HEAD BLOG » digital

Digital is not the way forward

Dom — Thu, 09 Dec 2010 08:00:47 +0000

I like big statements. I like the way they can underpin books which promise easy access to money and success. I like the way they can position the issuer as an authority and smooth the path towards consultancy; surely the aim of any high flying member of the intelligentsia.

So I relished a statement made via the Twitter Gods, home to all off-the-cuff and unsubstantiated statements, that claimed all marketing had to figure Digital in any strategy.

Let’s first be clear: I love the possibilities afforded by digital campaigns. Technology is a marketing person’s dream, offering, as it does, a slew of measuring mechanisms to keep all but the most cynical of bosses happy. Digital plugs into many lives and the numbers it reaches increases daily.

It’s not, however, a must in every circumstance.

In fact the only real encompassing statement I stick my neck out on is that there is no “must”.

Let’s talk anecdotes.

Earlier in the year I had a meeting where I was urging a prospective client to do more with digital. We all agreed there was more to be done and it felt great.

Then, almost as a side discussion, I was given an insight into the value of a non-digital campaign.

The reasoning began simply with: not everybody has easy access to the web. And even if they do they won’t have the access you and I have. I’m here twelve hours a day and a web-capable device isn’t far from my hand.

It makes sense.

I don’t work behind a till or in a hospital or any of the many jobs that mean a person can’t access the Internet whenever they want to. Access to media can be restricted to a newspaper in backroom between jobs or over a sneaky brew.

Yet these people still lead consumer lives and companies still have reason to urge them to buy during their break times.

In these digital times when it seems everybody is forever on Twitter or Facebook it is all too easy to overlook these people and, in doing so, overlook the effectiveness of what is now called “traditional” media.

Digital is a way forward, not the way forward.

On the value of ownership

Dom — Fri, 04 Jun 2010 07:00:18 +0000

Hands up anyone who knows someone who buys books because of the way they can compliment a room? Leatherbound or classic Penguin, definitely old and from a worthy writer, the checklist is easy to compile. They add dignity to the space they inhabit and weight to the owner. Buying them and displaying them, perhaps on shelves or perhaps in carefully arranged stacks, is a declaration of taste as the owner looks to impress upon us a holistic approach to interior design.

Many of us shrink from such displays even if we also display our books in such a way. Ours, for starters, have all been read, all loved and bought for the right reasons. We don’t buy art to match the curtains and we don’t buy books to rest between carved, wooden bookends.

But we do like it when others notice our more natural display of bookish taste. That old copy of Oliver Twist was bought second hand and read on holiday. That’s genuine. Dickens is a genius and still relevant today. And yes, we now buy hardback books, special editions where available, signed if possible – not because they look good to others but because they add to the pleasure of reading.

Because there is nothing wrong with collecting.

What is it about owning things that brings such pleasure? We all make our decisions, draw our lines in the sand when it comes to ownership. For some a “serious” book must be real but quick reads could probably be digital. For others all books could be digital but take away our LPs and there will be a ruckus. The pleasure is in the decaying paper, the smell, the scratchy sounds of the stylus, the ritual of purchase and consumption; things come into focus like stars aligning with our self-image.

Is the value, therefore, of a product in the core offering (the words, the ideas) or is it something entirely different, larger? Is it in the way it is wrapped up and presented? Is it in the kudos it bestows upon us? Why do we pay more for nicer packaging and to what level will this be replicated on digital devices? Much space is given over to the “dvd extras” approach but do they add any real value for the customer? Would, in short, the same consumer who might have bought into a physical special edition be persuaded to pay an extra few pounds for some behind the scenes video extras or author journals? Is physical design worth more than digital design?

Look at the chatter surrounding pricing on the iPad vs that of the iPhone. The standard of games on the latter impressed everyone and has shaken the world of gaming. Fully featured games for less than a fiver. Yet when it comes to the iPad people are wondering what is justifying the extra cost. Is screen size enough to charge more and if not how do we really know whether the game has been improved on the iPad?

It’s all a magnificent, personal and rambling subject of course. But as the road to digital downloads becomes as assured as the road to hell, it’s a subject worth considering.

The Mystery of Digital Downloads

Dom — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 08:00:36 +0000

Working with the new breed of developer publisher has been an exciting challenge. In a world of digital downloads how are you going to make your product stand out? Do you confine your promotions solely to the online world or do you learn from companies such as Google and utilise the power of old media and the attention it still attracts?

At Head First we ask all of these questions and help shape the creative campaign to suit the product and the client. With The Mysteries of Little Riddle we have been lucky enough to bring our skills to this issue and create a series of images that are sales focussed.

And luckily there is still great fun to be had in creating real world objects.

The Mystery revealed…

Dom — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 07:00:26 +0000

The launch trailer for The Mysteries of Little Riddle is now live on the internet so I thought I could share it with everyone via the HeadBlog.

[See post to watch Flash video]

This project has been one of the most interesting of the year, not because of the game (which looks fabulous) but because of what it represents.

Video games, generally speaking, are written by “developers” and then published by “publishers” in much the same way as authors and publishers generally work. Big publishers such as THQ, Capcom, EA etc are great at bringing games to market. They provide an expertise of marketing but also they provide the funds necessary to get it, well, published. It takes a lot of money to fund games these days. A lot of money to keep the developer going, a lot to pay out to the makers of the console and then a lot to market it to as wide an audience as possible.

But things are changing.

The easiest example of this taking place can be seen on the App Store (Apple’s online store for it’s iPhone applications). These are beginning to be created and released by tiny teams with virtually no marketing budget. They have a willing audience who are looking to purchase and, for the most part, rely on the brilliance of their design as their best advertisement.

The technology involved means that this approach, for now, is possible.

And it is being followed by other consoles such as XBox Marketplace and PlayStation Network. Increasing numbers of people are opting to buy direct via digital download rather than through traditional retails.

But the rush to digital marketplaces and the compartive ease by which products can be created means that there is now an awful lot of products are being released.

Apple make this a bragging point – something like 100,000 apps are now available through them.

But turn it around and say you have one of the 100,000 apps. You are faced with a problem.

You need to make your product stand out.

Because increasingly we are seeing the big brands make it to the front page. So Jamie Oliver’s cooking app is up there and it’s there not because it’s the best cooking app in the world but because it is easily recognised. It’s a brand.

Which leaves lots of cooking apps, like the one my Mum might write, going cold. Not because they are worse, but because we live in a world where big brands are pushed over better products.

So my Mum now needs to make her cooking app which will actually stir your sauce for you*, stand out.

Which means, well, marketing.

And those one person developer teams might be able to do that on their own or they might need create a streamlined marketing process.

Relentless Software are doing this with Blue Toad Murder Files and Head First have been proud to work on it with them. For us it shows what a knowledgeable agency can do to help make a point of difference because, unlike in the days where all you had to do was place a print ad in a specialist magazine, now you have different issues. Bringing games to market in the era of digital downloads is just as challenging as it was in the days of those old fashioned things called shops.

These days you might not know where your consumer is. They might not be browsing the sites you think they are browsing. They might be watching TV whilst texting. They might be using Messenger whilst listening to the radio.

So you need to be clever. Or cleverer. You need to create advertising which can be passed on. Which is fun and entertaining in its own right and which has a message which can be adapted to suit the medium.

It’s an old-fashioned idea really.

And it still works.

*not even remotely true.

When print gives up the ghost

Dom — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 07:00:46 +0000

There’s been a lot of talk over the years about the death of print. Newspapers have been terrified by it and, in turns, avoid, deny and confront the possibility. Video games seem to be moving away from it, lured by the sultry promises of online advertising and smooth online deliveries through systems such as Steam. Apple have made digital delivery a reality with the App Store and we have all seen, and perhaps experienced, the ease with which new software can be obtained, bypassing the traditional bricks and mortar distribution channels.

There’s little point denying it or fighting it. The future of print and boxed product has changed radically.

So what does that mean for Publishers? And, more importantly, what does it mean for companies such as Head First who are charged with producing packaging solutions for games? Currently we do a lot of work online. Campaigns are thought out in every dimension known to man. We propose a campaign and think how would it work in print, online, PR and how it would play out if it were transferred into a stage show set on ice. It’s a full service offering we have going on around here.

So the change from print to digital wouldn’t, on the surface, change anything. Business-wise at least. We’ve always known that a good idea is a good idea which is flexible enough to work in any medium.

What the change would mean, however, is that packaging would alter drastically. Not because digital delivery don’t require cover illustrations, they do. Cover art can still be seen on music downloads and Apple’s new “reinvention of the 12inch” approach could actually breathe new life into the artform.

But games, as always, are different. Or they like to think they are.

The biggest difference between a musician and a game developer is skillset. Musicians, on the whole, aren’t designers. They aren’t illustrators or photographers. Game developers, on the other hand, have a whole range of skills at their disposal. Including some very talented artists. When we begin work on a game campaign we sometimes get a suite of assets which to either use or draw inspiration from. Some of it is amazing, some of it decidedly GCSE. And you wouldn’t always know it from the skill with which the game it being put together. But it’s getting easier for Developers to believe the skills of a game artist are an easy and cheap way to control their “brand”. As the need to understand the print process lessens, the arguments to use one of the in-house artists become stronger. And sometimes with great effect. Personally I dig the new cover artwork for Borderlands. It’s well executed, eye-catching, uncluttered and has a certain iconography about it that we’d be proud of getting through. The designer or team involved was a great mix of illustration and design.

And I mean “mix”.

Illustration and design are two distinct disciplines. And that’s key to any attempts to create cover art. After the research and the experience stages of pack design comes design. Layout in terms of design can be a very different thing to composition in terms of illustration (just look around at the websites of illustrators and you’ll see how amazing art can be set on the most clumsy, poorly laid out websites).

Let me give you a story.

Many years ago we produced a logo which happened to be 3D. It was for a game that was itself 3D.

During the presentation the client (who happened to be the developer) turned to me and said that if he’d wanted a 3D logo then he’d have got one of his very talented (and they were) 3D artists to do it.

No doubt they could have got the texturing and the lighting finished to a much better standard than we had. But he’d missed the point. The logo wasn’t 3D because we had a new bit of software (in those days it would have been a process to avoid rather than embrace due to the primitive nature of the software). The logo we presented was 3D because that was the right thing to do for that product. It helped project the right set of associations at the time. And that 3D logo was initially designed by someone who understood logo design. That person (our Creative Director, Carl Pugh) had years of experience in designing logos. He had the skill to create a logo type that suited a product, that could become (as Steve Jobs calls them) a gem.

The logo was approved eventually though in its much earlier vector format. It looked distinct enough but it didn’t add that extra polish to the packaging we were aiming for. On a different pack, as a different approach, it would have been perfect.

As we move to more and more digital downloads. As our shelves move from the high street to our phones and computers, the need for more thoughtful, more designed cover art will increase. The browsing experience along with the triggers that draw our attention, will need to be re-examined.

But then we’re back to the merits of the idea coming first.