Brilliant though Google and other search engines are at bringing some level of sense and order to the billions of web pages out there, they all still rely almost completely on our ability to look for something in the right way. Keywords are really that - KEY!

Luckily as the amount of content online grows so does the average level of skill of people using search engines. Two years ago the average number of keywords entered into Google’s search field was not much more than 1.5, today it is more like 3.0. We are being more specific when we search which is a good thing - finding a million or more results is hardly a badge of honour now is it?

In spite of this there remains the ‘Did you mean?‘ problem or the ‘Did we mean?‘ problem as I would describe it.

As an agency advising our clients on SEO or search engine optimisation one of the toughest tasks is convincing businesses to think like customers and ensure the way they write about themselves online does likewise. By all means ‘build it’ but they won’t be coming unless the way you talk matches the way they search!

Take Last Exit and PaperVision for example. We are a Papervision3D agency and would like to be found as such when potential clients search for this kind of service online. Because PaperVision is a new technology however the challenge is to make sure we talk about it in the right ways. The correct description for this Flash plug-in is PaperVision3D but a quick check within Google’s Adwords Keyword Tool reveals a whole host of ways people are looking for it - papervision 3d, paper vision 3d or even pay per vision 3d are all commonly used. 

This wouldn’t be a problem but as I say above search engines rely on keywords in a very exact way. Try it yourself - a query of ‘paper vision 3d agency‘ will deliver very different results to one of ‘papervision3d agency‘ regardless of the fact both may be intended to find an agency supplying PaperVision3D.

Granted this all sounds very anal indeed but the truth is that Google and the other search engines are very anal indeed! Words, and the exact way they are used, are all they have to go on when routing that important query of yours to a handful of those 3 billion web pages!

The solution is writing for the web, making frequent reference to important keywords, and writing like the customers you want to attract would ask for you.

The solution is really not rocket-science, or should that be rocket science!

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papervision3d - paper vision 3d

I have to admit that I had become more than a little tired of the use of Flash online over the last 10 years or so.

Deepend, the original business I launched back in the mid 90s, was a huge fan and follower of Flash. In fact many of the creative awards we were fortunate enough to win in those days were for client website projects built using this technology - launch of the Volkswagen New Beetle into the UK market, creation of the first online presence for Terence Conran’s Design Museum in London, delivery of an aggressive challenge to James Dyson’s vacuum cleaner products for multi-national electronics business Hoover, as well as a wide range of projects for broadcasters like the BBC and Cartoon Network.

What was becoming clear though was the danger of over-indulgence, and I started to ask myself if the ‘whizz-bang’ impact delivered by some of these Flash experiences might be getting in the way of the client messages as opposed to amplifying them?  I began to suspect many of these sites were becoming a bit of a task or challenge to use as opposed to guiding the visitor from query to answer as they were initially intended. Most worryingly I started to suspect that our business might be using client projects to showcase individual designers’ wish-lists as opposed to thinking like end-users as we had always done before to build our success as a client’s digital partner.

I had seen many extensions to Flash like Swift 3D make their mark and then seemingly lose favour since the days when Flash alone was news-worthy. When I saw Paper Vision 3D in action (or Pay Per Vision 3D as I first understood it!) I found myself falling in love with Flash all over again!

At Last Exit, we have quickly become huge fans of this open source development in the world of Flash technologies, and feel that PaperVision might be finally delivering on the promise made by Flash back in the mid 1990s!

So, why is a seasoned cynic like myself thinking like this about what is seemingly an incremental addition to the Flash plug-in armoury?

Some of the key reasons are driven by the ability PaperVision3D has to offer:

• Significantly improved levels of end-user-interaction within a delivered website
• Fluid and intuitive styles of animation and motion whatever the task at hand
• Realistic 3D visualisation and environments including elements such as depth-cueing that were normally reserved for ‘proper’ local 3D applications
• Open source technology advantages when it comes to development and innovation
• Technical speed and agility within play-back - for example the handling of large numbers of media assets without any obvious end-user experience degradation
• Relatively seamless integration within Adode Flash making the development process very effective and efficient
• A significant step forward from what went before in terms of perception - providing that ‘wow factor’ for website end-users
• Ability to provide a genuine web 2.0 level graphical experience engaging even the most jaded site visitors
• PaperVision3D also provides fresh levels of inspiration and opportunity for web designers encouraging new ground to be broken within client tasks

This last argument is clearly an internal as opposed to an external one for any digital design agency, however it is so important that a team of designers feels inspired and engaged by any new project, and PaperVision3D provides this fresh impetus.

Aside from campaign-oriented work, our agency focuses on the CMS or content management of new client websites, making sure any new project is disability and discrimination act optimized, as well as built for the best level of search engine optimisation or SEO. These things are undoubtably important, but they are harder to argue as motivational elements when it comes to putting the same brief to an internal studio team of designers and developers, and are unlikely to lift the end result above the norm. Paper Vision 3D is both the new client and industry buzz word and I am certain this can only be a good thing for both parties!

Sure we face some challenges as an agency when developing iPhone applications given that Apple has still not found a way of supporting Adobe Flash, no matter PaperVision3D. And it would be a lie to say that every client brief that lands on our respective desks in Last Exit London and Last Exit New York is absolutely ideal for PaperVision. There are also limitations from both an SEO (and specifically Google search optimization) perspective with a PaperVision3D delivered user experience.

The fact remains however that, in my humble opinion, there are bigger issues at hand.

PaperVision provides fresh energy to the most exciting and user-engaging technology ever offered by the World Wide Web. Not only does it offer a level of user-engagement and entertainment not seen since the late 1990s - it turbo-charges the inspiration and creativity of both designers and developers working within the digital industry.

Given the ups and downs the digital industry has experienced over it’s short 15 year life I think it is fair to say that any fresh injection of enthusiasm is very very welcome indeed. I think a seemingly insignificant, open-source, non-commercial, well-meaning, incremental Flash plug-in like PaperVision3D could well be one thing to make a big difference in the digital near-future.

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The headline article in today’s AdAge looks at how car dealerships are utilizing video. It focuses on one particular dealership who has created a nice little (viral) video espousing the concept of transparency and honesty. Hold on, a car dealership saying it’s honest? It might take more than a highly staged video to convince us of that, but nevertheless the event is interesting to me on a number of levels:

1. The accessibility of video: largely thanks to Apple, video creation tools (both hardware and software) professional video creation can meet almost any budget. Of course this depends on your expectation and demands for quality. Distribution tools such as YouTube also offer access to a broad audience, if the content is good enough. Imagine spending $50k on a video and reaching a million people without any additional media spend. Amazing (potentially). Added to this, the fact that the spend is easily measured and analyzed.

2. Increasing the effectiveness of your website: according to Larry Pryg , national marketing and ad manager for General Motors Corps, certified-used-auto business, websites with video are twice as likely to general calls or emails from shoppers to dealers.

Of course, this video has to be engaging and entertaining and, most importantly in my opinion, demonstrate utility; it’s got to be informative, useful and empower the viewer to make intelligent qualified decisions - hopefully quick ones that result in check writing etc. Many dealers still just re-purpose TV commercials, which is OK, as many car ads are stil among the best (most entertaining and well produced) but, of course, there’s an opportunity with the online space and a great expectation of users to offer more interaction and information.

3. Transparency: the main ad this article references from the Clay Corp in Norwood, Mass, attempts to offer transparency and honestly by explaining the typical ways (other) car dealers try to screw you over. Ever since Naomi Klein wrote ‘No Logo’ in 2000 I’ve been convinced by the idea of discussion between a brand and it’s audience/customers, rather than the old industrialist approach of preaching brand values from a well staged, er stage. This video doesn’t really embody that notion completely but we feel that it’s vital to empower our clients with the knowledge to make the right decisions regarding digital agencies. So in that vein, we’ve created short documents explaining how to look for and how to buy digital services such as SEO - a practice that is still largely shrouded in smoke and mirrors.

The comparison I’m making here is a potential one: that many agencies, especially digital agencies are already building reputations as charlatans and spinning a web of confusing processes, technologies and TLAs (three letter acronyms). Time to get undresses, and bare all I reckon.

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IBM T30 Thinkpad / Thinkpads aboard the International Space Station

Serial ports and parallel ports remind me of years gone by - of a switch box to select a printer and floppy discs to move data around. Cars with onboard diagnostics, it seems, still use serial ports - and so I found myself on eBay in search of a used PC laptop that could ‘talk’ to my (frequently poorly) BMW. I could sketch almost every incarnation of Apple’s Powerbook from the 3400c through Wall Street G3, Titanium G4 until the MacBook Pro of today - and argue the case for their inclusion in any museum of industrial design - but a PC laptop? If there was an iconic design among the 8,148 laptops listed then I couldn’t remember it.

You realise you are a geek when you find yourself strangely excited by wading through people’s cast off laptops (viewing eBay’s list by ‘time ending soonest’ helps). But it was on another site that I saw the link ‘RS232 computers’. (If you think DOS is something you do at the weekend then those characters specify a serial port, the things we used to use before USB came along). For sale were a war chest of IBM T series laptops. Now I remember those machines for having a nipple instead of a trackpad and as anyone in the design profession knows that is no way to operate Word let alone Photoshop. They were not, therefore, on my radar. But if you look past the nipple you find a design that has stood the test of time far better than any of its contemporaries. And build quality that means they are still around, and still valuable. Why?

As ever, Wikipedia has the answer. Product of a collaboration between corporate head of the IBM design programme Tom Hardy and industrial design legend Richard Sapper, the ThinkPad is a monument to the realisation that design can be a powerful differentiator in any market; a design that is somehow so ‘right’ that it makes a modern Sony Viao look ever so slightly off the pace. No wonder Nasa’s astronauts took them on the Space Shuttle. These things are cool. They are also from IBM, an Intercontinental Ballistic Missile of a brand that, now it has departed the PC market, I find I quite miss.

They even made the machine for me - a 2002 ThinkPad T30 - the only model that came with a trackpad and a serial port, and mine is arriving from specialist Viper IT today. I can’t wait.

My tip for the new design leader in the land of PC notebooks? Dell, by a country mile.

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Can anyone tell me what this is about? I have absolutely no idea.  I thought comedy was all about … , … , … timing.

Maybe all will be revealed in the 2nd installment.

On another subject, those pretzels they give you on airplanes… what’s up with those?

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The lead article in todays Ad Age Daily news covers, in part, a study examining the effects and possible contribution to the rapidly growing (excuse the pun) obesity epidemic in the US. With particular focus on the African-American community, it suggests that marketing to this group has been squarely focused at fast food chains and not healthier options and complains that in poor neighborhoods all you can find to eat is bad food.

My concern with this kind of research is simple that it doesn’t capture the broader picture, e.g. that fast food, and in particular budget meals at fast food chains, is targeted at poorer people generally not just poorer African Americans. It also makes a very relative and unquantifiable statement, that the marketing “contributes”.

Well, how much does it contribute? Is that contribution 50% contribution to other socio-economical shifts, or is it a tiny/negligible amount?

So, my point, though more of a political one is that we are constantly moving towards a system or blame and lack of responsibility for oneself. Ignorance may have a part to play here: is it McDonalds’ fault if a person picks up a scalding hot coffee from a drive through, places it in her lap and subsequently burns herself as she pulls away? No!  And it’s also probably not their fault when people get fat because they eat McDonalds at every meal (including more than one sandwich, fries and a soda).

Of course I do appreciate that there should be boundaries: I don’t agree with soda drink manufacturers sponsoring schools and planting their vending machines in every vestibule, or misleading advertising. I also agree that we haven’t done enough, particularly in the last 8 years, to resolve our extreme poverty problems here in US, but ultimately, people must take responsibility: to educate themselves (the only way to improve your status) and to keep yourself fit and healthy. You don’t need an Equinox membership to do that.

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I did have to look twice at this banner ad.  At first I thought it was some reference to the Mojave Experiment.Interesting problem to try and reclaim the word ‘Vista’. 

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According to Bornstein Research, ad dollars being directed to the web by car manufacturers did not fall in Q1 of this year.  The industry has had a rough year and much it has to do with a lack of innovation and sudden panic to play catch up with the rest of the modern world, as I wrote in a previous post.  The good news is, that most of the manufactures and their brands are shifting gears and pushing marketing dollars behind smaller, fuel efficient models.  So, if your agency is currently working with an auto brand (as we are), you should be in good shape.

See the full article at eMarketer.

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So as not to waste a good site, we thought we’d post and host the ExpressJet site we’ve recently done for Dentsu. The site was designed to allow people to submit their stories in/of ExpressJet destinations. It’s a lovely site with a small dose of 3D Papervision thrown in. Check it out and let us know what you think - hey, why not submit a story. The competition isn’t active but you might discover something about yourself in the process. Or not.

http://www.expressjetmicrosite.com/

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I’m a big fan of the Ted Conference and one of my first video podcast subscriptions and on the train coming back into the city from Queens this morning, I watched a great and very short speech by Richard St. John. An interesting topic for us being business owners and entrepreneurs, and a constant question for us is “why do we do this?” and “how have we been/how will we continue to be successful?”. 7 years of research, is summarised in just a few lines and 3 minutes. In short he explains that in order to succeed you need to satisfy the following 8 steps:

1. Passion: you’ve got to love what you do!
2. Work:you’ve got to put your back into it.
3. Good: you have to be damned good at what you do and continue to develop to stay ahead.
4. Focus: don’t let yourself be distracted. Set your sights on something and make it happen.
5. Push: Push yourself physically and mentally. If you’re lucky your parents pushed you! Push through shyness and self doubt.
6. Serve: offer others something of great value.
7. Ideas: keep them coming - listen, observe, be curios, question, problem solve and make connections.
8. Persist: you can’t give up at the first hurdle. Persist through failure, critism, rejection, pressure and all the assholes!

Click Here to watch the video.

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