Time for a little Xmas cheer and the Secret Santa. This year we have dressed our tree with extra care and attention. Check out the crafted (ahem) baubles 
Happy Christmas to you all. Have a good one from all of us at We Love…
We Love… Being rotten this Christmas!
It is once again that time of year when the festive fun can begin, and what better way to start then by taking part in our perfectly rotten competition.
The humble sprout – affectionately known as the vegetable of Christmas, is largely overlooked the other 364 days of the year. So, we decided to give them their moment to shine…
We don’t want to give anything else away. So don’t delay – check out the humble sprout now.
New Win for We Love
We are proud to announce that we have been awarded the Multiple Sclerosis International Federation (MSIF) campaign for World MS Day 2012, after entering a three-way competitive pitch.
As part of a new three-year plan, MSIF aims to implement a new creative next year: ‘1000 faces of MS’, which will put people with MS at the heart of a campaign, targeted to create awareness and understanding of the disease amongst the general public leading up to World MS Day 2012 on May 30th.
The campaign will creatively push the global MS movement and will include digital, social, video and print content.
Mark Anderson, Creative Director at We Love 72 commented:
“We are delighted to have won the pitch for MSIF and to work towards a greater awareness of Multiple Sclerosis, by connecting up personal stories, experiences, messages and support from around the world and highlighting the great work MSIF do as a charity.”
We Love…New jobs
Due to a number of recent wins and big projects on the go, we are currently looking for a Senior Project Manager and a Junior Frontend Developer to join our team.
Senior Project Manager
What we are looking for…
The best of the best! You have dealt with large and small clients alike and understand the variables in each. Be technically aware… We are digital after all. You keep your head at all times, can manage clients and staff, and keep projects on track and on budget. Agency experience is a must.
Find out more and get in touch >
Junior Frontend Developer
What we are looking for…
An individual who can be responsible for innovative, well conceptualised and well developed multi-platform solutions for projects within the tech / creative department. You will be supported by a dynamic team in delivering high-quality end requirements for International clients.
We popped along to Typo London…
It’s been a very busy and exciting time here at the Manor and luckily I had some time to go along to Typo London last week. I have just managed to find a few hours today to write a quick overview of my time at the conference.
Typo Talks has been running for about 16 years in Berlin and this year was the first of hopefully many set in London. There were a broad range of topics covered over the three days from animation, art, signage, digital, print and of course typography. They were all loosely based on the theme of ‘Places’ but some more loosely than others. I can honestly say, there wasn’t a talk I didn’t enjoy and I even got to try a bit of calligraphy although I think I need a bit practice. I do plan to do a few detailed posts around some of areas covered, but for now here is just a few of my favourites from Typo.
Nat Hunter from Airside, ran through of a few of their latest projects but with particular focus on storytelling. I really liked the work they did for the Virgin Airlines inflight entertainment system, showing that a better design solution aids in a better experience, which then makes people happier, and then leads to other outcomes (such as drinking less from the free bar on Virgin flights, which then saves money).
“Pain is temporary. Suck is forever”. This is what Michael B Johnson from Pixar told us on Friday morning. I have always loved the way Pixar approaches a project and the attention to detail they put in. He gave an overview of a few stages of the Pixar process such as storyboarding and animation lighting, and finished on talking about the software they produce within Pixar just to ease the process and removing tension. After all, Pixar produce a playful product.
The talk that really stood out for me was from Karin von Ompteda. She did a very interesting experiment on typography, first conducting a survey to find the top 100 most popular typefaces and then analysed the individual letters with each other to find the areas of similar density. I won’t go into detail but I thought the images of each typeface placed onto of each other were really cool. I’d have then as a print on my wall.
An entertaining talk from Chip Kidd was a great way to end the conference. Briefly going over some book covers he had worked on over the years, he then told us about his obsession with Batman and the opportunity he had been given to write a Batman comic. All good stuff.
Like I said, I plan to do a few more posts on what I learnt at Typo so stay tuned. For now I’ll leave you with a few statements from Joachim Sauter on how to stay creative that I liked:
Reinvent yourself (every 7 years or so). Have the courage to fail. Share your experiences. Inspire rather than motivate. Teach.
Another mouth to feed…
A big hello to a new face at We Love! We’ve had quite a few new faces join the manor over the last few weeks and I’d like to welcome a new designer to the ranks. 
Stephen Gray joins us with varied experience working across different areas of the Industry…
With a background in print, coming from the same uni and course as myself, he made the transition into a more digital orientated role through his interest in User Interaction and UX Design.
Stephen is an ambitious designer, whose enthusiasm and creative vision will surely prove to be a great benefit to the team! Welcome Stephen!
We Love… Growing!
We are looking to expand the team…
Due to a number of exciting projects in the pipeline, we currently have our eyes peeled and on the lookout for some seriously talented creatives to come and join the team! Including:
Senior UX / IA
Senior Designer
Creative Traffic / Project Manager
Senior Project Manager
Junior Front End Developer
Come and be a part of these exciting times at the manor! Visit our jobs page to find out more and get in touch.
QR Codes
A recent online poll of consumers suggests that only a third knows what a QR code is, and have actually used one.
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?
A warm welcome to Nia!
Marketing & New Business is pleased to have a shiny new team member among our ranks – please welcome Nia Lonergan to the Coordinator role!
Nia joins straight from graduating with a BA in Politics from the University of East Anglia (UEA) in Norwhich. Not a ‘green’ grad- she has experience as a fundraiser for the UEA Alumni Association, and previous work experience within PR & Events in Kent.
She brings the New Business & Marketing roll-call to three, and is busy getting stuck into all aspects of agency (and new business) life.
The Future of Augmented Reality
The Metaio Augmented Reality Conference (Inside AR 2011) in Munich has become the world’s largest Augmented Reality event and took place earlier this week, making claims that by 2014, augmented reality will be used on every smartphone in the world.
Mobile computing is currently the fastest growing IT market, with mobile information retrieval ranging among the foremost activities of smartphone users. Marketers and global companies are excited at the prospect that it will soon be common place for their users to point their mobile device camera at anything in the real world and create contextual information/visuals.
There were a few major announcements at this year’s event; including the fact that metaio will be releasing a free version of its Mobile SDK to bring latest AR features to a broad developer community. It will also be publishing a tool called ‘junaio Creator’ to allow virtually anybody to create AR content for junaio. This information is of particular interest as it will become increasingly easier for creatives to enrich the user experience and extend the story we take them on.
Thomas Alt, CEO of Metaio, commented:
“We predict AR to become a common feature on every smartphone and tablet. Of course we are pleased that our solutions have emerged as benchmarks for advanced technology and excellence in our industry, used by developers’ worldwide.”
Software from companies such as Metaio and Layar now makes it possible for social networking to become a real world live experience – when at a bar, shopping or at a gig:
Here’s another example of what can be achieved at the moment with augmented reality: Rofo on junaio
A great brand example is Lynx, who extended their campaign to Victoria train station in London, asking passers-by to look up at a giant screen where they saw, not only themselves, but fallen angels alongside them:
Services such as Google Goggles – a visual search tool, which in basic terms helps define what you see in the real world and wants to monetise the process. Once the public gets used to navigating their environment with tools like Goggles, everything we see and share will become searchable data. Combining environments with predictive technology, Google will be able to serve visual experiences that benefit both the consumer and advertiser.
Although consumers have been confronted with advertising messages for decades and the future could see a positive change of more targeted and relevant messages in our environment, I do worry that this real world product placement could also have a negative impact, for example, instead of someone looking for an item in a shop, people will become reliant on using an app to scan a room for it – almost like putting on your glasses to see. If this was the case, would we lose part of our real-world connections and daily communication with others.
Questions to ponder on… Who owns the advertising space in an augmented world and has the rights to the GPS coordinates? At the moment, anyone can create a message and attach it to specific coordinates. What will stop brands’ realities overlapping, and will this be a movement not just for entertainment and advertising purposes, but for how we see the world in the future? Will the divide between virtual and physical realities become blurred?
Other food for thought is whether ads in the virtual world have to match ads in reality. For example, brands could take over competitors’ outdoor press – presenting an alternative virtual world. Although treading on potential dangerous ground, there is nothing currently in place to stop such a thing.
I find this whole area of our industry fascinating. There is so much opportunity for virtual advertising, projection mapping and Kinect. This mix of augmented reality, social data and interactivity is a real game-changer. My only worry is that without structure and processes in place, the market and our everyday environments will become over-saturated and eventually lose value, becoming a lonely virtual world that no one wants to visit anymore. But, let’s make sure this doesn’t happen by working out rights ownership and allowing virtual ads to evolve into content that users can choose to experience on their own terms.