The UFC campaign was created using “Eyeblaster Workshop for Adobe Flash”

An Interview with Aaron Buchanan, Technical Director at RED

What is the culture like at Red? At RED, we’re constantly challenging ourselves to get the best concept and the most powerful execution. We put a lot of effort into getting our client’s message across - we apply storytelling and cinematic elements; we’ll try to create a feeling or an emotion, and it has to give the end user an interactive experience. We always try to reinvent our creative to meet the unique needs of each new project - and when the idea is hot, it’s worth that extra effort.

You just finished a large campaign for UFC, where you used Eyeblaster Workshop for Adobe Flash^TM. UFC is a great client of ours - they have an exciting brand and are always looking for something fresh. On this campaign, we delivered that by using AfterEffects to create video that we streamed into Flash. We used Eyeblaster Workshop to assemble our ads and bringing these two powerful tools together within a flexible platform. The workshop allows us to streamline the process of producing high‐end rich media units. By being able to control more of the details ourselves, we’r able to produce higher quality work in less time. Once we got our hands on the workshop, we knew that we’ be able to save a few days from our schedule. That’s a big deal, because what we do with that extra time improves the quality of our work. The UFC video executions went very smoothly -we were able to focus on the creative challenges and spend less time with production. It was a big value for us to be able just pick up a tool and work with it right away.

Why do you use Eyeblaster for your advanced rich media campaigns? We work on large‐scale campaigns, with a lot of moving parts, and occasionally very short timelines. Getting these campaigns up and running is mission critical, and we need to deliver on time. The Eyeblaster platform is a great tool that allows us to simplify campaigns with many contributing agencies, channels, regions, etc. Since we deliver almost all of our work via the Flash platform, having a tool based within the authoring environment allows us do develop, test, and publish units very quickly. We do our own QA ‐ so having the ability to preview sync ads, for instance, is huge. It’ our task to make sure things work. With Eyeblaster, we have everything we need at our fingertips. Eyeblaster services are among the best out there, and I know they’ll be there for us when we need them. They’re always introducing new products and features.

How do you keep yourself up to date? Technically speaking, I read blogs, books, and I love a well‐documented API. Creatively, I’m a big fan of looking at what’s around me in the offline world. I love going out to the movies, and watching the titles to see how the big budget studios create new stuff.

From the familiar environment of Flash, you can now build, preview, share and upload ads while seamlessly collaborating with any number of team members or freelancers. There’s no coding, no fretting over technicalities, no guesswork. It works the way you work. With Eyeblaster Workshop v2.0, you can create it, see it and share it, all with a few clicks of the mouse.


We’re engaging with our clients to test new developments and influence the Eyeblaster Workshop roadmap. I recently spoke with Elliot Owen, a London based designer at Mediacom, who put the new Eyeblaster Workshop v2.0 through a rigorous beta test.


How often did you use the Workshop?

Every ad I build, I use it - so in the last couple of weeks, I’ve been using it all day. I’ve got a big campaign coming up, so there are 15, 20 different ads. Working on them all using the Eyeblaster Workshop.

Did you find that it saved you time?

Having the EBA files and recent projects listed, and being able to open files with one click is a big time saver. Previewing sync ads is certainly helpful and a timesaver.

What types of ads did you use the Workshop for?

The campaign I’m working on right now includes quite a variety of formats. Skyscrapers, leaderboards, banners and MPUs for MSN. It’s very heavy on video. There’s also one mini-game. Quite a few of those are synchronized, home page takeovers, things like that. I used Workshop for all of it.

Did you find the advanced video features helpful?

Absolutely. Some of these ads have multiple videos, so being able to add the assets in and having the numbers link up - and being able to test everything on my machine is much faster. So I can load videos and add videos to the ad unit simultaneously - with multiple video loader components.

Was the ability to share within the team and send previews to the client something that you used?

We have sent previews to the client, and I generally will send the link that Workshop generates to my project client. Those URLs are very useful to send to the client. If I build an ad and pass it to someone else, I will compile and bundle within Workshop and pass it over.

And how about uploading and source file bundling?

I bundle and upload ads directly from Flash, and it saves a lot of time. It does quick error-checking and makes sure you have all the components - the backup GIF in there, etc. And to sign-in and upload from the machine is very helpful.

Any other thoughts?

It’s certainly been very helpful, and managing the larger campaign has been useful as well, as far as organizing the different ads and different files. When you make an ad, you have the folder there, and it puts the Flash files into the folder - it saves time and keeps things organized. If you don’t have that, it’s easy for things to get confused, and for files to end up in different places. It’s quite a big time-saver.

For more info on Eyeblaster Workshop 2.0, visit http://www.eyeblaster.com/products/workshopforflash.asp .

Request Eyeblaster Workshop MXP

Gefen Lamdan, Sr. Product Planning Manager | Creative Eyeblaster

We’re all looking for that holy grail: the ability to grab users’ attention in an engaging, non-intrusive way.  Rich media these days is all about that fine balance: effective engagement with minimal intrusion.  That’s where Mouse Tracker comes in.

By visually responding to user movement, the user’s movements become part of the ad creative.  In this way, users are almost “automatically” engaged.  And, as Mouse Tracker stays within the confines of the ad real estate, it pulls users in without encroaching on page content.

In studying Mouse Tracker best practices, we’ve found some innovative and strategic uses.  Mouse Tracker wins the users attention in first tracking the mouse position.  Following up, moving “with” the user and avoiding the traditional looping - while adding a new, appealing visual interaction - is highly successful.

Here are a few of my favorite Mouse Tracker ads:

• The funky Virgin Virtually Vegas Campaign, by Lean Mean Fighting Machine, UK




• This very-meta NSPCC ad by Avenue A | Razorfish plays on self-referential computer jokes




• If you want more subtlety, sometimes just a slight gesture will do - like this ad by Profero UK for Channel 4.




• To implement some of these yourself, check out the Eyeblaster mouse tracker component.

Gefen Lamdan

Sr. Product Planning Manager | Creative Eyeblaster

gefen.lamdan@eyeblaster.com