Converse tries to tie 20 sites in to a big idea

Converse recently launched a new campaign called 'Connectivity' and online portion of the campaign features an Elf Yourself OfficeMax-esque 20 microsites to support the launch. For me the URL's of the sites may be the best part of the whole online experience as you start out at the appropriately name ThisIsTheIndexPage.com that features wallpaper of Converse wares in the background among other images, visitors can scroll down a menu of several URLs. These off shoot sites have names like OnaShoeStringFilms.com that features a short film of several talking shoelaces, KissingBackwithRoss.com that shows a kissing display of a bearded guy who's kissing a message on a glass surface with what could be icing or shaving cream. The most creative and interesting for me is ConverseSpellingBee.com where by spelling a word in Google, a paid search ad shows up at the top to take you to the next round. At any point you can go directly to Converse's official "Connectivity" destination. Where you can see all the Converse spokespeople and hear a song written by Pharrell Williams.

When taken as a whole it is an interesting experience but I'm not convinced of how well I think it really works. When you look at past examples like when Office Max launched a similar barrage of multiple sites a few holidays ago it was only Elf Yourself that caught on and everyone remembered. Maybe I have too narrow if a view of online advertising when I favor having one strong experience instead of a number of lesser experiences that may or may not add up to something more for consumers. It is that may or may not part that I struggle with since you are using a concept shotgun to throw a lot of content out there and hope that one of them catches on. I will keep an eye on it to see if one of them catches on and I would love to hear from anyone who use this strategy to hear how successful it was or wasn't.

The new LuxuryCollection.com

Through the course of my careers I have been faced with the challenge of how to create a branding system that would support multiple sub-brands but have those brands roll up to a master brand. It is a lot harder than it sounds. In the case of The Luxury Collection it is made up of 69 of the world's most iconic and award-winning properties that each have historical importance and are completely unique. As such they all have their own unique style, logo, and brand equity. The design of LuxuryCollection.com was the first step and design work that was done in trying to solve this problem.

The redesign, which was done in collaboration with BBDO Atmosphere and their phenomenally talented creative director Arturo Aranda, was the first step in their re-branding and the creation of the brand's new global visual language. The strategy and inspiration for the site came from the world of art museums and galleries where you can see unique and varied works of art from across history that are bound by the curation of the museum that brought them together and made them into a collection.

Explore the Collection

Explore the Collection brings this strategy to life with the properties displayed as slivered works of art against a large white background like the works lining the walls of a museum. You can either explore the slivers by rolling over them or search interactively by Destination or Pursuit which will narrow down the numbers of slivers displayed.

Global Cultural Calendar

The Cultural Calendar so that consumers would have access to the international collection of upcoming unforgettable events curated by each region. The visual design was created to mirror the visual language that uses a similar system of square to form the property logos in to the collection that makes up the brand. Any region that has an upcoming event will be filled in with colored squares so consumers can learn about and book experiences from Chinese New Year in Mauritius to the Bali Arts Festival in Indonesia to the International Aegean Sailing Rally in Greece.

Here is a sample of the final visual language work that was created out of the web site design work. This simple visual system allows for each property to retain it's own unique logo and color while the consistent formatting creates the curation system that makes them all into the Luxury Collection. In print and online advertising this is re-arranged into one long line so the colors form a visual mnemonic so that the collection is always represented in every communication.

The site design and resulting visual language is one a body of work that I am really proud of as it as able to solve a number of complex branding and design problems in a visually strong and elegant way.

What can Kidrobot, The Simpsons and deep branding teach us?

Anyone who knows me, has been to my house or walked by my office knows that Kidrobot is a brand that is near and dear to my heart and I have the collection to prove it. I have been been a fan since pretty much the beginning when I heard their founder and creative director Paul Budnutz talked about their philosophy of making toys that brought the fun and design back to toys. He will often start by defining what Kidrobot isn't and his usual example is a toy from the movie Jurassic Park where consumers buy the toy because it is memory connection to the movie and not because it is a good toy. You can click here to see one of his speeches from the recent AIGA NEXT conference to get the whole picture. As a creative person I buy into that approach completely since it is a value of their brand that aligns with my personal values. For those of us who work in branding these are the types of connections we try and make every day because they are deep and create long term loyal behaviors. The thing about any deep connection in branding or in life is that is has to be respected and maintained to stay healthy. That became really clear to me when I was cruising through the Kidrobot site on a discussion board where they list upcoming toy releases and it listed 5 upcoming releases for the month of August and the 3rd one stopped me in the tracks. Sitting there in the middle of the page was The Simpsons by Kidrobot. My mind raced and I saw red. I love the Simpsons and I love Kidrobot but what the #@$%ing hell were they doing together? How could this brand that I love that told to me about how they are all about making unique toys not based on something else DO EXACTLY THAT? I felt like when I was back in college and found my girlfriend cheating on me and it tortured me all day. I was well aware of the absurdity of equating a plastic toy release with someone that betrayed me but I just couldn't move my emotions from the place. In the end I look at as an overdue reminder of the responsibility that comes with building emotional connections with advertising and branding. We need to do what is right for the people who have connected with the brands we work on and not just what is right for our portfolios.

Shazaam - the magic iPhone app

If you have spent anytime playing with the flood of apps that came with the launch of the 2.0 iPhone software you have no doubt found that it is a real mixed bag. There are some really innovative apps like Loopt and some real disappointments like Facebook. The one app that I have been just blown away by is Shazaam and if you haven't checked it out go and get the free download now. The app was created to help you identify a song when you hear it on the radio, on TV, in a film or even over the load speaker system is a store. The way it works is that when you hear a song you want to identify you launch the app and let it "listen" to the song for about 10-20 second and then it will give you all the art info, album art, store it to build your own soundtrack, link to buy it in iTunes and the ability to email it to friends. I started by flipping around my XM radio in my car when I was stuck in traffic testing it on popular songs and it got the songs right 100% of the time. It is also worth noting that you get the results within 5-10 second even over mediocre EDGE connections (I still have the original iPhone). So the more I tested it and the more it got right the more I felt the need to try and stump it. So I left the alternative and pop stations behind and moved on to trying rare electronica, imported ambient and live blues. In the end out of 60 songs it got 59 right and only blanked on an ambient track by Zero 7 which is obscure enough that it can easily be forgiven. It is a cool app that is a great use of portable technology with extra hooks like the social aspect and ability to go right to iTunes to buy the song that will keep it on my iPhone for a long time to come.

Radiohead trades in cameras for lasers

The band Radiohead just released their latest video called "House of Cards" from their album In Rainbows. The video was made with real time 3D recording that were done with structured light and 64 Lidar laser-enhanced scanners to model lead singer Thom Yorke instead of cameras. You can see the video here or you can see an interactive version of the data at Goggle's code.google.com. The band is encouraging fans to use the 3D data of Yorke's head to make their own videos using the point cloud data and Processing. I haven't seen submissions yet but it certainly puts a different spin on user generated content.

IKEA's extremely cool and interactive music based closets

I got an email today from the agency Forsman & Bodenfors that they have just created and launched the latest IKEA site called 'Come into the Closet'. It's currently all in Swedish and is a sequel of sorts to its original "Come into the Closet" campaign from two years ago.
There are a total of five different rooms and the inhabitants of the room are controlled by music. It is kind of like an interactive version of the Tokyo Plastic site with a sprinkle a FatBoy Slim video. The music starts as a loop but you can influence it with your mouse and keyboard. Hit the Enter or Spacebar and see the twitchy motions of the rooms' guests change with the changes you create in the music. One of the coolest features is that you can bust out your own tunes by uploading your own MP3s to create the ‘soundtrack of home life’. If that doesn't appeal to you then if you have a microphone connected you can also make any kind of sound and the characters on the website will move around to those sounds accordingly. It is far more engaging and interactive site than their last several launches and really draws the consumer into the site. Again I think this step to take it from a passive experience into one you can interact with and that has consumers investing something into experience really pays off.

Use mobile photography to design your next pair of NIKE's

This launched a little while ago but it is still cool if you haven't seen it. Nike launched a new area on their online store called Photo ID that lets you use your mobile phone to turn your photos or surroundings into a custom pair of Nike shoes. It is just for Nike customers in the U.K., Germany, Italy and Finland and they can use whatever visual inspiration they find, snap a shot with their phone and text the word "DUNK" to specific number. The site takes the dominant colors from the photos and matches it to the Nike color options. The final shoes can then be saved as mobile wallpaper, sent to a friend, and most importantly purchased so you can wear your creation. Right now the site is only offering the Dunk which is a classic basketball shoe originally launched in 1985 but there are promises of more in the future.

This is probably one of the most unique uses of mobile I have ever seen because it takes the channel beyond taking a picture and posting it to your Facebook page and ties into a brand, their products and product personalization. It is that combination of the unique use of the media and the personalization that makes it so special. The uniqueness of the execution gets your attention but the personalization gives you a sense of investment into the product. It is that investment that makes the product feel special to each person and they feel like they have been part of the design process of one of the world's best brands. Getting consumer invested at a such core emotion level into your brand is a trick everyone is trying to capture so I am sure this site will it's copycats before too long.

Cleaning up digital waste down under

You can't go anywhere, read any newspaper or watch any TV without hearing with word 'green' and it happens so often that it starts to lose it's effectiveness. Today I saw an interesting digital execution from Clean Up Australia. They did ome research and discovered that over 80% of all office paper printouts end up in the trash so they created a downloadable desktop image that would act as a reminder for people of what it is they are printing. The first time I went to the site I thought it was looking at my print cue and was creating a custom tree just for me but then I sadly realized it was the same image for everyone. So I like the use of the desktop of a messaging platform since it isn't used very much but you just wish they have added some personalization to push it that extra mile.

Take your sites back to school with Web Site Grading

I found an interesting free resource that measures the marketing effectiveness of your websites. You enter the site address and it provides a score based on metrics like website traffic, SEO, social popularity and other factors. It explains the scores for each factor and gives you some basic advice on how you can improve the site from a marketing perspective. It is free and worth taking your site for a spin through it just to see what it has to say.

Apple pulls back the curtain on the iPhone App Store

Early this morning the emails started rolling in from my more ingenious friends who had downloaded iTunes 7.7 and found that by searching for certain terms like 'AOL' you could get iPhone apps in the search results. Click on one of those apps and then you could then use the breadcrumb trail to back into the App Store. By this afternoon the App Store appeared in the side nav and it is now open to the public and I think it is safe to guess that we will see the 2.0 software update tomorrow to coincide with the 3G launch. This limbo right now is strange because right you can buy games and applications you can't use. So a quick review of the app's listed in the store did reveal some really interest apps that I think could have a lot of potential:

Loopt - Your social compass
The idea behind Loopt is that it turns your phone into what they are calling a 'social compass'. The most interesting features are that iit has maps that show where your friends are right now in relationship to you and you can see where they have been and places that they recommend. I love this because it takes social networking into the real world and gives it a context and usefulness it hadn't seen before.

Apple Remote
You knew that Apple had to have an application in the mix for the launch and their contribution was Remote. it is an application that will let you control your MacTV which is nice for anyone who has ever had to use their little white remote stick. For me it isn't that the application is that incredible as much as it is seeing that the phone can used in this way to control other devices because I think they could lead to some very cool interactive and outdoor installations.

Checkout SmartShop
This is the start of a very cool idea. The application lets you type in a UPC code for any product and it will return reviews, pricing, online store pricing and store in the area that carry the product. If they can get camera integration so can just photography the UPC it could be a really amazing tool.

Obviously without having the benefit of being able to run these apps and the 20 others I have in iTunes application folder you can't get a real sense for them but there is a lot of potential for this just being the first step. Right now my only gripe is how uneven the pricing is as there are some amazing applications that are free and thenI come across one that is an interactive guide to the NYC subways system I could really use that is $15. It is just $15 but it seems steep for a map. I am sure time and demand will help pull this into line but we will see.

Ego 2.0 - the new StephenGates.com finally live.

So it has been just over a month since my promise that I would finally get my new portfolio site out the door. So while work has been nuts it is amazing how having your wife's in-laws in town for two weeks can give you a laser like focus on getting work like this done. So last night I finally pulled the trigger and pushed the new site live. The final work tally for launch was 35 clients, 73 projects, 203 designs, 35 videos and over 35 pages of copy. I am not kidding myself that this is some great design achievement but it is certainly a lot better than the 10 year old site I hadn't updated in 8 months. It's the first step in the vision I have for the site and I have a lot more work that is going to be added, more functionality and the open source section will be coming back with a lot of new code.