It starts with a question. Last Friday, Scamp asked a question [emphasis is mine]:
do you actually want to
My guess is that you can probably ask the same question to entire agencies. And the answer: "No, now that you mention it, not really."
Agencies are built around the development of the big creative idea. The inspirational, sticky, connective idea that sucks people in and keeps them there. And for some reason it's really difficult for the agency world to create big ideas and get them to work online. I think I'm starting to figure out why. We usually create our ideas/campaigns according to time-honored, traditional method :
- Research and brief
- Create a range of concepts, whittle them down and refine into a presentable few
- Present to client and revise the winner
- Produce the revised winner
- Get the final stuff in front of people
We may as well codify that like the marketers' version of the Reinheitsgebot. And for some reason, it's really difficult to follow that kind of workflow if you want to make online communications tools that 'work' for clients and people. On top of that, there's just too much stuff out there, too many really tiny players that are creating too many really great experiences that aren't tied to a preexisting brand. There's dev shops out there (like 37signals) that exist purely to make these kinds of experiences... to make tools that will help people out. Hell, YouTube began when three guys wanted to make a better way to share videos after a holiday party.
The point is that it's hard to create great online experiences when you're working with something that already exists. Our clients want us to create ways to get people to buy more of their stuff. With that end goal in mind, it's quite difficult to pitch an idea of an expensive, perfect, built-from-scratch web application, community or other online project that doesn't directly correlate with sales.
I applaud Nike+ (and whoever built it and sold it through, of course) for building something that actually helps people do something online easier than they could do it elsewhere. Because when it comes down to it, it seems like that's how to "do digital right."
There's always going to be space for the informative site, for the corporate site, and for the flashy marketing microsite. For one, they're necessary. Secondly, they help pay the bills, and hopefully can help finance the times where we blow through time working on a groundbreaking, change-the-online-world web application for a client.
In the meantime, I'm going to focus on trying to incorporate some of this kind of thinking into the "traditional" sites I work on. I've pitched a couple new projects to clients that revolve around integrating useful applications (using Flex, AJAX, Flash video, whatever) into what would otherwise be a standard site, and they all liked the sound of that music. But after the pitch of the idea, you've got to actually get down to business and build an application, produce a video or come up with a fun game for people to play.
And all that, friends, takes time and costs money. And you'll never know until after it launches if people will want to use it.
So... my question for everyone who has reached the bottom here: Does salvation lie in testing? Or in creating 10 options, and seeing which one sticks? Or some other method? Dying to know.