Hasta La Creative!

Redscout is bringing back Richard Fine, co-founder and CEO of consumer health brand Help Remedies, as the branding agency scrambles to manage its rapid growth.

Mr. Fine is returning in the role of managing partner, overseeing the strategy and creative teams. Redscout says it created the role to ensure that as the boutique grows, its size doesn’t stifle creativity.

In his prior position at the New York-based branding shop, Mr. Fine served as a partner and strategic director for four years. After leaving in late 2007, just after Redscout sold to MDC Partners, he launched Help, a popular line of consumer-health products known for eye-catching packaging and quirky names like, “Help I Can’t Sleep” and “Help I Have a Headache.”

Continue reading at AdAge.com

True it’s not rocket science, but getting what you need from your mobile website is not as easy as shrinking down your desktop content and moving it around. Not if you want to drive real outcomes, not if you want your mobile site to shine. Here are six steps to getting your mobile site on the road to greatness:

1. Pick An Outcome

Figure out what it is you want your visitor to do, the task they must perform to create what you need. These vary greatly but every nuance falls into five general categories – revenue, data, brand engagement, promotion, or drive traffic. Figure yours out, and stick to it (maybe two).

– Revenue/Commerce

If your company has items or services for sale directly, then your primary goal on-line is to convince the visitor to purchase your goods.

– Data Collection

If your primary goal is to gather information, build a data base of emails, or collect data for direct sales initiatives, then innovative solutions are needed to convince a data collection weary world to give you their information or participate in your survey.

– Enhanced Engagement

If your company wants to immerse visitors in your brand, then a digital experience that encourages interaction and increased time on site is necessary.

– Drive Traffic

If you want to create foot traffic into your brick and mortar location or sort the traffic digitally directing it to other properties, then a compelling digital pathway in impetrative.

– Promotion

If you are championing an idea, product, movement, or philanthropy, then creating engaging ways to inform and garner support and sharing is your digital mission.

2. Build A Path

Once you understand your objective, the outcome you want from your visitors, build a path and they will follow. Create a clear and direct digital linear pathway for your visitors to follow and put what you want them to do at the end. When your path is built with your visitor in mind you will be astounded by the compliance rates. However, if your mobile path way(s) look more like twisty country roads with infinite possibilities, your visitors will get lost in the Tulgey Wood and never find their way to the Queen.

3. Know Your Audience

Look back, you may have missed a very important point that actually deserves an entire article itself – “with your visitor in mind”. It is of the utmost importance to understand your audience. Just as you must choose one outcome to be effective, it is imperative that you speak to someone in particular. Not everyone, not even most people, speak to a very specific audience. You’ve heard the saying, “When you speak to everyone, you speak to no one.” Nowhere is this more true than mobile.

4. Less Is More

What’s true for salt, make-up and feng shui furniture placement is also true for mobile design, less is more. Don’t fall into the trap of trying to fit everything which is on your desktop onto your mobile site. It makes for a cluttered look and lots of scrolling for your visitors – if they don’t bounce first. Choose only content that makes sense with your chosen outcome and cut down on your copy.

5. Use Mobile Design Elements

Elements which are fantastic on desktop do not always translate to mobile. Create new or redesign elements specifically for your mobile site, to work well with mobile sized screens. Three quick examples, of which there are many, would be:

– Simplify and flatten – The nuances of intricately detailed logos, icons, and design features are lost on mobile and can look wonky (yes it’s a real word and perfect for this purpose).

– Symbols not words – To keep your site from looking cluttered, use conventional mobile symbols rather than words for taps to call, connect socially or find the menu.

– Customization creates space – Customized social icons can help create a cohesive look and gives the site a less cluttered look.

6. Freshen Up Often

Just as horses can smell fear and your mother knew you had not cleaned your room just by looking at your face, mobile visitors can spot an old site within seconds. Freshen up your content often and plan on a redesign at least once a year to stay current.

This contributed article was written by James Ramsey, CEO of Fiddlefly, a digital creative agency.

“Gird your loins for what would have been the biggest football game ad ever.”

The US Patent and Trademark Office has granted Google a patent that will allow companies to serve ads to mobile devices, offering a free ride to their store if an algorithm works out it is cost-efficient.

In America, you'd need to have a rich, overindulgent father to have the lifestyle of your average Swedish worker, says a bizarre new ad from a Swedish trade organization. 

TCO, an umbrella confederation that includes a number of unions, presents to you "Like a Swede," a three-and-a-half-minute ode to the many benefits—like long vacations and employer pensions—enjoyed by Swedish employees. 

The story is told, quite surreally, through character Joe Williams, a resident of Beverly Hills. His dad, also his boss, treats him to six weeks of annual vacation and six months of paternity leave. Williams all-around enjoys a life of opulence thanks to his decision to live "like a Swede."

For the uninitiated, living like a Swede means using your friskvårdskbidraget, a Swedish health-care stipend, to hire a celebrity personal trainer—but only for a few minutes a year, because, you know, such social support only goes so far. It also includes playing kubb, a Swedish lawn game involving the tossing of wooden sticks; drinking nubbe, a Swedish liquor; and, we're told, singing a song about how the Swedish labor negotiation model is the greatest.

In other words, Swedes are, in a roundabout way, poking fun at Swedes for being spoiled. Credit for their advantages, the spot sort of explains, goes to the Swedish model of labor negotiations, which depends on a high level of collaboration between workers and employees groups and limited government involvement. 

If you're still totally clueless as to what the hell is actually going on, a spokesperson for TCO sheds some light on the campaign in English-language European publication The Local. "It's to make the Swedish Model more visible in a different way. People often know very little about it, which makes it harder for the unions to justify their own existence," says the spokesperson. "The Swedish Model means that the two parties can talk about what is needed in that particular industry, and be supple, rather than have very rigid legislation that we don't think is good for the Swedish economy."

The spot is one of the most intricately produced awareness ads you'll ever see. But if you're a non-Swede like me, by the time you're done unraveling it, you'll probably be too exhausted to laugh.

Via Ads of the World.

(TrendHunter.com) The Apple Killer iPad Decal is a hilarious way to add personality and zest to your handy Apple tablet.

The iPad Apple Killer decal transforms the iconic Apple logo on the back of the iPad into one…

The Street Store a été fondé par Max Pazak et Kayli Vee Levitan de l’agence M&C Saatchi Abel en Afrique. Il s’agit d’une action caritative qui utilise seulement des affiches comme un espace de magasin, pour permettre aux sans-abris d’avoir de nouveaux vêtements offerts par des passants. Une belle leçon de générosité.

Native advertising can be a murky — and if not done right, illegal — business. Just ask Microsoft.

Microsoft recently signed a sponsored content deal with YouTube network Machinima to promote the Xbox One gaming console. As part of the deal, Machinima recruited some YouTube creators to post videos positively promoting Microsoft’s product in exchange for ad dollars.

One problem: a number of the sponsored videos didn’t disclose that they were sponsored, as first reported by tech news site Ars Technica. That could draw scrutiny from an already hawkish Federal Trade Commission, which issued rules on the matter in 2009.

Continue reading at AdAge.com

Burton’s Biscuit Company is backing its Maryland Gooeys range with a £3 million adspend, beginning with a TV ad that breaks today.