That Interweb

eArchive: In the Beginning

The year was 1998. Strange questions filled the halls of Madison Avenue. “Is it eCommerce, e-Commerce, or E-commerce? Maybe it’s eStore? Or is it e-Store? Damn it, just tell me, hyphen or no hyphen?” “Is it the World Wide Web, the web, or the information superhighway?” “Do we still need to use http:// or can we just simply use the web address?”

A lot has changed since those crazy dial-up days. The pipes have gotten bigger. The sites have gotten deeper. And in many ways, we’ve mastered this crazy internet thing. But in many ways we still have a lot to learn.

eArchive (or is it E-Archive?) will be a biweekly look at our interactive roots to see how far we’ve come, how far we haven’t, and how far we have to go. Our roadmap to the future will be the best of our past, the winners of past One Show Interactive awards, starting with the first volume in 1998. Maybe if we study our history, we can not only avoid the same mistakes we made back then, but repeat some of our successes. I think someone famous said something kind of like that once. I should probably look it up on the interweb.

eArchive: IBM lays a golden foundation. IBM Gold
Art Directors Tom Farrell, Kevin Chiu
Writer Mark Bellusci
Multimedia Nicholson NY
Programmers Wells Packard, Andy Parsons
Creative Director Tom Nicholson
Client IBM
Agency Nicholson NY    
IBM Merit
Art Director Doug Miller
Writer Mark Feigenson
Digital Artist Doug Miller
Producer Lori Ha
Programmers Rachel Heapps, Pam Mitchell
Creative Directors Bruce Lee, Jan Leth
Client IBM
Agency Ogilvyone

It’s easy to view the best interactive work of 1998 as naïve, goofy looking, primitive, etc. But to do so would be a great wrong to the brave souls who created great work in a very new field with technology that was very much in its infancy. The theory and tactics of interactive marketing were being developed on the fly so you have to give respect to those who were brave enough to embrace such risky work at such an early stage.

Though created in a brave new world with few rules, these two IBM banners, one a Gold winner and the other a Merit winner, are great examples of some basic do’s and don’ts that still hold true today.

The first set of banners won gold and did some things we should still do today. Though it’s hard to tell exactly how the banners worked (even presenting banners in award books was primitive back then) we can at least tell that they were trying to stand out by being visually interesting. There was simple motion in the graphics with the puzzle pieces coming together, the glass shattering and the hockey puck flying into the goal. I wish we could see what the final frame said so we knew what IBM was selling but in the wash of crowded, text heavy banners of the day this one surely got noticed.

The second IBM banner won a merit and it’s a great example of time teaching us what not to do. This banner is basically a mini TV spot with title cards, or maybe a moving print ad. I call it prinitgration in that it’s basically a print ad with several animated headlines. While it won merit in 98 it wouldn’t get out the door in most places today. Clever lines are simply no longer enough to make an effective banner. There’s no reason for the user to pull their eyes away from the content they really want to read to content they probably don’t care about no matter how funny or intriguing the line.

The bottom line is: clever concept plus motion equals good. Clever concept plus moving type equals not so much.

Posted via web from Idea City's posterous

Printegration bad.

      
  (Absolute print ad – good)               (Absolute banner ad - great)

Every once in a while I get a call from someone on the traditional side asking me to help out on a web project. I get very excited by this because we have killer clients and my mind immediately starts churning out fun ideas.

But more often than not, I learn that the “web project” is really just a bunch of banner ads in support of a print and TV campaign. And they don’t want my fun ideas. All they want is for me to smash their print campaign into a dinky 728x90 banner format. To many traditional creatives and clients, this is called integration. I call it printegration and not only is it the wrong thing to do, I hate it.

Would you show a static print ad on TV for 30 seconds? Hell no. It would be mind numbingly boring, a woeful misuse of the medium and complete waste of money. Same thing with turning print into banner ads. Customers don’t watch boring. They don’t buy boring. You’re not going to get the end results you need for your client with boring. And you’re not going to hold on to your client by wasting their money.

The first thing to realize is that TV is captive audience. On TV, the show you’re watching is taken away and replaced with something new. You control whether you watch it or not but you don’t control when your original content comes back. You’re powerless.

There’s nothing forcing you to view a banner ad. It’s like a picture of your relatives on the wall next to your TV. You only see it if you choose to, otherwise you’re intently focused on the latest episode of Top Chef. You’re empowered.

Now, if your relatives went all Harry Potter in their picture, you’d certainly notice that, and probably get off the couch to investigate. That’s what you want from a banner ad.

When you create banner ads, do everything you can to make them interactive, noticeable, clever. Don’t rely solely on witty lines. Try some motion or sound. Do something, anything that pulls the user’s attention from the latest misadventures of Ms. Spears and to your message.

Check out the Absolute work above for how integration should be done.