Bullfighting Free - Dont Panic Design Contest

She was selected as one of the top 20 finalists based on an online vote. Her work was printed and shown in galleries in both London and Spain simultaneously. Although her entry was not selected by the panel of judges as the winner, I’m proud to say that Ameliea’s Magazine who attended the event singled her entry out:

The powder blue and blood red palette is subtle yet effective, with your attention draw immediately to the strong form of a bull’s head shaped as a heart in the centre of the page. The poster is beautifully symmetrical, with simplified lines and shapes to describe the bull’s features.

The full article can be read here: www.ameliasmagazine.com

Congrats Babe!

When I saw the site I couldn’t help to wonder if they knew what they had gotten into. Opening the doors to the masses to say what they want and presenting it as representation of your brand online is a slippery slope. You run the risk of unwanted materials being presented on your behalf. This especially true for a brand that primarily targets children and their parents, so everything must remain pure.

Well after one day of presenting a twitter search feed as their main page they’ve done the old switcheroo and presented us with their facebook groups and pages. What happened? Well the twitter feed quickly filled up with innapropriate remarks, and brand bashing. Not really the kind of content you want to present to your consumers.

You can still find the twitter feed burried under the chatter tab if you’d like to check it out here.

Here’s a cap of what was on there

The ask was to be “revolutionary” and not “evolutionary”. We took this as they were willing to take a risk and be out there, and almost uncomfortable with what would be presented to the online users of the website. Our approach was to capitalize on the very social nature of the target audience and utilize technologies like twitter and online video to convey a very real and non scripted about the how life really was at the University. Basically we had recruited students, faculty and alumni to pump the university through unscripted and candid tweets, blogs, and video uploads.

The result was some very engaging content that felt extremely authentic and not the usual canned University propaganda. This however made some people very uncomfortable, and some thought it shed the University in some undesirable light. The reality of it is we all know these things are being said on and offline by student across the continent.  (This is a entire blog post in itself, stay tuned.)

What really made this a difficult project was the amount of written content the client demanded be included. The majority of this written content was to be pulled directly from pre-approve written materials already in circulation. With no room for negotiations  the site was filled with facts and figures the most studious of students would glaze over reading. Thus we had just repackaged the old and added some bells and whistles.

The engagement of the site was lost, buried deep behind an innumerable amount of mouse wheel scrolls, 12 pt copy had taken over. There was vast amounts of very pertinent and useful information there, but our client lost sight of, or truly misunderstood their target audience. This demographic would never take the time to read it.

Our hope was to use the social media ambassadors to convey these messages and tell these stories on behalf of the school. Of course we would have pdf download support documents, but we wanted the story to come from those who live and have lived it, not from those who think they know what it is or what it should be. I feel this delivery method would have reached the target audience in a far more effective manner.

To reach an audience we must understand how they consume information and how they like it delivered. This is a generation of techie multi-taskers who consume information through txt, status updates, tweets, and  video, and demand it that way.

Content is still king, it just wears a new crown.