Written by Nuri Djavit
We’re very happy to announce the launch of the Vespa USA website. It’s been a thrilling ride to get to this point and we’ve worked with some amazing people at Piaggio Group USA. Our team has been exemplary throughout the process and the results reflect the skill and commitment from the Last Exit team. Congrats to all.
Be sure to check out the scooters as well as the Community Rides section.
A few of the first press articles:
Written by Gary Lockton
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!
Written by Nuri Djavit
We all have some sense of the extent online research for product purchases and recent research in the US shows that 6/10 people make the internet their first choice for research items ultimately purchased in the brick-and-mortar-store. More an dmore retailers, therefore, are eliminating web-exclusive prices or extending them to instore pricing.
Some stores such as Staples, are offering kiosks where shoppers can peruse their websites and garner product information and reviews. The opportunity this offers is an ‘infinite aisle’, where shoppers are exposed to the stores full inventory regardless of what the store might currently have n stock. In response to this, it’s interesting to note that loss of sales to competitors due to stockouts measures $93 billion in 2008. Two reasons to have kiosks in store: 1) offer more information and empower your customers and 2) avoid losing customers.
The question this beckons is whether response policies, particularly regarding shipping and handling, need to be in place to ensure that custom is not lost, even with the ‘infinite aisle’ and, perhaps perhaps more importantly, whether retailers should consider how their website are planned and designed to allow easy or even seamless transition to an in-store kiosk application environment. The users extended cognitive architecture is completely different in this situation and as we research the psychographics as part of determining site strategy, instore browsing and researching probably should be properly taken into account.
Written by Nuri Djavit
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.
Written by Nuri Djavit
Pete Blackshaw of Planetfeedback.com, wrote in AdAge today a (self serving, yes) article about consumer feedback, or rather the lack of it. Here’s a snippet:
I wonder if we’re afflicted with service schizophrenia. Take a mega brand such as McDonald’s, which aggressively spends billions to position itself around ease, convenience and service (e.g. “We make you smile”). The company practically hides the most basic of contact forms on its website. Further adding to the disconnect, the company’s comments-rich corporate blog is called “Open for Discussion.”
From the point of view of a design agency, these forms are, for the most part, blown off, left until last and pretty much standard. The sub-conscious assertion being that if someone really wants to contact us, they will. Most forms are pretty simple simple and easy to use but yes, definitely uninviting and if you’re a brand projecting an open door philosophy, this could be detrimental to your cause. Worse still are customer service telephone lines. These seem to be designed to frustrate and often cause extreme anger as you are constantly passed from department to department and required time and again to repeat your account details. OK, we’re not going to go into all that as we don’t have much control apart from suggesting better approach to our clients.
Back to web-based consumer feedback. After reading this post, I considered one of our recent clients, an Italian motorcycle brand, that prides itself on being very connected to its consumer. We’re currently in the design production cycle and considering the global community behind this brand, I thought it necessary to review our strategy. We’re now considering allowing users to upload images, movies and to format their feedback via a rich text editor (much like using word) so our client’s customers can really articulate their message. I’ll post a link once we’re done.
Written by Nuri Djavit
According to eMarketer, North America is likely to surpass Asia Pacific in mobile gaming revenues due, largely, to the iPhone and the Apps store launch: “Screen Digest said the iPhone would drive mobile gaming revenues to more than $1.5 billion in North America in 2012, up from $930.5 million this year.” Worth a quick peek at this excellent posting I referred to in an earlier blog, that discusses the iPhone’s breakthrough from a developer’s point of view.
This again reinforces the notion that people are:
Right, I’m off to dream up ideas for iPhone games that will make us $Millions.
Written by Nuri Djavit
Haha, and just as I’m writing about the noise in email campaigns, eMarketer posts and article outlining the shortening gap between email and search. Read the full article here and if you’re not already registered yet, do it now, it’s a great news source for our industry.
Written by Nuri Djavit
As a digital agency, one might think it odd that we’re producing our reel as a hard media, DVD. In deed, it has been a bone of contention for some time and thats why, several months after completing our 2008 Design Reel
, we are only just approving the production. After laboring over the reel itself, we’re spending a fair penny on mastering, duplication, packaging and distribution. So I’m still asking why? when we’ve done a great job encoding at different sizes and serving. Electronic distribution is easy and basically free and above all: immediate. As a digital agency, perhaps we should be committed to the channels we predominantly work within? The answer is punctuated by a single word that my partner at Last Exit often heralds “RELEVANCE”. On top of that, I would like to add “penetration” and “visibility”. Our in-boxes are, unfortunately crowded with enough spam to fill a million cheap sandwiches and whilst we can use many different creative tactics to draw attention to a mailer, we believe in a multi-channel and relevant approach that taps into the the behavioral characteristics of our audience. Ours is splie between CMOs at the brands themselves and producers/CDs at ad agencies. Both sets have spent much more time in TV/Radio than in interactive and whilst the transition is happening it’s important to bridge the gap, speak the right language and not to be too disruptive.
So, our belief is that receiving a well designed, beautifully produced DVD (spot glossing and all) will, at the very least, leave an impression in the recipients mind (even if they never actually load the disk into a player) backed by the appropriate and well timed follow up. This is a tried and true and simple tactic that has worked for many reps and EPs in the advertising and motion business and whilst there’s not model for reps in interactive, we’ll give this a go.
Here’s a few screen shots. You can view the reel here, or let us know if you’d like to receive DVD.
Written by Nuri Djavit
We are immensely proud to announce the launch of a cracking piece of work for the JSF UK industry team - comprising BAE Systems, GE Aviation, MartinBaker, MBDA and Rolls Royce.
Fantastic result reflecting phenomenal innovation in the form of the Joint Strike Fighter which will replace the iconic Harrier Jump Jet in 2012.
Check out the site by clicking HERE.
Written by Nuri Djavit
Like it or not, your website is a living breathing entity that courts many visitors (hopefully) and much opinion. It lives out there for many months and even years and often sits there festering by not responding to moving trends and user behavior.
OK, this maybe stating the obvious but we are still a little surprised that many of our clients’ briefs do not include on-going maintenance and support. We endeavor to empower our clients with robust content management systems and most often opt for externally supported technology so that our clients’ are not encumbered by a dependance on us based on proprietary/legacy systems. Great! Of course we’re happy to continue to develop our relationships by providing valuable support in terms of design and technology resource but more importantly, these extended relationships should be based on research, analytics and strategic response.
It’s a blessing and a curse in many ways, that we have the opportunity to constantly fine tune a website or web-based campaign and it’s important to understand that for most ‘projects’ the goal posts are constantly moving: company information/portfolio/people, user behavior in terms of site interaction and in how people use search engines, competition, technology etc. etc. etc. All of which should be monitored and responded to in order to be as effective and as relevant as possible and to achieve constantly ascending success.
Beyond the website, it is also important to understand the greater conversation about your brand. Run a search for a recent campaign and you might be surprised by the number of results. We recently completed a site as part of a broader campaign by a large electronics manufacturer, with no-little follow up. For our own purposes we constantly ran reports and discovered that almost all the top search results were not controlled or influenced by the brand and a few were extremely negative responses. Your website must have tentacles!!
So, make sure that any design work you undertake is underpinned by a sound digital strategy targeting success criteria that will make your campaign or project pay for itself. And be sure to not let your site collect dust on some shared hosting environment. For many, it’s the first part of your brand that is seen and for customers, prospects, employees and potential employees it will leave an impression.
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