The Relax Campaign

Three weeks ago, I spiraled into total scramble mode to pull together a late-breaking campaign for Gordon's Jewelers, (a division of Zales for those of you who haven't heard of the brand). It's a simple little concept. Most jewelers are building up the moment of gift giving to a "do or divorce" moment. Give the perfect gift or be gone forever. We say Relax, because she loves you already.

Here's the series of "spots" we kept. Just a few days after approval of the campaign, we were out on the street, finding real couples to talk about their feelings for each other. Fun stuff. Below are the three couples we went with. You can see them in the obligatory Relax microsite here, where you can also try out the gift finder to help you find the right gift for your own little lady. You'll probably see these around the interwebs in various places.

Anyway, I generally try to avoid yapping on about my own work. I prefer to bitch about what other people do. But I'll make an exception here cause I think the couples are cute as hell. Maybe I'm just getting older, but they were certainly stupid grin inducing for me, at least.

There ya go. Now my very busy couple months will start easing up (fingers crossed), and you'll get to hear more of my usual rantings and ravings. Thanks for you patience blogo-peeps.

Matt and Tanya

Cole and Meredith

Derrick and LeRonda

Big Pimpin' with the Media Orchard

Scott Baradell over at the Media Orchard gave the hee-haw a gold old-fashioned spin doctorin' in one of his newest features "Pimp My Blog Post".

It goes like this, I wrote a post, Scott lays down the rims and the bass, and I pimp the pimped post.  (Alliteration kicks ass).

Anyway, you can find the original version of the post here,and see the pimped version below.  What do you think?  Upgrade?

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Three Cool Ways to Make Visitors Stop Coming to Your Web Site Forever

Anthropologists say that when humans name things, it is our feeble attempt to exert control over them. So it is with the term "user experience." Web site designers blather on about the "user experience," when the reality is, there is no such thing -- at least in the singular -- and designers certainly can't control it.

You can design a site, which is part of my experience. But there are other factors you don't control at all: Where I am, who I'm with, what I'm doing, what time it is, the specific information I want.

As a designer, you can't possibly know these answers. Therefore, like any enlightened person, you should embrace your lack of control -- by using your talents to anticipate the full range of experiences that I might have, and then working to accommodate these experiences.

Let's start with three features that you -- as a designer -- may think are cool, but that I -- as a user -- despise.

Cool Feature #1: Music that gets me fired. Your site may be super cool, but it's not worth getting ratted out at work. If your tunes start blaring through my speakers the moment I come to your site, I will never visit it again.

Cool Feature #2: A Flash intro that makes me long for a DVR remote.  Don't make me watch a commercial before visiting your site. If you do, I will never visit it again.

Cool Feature #3: Navigation that guides me into the rocks. Make it easy for me to find what I want -- not what you want me to want -- quickly. That means giving me lots of options -- primary, secondary, even tertiary navigations if you have a lot of content on your site. If you don't, I will never visit your site again.

Ultimately, successful design is about acknowledging that we're all individuals looking for different things on the Web, and coming to terms with that ambiguity creatively -- rather than force-feeding people something they don't want.

Very Zen-like, isn't it?

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