Archive for October, 2011

Live From New York, It’s All About Innovation

Wednesday, October 26th, 2011

I recently attended two events in NY – the 4A’s Strategy Festival and Pivotcon: The Rise of the Social Consumer. Big brands, big agencies, big egos presenting big ideas, and there really was lot to take away for [wire] stone as a midsize agency to help us get better at what we do.

But more than any specific social campaign or keynote on how to handle big data, there was an undeniable theme that spread across nearly every aspect of these two events. Innovation is happening in every aspect of a digital agency’s world, and new, innovative thinking is spawning transformation of the very definition of what it means to be a digital agency today.

At the heart of this movement is new technology – but the innovative spirit that is driving media and marketing is no longer about technology in and of itself. It’s about how innovative technology is deployed, how brands and their agency partners are using technology to engage, to facilitate and nurture meaningful, relevant, and scalable relationships between people and organizations.

(more…)

The New Modern Family: More Living, Less Watching

Monday, October 24th, 2011

In his recent article in Ad Age, Jay Samit of SocialVibe, questioned the logic of vendors such as Apple, Google, Microsoft, and Comcast still trying to “win” the living room via the TV. His thesis, and it is a solid one, is that this has become a fools quest (“Quixotic” in his words) and that the living room as we once conceived of no longer exists. We are a nation of consumers in a sea of screens, with the big one in the center of the room just one among many and not even the primary source of consumption.

Samit makes some great points in his article, but I think he missed one key aspect. It is not just that the second and third screens allow us to consume media wherever/whenever we want it and to share it with friends and family wherever they might be. What we have now is a fundamental redefinition of the very structure of the modern family. The Facebook wall, the shared calendar, the group texts, the Skype video chats have all become “living rooms” for our families and friends. We live in a world of multiplicity and virtuosity – everyone is everywhere and time is irrelevant. The living room is in my pocket and in my briefcase; it is at my office and on the bus and in my car.

(more…)

Wire Stone represents at the Emmy’s

Monday, October 10th, 2011

Wire stone was contacted by HP 2 weeks prior to the Emmy’s with this request: “make a cool interactive experience which will engage the celebrities but not take more than 2 minutes of their time”.  Sure, we make engaging experiences, but usually we like folks to stick around longer than 2 minutes. Working with HP’s event team, we defined an experience which would allow the celebrities passing through the HP Gifting Suite to be engaged for about 2 minutes with some light hearted albeit competitive entertainment.

Angry birds! Everyone knows how to play angry birds right?  It’s usually on a small screen though…insert HP’s all-in-one Touchsmart.

Attract Mode for the HP Angry Birds Wall

The video wall in attract mode

In approximately 8 days we went from concept to final testing and deployment backstage at the Nokia Theatre in LA. Now for the details. The experience was delivered on a 10 foot wide, 9 screen LCD wall solution from FNTech. With the center screen of the wall dedicated to a mirrored output of the Angry Birds game play, we had 8 screens to work with for display of the arcade style leaderboard, autographs from the players, game timer, and twitter feed. (more…)