Tag Archives: reactive

Tractor Design School

If you lead an agency or marketing department, you know what the bane of our industry is: it is starved of really good digital talent. Talent that can fuse genuine, explosive creativity with systemic thinking. The ‘systemic’ part means that these people know a lot about and can use existing digital formats, e.g. media, video or social content. And then combine these two realms to create new, innovative solutions.

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One of our new recruits at Reactive actually took a course in Digital Design at Tractor last year, a school established to address this lack of creative, digitally-savvy newcomers. And this year, with help from us and some other industry heavyweights from places like DT, R/GA and MentallyFriendly, Tractor is growing up to become an accredited school. Some of the sessions will again be led by one heck of an inspirational teacher-posse, in the shape of my colleagues Gabriel, David and myself.

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Additionally raising Reactive’s profile as a place of excellence for digital creativity is my mate Tim Kotsiakos, ECD of Reactive in Melbourne, on the advisory board.

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If you want to invest into your own career, sign up. Courses start March 3. If you already know a lot, why don’t you give back and offer your help in the shape of talks, playing host or other course support? Those digital superstars of tomorrow won’t grow on trees you know.

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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

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or AustralianOpen’s Social Shack.

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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.

Take a Break for PauseFest

Only sometimes do I wish I resided in Australia’s OTHER city, aka Melbourne. PauseFest is one of those reasons. Apart from its good branding and art work, it features delectable content and experiences.

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Continuing their strong momentum from 2012,  PauseFest features everything from cool installations, games, music, animations and interactive design to creative panels about startups and the wider digital industry. Under the title ‘Masters of the IndustryReactive’s co-founder Tim O’Neill will panel it out with some other Melbourne luminaries. Among them my friend and ex-colleague Dave King from The Royals and Erminio Putignano (ex FutureBrand, now PUSH Collective).

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Check out all the speakers here and get your tickets here.

Content Marketing for WeightWatchers

Among our latest work at Reactive is fresh content marketing for WeightWatchers.

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Understanding weight issues and weight loss as well as making healthier choices in your life has become a critical issue for Australians. By many statistics we rank as one the heaviest nations in the world. And that is tons away from our self-perceived ‘beach-bronzed surfer chicks and dudes’ ideal. Check out the various exercise tips, recipes and psychological advice in the University of Incredible or as a series of presentations on the WeightWatchers Slideshare account.

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YouTube videos and live events like Google Hangouts and Twitter chats with WeightWatchers experts complement the offering.

6 in 6 - sneaky workouts at work-1 Why Stress Is Like A Ninja_16x9-22 Why Stress Is Like A Ninja_16x9-08 Flatter your figure-01 WWS036 - Awaken the Incredible You in Minutes_v015 Daily Distractions & Sneaky Saboteurs_v57 WWS036 - Breakfasts Not Borefests_v0216 WWS036 - Breakfasts Not Borefests_v024

Web Directions Respond Conference with Reactive

This week, our fearless Creative Technologist Drew Schrauf takes the stage at WebDirections Respond. It’s a “Festival of Responsive Web Design for designers and developers of the multi-device Web”. So it’s basically unmissable – unless you still code in tables or consider responsive publishing some sort of copywriting style. International thought and practice leaders like Brad Frost and Jason Grigsby grace our shores, so snap up one of the last remaining tickets here.

WebDirections

Our relationship with Maxine and John from Web Directions has grown with hosting some pre-conference BBQs and speaking at smaller events like ‘What Do You Know?’ and now continues with our Drew presenting on the tricky subject “Picture Perfect: Tackling the Responsive Image Dilemma”
http://www.webdirections.org/respond2014/#drewschrauf

drewI know how chuffed Drew is to be invited to speak and I am happy that Reactive is able to contribute to such a cutting edge tech event in Sydney.