Fan of Chatroulette? Me neither but many excitable teenage boys enjoy nothing more than the thrill of searching through the hordes of other young men, to find an elusive pair of women’s breasts.

The viral campaign for “The Last Exorcism” takes advantage of these helpless souls. Enticing them in with the prospect of a young lady undressing and then scaring the living hell out of them, as she transforms into a demon possessed by the devil.

With already over 200,000 YouTube views, The Last Exorcism is receiving global recognition on a shoestring media budget.

There is seemingly a “technological revolution” released every second day in the digital industry, however every now and again something pops up which really makes people take note.

With the release of Facebook Places last night, it seems we are really entering the next phase of social media, a more diverse level of real-world interaction, as well as a completely new level of targeted marketing.

Places takes the existing concept of applications such as FourSquare and takes it to where people already are, Facebook.

While primarily aimed at iPhone users for now (Android and Blackberry versions are planned), Places introduces location-based services to the world’s most popular social network.

Places enables users to share their current location with friends, find out where their friends are, and discover new places of interest. Users can also add their own places of interest to the platform, whether it be a business or a residential address.

Read the rest of this entry »

Some of the team are flying the We Love Twitter flag. See what they have to say about the industry and nose into their personal thoughts about design, copy, dev and IA. Start following the We Love Team.

While you are there why not tweet us via our rather lovely and revamped Twitter page. Join the conversation.

Thanks to @gopalraju  for the twitter bird icons.

We Love is looking for a super talented Senior Tech Lead to join the family (Perm). To help grow the team’s technical and industry skills and take We Love to the next level.

You have been working in the industry for at least 7 years. Defining and shaping teams and projects. Making magic happen for top tier clients at top agencies. You know the pressures and complexities of the job and of a client’s needs. You know how to stay on top of it all – managing expectations and communicating them at every turn.

You will be working across a multitude of top tier clients and projects ranging from Apps to dotCOM to Campaign. You have a love of all things digital – see the beauty, reason, logic and commercial behind yours and others work. Someone who brings ideas to the table, and the processes to make them happen. You can see opportunity to improve and have a desire to do so. You want to develop the team and raise their game… You have a natural hunger for success and the desire to help develop the creative output across the company as a whole. You may be looking for the next step up in an agency that is going places.

This role is not all about management. You can handle a development from start to finish on your own or in a small team environment. You care about the Go Live and make sure that every pixel is perfect, every animation is thought through, every link is tested, so that at the end of the day you can leave the office proud of a job well done, knowing the code is as good as it possibly can be.

You understand commercial considerations, offering good insight into company development, while at the same time seeing technical solutions that can benefit the smallest of projects. You are visionary.

Technical Skills:
Front and backend superstar… with all the usual languages / skills. Obviously, you will have leanings… but show us what you got. We adapt to the right people.

Stuff we use…
AS3   //   Flash   //   HTML  & XHTML   //   Javascript and JQuery   //   CSS3   //   ASP.net   //   PHP   //   Python   //   Ruby (on Rails)

Be able to define and improve processes, as well as technical development, with the knowledge to document this. You are capable of QA your own work as well as your teams – always improving, always aware – and able to pass that learning on to others.

People skills:
You will be client facing, managing a team and responsible for inter-team communication. So being able to communicate – up, down and sideways – being able to listen, and know what to say and when, is an absolute necessity. You will be able to manage yours and your team’s time whilst ensuring a project’s plan, risks and status are fluidly communicated – keeping PM’s happy and the client even happier.

Stress? What stress? You’ve seen and done so much within this industry that nothing is going to surprise you.

And as always… a sense of humour is mandatory.

About We Love:
Born just two and a half years ago by two creatives, when agencies were playing the safe game, we had the vision to do things differently, letting our creative do the talking and the results speak for themselves. We create space for our staff to become the best they can possibly be… and then help them raise their game even further. We lead with intelligence, never leaving the creative process at home; we strategise, design and build thoughtful and robust digital for our clients. Always taking one step forward and changing the game.

We’ve already won numerous awards and accreditations, including: Chamber of Commerce ‘Most Promising New Business 2010′, we’ve been shortlisted for ‘Star Start Up’ in the HSBC awards and were placed No. 5 in the Top 100 Global Creative Agency Annual in 2009.

Our aim. To be a top 100 NMA agency by 2012. Leading the digital space and producing award winning work for our clients and ourselves.

Benefits:
• Good and competitive salary… especially for outside London
• Bonus scheme in place
• Training allocation per year
• Social events
• Pension scheme
• 5 a day fruit bowl
• Office massage
• Magazine subscriptions

Join our family. Apply now with CV and Folio >

Are you game? Are you ready to stop being a student? Do you want to kick start your career? If yes / yes / yes. Then you are ready for an internship here at We Love…

We are looking for people who are hungry for it. Who love the industry, who don’t want a bog standard 9 til 5, who have talent in buckets and want the opportunity to work with some proven gurus. To gain experience on real projects, work with real deadlines and budgets. To gain insight into this great industry of ours.

We are looking for 2 bright sparks. A designer and a developer, both must have a love of digital, a desire to learn and be brilliant. Internships will be a minimum of 3 months. You will work across a multitude of projects, taking ownership of some with guidance from others. There may even me a position offered at the end… who knows… it is your opportunity to shine!

Apply to James@welove72.com to join the We Love… Academy

A good day was had at Buckmore Park Karting Track (where Button, Hamilton and Herbert all learned their trade) yesterday when the the famous rubbed shoulders with the not so in aid of The Headway Charity (a charity supporting head injuries).

An endurance race was held with over 30 teams racing in honour of John Surtees son (Henry) who tragically died while competing almost a year ago. With the likes of Johnny Herbert, Barry McGuigan and the Red Bull rising stars making an appearance… and  I think I saw the future MotoGP star Bradley Smith there too. It was him or his Doppelganner anyhow.

I am not going into the winners… all that is important is that a cool 60k was raised. Well done.

Thanks to Vanquish for inviting me up. Thanks to all the sponsors for making it happen. Best wishes for John for all he has done for the racing world.

The internet has evolved. No longer are there a few ‘big boys’ doing all the cool stuff you like to play/purchase online, the new development tools are now cheaper and give you an opportunity to build sites that were too expensive 5 years ago. The growing concern is that the data you create and input into a website is now so easily moved around the web via API’s/RSS. What rights do you and the website have on this data? The DataPortability is one project that is trying to bridge that gap.

Read the rest of this entry »

After attending The Future of Web Design conference in London recently I can safely say it is a pretty exciting time to be involved in the digital industry.

As was to be expected there was a lot of discussion about the capabilities (and limitations imposed by particular browser/s) of HTML5 and CSS3. Admittedly, it is very exciting to be able to utilise these tools when designing for the web, however a few of the speakers touched on some points which I think are of much greater importance when it comes to the real future of web design.

Paul Boag mentioned that we should forget about the new technologies for the time being and focus on improving our Marketing, Copywriting, Contextual Understanding, Strategy, and Psychology skills. This is very much in line with what I believe makes a good designer, so I thought I would use this as a basis for what I, personally, would like to see for the future of web designers.

Over the coming weeks I am going to discuss in detail the often overlooked attributes which I feel make a successful designer in the creative industry.

What I hope to achieve is an increased awareness of the design industry outside the specific “digital space” and a more considered approach to the use of the new technologies which are available to us. Ultimately I would like us all (as creatives) to work towards avoiding an era of over-used CSS3 effects and being faced with a repeat of the original Photoshop filter overload.

So, while it is easy to get excited and spend all of our time learning the new technologies, I urge you to hold back and concentrate on improving your foundations skills before anything else, and only utilise the new technologies when the right project comes along.

Read the rest of this entry »

Battle for the World Cup buzz goes to Nike in early rounds.

via USA TODAY (please note: Contextual links below will take you to USA TODAY result pages)

But the early “winner” in buzz is Nike, neither a World Cup sponsor nor partner of the sport’s governing body, FIFA.

Social-media monitoring firm Meltwater Buzz looked at online buzz May 24 through Thursday for 11 top sponsors, partners and other key marketers and found outsider Nike had 26% vs. 20% for Adidas, a FIFA partner, and 11% for Sony, also a partner.

Credit Nike’s “Write the Future” soccer ad that launched May 20 on Facebook, says spokesman Derek Kent. It’s had 14 million YouTube views.

For big-spending marketers who rely upon social media such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube to economically create brand buzz fast, the importance of successfully riding the wave of global events such as the quadrennial World Cup can’t be overstated. “It’s a unique opportunity to tie your brand to the greatest sporting event in the world — in real time,” says social-media consultant Jay Baer. “So much in social media is about brevity, which lends itself perfectly to soccer.”

Read the rest of this entry »

Last Friday, I, along with several other Kent agency representatives, went to a Creative Strategy meeting organised by MediaTree and The Kent County Council. The objective: How best to strengthen Kent’s creative proposition in the short, mid and long term.

It was a good session that dealt with the issues of being ‘outside of London’, the diverse cultural variations of a large county, defining what makes working in Kent attractive (and what doesn’t), adopting European mindsets – where the focus of  an industry isn’t so centered around a single locale, getting creative at a grass routes level, Kent’s Brand (or lack of), identifying and retaining the talent and support from our local government to grow what is an already important industry to the county and country.

After years of working in London, as well as all over the world for top tier agencies, I walked away with even more conviction of what I already believe to be true – knowing that creative Kent has a growing and relatively untapped creative potential. And, as potential is core to success, that this should be explored via inter-agency thinking with council support to help activate and encourage ideas. That there are companies in Kent that are making a difference to our industry, that push boundaries without the blinkered and repetitive approach of many London based agencies. That here is a place that allows exploration of idea and space to grow. An alternative, and a good one at that.

That people who fail to understand what Kent has to offer, that beat the London drum far too loudly, are in fact intimidated by the challenge. Who wish to be just another number, rather than a valued player. Someone who hides behind others decisions and doesn’t really want to think for themselves. There is ample opportunity to work for the ‘Big Brands’ in Kent… and to ‘own the project’ with it. They just have to open their eyes.

I look forward to continuing these conversations with MediaTree, the KCC and likeminded agencies. Expect more. The Future is Digital Kent…