Being chosen as the Irish representative at the competition is a great honour for the NovaUCD spin-off, which launched its service earlier this year. HeyStaks provides a social layer on top of all mainstream search engines, allowing people to search more collaboratively.
The company wants web search to be more social and its apps make this possible for mainstream search engines such as Google and Bing.
Prof Barry Smyth, co-founder of HeyStaks, says winning the national stage of Mobile Clicks is a fantastic opportunity for the firm.
“It’s a strong validation of the HeyStaks product-set and our business opportunity, and it shines a global spotlight on our unique approach to social search,†he says.
Smyth says the company plans to build upon its product-set in the coming year to cover all major browser platforms, social networks and app platforms.
Interactive digital agency Brando launched an interesting Twitter campaign last week when it called on Tweeters to tweet the hashtag #tweetsweets so its employees could eat sweets.
The idea came primarily from Beth Cocher, the company’s social media manager, who after a skill-share class about Arduino machines, wanted to use the technology creatively. Arduino machines are self-made robots that tie in with a computer using Arduino cards.
In this case, Brando used a gumball machine which dropped sweets every time somebody tweeted #tweetsweets. Occasionally it threw a ‘curveball’ and staff had to do challenges such as charades, which were streamed online via a webcam.
Brendan O’Flaherty, owner of Brando, says it showed what the firm does as a digital advertising agency.
“The campaign was launched around lunchtime on Thursday and ended at close of business on Friday. During that time we interacted with people from 30 different countries, as far away as Brazil and China.â€
Some 5,000 people watched the webcam at the same time, while 61pc of those visiting Brando’s site were new visitors.
A new alternative to Google AdWords is fast attracting advertisers and publishers from around the world.
Established in South Africa in 2009, Ad Dynamo has already built up a presence there, in the UK, Spain, Netherlands, Nigeria, the US and Ireland.
It works by bringing advertisers and publishers together and ensuring the relevant adverts are placed on publishers’ websites or mobile application through contextual advertising.
The growth of Ad Dynamo has been rapid, especially in the last 18 months; Gianni Ponzi of Ad Dynamo Ireland says the company is offering a genuine alternative.
“We pay publishers faster than anyone else and at a lower threshold. We are more cost effective and we are passionate about making sure both our advertisers and publishers get the best deal they can.â€
“People are really taking to the fact that we provide another option to Google. We keep 80% of our advertisers and are working on the rest,†says Ponzi.
A new Irish company is giving corporate brands the opportunity to engage more with customers online.
Huggity has developed a social media tagging application, which sees a giant panoramic, high-resolution crowd image being taken at a venue during an event. Users can then zoom into a crowd photo, spot themselves and friends and tag them on Facebook.
Mike Sikorski, CEO of Huggity, says the application offers a great marketing tool for brand managers. It allows them to interact with their audience after concerts, sporting events, tradeshows and festivals.
It also broadens audiences as users share that photo with all of their friends.
Despite launching the application just three weeks ago, the firm has already received interest from companies around the world, according to Sikoriski.
“We’re already working on adding more interactivity to images, allowing people to befriend each other through images. There is much more potential there,†he says.
Award-winning digital agency, CKSK, invited Hyper Island to Dublin for an amazing 3day Master Class. This was the first ever Hyper Island Master Class event in Ireland, and it consisted of 3 intense days of advanced professional training.
What Hyper Island is has been best summarized in this Hyper Island In a Nutshell video (created by students from Hyper Island Digital Media class of 2010, Stockholm).
I had the pleasure of attending this Master Class, and I joined a mixture of agency and client side professionals in the Lost Society. We were ready to be challenged, inspired, and gain new insights into digital communications and marketing.
The Class kicked off with creating a set of guidelines that would make everyone comfortable with the unusual learning process. Just a sample few:
*there are no stupid questions
*step out of your comfort zone, it’s the only way you will learn something new
* you only fail if you do not learn from your mistakes
*confidentiality - what happens in Sweden stays in Sweden (with the Swedish music and Swedish sweets we were reminded to keep things in Sweden throughout the class) so anything about the course and speakers can be shared but not information about the classmates.
What followed was a perfectly balanced mixture of presentations from speakers - Mark Comerford, Daniele Fiandaca and David Erixon (one of the founders of Hyper Island) , creative tasks, preparing a brief and finally an action plan – a solid, clear list of deliverables and deadlines that was shared in groups.
Mark Comeford talked to us about change - the way networks are becoming the basic units of communication, how websites are no longer places we go to but rather are places we are sent to, and the fact that to understand the new models of communication we need to experience them, not just know about them.
Mark has made a perfect point with his swimming lesson example – even though he told us what exactly we should do not to drown, we still need a dip in the water to actually learn to swim.
Daniele Fiandaca demystified the newest trends in the industry – location, gamification, two screen, RFIDs, cultural artifacts, social mash-ups and gave us some tips on rewiring our brains to stay relevant in the ever changing digital world. We might have not succeeded in creating a revolutionary app in our mash-up task, and our predictions for the big thing in 2014 might have not been very accurate (seriously, I do not see cyborgs getting popular so soon), but we all seeemed to start seeing the digital trends in a new light.
David Erixon made us all aware of how many opportunities await if only we take into account the full customer cycle and focus on the consumer’s experience with our product, not the product itself. He renamed the traditional marketing value chain a “cost chainâ€, as marketers are on the side that only creates costs. He then made us realize the real value happens in the customer space, it is the integrated experience that we should be after, shaping expectations and doing things that change the rules in the market with and for customers. Finally, we were told to stop doing what traditional marketing is all about -putting lipstick on the pig, and just make the pig better
The presentations and creative tasks were always combined with time for reflection – on what we did, how we did it and what we could change. That particular part of the Master Class was very difficult to understand untill we actually reflected, shared in groups and were left with some valuable insights. It was like with Mark’s swimming lesson – you just have to try it to really get what it is all about.
To sum up I have to say that the Hyper Island Master Class was an exceptionally good, unique learning experience - it is a breath of fresh air in the old fashioned education system of the new digital communications era.
