hiring!

Well its been an interesting time across my various roles the last few weeks. Having been on the look out for good people in project management for months agencyside I finally found one, only to be quickly followed by another. This doesn't happen very often so we'll go for broke and have both if I get my way. Looking forward to having a wealth of it however and I know that the account will benefit from it.

For Mydeo we're still seeking developers but have recently taken on a good guy who's going to help shore up both customer and internal tech support. In a start-up world you can't afford to have someone in every role so this flexibility is going to be a great help, take a load of weight off my shoulders and let some of the rest of team loose to get on with other things.

Thanks for all the messages of goodwill and congratulations on the BestBuy deal too, its been a long time coming and raised a few eyebrows. We are working hard at the moment on the very first phase of integration before any of the marketing starts in earnest so the early signs are good although there's lots to be done. Looking forward to a big christmas!

A quick blog from Word 2007: some cool sites

Well, call me a luddite but its there and it seems easy so I thought I'd try it. I am guessing this is going to result in an unbelievable quantity of unnecessary mark-up, and I am going to have some problems with the (unrelated) image I am trying to upload but its worth a try! A shocking week this week but some interesting finds - we were basically collecting 'aspirational sites' – which is pretty subjective but I have kept a few that seem noteworthy regardless – mostly flash content and interesting brand and immersive experiences…

http://nikeplus.nike.com/nikeplus - despite being on my Christmas list for at least 2 years I am yet to be able to say that I have the right equipment to be an active participant in this case-study online tool/community/product showcase/social network/interactive experience… a great site

http://demo.fb.se/e/ikea/dreamkitchen/site/default.html this is just a visually stunning matrix-style effect created for an ikea campaign. Audio effect is really well done too, I'm not sure I can stop spinning it long enough to see any of the products but certainly effective in its visual appeal.

www.vodafonejourney.com – north kingdom got a licence to spend money here and the result, whilst extremely corporate and cheesy, is still impressive even a couple of years on.

http://www.monocle.com/ - an RL site but a good example of video integrated into a well designed site. To quote a colleague 'nothing seems like an add-on' and it's also fantastically consistent with the printed magazine.

There are loads more that I could mention – we had about 60; some of the car sites offer interesting experiences like the standard but immersive www.audi.com, the more artistic http://sixjourneys.mercedes-benz.co.uk/r-class/home.php or the wackier www.fordvehicles.com/flex. Apple, Innocent and Absolut stake their usual claims with really strong presences true to their consistently impressive brands. Others worth a tip of the hat included Diesel's slightly sleazy and fully customisable product showcase, the slightly peculiar www.michelinman.com/forward full of bibendums wandering about a 3d world and the unbelievable (for a site that's about milk) gaming experience that is www.gettheglass.com.

my view (kind of)

I've been a bit quiet here lately, mostly because I've been incredibly busy. Graham however managed to squeeze this article out of me (with the help of a writer who somewhat sanitised my rants). I'm not sure it actually gets anywhere in the end but there's some useful pointers in there for the audience; mostly mid-level marketing managers in blue chip firms...