I have just finished moderating the talk “Digital Hybrid- The Future of Agency Evolvement” at ad:tech Singapore. Attendance at the event overall was good. With probably 600 to 700 people at the keynote speeches. However all panel discussions were not so well attended. It seems people are keen to hear more about indepth case studies and/or different topics.

Maybe ad:tech should crowdsource the topics for next years conference, and maybe even nominate who they want to see speaking.

Overall however the audience seemed quite interested in hearing about ‘the agency of the future’. So a big thanks to Haresh, Sally, Calvin & Anand for their insights.

At The Upper Storey we like to strive for new thinking and new ways of doing things. This is not confined to ‘digital’ or to ‘creative’ – but across everything we do. We hope (we strive) to make sure our strategy is fresh, that our technology pushes boundaries and, of course, make our ideas very new.

So it is natural that we might be considered a Non-Traditional agency, and it’s a tag we are very happy keep.

For those of you who have come via a new print ad in the Marketing Agency of the Year 2010 annual edition, please look around and get to know us better.

And to see our latest work contact me (euan.wilcox@upperstorey.com) so I can show it to you in it’s full glory.

Thank you.

Intel’s Jeffrey the Robot, recently featured in a 2010 Superbowl commercial, was scripted in as one of the (minor) characters in an upcoming site we are developing. As the original Jeffrey is an actual puppet, which was unfeasible for our purposes, a three-dimensional digital version had to be created by The Upper Storey’s animation arm, Mofuro.

With the aid of reference images of Jeffrey, taken in various angles, we were able to create a faithful reproduction of the puppet. Modelling was done in Autodesk Maya, textures and mental ray shaders were developed for ‘coloring’ Jeffrey.

For the putting Jeffrey through his motions, we setup an animation rig that allows him to have a range of expressions in facial and body language.

If you own a pair of red/blue 3D/stereoscopic glasses, you can see these anaglyph images of Jeffrey in stereo format. So go on, have a look.

Jeffrey Test Animation Click to see Jeffery in action.

Our team in India has just picked up some new business from one of India’s leading general insurance companies. The work involves us developing characters for their digital platforms. We can’t reveal the client and the actual work at this stage. More to follow sometime later next month.

An entire gamut of digital initiatives for a luxury brand is next on the cards.

Watch out for this space….

All work and no play?  Not at TUS! How many reasons can we think of to put together a celebration? 100,000,000,000!

For this occasion the 6 Degrees Committee decided to celebrate a new client win (stay tuned for the announcement in due time) and some new employee additions that we will announce soon.

The team partook in some good drinks, good food, great company, and some Rock Band.  Here are some pics for your entertainment.

Our designer Mel sent this out to the office recently. Pretty exciting stuff, Google’s just launched a service to add web fonts to any web page. All fonts in the directory are available for use on websites under an open source license and served by Google servers.

They’re also working with developers to create a series of high quality fonts that are going to be available through this directory. It works in most browsers and is pretty easy to use. Dynamic content just got dynamic

Straight from the horse’s mouth -

“For a long time, the web has lagged print and even other electronic media in typographic sophistication. To enjoy the visual richness of diverse fonts, webmasters have resorted to workarounds such as baking text into images. Thanks to browser support for web fonts, this is rapidly changing. Web fonts, enabled by the CSS3 @font-face standard, are hosted in the cloud and sent to browsers as needed.”

Links:

Google Code blog for more of the article.

See it in action here (you might need to use Chrome to see this)

Google Font API

Came across an interesting post on Adweek a couple of days ago about how some agencies were shaping their creative leadership in reaction to ‘increasingly flatter structures at agencies’. Some points covered were how the current CCO’s needed to posses business savvy skills on top of being traditionally and digitally creative. The post goes on to quote Mike Hughes, president and co-CCO of Interpublic Group’s The Martin Agency, describing it as much more of an account management job than a creative one.

Thankfully , the article managed to stay away from the tired traditional vs digital natives debate. What it did do however, was remind me of the obsolete definition of a creative from our industry at large.

What does being a creative mean in our industry?

Ask around and you would get the standard answers about people who can visualize, write and code well. A creative means you are either a visual or sound artist, designer, writer or a coder? While i do not entirely disagree with these definitions, i feel that it is a discounted take which is preventing agencies from meeting the demands on the evolving industry.

Everyone in an agency needs to be a creative. Creative meaning strategically sound, effective and imaginative at the same time. Why split hairs between managing, client servicing, programming or art and copy departments? Those are just skill sets as far as we are concerned. There are as many wholly unimaginative and uncreative designers, as there are creative client servicing folks. It doesn’t really matter what we do with our skill sets. It’s more about how we do it.

It’s not really a new concept anyway. Our time has seen many creative entrepreneurs, business people who take on their challenges in totally unexpected but innovative ways, people like Bill Gates, Richard Branson and Steve Jobs. Who can argue that David Ogilvy or Martin Sorrel is not creative?

Creative thought leadership can work wonders, regardless of what you actually do with it. Creating a culture of creative thought leadership and allowing it to permeate into every role & aspect of the agency would directly translate into efficient and emergent services. It doesn’t matter if the client’s brief called for strategy or visual impact, traditional or digital work. Once this culture is truly in place, the agency gains a genre spanning team of industry leaders.

So guys, let’s not sell ourselves short. We are definitely more than a bunch of people who happen to be able to choose a nice color or put fancy words and charts together.

For some time I have been thinking about the structure of Client Servicing teams.  Traditionally, most agencies follow two particular models: they either have an Account Manager that provides both client servicing and project management (supported by traffic managers) OR they have both Account Managers and Project Managers.  Agencies create their own names and titles, but in essence, we all know what it takes to service clients and deliver projects regardless of the nomenclature.  The real question is, who does it better? A single AM or a combo AM-PM team?  Or is it something different? Hmm…

At TUS we structure our Client Servicing department into AM and PM teams long ago.  This allows each individual to really hone in on their specialty and focus on not only what they like to do, but also on what they are good at doing.  It is very rare that you find a suit that is also a fantastic project manager or vice-versa.  So, why not get suits and PMs to be GREAT at what they do, instead of just being good.  On the one hand, a great AM is one that understands its clients (personally and professionally); has a deep understanding of brands; is insightful,   ingenious and analytical when it comes to strategy development; and has a keen aptitude for business (as it relates to marketing impact on consumer influence and ROI).  A great PM, on the other hand, is one that has a keen interest and knowledge of technology; is process-driven; and has a commitment to project delivery that upholds on-time and on-specification requirements.  AMs and PMs serve one purpose in the client’s eyes, but they speak very different languages.

Now, what is beyond that?  Yes, we have all defined career paths, and growth for our team members, and for the most part we have standardized titles such as Account Executive, Project Manager, Account Director, etc.  Most agencies have adopted the AM-PM team model by now, but the question now becomes, where is the depth in that model? This is the time to make the model better not just follow it!

We have created yet a new role within our agency structure- Client Service Executive.  Client Service Executives (CSE) will serve as the only hybrid member in the client servicing team.  These individuals will support our AMs and PMs with the day-to-day operational and executional tasks; while at the same time, they will learn the tools of the trade and the TUS way for both account and project management.  This programs gives individuals wanting to be in client servicing with the opportunity to discover what it means to be an agency client service team member! Through time, the CSEs will naturally start showing tendencies for one track or the other (AM vs PM). It will then be our job, as management, not only figure to listen to what they like, but also to help them develop what they are good at doing and set them on the right path.  We will then hire more CSEs and continue to build our team, while allowing everyone the opportunity to grow together and form the new client servicing department.

Now, on to my search for our new CSEs…

The Upper Storey has been nominated in the Top 10 for two categories in this years “Marketing Magazines Agency of the Year Awards”. This is an interesting award as it is nominated by clients and peers. It is hard to influence and thus, in the end, is a pretty fair judgment of agencies.
For TUS it is our first time in these awards – we are very happy to to make it to this list of great agencies.
Also nice was the fact we are nominated as Local Hero for both categories.

Creative Agency of the Year – Advertising for Non-Traditional Media
Finalists
* BBDO/Proximity
* Blue Interactive
* Euro RSCG
* Kinetic
* McCann Erickson
* OgilvyOne
* TBWA\Tequila
* The Upper Storey
* Tribal DDB
* XM

Local Hero Finalists
* 8RewardsRoad.com
* Kinetic
* The Upper Storey

Creative Agency of the Year – Digital Creative Services
Finalists
* 8RewardsRoad.com
* Arc Worldwide
* BBDO/Proximity
* Blue Interactive
* Kinetic
* OgilvyOne
* TBWA\Tequila
* The Upper Storey
* Tribal DDB
* XM

Local Hero Finalists
* 8RewardsRoad.com
* Kinetic
* The Upper Storey

As well reported today in Media magazines today; “The Upper Storey to handle eBay’s direct marketing in SEA”. As Marketing Interactive put it “TUS bags eBay regional biz”

Technically and correctly it is eBay’s online direct work. Specifically their regional B2B online newsletter communications.

Officially: “eBay is seeking to increase the life-time value of these customers through a direct digital communications program with focus on measurement, tracking and optimisation. The communications approach and initial design will be established by the senior team at The Upper Storey in Singapore and managed by the Studio TUS team during the year.”

This is one of a few recent clients for Studio TUS which seems to be well positioned to meet regional clients essential day-to-day digital communications needs. Studio TUS is growing fast, although it really only engages in long term, stable relationships where the clients are focus on both efficiency and communications optimisation.

About Studio TUS

Founded in 2009, Studio TUS is specifically designed to focus on the production of creative and technical assets. Situated in Kuala Lumpur it has the best mixture of cost effectiveness with creative and technical talent, with a global view, to help produce regionally superior work.