Digital

Kontor, “Back to Vinyl” Smartphone App.

In an ever increasing digital world bridging the gap between analog and digital can be tough. Coming up with a direct mail piece that grabs the attention of time starved creative directors can be just as hard if not more so. The video below actually dropped on YouTube back in May, but I just got an email about it last night from a friend. Kontor Records, the worlds largest dance label wanted to promote the new Boris Dlugosch to ad agencies.

Rather than send them a promo CD, or an email with a link to MP3 tracks on the album, they created “Back To Vinyl”, a physical record that you play with your smartphone. Housed in a well designed sleeve, that folds into a physical record player, “Back To Vinyl” generated some impressive results for a direct marketing piece. It actually got 71% of the recipients to scan the QR code and activate the player. From that they got a 42% click through rate to the Kontor online store. Not bad at all for direct mail.

Advertisement

Soap Creatives Digital Trend Predictions for 2013.

The future is a tricky hing to predict. If futurist were right 50 years go, we’d all commute to work in flying cars by now. None the less the folks at Soap Creative have released a slide share deck with their predictions for 2013’s digital trends. Below are 13 predictions that cover everything from crowd funding to what is being dubbed eCommerce 2.0. Some things are pretty obvious like the continued rise of 3D printing, some are just emerging like stores tailoring specials/marketing to you based on how you use your smartphone. It’s worth the five or so minutes it takes to read.

Agile Creativity from Google.

If you are a software or web developer you are probably familiar with Google’s “Agile” system of development. If you are in the creative department, you probably aren’t. Google has plans to change all of that with one of their latest ventures “Agile Creativity“, where they take the best Agile practices and apply them to agency workflows.

There are 7 tips and tools on the Agile Creativity homepage that you can apply to your creative process right now, and if you dive deeper into the site there are planning tools, a research library, facts, forums and testimonials that will help your creative team move at the pace of digital as well.

Some of this feels like common sense, some of it is a new approach to creative development. All of it is good to review even if you are using Agile practices in your creative firm right now.

Monday Morning Inspiration. “The Watchmaker” by Dustin Cohen.

I work with pixels, with digital content on a daily basis. The things I create have no physical form, they are simply a display of numbers represented as images on a screen. This doesn’t diminish the creativity that goes into what I do, but over the years it has made me yearn for things made by hand. When I started my career as a designer, everything was done by hand. Even the photo processes used to create a printed page was analog. That longing for the mechanical, the analog, the hands on, has led me in recent years to a greater appreciation of finely crafted items, especially things like watches, clocks, vintage radios and stereo gear, etc.

Last night while perusing the “Made in Brooklyn” series on Vimeo I came across “The Watchmaker”. This is a short film by Dustin Cohen about David Sokosh, a watch maker in Brooklyn New York. Cohen’s short film captures that feeling about the hands on craftsmanship that surrounds the creation of a fine time piece. It captures Sokosh’s passion, and patience that is needed to produce a bespoke Brooklyn Watch. Perhaps it is my longing to spend time creating with my hands instead of a computer that drew me to this film. Then again it could also be the masterful way the short film was shot and edited.

The ironic part is, the film is all pixels, and I am equally drawn to the pixel craft went into making this film.

Be sure and check out the photo essay about the film here.