Augmented Awesomeness

Courtesy of friend and co-conspirator Luke at 190 Design in Brussels, here's a really great piece on augmented reality in real life application... amazing stuff... And certainly has a massive future in advertising...

Independiente gets bigger...

Hi everyone,

Very sorry we haven't updated for a while but it's been a crazy busy November, that has led to some great new work coming through the Independiente doors. With our move into Iphone and Facebook application development we've seen massive interest from London. We're now in contract discussions for a London and New York devoted app that will span platforms of Facebook and iPhone as well as online (more news when we're allowed to release it).

We're now in conversation with 2 large scale investment houses as to the possibilities of developing application marketing concepts for their companies across Europe.

We're currently in pitch phase on a Facebook application for a well-known UK brand that if it gets the greenlight will be a huge adventure, and promises to go global due to its interactivity and entertainment value.

We're also in contract discussions to launch a new food and drinks product in Hungary, working on brand creation right through to national advertising... More news when it launches.

Apologies for not releasing more info, but as soon as we can we'll drop more detailed information...

New Guinness Slogan and postioning airing tonight in UK

Moto Guzzi 8 Cylinder

Always trying to resist turning this blog into a homage to Moto Guzzi but sometimes it's difficult... Check out Moto Guzzi 8 Cylinder (yes, you read it right) from 1955... Far too mechanically complex to ever race, it just broke down too much... But beautiful to look at, a feat of engineering, and most of all it creates a noise that makes the hairs on the back of your neck tingle...

BA loses. Time to stick to brand principles

News today that British Airways has again lost cash in their first half results, a whole £292 million pounds of loss. Strikes us that it all once again comes down to customer service and more importantly sticking to brand credentials that made you so successful in the first place. There was a time in the not so distant past that flying BA was a pleasurable experience, one that, dare I say it, actually made the whole process of flying just a little more bearable. Yet with the advent of the low cost carriers such as EasyJet and RyanAir, carriers such as BA began a terrible race to the bottom in order to compete on every level. Now while many passengers on BA may have saved £30 on a short haul flight, they lost all the benefits in the process. A drop in quality on every level, on areas such as food, staff, timings etc is HUGE. From a brand perspective, people began to question why they were bothering, the brand became slowly tainted, losing travellers again and again. Why pay more for the same rubbish you get on RyanAir...

Crap, low rent flights, with overpriced food, plastered with advertising, where you get charged for looking in the wrong direction are the domain of RyanAir et al. They have no interest in service and strangely travellers don't care, because it's cheap bus travel with wings. The brand has never represented anything else, so therefore people aren't disappointed...

There is nothing worse for a consumer than a brand that makes a promise and never keeps it... BA made a promise that their quality would remain high, while their costs were reduced - clearly a promise that could never be kept. The result is their in a terrible limbo between trying to keep up with RyanAir and trying to remain the once great airline they were. But if they focus on this race for the bottom, then RyanAir are always going to win.

Focus on quality, keep the customer happy, stick to your core brand principles, I think we'd all be amazed by how many people come back. Let RyanAir run the cattlesheds...