Tag Archives: experience

Experience the Experience! How we digital agencies explain what we do.

So are you ready to ‘experience the experience’? Because you will quite often hear it from us digital agencies: We have to get the brand-, product- and service-experience right. The ‘customer experience’ and its special subset, the ‘digital customer experience’. Plus the one you might be more familiar with, the ‘user experience’. These three ‘experiences’ have spawned popular new job titles. They are combinations of ‘user interface’ (UI), ‘user experience’ (UX) or ‘customer experience (CX) with an appendix of -designer, -architect, -strategist or -developer. Apart from job titles, this experience work is also producing new deliverables like ‘experience maps’. Below you see a simplified example we created, describing the sometimes emotional roller coaster customers go through when buying into a brand and product.

Screen Shot 2014-02-13 at 5.55.54 PMOther examples of our digitally enhanced experience work is our The Most Powerful Arm

Reactivework01

or AustralianOpen’s Social Shack.

out 2

It’s interesting to look at how agencies and digital product companies describe this ‘experience’ offering in their own marketing. Our own Reactive site throws back no less than 548 search results when you look for ‘experience’. Screen Shot 2014-02-13 at 6.30.00 PM Have a read of what other firms use to describe very similar things:

  • DT Digital – “We create Customer Experiences that connect brands with people.”
  • Razorfish AU – “The Digital Experience Marketing Agency” with their international unit of “Emerging Experiences
  • Nurun – “We apply human-centered design to help businesses thrive in a connected world”
  • Huge – “We create experiences that transform brands, grow businesses and make people’s lives better”
  • Grow – “Grow is a digital agency with a passion for big ideas, little details, and a better approach to creating world-class interactive experiences”
  • Method – “We design integrated brand, product and service experiences”
  • MercerBell – “We’re a Customer Experience Agency”
  • eConsultancy– “Customer experience is the single most exciting opportunity for 2014”
  • Adobe – “Measure and optimize digital experiences to accelerate marketing  performance”
  • Sitecore – “Sitecore is a platform for driving one-on-one engagement at every touchpoint. Know every customer. Own every experience.”

But don’t forget to get in touch with us at Reactive first, after all,  548 ‘Experience’ search results don’t lie.

B is for Bruce, V is for Volume

In mid 2000, so almost 11 years ago, I and two other creatives in Germany got invited to create a digital art work for the exhibition Berlin – HongKong. We contributed the most logical thing: an ‘ultra-interactive KungFu Remixer’. We called it “I know where Bruce Lee lives” (a nod to the TV Personalities‘ lyrics of ‘I know where Syd Barrett lives‘).

I know where Bruce Lee lives - by SKOP

I know where Bruce Lee lives - by SKOP

It essentially was a very early mash-up piece, using snippets of Bruce Lee films (animations, fight sounds and loops of the score by genius Lalo Schifrin). Particularly entertaining for us was the hammy gangster dialogue snatched from the German dubbing of said martial arts films. Sprinkled into the mash-up were Chinese characters that mimic some of the sounds you hear. In order to get these right we had asked a Chinese language professor for help – to this day I have no idea what they really mean (see a trailer for the app here).

I know where Bruce Lee lives - by SKOP

I know where Bruce Lee lives - by SKOP

The playful interactivity comes through using your keyboard to ‘make music’ with Kung Fu. There is a longer list of the international festivals and exhibitions (from the US, Brazil, Spain and Holland to Hongkong and Australia) it was part of.

To this day ‘I know where Bruce Lee lives‘ ranks among the top Google search hits for the Asian hero. I still receive emails of people discovering and liking it, among them many martial arts fans but also musicians such as Krautrock-god Holger Czukay of CAN fame. The latest feedback email came through last week, from one of the members of ‘V for Volume‘. They are apparently a very popular Chilean band, coincidentally sporting some half-German members in their line up.

It is kind of hard to see the Bruce Lee connection in this video, maybe I should brush up on my Spanglish. But despite this, it never ceases to amaze me how the internet connects us in different ways at different times with our various tastes and aesthetic sensibilities. Double Rainbow all the way.

Save friendships – hyper target your facebook updates

I sometimes I feel like a semi-professional Facebook updater (mostl of the posts for Holler), sometimes I feel like an amateur. I have been posting things that were relevant to some friends and bordering on spam for others. As an expat I find it even more difficult to judge whether both my social circles can find common ground beyond web memes and global politics. And what language should they be written in? What do a former German school mate and a current Australian colleague have in common? I reckon not a whole lot, except knowing me. I suspect many have already hidden me because of lacking relevance to their lives.

But help exists in the shape of limiting the visibility of updates. I had known about the feature but not used it much. So when I stumbled upon Crystal Castles and wanted to share their tour dates (the band is bypassing Down Under as many international acts do) I chose to hyper-target the update. Written in German and only visible to those Berlin-based friends I considered to be into Crystal Castles style of music.

Crystal Castles facebook update

If you want to be this flexible, the posting procedure gets a bit silly (or maybe I have overlooked a more convenient way). See below the two parallel windows that allow selecting relevant names/friends.

Selective updates

But to keep the value of facebook up, I fear I must not only do selective reading but also practice considered sharing. Or else I might get paid out by friends in Pringles latest social content campaign “Help the Oversharers“.

Holler plays Fluoro Pong at Bondi Sizzle

If you are in Sydney this weekend, don’t miss Bondi’s first Community Festival called Sizzle. Holler’s Kerry Edward designed the blog/site and contributed a series of illustrations to the Garage Art Exhibition. His series is called “Growth” and reflects on his upcoming fatherhood.

Growth by Kerry Edward

Growth by Kerry Edward

My colleague and frequent collaborator Lukasz Karluk has created a funky interactive game called “Fluoro Pong“. Using colour recognition, the game’s virtual paddles are steered by lifting real rectangular prisms in fluoro colours. Additional face recognition maps a still photo of one of the players onto the playing ball.

Holler flyer at Bondi Sizzle

Holler at Bondi Sizzle

So come on down this Sunday and lift a fluoro paddle and a beer with us.

Fluoro Pong playing at Holler

Fluoro Pong playing at Holler

Web goes Mobile… no, honestly.

After you have been to a few “latest-buzzword-on-the-mobile” events, it is likely you become a bit jaded. Hype after hype wave breaks onto our shores but we are still missing a sizable audience changing its behaviour. Where is the move from voice and SMS towards mobile data usage (MMS, email, IM, WAP, web, widgets)? Last night, Mobile Monday‘s panel handed out some refreshingly honest opinions without the inflated projections.

Instead the talk was more about:

  • what will constitute a truly mobile digital experience (immediate, identifiable/personal, always-on, context, location, social graph)
  • that Mobile 2.0 will therefore be different from but build upon Web 2.0 (like TV built on theatre and radio, web on print and TV)
  • the (slow) arrival of pricing models that are less about “bill shock” and more about “worry free use” aka data flat rates
  • carriers hopefully becoming “smart pipes” and sharing traffic and customer data, thereby helping to combine and improve mobile experiences
  • developing widgets which don’t require a browser in an open-standards-platform
  • social networking as one key experience defining 3G (like voice did for 1G and SMS did for 2G)
  • MoMo panel
    Mobile Monday’s panel, picture taken with iPhone by Halans

    Speakers included Gary Chan from Forum Nokia, Oliver Palmer from TigerSpike, Oliver Weidlich from Ideal Interfaces and Jennifer Wilson from NineMSN. Mobile Monday’s own wrap up can be found here.