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Busy Little Bees

Written by Andy Weir. Posted on May 20, 2010. Filed under Blog, Enjoying life, Future gazing, production, work. Tagged , , , , . No comments.

Well – it’s been nearly 5 months of WEIR+WONG and we’ve barely had time to take a breather! We’ve been doing some great work for these great clients (and some clients we can’t mention!) and having a lot of fun on the way.  Onwards…

BetfairLBiThe MillWeapon7TBWA London

Crowdsourced social community-building experiment

Written by Robin Wong. Posted on February 8, 2010. Filed under Review, work. Tagged , . No comments.

Community building social experimentPepsi’s new community builder, refresheverything, marks a change in the control that big brands are giving to consumers in the way their marketing budgets are spent. Pepsi are not only crowdsourcing ideas to back in the social communities in the US, but they’re crowdsourcing the selection process as well. I love the fact that this is such a simple yet untried mechanism that will allow the cream of ideas to float to the top with relative ease. I’m sure there’s still a huge amount of administration, but no longer is a panel of the great the good expected to decide who is worthy. Makes perfect sense. Although obviously we may see the Jon and Edward effect with some inappropriate  initiatives, but that’s the world that brands live in as X-Factor will attest. It still made great train-crash TV. Anyway, I digress.

This is a huge campaign that has digital very much at its heart, and the fact that Pepsi have parted company with TBWA, allegedly because of their lack of digital and social media nous – particularly in their execution – is a real warning to agencyland about the need to integrate all of their activities, especially digital, and quickly.

I’m still stunned when I see ads from big brands that don’t have at least a URL for those who want to find out more about the brand and what they’re doing for their consumers. Hopefully this campaign will join the chorus of wake-up calls to those spending their bucks on marketing to challenge their strategy teams to how their campaigns can have more of a bite, and drive more than just awareness, and actually lead to some tangible action and interaction when it comes to creating the actual execution.

Virtual Assistance + iPhone

Written by Robin Wong. Posted on February 6, 2010. Filed under mobile, work. Tagged , , , . No comments.

Siri personal iphone assistantI’m intrigued to try out Siri on the iPhone, after reading Greg Roeken’s post and Dag Kittlaus’s mashable article. Siri is Dag’s little baby, and it brings the whole star trek communicator voice recognition a step closer apparently. It claims to translate requests like “find chinese restaurant nearby” by interpreting this into a web service request that returns data from APIs like opentable and yelp to give you information on where the nearest roast crispy belly pork is waiting for you.

This level of automation – taking the hassle out of simple search tasks – is a great evolutionary step for search and hopefully relevance. I guess the trick is being able to distinguish between different senses of taste and not just firing the same results back at everyone. For those with search/media heads on, how paid for search can have an impact to ensure staying at the top of rankings will be crucial, especially when more personalised taste is taken into account.

I’m going to try it out when it’s available in the UK app store.

The skills curve

Written by Robin Wong. Posted on February 4, 2010. Filed under work. Tagged , , , . No comments.

Interesting article on BBH Labs that presents a few views from an event at Social media week in NYC, that for me is summed up by this idea.

“As creative businesses continue to experiment with new models of creative collaboration, and explore different approaches to maintaining a creative arsenal comprising the highest quality individuals and partners, it is inevitable that which was once almost wholly contained within an agency will become, to some extent, located outside the formal confines of that business.”

Given this idea, the article goes on to pose 2 questions

“1. CULTURE: If the culture of an organization is one of the key elements of differentiation between one agency and another, when does the definition of an agency blur to the point of intangibility?

2. INCENTIVES: What kinds of models are right for incentivising the crowd? If the model of the future is going to involve fluid boundaries between ‘working for’ and ‘working with’, what does that mean for how people are incentivised?”

Obviously, I’m believer in the main idea. In fact Andy and I believed it so strongly we set up WEIR+WONG to provide access to a pool of the best digital talent. My main interest is to work with the best and most tried and trusted people, regardless of the communication medium, technology, or platform. The pace of change – especially with digital technology – has reached such a fast pace that not even the largest and most high-tech digital agencies can truly keep up with skills to offer the most value to their clients. They simply can’t hire fast enough to stay ahead of the curve. Freelancers and specialists are the way ahead, or at least one of the paths. A few agencies have realised this and have staffed up their creative teams with great technologists who can add to the creative process through rapid and light prototyping and the provision of a wide range of technology solutions early on. They then leave the heavy lifting of implementation to the right production company.

In answer to the first question about loss of cultural identity, I don’t believe that agencies have a monopoly on culture or ever have. Cultures change as people come and go. Agency life is a transient, sometimes nomadic way of making a living for many agency folk.

I believe there is another culture that underpins all agencies, and this is driven by a few great people who exemplify this culture through a combination of original thinking, subtle repurposing of old ideas, proactive collaboration, professionalism, a passion for learning and a genuine joy of creating great work regardless of their skillset.

In answer to the second question, to be in the presence of someone who embodies all these cultural traits is what will incentivise those seeking to work in this model regardless of who they work for.

Agencies have shown me what this cultural DNA can look like at its very best, but they don’t own this, they simply seek to replicate what can be found in those fleeting moments of greatness. More permeable cultures can only improve the frequency of those fleeting moments, which is good for everyone!