Archimedia Studios

Put the “I” back in Team?

It may seem like teamwork is commonsense, but our everyday understandings of how to work optimally together can be wildly out of whack according to a new book by Harvard psychology professor, J. Richard Hackman Here are three of the best “beliefs about teamwork that may be out of whack” and from our expereince we are in full agreement with the professor.

  • Harmony helps. Smooth interaction among collaborators avoids time-wasting debates about how best to proceed. Actually: Quite the opposite, research shows. Conflict, when well managed and focused on a team’s objectives, can generate more creative solutions than one sees in conflict-free groups. So long as it is about the work itself, disagreements can be good for a team.
  • It’s good to mix it up. New members bring energy and fresh ideas to a team. Without them, members risk becoming complacent, inattentive to changes in the environment, and too forgiving of fellow members’ misbehavior. Actually: The longer members stay together as an intact group, the better they do. As unreasonable as this may seem, the research evidence is unambiguous. Whether it is a basketball team or a string quartet, teams that stay together longer play together better.
  • Teamwork is magical. To harvest its many benefits, all one has to do is gather up some really talented people and tell them in general terms what is needed–the team will work out the details. Actually: It takes careful thought and no small about amount of preparation to stack the deck for success. The best leaders provide a clear statement of just what the team is to accomplish, and they make sure that the team has all the resources and supports it will need to succeed.

Facebook lessons from the Luxury Brands

Here are 8 of best practices and strategies used for brands on Facebook that were drawn from our friends in the luxury industry:

1. Offer premium content. Lancôme lets visitors upload a photo and virtually try on makeup with its “magic mirror” app. Mercedes-Benz lets fans listen, download, and explore music from its long-running “Mixed Tape” series featuring up-and-coming artists.

2. Keep up the conversation. Brands on Facebook need to be sure to post to their wall regularly, so that they appear in the Facebook feeds of their fans. But not too regularly. Five to ten times a week, as brands like Swarovski do, is probably ideal. More than twenty times a week is overkill and annoying (hint: Oscar de la Renta). Responsiveness to customers is critical too. Brands like Aveda and Dewars make a point of replying to nearly 50% of all posts on their wall by fans.

3. Give customers a voice. It’s hard to interact with your customers on Facebook if you don’t give them a place to express themselves. Thousands of fan photos and videos can be found on BMW’s page.

4. Ask customers to be creative. The most savvy brands inspire their customers to do more than simply upload a pic of their favorite product. Jaeger-LeCoultre invites visitors to design a virtual piece of art featuring one their custom Reverso watches; BMW’s “2Originals” app invites you to create an original film with your Facebook photos to share with your friends.

5. Offer “gated” rewards to only your fans. Facebook’s functionality allows brands to offer specific content and pages that are visible only after “liking” the page—a nice way to attract fans, and reward those who love you most. Belvedere vodka’s landing tab offers photos from an exclusive “haus party” to those who click the “like” button. Oscar de la Renta offered free samples of its new fragrance at launch to Facebook fans only.

6. Integrate Facebook with the rest of your web presence (The Most Important). Facebook is only one part of a brand’s online presence. Smart brands like Audi integrate it with Twitter, YouTube, and their own websites, linking out to them from Facebook, and linking to Facebook prominently on their own websites. Brands like Tory Burch integrate Facebook into every product page on their own website, with a simple “Share” button.

7. Balance global and local. As with any media, international brands must balance global reach with local relevance to customers. The L2 study found that luxury brands that offer localized Facebook tabs or pages (Johnnie Walker has 33 different national pages) have much higher rates of interaction by their fans.

8. Tap into F-commerce. Facebook isn’t just for making friends. It’s good for selling too. Even brands that are not yet selling products entirely within their Facebook page can use it to showcase products, guide the customer to a purchase decision, and then transfer them back to their corporate site for the sale. Bulgari’s customers can browse products in Facebook and click to go directly to their purchase page on the company’s own website.

You can check out all these brands on Facebook!

The Secrets of Food Photography

Food Photography is a business all unto itself.  It is used in commercials, print adds, posters, menus, for packaging, cookbooks, and recipe books.

We have all  noticed that some foods which you see on print and media advertising look great, then you go to the restaurant ,order it and somehow it looks different? This is because there are several tricks that photographers use to enhance appearance, and we are not referring to Photoshop, although that is also heavily used.

Most ingredients are carefully arranged by a food artist/stylist and ingredients are cut by hand to precise standards all to make them ever so more appealing.

  • For dishes to look fresh, for sodas or drinks to look refreshing, water mixed in with glycerin or other wetting agents is constantly sprayed as a fine mist unto soda can, glass or the product itself. Little bubbles that seem to last forever in the shot of a cold refreshing soda or drink are made by applying small drops of soap liquid.
  • Dishes, especially soups, are propped up; use of conclave dishes that raises the contents of the dish.
  • For any dish that is supposed to be served hot and consumed as such, the number one tool used is dry ice to give the effect of smoke emanating from it.
  • Nebulizers are also heavily used to create steam.
  • Products that are presented in such as way that you wonder why it does not fall of the table. They are nailed, glued or screwed into place.
  • The use of artificial props is also very common. Things like plastic ice cubes, fake cakes, fruits are commonplace.
  • Most foods are prepared on site just before being photographed, so they always look tempting and fresh. Meats and vegetables are usually undercooked since cooking them fully browns them too much to look appealing.
  • The studio can get very hot due to the lights set up. Products that are required to be kept cold, such as ice cream are not really made from “ice cream” but of lard for the shoot. Hungry yet?
  • The secret of Cereal ads is in using heavy cream so that the cereal won’t  become soggy or sink to the bottom of the plate.
  • The shinny fresh picked appearance  of fruit is done by misting them with a water glycerin mixture along with a healthy application of wax.

One of our favorite places to obtain “Food Props” is  TrentGrove Studios.  Check out their products, you will be amazed!

Lady Gaga’s Lessons in Marketing

Who knew we could learn so much about marketing from Lady Gaga? The pop star* has taught us two more lessons;

  • People will still buy music if it’s really, really cheap. Billboard says that Amazon sold 440,000 digital copies of her new “Born This Way” album at $0.99 each. The e-commerce giant sold 330,000 copies on a Monday in May, even though demand for promotion blew its servers up, and 110,000 more copies a few days later (Thursday), when it repeated the stunt.
  • People will still buy music if they’re really, really interested in a particular act. Billboard reported that s Lady Gaga was set to sell 1.15 million albums in the album’s first week. Which means that buyers are paying full price for some 700,000 of them.
  • Bonus lesson, because we already knew it, but it’s good to remember anyway: People are still buying CDs! Billboard also projected that Apple’s iTunes will account for 200,000 units sold by the end of the first week. Add in Amazon’s totals and you get to 640,000 digital albums sold. Which means that Americans will have bought more than 500,000 good old-fashioned compact discs this week, too.

Have you bought a CD in the last year? Do you know anyone who has?

But someone is: A decade after Napster, discs still account for a majority of the music industry’s revenues.

What they don’t teach You in Ad School

There’s one thing that everyone in the fields of advertising, marketing, design, digital and the like all share: We were all once newbies. Young pups. No matter how we earned our first job or sneaked into this industry — and regardless of previous class work, internships and competitions —  most graduating students have no idea exactly what they are getting themselves into. We would like to share some key insights into our world that  more institutions, that offer Communications, Marketing, Advertising, Design majors,  should be addressing in their curriculum.

#1 It’s Ultimately About People
No matter how “creatively driven” the agency, we are ultimately responsible for helping our clients interact with real, living, breathing human beings. While it’s tempting to get caught up in pursuit of fake gold awards to hang on the mantel, we need to always remember that we’re being paid to create connections between people and brands — whether it be building awareness for a new product or cultivating evangelism for an established brand. So while we may make ads, or build apps, or design and program websites, we must never lose sight of the fact that we are truly in the “people” business.

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