Dayvid Iannaci, Owner, Ghost Agency


Your idea about the perfect working day: It has to include new business. It’s all about the hunt and the kill. It could be a new concept, throwing Ideas against the wall and getting the big idea. This can apply to old business as well.

Your muse best comes when:  Hm, it’s really hard to say.  It could be a leaf falling off the tree, sour milk in the coffee or anything really.  Music can really get me in the right mindset but it has to be something without lyrics. I don’t know, but something about music with lyrics throws me off when I’m working.  I like ambient, although it could be some techno, but nothing too heavy, some classical or even some of the longer Floyd instrumental cuts can work.

What needs to be changed/improved in order to achieve ultimate engagement with users:  We’re heading towards a place where users are providing the content they want. They are the ones generating content. Look at Wikipedia. I think that’s the perfect example. It’s all about the interactive product and the user. We’ve reached a place where it is the user who creates products. Some aren’t professional and some are. It’s a wide open arena.  

The user generated content creates a great opportunity for dialogue. The technology is there, the limit is not the technology. It’s just a matter of seizing opportunities.

Favorite Brand Experience:  My favorite was for the campaign we ran for the Hulk movie. The things we were able to do with this campaign were impressive. We were able to schedule opt-in sound for the media buy and have the campaign be very disruptive, all in a good way. It was something they haven’t seen before. The screen shake was unexpected. It was a good one.

Kau Sern Hieu, Strategy Director at Starcom IP Malaysia (digital arm of Starcom MediaVest Group)

Your muse best comes when:  I’m in the shower. In fact, my best ideas come whenever I can clearly hear my thoughts - no distractions, no phones. I could be swimming and a eureka moment happens!

Your idea about the perfect working day:
- Start off my day with a set of breakfast for champions (eggs, sausage, toast and tea)
- Everything on my daily to-do list gets checked off.
- No emails or calls from my finance department.
- My team, especially the juniors, takes ownership and rise up to the challenge.
- I come across a kick @$$ strategy to solve an immediate problem. Bonus if it comes from my team!
- Being an inspiration to others and vice versa.

What needs to be changed/improved in order to achieve ultimate engagement with users?  Clearly defined engagement metrics even before the campaign begins. For this to happen, agency and client needs to work closer. If not, we will fall back to the unreliable click-through rates.
Also, the creative agency needs to start thinking from a user’s perspective rather than constantly coming up with intrusive ad placements ideas in the name of impact.  In summary, my perfect engagement campaign should be able to influence purchase or lead to purchase. 
 
Favourite brand experience:  HP TouchSmart PC

In terms of creative, it’s very fresh. Good use of 3D animation without over indulging in it. Plus, it makes full use of the space given especially when a user launches the tab functions.  Speaking of tabs, the tabs are very clearly labeled. More importantly, it’s functional and straight to the point. Best of all, it has a tab which leads users to a purchase opportunity.

Ideas for what could have been improved:
- To have a data capture form to capture leads eg. “I am interested. Please call me.”
- Users able to download a pdf file of the specs, right off the banner itself.

Nicola Rovetta (nickname: Woccia), Creative Director at Agency.Com

Your idea about the perfect working day: It’s when good ideas pop up from informal conversation, or innocent activities become business ideas.

Your muse best comes when: Driving, or in the shower.

What needs to be changed/improved in order to achieve ultimate engagement with users:  For me, ultimate engagement runs through digitalisation and “medialisation” of all the devices (outdoor, in-house, in-car, who knows?). So first, countries like Italy must overcome the digital divide. Too many people are not accessing or using computers or broadband the right way, and sure they prefer watching television! The second issue is that the infrastructure problem is not only physical, but also a cultural problem: publishers often prefer doing the same old things over and over again rather than experiment or support new media or new solutions. And last but not least, agencies and clients must have the courage to dive into the conversation, because each minute that you wait thinking about how to cope in the digital world is a year you lose in evolution. You know, as I often say to customers, in the digital world years are like dog’s years: one is worth seven!

Favorite Brand Experience:  Despite all rich videos about these days, what comes to mind first is Hancock’s “whale-throwing” game - part game, part widget.  For me, it is the right-sized addictive experience.

Tom Buchok - Interactive Producer at Preston Kelly

My muse best comes when:  Listening to music.  When I’m jamming out to Rhapsody with my Sennheiser HD-280 headphones ,  I’m able to get my best work done. Lately, I’ve been listening to Delta Spirit and Pela .  I’m always looking for new tunes; if you have any recommendations, leave a note in the comments section.

Your idea about the perfect working day: We’ve got this great coffee shop, Taraccino, near the agency.  Good days start with a large coffee from there.
As an interactive producer, the perfect work day includes any of the following:
- Helping scope out a brand new online strategy
- Working with my developers to solve a tough problem
- Seeing fresh, innovative designs that accomplish all of the campaign objectives
- Getting everything done early

I’d say that’d be a pretty good day!

Your favorite interactive campaign : 

 Lean Mean Fighting Machine’s “Non-Stop Fernando” for Emirates.  The concept was brilliant - Fernando talks for 14:40:00 about his home town of Sao Paolo, the amount of time of the new direct flights from Dubai to Sao Paolo.  The rich media banners did a fantastic job of delivering the idea - and tied-in perfectly to the campaign website.  Social media was used to connected to Fernando, as well.

And the attempt to get a Guinness World Record was a smart add-on.  In terms of design, there is a nice continuity between the overall campaign concept and the continuous  hand-written-looking motif.  It is no surprise such a great campaign came from Lean Mean Fighting Machine - they are rockstars in the digital space.



Other sites I visit for inspiration:  By far, the most inspirational site for me is Bannerblog .  The founders and site moderators are dedicated to finding the absolute best online ads and posting them to Bannerblog.  I visit Bannerblog often because they keep it fresh, interesting and current.  It’s a great site.  (And also where I saw Non-Stop Fernando for the first time.)

Some other sites that I find helpful are: A List Apart,- Gary Vaynerchuk’s site,  37Signals’ blog - Signal vs. Noise ..and all of the wonderful people I follow on Twitter give me inspiration daily

Changes that need to take place in the industry: Dean Donaldson wrote a post on this blog about moving away from click-through rates - I think that’s an important aspect to the evolution of the online ad industry.

I think the industry is doing a good job working towards online-specific content, and I want to see that continue.  It’s no secret that content meant for a :30 spot or full-page magazine insertion doesn’t necessarily translate into online advertising. Recently, I’ve been thinking about the publishers’ role and I’d love to see some comments about it:

Publisher websites need to do more to improve display advertising.  There are just too many websites out there selling low-impact, derelict placements.  How can advertisers feel confident about their media buys if many sites aren’t optimized for ad visibility and engagement?

Over time, we’ve seen major players improve their sites: CNN.com is a good example.  They’ve added that 336×280 placement to their homepage over the past 18 months or so.  That’s smart.  Silicon Alley Insider has similar, high-impact 300×250 placements on its site.

The smaller sites need to follow this lead. I see too many sites selling placements that are 728×90s in the footer, or 160×600’s below-the-fold, etc.  While these smaller sites may offer nice targeting - especially geographic - the media they’re selling isn’t as powerful as it could be.

What do you think?

David Carr

Head of Interactive

Chemistry Communications Group Plc

 Your inspiration best comes when:  When you’ve got a really rich problem to solve that will let you explore interactive media’s real potential - when you can move away from advertising into storytelling. When you’re challenged to create something useful, usable and delightful that engages people and helps them connect, either functionally or to show-off across real and digital spaces. When it’s about creating a useful embodiment of the brand that affects the real world, not a metaphor or a distraction, not a tool with a logo. Then you’ve got to turn-off the screens and get out in the real world with real people and the inspiration will hit you. Play more and this is the best job in the world.

• Your idea about the perfect working day:  When we have the space to break out of role silos and work together. When we can start forgetting who is a designer and who is a developer, who is a creative and who is a planner, and start nurturing a really rich idea that needs everyone’s help. When despite the last minute hiccups, amends, blue-screens of death and races against crazy deadlines you can go home at the end of the day and say “WE made that, and it’s bloody brilliant.” Oh and a lie-in would be nice.

Your favorite interactive campaign and why:  My favorite interactive campaign changes almost daily generally accompanied by the feeling of “I wish we’d done that” or “damn it, we were doing that, let’s start again”. But the campaign that is currently very much in the “I wish we’d done that” box is Barbarian Group’s CNN T-Shirt Headlines campaign.

CNN.com’s T-Shirt Headlines Project used small T-Shirt icons next to headlines to draw peoples’ attention to their improved video offer. Clicking on the icon would lead them to a custom t-shirt shop where they could purchase a t-shirt with the headline on it. The shirts were emblazoned with the “I just saw it on CNN.com” tagline, along with the date and time of the headline. People could choose shirts with headlines they liked, were appalled about, found surreal, or just whimsical by actually interacting with the videos. It also spread the wider word as people wore the shirts, gifted them to their friends or broadcasted their purchase on their Facebook News Feed.

Brand Reality Creative like this is organic not viral, it has more usage loops and can be used by people for self-representation. It nurtures and incentivises invites and it cares about the retention rate rather than chasing installs through brute force. It is not the archetypal one hit widget - the type that cluttered up your old Facebook Profile page, the Viral App that is essentially spam.

David also recently worked on the innovative Emirates campaign:  Emirates is the only long haul airline to fly from 6 UK airports. Despite this most people still associate mid and long haul flights for business or pleasure with Heathrow or Gatwick. Miles Better used geographic and behavioural targeting coupled with in-advertising mapping to encourage people to fly from their local airport. It demonstrated the ease of getting there by plotting a route and showed how quick the trip would be. The campaign was part of the 6 UK Airports strategy that combined brand led comms, direct response offers, and even brand utility applications to increase passenger numbers for Emirates flights at Newcastle, Birmingham, Glasgow and Manchester.