Last Exit, New York City and London based Digital Strategy, Marketing & Design

Chegg

admin — Mon, 15 Apr 2013 21:16:49 +0000

Chegg

As the lead creative agency for Chegg, Last Exit was tasked with creating a campaign that elevated the brand from the sum of its services.

Ambition

Developing a visual language for the brand was key for current and future services to unmistakably be identified as part of the Chegg brand.

Approach

Veering on the emotional side of the scale using real students to create empathy, relevance and connection to the brand, Generation Chegg was born.

Generation Chegg is an entire generation of students that faces challenges unlike any generation before them: student loan debt, an unstable economy and an ever-changing job market.

Generation Chegg is a brand campaign that transforms Chegg from a company students possibly recognize into a brand that students have an affinity for and turn to repeatedly for all things education related. Rather than attempt to reach consumers directly at the point of conversion with service-oriented ad placements, this approach leads to conversion and loyalty.

Outcome

Multiple forms of media were produced to launch the brand campaign: banner ads, wild postings, event integration, and social programs.

To elevate the authenticity of the campaign, a photo shoot was held by photographer Guido Vitti in Boston with 24 students. Real students would now become the face of Generation Chegg.

A manifesto video was compiled to illustrate a generation of post-secondary students that face challenges unlike any generation before them, in a very real, honest and organic way.

In support of the brand website, tiles of real student images would link to their ‘confessional’ video.

In support of on campus activations, a Generation Chegg confession cam would be positioned for students to create their own ‘confessional’ video. By incorporating user-generated content it further authenticated the voice of today’s student into the campaign.

*Generation Chegg was a proposed brand campaign that was fully planned and
creatively executed.

Overview Text:

authenticity
in branding

Client Name Color:

White

Project:

Generation Chegg Brand Campaign

POV: Interview with Nuri Djavit, CEO of Last Exit

lastexit — Fri, 12 Apr 2013 15:52:50 +0000

Welcome to The Agency Post. Tell us about yourself.

My name is Nuri Djavit, and I am CEO of Last Exit, a digital agency with offices in New York and London. I’m a London-born, motorcycle-obsessed, football (where foot makes contact with the ball) fan, and I spend my workdays developing future value for my clients and my agency.

Tell us about Last Exit. What differentiates it from other agencies?

Simply put, we get results. We have an approach that can be challenging at times but is aimed at achieving long-term value, not just short-term. It’s about outcome, not simply output. Yes, we have great creatives, Yes, we have great technologists. But it’s the mixture of traditional ad planners with digital and social strategists and how we’ve structured our project leadership teams that gives our clients what they need to succeed in digital. In referrals, our clients have also noted an unparalleled commitment. It seems that is somewhat rare.

What is the key to exposing the best opportunities in digital for brands?

Don’t be swayed by hype and reeled in by pretty shiny things – in digital we often refer to as “widgets.” You should have a balanced, whole-system approach to digital strategy — one that is firmly rooted in the solid bedrock of the brand’s overall objectives. It’s crucial to figure out the “what, when and where” of digital that can move the dial for a brand: where it should simply be competent to meet internal and external expectations of existence, where it needs to be competitive and where it can lead — and this is where the difference will be truly felt.

To do this, you often have to look everywhere, leaving no stone unturned. I heard one of my guys, Kent Valentine, explain a story about a guy who walking across the street to his car one night and dropped his keys in the dark. He proceeded to walk over to a streetlamp and search in vain for his keys in the light. An observer alerts him to the fact that he’d dropped his keys elsewhere in the dark, and the first man says, “Perhaps, but I can see over here under the light.”

In order to remain relevant in the agency-brand relationship, what should agencies be focused on (besides great creative)?

They should be focused on rigorous, objective oriented strategy to satisfy what I’ve said above.

Some say that agencies need to become publishers to succeed in a social- and content-focused marketing landscape. Should agencies position themselves to both develop the strategy and the execution?
Ultimately, it’s about the kind of agency you want to become, and there’s not a one-shoe-fits all answer to this. There’s a growing need for specialists, and I don’t think that even the biggest agencies are able to satisfactorily do both across many brands.

Before the announcement of Facebook’s ‘new’ News Feed and the tendency towards a pay-to-play model, I may have disagreed. Certainly, the most important role was and still is to develop or help develop meaningful strategy and an effective analytics/listening and insights reporting model. Having a specialist in content strategy certainly has become much more important over the past couple of years, and in terms of “success,” this is where the greatest value is to the agency. If an agency’s success plan is also built around production, then becoming a publisher may seem desirable. It may also be a requirement of the brand.

What skills are the most important to the future success of your agency? What are you looking for in young talent?

Adaptation. Digital is now so diffuse and evolving so rapidly that we need incredibly smart, adaptive people who naturally take the initiative and are driven by client success. ‘More and more people’ is not the answer. We prefer fewer people at the top of their game with a healthy amount of commercial acumen — regardless of whether they’re creative, planners or producers. Value to our clients and value to the agency is crucial.

We talk about the need for advertising to be authentic, engaging, entertaining, relatable, etc. What should be the ultimate goal of advertising, and how do you keep your agency focused on this?

Those are all noble traits and ones that I stand behind. Ultimately, I believe that our job is very often to take some complex thinking and create concepts that are big, simple and true. Big enough to grab attention and engage and simple enough to understand and connect with the customer. Bait and switch doesn’t work anymore, and we as an agency only want to work with brands and messages we believe in.

What has been your favorite projects produced by Last Exit? Tell us about the strategy behind these campaigns?

Belvedere Vodka. With a brand and parent whose legacy was very much in PR, our ambition was to build the gold standard for digital communications at Möet Hennessy. Initially, our approach was to simply apply best practices to all digital channels. We constructed an ecosystem around two hubs: Facebook and their website. Facebook would acquire new customers and engage with fans around social activities. The website would elevate the experience and influence purchase behavior at the point of purchase.

We took a long, hard look at where we simply had to be competent, where consumers expected us to have a presence, where we must compete in order to fend off the likes of Grey Goose and then where we had an opportunity to lead — where we could truly make a difference.

Over three years, that was naturally in constant flux, so we had to keep a close eye on brand, consumer and competitor behavior. The result was that while we were outspent by a huge margin by our competitors, we always maintained a competitive position and very often led. Belvedere was the first brand in category to reach one million fans, and its engagement rates outstripped the challengers for a while.

With a relatively small budget, I am hugely proud of what we achieved using a whole system approach, especially for such an exquisite brand.

How is mobile changing the way you approach campaigns?

On a business to consumer level, if you don’t have a mobile-first approach, you’re missing the most obvious consumer behavior we’ve ever seen. The attitudes towards these devices is interesting; many years ago, phones ceased being a simply ‘technical’ device and became a ‘personal’ device. This radical shift is important because, I believe, we must now approach our (mobile) media strategy quite differently. It’s so much more about picking the exact right times and places to interact with a consumer, where personalization is crucial, and often thinking about it more as a permission-based platform than the more aggressive push we might with desktop media. So we, at Last Exit, considerably in consumer behavior research and modeling to unlock the patterns that are critical in understanding how best and where to invest our client’s money.

What trends in marketing/advertising do you find most interesting/exciting?

Clients are finally asking about attribution modeling and assigning business objectives to their campaigns, often actual ROI — no matter how large or small — and this is where we are extremely well placed. I’m not talking about some fuzzy metrics around supposed values of impressions or fans. We’ve been building a value-based proposition from the start, and the achievements we’re seeing with clients confirm the viability of our approach. When we see mainstream awards being based on a blend of strategy, creativity and results is when I will be most happy.

One reason you love what you do: I not only get to (help) shape my clients’ success but also that of my company. Being able to inform culture, practices and environment gives me a great deal of satisfaction. We have a very flat structure here at Last Exit and the sense of camaraderie is unparalleled in my experience.

Favorite ad:

Ooh, that’s a tough question, but it might have to be an Audi print ad for the R8. Instead of the usual macho three-quarter shot you see of sports cars, it was an overhead shot taken at night with the car to the right of the page. The headlamp beam was photoshopped out and replace behind the car. Very small print at the bottom of the page read, “Audi R8. 420 horsepower.” No other text.

The suggestion, of course, was of the car being faster than the speed of light. A fairly simple construct, but enough to give you an “ahhhh, nice” moment, and whoever created the ad understood the value of time. In just a few seconds, the connection I made to the car company was considerable. I’ve never owned an Audi and suddenly felt we had enough of a conversation going to find out more. Success.

Must-read book:

“The New New Thing” by Michael Lewis — a wild ride charting the many successes of Jim Clark, who has contributed more to the Internet age than most, though his name seems to be a little absent from many minds. A little long in the tooth now, but any story about fearless entrepreneurialism will have some relevance forever. It’s an essential read for anyone looking to make great waves (or small).

BRAND RESEARCH: HITTING THE TOP SHELF WITH DIGITAL BY PAUL NEWNES

danielstolz — Fri, 12 Apr 2013 13:57:21 +0000

I’ve been in and around the alcoholic beverage industry or ‘licensed’ trade as it’s called in the UK for the last 30 years or so. It’s a fascinating and fun business, one that’s centered around good times, but intellectually challenging in terms of working with the necessary regulations for alcohol marketing. For all the excitement and dynamism around the products, the business is still very traditional at its core. It can be understood why; some of the brands are hundreds of years old and want to be around for hundreds more which creates a tension with modern day marketing that has a perpetual gravity towards youth.

If we look back three years ago this traditionalism was patently evident in the state of spirits brands’ digital marketing. My observation is that until the last few years digital communications has been for the spirits industry something exclusively youthful, wild and marked on the annual marketing plan with ‘there be dragons’. Not a safe place for spirits brands to do anything other the odd microsite and Facebook post. This was reflected in the quality of the digital marketing output for spirits brands.

Fast forward three years and a lot has changed. The quality of the digital work product is approaching the levels of other industries. The digital assets deployed have life beyond flat transpositions of above the line campaigns and digital media buys seem to make visible sense. Essentially spirits’ brand level communications through digital are starting to rock.

Grey Goose is possibly best in class. The site is responsive, presenting an optimal user experience on all devices from smartphones to tablets to 27” iMacs. Gorgeous mouth-watering drink images and Absolut has masterful SEO on Absolut Drinks.

All drinks and attributes are tagged and hyperlinked, URL stems and titles say what they should and a visitor can like or share the individual cocktail, which in turn generates the backlink to the drink’s page.

But a big piece is still missing…

The consumer.

The internet (remember that word?) is still at heart an informational medium. Its entry point is search, which by weight of market share is near exclusively Google. It turns out that people do certain spirits related things at certain times en masse in Google.

Figure 1: Folks do a lot of research around all kinds of whiskies leading up to the holiday season.

Figure 2: Folks also want to know more about the bottle of Scotch they received as a Xmas Present

Figure 3: Planning the big Cinqo de Maio night starts with research around the perfect Tequila

Data provided by Google Trends

So what does all this mean? It means that consumers’ digital behavior around spirits is visible and to a large extent predictable. The above was produced from one data source only – Google Trends. Combined with social media data, site and app analytics, and paid media response rates the opportunity presents for spirits brands to glean some pretty potent insights.

These insights should inform a truly strategic approach to spirits digital marketing; knowing that the dollars spent are not only visible to consumers, but when those consumers are in the mood to drink.

So how many spirits brands are taking action against these insights?

According to Emarketer (Spirits Brands Slow in Digital Space 3/5/2013) and L2 Think Tank, there’s not much positive evidence. Earned and owned media still focus around brand level communications and for more advanced brands, where to buy.

Five Keys to the Top Shelf

So what are the practical implications?

Firstly, identify the peaks for your spirits brand and category using data sources mentioned above. Understand the predictable cycles of interest for branded and generic mentions.
Paid digital media: have your digital media agency optimize media spend around peak interest, even using day-parting on display buys to ensure your paid media is showing when it matters
Earned media: look at your earned media and brand activation calendar. Are there gaps in the peak interest times that you can fill, or if overlapping with a peak interest time, augment with paid media?
Owned media: content on your owned media properties, such as your website, needs to be relevant to different audience groups. So your site needs to react and present different content dependent upon:
- The visitor’s location and anything that might trigger a response; eg. a hot day and a homepage with imagery of ice
- The time of day and day of week
- Whether the visitor has been to the site before: the user is probably cookied (meaning can be recognized) from going through the age gate previously.
5. Analyze the data. The peaks and troughs represent real world behavior of real people. Creative thinking is as important as mathematics for how to leverage the opportunities.

In summary, spirits brands have untapped opportunities to optimize and target their media channels against observable consumer interest. The implementation can scale from a single program to an entire campaign, all with the objective of matching brand expression to the mindset of the prospective customer.

Spirits of Digital – Driving Consumers To Drink

Investment in digital channels has increased considerably in recent years but brands are still leaving money on the table.

By being more observant and responsive to consumer needs and desires, brands can build far greater engagement that will influence purchasing behavior and return a positive ROI.

Today’s digital tools give spirits brands the opportunity to observe and leverage consumer behavior like never before. But to do so effectively requires a radical shift in digital marketing. This paper explains how factors specific to the spirits category have led even the most digitally progressive brands to leave marketing money on the table. It also points to how spirits brands can boost the effectiveness of their initiatives; moving from a primarily executional approach, dictated by brand priorities, to harnessing a strategic digital approach responsive to consumer behavior.

An Industry Ready For Take-OFF

Spirits are inherently social. Digital’s potential to rapidly build consumer engagement and dialog should be an (obviously) inviting prospect to spirits brands.

Digital, and certainly social media, is like the Wild West to many marketers. Legal teams have responded with extremely restrictive review and approval procedures, going against the grain of the nature of the platform and the behaviors of the users. Tentative steps to deal with these restrictive factors have meant that brands have been slow to take off with much of their tactics being focused on acquisition. Even the most progressive spirits brands lag behind brands in other categories.

With technology protocols, such as native age-gates, guidelines in place, and established methods for engagement taking root, brands are now poised to take-off and take full advantage of a medium where their target audience (21-35 year-old Millennial demographic) plays throughout the day, every day.

The opportunity is, therefore, for spirits brands to become true innovators, leaders – if not heroes – in the digital space. The category may not yet be a hotbed of digital innovation, but online development at spirits brands has been increasing over the past few years.

Embracing Facebook

Facebook has been embraced as the default destination and communication hub for many spirits’ campaigns. The world’s biggest social network site has been the main focus for amassing digital content through original creations, partnerships and user-generated content. But the efforts may seem to be sporadic and highly tactical.

There is a high degree of variation as to how well brands are faring online today, but a handful are clearly pushing the envelope and defining digital excellence within the category.

3 Spirit Brands In The Lead

Absolut Vodka

Online, content is king. A significant component of any digital engagement program will always be compelling on-brand content. Absolut has made content creation the central pillar of its digital strategy, producing a continuous stream of beautifully executed initiatives that leverage relevant cultural icons. From an original short film by Spike Jonze to a Swedish House Mafia remix tool on Facebook, Absolut is far and away the leader in creating high quality, engaging online content. These executions are a logical extension of the brand’s longstanding connection to the arts and artists, framed in a modern, social media context. Absolut provides consumers with plenty of engaging material to share while maintaining relevance around the brand.

Ciroc Vodka

Key to compelling social media presence is the creation of a differentiating voice. Cîroc Vodka chose musician and media mogul, Diddy, giving him creative control, and a substantial financial stake in the brand. Diageo has successfully harnessed tremendous cultural and media firepower. A core strength of the campaign has been Diddy’s social media engagement , and his ability to leverage the influential voices of artists represented by his label –“the Cîroc Boyz”. This approach has generated earned media value far in excess of the brand’s paid media budget. An added benefit is that much of the engagement occurs through personal accounts of Diddy and “the Boyz”,– unfettered by age verification or corporate messaging. As a result, Cîroc’s postings are fluid, responsive, timely and therefore, highly effective.

Captain Morgan

Mobile holds much promise for spirits brands, but many struggle to capitalize in a meaningful way. Captain Morgan leads the pack with an app combining social gaming, location check-ins, and brand persona , the Captain himself. The ‘Captain’s Conquest’, a multiplayer, location-based mobile game, is the most ambitious app of any spirits brand. Players check in to bars via Foursquare, allowing them to “conquer” territory and form fleets with friends. By testing their skills in battle, exploring their city and engaging in other features, players build social engagement while increasing their game standing. This seamless combination of brand persona and consumer engagement is a potent example of how digital tools can follow the consumer journey to the point of purchase and increase brand impact.

A Shift In Approach: Moving To The Next Level

Digital is squarely in the sights as the most critical territory to claim in the spirits category, so what is next for spirits brands competing for consumers’ mind space?

Much of the movement in the category has tended toward elaborate, branded digital extensions of pre-existing lifestyle campaigns. While this approach communicates a position and maintains brand awareness, such initiatives are driven primarily by brand priorities, rather than by consumer preferences and behavior. The biggest challenge in moving spirits brands to the next level in digital communications is to evolve from a predominantly tactical approach driven by the brand, to a strategic process driven by the consumer. In the spirits category, purchase and consumption decisions are particularly context driven – season, occasion, venue, company, etc. These can temper, or even supersede, a consumer’s stated brand preference. In other words, “I’ll have what she’s having”.

Peak Relevance: Understanding The Ecosystem

Acting upon the moments of peak relevance takes an understanding of the consumer ecosystem, which can provide a comprehensive roadmap all the way to the critical moment of purchase.

Source: Google Search Volume

Beyond simply understanding how consumers behave online, data from digital interactions can provide a window into offline behavior. For example, using search volume as a proxy for fluctuations in general interest, consistent spikes of interest can be observed across the category.

Search data shows peak interest points around crucial holiday occasions – Memorial Day, July 4th, Labor Day, hanksgiving, Halloween, and the Christmas/New Years season. Purchase interest has distinct seasonality, which suggests increased consumer responsiveness to targeted engagement at those times. Therefore, a spirits brand seeking a competitive edge could potentially enhance efficiency in their marketing budget by planning their calendar accordingly, rather than scheduling major initiatives in periods that do not show a strong connection to interest and purchase.

Occasion Affects Off-premise

It is also possible to see that some occasions correlate more with off-premise purchase occasions than others. Certain times of the year provide more effective opportunities to push initiatives based around off-premise purchase and home-bar restocking.

Source: Google Search Volume

Week-To-Week

Distinct patterns of relevance can also be observed on a micro week-to-week level, with general interest rising steadily toward the end of the week and peaking on Saturday.

Source: Google Search Volume

This information can be leveraged to schedule more direct call-to-action (CTA) messaging around peak times and utilize other times for broader brand positioning or fan acquisition. Though these insights may appear common-sensical, the implications for structuring communication marketing plans are

significant and wide-ranging.

However, there is little evidence that such findings have been factored into the digital engagement plans of spirits brands to date.

The Ecosystem

Using Last Exit’s construct to model the consumer ecosystem, we can extrapolate findings that can identify moments of peak relevance and provide a basis for multivariate testing and in-market optimization:

This is just a starting point and only scratches the surface of the great possibilities that can result from targeting peak relevance situations. Actual data and an understanding of device and platform usage patterns, along with specific consumer information, can be enhanced through creative and strategic digital engagements. This information then shapes a consumer ecosystem that will inform content development and the deployment of communications initiatives.

Changing The Game

By taking advantage of the spirits consumers’ digital ecosystem, brands can create effective engagement and reap the rewards of a winning strategy.

Taking this strategic, highly responsive and consumer-driven approach to engagement is becoming a best practice in digitally advanced categories, and represents a critical change from the traditional brand-centric approach the spirits brand category has employed.

Digital media is an arena where spirits brands should excel. However, there has been much trepidation regarding how to take advantage of new media channels in this highly regulated category with deeply ingrained marketing norms. Digital offers a window into consumer behavior and opens new paths to purchase. Establishing a basis for understanding and exploiting these moments of relevance provides a solid structure for communications. It establishes a baseline for further refinement, and opens the possibility for more rigorous attribution within a category that has lacked clearly defined metrics for digital success. As spirits brands come into their own online, the return on investment from traditional lifestyle content will inevitably diminish. Fortunately, returns will increase for those who focus on how consumers connect with their product. By taking advantage of the spirits consumers’ digital ecosystem, brands can create effective engagement and reap the rewards of a winning strategy.

What’s next?

To gain sustainable market advantage, spirits brands must understand consumers’ media ecosystems and how to engage at points of peak relevance to their category, brand, and products. The pivotal question for marketing / communications departments is always, “What is the most effective way to spend our marketing dollars?” In spirits, the marketing culture is constrained by regulation and circuitous paths to purchase, a situation which has created a fundamental rift between communications and purchase behavior.

Meanwhile, other categories are gaining valuable efficiencies with digital to gain actionable consumer insights into intent to purchase, and are establishing attribution modeling frameworks that give performance metrics context and meaning.

In summation, brands must upgrade their digital marketing and develop native strategies that aren’t simply extensions of their traditional brand campaigns. To gain sustainable market advantage, spirits brands must understand consumers’ media ecosystems and how to engage at points of peakrelevance to their category, brand, and products. Current initiatives of spirits brands demonstrate an enthusiasm for digital and a willingness to invest in the space, but to take the next step, they must move beyond novelty to embrace truly responsive digital strategies.

SEO ‘Hack Proofing’

lastexit — Thu, 04 Apr 2013 13:47:45 +0000

By Ayaz Lakhani
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In light of the recent hacking issues and PR blunders that have plagued a myriad of major brands such as Burger King, Mountain Dew and KitchenAid, there is a growing need to minimize the harm caused by negative publicity and proactively defend your brand’s SEO rankings as a crisis management technique. As we all know, too many bad, spammy or low-quality links can harm your rankings on search engine results pages (SERPs) and undo all of your hard work and optimization.

In the digital space where negative word-of-mouth travels at the speed of a tweet, no one is exempted. Every business is at risk of being a victim of bad publicity, whether it is the hacking of a social media account or contest, a product quality issue or an unintentional communication sent through an owned media property. To make matters even more severe, the importance of SEO spans across many different industries and sectors, whether they are major retail brands, service providers, universities or even small businesses.

Why is SEO ‘Hack Proofing’ Important?

The truth of the matter is that everyone is directly affected by SEO rankings and they will all have to deal with a crisis at some point in the future—it is simply the “cost of doing business” in digital. Negative publicity of any kind that shows up on a SERP has a direct impact on how your company is perceived by a potential customer and could be the difference between life and death for your brand.

From a strategic perspective, this means that businesses need to start thinking proactively about how to hack-proof their brand’s SEO rankings, especially if they operate in a high-risk industry (BP), or if a key competitor is a recent victim of being hacked (Jeep). It is also important to note that small businesses need to worry even more so than major brands, as they are typically at a disadvantage due to limited resources and a general inability to bounce back from a major crisis, or a slew of negative reviews.

5 Defensive SEO Strategies

Fortunately, there are 5 defensive SEO strategies that companies and brands of all sizes across all industries can implement to counteract negative links, manage online reputations, address negative reviews and effectively hack-proof their SEO rankings

Proactive Planning: Identify potential risk areas early on and develop proactive solutions to protect yourself in case of an emergency or crisis. Engaging in proactive planning will allow your brand to mitigate risks and respond swiftly to control the story in favor of your brand.
Social Listening: Actively engage in social listening for high-volume negative keywords and be on top of news headlines and stories as they break across the web. This will not only allow for the creation of relevant and timely digital content to hold your ranking, but it will also help to “push down” and offset any negative (and often factually inaccurate) news stories about your brand. View social listening SEO tools to craft your strategies.
Online Presence: Maintain a strong online presence through all owned social media properties, well-indexed websites and press releases to fortress your SEO rankings. Be sure to include high-volume keywords and search terms as part of your content strategy across all owned online media platforms to assist your ranking for these topics. Active profiles on popular platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Google+, YouTube, Pinterest, Instagram and Tumblr provide more chances for engagement with customers and thus, increase your chances of ranking well on SERPs. Use the Ad Preview Tool to view unbiased search results on targeted keywords and identify potential areas for defensive SEO.
Wikipedia: Use Wikipedia to moderate and control the tone of how and what is said about your brand and a particular crisis. Wikipedia consistently ranks high for most brand searches and is the primary source of information for many search users and potential customers. Since Wikipedia prides itself on the accuracy of its information, this is your company’s chance to set the record straight and source your claims. Be honest and accurate when engaging on Wikipedia and avoid any self-promotion or sales materials.
Direct Responses: If you cannot outrank them, respond positively to negative comments or false claims about your brand on message boards, forums and blogs. Remember to apologize, address concerns and stick to the facts—advertising speak does not belong here! This will allow you to “humanize” your brand, defend your positioning and positively influence negative brand perceptions regardless of where you rank on SERPs.

It is important to note that these defensive SEO strategies are by no means a “quick fix” and it will generally take some time to witness results. However, implementing these 5 defensive SEO strategies will significantly boost your crisis management efforts and assist your brand in reclaiming the first page of Google. Remember to stay calm, stick to your strategy and focus on your customers:

“When a disaster hits, it seems like the world is caving in and that can seriously affect judgment. The digital marketing industry is somewhat of an echo chamber, so the loudest voices are usually industry insiders and not necessarily real customers nor influencers. Deal with the short term crisis, but don’t let it distract you from the medium to long term objective of using SEO to protect and shift real consumer sentiment.” – Paul Newnes, Partner at Last Exit

Some recent examples of companies that have successfully dealt with negative publicity include Papa John’s and Chegg, Taco Bell, and General Motors.

This piece originally appeared in searchdecoder

Manufacturing Authenticity (or “Starbucks vs. a Dead Babylonian King”)

lastexit — Thu, 04 Apr 2013 13:39:53 +0000

By Kent Valentine
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At first, I enjoyed giving myself fanciful names because there’s nothing quite like listening to someone yell, “flat white for Nebuchadnezzar,” in a crowded Starbucks.

But the fun fell out of it when the staff began to recognize me, and they’d just ask, “And who are you today?”

This was last April, when Starbucks decided to force/encourage their staff to request the names of customers when taking orders and then announce them when the drinks were ready. It was an attempt to manufacture authenticity — to artificially create the social bond that might naturally grow between a vendor and customer in a bygone era when local customers patronized local shops staffed by local employees where everybody was on a first name basis.

This familiarity and sense of community is a powerful force. It’s one of the key aspects of the past that causes old people to believe that it was a better time to be alive, having conveniently forgotten that the same past was also generally more racist, sexist and homophobic and that domestic violence used to be an Olympic sport.

But you can’t blame Starbucks for having a go at creating this type of atmosphere; after all, they know we’ll all spend more money with them if we forget they’re a corporate behemoth. (Albeit one that doesn’t seem to turn enough of a profit to pay tax in the U.K.)

As a person who viewed this move with naked cynicism and resented its obvious, awkward and clunky nature, you can imagine my surprise when I came to the realization that it had worked.

A few weeks after the new policy was in place, I had forgotten how forced and faked this initiative had felt initially. My local branch was suddenly staffed by people whose names I knew and who (to varying degrees) knew mine as well. Written versions of my name on the cup varied wildly from Ken, Trent, Kenneth and Clint, but there was definitely a connection there. Their names were Peach, Simon, Jura and Luke, and I was the tall, bearded, flat white drinker with the inconsistent, one-syllable name.

As time progressed, our connection grew, and I realized that now we had a relationship that felt authentic. I cared about them, and they cared about me more than we had before the name game started. Starbucks had successfully manufactured authenticity.

Unfortunately for Starbucks’ shareholders, a superior (and genuinely local) coffee shop opened up just down the road, so one morning I sacrificed my sense of community to try the new place. These new kids on the block didn’t give two hoots about my name. In fact, they were almost indifferent to my patronage at all, but damn could they make a good coffee. There was no sense of community, but the warm fuzzy feeling of an excellent flat white trumped the warm fuzzy feeling of a mediocre flat white made by someone who thinks my name is Trent — and so I defected to the new shop.

In the aftermath of the Christmas/New Year break, I returned to work and was shocked to find my new coffee dealer was still closed for the holidays, so I sheepishly returned to Starbucks. I foolishly set my expectations high and fully anticipated to be welcomed back to the store by teary staff overjoyed at my return.

Unfortunately, times had changed at the big green mermaid, and names didn’t seem to carry the currency they once did. Not only did no one recognize me (let alone my name), but no one’s names were being requested or announced. The staff was the same — some of them even sporting the old name badges — but gone was the familiarity, the camaraderie and the community. What remained was authentic, but it was authentic to a corporate giant whose focus had moved on to something else, leaving staff and customers rolled back to their default state: half-arsed greetings from the staff and surly orders from the customers.

I haven’t been back since, and this was only one store, so I wouldn’t consider this a rigorous, scientific appraisal of Starbucks’ customer service policy. However, it did teach me a couple of things:

You can manufacture authenticity, and it can work, but it takes effort, focus and consistency.
Occasionally you’ll lose out to a superior product, even if you create a better experience.
If you’re going to fake it, you have to be willing to keep up the facade if you want to continue to reap the benefits.

My regular coffee shop is back open now, but they seem to have come back from the holidays even more caustic and unwelcoming than they were when they left. They could certainly teach Starbucks about making an absolutely banging flat white, but they could learn a thing or two from Starbucks as well, namely:

Focusing on your customers is never a waste of time, but you have to keep at it, and
Anyone who calls themself Nebuchadnezzar is nothing but trouble.

This piece originally appeared in The Agency Post

Last Exit releases Spirits Sector White-Paper.

admin — Fri, 15 Mar 2013 19:40:28 +0000

Spirits brands are leaving marketing dollars on the table, relying on traditional marketing strategies that do not fully take advantage of valuable digital consumer insights that are readily available.

This paper summarizes Last Exit’s thoughts on how the spirits sector can begin to embrace digital and form the basis of a winning strategy.

To download full Spirits Sector White-Paper, please enter email:

Carphone Warehouse

danielstolz — Thu, 31 Jan 2013 14:33:40 +0000

Carphone Warehouse

We have a long history of working sucessfully with The Carphone Warehouse – from digital support for their sponsorship of the X Factor through to new product advertising, phone chooser applications and internal communications pieces.

Spring 2011 saw the inaugural launch of the Carphone Warehouse Appys – a user-voted awards ceremony to recognize great apps and their developers. The awards were aimed at helping position Carphone as the experts in mobile Apps, no matter what smartphone you own. We were delighted to be asked by The Carphone Warehouse to help make this exciting project a reality.

Our approach

For the awards to be a success we identified a number of factors that would be essential to achieve the volume of votes we were looking for.

A simple to use mechanic
The nominations for the awards were split into 10 pre-determined categories plus a People’s Choice award. To vote, users simply clicked on their favourite apps and registered with minimal details or by using Facebook Connect.

Multi-platform convenience
To help maximise votes, we felt it was important that users could vote in whatever way suited them. With this in mind we created a website, a made-for-mobile version of the site, a Facebook app and apps for iPhone, Android, Blackberry & Symbian. Offering this variety of voting channels proved to be a smart move, as when the results came in they were evenly spread amongst the platforms.

Adding value to the user
It was important that the user could do more than just vote on their favourite apps. We structured the content so that all nominated apps were presented in an easily digestable format with screenshots and links to download the app as well as Carphone generated demo videos and judges comments. In this way participants got to find out about new apps or apps they may not have heard of before whilst still being engaged in the promotion.

Education and positioning
With any initiative of this type it’s important that users get what you are doing, why you are doing it and what’s in it for them. The site featured a video of the Appy’s host Richard Hammond (of Top Gear fame) talking through the awards, how you could enter and what you could win.

Spreading the word
The campaign was launched by Richard Hammond live on ITV’s morning chat show ‘Daybreak’ and it was supported by targeted Facebook advertising with press and in-store activity, all driving users directly to the relevant voting channel. The Carphone Warehouse also tweeted regularly and users were encouraged to share their votes on Facebook as well as Liking the promotion itself.

The results

The campaign ran for 6 weeks and in that time over 30,000 members of the public voted. The night itself was also deemed a great success. As well as Richard Hammond and Amanda Byram hosting the awards a number of other celebs where there to present the individual awards including Dom Joly, Peaches Geldorf and James Cracknell. You can see a video of the evening here.

And if you’re wondering who won what – here is the final list:

Appys Awards winners 2011

Best Travel – Trip Advisor
Best Fashion – eBay Fashion
Best Money-Saving – Skype
Best Lifestyle – Amazon
Best Photography – Adobe Photoshop Express
Best Time Waster – Facebook
Best Time Saver - Google Maps
Best Sport – Sky Sports News
Best Music – Spotify
Best Game – Angry Birds
Best Overall – Angry Birds

Overview Text:

the Oscars for Apps

Client Name Color:

White

Project:

website build and launch, facebook app, mobile app

Royal Albert Hall

danielstolz — Thu, 31 Jan 2013 13:06:31 +0000

The Royal Albert Hall

The Royal Albert Hall were looking to build a new way of forming a deeper engagement with their varied audiences through the effective use of Social Media. The Hall required the project to fulfil a number of aims from commercial, to educational, to charitable. Specifically we were tasked:

To define a unique online space for the Royal Albert Hall
To grow the online audience of the Hall through social channels
To raise awareness of the Hall’s versatility
To raise awareness of the Hall’s charitable status
To explore subsidiary revenue channels
To showcase the Hall’s extensive archive material

Our response was to create Life at the Hall – a social strategy and platform to achieve the objectives set.

Challenges

There were a number of challenges that we were looking to address:

Content
Despite hosting a wealth of world-renowned acts throughout the year the Hall doesn’t always have direct access to the acts so sometimes content is limited.

Resources
Whilst the Royal Albert Hall team are talented and passionate they also very busy day-to-day so we needed a strategy that would be time efficient to execute.

Audience
The Hall hosts events from the Proms to Disney Musicals to Jazz and, as such, caters for a wide and varied audience - especially when it comes to adoption of social media. We needed a solution that would cater for all audiences.

The main site
The main Royal Albert Hall website serves primarily as a ‘what’s on guide’ and ticket purchase destination. When tickets for popular shows go on sale the site can experience a huge volume of hits. We were keen to help alleviate the load on the main site where possible by publishing certain pillar articles away from the site.

Strategy

The big idea
We recognized that watching an event at the Royal Albert Hall is like no other experience of live event viewing. The Royal Albert Hall is as much a part of the live experience as the act is.

10 years after an event will you remember where you saw it?
You do when its the Royal Albert Hall.

We therefore wanted to place this big idea at the heart of the social positioning of the Hall.

Life at the Hall is a Social Space for the varied audience of the Royal Albert Hall

It’s a strategy on how best to add value to your online audience…
It’s looking at what kind of SEO rich content they love and want to share…
It’s creating a space for content to live that can be linked to from wherever they are online…

Method deployed
There were 3 main components to the solution:

1. Social strategy
The first stage of the project was to work with the Royal Albert Hall to help develop and define the social voice. Although the Hall doesn’t always own the rights to original content, we could still create content around the Hall’s main priorities that would be engaging and sharable for the audience.

2. Life at the Hall - a Social Space
We created a simple social hub – Life at the Hall – where we could host long-form content that can be shared on other social channels such as Facebook and Twitter. This social space has allowed us to generate interest around the Hall’s activities, both day-to-day and over time to build an active an engaged social audience. We also made it easy to update content and to add regular additional functionality to enrich the experience. The site has now become a key part of The Royal Albert Hall’s online portfolio by creating and enhancing quality, relevant content without diluting the focus of the key sales focus on the main website.

3. Working with the Royal Albert Hall team
As with any social project the outcome is only as good as the input and we were very lucky to work with such an able and passionate team as we found at the Royal Albert Hall. We have worked together to create engaging and relevant content for the myriad of Hall fans.

Facebook & Twitter
As well as helping the Hall with their social voice we also worked on their Facebook & Twitter presence to ensure we captured as many new fans and followers as possible.

We have also ran regular Facebook promotions in association with trusted RAH partners. For one such partnership we received over 24,000 sign-ups for a simple promotion mechanic.

Outcome

After the first year we had achieved the following:

1,200% increase in Facebook likes from 6,000 to over 72,000
Over 250,000 Facebook check-ins
725% increase in Twitter followers from circa 4,000 to over 29,000

By clever use of technology, smart working processes, great people and innovative thinking we were able to not only achieve the results set out above but also to provide a long-lasting platform for future growth and development.

With the Royal Albert Hall we not only managed to hit the targets set out in year one but also created an online legacy that is a major part of capturing the future history of this iconic venue.

"This project was the first serious foray in to the world of Social Media for the Royal Albert Hall. With our wide variety of audiences, a diverse set of messages and a limited amount of direct access to content we were impressed with how Last Exit helped us to find and define our Social Media voice. One year on and we now have a lively and engaged social audience and a digital eco-system to support further growth."

Overview Text:

providing a space for social growth

Links:

life.royalalberthall.com

Client Name Color:

White

Project:

website build and launch

Photobox

danielstolz — Thu, 31 Jan 2013 10:43:10 +0000

Photobox

Here at Last Exit we’re big fans of Photobox. Most of us have used their service at some time or other so we were really excited when they asked us to help bring some of the emotive Photobox experience to Facebook.

Digital technology has changed the world of traditional photography in a relatively short space of time. Photographic film has been replaced by computer files and, on the whole, it’s a big improvement. But Photobox recognized that there’s a vital part of the experience missing. Most pictures these days live on a computer hard drive and that’s a shame as you don’t get to see your memories as much as you might if they were printed in an album or in a frame on your wall.

Our approach

We wanted to help Photobox convey the experience of discovering lost memories on your computer. We wanted to display these pictures in a way that would invoke the feeling of having physical, printed pictures in front of you. We wanted to create an emotive response in the user so that they might start to think about getting their pictures printed at Photobox.

That’s why we developed Photobox Favourite Facebook Photos.

Photobox Favourite Facebook Photos
A simple but engaging mechanic designed to help you choose your favourite Facebook memories. We used Facebook Connect to pull in users’ photographs into familiar environments and then asked the user to select their favourite photos. They were then presented with a unique montage image that they could post to their wall or share with friends.

Promoting the product, gently
Once a user reaches the end of the promotion they are also presented with an image of a Photobox product with their picture superimposed on it. From there the user can choose to amend the image or change the product and then click through to Photobox to place an order. This allowed us to get personalized products in front of people in a very gentle way.

Going where the audience is
Photobox already has a strong Facebook following so we focused on tapping into this network initially to build traffic through the application.

Spreading the word
We used Facebook functionality in many ways to spread the word about the promotion. New users would get a post to their wall when they begin the process and at the end they would get a prompt to share their images with friends and family. In addition they could like the promotion itself or chose to follow Photobox on Facebook.

Competitive posting
The flexibility of the promotion also allowed Photobox to offer prizes to users for the best montage image created thus helping to extend the life of the activity.

The results

As a piece of pure customer engagement we didn’t have any specific targets to hit so we can judge the success or otherwise of the campaign mainly anecdotally. Here are some of the Facebook comments we received in praise of the app:

“Just had a play with the new app. Love it! I could spend hours on this!!”

“Great app really enjoyed ..Thanks PB !”

“I did enter and had fun doing so. Great app. Well done again winners. can’t wait to the next comp!:-) xx”

“Loved the new app Photobox, I had fun choosing the photos to go with each memory! x”

“It was brilliant!! It would be good to be able to print one as a poster so I could frame it Well done PB and thanks for a lovely app xx”

“Really enjoyed doing this it really made me cherish what is special in my life, and those special people who matter more that anything.”

“It was great fun, to browse through the pictures and recall all these moments! It’s so good to have photos!”

“Was a fab app, thanks photobox… such a lovely way to enjoy browsing through my most treasured memories x”

“This app is fantastic, it makes you look back on your year and remember it all! Well done PB! x”

“loved the app…was so easy to look at all the pics. And so nice to see my favourite pics on one page!!”

“as promised you have delivered a great app x”

“its fab thanks PB xx”

“What a fantatsic app! It’s managed 8221 photos! Some great memories. I’ll have to take some time over Christmas to go through them all! Thank you ”

“love it!”

“Fab xx”

“will share it now, thank you so much PB ”

“brilliant app ”

“I ♥ it PB! x”

Overview Text:

personalising a promotion

Links:

photobox.co.uk

Client Name Color:

White

Project:

Facebook application

BlackBerry

danielstolz — Thu, 31 Jan 2013 09:58:00 +0000

BlackBerry

BlackBerry were looking for new and innovative ways to grow awareness of the new BlackBerry Messenger (BBM) 5.0 and at the same time grow their Facebook follower base. Seeing a good fit between BBM and the Kiss target demographic, BlackBerry approached Kiss to discuss working together. With Kiss leading the charge on Facebook by having the largest Facebook follower base of any commercial UK radio station, BlackBerry decided Kiss were the perfect fit.

Last Exit were invited to begin discussions on how the Kiss audience could be leveraged to launch the new BBM 5 Messenger and grow BlackBerry’s follower base.

Our approach

‘Like’ to enter
The first wave of activity centered around driving follower numbers through product giveaways. Last Exit devised a simple ‘like to enter’ mechanic driving traffic from the Kiss website through to a custom tab on the BlackBerry UK Facebook page. Users ‘liked’ BlackBerry to answer a question and enter a weekly draw to win a new BlackBerry smartphone. This resulted in an initial wave of followers added to the BlackBerry UK Facebook page.

Maintain and engage
To further boost numbers and maintain the new follower base, Last Exit evolved the Kiss tab on the BlackBerry page into a ‘destination hub’ for BlackBerry users. The hub consolidated an array of existing BlackBerry tools and functionality, (including:

The ability to join a private group of 300 people and chat with the Kiss Breakfast Team
Creating BlackBerry wallpapers from Facebook photos
BlackBerry ‘app of the week’
Phone tips and tricks
A ringtone generator

This added value proved popular with both new and existing fans and resulted in a second wave of follower numbers for BlackBerry UK.

Picture this
Wanting to blur the boundaries between advertising and entertainment, we next devised an innovative mechanic to help promote the new BlackBerry Music Gateway system. By connecting with the ‘Kiss Konnect’ Facebook application on the Kiss website, a users’ profile information could populate sponsorship areas on the Kiss homepage. In this instance, users ‘became’ the fourth member of the Kiss Breakfast team and had to creatively position their profile picture inside a variety of pre-designed backgrounds. Images were saved out onto the BlackBerry Facebook gallery and the most creative execution won the Gateway music system.

The implementation of Kiss Konnect now allows Kiss to re-use this application with future advertisers, with users not needing to ‘re-accept’ the application. This has paved the way for a new interactive and engaging channel to connect advertisers with users in a truly personal manner.

The results

The main campaign ran for a 6 month period with the following results:

Over 9,000 additional fans to the BlackBerry UK fan
Nearly 16,000 competition entries
A new personalised advertising channel created for future Kiss advertisers

In addition the activity won The Arqiva Commercial Radio Best Branded Content award 2011.

We continue to work with Kiss and BlackBerry to explore new opportunities together.

Overview Text:

creating value from your social media following

Links:

uk.blackberry.com

Client Name Color:

White

Project:

website build and launch

KISS

danielstolz — Thu, 31 Jan 2013 09:04:43 +0000

KISS FM

Kiss came to us with a simple question: How can we provide our listeners with an engaging, meaningful online experience?

The existing Kiss site had become dated and overly complex and, as a result, it was not supporting either the business or its customers. So we sat down with Kiss and worked through how they wanted to interact with their audience online. Some of the key objectives that came out were:

to create bespoke channels to engage with listeners from different shows;
to produce a platform from which to launch innovative functionality targeted at a youthful, tech-savvy audience;
to be flexible and scalable so that the content could be managed by multiple users as well as being able to host temporary properties such as music festivals and other seasonal activity;
to increase traffic in order to be a more attractive proposition to advertisers.

The need for a strong yet flexible strategy to pull all of the pieces of the project together was obvious. We had to deliver a well-planned, innovative website with a robust yet simple-to-use back-end system. Cost was also a major issue.

Our approach

We identified a number of key areas we would need to address to get the results we were aiming for:

A low-cost, flexible CMS
We proposed using an open source CMS technology, WordPress, challenging conventional wisdom that a bespoke CMS was required to run such a large series of properties.

Using WordPress gave us the flexibility to constantly shape and define the Kiss offering. It’s templating system allowed us to exploit the latest technologies for the user interface and allowed us to rapidly prototype and deploy different channels. It supported our goal of creating a singular user experience no matter what Kiss property a user might be on.

Listening to the listeners
Launching unique channels allowed us to get feedback from the users as we went. We were then able to apply these learnings in future iterations of the next channels. By breaking out properties into different channels we were able to build the audience gradually, niche by niche.

Design & Usability
The navigation was based around what makes Kiss great – the music and the DJ’s that play it and we ditched the dated day-glo design and introduced a cool, relaxed colour palette. Key design elements were also identified and carried through to each property.

Intelligent use of social media
Kiss’ target audience are prime users of social media so we made sure that the whole Kiss online experience was infused with social media goodness. For the request show, Kisstory, rather than create a micro-site we worked with Kiss to create a Facebook page where listeners can post their requests as comments on the wall. This page alone has 28,000 likes.

Innovative promotions
Once the audience numbers started to build we worked with Kiss to create engaging promotion mechanics that tied in with the aims of their advertising partners. In particular we used Facebook connect to pull in users’ profile pictures into a campaign we produced for Blackberry.

Easy to manage advertising
All properties were designed with advertising and sponsorship in mind. We made it simple for the Kiss team to create entire homepage takeovers (including updating of all page colours) of the main site with minimal fuss.

Fine tuning the media player
We redeveloped the Kiss media player (previously it was being shared by all Bauer radio stations with no clear branding and only allowed live streaming, with no listen again facility). In doing so we developed another first – the Kiss Kube. Developing the Kube not only allowed Kiss to brand the player with it’s own identity, but has also provided a further revenue stream for the station in advertising and partnerships.

Kiss on the move
At the end of 2009 we launched the Kiss Kube iPhone app which delivered all the functionality of the Kiss Kube to the iPhone. Within weeks it became the no.1 downloaded app in the iTunes music chart and recently reached no.30 (out of 900,000) in the overall downloads chart.

The results – so far!

We have helped Kiss to create a vibrant online audience that is fully engaged with the Kiss brand. Due to this Kiss now has more page views, dwell time and visits than their competitors which has enabled them to increase revenues across their properties.

The Kiss Kube iphone app was no. 1 in the music category when launched and continues to rate highly.

Kiss also currently has over 420,000 Facebook fans – that’s the highest of any commercial UK radio station.

In 2010 Kiss won the Sony Radio Academy Award for Station of the year with the following citation: “High interactivity through totalkiss.com and the innovative KissKube radio player points to a station that is making digital happen now.”

Overview Text:

over 500,000 Facebook fans and growing!

Links:

kissfmuk.com

Client Name Color:

White

Project:

website build and launch

Where are all the people in marketing?

Kent — Tue, 22 Jan 2013 09:19:06 +0000

Recently, while watching “The Elephant Man” led me to contemplate how horrible we can be to each other. There’s a key scene in the film where the John Merrick character announces: “I am not an elephant! I am not an animal! I am a human being!” This declaration made me think about how marketing types tend to think of people.

We like to put people into buckets so we can think about more of them at the same time – one of the biggest buckets we use is “consumer.” It’s our way of describing any sentient individual based on the only aspect of their existence that we’re remotely concerned with and I think it’s time we let it go.

As with most things marketing, there are moral reasons for making this change, but it also makes sense from a business perspective. While on the surface, “consumer” seems an innocuous way of referring to something that’s not a “business,” like many evils, its damage is slow, insidious and subtle.

Words – Pregnant with Meaning

The language we use in everyday life has power attached to it; words are pregnant with meaning and history, and have an agenda independent of their speaker. By calling the people that buy our goods and services “consumers,” we’re referring to them by the basest representation of how they sustain us, as if they’re an indiscriminate mass that lives only to absorb what we push out.

But not only do we do a disservice to our customers when we refer to them as “consumers,” we rob ourselves of the opportunity to maximize our meaningful engagement with them. How can you engage with someone who you define purely by their capacity to consume stuff?

As someone who looks at the digi-web-o-tubes all day, most of what I see is product marketing people who obviously have one, catch-all term for the people that turn up to interact with them. I’d even go so far as to say it’s one of the biggest reasons why people don’t buy as much from us as they might.

Ironically enough, people are “better consumers” when they’re treated like anything but. This is because it’s nobody’s purpose to consume. People don’t get up in the morning with an insatiable desire to acquire indiscriminately. Consuming is a means to an end. We buy things because we believe they will help us be the person that we want to be. Even if I’m only buying a hamburger, it’s because in five minutes time, I want to be the guy eating a hamburger, or the guy who’s not hungry, or the guy who’s girlfriend is impressed with the size of the hamburger I can eat.

Not Buyers But Beings

By focusing not on what someone wants to buy, but on who they want to be, we can create a more powerful bond with customers. We are transformed from vendors into partners, sometimes even trusted partners. But this dedication to working with the people that sustain us can’t be an afterthought or an additional consideration; it needs to be baked into our core offering.

We don’t have to do it out of a sense of benevolence – although I’d like to think we could – but because happy people are good customers (unless you’re selling anti-depressants). And, strangely enough, people are most happy when they’re given the opportunity or the help to be who they want to be.

Anyone who sells anything can help a customer be someone else, even if he just wants to be the guy with no rats in his house. But you don’t get to that stage by assuming that the best way to define your audience is by its capacity to consume your product.

I don’t expect that this little piece will change much in the way that marketers refer to their audience, but then I don’t think it has to. Companies that truly understand who their customers are trying to become, and put that consideration before shilling their wares, will shortly put everyone else out of business.

People don’t want to consume, they want to be. So maybe we should just stop calling them by a name which demeans their role and recognize them for what they are. They’re not elephants. They’re not consumers. They’re human beings.

This piece originally appeared in Branding Magazine

Chegg

admin — Mon, 07 Jan 2013 20:43:11 +0000

Chegg, the leading network for students, is transforming the way millions of students learn by connecting them to the people and tools needed to succeed in college. Students on more than 7,000 campuses nationwide use Chegg 365 days a year for: Homework help, course selection, textbook and eTextbook options, scholarships, student deals and more.

Last Exit enjoys an ongoing relationship with Chegg as their lead creative agency and to complement the overall digital strategy we produce many creative assets including those for paid media. For the company's rush period for book rentals (and sales) at the end of 2011 the creative concept followed two students in a day of their lives, where Chegg is ever present, supporting their every need at college.

Overview Text:

the inside network for college

Client Name Color:

White

Project:

Walking man creative

Banners / Video:

1_man_300x250_003.swf

2_woman_300x250_002.swf

Chegg_Q3_Banner_1_300x250_a.swf

Chegg_Q3_Banner_2_300x250.swf

Chegg_Q3_Banner_3_300x250_a.swf

Chegg_Q3_Banner_4_300x250.swf

Chegg_Q3_Banner_5_300x250.swf

Ice, Lycra and Nike Plus – Getting gamification and engagement right

Kent — Tue, 18 Dec 2012 10:11:18 +0000

Outside my window, it's dark, wet and so cold that the rain is freezing on the glass, but as soon as I finish writing this I'm going to go running in it. Not because it's healthy or fun, but because Nike understands how I feel about exercise and knows how to get me out of the house in a pair of tights at 11pm in sub-zero temperatures. Not bad for a company of people I've never met who flog trainers from an ivory tower 5000 miles away.

Let me back up.

Running is a lonely activity and it can be really hard to get motivated to head outside when the alternative is a bottle of wine and an episode of ‘Homeland’ on the sofa with my wife. But Nike knows knows that somewhere deep inside, some of us would love to be the guy who runs through the ice to conquer the cold. And it knows that if we were that guy, we'd buy more shoes.

So what does Nike do? It helps us become that guy.

How do you convince someone to turn their back on a loved one, and a centrally heated home, to risk hypothermia on the icy streets of London? You give them a little pain.

Pain, brought about as a consequence of not doing something, is an effective factor in motivating you to change your behavior. It works in two ways:

1. Pain is an effective feedback mechanism, giving you an immediate indication that there's something you need to pay attention to.

2. Experiencing pain has a punitive effect, which discourages you from the behavior which caused it in the first place.

Unfortunately, for most of the fun things in life, we don’t have the immediate feedback loop to keep us on track with little doses of pain and encouragement.

Perform Better with Games
Adding a “game” dimension to the experience can help us perform better at favorite activities, by providing a framework which gives immediate feedback about how we're tracking against our goals, and a sense of motivation (encouragement or pain) to help us go the extra distance. What’s the catch? People must want to play.

But “getting people to want to play” is where brands come unstuck. One of the reasons brand efforts at gamification and engagement often suck, is that these efforts are driven by brand requirements (e.g. selling shoes), not consumer requirements (i.e. feeling motivated to exercise).

People share photos, or score points because, on a deeper level, it affirms who they want to be and socialized gamification allows people to create curated projections and to share them with our world. The affirmation that comes from creating those projections and the Internet accepting and validating them is a powerful, motivating force.

The Nike+ gamification system demonstrates a deep understanding of how exercise and fitness are important but difficult parts of people's lives. Nike knows people want to exercise, but the motivation required to get out there, coupled with the lack of recognition, are huge hurdles. To address this, they’ve created a framework for gamifying fitness by applying instant feedback, a set of rules, milestones, motivation and voluntary engagement to this problematic human endeavor. And boy does it work.

Goals and Tools
By assisting people to achieve fitness goals and providing a social toolset for tracking and sharing these achievements, Nike is an active, engaged partner helping people create sharable, self-projections. Nike helps their customers become who they want to be.

Of course, Nike is doing this because it wants you to buy more shoes, thermal tops and skin-tight, fluorescent running tights, but it knows you're only likely to engage in such lunacy if you can be bothered to step out into a blizzard dressed like a cut-price superhero when most people are sensibly tucked up on the sofa with a vino and Damian Lewis.

By gamifying actions that encourage an outcome favorable to both the consumer and the brand, Nike is helping customers self-actualize, which has the effect of making them better customers. It ends with selling more shoes but it starts by addressing a human desire to be better, and to feel that it’s a worthy and achievable goal

Now excuse me while I slip into something more high-vis and run through the cold towards a new pair of sneakers.

This article orginally appeared in Branding Magazine

Last Exit releases UK Pension Sector Benchmarking Report

Kent — Mon, 08 Oct 2012 14:42:00 +0000

Last Exit have released the first of their annual digital benchmark reports which rank the digital presence of key companies in a variety of sectors.

The 2012 Pensions survey analysed 19 major UK pension providers over 29 touchpoints across desktop, mobile and social media.

The report found that Aviva have the best online presence, but that the industry as a whole has been slow to adapt to changes in the digital landscape and is failing to engage with current and potential customer's effectively. In fact, only Aviva scored about 60% to be ranked "good", with the rest of the field achieving a score of "mediocre" or "weak".

The majority of the 19 major firms’ online offerings analysed scored poorly for clarity, ease of use, jargon-busting and optimisation for viewing on mobile devices.

These sector wide deficiencies mean that the field is open for an agile provider to break out of the pack and create a market defining presence in what is a poor performing sector.

Download the 2012 Pension Sector Digital Benchmark Report

Download the press release

For further information contact Morgan James on +44 20 7407 7666 or morgan.james@lastexit.tv

INTO

danielstolz — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 16:13:34 +0000

INTO

Challenge

With a rapidly expanding international business, INTO required a website that that addressed their varied local market offerings, partner relationships and languages spoken by their key audience. They also needed a site that was able to accommodate the inevitable shifts in focus which once might expect in a fast-growing sector.

Insight

With so many variables at play, a standard series of templates and page layouts wasn't going to give INTO the granularity to accommodate all their requirements, so a more flexible and scalable approach was required. INTO needed a solution that would also allow them to make rapid additions, edits and amends to the site on both a macro and micro level.

Work

Last Exit developed a series of modules which could be "bolted together" to construct pages in virtually in any combination, giving INTO the flexibility to cater to local requirements with a universal set of tools. The module library could be easily expanded to offer additional functionality and amends to the modules could be quickly rolled out to either the entire site or more targeted segments as required.

In addition to accommodating different structures for the various offerings - presenting extensive information in a user-friendly, accessible format - the site is also multi-lingual, with large sections presented in English, Russian, Arabic and Chinese.

Result

IntoHigher.com has not only given INTO the flexibility to accommodate complex and varied requirements in both global and local markets but it's also enabled the development of digital as an acquisition channel - a role which is set to grow in 2012.

Overview Text:

flexibility and scalability you can get INTO

Links:

Client Name Color:

White

Project:

website build and launch

Case Study Slide Text:

flexibility and scalability you can get INTO

(BELVEDERE) RED

danielstolz — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 10:21:52 +0000

(BELVEDERE) RED

Challenge

Launch (BELVEDERE) RED at major UK and Spanish airports, integrating multiple physical environments, on-site digital infrastructure and online properties with key campaign messages.

Insight

In the busy airport environment, Last Exit needed to make a real impact with the launch of (BELVEDERE) RED to stand out from the crowd. To create a high impact launch leveraged the latest digital technologies to turn the airports (BELVEDERE) RED. Not only did the technologies used create stand out but they also facilitated interactions between consumers and the (BELVEDERE) RED airport promotional staff.

Work

To create impact in the busy airport environment and to drive awareness and engagement in the (BELVEDERE) RED launch the following touch points were used:

Interactive digital table (Heathrow T5 and Gatwick only)
A touch screen table was used by promotional staff as a focal point for consumer interaction. At the table, promotional staff were able to showcase key messages via videos that played on the table when touched. Central to the campaign was a sweepstake to win an exclusive trip to Ibiza courtesy of (BELVEDERE) RED. An Interactive Table app enabled sweepstake entry within the promotional area. The set up was simple enough to engage consumers with limited browsing time but sufficiently impactful to draw them in and to stand out in a cluttered environment.

'Roaming' iPads
The sweepstake could also be entered via Ipads. Promotional staff were able to ‘roam’ with the Ipadsusing them as a tool to engage consumers in the campaign beyond the promotional area.

Foursquare
A (BELVEDERE) RED Foursquare account was set to encourage consumers to check in at the promotional area.

Video walls
96 screen video ‘wonderwalls’ featured (BELVEDERE) RED content to raise brand awareness. The content featured calls to action driving the consumer to enter the sweepstake and to ‘Like’ Belvedere Vodka on Facebook.

(BELVELDERE) RED bar
An airport bar served a variety of (BELVEDERE) RED cocktails.

QR codes to facebook
QR Codes featured across advertorials, cocktail menus at the airport bar and on the interactive table. These directed consumers through to the (BELVEDERE) RED Facebook tab page, enabling the conversation to continue beyond the airport.

Email newsletters
Competition entrants received a follow up email which included further information about the partnership with (RED) and encouraged entrants already engaged in the brand to ‘Like’ Belvedere Vodka on Facebook.

World Duty Free cladding
Cladding around the World Duty Free areas, where the promotion took place, featured (BELVEDERE) RED window displays showcasing the limited edition product.

Overview Text:

turning airports (BELVEDERE) RED

Client Name Color:

White

Project:

launch (BELVEDERE) RED at major UK and Spanish airports

Case Study Slide Text:

turning airports
(BELVEDERE) RED

From 2011 to 2012: Last Exit Delves Deeper into Digital

chanelle — Tue, 03 Jan 2012 16:40:26 +0000

Happy New Year!
It’s 2012, and we are looking forward to another year filled with innovation and creativity. In 2011 we did amazing work with Belvedere Vodka, Chegg, Montblanc and more.

2011 Highlights:
Belvedere places #9 in L2 Prestige 100 (June 2011)
Joined L2 Think Tank (June 2011)
Named one of the Top 25 Agencies to Watch by iMedia (August 2011)
CEO, Nuri Djavit spoke at NYU Stern, presenting the concept of “Creativity as a Dictatorship not a Democracy” to 450 incoming MBAs (August 2011)
Executive Director of Communications and Business Development, Willie Mack, spoke at minOnline’s Digital Summit on “Facebook as a Platform: Bringing Events, Content and Sponsors Into the Conversation” (November 2011)

From iPad apps to mastering the Facebook API, 2011 was a year of achievement and 2012 promises to be even better. Expect more great work from Last Exit as we continue to lead digital strategy, creativity, and development for all of our current and new clients.

#WorldAIDSDay: It's About Justice

chanelle — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 17:10:46 +0000

“It’s an accident of geography. It’s not ‘there are no drugs.’ It’s ‘there are no drugs for poor people in that geography.’ It’s about justice.” -Bono

December 1^st is World AIDS Day, but AIDS is something that people all around the world have to live with every day of the year. Bono’s statement is powerful, and while news stories celebrate strides to find a cure for AIDS, there are still people that cannot access the drugs we have to make the disease manageable.

Perhaps it is true that the unavailability of drugs is an accident of geography, but it is no accident that a person’s socio-economic status in the world plays a part in the puzzle. Money talks. Some say it seems that poverty has become a crime, and for anyone with HIV/AIDS, it seems the punishment for that crime is death, and that is not justice. Every day approximately 1,000 innocent children are born into the world with the disease, and as global citizens, we owe it to them to save them.

Our client, Belvedere Vodka has joined forces with (RED) to fight for justice and an AIDS free generation of newborns by 2015. Belvedere launched their official (PRODUCT) RED in September this year, creating a special edition bottle to house their original super-premium vodka, dubbed (BELVEDERE) RED. With 50% of Belvedere’s profits from (BELVEDERE) RED going towards the Global Fund, the fight against HIV/AIDS pushes on.

Drinking for a cause is definitely something we at Last Exit are down for. It’s time we all joined (RED), starting with a bottle or two of (BELVEDERE) RED.

Create a panel today and pledge to the cause at 2015Quilt.com

Facebook IS Getting Complicated, but There’s More to It

Fri, 14 Oct 2011 18:14:28 +0000

I recently read a Mashable opinion article titled "Facebook is Getting Too Damn Complicated" - this got me thinking. Is it really that there are just too many features that they're packing in there, or is it something else? My opinion, it's that they've lost their essence. Facebook was about connecting the people you know, how? By ‘friending’. When the like button came around, it became a logical extension of that for brands, whereby you could connect to the brands you know and ‘like’...

Fine, that works. But now they've added another layer to Facebook relationships where you can subscribe to people you’re not even friends with. And that definitely doesn't feel like an extension of what I thought Facebook was. In fact, the latest Facebook update has sort of become the anti-thesis of the original Facebook. With all of the new updates, Facebook has created dramatically different relationship dynamics that do not seem to be well defined in the scope of Facebook version 1.0.

Now you can friend somebody, subscribe to them, and you can like a page (oh, and don't forget - you can join that Groups thing that never really caught on). That's pretty complicated for one social network if you ask me.

Then comes the problem of too many features and confusing privacy settings. With new application slapped onto the news feed, ticker, AND friend lists. The loss of Facebook's essence has overloaded on features and become a sort of un-user-friendly mess that’s a headache to navigate.

As with most of Facebook’s updates, we’ll all adapt and forget what the Facebook version before this one looked like in a matter of months. But will we ever truly be comfortable using it again? Not to mention with all this talk of EdgeRanking and the new hierarchy on news feeds how much of Facebook and the brands we really like are we missing out on these days?

By: Maya Mikati

Diesel USA

nuridjavit — Mon, 15 Aug 2011 17:16:24 +0000

Diesel USA

Leverage the award-winning “Be Stupid” campaign to build an interactive stunt to drive consumers to the Diesel US Flagship 5th Avenue Store to increase store sale, Facebook Fans, Twitter followers and build buzz.

Everyone has secrets. And everyone wants to, at some point in their life, bask in their “minute of fame”. Why not combine the two? Last Exit conceived and constructed a video confessional installation for consumers to record a 60sec confessional. The videos were streamed live on TV screens in the store window and emailed to consumers to share via social media.

A LED ticker in the window allowed consumers to tweet or SMS a confession from anywhere in the world and join the fun!

The “Confess Stupid Campaign” was launched on Sept, 9, 2010 during Fashion’s Night Out. Ex-cast members of MTV’s The Real World judged consumers confessions before an audience of hundreds outside the store window, rewarding the best entries with $500 gift certificates.

The team at Last Exit took care of all design, usability, software development and hardware design and build. We're very grateful for having such a fantastic crew.

Overview Text:

confess your stupid at New York's fashion night out

Client Name Color:

White

Project:

Diesel Confession Booth

Case Study Slide Text:

- -

Last Exit in iMedia's Top 25 Agencies

nuridjavit — Thu, 04 Aug 2011 20:05:14 +0000

Last Year, Last Exit featured in iMedia's top 10 agencies to watch. We seem to have graduated to one of the top East Coast agencies. It's an accolade directly attributed to the dedication, hard work, skill and passion of an incredible team both in New York and in London. Whilst the company is a USA agency, we enjoy an extended on both sides of the Atlantic.

Last Exit 2011

nuridjavit — Wed, 15 Jun 2011 18:34:16 +0000

A colleague from my previous agency recently posted a picture of Vegas, my English Bulldog and the mascot of two companies, perched atop a desk with a Union Jack hanging behind him. He had just come from a breeder in Connecticut, a week after 911 and brought joy to everyone in the company. Vegas has now just had his tenth birthday and set me in a reflective mood. Time really passes and leaves many behind! Shortly after that photograph was taken, I parted ways with the company for whom, and with Fred Brown, I had launched a US office and brought clients such as Kenneth Cole. Awesome times with awesome people that I will forever cherish. That company gave birth to phenomenal companies such as Poke, Glue, De-Construct, tonic and within a short time Last Exit. I had registered the name in 2002 in order to run a couple of projects for the likes of Apple (QuickTime) and Weil LLP but always thought I would end up working with a big fat agency or in-house somewhere. Paul Newnes and old friend who I had once played rugby with back in the UK, found me in New York via Friends Reunited and soon convinced me that we should launch the company properly and officially. So, in early 2004 Last Exit took real offices in Tribeca and built a team along with some interesting IP. As we expanded, Fred Brown and I continued to explore ways to work together and bridge the gap between London and New York and 2008 his company Seriously was brought under the Last Exit brand.

So, here we are in 2011 and I was perusing through our archive considering material for our brand spanking new website I, took a trip down digital memory lane. The differences in approach to digital asset development are startling. The first is screen resolution. When we started we would have to accommodate 800x600 monitors. Even 1024x768 monitors are becoming scarce in the US now! The next is the heavy use of flash. Everyone wanted it and everyone wanted whizz-bang, even if it had no purpose. We fought against it on many occasions and are very happy that apple (largely) has provided a game changer in the iPad forcing everyone to consider HTML5 / no flash websites. The last is the focus on entertainment. An expensive and risky thing to develop for sure - after all, you can't legislate what will become 'viral'. This has been moved way behind socially connected sites where assets and ideas are shared via the network effect of tools such as Facebook and Twitter.

The world of digital marketing is a different one and Last Exit has grown and matured into a full service digital agency, combing strategy and branding with media planning and social marketing.And, of course, never dropping the ball on exquisite creative execution. The channels are now many and we've grown departments in social and mobile and it's made the challenges ever more interesting and the opportunities to connect our clients with their customers incredibly more effective.

As proud of where we have come, I am also of where we started. Here's a few peaches from the archives I mentioned:

ShowTime

DJ
A collaboration with EyeballNYC who produced the TV spots, this was our first commercial website. 'Aint it small?

Weil

Annual Report

Nantucket Film Festival

Years 7, 8, 9 and 10!

Seth Taras

Photographer

Ah, good old days!

Belvedere Vodka's social presence rated #9

nuridjavit — Thu, 02 Jun 2011 20:04:54 +0000

Recently, L2 (a digital think tank founded by NYU Stern professor and digital guru Scott Galloway) released their inaugural L2 Prestige 100®: Facebook IQ evaluating and ranking the Facebook efforts of 100 iconic brands in the Automotive, Beauty & Skincare, Champagne & Spirits, and Jewelry & Watches categories. We are very pleased to see that Belvedere Vodka was placed #9, and #2 in category.

Credit goes to the content Belvedere provides, the event support from Last Exit and the social media integration of the website. Great work!

Check out more of the work we have done for Belvedere HERE

Tesco eMarketing

danielstolz — Fri, 06 May 2011 16:16:58 +0000

Tesco F&F (Europe)

Challenge

Style and substance across four languages: reinforce and strengthen F&F in Poland, Hungary, Czech Republic and Slovakia as a standalone fashion brand, whilst achieving ambitious data capture and traffic goals. Having exceeded 2010s KPIs, including the data capture KPI by over 200%, the F&F team sought to make digital a greater part of the marketing mix.

Insight

2010 results reinforced the initial research, which revealed that Central European consumers view the F&F brand significantly differently to those in the UK, allowing a 'fashion-led' position and visual approach to be developed, distinct from the Tesco mother brand.

Statical analysis of the website, newsletter and rising influence of social media (predominantly Facebook) revealed an opportunity to deepen the relationship with loyal visitors, whilst extending the brand reach to a wider audience - both fashion savvy and price conscious.

Work

In addition to refining the website's look and feel, updating the site weekly to compliment in-store activity, increasing the frequency of email newsletter broadcasts, and investing in backend editing tools for local territory managers, integrating Facebook functionality was an obvious enhancement - both on site and within Facebook.

After creating a hierarchy for global and local Facebook pages and providing strategic direction for Facebook community management, additional content platforms were integrated, including a digital magazine and daily fashion blog.

In 2010 www.ffmoda.com launched as a catalogue site, reflecting in-store activity. In 2011, the website has become the central F&F marketing hub.

Result

Counted among 2011 successes thus far is the extraordinary in-store voucher redemption rates generated via a simple Facebook solution, exceeding expectations and remaining the most successful voucher campaign to date (as of May 2011). This activity also helped to push the local Facebook pages over the tipping point for naturally attracting 'Likes' - whilst the pace of growth has been higher than expected, quality of engagement remains key to nurturing a healthy Facebook presence.

For the main F&F site, dwell time (time on site), page views and repeat visits are over achieving against project goals, whilst bounce rate is down. Conversion rate for site visitors to newsletter subscribers also suggest the execution of 2011 strategy is delivering as planned.

Email newsletters continue to preform extremely well, with open and click through rates maintaining the same level as seen through 2010: well above industry average.

The Summer campaign, the single largest F&F online campaign executed to date, exceeded all project goals. Now, look out for the next campaign - the momentum continues to build!

Overview Text:

building on the success
of 2010 through 2011

Links:

Client Name Color:

Black

Project:

strategic leadership, design, build, management, multilingual, eDM, media, reporting

Case Study Slide Text:

Building on the success
of 2010 through 2011

Belvedere Vodka Digital & Experiential

admin — Tue, 26 Apr 2011 16:00:43 +0000

Belvedere Music Lounge

Event installation exploiting mobile/iPad, large format display, social media and great cocktails to fuel private parties.

We are joining Belvedere Vodka at some of the best music festivals in the US this year. The Belvedere Music Lounge breezes into SXSW, pops up during Ultra at the W Hotel in Miami and lounged in Palm Springs at a private mansion during Coachella Music and Arts Festival.

Each music lounge perfectly allows Belve friends and family the chance to mingle w/ DJs, Celebs and artists, while listing to the latest music played by top DJs and live performances. All while sipping speciality Belve cocktails chosen for them by a specially made iPad app, which suggested their perfect first drink, and then was projected onto screens all around the venue in the form of a bar graph to show which cocktail was the most popular one of the day.

We had a blast helping Belvedere put on these events and look forward to Essence Music Festival, Lollapalooza and MTV Video Music Awards, hope you can join us at the bar. .

Overview Text:

chasing vodka with digital at some of the USA's top cultural events

Client Name Color:

White

Project:

event installation; iPad, data visualization

Banners / Video:

belve_lounge_728x90_Coachella.swf

belve_lounge_728x90.swf

Montblanc

admin — Tue, 19 Apr 2011 21:12:45 +0000

Montblanc

Display ad campaign spanning standard, rich media and interactive mobile assets

"In 1821 Nicolas Riuessec invented the Chronograph"

Our friends at Mission PR recommended us to Montblanc for the US online launch of their Time Walker and Rieussec wathces. Montblanc, the world's most premier manufacturer of writing instruments, acquired one of the great timepiece manufactures in Switzerland and now produce a line of premier watches. The ad campaign, to run over select display media as well as mobile devices had to convey the legacy fo the movement, the historical reference to Nicolas Riuessec (inventor of the chronograph) and the quality and beauty of the brand. Rich media ads were created along with an interactive iPad experience. Now, the campaign is rolling back over to Europe!

Overview Text:

Montblanc taps Last Exit for the digital launch of a new range of timepieces

Client Name Color:

White

Project:

display ads, rich media and iPad ads

Banners / Video:

nicholas_b_300x250.swf

timewriter_300x250.swf

montblanc_ipad.swf

Firstkind Limited

danielstolz — Wed, 06 Apr 2011 18:27:51 +0000

Firstkind Limited

Challenge

Exploit IP through the creation of a brand architecture, providing future flexibility and delivering a comprehensive communications programme.

Insight

The creation of an ingredient brand for the underlying technology, allowing the company to retain ownership while exploring a range of opportunities across different sectors and regions.

Work

Comprehensive brand creation work including name generation, positioning, visual identity and key communications – including website, animations, promotional literature, user instructions and packaging – aimed at a range of audiences from healthcare professionals to end-users.

Result

Respectful of confidentiality, we are unable to reveal the performance of our collaboration with the pioneers at Firstkind.

Overview Text:

building value through brand architecture

Links:

gekodevices.com

Client Name Color:

White

Project:

brand architecture, naming and communications

Case Study Slide Text:

building value through brand architecture

Running Man Recap: (Belvedere) RED Launch Event

admin — Wed, 09 Mar 2011 21:05:52 +0000

We had an amazing experience at Belvedere Vodka’s pre-Grammys party at the Avalon in L.A., which celebrated its partnering with (RED)™ for the launch of BELVEDERE (PRODUCT)RED™. With the help of the Grammy winning celebrity ambassador, Usher, and the brilliant Belgian sculptor, Carsten Höller, (BELVEDERE)RED™ hit the ground running to raise funds for The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Malaria and Tuberculosis.

Höller's "Double Sphere Hanging", a light installation created specially for the (Belvedere)RED initiative, will be auctioned at Art Basel Miami at the end of the year. Proceeds from its sale will also go to The Global Fund. The light sculpture featured red and white flashing bulbs and was created to evoke an emotional response that challenges cerebral intuition. During the live performance, 700 attendees sipped event-exclusive cocktails, selected for them by the Belve Shaker iPad app we created. By weighing in taste, mood, and music factors, guests were given suggestions for their first drink of the night, which was aggregated into a constantly changing bar graph and projected onto screens.

In addition, pictures were taken on the guest-only red carpet (celebrities and attendees alike) and uploaded both to Facebook and the projector screens. We built the buzz among Belvedere's Facebook fans and twitter followers ahead of time with teasers, opportunities to ask Usher questions and a chance to help select one of the songs he performed. Then we kept them posted throughout the night via live tweeting and Facebook updates. The invite-only event was attended by such celebrities as Chelsea Handler, Mark Ronson (who was the DJ for the after party), Paris & Nicky Hilton, Jamie Foxx, Estelle and many more. Many of them paused after red carpet photos to autograph a magnum sized model of the Special Edition (BELVEDERE)RED™ bottle. There were also live tweets for our global fans to follow the event happenings and celebrity spottings.

The after party was INSANE!

Between the musical stylings of Mark Ronson, a surprise performance by Beth Ditto (of the group, GOSSIP) and all the chatter about a scuffle at the launch event involving a certain Oscar-winning boldfaced name, guests were plenty entertained. Perhaps the most entertained was music icon, Quincy Jones, who literally partied until the lights came on. It was great to celebrate for a cause, and we're glad we were able to help Belvedere Vodka execute a successful night of events.

Film Buff

admin — Mon, 21 Feb 2011 20:20:58 +0000

Cinetic Filmbuff

Another company rapidbly on the rise, Cinetic Media tapped Last Exit for user experience design. The client did a phenominal job defining the content, content sypes, organization and user journeys and our specialists were able to collaborate at a high level to refine usability issues and develop a visual language and interface design that meets, if not exceeds, all performance objectives. The design is scalable, immediately understood and helps to define a business plan for a (soon to be ) major player in the online entertainment business. Last Exit used it's experience with Wordpress to design effectively and seemlessly with Cinetic's tech team.

Overview Text:

digital entertainment distilled

Links:

filmbuffondemand.com

Client Name Color:

White

Project:

website, user experience design