Smashing Magazine ran a small post on next generation eCOMM. I am happy to say that Dripping in Fat (Our incredible tee site) made it in… and near the top too). Read the article>>

Its good to see that DiF is getting the attention it deserves. Our objective was to redefine eCOMM. Rethink what is considered as just OK and acceptable. To absorb everyday ‘real world’ experiences into a digital realm, after its not as if we would forget thousands of years of barter, trade and purchase behaviour that is now part of DNA.

Go check out Dripping in Fat>>

Further to my last post, I thought it would be worthwhile giving a bit of background information into the value of Social Media Marketing for those that have been living under a rock for the past few years.

Social Media Marketing, officially, is the creation of social interaction between a brand and the general public in a digital platform such as the internet.

So what does this actually mean to you?

Gone are the days of advertisers simply telling consumers their product is the best in the market, in the current climate consumers want to find out what products and brands are the best firsthand.

According to Forrester, nearly 45% of European internet users say that in the past three months they have researched a product online and then bought it in a shop (March 2009).

The time for creating an online presence and building your brand online is now. Many of the big brands are ‘having-a-go’ at Social Media Marketing, however very few are actually reaching their full potential.

A successful social media marketing campaign needs to utlilise a range of digital outlets, and effectively establish an online community for their consumers/potential consumers.

Setting up a Twitter account and hoping for the best is just not enough. The key to a successful campaign is establishing a connection between your Twitter account, Facebook account, your YouTube account and any other social networking sites.

Once a definitive network is created, it is important to initiate conversations, not campaigns, with your followers. You want to focus on 1:1 communication with consumers, and listen as well as speak.

Creating a solid relationship between your brand and your consumers gives you a captive audience who can be used for market research, consumer feedback, and ideally network building channels.

As important as Social Media Marketing is, it isn’t suited for every industry, so before you get caught up in the hype take a minute to assess whether or not it could benefit your business.

On a lighter note, and more an example of a viral video, the following is the latest Cadbury’s Ad… another stroke of creative brilliance, or have they just lost the plot this time? You decide!

With it being London Design Week I had to make the effort to go to an event. I would have loved to have gone to more, but prior committments said that I was allowed Tues Evening… bah humbug

I made my way to Show and Tell (organised by the kindly guys and girls at Creative Pool) where Creative Directors from all over the land were invited to review future talent folios. Some nice work and ideas out there! Well done.

Beers were consumed and natter happened. All us CD’s were bemoaning our lot until a rather invigorating talk by Patrick Collister gave us all reason to live again. Things ARE good. We ARE needed – We have work to do and a place to do it in. We will enjoy and love our industry again!!! oh yes indeedy… WE WILL MAKE BRANDS GREAT AND TRUE ONCE AGAIN!

So thanks to Creative Pool for organising Show and Tell. Heres to London Design Week. Shame I couldn’t make The Creative Social tonight

…after enjoying a fabulous two weeks in the south of France. It was great, barring the news that my cat was seriously ill (blog below). Driving up and around the Pyrenees, into Girona (where we shot the world famous Canon campaign). Almost to Andora (car broke down) and then (once fixed) back into France. We met some lovely people along the way. Drove some ace roads. Dylan hitched up to a young dutchie (they became inseparable) and discovered a love of water slides. And you should see my tan Its ace. I almost look human again.

Its good to be back.You can only take so much leisurely pleasure at any one time… can’t you??

It wasn’t so good to see the state of my inbox. But things will work them selves out. Thanks to Dan for cat sitting and giving Bubbles the love in her last few days. Enjoy the pics… Now get back to work Anderson!

It was a sad return from my holiday to find an empty house. There was no bubbles the cat crying for my return, no furballs on the bed, no whizzing by of a brown ball of fluff as she chased the local squirrels down. Last week our company cat, and mascot of all things cute, had a stroke. And as much as it pained me I had to tell the vet, while I was in France, to have her put to sleep. I never even got to say goodbye… I will be scarred from this day forth.

So here’s to Bubbles, she had a good 16 years. She amused us, she was loyal and she will be missed by all who met her. It may sound weird, but this cat had serious personality and loved being a part of the party…Had learned to use the internet better than a lot of humans and had serious munchy for Indian food. We will miss you.

On a recent flex project we had some complex animation – including alpha masks – to be embedded. Not sure why, but when embedding flash files in Flex with the tag, all action script is stripped out. It would be interesting to hear Adobe’s reasoning on this one, but here’s a solution to keeping the embedded swf’s actionscript intact.

The first step is to embed the SWF in your Flex project as binary data:

[Embed(source="complex.swf", mimeType="application/octet-stream")]
var theBytes:Class;

Next you need to load the data contained in your SWF by using Loader.loadBytes and instantiate the embedded SWF.

var loader:Loader = new Loader();
loader.loadBytes(new theBytes());

This will create your swf and if all you need is the actionscript to run, you can stop here.

Fashion Week is coming to London!

Fashionistas will be hitting the city from today as London Fashion Week celebrates its 25th anniversary. From 18^th – 22^nd September people from around the world will be celebrating all the best and latest trends that London has to offer.

Dublin-born designer, Paul Costelloe, will be kicking off the week with a selection of block colours and big prints. Costelloe’s pieces are quite tailored and wearable, but also bold and striking.

Taking place at London’s famous Somerset House. It’s a new venue that’s exciting because of it’s situation in the heart of the city.

Find out more >>>>>

Isn’t it fustrating how if you select multiple objects in a Flash file and choose Convert to Symbol, it places all the objects on the same layer, regardless of where they were before. Even more fustrating when you have nicely organised your file by labelling each layer. I found this quick Command to do just that. If you save in your Commands folder, and re-boot Flash, you can re-map your F8 key to use this Command instead of the regular Convert to Symbol Command.

fl.getDocumentDOM().convertToSymbol('movie clip', '', 'top left');
fl.getDocumentDOM().enterEditMode('');
fl.getDocumentDOM().distributeToLayers();

You can create simple Commands like this on your own. Just open up your History Panel via Window > Other Panels. The top right of the Panel has a menu that allows you to see the JavaScript of your actions!

Also, one thing I’ve always found annoying with distribute to layers, is that it tends to shift things to a half-pixel position like 24.5 – and our designers DO notice – which can be avoided by turning off Snap To Pixels before using distribute to layers, or this command

Hi, it’s Nick here (The Aussie), I’m currently half way through my 7th day here at We Love and the time has come to make my first blog post! My first week has gone quite smoothly, the a..a…a….a…Ashes haven’t even been mentioned once, and I am still on the good side of the developers…. I think!

Last week while doing some pretty thorough research on Social Media Marketing I came across this video which presents some of the overwhelming statistics behind the importance of Social Media Marketing

It seems that the most important aspect of Social Media Marketing is creating conversations rather than targeted campaigns, which in turn establishes a better relationship between the Company and the Consumer.

The time to embrace and really make the most of Social Media Marketing is now, and those that master the art will most definitely reap the rewards!

As Avinash Kaushik, an Analytics Evangelist from Google stated, “Social Media is like teen sex. Everyone wants to do it. Nobody knows how…”