Marketing
Building Heineken’s “Open Your City” Platform
R/GA London recently launched @wherenext (http://openyourcity.heineken.com), aimed at providing venue recommendations based on social media activity, via a tweet response and web app. The app shows the five hottest venues and a heat-map of activity in the user’s vicinity. During the discovery phase, we were surprised to find that nobody was successfully cross-referencing genuinely real-time […]
Brainstorming Technology First @SXSW
This year at SXSW, I’m talking about an ongoing experiment I’ve been doing here at R/GA for the past year. It’s not an experiment about software or hardware, nor does it involve social networks or mobile apps, it’s an experiment with the brainstorming process. Specifically, I wanted to see if there was a way we could improve blank canvas brainstorming to take into account the unique nature of digital products and services.
Nick Law: Innovation is Not a Big Idea
In a recent opinion piece for Australia’s B&T magazine, Nick Law, R/GA’s EVP, Global Chief Creative Officer discussed innovation. Not innovation as a big idea, but as a different way of working. A way of working that’s difficult to do if you’re set in your ways. As Nick says, “When we talk about the transition […]
The best hackathon teams combine technology, creativity and strategy
I spent this weekend at Hack // Meat, a hackathon focused on bringing change and innovation to the way meat is currently produced, processed, distributed, sold and consumed. The event brought together over 100 people from almost 10 states, and the 15+ teams worked on a wide range of hacks from scheduling systems to marketing […]
ABC News Realtime Election Results in Times Square
Today, ABC News special “Your Voice, Your Vote 2012” election coverage originates live from election headquarters at the Crossroads of the World. The Pomegranate API, developed in partnership with the R/GA technology group, is being utilized to synchronize and coordinate the enormous digital facade of NASDAQ and the 23 story high Thomson-Reuters sign with live ABC […]
The XOXO Festival
This past weekend, I spent four days in Portland, OR at the XOXO Festival. Billed as “an arts and technology festival celebrating disruptive creativity,” it brought together 400 minds in one space to share and discuss our work. The conference talks and themes have been thoroughly and thoughtfully covered by Anil Dash, the NYTimes, BoingBoing […]
Six Tips For Forging A Strong CMO-CIO Partnership
This article was originally published in Forbes. Much has been made of analyst predictions that chief marketing officers will soon outspend chief information officers on technology. Technically minded CMOs are already major buyers of marketing-related technology, and there’s lots of evidence that forward-thinking brands recognize the overlap in accountability and the need to sync the […]
Four Developer Tips for Winning Hackathons
Recently, we participated in a 24-hour hackathon and created 2012 Matters, a Facebook app that encourages you to share what matters most in the 2012 election. People are quick to talk about the advantages of building a product quickly, but there’s much less talk about what it takes for a team to build a successful demo in a very short time. Here are four things that successful teams do to create working software in 24 hours.
Copying Code is Like a Copying a Logo
Like logos and taglines, code is a powerful way to reinforce brand identity and attract customers; in many respects, code is similar to a branded typeface. Just as appropriating choice copy and visual assets is a sly way to bootstrap a company’s brand, swiping code can give a lift too. For example, shortly after we launched a […]
Build Apps Linked to Times Square!
Now, for the first time, your app can link directly to 19,000 square feet of LED screens in Times Square with one AJAX call. What makes this possible is a new API created by R/GA in collaboration with TS2 the Thomson-Reuters/NASDAQ alliance. This simple collection of methods (code named Pomegranate) enables apps to push text and images to fourteen […]
