Poke – Page 4 – crackunit.com

Spot the Bull

This is one of my favourite projects of recent times. It ticks all of the boxes that get me excited about the work Poke do.

It’s a simple idea, that hasn’t been done before (as far as I can tell). We were basically tasked by Orange to come up with an interesting way to give away a bunch of tickets for Glastonbury. So we came up with the idea of:

Putting a GPS enabled cow in a field (it turned out to be a bull later so we could turn the name into a tabloid-friendly pun)
Showing it’s position live on the internet, along with webcams
Whoever guesses where the bull is going to be at a certain time of day will win tickets

You can play online now for the next 4 weeks:

http://www.orange.co.uk/spotthebull/

I really hope that it gets picked up by the online community. It just feels like the kind of idea that people could get excited about. It’s one of those things that creates an interesting interface between the real world and the web world, and it’s a bit silly too (which often helps).

(In case you’re worried, we were very careful that the activity doesn’t in any way interfere with the Bull’s normal life. The whole thing has been devised in consultation with the farmer and the RSPCA)

Zopa Wins a Webby

I found out yesterday that Zopa won a Webby award. Which made me happy.

I’m not normally all that excited about awards. Having been on the judging side a couple of times you start to see how ‘the system’ works. And to be honest I think that a lot of the work Poke do isn’t really ‘award fodder’. The Webby’s are slightly different. The judges come from a wider base, the entry process doesn’t allow you to submit a jazzy film to explain why you should win. It’s basically just the URL to the site. The judges then have to figure out if, and why, it’s good.

I know that the Zopa win isn’t just down to Poke. It won because it’s an interesting idea (that hopefully we helped to express in an appropriate way).

In many respects it was a dream job for us. We got to work with a brand that had an awesome tone of voice and heaps of personality, as well as it being a proposition that’s totally right for now. And that’s not to mention the team we got to work with…

I’m not saying that working with a startup is easier. It has its own set of challenges: everyone is very close to the brand and has a strong opinion on everything and they work in startup time (i.e. it needs to happen now). But the energy and enthusiasm that an entrepreneurial team generates is really motivating.

Without wanting to miss anyone at Zopa out. Sarah, Justin, Dave, Tom, James, Tim and the sadly missed Richard we thank you all for everything.

Webby Awards Vote

This is a shameless attempt to sway voting in this year’s Webby Awards. But being as it’s a People’s Voice vote I guess that’s the name of the game. Everyone else seems to be doing the same.

You can vote here.

This year Poke have got 2 things in there. Zopa and American Express RED.

Anyway if you’ve got a mo (you do need to register so it’s not instant) pop over here and cast your vote for stuff you like – especailly the two sites above ;-)

Kate Moss for TopShop

A new Poke project (nothing to do with me really): Kate Moss for TopShop. I like the fact it mixes up old style web stuff with flash video and things. It’s all a bit ‘fashion’ for me, but I still quite like it.

Plus you know it’s going to get visited about a trillion times just because Ms Moss is involved.

http://www.katemosstopshop.com

Fancy Working For Orange?

Orange are on the lookout for a new Digital Manager.

Obviously the best thing about the job is that you’ll get to work with Poke, and you’ll get to boss us around. And we have to be nice to you. But aside from that it’s a pretty cool role.

It’s got all the things you’d look for in a client side job and a great team to work with. It’s based in Paddington.

They’re looking for someone with:

3-5 years in digital marketing
Demonstration of managing digital campaigns (and be able to show some cool stuff you’ve worked on)
Experience of media planning online (at a campaign level)
All the things associated with running jobs (project management, dealing with agencies, budget management, etc.)

From where I sit this could be a really great opportunity. The team is relatively small and able to ‘get stuff done’. And now that they’re a fully converged mobile/broadband company there’s some pretty cool stuff coming up.

If you want more information get in touch and I’ll hook you up…

Your future could be bright ;-)

Yacco Blogs

Nice to see that Yacco, Poke‘s new creative director, has started blogging. It’s early days, but I’m sure there’s going to be some nice things on there…

I made a NetVibes tab that contains all of the Poke bloggers in one place. It’s quite a nice thing to do – I would share it with the world, but I’m not sure if they’d all want me to. I might ask them and see.

Evil Recruiters

Not all recruiters are evil, but lots of them are. In my inbox today I’ve got 3 unsolicited candidates from cold-mailing (i.e. spamming) recruiters. This is bad. And it’s unfortunate for the candidates as I’m not even going to look at them, and they could be great.

But this is the just the tip of the iceberg of recruiter badness…

There is one recruiter who I like: Eleanor went out and set up her own recruitment company Roome Consulting. We’d worked with her for a while at her previous place and she’d always been really good. She’d never pushed anyone to come and see us. And never told anyone (including us) fibs or even white lies about people or places. And over time she’s learned the kind of people that we like and she ‘gets’ the culture of Poke. Anyway that’s enough of an advert (disclosure: I may get a packet of peanuts and half a lager for this placement).

Anyway, Eleanor has had a bit of trouble recently and asked me what she could do about it. I’ve got no idea apart from things which are really bad and spiteful, which isn’t really the right course of action.

Her problem is this: She’s been writing nice recruitment ads (for Poke and other people) and a rival recruiter (who shall remain nameless) have been ripping off her ads almost wholesale and reposting them. Then going to her clients and trying to flog them the applicants. This strikes me as low, even for recruiters!

Example. Her original ad starts:

PROBABLY THE BEST ROLE OF 2007……… It may sound like just another SENIOR ACCOUNT DIRECTOR ROLE in just another digital agency in London but WOW what a role, what an account and HOLY MOLY what an agency.

Their rip-off…

DEFINITELY THE BEST ROLE OF 2007..It may sound like just another senior designer role in just another digital agency in London but WOW what a role, what people and HOLY MOLY what an agency.

Anyone got any thoughts as to what she could do? Apart from change profession?

Virgin Media, Slight Redemption

As some of you noticed a couple of people from Virgin posted in the comments on my post. Which was pretty good. So I got in touch. They dealt with my problem quickly and efficiently. And now I’m online with Virgin Media broadband. It all seems to be working really well.

The people I spoke to were duly apologetic and at the same time recognised that what I’d gone through was completely unacceptable.

One up for the power of blogs perhaps? I wonder how difficult it would have been to resolve using the ‘normal’ channels. Maybe it would have got sorted anyway, who knows?

[For anyone who cares it looks like the problem came about because I made a switch from Telewest to NTL (on account of moving house) – then 1/2 way through the transition NTL changed into Virgin Media, which I guess does sound a bit confusing and perhaps a rare case. But something didn’t work quite right…]

Our ‘Secret’ Creative Director

OK. It’s time. I can now finally reveal the all-new 3rd Poke Creative Director (after all the buildup). He’s the guy on the left.

His name is Yacco Vijn – pronounce it as Jacko (like Whacko Jacko) Fine – pretty simple, and he claims it’s close enough to how you’re supposed to say it. Yacco has left behind the agency that he co-founded (skipintro.nl) to come and work with us at Poke in London. We’re looking forward to making sure he doesn’t regret it.

We’re dead excited that Yacco found us. And once the connection had been made we realised that we knew lots of his work and loved the way that he thinks about stuff. I really love the Rijkswidget they made for the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam – basically its a widget that gives you a painting a day (and the history of it when you flip it round). Can still be downloaded and installed from: http://www.rijksmuseum.nl/widget. Simple and brilliant. Self improvement never looked so good.

And he used to be a top Techno/Trance DJ/ Producer, which is nice. Plus he’s got a MySpace page with his own music on, which is cool.

Perhaps Yacco’s biggest legacy to date is creating the legendary skipintro.com, described by one website (in an article called “it’s a car crash out there”):

So how did we get here and where do we go from here? While none of the experts would point a finger at a single cause, they did point to some causes and all agreed that skipintro.com is a great example of what not to do.

High praise indeed! Unfortunately the site isn’t there any more, so unless you were there at the time, and many people were. This is probably a bit meaningless.

We’re all looking forward to doing some good stuff.

When Good Companies Blog Good

Here’s a site that Poke built that I’ve never written about. Probably because I had nothing to do with it. But it’s a great little site. Partly to do with what we did for them. But as least as much, if not more, because they’re using it really well. Which I’m sure is partly related to the fact that the site was built to fit their particular needs (it’s a custom blog tool built on top of Rails if you care).

Camron are a small PR agency who deal in a lot of stylish, luxuryish, stuff. The site is a portfolio for their work, which they write about and put nice photos in. But the best bit is their blog. They call it: Intelligence (the things they’re doing and the stuff they like). And it’s properly great. It really gives you a feel for the fact that these are a bunch of real people who appreciate and love great high-end stuff. And the most important thing is that it feels totally natural.

Puts our shitty Poke site to shame (for now…)

(And I also like how the people page has been done to focus on the object or thing that the individuals like the best).