DASI

The IBM Wimbledon campaign is generally one of their flagship online projects of the year. I’ve been involved in a couple of them in a previous role and there’s always a huge amount of effort that goes into them. This year, they’ve done something different, as the video above shows. They’ve developed a nice app for the Google Android phone, which utilises its camera,  internal compass and GPS function in a way which effectively gives the impression of image recognition.  It’s a nice project, and to me it’s just another example of how much the market has shifted in the last 18 months. The 2007 Wimbledon project was a celebration of 3D and rich media; I’m not sure there was any interaction with the users at all.  This couldn’t be further from this year’s focus which is complemented by a range of social media activities.

This shift is something every client needs to be aware of when considering their agency partners, and is an area I’ve been banging on about to anyone who’ll listen (I had a letter printed in Media Week a couple of weeks back on this very subject). Many agencies had to play catch up in terms of staff and structure when the digital land grab really kicked in, and this was an expensive and time consuming process. The problem is that the market has continued to evolve at a frankly mind -blowing rate and those agencies that had invested heavily in being able to offer the high-end microsite and super rich production of 2007 are now potentially again geared incorrectly for today’s world.  The danger to the client is that agencies by their very nature will, on the whole, want to sell what is in their ‘tool kit’  and if their agency of choice is still trying to catch up, there’s no guarantee that you’ll be getting the best solution to your brief.

What this all means to the client is that knowing your potential agency partners inside out is key. It’s a market of incredible choice, so being thorough in terms of research and asking a few probing questions has never been of more importance.