As the use of video in marketing becomes increasingly popular, here’s an example of a recent animation we created to promote an Avaya end user service.

The strong silhouette figures, bold use of colour and up beat music give this video a particularly distinctive look and feel. The red line takes you on a journey through all the business benefits on offer from this new service, in a way that’s clear, concise, but also engaging.

Together, all the creative elements build a credible, sophisticated identity for the service. This video was just one part of a larger integrated campaign that included emails, direct mail pieces and a microsite – click here to view the campaign microsite.

You on you:
I’m often described as ‘cynical, paranoid and weird’, but I have flaws too. In a previous incarnation I worked as an Illustrator/Visualiser with a global client base. Following a two year stint with a marketing company as graphic designer/coffee maker, I went solo in 1976.

My first client was infamous publishing entrepreneur Felix Dennis, designing ‘cult’ posters for fanzines. Then I produced a series of covers for the original Doctor Who novelisations (Target Books). Soon afterwards I was illustrating album covers for Paul McCartney and other rock luminaries, while also visualising for the rock-design outfit Hipgnosis.

By 1978, I had picked up an award from The Society of Illustrators in New York, for Ted Nugent’s ‘Weekend Warriors’ album cover. (recently featured on the set design of Channel 4′s American TV series ‘One Tree Hill’).

For the next three decades I worked for many of the major ad agencies, design groups, publishers, film and record companies.

I later diverted into developing concepts for children’s TV, but my projects were generally canned in Cannes! (the nearest ‘miss’ being the ‘Octopus’ Garden’ project with Ringo Starr! Don’t ask)! This in turn lead me into character design which proved more viable. Designs include the ‘Faith Girl’ icon for Faith shoes and more recently; the ‘Uly Bug’ identity for DJ Jonathan Ulysses.

What qualities do you bring to Second2?
Experience, skill, diversity, humour and wisdom teeth.

Which project have you been most proud of during your time at Second2?
There are so many my chest aches. I enjoyed working on the Second2 ‘Xmas card’ email. I’m quite proud of that, the Toshiba caricature project and the illustrations for the First Capital website.

Perhaps, due to my ever-expanding waistline and whitening beard, I was destined to become Second2′s Santa representative for Xmas 2009. I was given the opportunity to create the Second2 ‘Xmas card’ email and supply the Toshiba Xmas gift also.

Three things you love:

• Family
• My guitar
• ‘Five-a-side’

Three things you hate:

• Meat
• Celery
• Getting too old and fat to play ‘Five-a-side’

Where would we find you on a typical Saturday afternoon?
Quite often we head into town, grab some veg from Borough Market (no celery!), do a bit of culture; galleries/theatre or the flicks (always matinees), then beer and home. On Sunday morning I play football and spend the rest of the day recovering!

You’ve seen it around. The subtle advertising on the back of car park receipts, on supermarket trolley handles, or even on the hanging straps on trains and buses! Ambient Media is growing fast as more and more advertisers and marketing gurus strive to find new ways of getting in front of their target audience.

Ambient media also includes techniques like projecting huge images on the sides of buildings, slogans on the hot air balloons, and stickers on escalator steps.

Ambient marketing does provide a very effective way of getting a brand message in front of consumers. It can create mass attention in specific audience groups and locations, and directly interacts (or interrupts) the consumers normal every day activities.

It doesn’t need to be ‘big’ either – ambient could be used at trade shows, press events, or in your own office to promote new initiatives to staff and visitors.

Datasheets are used to help explain the benefits and specifications of particular laptops. However, as Toshiba have such a huge range of laptops, it can prove both costly and timely to produce a datasheet for every model. We proposed a datasheet creator application that would automate the production of any business laptop datasheet, pulling all the specifications and descriptions from the Toshiba website, therefore ensuring the details are always up to date through a direct XML feed.

The datasheets are instantly created as a PDF, offering a comparison option between other laptop SKUs in the same family, and a choice of which specifications to include.

The datasheet creator application is live at www.toshiba.co.uk/datasheet. Both customers and Toshiba staff are using the tool and finding it incredibly useful. Marketing contacts are freed up to work on other projects, money is being saved each time a datasheet is produced, and Account Managers can provide their customers with bespoke datasheets as and when needed.

What started with just business laptops has now progressed to a consumer laptop version, and also a TV version; and we also have a Digital Imaging version in the pipeline.

With our experience in the development of interesting ways to engage with our client’s channel and customers, along with our understanding of the storage market, it was no surprise that Overland approached us to help launch a new programme to recruit partners for their newly acquired SNAP portfolio.

The brief was to push the brand and develop a campaign that really made an impression, both functionally and emotionally. With so many organisations having SNAP installed, and people not really knowing how popular it was, we developed the concept ‘It’s a Small World. It’s a SNAP World’.

We planned an interesting route around London and produced a series of High Definition videos from key roof top locations around the city. We then added a “tilt-shift” effect on all the videos to make everything look miniature – so literally the world got smaller!  We used still images for the European countries, but added the same “tilt-shift” affect so each country had recognisable landscapes to improve response.

The result was a full screen flash video website which tied in the key concept and the key messaging within succinct areas across the site, without losing the visual impact of the videos.

The feedback across the whole world has been hugely positive. We created an outstanding, instantly visual and inspiring campaign, which is so different to anything the storage market is doing currently, both for resellers and end users.

Visit www.manageinasnap.com to view the reseller site
Visit www.yourdatainasnap.com to view the end user site