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Getting the correct workflow for your agency is a complex and non-trivial task. We are constantly trying to streamline the way we work, to improve on our processes and establish ways in which we can produce our work in the most effective and satisfactory manner, both for ourselves and our clients. Dealing with projects both small and large begs so many questions about what the correct ways are to roll it out, about what would be cost-effective for the agency as well as our clients, and end up making everybody happy. One of the biggest areas of trouble during any project is when there is a breakdown of communication of some sorts. This can happen very easily between the agency and the client, but very often is prevalent internally as well. The creation of a web site involves many players and thus successful communication between all involved is critical to the success of the job. Internally, project managers need to communicate with the production team, and the production team itself needs to have a clear avenue of communication and understanding with the various team members. If, at some point, someone fails to understand clearly how they are supposed to design or develop something, there can often be quite serious repercussions, considering the time it takes to fix mistakes is usually the longest. So I want to briefly put some thoughts down on why I find prototyping to be a valuable part of a project’s lifecycle.
Planning out a project properly is an essential aspect to its success. This can involve as simple things as basic sketches, through proper wireframing, to comprehensive modelling and documentation. However, if communication has broken down at some point, then one might spend a lot of time planning and documenting an incorrect job. Additionally, comprehensive documentation and planning can take up a lot of time of a project before anyone, especially the client, has even seen anything. Once this is done, the documentation might be put up for review, either internally or to the client, and if issues come up, the ripple effect can be substantial. Quinlan (http://www.appcelerant.com/get-rich-quick-ria-prototyping.html) talks about a project he worked on where, as “the project progressed and I saw the size of the document balloon from 50 pages to more than 200 pages, I had the realization that this document would never be read by ANYONE from beginning to end. The business owners who were responsible for ensuring that the requirements fit their actual business needs were completely overwhelmed by the document’s size and complexity. Six months later the business users were given their shiny new software and they were disappointed that the software didn’t match their expectations.” Proper documentation like this is no doubt still preferable to no planning and producing a product that is unsatisfactory which then has to be mended in order to satisfy the business needs, ending up consuming a lot of your budget and creating a general state of unhappiness in and between the people involved. But there is a way to streamline the process even more during the planning and initial development phases, and this involves the effective use of prototyping.
Prototyping really comes into life when you are developing RIAs, as wireframing, simple planning, and other forms of documentation rarely captures the feel of what you are developing. With complicated interfaces that include a lot of animations and conceptual aspects to deliver the message of the brand, static documentation is almost always ineffective in providing a clear understanding of what the project will be like when it is completed. And this is where communication starts to break down. But, as Staley (http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flex/articles/planning_ria/planning_ria.pdf) mentions in his article ‘Planning for RIA success’, “a key consideration is that a prototype can help establish expectations on design, functionality, and the resulting requirements of an application. This is particularly relevant to RIAs, because in many cases, the team will be venturing into unfamiliar terrain. Because of this uncertainty, traditional software development project techniques can be difficult to apply. A certain amount of discovery is required in the RIA process. Put another way, user experience design is of particular importance in an RIA, and it is often difficult to predict the outcome of an iterative design process.” In order to give everyone a sense of what you are creating, it is much easier and clearer when you can actually show them what you have in mind.
It is important to strike a good balance when doing this, as you wouldn’t want to create something twice, so prototyping should be a quick process meant to illustrate your point, hence the term rapid-prototyping. When you have something in mind for a particular project it can often save a lot of time and trouble if you are able to show the relevant parties something early on. This will help project managers, designers and developers work together more closely and effectively, provide clients with the means to understand what you are proposing (rather than a stale presentation filled with conceptual discussions on the merits of a fade, transition, or user experience), as well as catching usability issues early on. As discussed on A List Apart, (http://www.alistapart.com/articles/sketchingincode/) “Prototypes can help you sell a decision that is fundamentally or radically different from the client’s current solution or application. The traditional approach is to create a compelling story and a riveting PowerPoint presentation, and spend a day arguing for the wisdom of your approach. Instead, sit a stakeholder down in front of a working prototype and show him or her why your approach is compelling.”
Once you have created a prototype of some aspect of your project, it is always easy to spot the areas which don’t work, and identify the things that need to be changed or improved upon. Very importantly as well, once you have worked out where your prototype works and where it doesn’t, creating proper planning documentation and rolling out the final product takes a very short amount of time, and is usually spot on in terms of the business requirements. In this way, effective use of prototyping manages to clear up the avenues of communication, as management can quickly establish whether production has understood their tasks and clients can quickly see whether the agency has understood the brief. If not, adapting the prototype is not as serious a matter as rewriting your comprehensive set of documentation or redeveloping major aspects of a site where the effects of a simple problem can undermine the rest of your project to such a large extent that it ends up destroying your budget, team morale and client agency relationships.
Ideas in a creative environment are often very conceptual, and one person’s idea might be completely different to that of another’s. In turn, clients have particular visions for their products, project managers have their own, creative directors have theirs, and the production team have their own. These ideas aren’t always easy to put down on paper, but with the proper use of prototyping, those ideas can be married much more effectively and the overall success of a project is much more certain. Making good use of prototypes during the development of your project opens up communication and helps to ensure the success of your project.
Marc Newson’s concept design for Ford. A car that never saw the light of day due to the negative feedback this prototype received.
Getting the correct workflow for your agency is a complex and non-trivial task. We are constantly trying to streamline the way we work, to improve on our processes and establish ways in which we can produce our work in the most effective and satisfactory manner, both for ourselves and our clients. Dealing with projects both small and large begs so many questions about what the correct ways are to roll it out, about what would be cost-effective for the agency as well as our clients, and end up making everybody happy. One of the biggest areas of trouble during any project is when there is a breakdown of communication of some sorts. This can happen very easily between the agency and the client, but very often is prevalent internally as well. The creation of a web site involves many players and thus successful communication between all involved is critical to the success of the job. Internally, project managers need to communicate with the production team, and the production team itself needs to have a clear avenue of communication and understanding with the various team members. If, at some point, someone fails to understand clearly how they are supposed to design or develop something, there can often be quite serious repercussions, considering the time it takes to fix mistakes is usually the longest. So I want to briefly put some thoughts down on why I find prototyping to be a valuable part of a project’s lifecycle.
Planning out a project properly is an essential aspect to its success. This can involve as simple things as basic sketches, through proper wireframing, to comprehensive modelling and documentation. However, if communication has broken down at some point, then one might spend a lot of time planning and documenting an incorrect job. Additionally, comprehensive documentation and planning can take up a lot of time of a project before anyone, especially the client, has even seen anything. Once this is done, the documentation might be put up for review, either internally or to the client, and if issues come up, the ripple effect can be substantial.Quinlan talks about a project he worked on where, as “the project progressed and I saw the size of the document balloon from 50 pages to more than 200 pages, I had the realization that this document would never be read by ANYONE from beginning to end. The business owners who were responsible for ensuring that the requirements fit their actual business needs were completely overwhelmed by the document’s size and complexity. Six months later the business users were given their shiny new software and they were disappointed that the software didn’t match their expectations.” Proper documentation like this is no doubt still preferable to no planning and producing a product that is unsatisfactory which then has to be mended in order to satisfy the business needs, ending up consuming a lot of your budget and creating a general state of unhappiness in and between the people involved. But there is a way to streamline the process even more during the planning and initial development phases, and this involves the effective use of prototyping.
Prototyping really comes into life when you are developing RIAs, as wireframing, simple planning, and other forms of documentation rarely captures the feel of what you are developing. With complicated interfaces that include a lot of animations and conceptual aspects to deliver the message of the brand, static documentation is almost always ineffective in providing a clear understanding of what the project will be like when it is completed. And this is where communication starts to break down. But, as Staley mentions in his article ‘Planning for RIA success’, “a key consideration is that a prototype can help establish expectations on design, functionality, and the resulting requirements of an application. This is particularly relevant to RIAs, because in many cases, the team will be venturing into unfamiliar terrain. Because of this uncertainty, traditional software development project techniques can be difficult to apply. A certain amount of discovery is required in the RIA process. Put another way, user experience design is of particular importance in an RIA, and it is often difficult to predict the outcome of an iterative design process.” In order to give everyone a sense of what you are creating, it is much easier and clearer when you can actually show them what you have in mind.
It is important to strike a good balance when doing this, as you wouldn’t want to create something twice, so prototyping should be a quick process meant to illustrate your point, hence the term rapid-prototyping. When you have something in mind for a particular project it can often save a lot of time and trouble if you are able to show the relevant parties something early on. This will help project managers, designers and developers work together more closely and effectively, provide clients with the means to understand what you are proposing (rather than a stale presentation filled with conceptual discussions on the merits of a fade, transition, or user experience), as well as catching usability issues early on. As discussed on A List Apart, “Prototypes can help you sell a decision that is fundamentally or radically different from the client’s current solution or application. The traditional approach is to create a compelling story and a riveting PowerPoint presentation, and spend a day arguing for the wisdom of your approach. Instead, sit a stakeholder down in front of a working prototype and show him or her why your approach is compelling.”
Once you have created a prototype of some aspect of your project, it is always easy to spot the areas which don’t work, and identify the things that need to be changed or improved upon. Very importantly as well, once you have worked out where your prototype works and where it doesn’t, creating proper planning documentation and rolling out the final product takes a very short amount of time, and is usually spot on in terms of the business requirements. In this way, effective use of prototyping manages to clear up the avenues of communication, as management can quickly establish whether production has understood their tasks and clients can quickly see whether the agency has understood the brief. If not, adapting the prototype is not as serious a matter as rewriting your comprehensive set of documentation or redeveloping major aspects of a site where the effects of a simple problem can undermine the rest of your project to such a large extent that it ends up destroying your budget, team morale and client agency relationships.
Ideas in a creative environment are often very conceptual, and one person’s idea might be completely different to that of another’s. In turn, clients have particular visions for their products, project managers have their own, creative directors have theirs, and the production team have their own. These ideas aren’t always easy to put down on paper, but with the proper use of prototyping, those ideas can be married much more effectively and the overall success of a project is much more certain. Making good use of prototypes during the development of your project opens up communication and helps to ensure the success of your project.
One of the industry greats, Bill Bernbach (the B in DDB) wrote this letter to his employers at Grey World Wide in 1947. This seems to be ringing true, even more so today then ever.
Dear ___________:
Our agency is getting big. That’s something to be happy about. But it’s something to worry about, too, and I don’t mind telling you I’m damned worried. I’m worried that we’re going to fall into the trap of bigness, that we’re going to worship techniques instead of substance, that we’re going to follow history instead of making it, that we’re going to be drowned by superficialities instead of buoyed up by solid fundamentals. I’m worried lest hardening of the creative arteries begin to set in.
There are a lot of great technicians in advertising. And unfortunately they talk the best game. They know all the rules. They can tell you that people in an ad will get you greater readership. They can tell you that a sentence should be this sort or that long. They can tell you that body copy should be broken up for easier reading. They can give you fact after fact after fact. They are the scientists of advertising. But there’s one little rub. Advertising is fundamentally persuasion and persuasion happens to be not a science, but an art.
It’s that creative spark that I’m so jealous of for our agency and that I am so desperately fearful of losing. I don’t want academicians. I don’t want scientists. I don’t want people who do the right things. I want people who do inspiring things.
In the past year I must have interviewed about 80 people – writers and artists. Many of them were from the so-called giants of the agency field. It was appalling to see how few of these people were genuinely creative. Sure, they had advertising know-how. Yes, they were up on advertising technique.
But look beneath the technique and what did you find? A sameness, a mental weariness, a mediocrity of ideas. But they could defend every ad on the basis that it obeyed the rules of advertising. It was like worshiping a ritual instead of the God.
All this is not to say that technique is unimportant. Superior technical skill will make a good man better. But the danger is a preoccupation with technical skill or the mistaking of technical skill for creative ability.
The danger lies in the temptation to buy routinized men who have a formula for advertising. The danger lies in the natural tendency to go after tried-and-true talent that will not make us stand out in competition but rather make us look like all the others.
If we are to advance we must emerge as a distinctive personality. We must develop our own philosophy and not have the advertising philosophy of others imposed on us.
Let us blaze new trails. Let us prove to the world that good taste, good art, and good writing can be good selling.
Social Media Marketing is the latest buzzword… and one of the fastest growing segments of online marketing. The value of good social media marketing is immense – direct consumer interaction creates brand evangelists and advocates.
While there are many success stories out there, few South African brands truly understand the medium and how to interact with their consumers inside of social spaces.
Here’s a brief overview of how to run a social campaign:
1. Planning
Planning is crucial, but gets the least amount of attention when brands consider marketing in social spaces. You need to figure out what spaces you’re going to populate, what content you are going to distribute, and what resources you are going to allocate.
Another important part of planning is to work out your goals and measurement tools upfront. This will ensure that at the end of the campaign you actually have some data that can tell you something and prepare you for the next campaign.
Planning is not just about ticking the right boxes, it’s about having clear intent and direction around the programme.
2. Creative Execution
Once you have selected the social networks that you are moving into, find out how customisable they are. Create Myspace skins, upload your logo to your Fan Page or create a custom landing page, skin your blog or brand your Twitter background. There are various ways to customise each of the different social networks and it is important that your brand is integrated and correctly shown on all of them.
3. Talking To Consumers
One thing most brands get wrong is that they fail to realise that social network marketing is vastly different to television advertising or print advertising. Remember, Social Media is not a broadcast medium. Consumers expect you to talk and act like them. This means that you need to be relevant and always available. Having the right resources is critical. It’s also critical that these resources have the time to monitor the networks and the authority to answer questions.
4. Incentives and Promotions
A leading global agency, Razorfish, recently published their annual feed report. One of the findings was that promotions and discounts were primary drivers of “friending” a brand for over a third of social networking users, and 44% of Twitter users. Knowing this, brands should set aside budget to keep the consumers incentivised to talk about the brands. Promotions should be used to drive both talk-ability and awareness.
5. Exit Strategy
One thing I have seen quite a lot of is the lack of exit strategy. Once your campaign or programme has ended, have you thought about how you are going to close down your various properties? Leaving consumers in an online brand limbo creates a negative impression. The nature of search and SEO also lends itself to the fact that your old social profiles will be easily found via Google or Bing, and potential consumers could think negatively of a brand should they come across a space that hasn’t been updated in months.
Your exit strategy should include ways to close down the space but also keep the consumers happy and entertained.
Conclusion
Social media is unavoidable as a marketing tactic today. Be sure that you have a strategy and a plan in place before you jump in headfirst.
As we round off an amazing 2009, we traditionally don our augmented reality goggles and come up with sage predictions for the new year. This year I’ve taken a different view and instead of following the masses would rather give you the bucket list of who’s sprouting what about 2010 and beyond.
There’s been quite a bit of excitement about Google Wave within the Stonewall+ team. The first set of invites arrived on Monday morning and the office was buzzing. Needless to say, not a lot of work was done during those first few hours of playing.
Excitement and hype aside, the concept of Google Wave is a bit difficult to wrap your head around. If you don’t have an hour to watch Google’s presentation highlighting all it’s functionality, here’s a short and sweet video from the good folks at Epipheo Studios.
We started as a simple digital production company in 1997 and have emerged as a dynamic full service digital marketing agency.
As one of South Africa's leading and most established digital marketing agencies, Stonewall+ has built its business on solid marketing principles with a shared vision of creating ground breaking work in a style that is unconventional and fresh.
As an independently owned agency with offices in Johannesburg and Cape Town, our team of 45 is made up of talented individuals with the flair to create the exceptional.
