that they are comfortable with. From this perspective, the underlying principles of CRM remain true; ensuring relevant and meaningful conversations and interactions (”the right ‘message’ at the right time in the right place”). The proliferation of channels and media just make this a tad more complex!

This new approach to CRM is not just about ‘adding in a few more channels’ - its fundamentally challenging traditional CRM practices (i.e. segmentation and communication strategy) and technologies (i.e. multi-channel campaign management and marketing automation) - requiring them to evolve to accommodate the need to respond to real-time experiences and conversation that consumers expect through interactive channels.

There’s no doubt social media and technologies present real opportunities to better connect and build relationships with customers. Whilst a lot of attention is being paid to the marketing part of CRM, perhaps the greatest potential for improving and advancing relationships is through the service channel. For example, sites like getsatisfaction.com are turning customer service on its head: with customer support evolving into a community conversation between users and the brand.

Read more “Expert Views” on innovations shaping CRM, including my two-penneth! Enjoy!

Pipa

In need of some instant fun we decided to have a Kemp Folds inspired session. Take two pictures of Hard Man, Ross Kemp fold and enjoy.

Once we’d warmed up we took random photos of our colleagues and held a fold off. Each person took a random print from the table, folded it as required then with baited breadth revealed it next to the same image folded by another colleague. The biggest gasp, laugh, shock won.

Great fold. Fold on.

This friday fun was suggested by the Dan ‘Hold the Fold’ Holder - who now has his own personal tribute site - Folder of the Holder

With lots of work to show we decided to adopt a pecha kucha style presentation and crack through 7 projects in super quick time. For those that don’t know - pecha kucha format is 20 slides with 20 seconds a slide. To make sure we ran to time, all the slides were set to autoplay every 20 seconds. Bound to be fun.

We got hear to about:

• - Our work with BT, including BT Business, BT Retail and BT Tradespace.
• - The story behind our Marks in Time showcase.
• - The work on launching Electrolux in France through the Art Home project.
• - A sneak peak of an upcoming project with M&S launching 17th September (watch this space).
• - The latest on our work for Garanti - Turkey’s favourite bank.
• - A summary of the work we’ve done for UMG, including a number of artist sites and some hefty strategy.
• - A preview of the soon to be released Barratt Homes Prestige work and recent campaign activity.

The gods of Pecha Kucha did strike as one of our presentors attempted to move the slide on ahead of schedule, resulting on Powerpoint getting rather confused and moving two slides ahead completely wrong footed the flow. The rules are there to be heeded - attempts to break the 20 second rule will bite you back.

We also had three special guests in the audience from Lost Boys - our Amsterdam office. They were gracious enough to share some of their work for Vodafone with us, including a lovely story explaining how ‘Make the most of now‘ has to be meant not just said.

Pecha kucha is a registered Trademark and all rights rest with it’s creators

Inspired by In B-Flat and MJ Advertising, we wanted to think up ideas for creating a simple web page containing only 1 or more YouTube videos. A low tech video experience.

With thought starters: Music, diary films, banking tips, energy savings and holidays on the cheap, we set about thinking up some ideas. 15 minutes later we’d got suggestions of Tree of Transparent Truth, Interlinked Stories, Maxi-shape Creator, Buzz Headroom, The Flying Click-its, Replace the Dialogue, Magnetic Poetry and Don’t Go There.

This is worth checking out - an autoplay JavaScript version of B flat

Last week I was lucky enough to give a talk at the IAB about blending creativity and technology. [Presentation deck is available here 7.7MB PDF].

Now that’s something we know a thing or two about here at LBi. We’ve a talented team of technologists who work closely with our creative and experience architect teams. It’s not always been easy or smooth but it’s something we’re committed to getting right - as the new digital world - really needs joined up creative and tech to deliver the fantastic ideas we have.

Here are a few simple tips for better blending:

- Make both sides aware of what’s important
- Don’t throw tasks over the wall
- Let your technologists suggest ideas
- Give everyone the chance to be a hero
- Challenge your technologists with the impossible

Keep up to date with our Technical Architects team right here on LBiQ. Jim and Mark-A are already posting, with Nick, Jon, Riaz and Mark-D preparing their own brain splittingly clever bits for your delectation.

Clever technology & creative blending means we can do things like this, that and the other.

Not our regular Friday activity but Cannes on the cheap was fun and some of it happened on a Friday.

In attempt to keep costs down we decided (quite rightly) to forgo the usual (or so I’m told) expensive rooms in the Martinez, Carlton or Grand and decided to head to the Parc Bellvue camping site in Cannes La Bocca – not far from the beach, but far from Cannes Central. We’d started with the idea of tent but decided to upgrade to a caravan – somehow convincing ourselves that it would be more secure for our presentation and laptops. As luxuries go, it did come with it’s own gecko and rather narrow beds, but it didn’t come with shower or toilet . Thankfully both the outside showers and toilets were very clean, with the former providing very warm water.

Respect to Mike Williams from übermore who decided we were involving too much luxury and pitched his £15 tent alongside. His entrance after hours attracted the attention of the security guards as he barrel-rolled over the fence sometime after midnight. Despite this he did a cracking job at representing the Creative Showcase along with Laura at their workshop the following day.

Laura’s idea of a slap up meal consisted of 2-minute noodles with a small bottle of Pop Champagne to help the Cannes spirit. Rumours suggest this might have been her standard breakfast ration too.

My first night consisted of airport beer before boarding the last bus into Cannes – and then trying to remember the general layout from years gone by. Having alighted the bus successfully I proceeded to the beach to find my colleagues somewhat worse for wear at the No Party. A shady ‘slip the arm band over the wall’ later I was in were all seemed to be celebrating the end of television amongst other things. Clearly this ‘no party’ meant no wardrobe or night vision after guest after guest managed to fall over my rucksack causing untold damage to the beautiful people of Cannes. Commonsense prevailed and an early night brought the proceedings to a close, for the importance of being there - we had a workshop the following morning. Thankfully I’d had the Heineken pipe fitted meaning this refreshing liquid managed to pass the majority of major organs meaning little damaged was caused.

An early start followed by a Nurofen, croissant and of course Perrier, meant no pesky audience was going to hold us back. Thankfully French buses are frequent, clean and cheap at 1 Euro. So our journey into Cannes was speedy and direct. Moreover they don’t seem to have annoying passengers that insist on playing below par RnB from their mobile phones.

Attempts to send intelligent tweets were curtailed by Anil arranging an in-promptu meeting at his building site come hotel. It had a marvellous view out across the Mediterranean once you ignored the unfinished roof, diggers and concrete mixers. Some how I preferred our campsite it felt far more real, believable. Get down with the Gecko.

Our workshop was then dispatched with aplomb and with a series of lewd but enlightening creative ideas from our visiting middle eastern friends (you had to be there). A few matters of work were cleared up and so then on to the smoozing. It was slightly annoying to be the only ones paying for drinks at a hotel bar when your UK digital friends are being entertained free of charge by the Guardian. Thankfully the cordon was easy to lift. A swift kick to Mr LMFM’s knee meant the esteemed guests soon left…. And we were back to square one.

As the sun set the evening’s entertainment options started to present themselves. Well actually they didn’t – the only party required an invite and our ‘do you know who we are’ posturing counted for nothing as we were right at the back of a very long queue all trying the same thing. We tried a shifty look around the side and even considered a commando style run over the roof and slide down the pole entrance – but quickly realised it was pointless. It turned out that Ginger hair and bad breadth (Mr Bedwood) would see you enter as would being polite and on your own (Mr Tait)

So running out of options we retreated to a hotel bar, where I correctly identified a famous person, but got it incredibly wrong before seeing the rock royalty of Roger Daltry complete with Union flag socks sat next to him. To complete this famous gang was the lovable Irishman and one time musician Sir Bob Geldof. Ignoring this merry group we got stuck into some Rose and chatted about the festival so far.

Realising a trip to Cannes without visiting the Gutter Bar would be a sacrilege we took matters in hand and traipsed off to find it. Thankfully a few expense accounts where still in existence and yes a little more Rose was consumed. We were introduced to a number of award winning creatives that evening (well done all) indulging in some stimulating and insightful conversation. Only to be interrupted by the screams of FIGHT, FIGHT, FIGHT – and then we saw it – the aforementioned Sir Bob being led away back into the hotel by a rather burley security guard. Thankfully Kofi Anan, fresh from his earlier seminar had been on the scene and provided the perfect mediator to this unsavoury episode. For the record Sir Bob wasn’t fighting with me. Thankfully.

As the light started to break across the French resort, we realised it was in fact time to head home. A stroll along the Croisette meant the obligatory photos with Hans Solo, Chewy and Uma. When all had been packed back in their hotels and apartments – I soon realised that Cannes on the cheap came at a price – how the hell to get back to La Bocca. Realising the concept of a night bus hadn’t reached the South of France – some ant like manoeuvres and arm gestures managed to a flag a taxi down.

The dawn chorus was in full flight, as was the nearby motorway when I returned to the caravan. So grateful was I for my rather splendid Boots ear-plugs I soon found myself in the land of nod.

Friday was a far more relaxed affair spent in the delightful company of Congregation Partners and WNTD – thanks for the expense account – yes I owe you. We spent some of the time discussing our beautiful French waitress called Sandy. Yep we couldn’t work that one out either - a face and name that just didn’t match. Much conversation on the state of the industry, economy, the awards and economy ensued before this budget traveller had to scrounge a lift back to the airport.

Cannes on the cheap had been a success – a successful workshops completed, connections made, important dialog spoken and all under a strict budget. It might be Advertising’s annual big celebration bash but I heartily recommend doing it on the cheap. So next year lets all hire a caravan, pitch a tent and keep it simple. It really is where its at.

Technically not a friday - was a wednesday but high jinx abound as a set of LBiers took on a Brick Lane Treasure Hunt challenge involving some impromptu promotion for our favourite coffee shop, Nude. That’s one way of enjoying the hot weather I guess.

Last Thursday a few of us from LBi, Lego, P&G and Pereira & O’dell did a workshop on building a believable brand for the digital age. As part of the session set two briefs and asked the attendees to response with ideas for how to launch this new product.

We referenced a number of interesting projects and their case studies. These can be found here:

Sociability
Forever story by CHI for Talk Talk
Whopper Sacrifice by CP+B for Burger King

Integrated Worlds
Spot The Bull by Poke for Orange
Nokia Unloader by Far Far for Nokia

Conversation
Garron Dares by Lean Mean Fighting Machine for National Year of Reading

And for a reminder of the Lego Miniman work take a look at this. We’ll post the case study video up here shortly.

Here’s a PDF of our presentation.

Just launched by us here at LBi: a new site to support one of our biggest clients for their birthday. Marks and Spencer’s 125th Anniversary is not only an in-store celebration, but a fabulous exhibition called “Marks in Time” in Leeds which will show off their continued history of innovation and ethical production. Our task has been to support that exhibition, and to add conversation and continued development to the show over its 3 year exhibition period.

Growing from a penny stall so many years ago, did you know that M&S was the first supermarket to sell fresh chicken? The first to produce a mass-market melt-in-the-middle chocolate pud? And through Plan A, the first to go hydrogenated trans-fat free, and to only use free-range eggs, even in cooked produce? Well, neither did we, but surfacing these fascinating facts, and others, is one of the reasons that we’ve just loved this project so much. Focussing on 7 product innovation stories through time, the site both gives a taste of the show itself and an opportunity for people to add their thoughts and memories about M&S though writing online ‘postcards”.

Utilising large areas of Flash video (filmed in our basement in conjunction with Agenda Collective) and subtle sounds to bring the historical tableaux to life, it brings a little bit of the contemporary M&S sexiness to their wonderful history.

Here’s a quick selection of recent award winning work from the LBi network

Webbys

Digital disobedience, with security computer clogging Hello Fra gained the Peoples’ Vote. Savvy Auntie was also nominated.

We also had Honourary Mentions for Red Bull Racing, Pleats Please Issey Miyake, The Atava House and The Company

Revolution Awards
Generation Green - Professor Green and the Eco-Rangers picked up the B2B Category win.

Creative Review Annual
The hugely popular Hope.Act.Change
Mitsubish’s On Your Mark - helping to launch 2 new models Europe wide

Sweden’s Golden Egg
A silver for the Swed Bank campaign - cleverness all round.

Danish Creative Circle
Silver for Nike women and shortlist for Nike Troupe
Another Silver for the German Tourist Board campaign

Through the great team in EPR we launched the 2009 campaign for Red Cross in support of Refugee Week this week.
The Red Cross is asking everyone to look beyond the label of “refugee” often placed on people,a label that’s so damaging and impersonal – and to see refugees for who they really are and what they contribute to the UK.

Not content with resting on our 2008 award-winning laurels in terms of creating PR for the event, we’ve gone bigger and better this year. We’ve created a short film (in conjunction with the brilliant Agenda Collective) starring Mission Impossible 2 and Desperate Housewives star Dougray Scott, highlighting the plight of refugees in the UK and surfacing some of their stories.

Look beyond the label from British Red Cross on Vimeo.

But the real meat of the campaign we’ve created is an online movement to allow individuals to show support for the cause by participating in grass-roots action:

The idea couldn’t be simpler: we’re asking people to change their online status on the 15th June (the start of Refugee Week). To ‘look beyond the label’ by replacing their profile pictures and status, tweeting about it, blogging about it and adding the call to action to their email signatures to encourage the viral spread of the action. We’re hoping to create something a little like an Earth Hour movement here (not as big, but then Earth Hour started off small at first too).

You can check out the site and all the ways you can help here: http://www.lookbeyondthelabel.org/

The success of the campaign depends on its viral reach, so we’re asking everyone we know to please contribute where you can. Changing your email signature over the next 3 weeks to incorporate the message is a good first step (full instructions here: http://www.lookbeyondthelabel.org/email.html); but please take a minute out of your day on the 15th or before to change your Facebook/Twitter profile pics, change your status, and make a visible show of support for the Red Cross through all your social networks. The video is on vimeo which you can link and embed into your blogs etc too.

Its amazing what a little bit of seeding even just from friends will accomplish in getting it out there.

From Theo:
Looks like people are having fun with our New Blood campaign. The posters are popping up all over the place. Those of you who walk past Wieden + Kennedy in the mornings may have noticed one proudly displayed centre/front in their window. Apparently Dare, Mother, Poke and a whole bunch of others also have them up. Below are just a few examples of how our campaign has (umpromtedly - new word) taken a life of its own:

Thanks to Ben, Fillipe and Simon we have an aggregator of personal tweets from our London office displaying in reception. These pictures don’t do it justice - it actually looks lovely and clear.

Here at LBi we’ve just launched the campaign to promote D&AD New Blood’s 10th Anniversary exhibition, at the end of June. Its been a labour of love, something that I’m really proud of for the best (in my opinion) and most important part of the charity.

This campaign is about getting industry down to New Blood to support graduating students. First off don’t let’s forget the message here - we’re trying to build our collective future. New Blood has been suffering from growing apathy amongst us agency-types for a while now. In the last downturn, internships and placements just evaporated for graduates. For a few years students stepped out into an industry that just wasn’t paying attention. These graduates went elsewhere, and as anyone trying to find mid/senior talent, particularly in digital, can attest to - the whole industry lost out, and work has suffered for it. Its our collective responsibility to grow one of the most dynamic and amazing industries out there.

Call me naive (and I’m sure you will) but we wanted to try to get us all off our arses (or out of them) and take a minute to think about what New Blood is all about, where we might have been 10 years ago, and to make a personal pledge to give these new talents the support that they deserve: there’s no denying its going to be really tough for them out there.

The hero photos represent only a small part of this campaign, but a lead that we hoped would put New Blood on the industry radar again, and cause some intense discussion about why its so important (job done there, I guess ).The images are tongue-in-cheek but the message they contain is seriously important. The point is that these people aren’t the seven most important people at the event, its the students, and its also each person that stops navel-gazing and actually contributes to its success.

These industry ‘icons’ were selected because they are actively helping New Blood already, offering their scant time (extra big thanks to Nadav) and profile to help get the conversation going, and who have committed to the New Blood event - they are the first step towards creating some solidarity with our brightest young stars by challenging you to do more yourself. And it’s working.

For those that haven’t seen the whole campaign, please check it out. For those lucky enough to be judging D&AD professional and student awards this year, there was a booth set up (using the 2 of 2006’s Best New Blood Winners - David Horwich & Paul Mansley) where everyone could pledge their support… and  of course the hub of activity is that everyone is encouraged to upload their own photos or video committing to being at the event. “I’ll be there”.

We’ll also be asking agencies to use their prime window real estate to create their own statements of support - a lot of us have the best street-level ad space in our areas.

On top of that we’re providing free space for all students to have a web presence within the same matrix, and a great digital system for tagging your favourite work at the event, so that all that fiddling about with trying to contact your favourite future teams afterwards is as painless as possible.

So please, continue with the discussion as much as you like, but know it came from the right place. Most importantly take a moment to think about what it was like when you were entering an industry with your vivid optimism and desire to do what we all do every day intact - and pledge your support.

After all, the more voices we get online, the more those you don’t agree with will be drowned out by the noise of the industry pulling together.

It was the G20 week - we’d all seen how the press had managed to goad 5 or 6 protesters into taking some action against several thousand Police and we wanted some.

So what would our protests be? The protest against annoying geezers playing music from their mobile phones managed to get our heckles across but due to the enormity of this problem and the sheer vitriol it was creating we decided to tackle something less emotional. Here are our protests:

Anti-protest Protest

Twitter/Tweet Off

Creatives against everything

Creatives against malfunctioning printers

This brief was for the Westomatic - Riviera Ultima with Simm logic. Or in other words ‘Pimp the coffee machine’. This isn’t your shiny Gagia desktop wonder - this is the big bad post box sized beast. We have two and they need a refresh. The main graphics area is up for grabs - what would do?

My favourite ‘Milking a Chicken’, the crowds favourite ‘Will it blend’.

Part 3 in our Copywriter series

Rewrite the lines from famous ads. Use the D&AD as your inspiration. For some reason this just descended into chaos with the results being censored… It’s for your own sanity and protection you understand.

Part 2 of our copywriters take control series.

So you’re pitching that new idea and want a snappy description to easily communicate what it’s all about. Why not practice with a few film ideas. You know the drill by now - divide into small groups - scribble things down - present them 10 minutes later.

Death Aquatic - I see nearly dead people

Spazhammer - He’s a spaz and he’s got a hammer…

Spazhammer II - This time you’re nailed…

Others included (best when read in a deep Hollywood accent):

Revenge of the Killer Milkshake - Don’t get sucked in this summer

The Letter - It’s got your name on it

The Hail - The weather’s getting heavy

Deep Cavity - And you thought you were scared of the dentist
Hygienist goes crazy with over-size tools think SAW in white coats and goggles

Chicken runs - Giving you the shits
A disaster movie, where the flood takes over

Turkish Delight - You’ll never guess what’s in the chilli sauce
A modern day Sweeney Todd meets abrakebabra

Inspired by the snow and frustrated by our country’s inability to cope with anything other than light rain, we decided to vent our feelings in a complaints letter to a local train service.

We decided it would be much more fun to do it as a celebrity - cue split into 4 groups, pick a celeb and get on with it.

10 minutes later and a lot of anger released these are the results:

Mr T

SWT Suckers,

You made me fly. You crazy fools. Nobody makes the T fly. Fools.

Planes man. I hate airports. Dem security suckers make me take off ALL my gold. I mean I am the A-Team. Crazy fool.

You never had snow before - that’s pathetic. I could have made a snow plough in any old barn using straw, nails and a shovel.

Next time get it right or I’ll hunt you down and force feed you snickers till you beg for the face to kiss you.

Suckers

Lily Allen

OMG I can’t believe it…

I got on the fackin train today
To see my BFF who’s totally gay
The wrong kind of snow
Not my kind of blow
Made it awl go slow…
Another facking delay

Am angry and bitter
S’why I’m writing this letta
You can be sure I’ll diss you on twitter
Sarf West Trains are so up the shitter
If only I’d walked then I’d be fitta

Who the fuck do you fink you are making me wait?
Keith Allen’s my dad, Jamie Winstone’s my mate
Had to divert to the Graucho to meet up with Kayte
Am never getting the train again from Nottin’ ill gayte

You c!@$

Hannibal Lecter

To whom it may concern

I am writing to you from the Queen Mary Asylum on the Isle of Wight. Having successfully  absconded from this very asylum Monday last and crossed the solent, I was booked on the 7:42  South West Train service from Portsmouth to London Waterloo, which should have arrived at 9:03am. This would have enabled me to catch the London Underground to St Pancras, in just fifteen minutes according to the Transport for London website, in order to catch the Eurostar back to Venice.

Alas, due to adverse weather conditions, this train didn’t make it further than Aldershot where I was picked up by the police and transported back to this facility, thus thwarting my grand escape. I can not understand how such little snow can bring such a supposedly sophisticated nation’s transport system to a standstill.

The one positive thing I will say for South West Trains is regarding the exquisite local countryside meat served in first class, I’ve never tasted anything quite like it…

Yours regrettably

DR Hannibal Lecter

Its D&AD black pencil (and student award) judging time, and this year we’re very proud to host at LBi!

Here are some quick pics of the setup (we’ve even put a tablecloth on our coffee bar ) First on the list for judging are the student’s furniture design and professional product design categories tomorrow! Also pictured is my favourite piece of work from the students, a great stool-come-table…

Yesterday I gave a short presentation to the guests of Figaro Digital at their Design & Build, UCD conference. People often use the term best practice when speaking about UXD but other people often use it to stifle creativity. I wanted to leave the delegates with a little clarification and inspiration around best practice.

The idea of the talk was inspired by two things:

1) Our own experience over the years on how are own hugely talented User Experience team have worked in conjunction with our edgy, look-to-the-stars creative department. We work in a collaborative manner and as such we’re constantly evolving our methods, techniques to creatively solve our clients’ problems.
2) This particular blog post by Chris Clarke, our CCO and his feelings for best practice

I ended up racing through the presentation at break neck speed so didn’t dwell on any particular points - although many could be expanded upon. In short, best practice is useful, but not the b-all & end-all. Use it to get started, to help out - but make sure you dream, lead with an idea and embrace failure.

The presentation can downloaded here. PDF [12MB]

A few notes when reading it:

- All the examples demonstrate great work. Some fly in the face of best practice and deliver amazing results, some extend it.
- The evolving examples are drawn from the Webby Awards - check them out and how they have assessed best practice.
- Some of the work has been removed as I’m not in a position to share it with everybody yet
- The Pattern Language is the original book (ok so it the 2nd in a series of 3 for the pedants) by Christopher Alexander. Well worth a read especially if you are interested in architecture.

This was the preamble - judge for yourselves if the presentation measures up.

Getting past best practice: being creative, staying usable

The supposed conflict between creativity and best practice still manages to influence nearly everything we do online. For many best practice is actually worst practice, being nothing more than an excuse for mediocrity. For others it’s the bible from which to preach and something not to be deviated from – at any cost.

This talk will take a refreshing look at recent web standards and provide thought provoking examples that both challenge and reinforce them. It will bust open a number of myths around best practice and show how creativity can flourish without sending usability specialists into mild cardiac arrest.

Generation Green picked up the Revolution B2B Award at the Revolution Awards. It’s taken me this long to remember where I left the award after one too many bottles of celebratory champagne…

We’re stoked and chuffed to see our hard work, commitment and enjoyment be rewarded. It’s great piece of work and we all had a lot of fun doing it.

Starting a ripple effect
In the beginning of 2008, British Gas wanted to start a ripple effect in tackling sustainable issues from the ground up. Through its new Generation Green programme it decided to target and empower kids to create a new movement. Having noticed how children would practise new skills through playing games online. We decided to introduce a good vs evil online game – which pitted good, clean, green living against evil, wasteful, archaic environmental disregard.

On the side of good, we have the eco-rangers, headed by Professor Green and his super-smart assistant J0b0t. They are pitted against Baron Fossilosis who has turned humans into mindless, energy guzzling wasters. The eco-rangers are charged with rescuing Fossil Island from destruction through their own sustainable actions.

The weekly occurrence of the MiniMama EA Meeting proved fruitful and engaging yet again. This time credit went to Jeff for the concept and facilitation of the “LBi Swap Meet”. The idea was to bring along a piece of your work (as close to a finished design as possible) and hand it over to the person on your left. We then had to provide a particular type of feedback before passing it again to the left for the next round of feedback, and so on - Add, Modify, Remove, Compliment. Although this proved to be a lot of fun, it’s was a great way to get objective feedback and inject some new ideas into a design.

The prize for most original (and weirdest) suggestion must go to Kim, who thinks you should be able to click on the image of the man on the BT business homepage to undress him?!?!?

Post-it heaven

A few Fridays ago, the Facebook album art meme swept through the office. Here are a few of our creations. You know the rules.

Long before the recent popular facebook meme we had our album art task.

Start with a few random images from our new creds deck, a couple of markers, scissors, prit-stick and a few scraps of paper. Select a random music genre; then dream up an artist name, 4 track titles and create an album cover. 10 minutes later and these were the results.

Genre: World Music
Artist: Mongo Bizarro
Album: Lost In Translation

Tracklist:
1. Disco Enchiladas
2. I’m An Illegal Alien in Wolverhampton
3. I Can’t Get No Work Permit
4. Ride The White Lightening
5. Download My Family

Genre: Dinner Jazz
Artist: Betty And The Mildreds
Album: All My Friends Smell of Piss

Tracklist:
1. Jazz In Your Face
2. Biscuits Brew
3. Zim Zimmer
4. Stairlift To Heaven
5. Kind of Blue Rinse

Genre: Thrash Metal
Artist: Septik Octopus
Album: Noise Hazard

Tracklist:
1. Aheb’s Carcus
2. I Bleed Noise
3. Mental Tentacle
4. Stairlift To Heaven
5. Kiss My Suck

Genre: Breakbeat
Artist: SW
Album: Darkside Twister

Tracklist:
1. We’re Not Plastic
2. Sidewalker Shuffle
3. It’s Hard Being Evil
4. Darth Never Loved Me