Our aim with the new Skive website was to build a great looking site taking full advantage of the dynamism that is available through Flash, but without any of the common annoyances that can occur in non-HTML sites.

The traditional Flash website

Essentially one big page behind one big preloader. Users cannot navigate directly into an individual page within the site, cannot bookmark or forward links to individual pages, and cannot use the browser’s back and forward buttons.  The worst case scenario here is a user who has navigated around the site for a while, doesn’t realise the history buttons don’t work and clicks the back button, taking them right out of the website entirely and to wherever they were before that.

The Skive website

Skive's new website

The skive site uses SWFAddress, a third party Flash and Javascript library allowing each page to have a unique URL and enabling use of the browser’s back and forward button.  There are several features of the site which allow us to take full advantage of SWFAddress.

To minimise load times, and to remove the need for a preloader at all, the site only ever loads the necessary code for the page currently being viewed. This is made possible by having a separate file for each section, and separate modules for each library of code. There is one main site file which contains the navigation, text rendering engine and file loading logic. Anything else is loaded only when it is needed.

To give a concrete example with numbers, all 3D code (which uses Papervision3D) is compiled into its own library which is loaded when needed. When the user visits the featured section the 3D code is loaded first (70KB), followed by the much smaller featured section file (15KB). If the user then navigates to the work section the 3D library is already loaded and only the very small work section (4KB) needs to be loaded.

Page load times are also reduced by not requiring all images to be preloaded before a page will display, instead (like an HTML page) the page is rendered first, then each image as it is loaded.

Given my allegience to the red side of Manchester, to say I’m not a big fan of Manchester City football club is a bit of an understatement. I don’t like a thing about them. Well, apart from their new website, which unfortunately is rather good and streets ahead of United’s.

It’s clean, extremely user-friendly, has free VOD highlights packages and to top it all off is free of advertising (after all they don’t need the money given their new Arab benefactor’s deep pockets). Someone also seems to have thought through their wider digital strategy which is summarised here.

City seem to have realised that if they’re to become a global brand, they need to have a cohesive, well thought out digital strategy (as all brands should) and this is something that all of their Premier League competitors should action if they’re not in the process of doing it already.

They still won’t finish in the top four though.

In a move that makes it a Top 40 Digital Agency, Skive has acquired a controlling stake in creative digital agency Soup.

The agency, which is based in London and Norwich and has 35 staff, currently works for clients such Sky, Innocent, Jordans Cereals, Virgin Money, Moonpig and Aviva.

The two agencies will continue to operate as separate entities, but will share certain resources when required, to provide clients with an even wider range of skills across the group.

Commenting on Skive’s acquisition of Soup, Chairman Alan Page said “We see this as the first step of our strategic plan to develop a broader independent digital marketing offering.  As Skive increases its direct relationships with clients, the exceptional skills of Soup in strategic planning and creative will provide the group with a chance to continue developing its own skills in these areas.  Also, the deal places the combined group in the NMA Top 40 agencies in the UK.”

Nick Thompson, Soup, said, “This is a great opportunity to take the business forward with like-minded people. Skive is ambitious, has strong credentials, a reputation for delivering high quality work and is passionate about digital. We are all excited about moving forward together.”

Well, it’s been an interesting week to say the least. Although I have physically handed my new business card to only a handful of people it has reached enough to fill Wembly Stadium twice over.

About 6 weeks ago, in my spare time I created an Augmented Reality business card and posted it on my blog and Vimeo. I had a small initial rush of a couple of thousand views and then it quietened down. Standard story.

Then last week things went absolutely mental. By the end of the week I had had 40,000 hits on my blog and 180,000 views of my Video. I was being Tweeted something silly and blogged by such giants as Engadget, Popular Science, Gizmodo, Notcot, The Times and many others.

As a result, several big brands have approached me expressing an interest in working with Skive on Augmented Reality projects. I’ve had parties approach me for interviews, articles, tutorials and to be involved in books and conferences.

It was fascinating to see how interest in this piece of work evolved over several days. There was an absolute digital ripple effect. It seems that Twitter played a huge part in driving the success throughout. It’s great to see, first hand, social media acting as a vehicle for non-commercial work to gain such a huge audience in a small space of time.

So where to from here? I will be continuing to experiment using AR but in addition to investigating it at home I will be doing some more R&D work. So who wants an AR application? Form an orderly queue…

I read with amazement this week that a piece of basic media research conducted by a 15 year old intern at Morgan Stanley on teen media consumption caused a sensation across the City.

The FT ran a piece regarding it on its front page and many other respected media outlets also reported the ’sensational’ story (it was even posted on our blog).

What was so surprising to me was that the research itself is extremely basic and concludes what every advertising and media person probably already knows (or should know) about teen media consumption, particularly in relation to digital.

This seems to be a great illustration therefore of how little certain sectors know about media consumption and also, more worryingly, how little they read more robust research from more respected sources.

My thunder was somewhat stolen by this chap and i couldn’t agree with his article more.

Our quirky campaign for Weetabix Minis has just gone live.

The TV spot by WCRS tracks the world-weary MD of the Minis Factory as he herds a tour group around its shrunken workspace, and culminates in an employee – Nigel – being ‘minimised’.

The digital experience – aimed at 6-10 year old kids – begins where the TV ad finishes, and requires users to go on journey of discovery around the diminutive factory, with plenty of quirky fun along the way.

The factory is shown in cross-section, like an ant farm, and users interact with gadgets shown in the ad such as the ‘Chocolator’, Shrunken Employee Detector and Minimiser in their effort to Find Nigel.

Figaro Digital magazine has published an in-depth joint case study on the Start Thinking Soldier campaign written by Skive, Spank and Publicis Modem.

It’s a very thorough account – from inception through production and delivery – and worth a read to really get a clearer picture about our involvement.

It’s in the latest publication but also reproduced here.

Acrossair is one of the first augmented reality applications to go live on the iPhone AppStore. Using the phone’s video function, the application shows Londoners where the nearest tube stations are in relation to their location. The app tells you how far away (in kilometers) you are from the station, as well as what lines operate out of the station.

Click here to see the app in action.

This is an excellent example of adding utility to augmented reality (AR). Although AR has been around for over a year it has recently become very popular in marketing communications for a number of brands. The danger of such popular technologies is ‘bandwagoning,’ where marketers create applications which serve no real purpose other than to appear current.