Welcome

So everywhere you turn, companies seem to be turning to Twitter to engage with their audience.

But, is it actually happening?

For me, Twitter is becoming like a busy pub on a Saturday night. I want to have conversation but:

1. who do I choose to talk to?
2. I can’t get into a good conversation because it’s too damn noisy!

Even when a thread starts between me and someone else, it gets broken by inane mutterings from someone about something I have no interest in and chances are, I am also doing the same to people following me. Or, someone replies to a question I asked a day or two ago.

Twitter, for me, is becoming something I can dip in and out of and maybe I have made the mistake of trying too hard to be popular? (Ego hey?)

And, if I am having this problem with less than 1000 people in my followers/following - god knows how people are doing it with 10’s of thousands. I mean, how big and noisy would that pub be?

The alternative is to cull the people I am following. But then how engaging is that for those following me? Let’s face it, who am I to warrant any attention without giving something back?

Twitter. I do love you and what you are doing for me, but, I’m getting to that age where I simply prefer my local, or a nice quiet country pub, and my guess is, so do the people I really want to engage with.

Is iPhone art, mobile art, finger art (call it what you like) establishing itself as a genre in its own right?

That would seem to be the case with an increasing number of artists springing up all over the place using the Apple iPhone as their ‘electronic’ canvas.

Many of the pictures have been created with small, inexpensive apps such as Brushes and painted freehand on a 3.5-inch iPhone screen using just fingers and thumbs.

Inevitably, it didn’t take long before a large amount of highly innovative creative painters and paintings began to post their work in a Flickr Group.

One of the leading exponents of this type of art even had his artwork published on the front cover of The New Yorker Magazine.

Others, such as retired artist Susan Murtaugh, also has numerous examples of her work on-line including this particular gallery that includes a series of impressive tiger pictures.

‘Tiger 6′ - created by Brush on the iPhone by Susan Murtaugh

One artist actually claims to have completed a piece of work while waiting to see his dentist and there’s even talk of some popular pictures being displayed in an art gallery.

See for yourself and let us know what you think.

In the past, and perhaps even now, marketing and sales departments used to fight like cat and dog. Marketing looking to create a sustainable route, compared to sales who JUST WANT IT NOW!

For me, they work hand-in-hand - especially in a small business.

That’s why we’ve teamed up with Daryll Scott of Noggin to create an empowering day of NLP based ’stuff’ in September.

This ’stuff’ is based around you finding ways to challenge your stuck thinking and create new skills in terms of sales, marketing and your business interactions.

Find our more about the workshop on our microsite - Make The Escape.

Microsoft has confirmed the release date for its brand new operating system Windows 7 as 22nd October 2009.

This will be the first day that consumers will be able to get hold of a copy.

System requirements

Windows 7 will have ‘comparable system requirements’ to Vista (Microsoft’s most recent operating system) which means that if your PC’s capable of running Vista it should also run the new version without any difficulty.

It’s widely hoped that Windows 7 will be a significant improvement on Vista - especially in the area of usability as well as simplified of security measures which have caused a great deal of frustration for many users.

Performance

Testers of Windows 7 have reported that it runs faster than Vista, particularly in terms of start-up and shutdown.

The reality check bit…

So if Windows 7 is available from October this year, I wonder what odds the bookies will be offering on SP1 being available by the following Easter?

I had a good get together last night (organised by Daryll Scott) with a couple of guys in the fields of branding and PR. I’d go as far as to say it’s the most intelligent conversation I’ve ever had with a PR person (Paul) and we had a good chat about Twitter, amongst other things.

When I talk to most people about Twitter, the concentration tends to veer towards what is written and ‘what’s in it for me’ commercially, which is understandable. But, one aspect of Twitter that is much overlooked is to be there as a spectator, using Twitter as a resource.

As a lecturer, Paul mentioned that he finds a lot of resource material via Twitter and the people he follows; resources that he would’t usually have access to.

This reinforces the idea of quality over quantity for me. Yes, there is a lot of dross on Twitter (as there is with any user generated content media). But, the point is that you choose who you follow.

Here’s a real world example of this idea

One of my projects is a beauty salon in Farnborough that also sells products online. One of the most popular brands we sell is a nail and hand range from Jessica Cosmetics. The UK distributor (or their PR agency) is on Twitter as JessicaNails and some of their recent tweets have cited press articles, such as this one about Gordon Brown biting his nails and this one about a product review. We can see the difference to the sales of those products in the day or to following this press coverage - I can create the link of why.

Now, what if I used that information to drive sales harder over that period? Why not jump on the bandwagon very quickly and set up these products on offer; perhaps set up a specific Adwords campaign that played on the story?

Increasing the chances

Twitter is not an exact science. In fact, a lot of online marketing is down to chance, timing and trying to be the most relevant you can and you can’t force your marketing the way you used to.

But, you gotta be in it to win it! And, the person with the information at their finger tips (at the right time) WILL have the advantage.

A few months ago I finished this book, loved every bit of it and took a lot of learnings from it. I recently read back through one particular chapter and it reminded me just what a fantastic book this is.

For any Student, Junior Designer, Senior Designer, Creative Director… hell… anyones who claims to be passionate about graphic design… this should be the bible you adhere to.

Its full of great advice and sets the mantra that all creatives ’should’ live their lives by. I seem to be contacted by (and meet) many so called creatives that feel that this industry owes them a living and success with it. This book reiterates that if you want to be successful (and I appreciate this means different things to different people), being a graphic designer is fundamentally about hard graft, dedication and a passion to go the extra mile that separates you from the crowd. It is also packed full of advice that is relevant to anybody in the creative industry. It does have contributions from many of the industry ‘big names’ but in my opinion, some of these are a little bullshitty (if thats even a word!). The main man that speaks complete sense throughout is the author, Adrian Shaughnessy.

Rather than continue to sing this books praises, I fully suggest you get hold of a copy and read it. It will not disappoint. For me, every designer should have this book. Live your creative life by its fairly basic rules and you’ll not go too far wrong. Mr Shaughnessy, I take my hat off to you.

Yesterday saw us launch the 10th incarnation of The Escape website.

There are a number of reasons why we have launched a new site, just 17 months after the last one. Some are about design, some are about technology, but the main reason is about marketing and how user interaction is the driving force behind good web design.

To be honest, we tend to do a lot of research and development on our own site and as such, we sometimes lose balance. The last site was based a lot around SEO and traffic genaration and it worked, the site is getting stronger and stronger in terms of visitor numbers and sales enquiries. Rob Jones, our Account Director, is understandbly nervous about changing a website when it seems to be doing so well, but we have to do these things.

It’s early days but yesterday actually saw our biggest number of visitors, just shy of 600 uniques.

Design

The new design is based around new brand development at The Escape and the website is much more image heavy than previous versions. The easiest thing in the world is to rely on images to do the talking, but it doesn’t necessarily work well with SEO or user experience and there is a balance to be had.

That said, our creative team is stronger than it’s ever been so we may as well use them!

We have some design features, such as the side-sliding contact form, which is being seen more and more on websites, and it’s a handy tool to create ‘now’ interaction. This also helps us measure which areas of the site are working.

In terms of user-design, the website is much more guided towards creating sales enquiries. This needs to be measured over time, but we have based this structure on measuring previous user experience and effectively making the website much more guided towards the goals we have set. You could argue that this stifles pure user freedom, but we do have an agenda, as should all marketing websites.

Technology

Still classic ASP but much more use of JQuery over Flash. This was also a great opportunity for use to update our web framework. Despite the fact that the website is static, the framework allows for easy updates and additions. The Twitter Wallpaper App uses .NET on the back-end. This will make it easier to upgrade and add new images.

Marketing

Ultimately, the website is a marketing tool. As mentioned above, the design is geared towards a specific strategy of generating sales leads. I fully expect our traffic to drop as a result of this, but, I do envisage better quality traffic and higher conversion numbers over time.

Social media will still play a part in generating conversation to boost authority and this will benefit our generic profile on the web, as shown on our referrals yesterday, with over 10% of traffic coming from social sites such as Twitter (and 3 of the top 5 referrers). Interestingly, the social site bounce rate is relatively low considering potential levels of engagement.

Another focus from the past two years that has paid off well is geography, ie. where we are. By localising and focussing our message, we are picking up a lot more local business. Much overlooked in this easy-to-reach world, our local economy is easier and more cost-effective to service, so why not start there.

Summary

Initial feedback has been good, and, it’s all been based on how the website looks and this is important for a design agency of course. Me, with my marketing head on… I’m looking for results.

This week, I have been porting across a tonne of content to our new website structure, which should go live on Monday. It amazes me how much content we have written over the past 18 months on this version of the website, some of it a little dated now, but some of it still bang on the money.

Then, for one reason or another, I found myself trawling through an Analytics account this morning which has some old client websites in and recalling some of the names in there, some of these companies that are no longer clients.

As I think about these projects and look at the stats, then go and visit the websites in question, I am amazed and baffled and to be honest, a little bit angry.

What a waste of an opportunity for some of these guys, some of whom placed the blame squarely on our shoulders at the time. These websites haven’t changed a jot in 3-4 years… not one word. The visitor numbers back this up and traffic is pretty much non-existent on some of these sites. I wonder if this is still our fault?

Now obviously, I do web stuff for a living - creating website strategies, content, etc. and I am currently riding my high horse as I type, but it’s my passion and my drive. So me seeing these websites would be like me showing a piano expert an old Steinway covered in plants and coffee stains and never played.

As a web agency, we can only do so much to deliver traffic and sales leads, and client expectation needs to be managed. But, the client also has their part to play… unless they want to put a retainer in place (and more and more clients are happy to do that and leave us to get on with it).

One of Tony’s (our SEO guy) constant discussions with me is about client input (or lack of), because the more we have to play with, the more we can do. Yes, we charge for these things ( it’s how we make a living) but online marketing / web updates / SEO (call it what you will) works with the right strategy - and it delivers measurable value.

So, I will continue to seeth over my cornflakes (for the next ten minutes at least), especially when I think of the end discussions on some of these projects. But I will remind myself of the clients who do ‘get it’ and are delivering great results having understood the need to invest time and/or budget into what is a marketing channel, that just so happens NOT to be FREE, or EASY.

Some interesting examples of ways in which advertisers around the world have used creative techniques as part of various campaigns.

The examples below are not only representative of their respective brands but also provide an intriguing brand extension created through the manner in which each has been executed.

In some cases, there is an influence which is very reminiscent of Salvador Dali while others are either inspired or just damned clever.

See what you think.

• @garyj - @craigkillick will put some cash behind the bar - we like to sponsor local initiatives. Good work on organising #bsktweetup #
• Had a great web copy writing workshop this afternoon. Real good collaborative session with some very keen clients. #