Its 2021, and COVID19 has been a part of our lives for the past two years. Stay at home notices keep coming along, and to escape the pandemic we seek comfort in our screens. Now the minute I say screens, the one brand that is synonymous with that, is Netflix, the source of all our comfort. But this goes beyond Netflix, we all communicate with each other in today's ages of big screens and small screens with motion, whether it be through memes, animated GIFs, message videos, message effects, Instagram Stories or video calls. Oh, the endless zoom calls which have become such a staple in our daily lives. Give a magazine to a child, born beyond 2010 or even earlier, they would probably scroll down to get to the next page, ask them to make the hand sign for a call, they would use a flat palm against their ears (no thumb and little finger outstretched in opposite directions against their ear!). Our billboards on the roads are digital, changing shapes, images and colours as we drive past on our finally 'free' highways. Taxis like Olas, Lyfts and Ubers have ads playing in more screens, and our malls are inundated with digital signage. Static is old, motion is today. Some forward thinking companies are looking at pushing the boundaries of our experiences. In 2019, South Africa Tourism Board pushed the boundaries of virtual tourism by having a website that had virtual reality and allowed you to view the destinations in all it's glory. The Hotel Industry is experimenting with multi-sensory marketing, including smells and tastes, that follow the traveller throughout their stay in their premises. Of course, this was before COVID19, but that's not to say these unique marketing experiences have not been executed, and successfully so. So talking about motion in branding and marketing should be so yesterday, and it begs the question, why aren't more brands making this a staple of their branding or marketing offering? We've ascertained that brands behave, they have their own brand personality, so how much better is it for a brand to have a signifier motion that is associated with them, that makes them stand out in a crowded marketplace of semi-static brands? A Brand behaves in space A brand behaves in their own space, whether it is their category, the medium of viewing the content, online space, or in the space they are trying to hold their consumer's attention. Motion used to be thought as something that only the cool brands could implement, but it shouldn't be so. Motion by far is one of the most interesting tools that enable a brand to stand out from a crowded digital marketplace. It makes them significant, it makes them unique. And motion doesn't need to be relegated to motion graphics, it should be a part of the user interface, especially with your consumer using a plethora of applications to do their day to day tasks. Imagine an application which has motion firmly entrenched in its core look and feel, wouldn't that capture your attention? Branding in Motion It's really simple, anything that evokes a stronger emotion is the key to making brands more significant in their customer's lives. When things are static, they lack empathy, they lack meaning. Motion is the one tool that can make an application empathetic to their customers, or a bank meaningful to their consumers. The end result of incorporating motion into your brand's identity makes every communication rich and emotive. From a User Experience perspective, motion can bring flat elements of any application to life, whether it is playful, or built with a sense of communicating purpose. Motion is the one aspect unfortunately ignored by most brands, probably because they have never considered it. With every technological jump, brands and marketers look at incorporating those elements to make emotions more powerful and more stickier. It's simple, the brands that stick in your memory, and that you connect to, are the ones not firmly rooted in tradition, but are willing to explore new and innovative ways to make themselves more purposeful to their customers. And hopefully motion identity is now on their agenda. To learn more about how we approach branding identity, contact us now.

Imagine if someone comes up to you at a party, and asks you who or what do you identify yourself as? What would be your answer? Think about that for a couple of seconds at least before giving me your answer. Thought about it? Now let me take a stab at your potential answers. You might say you identify as being straight, or gay or bi-sexual, depending if you think if the person you are talking to, is hitting on you. Or you might say you identify as liberal, centristic or right-wing, if you've overhead their previous conversations, being about politics. Or you might go a bit deeper, and actually open yourself up to this complete stranger, who has asked you a pretty profound question. Who or what do you identify yourself as? But the last thing in all aspects or all possibilities of the conversation, would you say, you are looking at me, this is how I indentify myself as. And this is branding in a crux. Your logo, your typeface, your colour schemes are all the end products of a process that enables you to truly identify your brand as if you were talking to a living, breathing and thinking person. That's what true branding is. I can go into your customer touchpoints, and talk about exploring the big aspects that made you as the founder think of this brand as something that the world needs. But again what you see as an output, is a fine distillation of the overall process that it takes to truly create a meaningful brand, that outlives us all. So let's start with some of the key aspects that most people don't really consider when they talk about branding. Brand Personality When thinking about your brand identity, your brand personality plays a pivotal role in crafting your brand. Because this is the part that humanizes the brands, and truly connects with your target audiences. The design team needs this core essence, so that they can convey it through their design, whether it is in the brand language, graphical representation, motion identity, sonic identity, and so on, and so forth. In simple terms, if your brand was a human, what would its personality be like? Would it be bold, confident, and professional, or would it be cheeky, humorous or sarcastic? Your brand personality comes out not only through your visual communication, it comes out in where you communicate to your customers. It could be Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, or it could be in your video ads. After all "Birds of a Feather, flock together", or so the old proverb goes. Your personality builds your flock, connecting them together with your brand personality, and building a proverbial community, that is passionate, vocal, and some of the biggest advocators for your brand, because they see a little bit of themselves in the personality of your brand. You want to elict a positive response to your brand, get started working on your brand personality. In addition to this stage, a couple of key questions that might help refine your understanding of what your brand personality should be: What does your company stand for? Forget the products, forget the company targets (they change from year to year). What does your company truly stand for. This is a mission statement, a brand promise, that should never change. Do you have a company philosophy? Is it split amongst internal and external stakeholders? Can you unify it, so that you have one common vision and mission statement that is significant across all stakeholder groups? What is the tone, that is representative of your company? This tone, or voice connects with your audience on deeply fundamental levels, and it also helps direct the design team towards imagery and colours. Brand Colours Choosing colours is an important part of the journey, and shouldn't be limited to our CEO likes Blue or Black. Colour psychology is a real art. And it brings out different feelings in each and everyone of us. Colour combinations are a product of trial and testing, but in the same way, a carefully crafted palette of colour combinations, bring out a series of emotions that can influence your customers, change their behaviours and love your brand. Typography Just like your colours, typography plays a massive role in communicating who and what the brand is on a deeply psychological level. You would not use a whimsical Comic Sans for a serious healthcare institution, because quite simply, it wouldn't communicate the level of trust and professionalism, that people require when they are putting their health in your hands. There's no one-size-fits-all solution, but every brand should be aware of typography's power as a differentiator, and have a strategy for using it in the most appropriate way. Brand Copy Your copy is more than just "Lorem Impsum" text, its carefully crafted copy that succinctly communicates what you want to tell your customer, in digestible bits and pieces, that is important for converting browsers to buyers. Your copy is about easily guiding your customers through your products and offerings, and explaining it to them why they need this in their life. Every bit of your marketing collateral, from brochures, to blogs, websites, mobile applications, social media and your advertisement copy is all dependant on your brand copy to be meaningful and expressive. Brand Story Traditional advertising is showing and telling your customers what your all about. But unlike that a brand story adopts an emotional reaction to your brand. It can be told from the perspective of the customers, or from the stakeholders. The narrative exists whether you like it or not, and the beauty of a story is that if its emotive, it will always hit the right cords with your target audience. Your story makes the billions of decisions that you make around value and purpose stick in the mind of the discerning consumer. Are you an ethical choice? Then use a story to attract like-minded individuals. A Brand Story is often the secret sauce that makes any startup inspirational and a century-old company relevant. And a good story always leads to brand authenticity. Website and/or Mobile Application This requires its own series of blog articles to explain how important this tool is to your brand, but I will try my best to get this across as briefly as I can. Your primary touchpoint, whether you are a B2B or a B2C brand is either your website or mobile application, and quite often, its both. People are scanners, and within 15 seconds, (yes I am not joking), they know whether they are going to continue to browse the website, make a purchase, or leave. That's how amazing your website or mobile application design should be, you should capture your customer's attention in a mere 15 seconds. Motion Identity Just like the visual palette of colours, and fonts that combine together to make a brand identity, in the world of moving screens today, you need an expressive motion identity to be recognizable and to stand out from the crowd. If the way something looks makes an impact, the way something moves adds another layer to that impact. In today's digital first world, this in as aspect that truly makes your stand out from your sea of competitors. Sonic Identity If the way something looks makes an impact, and they way something moves adds emphasis to that impact, imagine adding the way something sounds. Now you've got a truly impactful brand. Sonic identity reinforces the way the brand expresses itself to its customers. Brands are continously trying to engage our five senses (sight, smell, touch, taste and hearing), and a brand that has taken the efforts to engage more senses will by default be more recognizable than any of its competitors to its target audience. Logo And of course we now come to your logo. As a visual representation of your company, it captures who you are, and what you are about with a unique design. A truly good logo can communicate the essence of your company, its personality and achieves trust with your target market. Hopefully by now, you understand that the logo is not all that a branding identity is all about. All other touchpoints This could be your interior designs, interactive signage, event designs (if you're a B2B company). But do not ignore your internal service, support, customer experience, and other critical operations just because your focusing on your visual identity. Your employee engagement is as important (if not more), that all other engagement touchpoints. There is a reason brands with excellent customer service always have a line of advocators and loyal customers outside the premises. It's the cumulative brand experience that adds tremendous value to the customer. A brand is truly alive, when it engages on all platforms, and when both internal and external stakeholders promote the brand with equal vigour as the other. That's when you know you've truly succeeded in creating a great brand. To learn more about how we approach branding identity, contact us now.

Many people think that the gift of storytelling belongs only to writers, shamans, and the very old. It is the thing that makes us very human, stories (whether real or imagined), that showcases humanity's gift of intellect. Today is Ganesh Chaturthi, the birthday that millions of Hindus across the world celebrate, and that is the birthday of Lord Ganesha, the Hindu God, who inspires us to strive for wisdom. Stories have been introduced to us in various different forms; poetry, song, movement, pictures, plays and even Dad Jokes. The creators of such stories have used a variety of mediums to spread this knowledge, through brialle, papyrus scrolls, books, movies and in today's digital age Youtube, Tiktok and a variety of other online platforms. Storytelling has always been dynamic You and I remember the stories we grew up with, and a few poignant ones stay forever in our memory, because we draw lived experiences from them. Even when they become static, when we write them down, few books are always our favourites because we connect with them on a deeply human, psychological level. For me I read the Dune Novels very early on, and was amazed by the Universe that Frank Herbert created. I've always gravitated towards sci-fi novels, novellas and comic books, because to me it explained how amazing we were as a species and how unrealised our true potential was. A couple of period dramas stuck with me throughout my life too, A Different Sky by Meira Chand, is yet one of my favourite books that speaks to the diversity of a country that adopted me, Singapore, and the real struggle of this yet tiny city-state, that overcame a lot of adversity to become the economic powerhouse it is now. Storytelling does however follow a format, and this is what I am here to talk about. Storytelling is an art, not a form, process or technique. An Art... Storytelling is not something that you grasp through a single reading, it stays with you forever, but its not something anyone can grasp quite easily. It requires creativity, vision, practice, and years of putting together information in a cohesive way, that leads to a story being memorable or even great. Think Shakespeare! Stories make the abstract relatable This is a powerful statement, and what better way to explain what the crux of any story is? Stories are ideas formed through various life and learned experiences, and maybe even generational experiences. The need to tell stories dates back to the Third Milennium, with the Epic of Gilgamesh. I argue that it goes much further than that. In the Paleolithic period, cavemen drew drawings of their daily life, primitive as it may be, that is our first documented story or stories. And through all our cultures we will find examples of how stories have been an important tool to pass down knowledge, from the Vedic ages to the advertising ages of today. Stories unite us, in ways we cannot imagine Stories are the one universal language that unites us all, across cultures, geographies and demographics, stories are the one constant that we all remember fondly. We understand the story of the hero, the story of an underdog, we feel strongly and positively when they overcome their odds to become better, we feel uplifted when we hear a powerfully crafted story. Sharing a story brings people together, and makes the most diverse group of people achieve a sense of commonality and togetherness as a community. Stories inspire and drive us to be better, to do better Stories make us human, and how much more would this work for an intangible thing like a brand. Stories go a long way in humanizing brands, enabling brands to connect with a completely new audience and to inspire and motivate in ways that a static visual communication could only do as much. By crafting a powerful story, you assemble your own community as a brand, and that community is 20 times more likely to value your brand, if it is closely connected to your stories. Stories are not a tactic, it should be the core essence that your brand is built on. “Facts tell, stories sell,” says marketing guru Bryan Eisenberg. Stories enable brands to connect with their consumers on a deeply fundamental level, on a deeply human level, that encourages your consumers to alter their behaviour, change lives and makes an intangible asset like a brand, more purposeful and driven. No matter what industry your brand is in, no matter if your are in a B2B or a B2C business, you can find a plethora of stories everywhere. There will always be a multitude of stories to tell, and people to move. You just need to start... On this occasion of Ganesh Chaturthi, I wish Lord Ganpati visits your home with bags full of happiness, prosperity, peace and most importantly knowledge! To learn more on how we can craft your brand story, contact us now!

Data is everywhere, in fact your brand probably already has the exact data points you need, you just haven't utilized them effectively enough. David Ogilvy once said: "Advertising people who ignore research are as dangerous as generals who ignore decodes of enemy signals." There's a lot of truth in that statement, because as humans we tend to conflate data with our own personal biases or preferences, be it for the primary colour of their brand, or the story they choose to push to the customers. Market Research is not an inherently complicated task, sometimes a simple conversation with your customers or customer groups would suffice. But talking to them in person, or in today's age via a Zoom call definitely does help. As a business you would like to be the Steve Jobs in your industry, creating innovative products that change lives, and being visionary by knowing exactly what your customers want, before they even do. While that all sounds good, the reality is that your customers are probably not looking for a dynamically different product, they already like your product and need small tweaks here and there that make their life easier. SaaS brands spend a lot of time in product development, and ever so often, its the mistake of the product manager who assumes too much, when all he needs to do is speak with a few of his/her customers. Talking to your customers not only give your brand the personal human touch, it shows that you are invested in their happiness and that you are willing to take the time off talk to them one on one. It also allows you to truly know your customer, and these customers will be more open to feedback in the future, and will definitely be your most vocal advocators. Focus on your strengths Don't be afraid to be uncool. You don't need to be the Accounting Software for the Top 10 Companies in the world, or the Project Management Software of the Wipro's and Infosys's of the world. You can serve the other 99% of the market, and add features as you grow to add various different consumer groups to your umbrella. Atlassian Corporation is a perfect example. The Sydney Morning Herald referred to Atlassian in one of their headlines as “the $30 billion tech giant no one understands”. And there in lies the beauty. The idea behind what Atlassian does is so businesses don’t have to think about what they do, and instead focus on growing their businesses. Imagine these guys took on a $10,000 debt to found their company, and today are worth $26.6 billion. Even now Atlassian only spent 19% of revenue on sales and marketing, far less than similarly placed tech companies. Be an Atlassian, in a sea of Salesforce giants, and conquer your own little corner of the world. Ask the right questions If you're getting started in a particular industry, don't be afraid to speak to people working in that industry, experts or not. Solving an industry's pain-points, is what leads to some of the best SaaS products in the market today. Look at Editor X, once considered an amatuerish product for website development, developers made fun of it and didn't take it seriously. I know I did. Until I used it, and now I'm it's biggest advocator. A web design product made for designers, with a similar workflow to using Photoshop or any design tool, with Layers, that can create quality websites across all viewports. Phew, that's a mouthful, but it works as advertised and we have created some beautiful Editor X websites, including this particular one. Another way to do effective market research, is to look at review sites. You can see what people are saying about various products, and that's just brilliant. A scouting tool, that allows you to have visibility into your competitors, gain significant market research data. Subreddits, forums, youtube comments, amazon book reviews, Facebook groups, don't be afraid to go deep, and to read the comments to accurately identify pain points of various competitors. And finally, sign up for your competitor's products and make note of key questions: What's their response time? Once you sign up, what's their flow? Is it an email or do they call you? What do their emails look like? How often do they send emails? Are you signing up and not getting a welcome email? Are you signing and getting a phone within 10 seconds? This level of depth, allows you to build a competitor map, and truly understand what's going on in the industry. Not only that you understand the psychology of your competitors and see how effectively they operate. This gives you tremendous value. It might cost a bit of money, in terms of staff resources, etc, but the ROI on this will be self evident, very soon. Learn about how we help companies build products, through product design and effective user experience.

Wherever you are, close your eyes for 30 seconds when we reach the end of this paragraph, ask yourself and try to answer the following questions: What did you last see? And what did you last hear? Can you remember where that sound came from? Can you visualise the nature and story of the sound? That's a classic example of a sonic experience happening to you. Considering you did it right, you will realise an interesting fact. The last thing you probably saw was this, the article right in front of you. The periphery of your vision may have captured some other elements in front of you. The things you heard and continue hearing however, followed no such directional limitation. The existence of a phenomenon is made aware to you through what you hear in the totality of your environment, at all times. While you are reading this, you are also hearing things going around you. You may or may not be consciously aware, (now you probably are, forgive me). You will be surprised at all the things we can hear, if only we choose to listen. This may seem philosophical, and perhaps it is, but it is rooted in science and how the brain works to interpret what we hear. We humans (and probably all life that is capable of hearing, although research is still enroute), have selective hearing. What we think of as hearing, is the effect. The analysis of our brain as how we perceive vibrations in the air. The takeaway from this is food for thought. When we close eyes, even when we blink, the world disappears for a moment. However, in the presence or absence of a visual cue, you still can hear everything around you. We are submerged in air, constantly immersed in sound. Consider this, what we see is only a fraction of our cognitive experience. Before the invention and discovery of languages, the practice of communication was very aural-sonic oriented. Knowledge was passed down through generations in forms of stories that were first told and then written. Bards and minstrels would sing songs and heralds would be heralding… Our field of vision in focus is limited to only 50 - 60 degrees in front of us and yet we are constantly processing information through our 5 primary senses, regardless, correlating it to memory and analysing priority lists, emotional cues, intellectual thought and pondering spiritual quests. And in all of this, what we see is only 1/6th of the capacity of our preceptive capabilities, not considering our other senses of smell, touch and taste. In all of this, if there was any sensory perception that was omnidirectional and constantly seeking stimuli, it is our sense of hearing. Visual communication is a powerful tool for storytelling and yet, when you read a novel, or hear a story that has no such visual cue, our imagination fills up the void. You are probably reading this article in a voice inside your head. The process of branding and experiential marketing aims to integrate your brand with the human senses of your customers. Branding is the process of turning your organisation into an organism with the outward and inward properties of Identity and expression. Music and sound hold the power to bring visual stories to life. The best way to turn a horror film into a comedy is to hit the mute button. In a great film, there are two storylines. One that is seen and the other, heard. One that is obvious, and the other that is subliminal. Can you imagine an Alfred Hitchcock's, ‘Psycho’ without the flurry of violin ‘stabs’, or Stephen Spielberg’s Jaws without the apprehensive steps of the orchestra? George Lucas’s Star Wars without the sounds of the Lightsaber and the iconic musical liet-motif that made Darth Vader and the Death Star of the Galactic Empire, terrifying! Perhaps even Alfonso Cuarón’s Gravity, without the dead silence of space. Music and sound design create the emotional atmosphere of visual communication. It creates a bridge for the audience to emotionally connect with the story that is being told. It’s something like the debate between the heart and the brain. However in reality, they are two sides of the same coin, creating an integrated experience for the audience. Only when both are connected, can something truly magical be created. Then again, on account of being musically inclined myself, stories are first told and heard. Storytelling through sonic experiences Despite the encompassing role of our auditory systems, branding communications that aim to integrate the auditory senses are vastly understated and underused. All that we know of sonic branding and creating sonic logos is merely a scratch on the surface of an ocean of potential. The rise of the audio user experience is now. With technology systems being voice operated, electric cars making a segue into mass markets, and overcrowded visual stimulation for consumers, a sonic strategy incorporating music and sound design for your brand is an essential investment to stay relevant even with eyes around you, closed. To learn more about how we approach sonic branding, contact us now

That little three-lined button is a fairly well used trend, in a lot of today's websites. Whether you call it a navigation drawer, or a hamburger, it hides certain features effectively, yet freeing up a lot of real estate space in tight constraints, like a mobile application. It's not food, yet its consumed just as much! Sorry we are not referring to the kind of hamburgers that you eat, in fact I am talking about that three lined menu that is usually placed on the top right hand corner of most screens. We at the Unmarketing Agency, use it on our website too, so what is it about this menu that has got pretty much all the new and old kids on the block using it so extensively? From Facebook, Spotify, Zomato, a lot of the Google Apps, and well so on and so forth, you get the idea, the hamburger menu is very, very popular. But what is it that makes this simple menu system so addictive, and since it's so widely used, are there any cons to it? Let's start with the pros ... The hamburger menu started appeared on mobile devices, where space was at a premium and a large menu was required for a website with a lot of pages. Since then we have seen the emergence of responsive design, with a single website catering for all browsers and devices. Because of this, many user interface designers have adopted a ‘mobile first’ approach to keep the interface clean and simple, working across all devices. The idea was that if a site worked well on mobile then it would work even better on desktop where space and control is improved. Some designers, therefore, view maintaining a sense of consistency across browsers as a pro. Our second pro is around how clean and uncluttered a hamburger can make your global menu and header. Displaying a lot of links can sometimes create an untidy header; hiding all this behind a piece of functionality will keep your site looking slick, minimal and oh so elegant. All the kids are using them! This approach is obviously very common and heavily used, meaning users are associating the icon more and more with menus. This is particularly evident with users that have grown up with social media; it’s as if they’ve been wired into automatically looking for a burger menu. We're finding more and more in user testing that it's a 'learnt' interaction that users are gravitating towards naturally. And my final pro? It's cool. Making things move and animate on a website is playful and engaging, right? Which then brings us to the cons ... Let's get down to the negatives, the cons ... They may be playful, but is there anything more frustrating on a website than looking for content without a visible and clear means of navigation? The kids might be down with the hamburger, but for those users who haven’t grown up with technology, they require a little more guidance and handholding. So the big con clearly is its poor discoverability, hiding the menu behind a small button means it’s less likely to be found and can be the cause of frustration. A hamburger requires an action or additional click before a user can use it. This involves added time and effort that a user might not be committed to, especially if it’s just one of many sites they’re visiting in a session. The fewer clicks you make to a piece of functionality, usually the more usable and intuitive. This theory has also been tested, which indicated that hamburgers were likely to be clicked 20 percent less than a traditional open nav. The positioning of hamburgers in the top left-hand area on mobile screens can lead to poor usability as it's often the furthest away spot for anyone right-handed and forces users to reach across the screen to access the menu. For sites that have only a small number of global categories, hiding them in a drop-down menu doesn’t make sense. One example that is guilty of this is T-Mobile. They have placed all their services and offerings within a drop-down menu labelled 'Shop', which actually only contains 5 links. These links could easily be visible and displayed horizontally across the top. My final con is based around a particular type of hamburger menu, referred to as a multi-push menu. These menus are built of multiple steps or levels, allowing a user to click down through the site structure from within the navigation. While this might be a good way of quickly finding content, it can also encourage users to skip sections of a user journey through the site, meaning they may not get what they expected. Our Conclusion In summary and without sitting on the fence - this time, I feel the use of hamburgers can present some notable usability issues but ones that will only fade with time. They’re most effective on mobile and smaller devices for which they were designed and have a place on image-led sites for desktop. Use on desktop ought to be limited to those sites where the aesthetic dictates a hidden menu and the audience can be expected to use the hamburger intuitively. Users that need a little more guidance are likely to prefer an open menu on bigger screens, particularly if the global navigation isn’t of considerable size.

The Holy Grail of Marketing Let's make it simple. All the interactions that you can imagine a customer going through with your brand, or your product, at any and at every given time of a customer facing experience, is user experience. For an FMCG product, it's the time a customer picks up a product off the retail shelf, and reads the ingredients, or it's the time a customer looks at a product while walking by, because the packaging appealed to them. For a digital product, a user experience constitutes even a timely or late delivery of an actual product, or even the packaging a product comes in. Now let's make this clear, a lot of online shops are aggregators or marketplaces where third parties sell and at many times, even distribute their products to the end user. So you might as well be saying, how does that constitute a part of my user experience? The answer is simple, the customer bought the product from you, so in his or her mind, you are the brand he or she is dealing with. That just broadens up the domain of user experience, doesn't it? Of course it does, user experience is broad, immensely broad as a practice, and simplifying it to a single interface, completely reduces the complexity and the importance of its domain. If i download an application from a QR Code, the QR Code is an essential part of my user experience. Let's put it this way, take all the possible interactions that a consumer or user could have with your brand and/or product(s), sum it up in it's entirety, and you have a schematic whole of a comprehensive user experience. So why is User Experience relegated to Website or Mobile Applications? Back in the day, and I am talking late 80s and early 90s, user experience was a much different term. It was called 'human system interaction'. According to the ISO definition, user experience includes all the users' emotions, beliefs, preferences, perceptions, physical and psychological responses, behaviors and accomplishments that occur before, during and after use. The ISO also list three factors that influence user experience: system, user and the context of use. As an interaction designer, we sometimes miss this point, moving fast forward to deliver a product that the client can touch and see, completely misunderstanding that the end product is resolved through hours, perhaps days and even months, of complex data analysis that makes us better understand the overall usage or consumer assumptions of these various elements. An interaction designer, we plan for those very moments, our core responsibility is relatively simple to make those moments positive and meaningful. And these interactions are not just the interface (that's just the UI - User Interface Design). It include all aspects of the software, the back-end logistics or processes involved, from management approvals to customer service to delivery, to anything that cannot be automated. It's the copy writing (a very neglected part of the user experience), the graphics, the layout, the customer flows through the various elements that make up the entire system, and finally to the actual physical experiences. As an interaction designer, we are supposed to anticipate that, and for existing business models or existing models of interaction, we can use our experience to compensate for a lack of data, and the end results are very close to the final product. But for more novel approaches, or more unique business models that are non-existent in today's economy, it becomes a lot more difficult to rely on experience based judgments. We need data, and that could be obtained from extensive user interviews, stakeholder interviews, eye-tracking analysis, and so much more methods to quantifiably obtain relevant data. Pay attention to the process This is a process that could take days and perhaps months to gather, before even a single piece of user interface is designed, or a piece of code is written, and this is very the confusion begins. Trying to design a product in the dark, is like trying to fish for 'salt water fish' in a 'fresh water' river. It's just not possible. But customers generally ask that of us, because they are clouded in their understanding of the complexity of what is human experience. Think about it this way, I have a bottomless pit full of money, and I give it to the architect for the express purpose of designing a building or a house for me. Do you think the architect would just be responsible for designing the house? No. He would take great care to design the surrounding greenery, the foyer, the garden, the driveway. He would take great care to design every inch of the property to suit and anticipate my every need. That is what makes a great architect so invaluable. So is it the same with a great user experience consultant. They dissect your business relentlessly, expose its very weakness (so that you are aware of it before it becomes a functional problem to the business itself), understand the very nature of the customer that you are targeting, and base concrete decisions that may seem insignificant to you, but could have a dynamic impact on your consumer. User Experience is not a website developer or a mobile application developer. Our landscape of design is a huge arena, that has significant impacts on every nature of your business. So please, next time you ask for a user experience assessment, understand clearly what it is your are asking us to do. And those who claim to be user experience consultants, don't relegate our space to a mere website developer/designer, we are not just that, and you know it...

Too Good to be True! When customers are faced with a slew of branding problems, they get someone who is cheap, promises a lot, and doesn’t have much genuine case studies, it usually too good to be true. And when something seems too good to be true, it normally is. Sadly a large number of clients come to us, cautious and scared, and like another ‘age old adage’, they are ‘once burnt, twice shy’. This usually leaves a lot that is negative towards the digital medium, but the harsh truth is, because of “saving” marketing ‘expenses’, or viewing marketing as an expense rather than an opportunity, many of these clients become shy of choosing the right digital media agency, and worse still, unsure of the digital medium. Effective digital campaigns can create a whole load of opportunities to a business’s bottom line, provided it is done well and by an effective agency. It has the potential to create and generate new revenue streams and provide a transparent two-way channel to engage with your audience. Best of all, everything is monitored, traced and much more effective than any other medium out there. This means that you are not only able to look at ROI figures sooner, you can change your strategy on the fly if the earlier strategy is not working. Why is it so difficult to choose a Right Branding Agency? If now, you are thinking “here we go again”, hear me out first. In an effort to help you choose the Right Digital Marketing Agency, and to assist you with promoting your business, I am going to expose the telltale signs of an agency or consultant or freelancer, that just wants your money and nothing else to do with your business. And when I am done with that, hopefully, you have all the information to better choose an effective digital supplier, even if it isn’t us. Another adage, “You get what you pay for”. The first sign of a dodgy supplier is when they are ready to undercut all competitor quotes, and quite simply, are willing to say yes to all your requests, without concrete advice or queries. The role of the Right Branding Agency is to first, always identify what is possible, effective and generates returns. Sometimes it means they have to go against the flow, and completely disagree with what you are saying, but if you are truly looking for an excellent Agency you need to understand, they are actually doing you a huge favor. If someone offers you rates that are dirt cheap and responds to all your requests without a second thought, you’re already with the wrong agency. The truth is, a reliable supplier doesn’t come cheap, and you are in for a load of additional charges down the road, or a completely unresponsive supplier, once he gets paid. Overpromising, and the yes sir, yes ma’am speech … If you are promised, 1st place rankings with SEO, over 1000 fans for practically nothing on facebook, a website that will increase by over 500% in traffic without paid SEM, you know something’s wrong. Let’s be fair, getting on top of SEO rankings takes a lot of time, and if you are up in a month, the next Google Search update will most definitely penalize you severely, cause your agency is using blackhat techniques. Paid facebook fans are not they way to promote your brand. Themes and templates for your facebook applications, don’t quite cut it, in the long run. And if this is what you are getting, your agency doesn’t give a “rat’s ass” about your brand or marketing, and you will understand this soon enough. Finally, do you really think that paying $15 for an app will bring you gigantic results? Again, you get what you pay for, remember that! So what should you be looking for? Really knowing what and where to look for, will help you avoid the real con-men out there, but believe it or not, there are the real agencies who want to give you a great product, and an even better service. But now the question is, which one do you choose? Here are a few steps you should take before selecting the Right Digital Marketing Agency. Look at their history, case studies, and study them: This probably sounds like a lot of work, but looking at their case studies, actually helps you understand how they operate, what they do. And most quality agencies, have long term clients who will share their experiences with you, first hand. This is the best way to gauge their level of work. Meet the team: If you are looking for an agency of record or even an agency for a week, you need people you can trust and people you like working with. Meet the founders, meet the partners, meet the creative team, let them talk to you, strategize together, and if you really enjoy their energy, you can be sure that they will be good to work with. Remember, you get what you pay for: It’s pretty simple really. If you pay peanuts, you get monkeys. An agency that is allowed to think outside of the box and churns strategies and campaigns that are simple and effective always wins. The overly complicated strategy won’t stick with your fast moving consumers, and definitely won’t impress them. It’s the best to follow the KISS principles. (Keep it Simple, Stupid!)

A Digital Marketing Agency is hired for it’s innovation, and not to pander to conservative, tried and tested methods, that have a low return of investment. As a client, you don’t hire us to follow your every direction, you hire us to creatively innovate, and to revitalize your business. Without creative freedom, we just cannot do that … Icarus and his father So today I’d like to tell you a story. Actually, it is a famous greek myth that has a lot of connotations for marketers who tend to ‘over-evaluate’, us agencies, and quite really, in general, anyone who has taken the entrepreneurial journey. Towards the south of the Greek island of Samos lies the Icarian Sea. Legend has us believe that this is where Icarus died – a victim of human pride. The story goes, that his father, Daedalus, was a master craftsman. Banished to prison for sabotaging the work of King Minos. You know the guy that created the mighty labyrinth, a maze of puzzles where the Minotaur (half man and half bull) was housed. Theseus, an enemy of King Minos was sent to the labyrinth to die, but Daedalus, gave King Minos’ daughter a ball of string to give to Theseus so that he could find his way out. Anyways, with all that brilliance, Daedalus, came up with a master escape plan, quite ingenious actually, and this forms the basis of the myth that we were told when we were children. So Daedalus fashioned a pair of wings for him and his son – Icarus, made out of wax and feathers. And before setting out on the journey, Daedalus explicitly warned his son, not to fly too high, as the sun would melt the wax off the wings. But Icarus, entranced with the ability to fly, disobeyed as any boy his age would do and flew too high. And it’s common knowledge what happened next, Icarus, the beloved son, lost his wings when the wax melted, crashed into the sea and died. The Moral So the moral of the story: Don’t disobey the king, don’t disobey your elders, don’t imagine you’re better than you are, and most importantly don’t believe you have the power to be a god. But the part of the myth that was conveniently left out was that in addition to telling Icarus not to fly too high, Daedalus also told his son not to fly too low, because the water would ruin the lift in his wings. Thanks to society, we’ve forgotten that, which is as important a lesson as the moral of the story, instead, industrialization has created a culture where we remind each other about the dangers of standing up and being different. How are Digital Marketers Related to the Story? So how does this relate to a Digital Marketing Agency? It is far too dangerous to fly too low than too high because it feels safe to fly low. Same way, marketers like to look for “Good Marketing Ideas” that are safe, that have guaranteed results, so they copy from other campaigns that have worked elsewhere, or worse they settle in their comfort zone. The truth is as a Digital Marketing Agency, we are idea farmers, we give a bit of ourselves away and let marketers chip away at our spirit, little by little, every time we pitch. And we agree that it is the normal process that our pitch was not suitable for the client, so we need to tone it down. Or better yet, that the client will respect the confidentiality of the pitch, and not go to someone “cheaper” for execution. Unfortunately, this happens too much in this part of the world. Pitches go for free for too long. Worse still, RFPs with government agencies, require you as the agency to place a bank guarantee, then say they’ve given the campaign to someone who was better. Bullshit. Many times we’ve seen our ideas used, and we have no recourse but to shrug our shoulders, and say “What can we do?” So how does this relate to you the client? Very few have the passion for driving their company to new heights. More often than less, your current position is a stepping stone to something bigger, or worse still, you make your money off bribes and cutbacks. You make the agency work, before ever paying. And then instead of paying for the idea, you think that they are too expensive, hence it is your right to go to someone cheaper. But see this is where marketers don’t understand. Ideas are seeds, to farm them, you need to nurture them, grow them, take care of them, then enable them to explode to a full blown seed. And who better than the Digital Marketing Agency that gave you the idea in the first place to grow it? The ideas are not yours to utilize and give it to someone else for a cheaper price, the ideas take blood, sweat and weeks of toil to generate, and oh yes, they cost us money. Lots of it! So here’s an idea, throw off the yokes of the safe thinker. Think big! Because if you think this is a stepping stone for you to get a better job, you better do it right. Don’t copy… It’s not yours to copy and execute. And finally and RFP is not a selection pot for you to choose the best idea and the cheapest executor. It’s meant to even the playing field and select the best supplier, not only on price but on a larger number of factors where the price should play probably 20% of the weight of the decision. And finally, give credit, where credit is due. Story of Icarus Deception taken from Seth Godin - We are all Artists Now To know how we could help you craft your Brand Identity, contact us now!