This time it's personal

Flash is great. It's come a long way since it was first released as piece of vector animation software over 10 years ago. It's still great FOR animation - probably the best, but now developers are using it to build whole applications for on-line use.

When The National Skills Academy asked Idealogy to develop a way of NSA website users being able to customise and save personalised versions of their 'Smiles-Of-Britain' campaign logo then we knew Flash would be the right tool for the job.



A mini Photoshop would have been near impossible for on-line use only a couple of years ago - but not now - we could be prototyping the functionality within a couple of days - the hardest part was deciding what functionality we needed; what was logical and what was feasible for the application to run efficiently as a web application.

We decided upon giving the users the ability to choose from a selection of 'Smiles' logos to which they could draw on with a pencil tool. They would be able to choose from a range of colours and change the stroke width of the pencil too. We added an eraser and an undo function as well as having the ability to completely clear the canvas and start again.

So it was all very well being able to scribble away, but to give the option for greater personalisation we decided to include an upload facility, enabling the user to upload a picture of their own into the application - they could then scale, skew, rotate and re-position it to their hearts content and to cap it all off they could enter a line of text to the logo which could also be positioned where they pleased.

So there were three parts to this application in reality: the User Interface - Flash took care of that, the functionality and interactivity - Flash took care of that too and the storage of a users brand new logo creation - after all, it would be no good creating a logo if you couldn't use it! So every logo created would need to be saved as a JPEG in a database of users, that way you could always load your logo back into the application and change or update at a later date.

So there you have it, a neat little application that would have been pretty unfeasible a few years ago made very real today.

Next?

Posted by Paul Skinner

Great customer service starts with a smile

This summer is set to be the UK’s biggest ‘staycation’ ever (Yes! That’s a real word – just look it up on Wikipedia) as the British public resolve to spend their summer holidays on home soil. So the National Skills Academy for Hospitality is launching a campaign to celebrate the very best of British hospitality.

The Smiles of Britain campaign encourages members of the public to be on the lookout for the nation’s warmest and most welcoming smiles on the faces of people working in the Hospitality industry. And, when they see one, to snap a picture and share it on the Academy’s campaign website (www.smilesofbritain.co.uk)

But as well as helping to highlight Britain at its hospitable best, there is also a serious commercial message underpinning the campaign. As David McHattie, chief executive of the National Skills Academy for Hospitality, explains:

“The role of the Academy is to seek out the very best training, development and education programmes in hospitality, to recognise and celebrate that excellence, and to lay down the gauntlet for the whole industry to follow their lead.

“As part of this process we want to shine a light on those in our sector who are leading the way in customer service.”

Idealogy worked hard and fast with the NSA Hospitality team to achieve almost unprecedented deadlines, in order to get the campaign – a combination of ‘YouTube’-esque web site, social networking, personalisation tools and powerful merchandising – launched and active by late May 2009.

Idealogy developed the Smiles of Britain website as a navigational addition to the current National Skills Academy website, as well as encouraging all Smilers to visit though the more conventional URL. And the response has been extraordinary, with an almost ‘word of mouth’ fervour attracting thousands of unique visitors, and of course Smilers, during the month after launch, supported by a moderate social network prompting program via Twitter. However, this was more judgement than luck because the web environment was designed to provide a ‘social networking’ ambience for new talent within the Hospitality industries – a place to share views, images and other content with like-minded colleagues.

In addition, Idealogy developed a “Draw a Smile’ personalisation tool, to encourage members of the network to create more individual images, rather than de rigeur Facebook style snaps, and to reproduce them for their working environments, common areas and homes.

Additional campaign elements included lapel badges, branded balloons, T-shirts and campaign cards.

Visit either www.excellencefound.co.uk/Smiles-Of-Britain or www.smilesofbritain.co.uk to see what’s putting a smile on the face of customer service across the UK.

Posted by Simon Johnson

Calling all Project Managers!

We are looking for a confident, hard working project manager to work with us on a strong portfolio of digital projects. On top of good PM skills, a good all round knowledge and experience of the Internet is essential; with basic HTML experience a plus...interested? Then find out more here


Posted by Idealogy

A Leap of Faith

The Lifetime Leap - An evolution of the Lifetime HF brand to widen its appeal



For the past year, Idealogy has worked alongside Lifetime HF, one of the UK’s fasting growing training consultancies for the leisure industry. Founded in Bristol in 1995 by Heather Frankham, Lifetime HF specialises in working with national and multi-national leisure organisations. Their values focus on excellence, professionalism and commitment and these values permeate a holistic approach that progresses all the way through to the achievement of desired standards and results at a company and individual level.

Much of the training that Lifetime provides is work-based-learning and, as such, takes place within workplaces throughout the UK. Lifetime delivers Apprenticeships, Work Based Learning NVQs, in-house training and open courses including distance-learning courses across the fitness and leisure sector.

The Lifetime brand already has an enduring appeal for its existing customers. Therefore, Idealogy’s aim was not to instigate revolutionary change, but to ensure that the brand appeal was extendable into new markets and sectors, without stretching it beyond its core competencies. The new brand identity and hierarchy was designed to reflect this.

James Surridge, Director for Demand Strategy at Idealogy commented, “The founding principle was about supporting fitness businesses to perform better – providing consultancy and training to deliver outstanding fitness programmes. It was also about simplicity – finding the things that really made a difference and acting on these as well as presenting training information in a way that was easy for students despite the complexity of the subject. The Lifetime name was originally chosen because it meant more than just fitness – it encapsulated lifestyle and wellness and had the health agenda of longevity linked in.”

The overall proposition also changed from ‘delivering outstanding training’ to ‘delivering the most work ready people for your business’. This works not only to differentiate the brand in the marketplace, but appeals beyond the fitness arena and into active leisure and beyond.

In the refreshed visual identity, ‘The Lifetime Leap’ replicates the first movement of the original Lifetime brand. It represents a dynamic step onto a springboard and then makes a confident leap forward, connecting more positively with the Lifetime word mark. ‘The Lifetime Leap’ not only depicts a journey that embraces change, but also achievement. This aspect is more literally brought to life in applications such as websites, collateral and exhibitions.

Within the new hierarchy, the creation of an Awarding Body presented a new opportunity for Lifetime to enhance its credibility. Whilst the connection with the existing brand was maintained, there is a distinct difference in the offering and business structure and this was reflected in a new ‘Lifetime Awarding’ Brand Identity

Idealogy are now implementing both internal and external programmes to relaunch the Lifetime brand, working alongside Lynda Brown, Lifetime’s new Head of Marketing We would welcome your comments on the developments Idealogy has made to the Lifetime Corporate Identity and Awarding body. Please use the slide show to view the completed visual presentation.



Posted by Anna Ecuyer

Don’t like yours much

Simple recently asked Idealogy to come up with a campaign to promote the benefits of it’s products in fighting the signs of ageing, so we started thinking and bounced ideas around in one form or another for over 6 months.

From our initial ideas the project went through several iterations; we finally decided upon illustrating how someone with a poor quality lifestyle would age quicker and more harshly than someone with a healthier lifestyle. Simple products would obviously help this improvement too of course and we would promote the New Repair Anti-Wrinkle Range.

Then someone came up with the idea of showing a young, beautiful woman ageing (time-lapse style) from 25 to 75 very badly. We could do a quick rewind and then show the young woman ageing more ‘gracefully’. Some shock-factor tactics that we could use on the Simple website.

So about a month ago we started to put the piece together. The first thing to do was to cast two models who could feasibly be the same person at different ages of their life. Once chosen we arranged for them to attend a photo-shoot on the same day, enabling us to have the exact same lighting and feel for both.




Some additional Photoshop and a couple of pieces of animation software later it was looking pretty scary; a time-lapse video with 2 very different endings.

Initially the video was promoted through the national press (Heat magazine doing a massive article showing celebrities aged badly), health & beauty blogs and traditional PR via press contacts. Secondly, Simple’s quarterly email newsletter had a feature on it which also tied into a competition to win a photo of yourself aged. Then finally a version was seeded via a network of social media sites, blogs, forums and of course YouTube.

The Simple website itself had special landing pages that traffic was driven to and an interactive version of the video that allowed the user to pause the ageing process whilst reading skincare do’s and don’ts

First responses are good, with traffic up 800% on the first day of release and 1700% on the second and holding steady at 1700% on the third.

Take a look and tell us what you think – we’d love some feedback.


Posted by Paul Skinner

Carbon-neutrality? When you need to make decisions that take your environmental credentials forwards or backwards, being in neutral is not an option!

What, exactly, does this expression "carbon neutral" mean? There seems to be no viable definition – at least not in the very places you could arguably refer to as reference points. So, in desperation we turned to good old Wikipeadia which quoted “Being carbon neutral, or having a net zero carbon footprint, refers to achieving net zero carbon emissions by balancing a measured amount of carbon released with an equivalent amount sequestered or offset”. Ummmmm!


In recent Google searches on the term, we also found a wide variety of ways the term was being used, and more than a few questionable claims. (Can you really fly carbon neutral on company jets, even if it's "more affordable than you think"?) Beyond that are questions about how companies are achieving their carbon neutrality – because not all commercial offsets are equal. Is planting a tree ever enough? Is a paperless environment a realistic objective?

And if a business, any business, has a carbon footprint, how does that equate with having a net carbon neutral profile? Doesn’t a footprint leave an impression, imply size and volume? You can see where this is heading can’t you?

In demonstrating our concern about all this -- and all companies that have made, or are thinking of making, some kind of carbon-neutral claim should consider this – as claims continue to grow in both self-importance, scope and popularity, the very value of our claims will diminish alongside the scale of our emissions (however we choose to measure them!). Getting our carbon ‘badge of honour’ becomes another me-too action for all but a handful of companies. At best, carbon neutral will be seen as de rigeur, no longer having any street value outside of the internal morale of the company itself.

That's okay. But beyond that is a much bigger issue: will carbon neutrality become just a cover-up for lack of real action? Are we heading blindly towards a torrent of opinion, backlash if you will, against companies making carbon-neutral claims without having taken the relevant steps to improve their energy efficiency and use only energy derived from clean, renewable resources? Like ISO and ‘Investors in People, is Carbon Neutrality going to become the next trap to sidestep when businesses are asked to defend their environmental position while tendering, partnering or regulated trading?

How much can a true SME possibly achieve? Is receiving a County Award as an environmental champion the beginning or the end of the process? Doing something, in our opinion, means that we are anything but neutral. We are able to make sensible but tangible decisions about our environmental impact – from turning computers off at night, to using long-life light bulbs, and from using recycled toilet paper (urgh!) to having so many recycled paper bins you can’t move – and these are all positive steps. But are they big enough? Persuading our clients and partners to give into their carbon-neutral inclinations is a much harder process, but in the absence of any real diktat from a government that seems mildly distracted at the moment, it’s an ideology worth embracing!

So we’ll continue to do the very best we can, while casting a wistful gaze at the word neutral and wondering why the real wordsmiths haven’t cracked that particular, yet valuable, nut. If I want to be neutral, I’ll park out the back and get a parking ticket from the traffic fascists. Thinking about changing our environmental gears from 2nd to 3rd, now that’s a question of timing and having attained the right speed. And, if moving at 3 mph means I can safely plant a tree as a way of saving the planet, then that’s win, win.

But how do we get back there to water it?







Posted by Simon Dover

Is Dan Soutan an endangered species or simply a designer looking for a new environment ?

Idealogy have recently adopted a small hairy creature that, as part of a fully developed conservation programme, is leaving it’s regional habitat and being moved to the more temperate southern coastal plains. His keepers hope that this change of environment and climate stability may encourage a more positive breeding culture, and, therefore further increase the chances of the survival of the genus.

The approach of this wing of the Dan Soutan Foundation goes beyond that of purely protecting Dan. Critically it also includes a recognition that the habitat for the Soutan must be unique in its richness of culture, biodiversity and crucial for local communities, who are as dependent on the habitat as Dan. In the medium to long term this will mean an increase in the number of Curry establishments in the Lymington area, easy access to a number of local, mature golf courses, the construction of a man-made range of hills and climbs to take advantage of Dan’s strange but well developed cycling skills, and his own personal queuing line in the key food, clothing and convenience shops in the region.

Conservation is more than protecting a species. It is about saving nature which includes us, 'the fifth ape'. The efforts of all of us to prevent global warming will be seen as a defining moment in history, for humanity's sake and for the health of the whole planet. Tropical forests, mountain biking, and less TV Soaps can play a significant role in guarding against this change. Idealogy will discuss more about our approach to the environment in future blog entries.

The Soutan will continue to make progress under the watchful eye of his keepers, who will continually monitor his ability to colour in with confidence, understand advanced, paper-based and digital communications concepts, integrate into his new social group and, as he develops as a senior designer, be cured of his poor dietary habits, in particular a passion for ‘Pot Noodle’. For more information about this intriguing species simply respond to the issues raised in this blog or leave a donation and speak to any one of his keepers – Paul Wright, Simon Johnson or Darryl Akerman.

Posted by Idealogy