The Upper Storey gets showcased as one of the top 50 outstanding websites for digital marketing and social media agencies!

Social Media is at the tip of every marketer’s tongue.  But who is really the best agency to do it?

Click here for the list of the top 50 agencies.

Thank you to the team at Urban Fairways and all our clients, partners and friends who came along to our 2nd ‘virtual’ golf night (indoor golf in life size simulator, with professional accuracy). We love the place and everyone seems to enjoy it. We hope to do it again soon.

I am very happy to be working with Christer again. We were part of the early digital team at Euro. But since then he has had some excellent experience at Starcom and Tribal DDB. He is one of the most ‘digital’ thinkers I know (ok along with his twin brother) and very passionate about brands and strategy.

We’ll let Media magazine do the talking:

“SINGAPORE – Digital marketing agency The Upper Storey has appointed former GM of Tribal DDB Singapore Christer Eriksson (pictured) to the role of regional strategy director.

In the position, Eriksson will develop campaigns and communications strategies for multinational clients. He will be based in Singapore and work with managing director Prakash Kamdar and business director Euan Wilcox.”

Dell Swarm - award winner for Intel & Dell

We do love awards. While we know the whole process is a game, and you have to look beyond the immediate glitz and drill into the details of the campaign – it is great for us to have some recognition of our work.

But now we know it is an even greater thrill to win an award for your client. And not just one client but two!

So this week helping Dell & Intel become joint Digital Media Brands of the year is probably one of the best pieces we have heard in 2009. And it is well deserved, it is not just an isolated campaign, they are out there pushing the boundaries in new marketing practice all the time.

We are looking forward to meeting more brands like them in 2010.

Singapore – On the back of a hugely successful through-the-line marketing campaign, the second OCBC Cycle Singapore event is looking set to be a sell-out as early-bird registration numbers have already surpassed the total number of participants in 2009.

Wow that is so nice of Marketing.

This is of course great news. The team at Spectrum WW deserve this as organisers of the event, their planning and running of this campaign is a text book case of how to extract the best work out of their partners.

Thankfully we have secured our places in the race.

The use of video online is growing a lot. This year we have done much more video work for the web than for our old staple; DVD. Our heritage of 8 years experience with CD and DVD give us quite an advantage as broadband really starts to change the web experience. Here is a simple example of a Sony pre-roll video Mofuro has developed for a 3rd-party online media site.  We are developing a whole series of these over a 6 month period.

Re: Clients Unimpressed with Agencies’ Digital

Pardon the baby analogy (just became a first time father last month) but say your newborn makes a wheezing sound when drinking his milk. Are you likely to see your family general practitioner (GP) who has treated three generations of your family with the same old tried and tested cough mixture? Or will you see a highly recommended pediatrician who probably knows baby-related issues best? I think you catch the drift.

Therefore, the findings stated in this article came as little surprise to me, especially so when traditional creative agencies (my GP in this case) proclaim themselves to be digital marketing specialists by hiring a couple of digital “evangelists” or acquiring digital shops only to have them create online versions of TVCs and print ads (the same old cough mixture). Or worse still, when their idea of a social media strategy for their client is a Facebook game or a fan page.

What most do not get is that digital marketing isn’t about creating brochureware online and that creating a Facebook fan page or a Twitter account doesn’t constitute a social media strategy. More importantly, digital isn’t merely another communication delivery channel/media, though as one, it has become more pervasive and relevant than ever before. Digital is a way of life which is intrinsically linked to technology. Think email and instant messaging, search engines, social commerce, digital TV, electronic newspapers, the iPOD, eBook readers, GPS on mobile phones, etc. It has changed where, how and what we use to communicate, search for information, purchase that new notebook, watch (and interact with) our favourite TV show, consumer our daily news, listen to our music, read our books, find the nearest petrol station, and the list goes on. Utilising these technologies for brand building, marketing and business benefit requires one to embrace change and innovation – which most traditional creative agencies find difficult to do for a variety of reasons.

Why specialist digital marketing agencies, and particularly independent ones, are better at accepting change and embracing innovation is simply because we are nimble (and therefore flexible) and because we are in the business of leveraging technology (which is in constant and rapid evolution) to create marketing impact for our clients. In fact, our very survival depends on our ability to evolve and innovate.

Another reason why specialist digital marketing agencies (and often media agencies as well) are the preferred port of call for clients looking to invest seriously in digital marketing is due to our understanding and investment in the area of tracking, i.e. analytics. Admittedly much still needs to be done (even in the case of the specialist digital agencies in this part of the world) to strengthen on our analytics competencies. Even more needs to be done to educate clients on how digital ROI is measured if we want to see digital spends increase to the levels seen in the West – lack of ROI understanding or measurement appears to be the biggest barrier to clients increasing their budget on digital marketing.

Perhaps most threatening to the traditional agencies, specialist digital marketing agencies (and particularly the large independent ones) are steadily evolving into creative business consultants, i.e. technology not just for marketing communications, but also for driving business growth for clients through customer relationship management, product innovation, and channel development. This certainly seems to be the trend in the U.S. and in Europe where a host of big brands have started to engage “digitally bred” creative business consultants (e.g. SapientNitro) for strategic marketing campaigns as opposed to their traditional creative counterparts.

Will we see a similar trend in Asia and therefore a growing role and relevance of specialist digital agencies to big brands in Asia looking for innovative business solutions? Well, let’s just say that one can’t think of any compelling reasons to suggest otherwise.

For the record, my GP diagnosed my son’s wheezing to be the result of a cough while the pediatrician correctly identified it to be a reflux issue. As you can imagine, I’m likely to be seeing the pediatrician for some time to come (as much as I swear by my GP) when it comes to my little one.

There’s a reason why there’s a term called specialists.

-       TUS unveils website for LG Health+

-       Site covers Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Philippines, Vietnam, India, Thailand

-       Aim of the site is to create awareness of new LG Health+ products

Regional – Digital marketing agency The Upper Storey has launched a new website for LG as part of its Health+ push in Asia.

Part of an integrated campaign, TUS has created the regional site http://lghealthplus.com/ to drive awareness and interest in LG’s new range of products. LG is the first consumer electronics company to design and market a comprehensive suite of home appliances aimed at helping consumers maintain healthier homes for the family household.

The main aim of the website is to build familiarity with LG’s new Health+ logo and the benefits of the products that carry the logo. The site covers the markets of Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines, Vietnam, India and Thailand.

“We believe that synergy with the main campaign is key here and have developed a campaign & assets which reflects that. We want to engage consumers with the ‘fairy tale’ story and have brought this educational content to life as much as possible,” Euan Wilcox, business director of The Upper Storey, said.