Lord Creative was brought in to analyze and recommend CMS technology solutions, clean-up inherited programming issues, create a branded email gift certificate along with an auto generated companion PDF, and to re-design the existing site’s overall theme to be fresh, clean and modern to reinforce the Kinara brand. Job also included art direction of an on location facility shoot along with underwater product photography shots.

The end result is an overall better user experience for both the client (to do in-house updates and maintenance) and the end user (who now has a successful shopping experience!).

Here’s a little holiday animation we recently completed for a new division of Disney called Disney Digital Studio Services. Job included storyboard concepts, copywriting, HD animation, setup and branding of social media accounts and an email blast. The goal was to produce a holiday greeting that reinforced the new divisions name in an integrated way. Enjoy!

Last week a mad gunman marched up Vine Street here in Hollywood taking shots at passing cars and luckless pedestrians. Tyler Brehm, as he was later identified, was shot and killed by police, but not before he wounded three people. One of them, music executive John Atterberry, sadly died yesterday from wounds he suffered.

As tragic as all this is, it turned creepy this morning when, while reading coverage of the story on-line, we noticed personal photos of Mr. Atterberry and Tyler Brehm with a Facebook copyright insignia.

Above: Tyler Brehm photo from Facebook?

Could it be, we wondered? Had Facebook somehow managed to copyright personal photos uploaded to its site and, sensing an opportunity to profit from them, licensed these photos to news outlets? Was this legal? Was it really possible?

As a matter of fact, yes. It is legal and possible. In fact, it seems inevitable. When you signed up to become a Facebook user, you agreed to all of it.

Here’s an article that breaks it down from a legal perspective: Facebook: Who Owns What?

I’m sure we’re not the only folks who have a problem with this. Imagine the parents of Mr. Atterberry enduring the loss of their son only to find out that candid photos of him were quickly monitized by the faceless behemoth called Facebook. It’s unseemly on all sorts of levels.

A word to the wise; social media can be great, but once you put it out there, it ceases to be yours anymore.

The events of 9/11 stir a wide range of vivid emotions. Yet, somehow, our client Stephen Arnold Music has managed to distill the essence of that infamous day into a musical score that will accompany CNN’s 10th Anniversary Commemoration. The rhythm is purposeful and insistent with a melody that is simultaneously somber and hopeful. We are so proud to be associated with this and extend our most sincere appreciation and congratulations to Stephen Arnold Music on this moving accomplishment.

You can read more about Stephen Arnold Music and this project at:
http://blog.stephenarnoldmusic.com/2011/09/07/cnn-911-ten-years-later/

We took the news of Steve Jobs resignation almost like the loss of a family member. After all, we are surrounded by his children; little iPod, always with a song in its heart, iPhone, the adolescent terror looking for the latest app, chatty as a hen house and iPad, fully grown, sleek, daring the world to fill it with its collective soul and wisdom. How much richer we are for his begetting the world these wonderful gadgets is hard to quantify at this time because their impact is still evolving. Ten years ago the world didn’t know it needed such things, but Steve Jobs did. That’s what’s meant by genius.

In hindsight, the motivating animus of his career is clear. He wanted to move the computer from a clunky box that sits on a desk into the world where it could work side by side with us in such a way that we would cease to think of it as a tool. That he succeeded is a triumph of technology and design.

Of course, we love technology, but we really love design. Dating back to the Macintosh, with its icon driven GUI, design has always been the foundation of Job’s vision. There are stories of him halting products after manufacturing had commenced in order to change a finish or a surface texture. That’s not cheap, friends. The only other innovator who comes to mind with an attention to detail so fanatic that it would compel them to scrap something already produced and redesign it is Walt Disney. Not surprisingly, the two men are highly complementary. Disney was the first to extend a brand across numerous platforms (movies, theme parks, television) and Jobs created numerous platforms to enable all of us to extend our brands like Walt. Way to go, guys.

Good job, Steve.

If a taco that’s 30% beef and 70% “other stuff” is your kind of synergy; if a pizza fresh from the microwave is your kind of authentic, then you might not find this funny. The good news is… you will find them at the exact same place.

In the history of marketing-speak, few are the hybrid word concoctions that rival “gamification” for sheer silliness and grasping at that ever elusive “hip” factor. Forget touchpoints or widgets or crossplatform compatibility, gamification represents the nadir of techno babbleosity.

That said, using game mechanics to boost the stickiness (Oh dear, another one!) of your site is an intriguing enough idea that we decided to dedicate a post to it, to suck the marrow from this jawbone and determine once and for all whether it’s beef or ham. And the answer is… it depends.

The underlying concept of gamification is nothing new to anyone who remembers S&H Green stamps or possesses a club card. The use of incentives to drive business is perfectly quaint. The wrinkle gamification adds comes from how these incentives are acquired. Essentially, a game is deployed on your site (Think Farmville in terms of sophistication.) to increase customer involvement with your product. The tricky part, as usual, comes down to design. It’s not enough to create a game that simply rewards players with points they can redeem for prizes and free stuff. Needless discounts pose the danger of devaluing your product. Besides, anyone can offer incentives and, as these gamified sites become a dime a dozen, you’ll need something to distinguish your site from the others. That distinction will come from the design of your game. And the design should begin with the right intent.

For our part, we believe any gamified feature added to your site should not necessarily reward players with financial incentives, but allow them to interact with your product in such a way as to personalize their experience with your brand, to make them a partner in your business.

Think how social media functions; the satisfaction derived from recommending a new restaurant to friends or raving up a book you just finished, and you’ll get where we’re coming from. You want to build games that open up a conversation between you and customers so they feel invested in your brand.

How might this work? Let’s take the example of a small business. In this case, a local restaurant wants to drive business to its new prix fixe menu. To promote this prix fixe menu a game is developed that lets customers play sommelier, creating a flight of wines from the restaurant’s wine list to go with each course on the menu. The game tabulates the most popular choices for each flight and produces a list of the full flight based on popularity. Winners are chosen based on the number of their selections that matched the chosen flight. As a “reward”, those with the highest scores are invited to a private party at the restaurant where the meal and accompanying flight are unveiled.

The up side? Customers become more familiar with the restaurant’s food and wine offerings in a fun way by getting to challenge their wine knowledge. The party becomes a tool to promote the business via social media. And, because it is a one-off event, it enhances instead of devalues the brand. Building customer loyalty in this informal yet personal manner is a cornerstone of successful gamification.

Of course, if you’re a bigger business, the opportunities for gamification are even greater. All it takes is imagination and a focus on crafting an experience that builds value (as opposed to giving value away) for your customer and strengthens your brand/customer relationship.

Web video runs the gamut from entertainment and news to brand and product promotion. More and more, smart brands are increasing the stickiness of their sites and inspiring brand loyalty by offering how-to videos that teach consumers about new products or offer new ways to enjoy older products. It’s the brand equivalent of lending a helping hand.

Given this fact, if you haven’t already, now seems like a good time to start thinking about how to approach the use of video for your site.

The good news is, producing online videos for your site need not be intimidating (see LC post 1/12/2011). The key to success is to be engaging, informative and brief.

At Rouxbe (pronounced roo-bee), the web’s first-ever online cooking school, they are masters of the engaging, informative and brief.

Rouxbe features iPad friendly video tutorials that cover all aspects of cooking from proper knife skills to challenging and delicious recipes. The majority of their video content is available to paid subscribers only, but they do offer access to select tutorials as an introduction to their brand. Take a moment, if you haven’t already, to watch the above video from Rouxbe before we dissect it. The clip is a recipe overview. Lamb shoulder is on the menu!

Upon viewing this video, a few things should stand out. First, the image quality is top notch from the lighting and focus to the framing of shots and the styling of the food. The sound is clean. It exudes professionalism and that builds confidence in their product. The script is tight and to the point. The voice over is warm, assured and easy to understand. Music is added to set the tone. The editing, too, is tight, with every shot giving new and useful information. Finally, it is short.

Watch it again and think about how much information is being conveyed in twenty-five seconds. Now, were you to access the full video recipe, the tutorial would be longer and more involved. To get around the problem of length, Rouxbe wisely divides their tutorials into short chapters, generally no longer than a minute and a half. These chapters walk you through the dish from prep to plating.

Understand that Rouxbe represents the pinnacle of how-to web video and that video of this quality requires a great deal of thought and skill to produce. We can do it for you at Lord Creative, but, if you want to attempt it on your own, this site offers an excellent reference to aspire to.

Two suggestions. Make sure that you use a video camera with a high resolution (1080p preferably, 720p minimum) and experiment with lighting and framing to get the best results. When recording voices place the microphone as close to the subject as possible and let the level ride as close to the red as possible without going into the red. Bad sound is your worst enemy.

As a final thought, notice how the “look” of the videos on this site relate to the “look” of the Rouxbe site itself. The design is uncluttered, tasteful and clean. That fits nicely with the subject of cooking and provides added cohesion to the overall experience of this site. Extending this approach, all the videos featured on Rouxbe adhere to this aesthetic regardless of the topic they are covering.

Do you see why we love them? In fact, we are such huge fans we even enrolled in their cooking school. Yum!

Every so often we like to highlight a simple fact: design matters.

There are so many reasons for this. One of our favorites is that design is a great equalizer. It gives small companies a chance to compete with the big boys.  Apple may be the best example. Currently the largest company by market cap in the the world, it wasn’t always that way. For decades, Apple represented a minor player in the world of computers next to PC manufacturers like Dell and IBM. But they hewed to a belief that design mattered and eventually they were proven right. Now everybody in the market chases them.

Great design endures, while technology is ever changing. So how does one maintain consistent and effective messaging across all these evolving platforms? By having a brand that is distinctive, memorable and implemented effectively.

Think of Campbell’s Soup, Nike and Coca-Cola — you instantly picture their logo. That’s great design. You can’t place a value on it in terms of ROI, because it represents the essence of the brand. What’s that worth? Coca-Cola may have changed their formula at one clay footed moment in time, but they have never changed their logo.

Great design endures because great design works.

The people at Method, a home cleaning products upstart, are taking on worldwide behemoth, Proctor & Gamble, with an eco-friendly approach that emphasizes transparency and design. From humble beginnings in a small San Fransisco apartment, Method has become one of the fastest growing privately held companies in America. Their products compete side by side with P&G in grocery stores, Targets and specialty markets across the country.  Despite paying a premium for Method’s products, consumers have gravitated to this brand because they identify with their message and respond to the brilliant packaging and branding of their full line of household cleaning supplies.

Take a look at their starter bundle pictured above. Instead of opting for the boring, dun colored branding of so many eco-friendly product manufacturers, the kind of packaging that screams “we recycle and love nature”, Method has established their brand identity as something modern and cool, vibrant and alive.

Who wouldn’t want to display that grapefruit handwash on their bathroom countertop? These guys rock. And their success proves that, not only does design matter, but people will pay for the value it promises.

To quote from their website: “Most companies treat product design like it ain’t no thang. At Method, we believe product design is a thang. It’s very much a thang.”

We at Lord Creative couldn’t agree more.