Blog

Through our work on Cravendale we were lucky enough to be introduced to the creative and interesting folk over at Life Agency. After seeing our work they tasked us with the tricky job of design and build of their own website.

From a creative point of view it was great to find a site that could benefit from some experimental work we had been doing using the FlickR API and technically it was great to fully test out the new version of SWFAddress which has been used for deep linking and bookmarking throughout the site.

The guys at Life Agency have a unique approach to everything that they do in the world of through the line marketing and we think we have built a site that truly represents the personality of their agency and its work.

Thanks to Michelle, David and Ian (ordered by number of shoes) for all their work helping us to create their home on the internet, but most of all for allowing us the creative freedom to experiment and having the courage to try something different! Hopefully we will working together again soon.

www.lifeagency.co.uk

www.lifeagency.co.uk/blog

August saw the launch of this huge site for Yusuf Islam. It’s been a long time in the pipeline, but the final product has been more than worth the wait. With so many aspects to Yusuf’s career outside of his music, the site aims to bring together for the first time all of this content in one place.

The site includes a massive amount of audio and video content, cataloguing Yusuf’s entire career from the sixties through to today. As always the site is driven by our own custom CMS, allowing full updates to all sections, to include lyrics, a full timeline, two different members areas, charities and a shop to follow soon!

www.yusufislam.com

The last few weeks in the Ouside Line studio have been hectic to say the least! However, what this does mean is that we come out the other side with a huge amount of great work to talk about…

The first of these is a site for Sony BMG artists ‘The Priests’. This multi-language site (based on our own bespoke CMS) for these three full time parish priests is setup ready for their assault on the world music scene in November 2008.

Watch this space…

www.thepriests.com

The Top 100 brands in social media is a fascinating report in the top brands in social media today. Not only is it a great report but we’re particularly pleased with one particular brand:

Finally, LG makes number 25 in the immediate future rankings for share of voice, whilst at Interbrand it is ranked at ninety-four. LG has been actively engaging with the blogosphere for sometime now.

This is really pleasing because, as we’ve mentioned before, we manage the social media campaign for LG, which includes managing their blog not just for the UK but France, Germany, Italy and Spain, but more important working on their relations with other bloggers and influencers in the social media sphere. We’ve been working on it for the best part of a year and we’re delighted with the result, breaking into the top 25 and proving that engaging with the social media landscape makes a measurable and appreciable difference. Furthermore in a competitive world, especially with the possibility of an economic downturn, it shows how a dedicated social media presence can quickly raise a brand’s profile in a cost-effective manner.

There’s plenty more in the report and I recommend reading it all the way through, covering the many different aspects of the digital landscape. In particular, in the final conclusions it sums up very pithily the key to success in the field and what great results it can bring:

Flagging issues and identifying Influencers is the first step in communicating with a brand’s audience. In this way, the corporate communicator can determine audience interests and who is most authoritative.
[...]
Brands should join the conversation. By answering queries and problems directly, it is possible to stem negative Comment before it spreads. By sharing exclusive, entertaining and participative Content, and by collaborating with audiences, brands can place themselves in the conversation. This positively drives share of voice and creates search engine friendly consumer endorsement that is forever banked online.