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3 entries, 3 gold awards.

The Horizon Interactive Awards is a prestigious international competition recognizing outstanding achievement among interactive media producers from all over the world.

CIT

We created a simple narrative in which tiny gifts come to life, in order to help CIT employees connect with their contacts. Production was as follows: First, the team created concept boards, depicting different ideas of how to approach the card. Next, the team got to work with simple storyboards, depicting the basic story and messaging. Then, they created a mock desk set in the studio, shooting 24 still images for each 1 second of video.

The result was an endearing, simple, and concise 30-second stop-motion video. The messaging was then translated into 9 different languages, so that the video could be shared across the world.

Click to see the project: CIT Holiday Card 2012 – Motion Graphics / Effects – Video

Neenah Paper’s Astrobrights

Starting with no fans, we built to over 26,500 Facebook fans and 55 million impressions using social, sweepstakes contests and paid media. A crucial part of this growth came through our bi-weekly crafting contests, which were supported by origami style display ads featuring Neenah Paper’s Astrobrights products. We followed our crafting contest series with a school-based sweepstakes, driven by display ads, UGC and original content created for Astrobrights. The ensuing sweepstakes lead to more brilliant user-generated content—we gained survey response data and over 2,500 email opt-ins for Astrobrights!

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In the pre-digital days there really wasn’t a need for brands to produce more than the ads that went on traditional media. Now they need to produce an almost constant stream of fresh content to keep up with digital channels and social media. For most companies it’s a pretty tall order because making content is a completely different business from what they know. And it gets even harder when so much of the content that they now need is video.

Since cheap bandwidth has made high-quality video so easy to get, people want more and more of it. Projections have video representing over 85% of all Internet traffic in a couple of years. So brands need to make lots of videos. The problem, of course, is not just the quantity, but how does a brand make videos that are good enough to stand out? While cameras and equipment are cheap and easy to get, creativity and know-how are still in short supply. Of course, what makes a video good is in the eye of the beholder, but most of us know bad video when we see it, and the last thing any brand needs is to be spreading bad videos.

So the challenge is for companies to put in place the capability to produce lots of “good” videos, consistently over time. The problem is that because the budgets are much smaller, it’s not like producing TV commercials, which brands have a lot of experience with. According to the 4A’s, the average cost to make a TV spot is over $300,000 — but for video content, that may be your entire budget for the year.

The big question is — do you try and do it in-house or hire pros? While you may need a lot of videos, you may not need enough to justify the large expense of hiring a full-time team. So another approach is to hire an in-house video producer whose job it is to put together freelance teams for each production. This is not a creative person, but a video project manager, and you still need to be doing enough work to justify a full-time person.

For most brands the answer is to hire pros. The advantage, of course, is the wide range of talent and capabilities you can access. The problem is how to keep the costs down. Most agencies focus on developing the creative, and then hire a production company for the execution. As a result, the costs mount quickly. Some TV production companies do creative, but their focus is really on the production and they are rarely able to develop the creative or the strategy for the video, which is critical. So that leaves companies and agencies that specialize in video content for digital channels.

The ideal is to have digital content strategy, plus creative, plus production under one roof. A company that can do all of that — and that is set up to produce a lot of video content over time, cost-effectively — has found the perfect solution. Of course, the videos still have to be good in the eye of the beholder, which to start with would be you.

As captured on video, IQ’s CEO & founder Tony Quin braved the mechanical bull at the annual SXSW SoDA (Society of Digital Agencies) party. Tony, who chairs the board of SoDA, said nothing but his dignity was bruised and he is ready for a rematch as soon as he finds the same bartender who prepared him for this outing.

Making complex things like financial services easy to understand and engaging is no easy matter. That’s why VALIC, a major financial services company, turned to IQ. With deep experience in the category, IQ created this new website with an entirely new approach, design and new content, including this series of videos, also produced and created by IQ.  VALIC’s retirement offerings can often be confusing and difficult to grasp for consumers, which is why IQ and VALIC set out to change that by designing an engaging web experience complemented by two series of videos, one about consumers’ goals and the other about understanding financial concepts. Continue Reading

A new type of video content creation.

This post is about a brand new digital technology for video called Popcorn. It’s one of a number of technology led efforts to broaden what video is capable of, and in a world where soon 90% of data on the internet will be video, that’s good news for marketers, but first a little context.

My career and IQ, my digital agency started out in the video business. Over the years I’ve seen big changes as we moved from film to HD video, and from expensive post-production to a million dollar edit bay on a laptop. But despite these changes the basics of video creation haven’t changed that much. It’s still a linear experience made out of the combination of visuals and sound. It still a demanding art that takes quality writing, acting, lighting, sound design, animation, and post production, to say nothing of great ideas, to make quality videos.

Now, with the Content Age in full swing and a general mad scramble for video content creation, companies are finding that while they might be able to produce a talking head video of the chairman or an interview with a customer, it still takes experts to make the quality of video that captures the imagination or moves us emotionally. Today companies can go out and spend a couple of thousand dollars on a camera that would’ve cost a fortune a few years ago, they can buy microphones, lights and editing software and be fully equipped for chump change. But in the end it’s still the experience and expertise of the people using the equipment that’s the difference between wonderful and OMG.

Many forces are driving this demand for video, not the least of which is that it’s become incredibly easy and cheap to put high quality video in digital channels. So much so that video has replaced many of the interactive experiences we used to make. This is good and bad. The bad, at least for brands, is that we have moved away from interactive experiences which required the participation of the viewer. Instead of two way experiences we’ve gone back to a one way traditional video experience. Until now……

With the introduction of a new technologies like Popcorn that may have changed. Popcorn is open source technology that allows us to put links, images and even dynamic content into a video stream. That can be as simple as a link to where to buy that sweater you’re looking at, or a photo and email address for an insurance agent in your area. Popcorn essentially turns videos into mini-websites so that when your video travels around the web from person to person and site to site, it has the same capabilities you could have on your home page.  The possibilities are as many and varied as the technology is flexible. It can adopt the dynamics of “choose-your-own-adventure” and allow brands to follow viewer preferences and interests, or it can enable the functionality of shopper video without the big platform cost. On first blush it looks like Popcorn is moving video into the digital age with functionality capabilities that could reshape what we think of as video. It’s early days for Popcorn, but it appears we’ve been given a new paint box for video and I can’t wait to see what’s possible.

Good morning class, time for a pop quiz. These news items recently caught our attention: P&G shifting money from marketing to social media. And GM walking away from advertising on Facebook.

Question: Are these events contradictory or complimentary? Discuss.

Ok, pencils down. The answer, class, is that they are complimentary. If you answered otherwise please go back and review the last 15 years of digital evolution. If you got the answer correct, then what are you doing about it? Continue Reading

Hilarious and insightful perspective:

Thanks to motionographer.com

GEL, a conference held every year in New York that focuses on good experience of all forms, got a funny surprise when a seemingly real presentation on a new social media service named twirlr turned into a musical number by the good folks at Improv Everywhere. The number parodies social media oversharing, which was sure to be a big hit with tech-savvy folks in the audience.

Full writeup of the event

Hands down the most fun we’ve had with the IQ rebrand this year —  the motion ID. Here are some motion tests the team has been working on. Big nod to Stefan, Boutte & Edwards on these. Make sure your speakers are up because the sound really makes a big difference. So which one is your favorite?

Pennington TV Commercial from Pennington Birds on Vimeo.

Today we went live with our latest piece of the Pennington Wild Bird Seed campaign, a TV spot featuring the Wild Bird Band, four animated birds in the tradition of Pixar style movies that brings home the promise of “Great Entertainment for your Yard”. The TV commercial features the four birds wisecracking at a bird feeder and includes their rendition of “A’int we got fun”. Tactics also include radio spots, outdoor, banner ads, in-store display, print and a Facebook page complete with a yard entertainment guide. This is a really fun consumer campaign that shows off not only our well known digital skills, but even more so our design and traditional advertising know-how which is where we started.