LBi London

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

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Weekly Social Media Update

Posted by rebcla July 5th, 2011

Google+ the new answer to Facebook?

Google+ launched last week with their usual limited number of invitations tactic to their new social networking platform, set to rival Facebook. Google then reported that ‘insane’ demand forced them to put a cap on the number of new users. It might be helpful if they released some numbers to define the ‘insane’ demand. Google wants to make sharing online more like sharing in real life. Here are the four key elements:

• Circles: Instead of friend lists, connections are organised in different circles allowing complete control of privacy settings to be applied to each circle
• Sparks: You can tell this feature your interests, and it provides you with targeted content
• Hangouts: It lets your friends know when you’re available to chat via video, enabling group chats
• Huddle: To help group plans. It turns lots of conversations into one big group chat to help you reach a decision

Privacy concerns have been an issue in one way or another with most social networks, especially Facebook. Google+ is trying to address this by allowing users to alter their visibility settings and choose whether their profile is indexed by search engines. The question we are all asking is, will users be willing to leave Facebook for Google+ when they already have a social network that works? A new Google Chrome extension Facebook Friend Exporter is making it much easier to import your Facebook contacts onto the platform, although it has been reported this morning that Facebook is actively trying to block the application by removing emails of your friends from your profile. More on the story here. Maybe Facebook really is getting concerned about Google stealing their crown.

Facebook and Skype to launch integrated video chat?

Facebook are set to make an ‘awesome’ announcement tomorrow. We have a feeling that it might end up being a new video chat feature built in partnership with Skype, which was bought by Microsoft in May. Currently users looking to video chat with their friends have to leave Facebook to do so. If Facebook and Skype do launch an integrated video chat product it’s perfectly timed with the launch of Google+ and the Google+ Hangouts feature which allows video chat. This move would make strategic sense for Facebook, fending off Google and strengthening its ties with Microsoft. Listen out tomorrow on Facebook Live.

The Crunch Band Mobile App

Pringles have just launched a new mobile app to help celebrate the season of summer music festivals. It has a mix of native iPhone and Android apps that are used to play one of 15 virtual instruments. It’s free and if you grab a pack of Pringles you can scan the barcode to unlock new features and badges. Check out the video.

Tags: Facebook, Facebook Live, Google, Pringles, Skype, Social Media

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my new ‘Social TV’ experience

Posted by Riaz Ahmed May 25th, 2011

It’s smart and social…

So, over the (Royal) Easter break not only did I treat myself to lots of chocolate Easter eggs and even a Royal Wedding street party (thanks mum!), I went out and bought myself a new TV. Well it turns out that not only does my new Samsung D7000 produce crystal clear HD/3D output it’s also very smart and social…

Ok so it doesn’t suggest the next big IPO to invest in or go out and watch the football with me, but with a huge array of very cool and useful Internet-enabled features, my new Samsung TV, has not only made my viewing experience a whole lot more enriched but I think Samsung are on a journey that will make them stand out from not only the competition like Sony, but rival Internet TV services such as those provided by Google and Apple.

Connectivity and Streaming

With built-in Wi-Fi and a very easy set up process I was up and running within a few minutes. The first thing the TV did when it connected to my broadband Wi-Fi was to start updating itself…after the TV came on it instantly discovered my laptop which had ‘media share’ software installed. Media share software e.g. Windows Media Center, allows sharing of music, video and image files stored on your laptop to externally connected devices. This meant without further configuring or cabling I could view almost any media file from my laptop over Wi-Fi. Because the TV could support many different and newer media formats (MPEG4, Xvid, DivX, MKV, MP3, WMA, JPEG) none of my media files needed converting. Ok ok so lots of modern TV sets have this already so nothing new there, but wait it gets better…

Samsung Smart TV Hub (click for a larger image)

The ‘Hub’ Button

While unpacking the remote control, I noticed a button called hub, upon pressing it I was taken to the Samsung Smart TV Hub which is a portal to all the Samsung TV apps and features. Because I enjoy tweeting I immediately went to try out the TV Twitter app. But before I could load the app, I was taken to the ‘Register Services’ screen. This screen allowed me to create a single Samsung TV login account that would store my credentials for social networking TV services that were available such as: Facebook, Twitter, Skype, Google Talk, etc

Tweet tweet... the Samsung Smart TV Twitter App (click for a larger image)

Social TV…tweet and watch!

Once I finished registering and logging into the Twitter service, I immediately found myself immersed into the world of Twitter on my TV where I could start viewing tweets, replying to tweets and almost anything that a Twitter app for my laptop or phone could do. What I really liked about the experience was that I was able to switch from using the full-sized app to a real-time social interactive tv view to allow what Samsung calls a ‘Social TV’ experience. Whenever I wanted the ‘Social TV’ experience all I had to do was press the social button on the remote control and have instant access to my social networking services. What would be really cool would be integration with Windows Live Messenger 2011…but with Microsoft’s recent acquisition of Skype it will be interesting to see what will happen in this space…

Samsung Smart TV Social TV (click for a larger image)

Samsung TV Apps Store

The Samsung Smart TV Twitter app was very slick and I wanted to discover more….so the next TV app I tried out was the BBC iPlayer app, again this was also impressive and I was able to start watching BBC content with very few presses on my remote. The BBC iPlayer HD content was particularly impressive and the programme search worked well and fast. Oh and I would like to point out that I only have a 4MB broadband connection at home and all the streaming worked well with very few judders! Likewise while trying out the YouTube TV app I was very impressed how it worked so seamlessly well with the TV and made good use of the remote control buttons to navigate through the app. I wanted to see what other apps I could download for the TV so I went back to the Smart Hub and navigated to the Samsung apps widget. This took me to the very impressive Samsung Apps Store where I could search and download a variety of cool apps for the TV. I think the UK Samsung app store has about a 100 apps so far, with newer apps always popping up, like the recent Explore 3D App

Samsung Smart TV App Store (click for a larger image)

Two million Five million downloaded TV apps

In a January 2011 press release, Samsung stated that two million apps had been downloaded from the Samsung TV app store. The press release went on to say:

“Samsung reached the 2 million mark within a year of the launch of Samsung Apps and the number of apps downloaded has doubled since November, when it reached one million downloads.”

“After reaching one million downloads, consumers have downloaded an average of 100,000 applications every five days.”

The full press release can be found here

Update: as this article goes live, Samsung are reporting that they have passed 5 million app downloads

A TV SDK* for the developer community

Back in September last year, Samsung ran a competition for developers to build the best looking and most innovative Samsung TV app. The winners shared a pot of 500,000 euros and the voting public got a chance to win a new Samsung TV. These types of initiatives always encourage more and more developers to develop for your platform and now Samsung claim they have over 400 TV apps available in over 120 countries.

After a little bit of digging around, I found that to develop a Samsung Smart TV app, you need skills in JavaScript, CSS and HTML. Developing a Samsung TV Widget seemed quite straightforward; Liam Green-Hughes has a great write up on developing a “Hello World” app on his blog.

* SDK: software development kit

Full Internet browsing with Flash but not HTML5 yet!

Another very cool feature on my Samsung TV is that it has a built-in fully functional web browser. The browser is based on an adaptive version of Google Chrome. The browsing experience is quite good and the experience is enhanced even more so by a built-in pointer in the remote control which acts like a mouse. The menu items in browser are easily accessible by the remote control buttons and the browsers ability to play flash content was a very welcome feature. The only drawback was the browser’s inability to play HTML5 content, but I have read that HTML5 will be fully supported and available in the coming months.

Samsung Smart TV Web Browser (click for a larger image)

Search

A very useful and well thought-out feature of the TV is search. The search function can be accessed directly from the remote control or from the Smart Hub. When I searched for ‘Arsenal’, the search app started searching for all Arsenal related content from Facebook, YouTube, Websites, Samsung TV apps and even my own media library that was stored on my laptop.

Samsung Smart TV Universal Search (click for a larger image)

(credit for picture with Iron Man 2 search: http://www.samsung.com/us/article/the-wonder-of-samsung-smart-tvs)

A Google TV/Apple TV Killer?

Absolutely yes! If Samsung keep investing in TV app development and roll out feature-rich updates with new Internet based widgets, apps and services to the Smart Hub, I think Samsung television owners won’t need to purchase Apple TV or Google TV products. Last week, Samsung UK announced a deal with Channel Five about rolling out a Five on Demand app. These are exactly the type of deals Samsung will need to do to get consumers choosing Samsung over other rivals. The more content providers that sign up with Samsung the more appealing these sets will become to consumers.

Whilst talking about rivals, Sony, will be launching their Internet TV sets in June/July this year. They are offering Internet based features similar to that of Samsung but have one big advantage……..Sony can provide a huge amount of Sony owned content like Hollywood blockbusters and a massive music catalogue. Currently this is available through the Qriocity TV service but I can see this expanding and becoming very feature rich. The only drawback is that the new Sony HX TV’s are much more expensive than Samsung’s identical sets.

So yes, it is smart and social

Ok so it doesn’t suggest the next big IPO to invest in (smart) or go out and watch the football with me (social) but with an array of top notch Internet enabled features, services and lots of TV apps in development, surely Samsung are on a winner and this is certainly the year of the Internet TV — with social being at the heart of Samsung’s offering.

Thanks for reading!

Riaz Ahmed is the Head of Microsoft Development at LBi and can be found here @TheRealRiaz and here LinkedIn

Tags: apple, Apple TV, Facebook, Google, Google TV, Internet TV, Microsoft, samsung, Samsung Smart TV, Skype, social, social networks, Social TV, Streaming, Technology, Windows Live Messenger

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Weekly Social Media Update

Posted by rebcla May 10th, 2011

Microsoft, not Facebook make unexpected purchase of Skype

Today Microsoft have announced that they will be buying Skype for an astonishing value of up to $8.5 billion dollars, after rumors that Facebook and Google were in talks with Skype. In case you didn’t know, Skype is the market leader in internet calling with around 670 million registered users, although they have a worryingly low conversion rate.  Only about 6% of its users actually pay for the service. This deal will add Skype to the Windows Live network, and give more opportunities for brands to place ads.

Ben & Jerry’s donates your spare Twitter characters in honour of World Fair Trade Day on May 14

The iconic ice-cream brand, Ben & Jerry’s have launched a great campaign on Twitter with this cool application that squeezes your tweet. It makes sure all your unused characters go to good use in spreading awareness of World Fair Trade Day this Saturday. The shorter your tweet the more support for #FairTrade! Fair Tweet here

YouTube Movies

Google has confirmed plans to extend its YouTube Movies service. YouTube has partnered with Universal, Sony Pictures and Warner Bros to offer full-length feature films. Piracy concerns are rumored to have stopped Paramount, 20^th Century Fox and Walt Disney signing up as rental partners. You can see the full announcement on the YouTube blog here

The deal means that US viewers will get to choose from 3,000 films to rent from around $2.99 per film.  The film rental deal is crucial for YouTube.  Currently the average user spends around 15 minutes a day on the site, although YouTube wants to be the chosen destination for all types of quality video content. This announcement will challenge the likes of Netflix and iTunes.

Tags: Ben & Jerry's, Facebook, Fair trade, Fair Tweet, Microsoft, movies, Skype, Social Media, YouTube

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