Albion's work on Joost

We’ve been working on the launch of Joost for quite a while, so it’s nice for it finally to be out in the open.

We defined their brand strategy, developed their brand personality, designed the brand identity (apart from the logo), and we’ll be doing lots of work on communications as Joost moves from an invitation beta to full Gold release.

We like the name Joost. We helped them with a big naming process, but as it turns out they came up with Joost themselves. Which we think is often the best way. It’s a little bit like naming your child. You think about it for ages. There are lots you’d like to use, but can’t because somebody else already is. People will make lots of good suggestions but, in the end, you just need to go with the one that makes you feel right. You’ll be using it for a lot of years to come.

We wanted to do something a bit different from the usual Web 2.0 beta launch, so we encouraged them to use their codename, The Venice Project as a placeholder brand for while, until their user experience was good enough to associate with the proper brand name. If you’re lucky enough to be a beta tester, you’ll know that it certainly is good enough.

We also wanted to do something a little bit different with how the brand feels. It’s great that a lot of new companies are using language as a key part of their brand identity, but we felt that lots of them are using the same one. Everybody is being honest, human, casual, funny... Perhaps it’s a sign of the times, or perhaps they’re all inspired by brands like Innocent and Skype? Anyway, Joost isn’t a Web 2.0 company; it’s a new TV platform. We think that that is a pretty exciting idea, and we think the world of TV is pretty exciting. So instead of being humble and small, Joost will be open, bright, alive and epic. What you can see now is just the start.

What we’re most excited about at the moment is that the website that we designed with the lovely Marksmith went from zero to around the 500th most popular site on the internet in 2 days.

There's a great article in Wired that tells you everything else you need to know.

Behind-the-scenes at The Venice Project

The Venice Project have been a client for a few months now, but we couldn’t talk about it for ages.

We’ve just made some films of people from The Venice Project talking about what it is and how it works.

This is part of our strategy to build the buzz around the project among tech enthusiasts. We think the right way to do this isn’t about hype or stunts, but by getting their people talking directly to the community, just telling the truth.

So we thought about what we wanted to reveal at this stage, planned some scenarios, and took a documentary film maker to Leiden and London to shoot them. The briefest bit of editing, and then we posted them on their website.

Here they are for your viewing pleasure. Look out for a few odd touches!

Albion - One to watch

According to New Media Age, Albion is an interactive agency to watch.

http://www.nmatop100.co.uk/Top100/ones_to_watch.aspx

Which we’re very happy about, especially since we’re not an interactive agency! Sure, we make lots of stuff that lives online, but we also make adverts, record covers, and smoothie cartons. And Teddy likes to dress up as an animal whenever he can!

Ian's Bitchin Commendation

Ian's Bitchin Website has been commended in The Campaign Digital Awards 2006. One of the banners for the campaign even got banned from the Channel 4 website - score!