Fallon tries to improve on Modernista!'s site
Fallon wants to get its mojo back as an innovative shop steeped in the latest and greatest interactive. After all, it's been eight years since BMW Films debuted. The Minneapolis agency was inspired by Modernista!'s fresh take on the agency Web site when it decided to recast its own site, according to Chris Wiggins, creative director at Fallon. "There was something there," he said. "I thought there were a lot of ways that it could be improved." The Fallon twist: It created a "lifestreaming" tool it calls Skimmer to aggregate Twitter, Facebook, Flickr and other social tools. It's an Adobe AIR desktop application that visitors can download and try out. (The site's actually been up and down all morning, making it hard to download. Goes to show how the digital stuff is tough to execute.) Fallon's 175 employees are using Skimmer and showing the world their innermost thoughts, photos, videos and pokes in this new "We are Fallon" section. Give it a whirl, and see if Fallon has raised the bar for rethinking the agency site. |
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March 24, 2009 in Agency web sites, Fallon, Modernista!, Morrissey | Permalink |
Comments
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It's pretty neat... definitely sleek... but a)id rather have tumblr integration than blogger, and b)it really needs to have realtime updates... I don't want to respond to a tweet 5-10 minutes later, sorta defeats the purpose
Posted by: robert | Mar 24, 2009 11:27:58 AM
Thanks Robert, we definitely would like to incorporate more services down the road so we are open to suggestions. Had to be a bit frugal at launch since it's not like we're working with lotsa big VC bucks here. ;)
The real-time update is unfortunately throttled by some services so not possible.
Posted by: Chris Wiggins | Mar 24, 2009 11:48:53 AM
A few observations:
1. Lifestreaming is a time suck for narcissists.
2. Agencies are not software developers.
3. This is an okay application: pretty design, decent integration of platforms, but totally unnecesary.
Between FriendFeed and SocialThing!, this has already been covered. And dare I say, it's not all that novel.
Overall, I think the discussion of this launch, and all the other stunts ad agencies are doing nowadays is good for the industry, but it shows one thing: we're desperate to prove relevance, and we're not solving the problem.
What's the answer? I'm trying to figure it out as much as everyone at Fallon, Ogilvy, Crispin and Goodby are, but we're not there yet. We're SO not there.
Posted by: Eric | Mar 24, 2009 11:54:10 AM
Thanks for the thoughts, eric. Sure can't argue with you about (1) ;)
Agencies aren't software developers, true, but does that mean they can't be? We built Skimmer's mostly an experiment, done on a shoestring. I'm pretty surprised it's being compared to actual software from companies who are focused exclusively on their products and need to make a profit from them. Software developers approach the problems one way, we tried to come at it from a somewhat different angle.
Whether skimmer gets used or not, I do think there's too much sideline chitchat about what to do with the social web landscape and not enough action to help shape the thing ourselves.
Posted by: Chris Wiggins | Mar 24, 2009 12:06:23 PM
Chris: I'm curious as to why you chose not to engage actual software developers on this? (e.g. people who build similar apps for a living as opposed to people who work for ad agencies.)
Or did you and I just misread your response to "Eric"
I ask because this is often a blind spot for agencies in other areas: they will try and develop long-form content that's meant to compete with TV shows but won't engage people who actually make TV shows for a living.
As for the Skimmer itself, I applaud your effort and the idea behind trying something like this- you are correct that agencies need to push themselves.
But the actual product you've come up with is a tough sell. FriendFeed's never caught on (no matter how much Scoble evangelizes it) because most people find it overwhelming-- it's too much to keep up with and the actual need-- to simultaneously track your entire social graph-- doesn't seem to be there. My observation is that people compensate for that by "double dipping" - tweeting about a recent blog post or picture that they've also tacked up on Facebook, etc. and so forth.
But trying's always better than not trying, especially in this space, so I applaud you for your efforts.
Posted by: Alan Wolk | Mar 24, 2009 12:48:39 PM
Thanks for recognizing the 'try' Alan. There's too much talk and less doing in this area, IMO. As regards involving a software agency, that really would have been impossible as we had basically no funding for this. It is less intended to compete head-to-head with tweetdeck etc, but more of an experiment to see if people would appreciate the type of experience that a creative agency, not a development agency would come up with. I think people tolerate the web 2.0 designed-by-developers experience because there aren't (yet) many alternatives. So we did this to see what would happen and we're pretty surprised with even the initial results/talk about it. The fact that we did this with no money in 6 months and it's being compared to the big guys is very flattering!
The other reason we did it is to make a point about how strongly we feel about brands being generous AS a way to market themselves. Ultimately all we did was launch a new website. But because we made this little toy and gave it away, lots of you are discussing it. :)
Posted by: Chris Wiggins | Mar 24, 2009 2:15:17 PM
Fallon is down to 175 people?
Posted by: Cent | Mar 24, 2009 3:25:41 PM
Fallon trying to be cutting edge and getting into the digital side? I love how they are just changing titles around, so they appear to be more than a Traditional agency. Everyone knows the "Director of Integrated Production: Vic Palumbo," is the head of television production. Come on.
Posted by: Todd | Mar 24, 2009 3:50:01 PM
Here's two even Agency Spy knew were already out there: "Wait, didn't AOL, Friendfeed, Google and on and on and on already do that? Yes, they did."
Posted by: LOL | Mar 24, 2009 5:14:57 PM
Fucking stop with the emoticons Wiggins.
Posted by: Aquaman | Mar 24, 2009 5:26:57 PM
This isn't a great client BUT it does point out how appallingly simplistic the Modernista site is. At least Fallon tried to actually do something kinda creative with the existing APIs.
I really don't understand the praise of the Modernista site when it doesn't even attempt to do anything more creative with Flickr etc. than your average wedding photographer.
Posted by: Bill | Mar 24, 2009 5:41:12 PM
heya chris, i *love* the look of skimmer. it's downright gorgeous. so THANK YOU For that. now, the larger question... what's up with that privacy policy? specifically : "We may share your information (including, without limitation, personally identifiable information) with partners, subsidiaries and affiliates of Fallon Worldwide."
total turn off.
Posted by: alan | Mar 24, 2009 6:10:16 PM
You'd think if agencies (not just Fallon) wanted to appear knowledgeable about interactive, they would back-version their Flash sites. I can't even view Fallon’s site without downloading a new version of Flash, not exactly a great user experience.
Posted by: Just a thought | Mar 24, 2009 8:25:16 PM
Right on alan, especially given the fact that blogger ties to gmail accounts (usually) and flickr ties to Yahoo accounts. Sorry, until you guys have some proven security cred I'll sit on the sidelines and watch.
Gave me the heebies.
Posted by: Bill | Mar 25, 2009 12:00:56 AM
Chris,
I think we're in agreement, and hope you took my input as it was intended. It's laudable that you dedicated resources to digging into the problem. If nothing else, it helps build some much needed new perspectives into teams that are not used to working with this medium.
I think it's more exciting than scary, myself. But we are now as agencies competing with the content creators themselves for our paychecks, to some extent.
Posted by: Eric | Mar 25, 2009 11:53:42 AM
Bill,
I would argue that the Modernista! site addresses the notion of "crowdsourcing," to use the buzz word.
It puts Modernista squarely within the digital space by showing the different facets of its brand as they would appear in the social networks.
From my perspective, the praise is that they are showing, rather than telling, which does bring a lot of relevance to them and their strategic insights.
Posted by: Eric | Mar 25, 2009 12:04:30 PM
I like it personally. It's very elegant and beautiful. But it is the type of product that comes from an agency rooted in traditional advertising and creative who cannot quite come to grips with the new world and getting comfortable with letting go of control.
Posted by: Dane Hartzell | Mar 25, 2009 1:03:25 PM
Dear "Dane." That's just stupid. Really. Kind of moronic actually. Wait, let me guess. You're one of those "Social Media Experts" out there. A real Guru ain't ya.
Posted by: HuH? | Mar 25, 2009 4:05:58 PM
I'm not the grammar police or anything but "LET'S" means "LET US."
And it's WRONG on the FRONT PAGE OF THEIR SKIMMER SITE.
IN THE ONE SENTENCE THAT'S SUPPOSED TO EXPLAIN WHAT SKIMMER DOES.
How many Fallonites saw this and didn't know?
How stupid does that make them look?
Posted by: grammar | Mar 25, 2009 8:00:56 PM
Cloud apps — Yes. Download apps — No.
Posted by: Unconcerned Citizen | Mar 26, 2009 10:18:04 AM
Grammar,
Good thing you aren't the grammar police, because their usage is correct.
Let's is the contraction of Let us.
Lets is the 3rd person singular form of the verb "let"
Wish people would do at least the minimum research before opening their pie holes.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Common_grammatical_errors
http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=let&db=luna
Posted by: Whome? | Mar 26, 2009 1:57:00 PM
Dane,
So, this is the type of product that comes from "an agency rooted in traditional advertising and creative who cannot quite come to grips with the new world and getting comfortable with letting go of control."
I see, so can you name 2 other traditional agencies that have release free social networking software? Ever?
Not arguing that Fallon is mostly rooted in traditional advertising. But to suggest there's a type of software product that comes from such agencies is just plain silly.
Got some jealousy issues with your fellow Twin Cities competition?
Posted by: Whome? | Mar 26, 2009 2:03:10 PM
"free social networking software?"
is it really free if their privacy policy allows them to share all of a users information with "partners, subsidiaries and affiliates of Fallon Worldwide."
sounds like people are paying for it one way or another.
Posted by: alan2 | Mar 26, 2009 3:01:20 PM
Yeah, it's free.
Posted by: Whome? | Mar 26, 2009 3:39:15 PM
"Yeah, it's free."
nice comeback. that spoke volumes.
Posted by: alan2 | Mar 26, 2009 7:42:58 PM
Thanks.
Posted by: Whome? | Mar 27, 2009 11:08:29 AM
What motivated me to write the "control" comment is that I work in such an agency where I see it every day. Having recently come from the client side where I expected that mentality, I am a bit surprised to see it so prevalent on the agency side. I applaud Fallon for testing.
Posted by: Dane Hartzell | Mar 31, 2009 1:00:53 PM
Don't let foolish ex-creative hacks, AKA the new Social Media Guru, let this stop you Fallon. He hasn't done shit that's any good in his career and is just one of the new digital PR hacks out there.
Posted by: Freddie | Apr 6, 2009 4:47:09 PM
