Odds are, if you landed a career in art direction or design on or before 1988, you’re familiar with the following items; Ruby or Amberlith, circle template, compass, typesetting, Linotype, Haberule, Zipatone, film overlays, Stat camera, non-photo blue pencil, Koh-I-Noor rapidographs and a full 132 piece Prismacolor set (for the art directors who actually knew how to draw). These tools now reside in the museum of forgotten art supplies, but they were essential for getting the job done back then. I know I’m starting to sound like a relic, but these antiquated devises made the point of contact between designers and drawing board more intimate. Courses that taught Gestalt, typography and layout were not electives, but mandatory for designers to understand the language of design.
A conversation started on the subway platform yesterday between a designer friend and myself as we were staring at a large NYC subway map. We laughed at how many overlays, registration marks, key lines, and wax-backed type applied with a burnisher would have been needed twenty years ago to create it. Not to mention being in the capable hands of a true paste-up artist. (I underscore, artist)
Digital has made the job of a designer much easier, but has it made him better? The answer might be found in three categories: 1) Education 2) Visual evolution and 3) Digital as disposable.
Education:
There is only so much information you can pack into a course or degree and there are many students who stick it out just long enough to put a decent a portfolio together. With so many new tools in a designer’s quill, you’d have to be a PHD to be proficient at them all. (Photoshop, Flash, After Effects, Final Cut, Dreamweaver, 3D modeling, HTML, social media, just to name a few) Schools are streamlining the foundations courses and jumping right into technology. You can test this theory with a simple task. Ask a junior flash designer to resize a leaderboard banner ad into a skyscraper and see what you get.
Visual evolution: This one is a bit of a parabolic arc. FLASH animation came onto the scene like a rock star and turned bad design into decent design because it moved, blinked or bounced. Anyone with a Mac and Adobe Creative Suite installed was somehow a professional designer. Solar flares, texture, beveled edges and reflections are a great way of putting lipstick on a pig.Like the free love go-go days of the 60s, things have calmed down and we seem to be getting back to the basics. A good user experience is facilitated by great design. That being said, the visual landscape has evolved. Our brains are capable of absorbing more stimuli, and kids are able to sort through it at a staggering rate. As the medium grows, so will the desire to scream louder.
Digital as disposable:
This is the most disheartening reality of the digital space. Similar to offline direct marketing, not much craft is applied to a mailer when statistics show most will make its way to the trash. Same rule applies here, with a different trashcan. Clients aren’t commissioning well-crafted work to perform media tests or landing pages that might only be used for a week. This is totally understandable, the problem being, the inability to distinguish between what’s important with a churn mentality. Thinking the same amount of time for a banner ad should be applied to a corporate identity system can be shocking.
Apple computer ran a print ad in 1994 for their new Power Mac with this headline: “If you’re a hack, you’ll still be a hack. You’ll just do it a whole lot faster.” This was a painfully true insight and one that allowed agencies to make a greater margin. The same task took half the time to create. As desktop publishing demystified pre-press and design in general, clients used that knowledge to negotiate rates, not understanding surface manipulation is only one small part of the puzzle. Having the talent to create something unexpected, optimize spatial relations, facilitate call to action or simply make things more legible is an art form not an animatronic task. It doesn't help the situation when everything from videos to music is perceived as free online. Social and spread media contribute to the fast, cheap and disposable mentality. By now, every client now knows about Jill and Kevin's wedding entrance video on YouTube and its 17 million hits. If Uncle Jim can get Superbowl-like attention by simply hitting the red record button, how complicated can it be?
A recent article on Adweek.com indicates that if the advertising industry ever bounces back, it will never be the same. A leaner business model, it states, with performance-based financial structures will increase. Everyone knows that the first to be squeezed out of a budget line item is the creative. If this is true, it’s highly unlikely the latitude to create inspiring design or nurture young designers to learn the craft of advertising will increase.
I can still remember the first time someone typed “C U L8R” in an instant message to me over 19 years ago using QuickMail at my first advertising job. I thought to myself, how geeky can one be? Years later, with AOL’s Instant Messenger, we were given the original set of emoticons or ‘smileys,’ then sheepishly typed the letters “LOL” for the first time. People were trying to be visually and emotionally expressive as well as communicate with the least amount of effort.
Quickly cellular phones were getting smaller (I remember the thrill of my first Nokia 2110 in ‘95), and an era of quick and disposable communication was born. Then text short code arrived and allowed businesses to sell and inform customers with immediacy – anything from a ring tone to a pair of pants could be purchased by simply inputting five characters via SMS or MMS.
Enter Twitter, the hopeful Messiah of the recent economic mudslide. Anything you wish to announce to the world within a 140-character limit. People who regularly use twitter have devised their own lingo of sorts –terms such as deets (details) or ppl (people). http://twittonary.com is a good resource for figuring out terms you might not be familiar with. Besides being part of the in-crowd, you can post more information quicker if you know what you’re doing.
Last month a friend passed along the iMoji application for the iPhone. iMoji is a set of over 400 emoticon-style graphics that you unlocked within your Japanese keyboard settings. Almost like "Magnetic Poetry" that was popular a while ago. An interesting thing has happened within my circle of iPhone friends who have all downloaded iMoji. In the same way as with the original, “CU L8R”, storytelling is facilitated by stringing together a few characters such as this:
(Translation: Scott thinks brunch was great. Heading to the gym at 5:00)
Now at 42 years old, I find myself turning up the geek-factor in ways that keep me up at night. But the lesson here is that people are evolving (or simply making more interesting) their digital expression. Facebook status updates have featured links, images, widgets and movies for a while now. “A picture is worth a thousand words” is evident as friends can learn more by saying less. Although voice recognition software has come a long way and will continue to improve on the consumer end, people still want to be visually in control of their projected voice
With evolving technology come innovative businesses. William Burk Digital is currently working with a client who is building a breakthrough product called, Thwapr. It will facilitate how we use and share visual content. It’s currently in stealth-mode, but suffice it to say, in the very near future we will all be Thwapping each other.
About ten months ago I viewed what was called, a “Brand Timeline,” that was posted on a colleague’s company website. A Canadian blogger, Jane Sample, was interested in visualizing her day using product brands. Since my agency was in the middle of concepting a company new business piece, I focused our efforts on visual storytelling within the social web. We built the brandmyday.com application as an experiment to see how users might express themselves. Although the site is a Beta release and has no social features as of yet, some interesting observations have emerged and one thing has become abundantly clear – people always embellish for entertainment value and tend to over compensate. Also, the topic of real vs. digital identity gains added clarity as it continues to emerge as a hot topic within the blogosphere.
Like I mentioned, this is an early release and it will be interesting to see how content evolves and if any users will think of new ways to use it. Here are a few examples that we have seen so far:
http://brandmyday.com/snoop-dogg
http://brandmyday.com/Harold-Phillips
http://brandmyday.com/boss-man
http://brandmyday.com/Jesus
Communication is evolving at an insane rate, but it does appear that the early caveman is a bit less of a lug head than we gave him credit for.
I viewed a TV commercial this past weekend for Nationwide Insurance announcing that they are the first insurance company to have their own app. (interestingly that they did not call it an iPhone app) I thought to myself, sound like a great fit, cellular transmission meets vehicular transmission.
Let’s start with the negatives then congratulate them for a smart job, well done.
First off, I wouldn’t consider it to be the most handsomely designed user interface. A few of the sign up fields are a bit hard to navigate, much less having to sign up in the first place.
The application itself is put together intelligently and the concept alone is admirable. Not only does it offer very useful features, but helps Nationwide do their job more efficiently. Here are a few of the capabilities:
• Calls emergency services
• Helps you collect and exchange accident info including photos using the iPhone camera
• Helps connect you with the nearest towing services
• Helps you start filing a claim
• Stores your insurance and vehicle info for easy lookup
• Locates Nationwide agents near you
• The proverbial iPhone handy flashlight
This isn’t a plug for the app as we have nothing to do with its development, but it once again points to the ever-evolving debate of the future of advertising. According to BusinessWeek (June 1st, 2009), the advertising industry has to get its head out of the sand and change with the rest of the world. I agree, but understand the realities – changing any monster industry overnight is next to impossible. Telling a 45-year-old Creative Director that TV is dead is not dissimilar to telling oil execs to work with clean energy. The circle of life is too rigid for seismic change, but change is inevitable. That being said, while huge agencies stagnate, it allows the smaller more nimble and creative ones to helm the industry’s future.
Two things are plain as day. First, companies that build useful online tools that improve the lives of their consumers will will have higher retention. And two, applications that are heavily advertised within traditional channels such as TV are downloaded at a much quicker rate. Good news for the aging Creative Directors out there. That being said, CNET reports that of the 30,000+ iPhone apps, only 30 percent of the people who buy them actually use them the day they are purchased and the numbers plunge from there: after 20 days, less than 5 percent of those who downloaded an application are actively using it. The drop-off is worse for free applications.
I was visiting family in the heartland last week and picked up my thirteen year-old nephew’s iPod touch to see which apps he downloaded. They ranged from “iFart” to “Beer Tap.” I supposed to an adolescent living in Omaha, the iFart is a much more sought after app than the one put out by Nationwide. But I did forgot to ask him if he’s able to let one rip on his Facebook wall.
I originally started a blog entry to pose the arguments for Flash vs. HTML site builds. The design pros and cons, as well as the backend and marking attributes. But then I got to thinking; maybe the best way to begin the discussion is with the tireless cliché of form vs. function.
Let’s start with Google. They have a very simple mission statement: “To organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful.” They also believe “To focus on the user and everything else will follow.”
Most designers would agree that Google products lack aesthetic sophistication. Most of them are downright ugly. It’s also pointed out on their corporate page: “A Google product doesn’t try to impress users with its whizbang technology or visual style.” And the Google logo itself is a design nightmare if it weren’t so omnipresent.
The Google design philosophy is equally simple:
“The Google User Experience team aims to create designs that are useful, fast, simple, engaging, innovative, universal, profitable, beautiful, trustworthy, and personable. Our intent is to invite beginners with a great initial experience while also attracting power users whose excitement and expertise will draw others to the product.”
I urge anyone who hasn’t read the Google complete design philosophy to take a look: http://www.google.com/corporate/ux.html. Within the pages are jewels that relate to information flow, the democracy of the web and how anyone should approach internet-based design and development, regardless of the language or framework.
Gone are the earlier days of traditional interactive when users were wowed by unique and elaborate animation techniques. Users ‘get it’ now and want to ‘get it’ faster without too many bells and whistles. They should accentuate and not get in the way. People have more to look at and less time to do it. We recently published an ad for a Flash Designer and were immediately inundated with resumes. As I viewed the countless portfolio sites it was hard to tell one designer from the next. All with the same transitions, effects and motion tweens. Aside from the overall taste-factor, the difference between the candidates boiled down to information-flow and a clear understanding of what a user is looking to do (Function). This reminded me a lot of how we used to review traditional art director portfolios. Advertising trade schools pumped out slick books, an obvious result of the full Photoshop effects library. After you peel back the onion, it boiled down to the brilliance of the concepts and not about surface manipulation.
RGA’s Nike + running application combines form and function with a handsome User Interface. Nike global director of digital media, Stefan Olander sees the web as a chance to build Nike's brand by providing valuable utility, viewing digital as less of a marketing/branding channel than a place for services. Apple’s iPhone is another great example. Though games and entertainment application are popular, the utility-based ones have the most downloads as they create an experience that is easy to use and betters the lives of the user.
This gets us to the crux of the argument. Web design will ultimately be less about subjective style, and more about revenue and ROI. With companies trying to get more eyeballs to websites and online promotions, SEO is as important as information flow and the direct line to the consumer’s wallet. It’s hard to ignore Publicis’ Honeyshed project, spearheaded by Drogas5, when discussing this topic. The flash-based U.I. was so difficult to navigate that getting the items you wanted to purchase was almost impossible. This was bizarre since it was billed as the new QVC for the hip and trendy.
As the pendulum swings from the brand-centric traditional agencies who have dictated how we consume products, to the digital agencies who know how to serve it up and create a conversation around it, it now appears to be swinging back, yet hung up in the middle. The traditionalists know how to tell a story. They know how to sell product. And what was considered the ugly stepchild of the advertising world, direct response, has emerged as the darling of the online space. Remember the shunned art director down the hall who could design the best damn coupon ad you’d ever seen? Well, he’s back and ready for his One Show pencil.
Ever since the phase, ‘The Long Tail,’ was thrown around a few years back, media companies and online advertising agencies have been trying to follow the trend and cash in. The phrase ‘The Long Tail’ was used describe the niche strategy of businesses, such as Amazon.com or Netflix, that sell a large number of unique items in smaller quantities. Now that we’re in a recession and product inventory is higher and consumer spending is lower, it appears as if the long tail is getting even longer. Will this mean another seismic shift in the way we do business?
Last year I attended the IAB conference in New York City where the topic was again discussed in a pre-recessionary context. Media networks were leading the charge with tips on how to connect with these niche audiences who pursue lesser in-demand products. One thing that’s true is that niche audiences are easier to market to. The ability to find common themes, nuances, likes and dislikes becomes more apparent, and with the help social media sites such as Facebook, MySpace or Twitter, market research will be easier.
When I led the creative and strategic launch of Disaboom.com last year, (the online community catering to those with disability.) it was the ultimate lesson in niche social marketing. What first appeared as an audience of 50 million people, turned into 150 million when you factored in anyone ‘touched’ by disability. This included parents, doctors, co-workers, friends or caregivers.
We focused on three distinct target groups: disabled baby boomers, college-aged and the caregiver community. Within these groups were age, sex, military/non-military and race. With these variables we created over 150 unique banner impressions to A/B test. Suddenly one large audience became a myriad of smaller groups. Without the reach of the internet, we would have never been able to effectively target these niche groups. The ultimate goals was to get users down three distinct paths; health, living and community. Within these paths were the products and information consumers were seeking.
For Disaboom, the key to chasing the long tail was to take advantage of every tool available within our toolbox. We isolated 12 brand ambassadors who represented evangelists within the disability community. From actors and athletes to mothers and their children. We leveraged their Facebook and MySpace pages, personal cause websites, Disaboom Community profiles, blogs and launched with a series of banner ads. For example, an urban teen seated in a wheelchair asks, “Have I forgiven the person who put me here?” Rich media and in-banner videos became trailers for ‘answers’ that appeared in landing pages. We used both online and offline television to ‘Disable Stereotypes’ and get the conversation started. Events such as the New York City Marathon and the Achilles Club became launch points for text messaging, Twitter feeds, and a virtual event played within the media room on the website. Suddenly, everyone was engaged at every level and within all media channels. A big idea was conveyed and tactically executed within the smaller sub-groups.
Ten years ago, integrated marketing meant Print, Radio and Television. Today it includes blogs, texting, videos, IMs, wikis, tag clouds and widgets. The list keeps growing by the minute. With traditional advertising, media was the vehicle for the message. Today, great ideas, themselves, become the media and offer more ammunition than ever before to reach niche audiences. Suddenly that concept that costs nothing to produce appears on YouTube; gets blogged about, commented on, uploaded to Facebook, downloaded to your desktop, and twittered, all in channels as far down ‘the long tail’ as you can imagine.
Digital agencies who understand the principles of traditional advertising will be better prepared to lead the charge. Great strategic ideas create social currency in a medium that’s hungry for it.
One of the first things a client will ask us at William Burk before we build a site is, “What do you guys know about Search Engine Optimization?”
Over the years the term SEO has changed in its definition and handling. The tricks used to manipulate rankings ten years ago do not apply as Google algorithms are much more sophisticated, and to most everyone, a mystery. The desire to remove as much spam as possible and create quality listings is their mantra.
The bottom line is that being the first listing on Google can get as many as 55 percent of all people who search for that term. SEO is an important and cost-effective part of your marketing program. Done correctly, it can have an amazing upside to your business and your bottom line.
Years ago we would concentrate on the basics. Keyword stuffing and extensive meta data. The basics still remain true, but you also need to be relevant, build authority and be linked to every conversation possible –from Facebook, Flikr, Twitter and beyond. The constant lattice of crossover conversation between these applications has affected how items are indexed in a big way.
Today, Search Engine Optimization has become much more sophisticated and requires the orchestrated efforts of writers, designers and developers. As with everything we do at William Burk, it’s important to put yourself in the mindset of your consumer. How will the user experience flow from start to finish? Thinking ‘human’ is sometimes a more effective way to discover unique entry points that can be optimized. Then ensure each step along that path has the right keywords that are related to your product or service.
In the past, we’d have to wait for the content within the sites we built to be indexed by the major search engines; not any longer. You can upload XML site map files with details about your site so search engines know where to crawl. This will also help Flash sites get indexed, especially if you have other pages that are “behind” the flash content and not easily available to a search engine. This site breaks it down into 4 steps: http://www.xml-sitemaps.com/
Optimizing content:
Trying to find the right keywords and phrases that align with your product/concept, then calibrating the correct ratio between overall word count and keywords is key. There is no rule of thumb relating to keyword percentage. 10 to 20 percent seems valid, but once again, the user experience is paramount and no one wants to drive a user away with unnatural word-stuffing. It makes the user experience awkward and difficult. Instead, use the method of creating more pages with fresh and compelling content. Make sure your website title contains textually relevant words.
Links, links, links…
One of the things my Partner, Leigh Newsome, has told me from day one, is to use relevant text in your links if possible. “Don’t use phrases like ‘click here’, but instead something strategically relevant for your business such as a product name, title, etc. Make sure the words in those links are based on your keyword marketing strategy. Getting others to link to you also helps your search engine ranking, so don’t forget to make it easy for web visitors to share this page.”
That brings us to the final piece of the puzzle, social networking. Have your company site linked to as many relevant social sites as possible. From Twitter, to Facebook, LinkedIn, social bookmarking and the many thousands of blogs out there, there is always a natural, spam-free way to make that happen. Have those linked to the essential informational part of your site, such as ‘Corporate’ or ‘About us.’
Did I mention in this article yet that William Burk is a digital advertising and development company located in New York City?
Recently I read two separate online news stories about the future of social media. Sarah Lacy interviewed Roger McNamee of Elevation Partners who feels the last thing people should be debating is the valuation of Facebook stock, but rather, shift the focus to Facebook winning in the space and finessing the application to be all it can be. Facebook, as he puts it, has tremendous potential. Everyone knows that if a person has 500 friends on Facebook, there are no more than 30 or 40 who are good friends. The close friends are the contacts stored within your mobile device. So it will be the convergence of a social network within mobile devices that will begin to reap the rewards of monetization.
Recent numbers from comScore support this fact. The current model for social networking is beginning to plateau. Aside from a handful of industry professionals who can’t be in enough social networks, the mainstream is experiencing social fatigue. All they really need is a Facebook or MySpace account and a LinkedIn page. Beyond that, user groups within the two behemoths can fill in the gaps of niche networks.
It seems the opportunities for mobile networking are still wide open at this point. No one has created an application that has received enough traction to get mainstream numbers. That’s partly because of technology and handset limitations. The prison the handset manufactures have created with free-market invention has created a bottleneck effect for mobile’s real promise.
The iPhone dipped its toe in this deep swimming pool with the launch of Loopt. The problem became quickly apparent with the iPhone operating system itself and the lack of background processing. The application does quits once you skip to your web browser or use your phone. Users have to constantly be updating their location in order for it to be accurate. It was a brilliant attempt. Imagine, you’re sitting in an airport terminal bored out of your mind. By simply clicking Loopt, you can pick up details of people sitting in your general vicinity by choosing various filters. As much as you or they want to provide. “Heading to Vegas for the CES Trade Show. Anyone else going to be there? Poke me if you’re interested.”
The potential is much greater than the airport example, to be sure. And once advertisers fully understand the huge opportunity to tap into these mobile social networks the quicker the industry will grow. Stanford University has already developed a free iPhone application for its student body that offers such services.
Keep an eye out for Palm. They announced their upcoming phone/OS at CES. It’s quite sexy, intuitive, and acts as a potential "gear box" or connector of your different worlds. For example, it can pull information from various touch-points (such as events from Facebook) and automatically integrate them directly into your phone in a consolidated fashion. It comes with similar capabilities as the iPhone (accelerometer, GPS, touch screen, Wi-Fi, etc), but it shows a potential in connecting the "mobile world" and the online "social world." I'm sure we'll see a stronger, social integrated user experience on the Palm, and maybe it will be one of the next leaders in the upcoming mobile/social revolution. They certainly have an exciting list of investors. Hopefully it's not too late for their resurgence in the mobile world. Competition is good. The next quantum leap within social media is going to happen when your mobile device can truly set you free.
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