LBi London

Weekly Social Media Update

Posted by Jamie Pither December 15th, 2011

#NewnewTwitter

The mainstream micro – blogging service Twitter has launched a complete redesign of the site (you may have noticed) for both desktop and mobile. Not only is there a redesign but Twitter has introduced some major new features too – there’s now more focus on rich media, real time discovery and the opportunity for brands and advertisers.

The new Twitter design features four main categories, ‘home’, ‘connect’, ‘discover’ and ‘me’. The ‘discover’ tab is the biggest new addition, this will help users to discover the latest trending stories, with more of an emphasis on the content that drives the trending topics.

Brand pages

After much speculation Twitter has improved its platform for marketers, giving brands and advertisers the chance to create more of a unique branded offering through ‘brand pages’. Available to a selected number of partnered brands at the moment, the new brand pages include the ability to create your own banner at the top of the page. You can also favourite a tweet to the top of your timeline, so that you can show off selected content to visitors.

The introduction of brand pages will help to position Twitter into direct competition with Facebook’s brand pages as it becomes more of a media rich hub for on-page engagement. This may result in a shift where we see users spending more of their time on Twitter.

Google Currents

Google has recently released Google Currents, an application that lets you explore online publications and other rich web content in one neat visual place. The search engine giant has partnered with over 150 publications including Forbes and The Huffington Post to offer users full-length articles optimised specifically for the app.

Users can add their own RSS, video and photo feeds and public Google+ streams that they’re following. The app will place all this content into a well-designed layout that you can then scroll through online and offline – so when you’re out and about you don’t need to rely on picking up a network connection.

Google Currents is also offering publishers, (of any shape or size) the opportunity to design and customise their own web content specifically for the app – this part of the app is called Google Currents Producer.

Google Currents has positioned itself as an app that works alongside Google+ which leaves open the possibility that there might be plans for further integration with Google’s overall search experience. Unlike its notable rival Flipboard (who have dominated mobile content aggregation on iOS), Google Currents is available on both iOS and Android. Keep an eye out for when the app becomes available in the UK.

Facebook trial brand page messaging

Facebook have begun trialling a private messaging system that lets brand pages and fans communicate, much like the messaging system in place for Facebook profile pages. The private messaging system for brands does have some key differences including:

• At the moment brand pages can only reply to messages that have been sent to them.
• Brand pages can reply privately to individual comments that a fan has made on the brands wall.
• Users messaging a brand do not have to be a fan of the page. This could have a few implications for brands:
  • The messaging system may well become another response channel to manage – presenting a potential resource issue.
  • Brands will have to think carefully about how to prioritise communication between fans and non-fans, if it’s part of its Facebook strategy.

Overall the new messaging system could be seen as a significant plus for brands, as it allows them to deal with customer service queries in a private setting that does not affect the public reputation of the brand – unless you’re brand still has an open wall policy that is. Keep an eye out for this introduction as Facebook are testing the product in quieter markets before hopefully rolling it out to the masses.

0 comments Share

What’s Next: Introducing our new ‘Show Real’

Posted by Calvin Lau December 14th, 2011

You may remember seeing, hearing or reading about a real, live unicorn on Brick Lane a few months ago.

Erm, that was us.

We literally stopped traffic early one September morning as our Chief Creative Officer Chris Clarke (somewhat bashfully, it should be added) led the mythical beast through the East London streets and into our office.

Contrary to popular belief this wasn’t just an average day in the life of a Shoreditch digital agency. We were filming the opening scene of our new showreel, which we’re pleased to be unveiling here today after a lot of hard work from all involved.

We hope you’ll agree that it’s no ordinary showreel.

Our aim was to create a film that showcased to the outside world some of the work we’re most proud of, as well as giving people a glimpse of the creative magic makes us tick here at LBi.

Rather than a showreel, we wanted to create a ‘Show Real’.

It was important to us to create something that reflected the breadth of our services in the most interesting and engaging way possible. We wanted to show off our talented people, our skills and the unique way we blend all our expertise together to build business value for clients like Puma, Sony Ericsson and Skype.

To do this we created a narrative around the unicorn. To us the unicorn symbolises the never-ending quest for digital mastery. It represents our ability to help companies of all shapes and sizes decide What’s Next … and then take them there.

We’ve tried to bring this theme to life in our Show Real. Like most agencies these days we work mostly in digital, but for this project we stepped away from our screens, went lo-tech, and tried to do as much as possible for real.

To that end we’ve built up, propped up and acted out a series of vignettes representing some of our best bits. From a machine made of brik-a-brak to a projection mapping installation and a live unicorn, this has been a project involving lots of LBi people, lots of work, and lots of fun.

It’s been an adventure, and we’re incredibly proud of what we’ve created.

We hope you enjoy watching it as much as we’ve enjoyed making it because – in the end – you’ll be the judge.

Credits

Lead LBi Creative Team
Thea Hamrén and Emil Rydberg

Director
Fredrik Forrest

D.O.P
Simon Rudholm

Sound Design
Kungen & Hertigen

Producers
Ashley Cohen and Debbie Lee

+ all lost boys & girls that’s helped build, act out and make this film happen.

Tags: blend, blending, branded content, chief creative officer, Chris Clarke, Digital Agency, digital mastery, lo-tech, media, puma, shoreditch, show real, showreel, Skype, Sony Ericsson, what's next

1 comments Share

Reality Remade: The Swarm

Posted by William Ward December 7th, 2011

Last Saturday, shooting began on The Swarm, an alien invasion film directed by Tom Harper (Misfits, This is England ’86 and the BBC’s Christmas blockbuster, The Borrowers) and shot entirely on Sony Ericsson Xperia Arc S phones. The film is Sony Ericsson Xperia Studio’s next project.

At the beginning of this year Sony Ericsson asked agencies to propose a global “big idea” for its Xperia smartphone range of smartphones that would set it apart from competitors like Apple’s iPhone. Xperia Studio was LBi’s response, and seven projects are now live at xperiastudio.com.

Working with Tom and the crew was a great insight into how a film is made. The amount of preparation in each scene is huge even for a short film! We created our own phone camera housing mount out of a plug socket to be able to attach it to a tripod and monitor, or even drop it. Apart from some basic lighting in some scenes, the film was shot au naturel. This was pretty much all the set up we needed. We wanted to keep it as simple as possible.

Even though it was freezing cold the atmosphere was really good. Everyone was excited to see how it was going to turn out.

At the moment the footage has been sent of to be edited and then its off to the SFX guys to add in the alien swarm! the video is going to look really good when its ready and I can’t wait to see it!

LBi credits

Graham Hodge, Executive Producer
Bernie Valentine, Producer
Will Ward, DIT, Clapper
Ben Marsh, Runner
Sofie Runnquist, Runner
Emily Williamson, Runner

Tags: Sony Ericsson, tom harper, Xperia, xperia studio

0 comments Share

Weekly Social Media Update

Posted by Jamie Pither December 6th, 2011

Spotify Apps

Spotify have just announced at a news conference in New York that it will be opening up its platform so that customers can use various apps to enhance their listening experience. The Spotify Apps platform is open for developers and media partners to build apps that will run on Spotify’s desktop application.

The new apps will let you look up song lyrics, find out about gigs and share your musical experiences. At the moment you’ll find apps made by Rolling Stone, the Guardian, Last.fm, Songkick and TuneWiki.

For example the Guardian’s app is going to be all about bringing album reviews from the Guardian and the Observer into Spotify’s service. It will be exciting to see how these two companies’ will work together for a series of live gigs in London.

With Spotify’s launching in the United States this summer and its 2.5 million paying customers it can claim to be the most impressive new technology company to have come out of Europe in the last five years.

The apps will sit within Spotify’s desktop client, with possible extension to mobile in the future. The apps will be available to free and paying users of the service, although for now, developers will not be able to charge for them.

Just a bit of Spotify trivia for you, at the moment it has a catalogue of 15m songs, and  roughly 20,000 new tracks are added per day. Which apps will you be using?

Take Google Maps Indoors

Where would we be without Google maps? We all know that Google has spent the better part of the last decade mapping the great outdoors so is it such a surprise that they are going to now conquer the indoor domain?

With the launch of Google Maps 6.0 on Tuesday, users of mobile devices running Android OS 2.1 and up will be able to use Google Maps not just to get directions to an IKEA, Macy’s or one of several airports, but to use the mapping functionality to figure out how to find housewares, ATMs, and your flight gate once you are inside.

Google’s inside mapping will work similarly to how its outside mapping works. A little blue dot will move along with you to show you where you are, and the technology is even able to know what floor you are on.

At the moment the functionality  is currently only available for some buildings in America and Japan, and only works on Android mobile phones, Google has already mapped some indoor areas in the UK, for instance for its projects to take people inside art galleries via Google Earth. Keep posted for more indoor locations across the UK.

Burrito Record

On Wednesday 7 December Benito’s Hat is planning a stunt to create the UK’s biggest burrito, which its Facebook fans can then help eat in its restaurant free of charge.

Not only is this a tasty stunt, but it has a charity angle as well. The stunt will help raise money for homeless charities and is also aiming to increase the number of fans on Facebook and bring people into the restaurants.

Benito’s Hat ran a successful campaign last month on Twitter which resulted in a 25% sales boost. They are keen to harness the power of social to not only increase brand awareness, but to drive sales and it looks like it is bringing them results. Check out their Facebook page for details of the event.

Tags: Apps, burrito, charity, Facebook, Google, google maps, guardian, indoor, record, rollingstone, Spotify

0 comments Share