If you have a minute or so to spare check this site out for a really cool all-out amazing flash experience. Beautifully done, but there is some waiting required, but well worth it if you have the time.
This is a very nicely designed site. Plain and simple, yet effective in the right area’s. It’s designed with the user in mind, not to blow them away, but to serve them quietly yet elegantly. Make sure you don’t miss the opening animation.
I don’t have time to write an epic, but all I can say is ‘thanks’ to Fiona Phillips from Cybercellar.com and Andrew Smith from Yuppiechef.co.za for their awesome delivery on how to set up an e-commerce business.
Thanks also to all those who attended. I met some fascinating people last night, and, as usual, it was great to put faces to some of the bloggers out there.
Thanks also to our sponsors Perdeberg for the great wine (not a drop was left at the end of the 2 hours!) and 24.com for hosting once again.
Here is last month’s video of Rui Esteves’s talk on Building a Brand in South Africa.
Check this site out! It is so funny! Great designed as well. Love the sound effects and preloader animations. Very nice.
Not sure about this. The changes to Facebook’s layout seem too small to drastically up my usability, and too big not to be annoying. Maybe it’s just me, but it’s taking some getting used to.
[Update: Ok, so it took a day: It's growing on me.]
For those of you up bright and early in the morning you may have seen World Wide Creative’s very own TV celeb, Fred Roed, donning his customary Hawaiian shirt on CNBC Africa. Following on from his Carte Blanche cameo he was asked to talk about web marketing strategy for African business.
Fred was asked to suggest a possible online strategy for a fictitious business. Breaking the strategy down into four key steps, he outlined a possible route of attack for a Kenyan Taxi service. The key steps were:
1) Understand your brand and be consistent and pervasive with it.
2) Set up your online presence
3) Engage with your customer, both online and offline
4) Keep it active!
Despite the growing gloom in the industry, advertising still works.
I’ve heard in meetings recently that the time has come to start casting the net out wider and cutting advertising budgets. I think in some cases this is true (and plays nicely into our hands being a web marketing company) but to believe that the advertising industry is dead, as some pundits have called it, is foolish.
Advertising is not dead.
It’s not going to die anytime soon.
Marketers must remind themselves that great marketing is all about initiating and maintaining profitable relationships. Figure out how your brand message is different, and then punt it on every channel where you’ll find your target market.
It’s great, and critical, to venture into other channels, but remember that consumers still respond to the same things: authenticity, humour, intelligence. This can be done through all the new media available, but if your key demographic is still reading the news and watching TV, it’s silly to ignore it.
In closing, bear this in mind. According to Nielsen’s report ‘Trust in Advertising’ in Nov. 2007, half of UK consumers, 55% of American consumers, and a whopping 64% of South African consumers still trust advertising.
One of World Wide Creative’s success stories, Verity was highlighted on the prime time television programme Carte Blanche this evening. It’s a great example of how a good web marketing strategy with great determination and even greater belief can reap rewards.
For those concerned about Freds condition, please bear in mind the camera puts on 20 pounds but unfortunately the Hawaiian shirt was his own choice.
And something different! This is a great innovative ad for a dutch department store. Just wait a couple of secs for it to load and enjoy. Personally I think one or two little touches more could make it even better (the url in the call to action should be a link and can be designed better ), but still great ad!
Check out this site as a nice example of good design, combined with functionality. Or just for some great t-shirts! It’s also fun to vote for the best design, or to comment on the different designs.
This is a really fun site!These guys are just showing off their amazing skills by creating a small but beautiful world where you can choose your own character and exploring by walking or flying, or just chatting to the other characters, or boxing them, or dancing with them. Great fun!
In May, we enjoyed the entrepreneurial ramblings of Charl Norman and Eric Edelstein as part 1 of our “Netrepreneurs” series (watch the video here).
Now, with part 2 scheduled for the end of this month, we’ve asked two of South Africa’s best exponents of e-commerce to speak at the upcoming Heavy Chef Session on 30th July.
Fiona Phillips, CEO Cybercellar.com
First up, we have Fiona Phillips, CEO and founder of Cybercellar.com, one of South Africa’s first and biggest online shopping platforms. Fiona started the company waaayyy back in 1998, and has a wealth of knowledge about surviving and thriving through bumpy times in the tech sector.
Cybercellar.com is the fifth biggest etailer in the country, with further growth expected as Fiona starts to expand into North America at the end of this year.
Andrew Smith, Co-founder of Yuppiechef.co.za
Our second speaker is Andrew Smith, co-founder of the coolest kitchen store in the country, Yuppiechef.co.za.
Yuppiechef has won acclaim across dozens of magazines and newspapers across the country, and is the recipient of multiple awards, including E-commerce Site of the Year (Home & Garden Category) in 2007, and Sunday Times Food Awards ‘Entrepreneur of the Year’. Andrew is the techie in the Yuppiechef team. He’s in charge of the systems and architecture, as well as figuring out how all the various pieces of the puzzle need to fit together.
Marketing and Technology
Fiona will kick off the proceedings with an introduction on how she set up Cybercellar.com, focusing on the business / marketing side of e-commerce.
Andrew will then look at the technical and logistical side of things, digging into the behind the scenes stuff no one thinks about when scheming up their netrepreneurial world-domination plan.
Want to attend? You’ll have to cough up, big time!
Cost:
* Petrol to get there: roughly R400 to drive 10kms there and back.
* Phone calls asking for directions around Green Point: about R10 (on Vodacom)
* Bandwidth downloading videos of the event afterwards: about R100 (on one of Telkom broadband packages)
* Cost to attend: Priceless (er, free.)
Date: 30th July
Time: 5:30pm to 7pm
Venue: 3rd floor, 24.com building in Green Point
Drinks: Wine and snacks sponsored by Perdeberg Winery
If you’re keen to come, please email Rowan at worldwidecreative.co.za or give Rowan a call at the World Wide Creative studio 0861 932226.
I know we all hate spam but sometimes you have to admire the creativity and thought that goes into some of the subject titles. I must admit, I’ve never been inclined to click on “get your viagra today” or “grow your schloong to extra lengths”, but today I had one sent through that I just had to click on:
“Grow a kangeroo in 2 weeks”
Brilliant! And for a moment I even let my mind wander into the realms of thinking about having a baby kangeroo hopping around my flat and the two of us staying in with Pizza and watching Rocky IV on Friday evening.
Imagine my disappointment when I clicked through and all I got was a link to some medication that would “upsize my organ”. At least the viagra spam is selling what it says it’s going to sell.
Anyways, I thought I would open it up to all the heavy chefs out there to check through their spam with a creative eye this week and see what other classic subject lines are out there.
Mike
Fred
Paul
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