After taking part in several 2009 interactive planning sessions for various clients over the past few weeks a common question between the sessions was asked repeatedly.  What are you going to do for us online?  The question seems quite simple and benign on the surface, but it has almost infinite intangibles, influencers, dependencies and possibilities.  And because of all those things that basic question becomes very difficult to answer and requires a very complex response.  Clients are asking for their digital and online agencies to provide more than just a strategy for building a website.  We have moved into a new era with the digital agency landscape and the agencies that prosper will need to respond with an evolved view of online marketing and how to integrate with other marketing mediums.

I generally break the evolution of interactive marketing strategy development into four eras;

1)       The ‘hot sh*t’ era, other wise knows as the first bubble.  This is when every .com start up was an IPO away from glorious riches. Accountability, for both budget and strategies, took a back seat to industry buzz and popularity.  The money and BS flowed freely and everyone was trying to be the next one to cash in/out.

2)       The ‘we are a serious business, seriously’ era.  This is the void between the first bubble and then now ubiquitous Web 2.0 establishment where interactive agencies and ideas had to fight for credibility, and budget, to prove that online marketing was more than putting .com at the end of your name or asking for something ‘viral’ in the campaign.

3)       The ‘seat at the table’ era.  The bubble burst, we proved that interactive marketing could work, we had the metrics to prove it, and now we want to participate (even lead) the creation of marketing strategies and not just be the production shop building a cool website.

4)       The ‘what are you going to do for me online’ era.  This is the next big step for digital agencies.  We’ve gotten our seat at the strategy table and now we are expected to do something that pure play digital agencies haven’t been equipped to do…think like traditional marketers.

This last era is where the simple questions start to get complicated.

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I first came across the Matterial paper line during an open studio party, over the course of the night a good portion of the crew at Matter was hard at work, printing and packaging up some of their goods for the Matterial line, there were samples of each offering displayed. The entire range of products are designed, printed, and packaged in-house at the Matter studio. The line uses recycled paper, packaging, along with reused/repurposed elements. Other adornments are also done in-house, such as letterpress and the silk screening. It’s a pretty wild and energetic set-up, the products being produced as a result of it, are just as inspiring to draw in as they are to look at.

Outside of helping to organize your week, or simply helping you squeeze out that little burst of creative joy, Matterial also helps to draw the connection that we all share, in the products we consume and their direct impact on the local environment & economy. With these products the Matter studio has cranked out a body of work that is aesthetically pleasing & engaging, along the process of creating they have also managed in a small and unique way to do their part in contributing a solution to some of the larger issues we face today.

Check out the Matterial website for their line of consciously created tablets, drawing pads, composition books, and an assorted collection of other creative driven oddities & blunt objects!

Created by designers, for designers and other thinking persons.

Josh Wills, Creative

The Olympic torch reached the top of the world Thursday in the hands of a Chinese mountaineering team. Political controversy aside, what’s really impressive is the investment by China’s state broadcaster CCTV, who apparently built a television studio at basecamp, then several relay locations throughout the ascent. All in the effort to broadcast it live. A live broadcast is cool, but a live interactive broadcast via the internet would have been even cooler. After all, it’s a global event, right?

Here’s the full article.

David Schell

If you’ve ever spent time with an interactive agency defining a digital experience (website, integrated campaign, web application, etc), you’ve most likely seen the results of several developed personae - fictitious representations that encapsulate targeted, prioritized user types. Historically, personae have been touted as a key deliverable when developing any user-centered product. At texturemedia, we certainly subscribe to this belief and have found them effective in allowing clients and project team members to “think like an end-user.” [ more… ]

Meeting expectations on all client projects is difficult. Issues come up. Communication breaks down. Deadlines get missed at times. Costs escalate. Bugs are found. Servers go down. Sometimes the complexity of a great idea is underestimated.

These seemingly perpetual issues make client management challenging.

To address these challenges we have several options we can employ. We can bury issues. We can solve them before the client finds out. We can address them indirectly by getting some unrelated quick wins, building credits elsewhere. We can even deflect and make excuses. To us, these approaches are tired and they only push out risk. In the end they do a disservice to the client and agency relationship.

How about trying something new?

Be a good partner for your client. Be honest with your client. Even if it means the relationship may hit rock bottom.

Hitting rock bottom with a client means that all issues and potential issues have been flushed out, documented, discussed and understood. It’s big bang with nuance. And while it may seem risky and unattractive to disclose unknown issues to clients, the reward of proactive transparency is significant. It builds trust, credibility and partnership on both sides.

After hitting rock bottom the only way to go is upwards.

Ivan Perez-Armendariz

In the face of stiff competition from Microsoft’s Silverlight and Sun’s JavaFX, Adobe’s Flash technology seems to be making all the right moves.
Adobe has given us the tools to make Flash dance (I haven’t used those two words together since the eighties) in new and interesting ways.

In particular, Flex 3 and ActionScript 3 have made it possible for we programming geeks to create visually rich internet applications using a strongly typed, object oriented programming language and a decent markup language. And the AIR runtime engine has enabled us to extend these type of applications to the desktop using the same programming languages and skill sets.

Now that Flex 3 is open sourced I expect we’ll see even more progress in terms of documentation and API’s in Flex 4 (code named Gumbo).

But this isn’t meant to be cheerleading camp. So here’s my hint of the day for flex developers wanting to create RIA applications. Both Cairngorm and PureMVC are strong frameworks for creating Model/View/Controller applications in Flex and Actionscript. But if you are creating something relatively simple, both of these frameworks can add unnecessary complexity and overhead to your application.

For a simpler application, I highly recommend Tom Bray’s EasyMVC recipe (unfortunately you have to log into Adobe to view his screencast). Just to keep you confused, there is a second actionscript framework calling itself EasyMVC written by Simeon Bateman. I prefer Tom Bray’s explanation and approach. He refers to his EasyMVC as a recipe. There are no source code files to download, only a explained methodology for how to structure a well organized application. It’s also a nice primer for Cairngorm development for anyone interested in learning more about that framework.

- Dan Fox, VP of Technology

We’re all familiar with the ideas of backwards compatibility and graceful degradation. Now it’s time to embrace the idea of progressive enhancement.

Like backwards compatibility and graceful degradation, progressive enhancement is not a new idea. At its simplest, progressive enhancement means that a system will provide a base level of performance, with higher performance provided for clients which can handle it. But the base level of performance must be such that it provides everything necessary to achieve the goals of the system.

For the web, progressive enhancement means providing a basic level of content for everyone, even the most primitive browsers, and then adding in more content (like multimedia) and capabilities (like fancy Flash navigation or form auto-complete) for those who want it and have the resources for it.

Progressive enhancement is surprisingly easy to apply to web projects. The industry best practices of semantic markup and separation of presentation from content provide a great foundation, and from there you can apply some simple techniques to progressively enhance that base. AJAX techniques, for example, are excellent choices for progressive enhancement, though it’s very important not to rely on AJAX as the sole provider of necessary function.

The biggest myth about progressive enhancement is that it severely constrains design and creativity, requiring a sort of “least common denominator” approach to producing websites. This couldn’t be farther from the truth. With a solid foundation of semantic markup and standards compliance, it’s easy to use progressive enhancement to create amazing websites with rich interaction and multimedia capabilities.

The benefits of progressive enhancement come directly from the basic level of content it provides, which is aimed at everyone. Progressive enhancement assures that even simple user agents can access your content and parse it correctly, which assures accurate search engine placement as well as a basic level of accessibility. And you’re still providing a top-notch interactive experience for the majority of users who have modern browsers and the resources to handle it.

- Jon Reid, Interface Development

The traditional teodice problem goes like this: ”If God is good and almighty, then why is there evil in the world?” That’s a very good question that has been debated by smarter people than me for centuries. Now, I don’t know if I want to blame God for the issue I will discuss here, even though I do think that bad communication is definitely in part responsible for the bad things that go on in this world. Instead I will rewrite the problem statement to be:

“Now that we have all these wonderful media to help us communicate,
how come it is still so hard?”

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I love the web. I love how quickly things change, and how a single innovation can open up a whole world of ideas. Take this site, for example. Publicis & Hal Riney’s newly redesigned site allows you to navigate using your web cam. How fantastic is that!

Check it out here.

David Schell, Creative

Interesting site that breaks down the before and after on some major brand identity redesigns. I find it interesting to flip through, and see whether the changes work for the better, or were even necessary to begin with. They also update the site regularly, so bookmark it for your next brand identity redesign.

http://www.underconsideration.com/brandnew/index.php?page=1

David Schell, Creative