Crazy talent from Villfane Studios in the uncrowded category of high-end pumpkin carving. Fantastic work.

These ‘lightpainting’ images are the work of photographer Fabrice Wittner, lending his talent to the rebuild effort in Christchurch. Handmade stencils and a long exposure technique create the ghostly figures in memory of the city’s February 2011 earthquake. See more development shots here.

Matt

Every effective landing page is a marriage of strategy, creative & execution. Even when your strategy is sound, if you fail to execute landing page best practices, it can hurt your ability to convert. Run your landing page through this 10-point checklist to make sure you have the basics covered.

Message matched. Your landing page copy should mirror the words and phras­es used in your ad. Make sure what the visitor clicked on is reflected very clearly when they land on your page. This is called ‘pathway to purchase’ and it helps reduce bounce rate by reinforcing the visitor is in the right place.

Relevant. Just because your ad & page copy match doesn’t necessarily mean your page is relevant. Make sure your page is rel­evant to what you offered in your ad, and rele­vant to your call to action. Everything needs to be cohesive—the copy, the offer, the images.

Valuable. Is there a clear value proposi­tion in your offer? The role of the landing page isn’t to inform, it’s to sell. So don’t be afraid to make your pitch. Tell people why it’s in their best interest to convert.

Above the fold. Make sure your most important content is above the fold. That means copy, images and calls to action. You can have good stuff below the fold, but the best stuff needs to be high on the page.

Scannable. Long sentences, tons of bul­lets, lots of paragraphs—it’s hard for a visitor to read all that! On the landing page you have only a few seconds to make your case. Make sure that it’s easy to scan the page and absorb the overall message. Vary the length of your sentences, use bullets (and keep them short), and make sure paragraphs aren’t too long.

Visually actionable. At a quick glance it should be very clear what the key ac­tion is on the page. What does the page want the visitor to do? Pick up the phone? Fill out a form? Click a button? Whatever it is, make sure your page is very obvious and very ac­tionable. It should visually compel the visitor forward into the desired action.

Distraction minimized. Edit, edit, edit. Get rid of unnecessary copy, graphics and especially links. Every element of your page should be increasing your odds of con­version. No exceptions. Get rid of extra links, unrelated calls to action, superfluous graphics and anything else questionable.

Easy to convert. Make sure your con­version is clear and easy to act upon. If your conversion is someone picking up the phone, make it really easy to see your phone number. If it’s making a purchase, then adding to the cart needs to be super simple. If it’s complet­ing a form, only ask for information you really and truly need. Just like minimizing distrac­tions, you want to eliminate hurdles between the click and the conversion.

Feels good. The most subjective point, but important. Take a gander at your page. Ask others to look at it too. Does it make the visitor feel good? How good is your page as compared to your competitors? Don’t neglect the ‘feel good’ factor—even landing page visi­tors want great experiences!

Tested & optimized. Landing pages are the perfect place to test—copy, images, offers, layouts, forms. You name it, you can test it. Without testing you are leaving conver­sions on the table.

Source: Ion interactive

I believe that there is nothing more creative than a good gag. Comedy is filled with so many nuiances and intricacies, it’s impossible to define what is funny and what isn’t. It requires in-depth observation. What is funny depends on the time, the place, the audience, the person telling the joke, social status, ethnicity, occupation, what just happened, what’s about to happen, what has happened in the lives of people in the room and a million other things. It’s probably one of the few things in life worth taking seriously. Coming up with a good joke requires raw human creativity. There will never be an app that can create a funny anecdote or humorous reflection on a basic truth about humans that we can relate too.

Comedy is honest. Comedy can’t hide behind anything. If the gag isn’t funny, the audience doesn’t laugh. No amount of pyro-technics or special effects can make a bad joke funny. Going deeper into the bad joke and explaining to the audience why it is funny will only make the situation worse.

A bad idea is like a bad joke. You can’t hide a bad idea behind stunning photography and cool PhotoShop effects. You can’t make a bad idea seem better by rolling it out across a dozen or more platforms to show that it has ‘legs’. If it was a bad idea on a bus shelter, it’s a bad idea on a web banner.

This is similar to what I was saying when I blogged about PhotoShop, you can’t polish a turd, you can only try and disguise it with glitter.

Which brings me to the humble ‘scamp’. A little rough pencil sketch of an idea. The scamp is the idea in its rawest form. Throwing an idea at a client in this format can be risky, it may look unimpressive at first glace and many clients would prefer to see something more ‘worked up’, but the scamp is honest. The scamp can’t hide behind anything. The scamp doesn’t try to cloud your judgement with glossy photography and slick typography.

At the scamp stage the idea is still fluid and can easily evolve and grow. The scamp flies around at 30,000 feet and still has the ability to land anywhere. Once the idea is presented as a finished visual, the idea begins to set and become concrete, the idea is now only a few feet from the ground and doesn’t have much room to move before it hits the ground, so if it’s off-target, it may be too late to correct it.

Good ideas need time to grow and develop. The scamp is like the seed.

So a good scamp is like Jerry Sienfield’s stand-up, which grows and develops into a great TV show and a bad idea, fully worked up, is like Joey or, pretty much, any other sit-com spin-off (Possible exception: Frasier). (And $#*! My Dad Says is a good example of a good scamp that has been rushed through development and not giving the nessessary time to grow and develop).

David “Von Scamps-a-lot” McLeod

We had an earthquake here a couple of months ago. Things have settled down a lot now, although every so often we still get an aftershock strong enough for us to freeze in our tracks and look around for the nearest large piece of furniture to hide under. Well I do anyway. My rather more intrepid child fixes me with a stern eye and says, “More wibbly wobbly please Mummy”. Incidentally, if you are at a loose end one day, try explaining tectonic plates to a two year old. You won’t be bored by the time you’ve finished. Desperate for a drink yes, bored no.

So not so many wibbly wobblies, but more and more gaps in the city landscape, as damaged buildings get torn down. There are vacant lots popping up all over the place.

http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/photos/4095395/Latest-photos-7-1-quake

I believe these sites offer an opportunity for Christchurch to rebuild something memorable and attract people back to the character and variety of the central city, away from the dubious allure of the suburban malls. Whether the city has the vision to take this opportunity and make something truly great out of it is yet to be seen. Exciting times though.

In the meantime, these sites are already blossoming and playing host to a group of local creatives who are getting together to create pop up cafes in vacant lots,  where people gather to celebrate, play petanque, dance  and watch performances by poets, musicians, film makers and other artists. The initiative is called Gap Filler and it’s a beautiful example of how, with abundant creativity, something memorable and engaging can be created on a shoestring with the most basic of resources.

Photo borrowed from Gap Filler

http://www.stuff.co.nz/the-press/news/4190355/Quake-paves-way-for-fresh-thinking

http://www.gapfiller.org.nz/about.html

The TimeZoneOne team has been pretty busy over the last couple of years hatching brand new little Zoners, who are now teaching their loving parents that sleeping is for losers.

The other day I was hanging out the nappies (the unspeakable glamour) and making a to do list in my head. To do lists are my friend. Remember that no sleep bit? It plays havoc with your memory.

My list went a bit like this:

• Finish off website copy for Big Beverage
• Write first draft of brochure copy for Super Finance
• Review taglines for Funky Bar that I did on Friday
• For goodness sake finish that illustration already
• Buy milk
• Oooooh look, fluffy clouds over Quail Island…

Anyway, so I sat and I looked at my list as I was topping up my caffeine to blood ratio and it struck me that two years ago, before I  had my little ankle biter, my to do list would have been a lot more project management focused and less creative.

I wondered how this had happened. After all, my main role at TimeZoneOne is still project management and I love it. How did all this creative stuff get in the mix? And then I grabbed a pencil and wrote down the reasons that sprang to mind, because otherwise I’d forget them.

• The perspective I got from having a baby made me less frightened of failure. I’m way more open to challenges. I’m trying new stuff. And I’ve discovered when you are open to challenges, they start arriving thick and fast.

• I have less time, so I use the time that I have really hard. Also, I know that this sounds like the biggest cliché, but being a parent makes you realise your mortality and I realised that life’s too short not to do exciting work that gets me fired up.

• Flexible working hours lends itself to creative work. A lot of thinking is going on behind the scenes, so while I’m taking the sprog to pre-school, or weeding the garden, my latest project is bubbling away at the back of my mind and I’ll find that when  I sit down later to work, things that I didn’t even know I was thinking about have resolved themselves.

• I’ve realised that doing something good and getting it out there, is better than doing something perfect that may never see the light of day.

• I’m not afraid to ask how I can make something better.

• TimeZoneOne have been the best, most supportive employers that I could have wished for. They set me up so I can work from home, they let me work as flexibly as I wish, they supported me through the times when I wasn’t sure that I could string a sentence together, let alone run a project and they never let me say “I can’tâ€�. That’s an inspiration right there.

The general cultural assumption in the West seems to be that scone grabbers are the enemy of creativity, that they will chew up your mojo and you will never write (paint, dance, sing…)again.  But me, I reckon kids can also be a great catalyst to stop wasting time and just get on with it. I’m going to stop at one though. You don’t want to tempt fate with these things.

Domestic Bandit & Blog Mistress Elizabeth 

Why has there been no blogging lately??

Well there is good reason:

1. We have been busy working on some fun projects, which is always good.

and

2. The USA team have hit the office, which always makes things hectic but also fun.

For me personally it has been great to spend some face time bouncing ideas around and brainstorming projects with our fearless leader. This is usually done over Skype or Email which, even though we live in a digital world, is never quite as satisfying as being in the same room.

Our clients will, either way, get the best creative in the world. So never fear, first class work is on the way – fresher, faster, fairer!

 Tim

The St James School of Medicine, with campuses on the islands of Bonaire and Anguilla, offers an affordable medical education to students who wish to pursue their dream of a career in medicine.

TimeZoneOne is working with St James to help spread the word about the excellent medical training they offer.

On Wednesday we spent the afternoon running a workshop with the St James executive team helping them better understand their students and therefore how we might best communicate to them.

The workshop provided valuable information and insights and we were delighted to receive the following note from the St James Registrar…

“We were all very impressed by the workshop, just when we think we’ve seen everything you have to show us, you come and blow us all away again. Thanks for all the time, effort and creativity that you put into working with us.â€�

Thanks to St James for these kind words, we are very excited about the progress we can make for 2011.

Below are the links to the new websites for St James. Our work on these included design and SEO.

http://bonaire.sjsm.org/
http://anguilla.sjsm.org/

The U.S. Justice Department cleared the way last month for Continental Airlines and United Airlines to merge, creating the world’s largest airline. The airline will be called “United”. This is an interesting branding case study. In the pictures above you can see proposed aircraft branding once the merger takes place. The aircraft livery uses branding cues from both legacy carriers. It literally “unites” the two brands. The design retains the white aircraft fueslage, and includes the Continental Airlines globe on the tail. Two logo typefaces have been proposed so far – firstly, the airline name using Continental’s serif typeface and secondly, the airline name using United Airline’s sans serif typeface.

USA Today has reported that customer feedback would like to see the merged airline retain the famous United Airlines tulip shaped “U”…so, I guess you can’t keep everyone happy!

Bulkhead Nigel.

Adweek reports this week on how Wasa crispbread is promoting “snackspiration” and its cracker biscuits to the world via its Facebook page. This is a great example of an attractive microsite built within a companies facebook page. The site has a lot of underlying functionality and encourages viral engagement.

Here is a link to the Adweek article to find out more. And, here is the campaign running on Facebook 

Networked Nigel