Every so often a job comes in that stands out from the crowd as being particularly captivating or interesting. Naturally, different jobs appeal to different people but our latest British Library project is right up my straße as a one-time English Graduate.

Our brief is to conceptualise and design a site to support the Library's upcoming exhibition, Evolving English: a showcase of how and why our language has developed and changed over the ages. The magic of the exhibition is that it will be supported by dozens of astoundingly important documents and iconic texts such as Beowulf, Shakespeare folios and the King James Bible and we want to convey this magic in the online experience we are creating.

On the 8th September we are running focus groups at the Library to try and better understand how we can engage with website users through online tools that support the exhibition.

In total we are looking for 20 people who are;

• ‘Creatively cultured’ and open to ideas-based exhibitions
• Ideally, but not necessarily students of English, languages, history
• Between 16 – 40
• Internet Users
• Use a form of social network or other online tool
• Articulate
• Comfortable communicating in English
• Haven’t been to focus group in past 3 months
• Happy working in groups

We will be running 2 sessions with 10 people in each and you will be handsomely rewarded for your time.

Session 1: 9am - 12pm
Session 2: 2pm - 5pm

If you fancy getting involved and can make either of the 2 sessions on the 8th please contact either Michael or myself as soon as possible.

Not only will you be involved in the creation of something compelling, you will also be given more tea and biscuits that you can shake a sizeable stick at.

Boom! It's the Third Thursday of the month. In August we have not learned to line the camera up any better but Mark is wearing a white shirt which is a massive departure from his normal attire. In September we may introduce some colour... baby steps.

Bruna Magor - Our new Finance Director

Other links referenced...

• British Library Evolving English - (holding page)
• Hamleys Toy Shop
• Sarah Beeny's Rise Hall
• Hoxton Hotel £1 Sale

It was only a couple of years ago, when we would get a brief a week to design & build a flash game. These simple games were designed to appeal to the casual gamer, a simple game the can dip into and out of, and share with their friends. Over the past year the market has changed, the “viral game” has remained the territory of the tech savvy, leaving the mainstream to be catered for in a whole new wave of viral social games.  What I am talking about here is the rise & rise of Farmville and how it fits into the life the consumer.

When I told my friends I was writing an article about Farmville, I was met with 2 responses. The first “If you take your iPhone out to water your crops, while we are in the pub, Consider yourself no longer my friend” and the second “Have you got the limited edition silver rainbow baby sheep, which gets your double XP points?... I can send one to you”.  This ‘Marmite’ reaction to Social Gaming is brought on by what is at its core; playing a game, and getting your friends involved. This is seen as negative by the social media “creators” as it’s easy to have your Facebook news feed polluted by the constant “calls to action”  to receive gifts from your friends playing a game that you aren’t.  But it is this emphasis on getting your friends involved has lead to Farmville makers Zynga notching up 235 million users of their games per month, with 65 million coming back every day.

For those of you who have been living under a rock for the past couple of years and aren’t part of that 235 million.  Farmville is a game which is built on the Facebook platform, which has become a social network unto itself.  In this game you can build & tend a virtual farm, doing everything from sowing virtual crops, to rearing virtual animals, to building virtual barns. Users spend their Farmville coins on crops which they can sow,  wait a couple of hours then come back to harvest & sell the crop for which you are paid in Farmville Cash, to repeat the process all over again

But what happens if you want to buy something you don’t have enough Farmville coins for?” I hear you ask... Well this is where Farmville will convert your hard earned and very real Great British Pounds into virtual Farmville coins.  This transaction is currently earning Zynga $1million a day.  Zynga is forecasting to turn over $450m in 2010, this puts Zynga in second position of PayPal’s largest merchant list only behind eBay. The Farmville economy has grown so much that now, more virtual tractors are bought every day than there are real tractors in the U.S.

Facebook are making sure they get their share of the pie, not just by scraping 30% of the top of transactions for these virtual goods, but by accepting almost $100m in facebook ads from Zynga to Advertise its game.

But who are the people spending so much time and money playing these virtual games? The demographic from the game developers shows an even spread of ages, with a slight skew towards female. It is these figures that game developers would like us to believe as they suggest that social games are played by everyone. The anecdotal evidence, however, suggests that this audience’s can be grouped together as passive users of social networks. To these users, social networks aren’t about the usual sharing content with their friends. They aren’t updating their status or engaging conversations. To this audience, Farmville IS social networking. They only really communicate their friends via the game, to send them free gifts… and get their friends to help them to the next level. Farmville has saved this audience for Facebook. Now that their initial interesting in snooping what their friends from high school are doing now has worn off Facebook offers them nothing without social games like Farmville

With so many Farmville users, brands are chopping at the bit (all puns intended) to get involved. The most interesting has come in the shape of Organic food maker “Cascadian Farm” who sell fresh blueberries throughout Canada. They have placed branded blueberry seeds into the Farmville Market so users to buy & grow their own “Cascadian Farm” Blueberries. I haven’t been able to find any stats to prove that these in game sales have effected real sales of blueberries, and I would be keen to know how effective this brand communication is (If anyone has any more information on this campaign please drop us a line in the comments below.)( http://mashable.com/2010/07/22/farmville-organic-blueberries/

A whole host of other brands from Lovefilm to O2, who want to target this market but don’t have products which can be placed into a virtual farm, are now offering Farmville money as a bolt on for the services they are selling. For example when you buy a monthly Lovefilm subscription you can receive 89 Farmville Coins.  Will this style of Bolt on get me to change my mind and switch my mobile contract from T-mobile to O2, or is this just a nice little extra to sweeten the deal? Once again I would like to see the stats and figures on the effectiveness of this style of promotion.

One thing is for sure; with $1.6 billion estimated to be spent on virtual goods this year, the Virtual Economy is expanding at a radical rate. The answers to these questions are going to become more important to both brands and government...can you tax virtual goods?

When full service digital is mentioned do you also think… branding?

I think it might come as a surprise to many of our clients that we frequently get involved in branding identity as well. We have worked with a number of start-up web companies over the years so it often makes sense to evolve the brand identity alongside the digital offering as they are so intertwined. However we are also often asked to also refresh existing identities when we are looking at the strategic direction and positioning of clients, particularly if they see their own future being lead through the web. Here are a few examples.

Pownum

Pownum is a start-up company. They came to us with a name, but little else. The idea they wanted to get across is that there is power in numbers and if enough people share a similar view and air it one place, then they can affect change.

The idea, therefore, was to create something that felt inclusive, a bit fun, but also had that sense that pulling together we can all make a change.

We presented an idea that had a nod to the imagery of revolution and looked a little bit ‘home made’ making it feel like it was something ‘made by the people, for the people’.

Global Poetry System

The Global Poetry System (or GPS) was a project launched by the Southbank Centre and was the brainchild of their artist in residence, Lemn Sissay.

We needed to create an identity for the project that was sympathetic to the Southbank Centre’s brand, but also was positioned as being separate to that. The project relied heavily on user-generated content and so we wanted to create a logo that looked like it could have been made by one of the contributors (ie it looked hand-drawn), with a strong strapline underneath that explained what the system actually did.

Users are invited to upload examples of poetry that they have seen or heard. Much of the content is photos of poetry that has been painted on walls (some might say graffiti), and so we wanted to suggest a hint of graffiti in the application of the identity, too.

Tepilo

Tepilo is a joint venture with Channel 4’s Sarah Beeny. It was important to create an identity that could be used alongside Sarah’s image, but that wasn’t irrevocably linked to her, in case the business was sold to someone else in the future.

The identity needed to look authoritative (we are, after all, talking about most people’s largest asset), but friendly and approachable. We felt that these brand attributes also reflected those of Sarah Beeny.

The main visual element of the site is the multitude of user-generated images. We had to ensure that anything we created wasn’t battling for attention with the users’ own images, about which we had no control. We therefore created a logotype using blacks and greys and used muted blues as a background.

We created a strapline “Sarah Beeny’s smarter way to buy, sell and let your home”, but we kept this apart from the actual logotype.

Poetry Book Society & Poetry Bookshop Online

The Poetry Bookshop is owned by the Poetry Book Society. We were commissioned to redevelop their site bit also to evolve their identity.

For both identities, the audience group were loyal and many had been with them for years. We needed to make sure that we didn’t totally reinvent the identity and alienate the organisation’s loyal user-base.

Instead, we evolved the typefaces and colours, to give it a more up-to-date feel, but one that was instantly recognizable to anyone who had seen the earlier incarnations of their logos.

If you are interested in talking to us about branding please drop us an email on hello@codegent.com or call us on 020 7720 4040.

Can you believe it's already time for another instalment of codegent news for our monthly newsletter Third Thursday? In August we will try and get the camera to line up a bit better! Either that or it will just be Mark on screen (wearing the same jumper) with smart ass quips from David stage left. Thoughts?

A Ferrari Team photo from Jon Nicholson - part of our new photography iPad App

Other links referenced...

• Procurement GPS launches to test bed of users
• Sarah Beeny on Tepilo's Social Media strategy at The British Library Business & IP Centre
  codegent name checked at 1:57!
• BIMA's School's Digital Challenge in conjunction with Channel 4
• Webcam Snapper - A sneak preview of the new site :)
• Sign up for the private beta of Dash

The action packed second video instalment of codegent news for our monthly newsletter Third Thursday. Let us know what you think!

The team do some Circus Skills training!

Other links referenced...

• Our new HR referral scheme - Help us hire, get Cash!
• Stephen Fry tweets about Pownum
• Tepilo featured in HSBC Customer Newsletter
• Google UK adds house-hunting to Maps - The Guardian
• 10 of the Most Inspiring Flash Websites of 2010 - Hoxton Hotel
• UR7s launch the National Sevens Series

You may have seen on our site and in our collective tweets that we are on the hunt for two new people to join our happy throng. This time we are looking for a Senior Project Manager and a Mid-level Python or ColdFusion Developer for the London office.

We are 6 years old now and in that time people have come and gone but in all of the hires we have made there has been one consistent pattern; we have found our best staff through our own networks - i.e. all of you.

To acknowledge that fact we have launched a referral scheme, which means that if you put us in touch with a potential employee and they end up joining us, we will give you 500 English Pounds to do with what you will as a 'thank you'.

You can't say fairer than that!

We are trying something new (and foolish?) this month for our Third Thursday newsletter by putting together a video of codegent news. Just click on the player above to get the lowdown on what the agency has been up to recently and let us know what you think!

Our new office in Bangkok

Other links referenced...

• Our latest web app - Dash
• New launch - Pownum
• New launch - Hoxton Hotel
• David Heinemeier Hansson presents "Rework" - BIMA
• Tools to help publish, monitor & grow your social media presence - Social Media Monday
• To get in touch on our Away Day (Friday 21 May) email support@codegent.com
• Circus Training!
• We are hiring a developer & a senior project manager

There are 2 things that you want to avoid when a user lands on your site; firstly scaring them off with too much copy, secondly not giving them enough information to enable them to use your website or even understand what you do. 

A video is a great compromise; it can explain your proposition in seconds whilst simultaneously increasing accessibility and engagement. Creating, producing and editing a professional quality video seems like a daunting task but in reality, with the right tools, it isn’t as hard as you might think.

We’re going to give you an overview of why video is a valuable asset for any site, and why we believe After Effects is the best product for the job.

The Importance of Video

Why a video? From information-lead films to arty stop motions, video allows direct, fluent and human communication. It could be shown on the landing page of your website and allow you to present your business in an instant. It can also be used to reach out from your site to create buzz around your marketing campaigns. 

Why After Effects?

Improving your video 
There are a myriad of tools that After Effects gives us. It allows us to remove all evidence of camera shakes, increase contrast, modify luminosity to bring out gorgeous colours and so much more. Visual and matting effects can also be applied to improve the look and feel you want to give to the video. Alternative video editing programmes, Premiere or Final Cut can handle most of these improvements just as well but what makes After Effects better is that it doesn’t stop there...

Tracking function, total symbiosis
We can create a multi-layer composition by integrating other videos, photos, texts or vector graphics into your video. Notice I said "integrating", beware, adding is one thing, integrating is another. Thanks to the tracking function, we can follow a point moving on the 'master' video and apply this movement to the new item we have layed on top. From this comes the impression of symbiosis, graphics follow the movement of the camera perfectly, they really feel part of the video.

The Third Dimension
After Effects now takes your video production to the third dimension. The 3D mode allow you to create a virtual camera over your composition, to allow you to change your point of view. You have complete control over this virtual camera, being able to configure the lens length, image area size, and aperture. This powerful tool makes it quick and easy to incorporate several lights with shadows and define their intensity, all of which will take your video new level of dynamism.

High Quality Manipulation 
With After Effects, time can be stretched and/or reversed. But crucially it will also smooth out the jerkiness usually associated with this sort of effect when it is applied with Final Cut or Premier. 

After Effects is integrated
After Effects works seamlessly with other Creative Suite software such as Illustrator, Photoshop (including it’s 3D layers), Flash, Premiere Pro and other QuickTime-based software. You can even import and manipulate audio files and render them in high quality in real time. It is even possible to export the composition from After Effects to Flash, to then make it interactive. Whatever the project needs, this level of integration gives you the flexibility to port your content across different software.

Fit the Web

Be versatile & be connected
After Effects contains an export module which will optimise your video for the web. With a couple of clicks you can export your film to web-friendly formats like QuickTime, AVI or MPEG-4, making it easy to put your video onto your website, blog, Youtube, Vimeo etc.

Mobile accessibility 
The latest version of After Effects integrates mobile-device authoring into its workflow and multi-device previews for most phones and PDAs. With the ever-increasing popularity of smart phones, thinking about how to reach people on their mobiles is becoming a close second to reaching people on their PC's.

Video is a fantastic and popular way to reach and engage with people and any tools that help us do that better get the Codegent seal of approval!

Guerilla Marketing campaign

In a world where people have become almost completely de-sensitised to advertising in any traditional sense of the word, trying to infiltrate people's consciousness is an increasingly impossible task. Smart advertisers recognised that the way to combat this apathy was to get their message into places where people wouldn't expect to find them, making them impossible to ignore. This practice has become known as 'Guerilla' Marketing.

Guerilla Marketing is all about surprising people, breaking their concentration and making them have an unexpected and emotional reaction.

Pioneered in 1984 by Jay Conrad Levinson, Guerilla Marketing was originally intended to establish a new tactic for small companies to keep up with the big players. Since then even organisations like Nestle, BMW and Unilever have learned to appreciate the advantages of a well developed Guerilla Marketing campaign.

Enough of the theory; here are some of our favourite examples of Guerilla Marketing campaigns:

If you think the first image simply shows a woman carrying a crate of beer, you have been taken in by a successful Guerilla campaign! This crate, looking like it only weighs half a pound, is a shopping bag in disguise.

This should make you smile. Hundreds of people appear to be coming out of a Mini Cooper, when in reality it is a subway exit. Well done, BMW!

Vacuum cleaner producer Miele is proud that their products suck :-)

Mr Clean puts other zebra crossings to shame...

As you can see, Guerilla Marketing campaigns include giveaways so that on closer inspection people realise that they are being advertised to, but hopefully the pay-off in terms of entertainment means they don't mind. The key is to add something unexpected and exciting to a space, not consume it with a corporate and boring advertising message.
Now let's get down to the nitty-gritty. Here are 5 golden rules, which you should keep in mind when creating your own Guerrilla Marketing campaign:

1. Don't forget to define your goals
Although Guerilla Marketing is all about creativity and the element of surprise, it still needs to be planed thoroughly. You still need to know what to do, where to do it and what you want from it.

2. Know your audience
Guerilla Marketing is effective because it is provocative. This is why it can bypass the 'corporate' constraints of traditional advertising. However, you also have to carefully consider your audience's sense of humour, you want to be memorable but not offensive.

3. Provocative or offensive?

This carries on from the above point. Prompting a positive emotion is what any advertiser wants, but in the case of guerrilla marketing you don't have to focus on humour. Appealing to people's sympathetic emotions can be just as effective.

However, you do have to bear in mind that there is a very fine line between being emotive and being crude. This is a good example of a campaign that manages to straddle the line well:

4. Be brief
A Guerilla campaign should appear out of nowhere and then disappear just as quickly. The mysterious and temporary nature adds to the effectiveness. In a nutshell, don't let the joke get old.

5. Do your research
Don't be caught out by any unforeseen issues:

• Permissions: You're not Banksy. Contact the responsible authorities and make sure you have got all permissions you need.
• Law: Know and obey the law. There are some crazy rules out there which you need to be aware of. For example, in Switzerland you are not allowed to dance on bank holidays. In Maine, USA it is forbidden to display Christmas decorations after 14th of January. And in Illinois, USA it is illegal to whistle in public on Sundays. Those are just some of millions of unbelievable laws that might constrain you and your work.
• Protests: Check the animal and eco friendliness of your campaign.

All in all, everybody enjoys a little surprise, a thought-provoking impulse or a reason to smile in his/her everyday life. Guerilla Marketing can turn ordinary and mundane activities, like watching people leaving a subway station, into entertaining events. Advertising can be fun for everybody, who'd have thunk?