As part of our ‘Favorite Brand Experience’ series, we’re pleased to bring you an interview with: Alain Emile, Creative Director at tuskluv
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Your idea about the perfect working day?

A couple of years ago I would probably say working from home, but honestly I love being able to come into my office really early - 6′ish, put on some good music and finish my entire workload before 5pm Then be able to play some soccer or enjoy the city before the sun goes down.  That gets the status of “perfect” because getting here at 6am is short of a phenomenon.
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Your muse best comes when?
The subway hands down. I feel like the train is personally taking you to work and you need to get your thoughts straight before those doors open. This is assuming you are not cramped in the subway with 200 plus. Then my muse clearly switches to potential escape plans.
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What needs to be changed/improved in order to achieve ultimate engagement with users? 

I think there is a lot of user interaction that we see as new or innovative in online advertising when it is in fact ubiquitous to people’s everyday life. Being able to actually shop, send video messages, book tickets, buy music, all these call to actions could very well take place within the ad. We need to take a step into not only using the rich media space to promote but also to execute. I would love to be able to buy a dvd or download an album from an ad without even rolling off.

Favorite Brand Experiences?

The favorite one I worked on is the Dentyne Make Face Time by far. My favorite one in Eyeblaster’s stash, I would have to say Pepsi’s Dear Mr President by R/GA

Dentyne’s Make Face Time is my personal favorite because not only did we get a chance to be part of this award winning campaign with McCann but we also got to concept and illustrate the online execution. In this case it was an anti-campaign to keep people ON the computer as opposed to out making face time. Plus who does not love a Sumo destroying an emoticon.

R/GA’s Pepsi campaign, well I love it for everything I wrote in regards to ultimate engagement. They took this technology which almost everybody has and have been using for a while and they simply made it available in a very limited space. Also it was done for the right reasons and not for the sake of uploading video. I love when the ideas are so good they require next level execution.

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The impact of the recession on online advertising?

Ah Dr Recession. For a small shop like Tuskluv this has brought on both positives and negatives. For one, a lot of companies felt the need to advertise and try to connect with their audience in these rough times. Being a small shop we got a lot of business because we could negotiate a lower price. But at the same time, on the other side of the spectrum, a lot of bigger companies that previously did not offer interactive started getting into the mix in order to generate more. For the most part we were in a good spot because we started working with a lot of these companies as their creative shop for their interactive needs. The negative being that this nurtured a whole new level of companies that positioned themselves between us and the client. Needless to say that’s another tier you need to go through when billing. Clients started paying a little bit later than usual and then their clients as well. So when it trickles down, my company was basically the last one down the chain to get paid. This brought on some heavy cash flow problems that were almost impossible to deal with and forced my already small shop to get even smaller.