Our motives of starting an agency were questioned, but we believed in a better creative world – where an agency got back to its routes and produced great work without charging (let’s face it) the inflated and greed orientated fees of others. Work that benefited the intended audience, not purely the agency.

Our sense of timing was questioned, but we welcomed the recession, I know that sounds misguided, but in our industry great agencies are born out of recessions – There is a flick of the reset switch, the fat is removed – we remember it’s about great creative, marketing and communications. Simple.

So what has been the secret to our last 4 years? Well, I won’t give it all away, but…

…in the beginning we had no clients, no website and no folio. All we had is what all creatives dream of… A completely white piece of paper to do with as we wished, along with our hard won reputations. It was time to start afresh – to reinvent what an agency should be and remember why we got involved in this industry in the first place – align our ethos and ethics to an ever (rapidly) changing and demanding world – get out there and spread our message. One of creative love.

We went against the grain when others played it safe and employed top of game talent to deliver on our promises of great creative and management. Within this structure we fostered an environment that invested in staff, encouraged creative thought, and empowered individuals to take ownership and accountability of their work whilst developing the concept of the team and not rely on hero dependency.

We found a niche. We developed an approach to transparent management and communications – allowing staff to have voice and help shape the future of the company. There should be no secrets.

We worked hard. Often above and beyond the contractual agreements we had made… Even today, if it needs that little extra we will give it, meaning that we do it better, faster, cheaper, more honestly, and with a wider range than our competitors.

But most of all, we created an environment that allows people to work with a smile. Promoting people to look at things with new eyes, to not be afraid or think of limitations.

Things great and small

With each dollar having to work harder and the amount of channels now available it pays to stay small and agile. It pays not to be the ’800-pound gorilla’. It allows us to work under the radar of the bigger agencies.

By staying small and focussed we hold on to the things that are dear to us, our passion of ideas, our love of storytelling and the acceptance of making mistakes. Mistakes are OK… If we don’t make them, then we aren’t pushing hard enough.

And what of 2012…

As advocates of design and communication we will be thinking about how we can change the world. To make it that little bit more special and leave a legacy – gifting back to the audience we rely so heavily upon to love and be influenced by our work. Yes, we live and work within a commercially driven world and environment, but it’s evolving… And brands can and will be playing a central role within this communication evolution – To make the world a better place to live in. It’s not all about the financial rewards… It now incorporates the story we are telling and the smile we should be leaving behind.

Our mission

As always; To over achieve – to deliver time and time again on our promise. To change the world ever so slightly for the better. To make the complex simple. To love what we do.

Here is to what we believe is going to be a most excellent 2012. Have fun with it.

Mark Anderson / Creative Director and Founder

Arriving at the office at 5am was a small struggle, but excitement prevailed. Arriving in Paris, we spent a short while navigating (getting lost) the Metro, but once we had our bearings, were in for a great day of hot chocolate, art galleries, delicious cocktails, Christmas markets, mulled wine, and crazy Parisian weather (see windswept and interesting photographs).

We were too busy having a marvellous time to do any shopping, resulting in most of us buying last minute cheese as souvenirs, so I apologise to fellow Eurostar travellers for the strong fromage odour, but when in France…!

A brilliant end to the year – good job Niko!

Merry Christmas!

Happy Christmas to you all. Have a good one from all of us at We Love…

When a Quick Response (QR) code is scanned by mobile phone, it directs information and messages to the device. The use of QR codes is increasingly popular among marketers as a low cost method of communicating brand information, and according to one study, code scanning has increased by a huge 4549% between 2010 and 2011. For the consumers who are using them, they are a quick way of engaging with brands and receiving vouchers and other brand related rewards through their mobile phone.

Despite the clear benefits to brands and consumers, it remains that only a small proportion of consumers uses or understands them. Barriers to use include the consumers lack of knowledge, not owning a device which is capable of scanning the code, and the apathetic – those who feel there are little benefits to their use, and they can use a website more easily and quickly. Marketers, though using them, are generally not making them integral to campaigns, tucking them away in the corner of advertising and packaging, leaving them easily missed and remaining outside of the mainstream.

How can these barriers be overcome? I think most important is to define a clear USP for the code, and do this creatively, inspiring consumers to engage with the technology and the brand.

Some cool examples of QR code positioning:

In Korea, a leading supermarket has created a virtual store in a subway. When commuters scan the QR code on the image of an item, the item is added to their shopping list and delivered to their home, resulting in greater brand awareness customer loyalty.

In Tokyo, it is popular to project huge QR codes onto the sides of buildings. When scanned, consumers are taken to a website which offers discounts for local shops and restaurants. Away from the cityscapes I seem to associate them with, this one was mown into a field in Germany. The message decodes to “Hello World!” and could be seen from Google Earth.

It’s not only for shopping; BBC3 has integrated the first QR code into on air animation to advertise new drama The Fades, as a way of engaging with the digitally minded target audience, and the NHS is also tapping into this audience by using QR codes to connect clubbers to drug advice.

Which QR codes you would recommend?

Podge is an opportunity – and one James and myself most heartily enjoyed – of our industry getting together to eat and be merry – both big and small companies, and not just agencies… anyone who plays an active part in the industry, was there. It may sound like just another ‘network’ event… but it’s not. It’s been a while since I enjoyed such a shindig so much. Meeting some great new people, some of them my heros in the design world when I was still a young nipper, as well as bumping into old friends.

Everyone left the ego’s at the door and set about having a good chinwag about what we are up to, how to safeguard against tough times, new opportunities or opinions on old. Remembering that we should always be collaborative, that we love this space of ours and should be looking to the future not protecting the past.

Anyway, enough of my chitta-chat. Many thanks to Phil for organising. Many thanks to FutureBrand for such an engaging concept. Hope to be back at Podge next year to say hi to everyone again.

I say dotBrand – you say What? So, let’s start with the basics. DotBrand is the moniker that’s been given to the new raft of impending top level domain names.

We are all currently aware of at least a handful of the 22 existing traditional endings to a domain address such as .co.uk, .com, .org, .net, .biz, .fr, and we get along quite nicely with them for the most part. People have come to understand that a ‘.co.uk’ site is the UK version of a website, or that ‘.edu’ is limited to use by educational institutions, and is likely to be the domain name for your childs primary school, or your university.

dotBrand opens up the top level domain names to ‘.anything’… It could be .coke, .london, .music… and so on, creating with it an entirely new online landscape. Brands could essentially have total ownership and management of their own unique name space. No longer would they have to check whether a domain name was available at the start of a new product launch, or advertising campaign. Instead they would simply just add it in their repertoire. For example if MGM studios launched a new film, lets say it’s called Violet… they could simply have www.violet.mgm (instead of a) not being likely to get www.violet.com as another company will probably already own it and b) not having to use something along the lines of www.mgm.com/movies/newrelease/violet). Obviously the latter is a lot less effective, less memorable and holds less retention with the audience.

All dotBrand domain name requests have a 90 day period to be submitted to ICANN – the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, starting Jan 2012. After which time a review process will take place, and names granted or declined… More of this later.

So, next comes the fact that a new digital landscape calls for a new digital strategy. Obviously there are immediate pluses and minuses to the arrival of a dotBrand era, and questions to be considered.

• How will it be received by the public? There is likely to be early confusion and potential reticence to change.
• How will brands educate the public, and encourage them to use their new dotBrand top level domain?
• Will cybersquatting increase? Will dotBrands be bought up by people who have no right to them?
• Will dotBrands be perceived as more or less trustworthy?
• How will dotBrands affect the online search strategies and effectiveness for non-dotBrand’ers?
• Will dotBrands give a competitive advantage to their users, or will they be yet another top level domain name in the mix of the existing ones?
• Will the obvious simplified url’s create a noticeable amount of stickyness for a campaign?
• …And the list goes on…

One immediate problem is that credible and agreed names that are submitted for registration will not only be approved, but will ensure that similar names, or different versions on a similar theme will be declined. The example given in the recent webinar was for Deloitte – if registered, .deloitte will be acceptable, but .delloite / .deloite / .deloittr will all be declined. The irony for me is that dotBrand itself is a company name… Will ICANN buy the .dotbrand top level domain for all registrations, and if they do, do they have ‘more right’ over it than a company whose registered name is DotBrand?? Wow… the mind boggles. Gap is another great example, as a colleague pointed out. There is currently thegap / gap/ gapadventures / gapinc / gapantenna / gap-software… Who can lay claim, and who will be shoved out of a dotBrand world? Or will it come down to those that can pay will muscle out those that can’t and stake their claim on a name?

The digital landscape may also change more dramatically than one would first envisage. There is the potential that dotBrand websites will eliminate the need for a website hierarchy, as you will be pointed exactly where you need to go by a short, snappy, memorable dotBrand url (www.contact.amazon or www.soul.kia). No website hierarchy and a direct route of navigation potentially means no Homepage doesn’t it? – a concept that all website users are currently familiar and comfortable with using and navigating. Obviously the immediate question raised in my mind, is around the interconnectivity of pages within the same dotBrand domain, and how users will find their way from one place to another if the navigational homepage is made redundant…? This may currently appear to be one step too far.

Now back to the process of registering for a dotBrand, as promised. There will be an initial 90 day registration period, after which the current schedule is that further registration for dotBrand domain names will be closed until 2016. That is a long way away! My initial fear on hearing this, coupled with the fact that each submission for a dotBrand domain name will cost a whopping $185,000 (please don’t gasp aloud as I did upon hearing this figure), is that all of a sudden the internet will become yet another landscape of have’s v’s have-not’s. For me the beauty of the internet is that it allows everyone an equal playing field – whether you’re a small start-up, or a big fish in the marketplace; equally it has allowed some amazing entrepreneurial successes that may never have got that first break had it not been for a unified global online space…

And let’s not brush over the $185,000 price-tag itself. What exactly are brands paying for? I’ll repeat that. What EXACTLY are brands paying for? And frankly, aren’t we simply saying to companies over a certain size and turnover ‘welcome to a brand new web’, and to all you others ‘goodluck’…

Whilst you read this, there will be more Top 100 companies publicly setting their stall out (to register or not to register, that is the question?), with the likes of Deloitte and Canon quickly announcing that they would be buying their respective dotBrand domain names. It would seem that there are therefore two options – dotBrand, or don’t. A third, slightly questionable, route is also being put out there by ICANN: register and then retreat. You register and essentially ‘reserve’ a domain name so others can’t get it, and then withdraw your application after the 90 day deadline. This would mean that between April 2012 and sometime in 2016 no-one else would be able to get your dotBrand domain name, however it would also cost you $55,500 for the privilege (30% of the original fee would be retained)…

I guess we shall just have to wait and wonder…

Something a little off-piste for today’s blog. Feeling the 80′s vibe this week, after finding a Sooty puppet in a vintage store this weekend, and I thought I’d share the love (or should that be magic?)…

Whilst musing over the cult classic that was The Sooty Show that started back in 1955, I was interested to find out the entire idea for Sooty was born in much the same way – a cute hand-puppet teddy found in a vintage shop on a day out at Blackpool pier, as a last ditch effort to entertain a small child.

The Sooty Show was a father / son enterprise that spanned across BBC and ITV without falter, something that many modern shows, with all their hype and ratings, fail to do well.

I wonder how many of you still hold a soft-spot for Sooty (…or Sweep, Soo, Butch, Scampi, Muffin and Snuffles for that matter)?

This months challenge was to mock-up the homepage for a visitor attraction site – whether fictitious or existing.

Inspired by a gallery soon to launch locally, we mocked up a page for Jerwood Gallery.

Take a look for yourself here.Jerwood Gallery .net design off

With customer expectations higher than ever, and the need for immediate resolution to satisfy our culture of instant gratification, see how your business can offer service and support with the use of Twitter.

1. Real time service status updates

You can avoid user disgruntlement by being open and honest as soon as problems occurs. If you’re experiencing downtime, or  if there are interruptions to your normal service, you will find that customers are a lot more understanding if they are kept up to date. Show empathy, acknowledge the issues you are encountering and install faith that you are working towards a speedy resolution. Twitter provides the perfect platform to provide lightning fast, real time updates such notifications and updates.

2. Answer general queries regarding your service or brand

The value of communicating directly with potential and existing customers and users cannot be overstated enough. People want to know that they are being listened to and that if they have questions or concerns, that they will be answered and not fall on deaf ears.

“Users say they’re more likely to buy if a business answers their questions on Twitter.” (NYTimes.com) it’s for this reason that many global brands have turned to Twitter to offer users support about basic account information, basic service queries and support, and general FAQs.

The communication stream between your brand and the Twitter user will be there for all to see. This exposure as a customer relations tool is invaluable and will ensure your brand is seen in a positive light.

3. Respond quickly before moving to more robust channels.

If a resolution can be communicated in 140 characters, all to the good, but you may also want to move people to private or more suitable channels for full support (e.g., “send us a DM with your email or phone #”). The world sees that you are responsive. The customer gets a more complete answer. The situation is resolved in a more private setting.

4. Reduce support costs

If you are able to establish a good service and support relationship with users and customers on Twitter, you will indefinitely save on your support cost overheads. Time spent talking to users on phones, replying to e-mails, can be drastically reduced by @replys and Direct Messages.

Facebook is accessed by just under 1 in every 13 people in the world. Given the number of babies and old folks (excluding the Ivy Bean’s of this world), as well as complete technophobes (fearful) or techo-illiterate (fearless, but also clueless)  that’s quite astonishing for something that started up as a support site solely open to membership from Harvard students (an approximate audience of 7000 people in total!). The number of Facebook users has now surpassed 750 million… with 2000 employees to manage it in 15 different offices worldwide… Phew!

Over 30% of users are in the ’35 years and over’ demographic. A marked shift from the original college student focus. Raising the question with some audiences whether Facebook has gone from cool to just plain cold… However, to counter-balance this the 18-24 year old audience is once again the fastest-growing segment, regaining the title from ‘women 55+‘ who snagged it briefly in 2009. Take from that what you will!

The average user has 140 friends that they are connected with on Facebook, and sends an average of 8 friend requests per month, during roughly 40 visits per month, in which they create approximately 90 unique pieces of content; 200 million of whom do this from their mobile device whilst on the go… Users have been dubbed the ‘Tell-All Generation’ with Facebook as the platform to air your views, your opinions…and in some cases your dirty laundry 24/7/365.

And that is all just for starters. Before we even mention how many millions of users follow how many thousands of companies in how many different languages, or not if the most recent article is anything to go by. Or the most and least popular pages on the site, and how many fans they gain each week (Texas Hold’Em Poker and the Kate Middleton page are way up there this week!)