Quick apologies for not being able to make the Nomadic Marketing Dinner this evening. Thought I would share with you some of the experience of where I went instead (Africa XI vs. Rest of the World XI). Couldn’t miss the opportunity to see Pele:-)
Mike and I are preparing for an all-out siege of new projects. We are still on the lookout for new members to our burgeoning team so if anyone out there thinks they have what it takes, please send us your C.V’s.
As for activity, this week sees some exciting snippets:
We are embarking on the redesign of our blogs - The Heavy Chef and Ideate. Watch this space.
Fred and I have been talking a lot about our marketing strategy for World Wide Creative lately and as such have been planning changes to our Website, The Heavy Chef Project, Advertising and the usual marketing mix. The problem I sometimes have with marketing is the focus it places on selling rather than the buying process. Or should I rather say; the problem I have when I do marketing.
The web has changed dramatically over the last couple of years and the idea of “if they see me they will buy” just doesn’t ring true. The consumer no longer responds to the TV ad by rushing out and purchasing the latest product - in fact they haven’t done that for quite a while now. They are information gatherers, a tribe that absorbs thousands of messages a day, sifts through them sub-consiously and retains what is applicable to them. Each one is an individual, each one choosing to retain that message for a different reason to the next. How then is it possible to put up a sign with a picture of your product and a snappy line that say “we make your dreams come true” going to work?
We have to understand each and every one of our potential buyers and more importantly the process they take to buy our product or service. We need to ensure we are part of that information gathering process so that when they are at the point of saying: “Yep I’m ready to buy now” our product/service is in front of them. To do this we need to intricately understand the route they take, the alley ways and paths they go down, whilst subtly persuading them along the way.
This is much easier said than done as it requires an extreme amount of planning. If we are designing and implementing a web strategy for a client, it is almost impossible to persuade them that 2/3 months worth of analysis, research, brain storming and getting into the minds of their users is required before we can even tell them how there website/blog/web marketing is going to work. The reason being is one still views the web from an “old” marketing perspective: If I place an ad in a paper people will buy my product - if I put up a website people buy my stuff.
I am really looking forward to the next couple of years and seeing how the growth of Web 2.0 changes the way businesses not only think about the web but marketing as a whole.
Maserati’s Reinhart Schwendinger has scored a scoop in last weekend’s Cape Argus. We salute you Reinhart for successfully hogging the media spotlight once again! (Click on the pic to see it fullscreen.)
Verity, the South African singer/songwriter, continues to amaze us with her unflappable desire to achieve her goals. Through the website we created, Verity has sold over 1300 CDs of an album that does not exist. Find out more at www.iamverity.com.
This week is a busy one for the team. These are exciting times for us, and we are looking for some new talent to join the team at World Wide Creative. We are currently looking for the following positions:
Studio Manager: must have experience managing a creative studio. Client Service / Sales: must have experience in an agency environment, must have marketing background.
Projects this week:
We begin the design and development of the website for a new hotel group being launched here in South Africa.
Our team has nabbed the account for one of the country’s top golf estates (more to follow). We will be responsible for the design and development of the estate’s website, intranet and communication systems.
I saw this first on Apple ambassador Guy Kawasaki’s blog first - a trip down Apple’s memory lane. It’s a timeline of their products from the first Apple 1 more than 30 years ago. Amazing - I remember learning to design on the Macintosh LC (1996) at the Technikon Graphic Design School.
We are excited as the new month sets in. Our Heavy Chef Newsletter goes out tomorrow*, which always gets some great feedback - and also announces the upcoming Heavy Chef Session in Cape Town at the end of July. For our UK clients missing out, never fear, Mike is going to be swinging by in August / September to conduct a session then.
We are busy with the following projects:
Finishing up the Cape Nature website - yeeha!
Rocketseed banners for Co-ordination Crew
A blog design for Cerebra for their client, Toyota
Finalising a kickass website for Shonaquip
Starting another kickass website for NH3, an engineering company in Cape Town
Getting cracking on a website for production house, 2Productions along with DZ3.
*Not on our mailing list? Email me and I will add you to our database.
As someone very aware of what you should and shouldn’t do online, I was shocked today to get a phone call from one of my daughters, telling me that she’d just had a text and phone call from someone claiming to be her dad (and the person named her). Unless I’d been sleep-texting or calling, I assumed that it hadn’t been me that called her.
After a bit of digging I found out that she’d been (stupidly) putting her mobile number on some of the social networking sites she uses. Hey presto, some paedo/whatever finds her profile and thinks it’s his birthday seeing a phone number and so decides to ring her up pretending to be me.
Luckily she quickly realised it wasn’t me and hung up and let me know, and she now knows (even though she’s been told countless times) how stupid it is for kids to put their personal details (phone, address, school etc.) on these types of sites.
As some of you will know, I specialise in helping companies/people be highly visible online. The word of warning here though is that the sickos of this world don’t need my types ofkills to find exactly what they’re looking for because the innocence of children does it for them.
We are very proud to announce some new sites going live.
AV Direct First up is AV Direct, a fantastic audio-visual company that we have been working with for the past 12 weeks on their revised web presence. Click here to view the site.
Vladimir Tretchikoff This iconic Russian artist who sadly passed away last year has sold more prints of his work than any other artist in history. World Wide Creative was proud to be picked to create the website in praise of the great man. Click here to view the site (live on 1 July).
Exciting News World Wide Creative won the 4 way tender to design and build the Cape Nature website. The site has over 18000 regular visitors, and is being heavily touted on a Cape-based radio advertising campaign.
On the last Wednesday of every month we run our Heavy Chef sessions at our studio in Sea Point. This is when we get away from our computer screens and actually interact with real people:-)
The topics we discuss are all about making your website profitable. Everything from search engine optimisation through to the importance of branding.
This evening we are looking at how you can use statistics to help you make decisions about your web strategy. Sounds boring (I know) but the food will be good.
The reason I’m posting is because a couple of people have dropped out last minute so there are a couple of spaces available. Usually costing R950 to attend (free for our clients and BNI members) the couple of spaces we now have available are going for free (seeing as its very very last minute). It starts at 5pm.
If you want to attend let me know before 2.30pm by emailing me at: mike@worldwidecreative.co.uk
At World Wide Creative, we have some pretty cool clients, from singers to wine experts - but Reinhart from Viglietti (South African importers of Maserati and Ferrari) has got to be up there. Responsible for the name of this blog, Reinhart is an old mate of ours. He also happens to be the lucky guy who has to market these amazing vehicles in SA. Pictured here is the Ferrari F430, and with a very limited number of these beasts in the world. it was quite something to witness up close and personal. I popped in on Wednesday and took these snaps of Reinhart and his new toy…
I am working with one of our outsourced programmers at the moment and we are trying to put together a budget for a project we are quoting on. He said something that really resonated with me: “The client needs to choose any two points of the triangle”. The points of the triangle being:
1) Quality
2) Cheap
3) Speed
I’m sure for you avid book readers this is probably old news, but I hadn’t heard it before so thought I would share it with you.
World Wide Creative’s Heavy Chefs went on a day-long forward planning session on Friday. Here is a highlight - mainly so that Mike can review his swing…
We’ve been busy lately at the WWC studio. In addition to all the moving and new members, we recently won the contract to redesign the Cape Nature website and we’ve gained a host of great new clients. We’re proud of the design and development work we’re doing now as well. Check out these two new sites recently gone up:
Beautiful Bug: Want something for the wife? Look no further than this luxury lingerie site featuring the best and most affordable underwear in the United Kingdom.
Friday Island: a lifestyle and conference venue up the West Coast of Africa - perfect for those who want to test out some adrenaline-charged activities.
Wed Dec 10 (Cape Town) 'Digital Marketing in 2009' Grant Fleming, David Duarte, Jon Cherry. book your seat Wed Feb 25 (Cape Town) 'Creativity... and why it should be applied to Digital Marketing' Justin Gomes, Andrew Whitehouse book your seat
the heavy chef galleries:
Looking for tasty web stuff? Whet your appetite here...
This is a nicely designed-userfriendly profitable website. I think the option to join as a digimate and then you can advertise old macs etc and other percs is a very cool incentive. I joined. It’s well catered for it’s target audience.
Cool innovative site: the idea is all based around brand exposure. These guys made this site, and invite anyone to send them stuff that they then put onto the site, they then send the people badges with their logo on. So they get brand exposure, as well as the people participating, like a :”scratch my back,I’ll scratch your back” scenario.
Nice and simple design, putting the focus on the work and their talents. Yet easy to navigate and contact them at any point if some great piece of design buys you.
Nicely designed blog and website with the function of creating an online freelance community, to provide advice and support for all kinds of freelancers. This has been done well, resulting in people wanting to advertise, ca-tching!
Very nicely designed site, nice intro, flash loads pretty quick as well, and easy to use navigation and good contact section. One or two elements that can be improved on are: having a skip function with the intro, for if you’ve seen it before and are in a hurry to find some info. Then it would also be nice if you didn’t have to go back to the home page in order to get to the other pages.
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