Wednesday 01 Sep 2004
Celebrating a decade in the digital-media industry this year, Good Technology takes time out to talk to Digit about its successes and how the industry has changed from the early days of Internet.
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Yes. I usually put them up on my #deviantart account for feedback on how to improve.RT @spialelo
Varies... from vector artwork to photo manips. I add them to my portfolio and/or my DA account & then provide links.RT @MrRyanDee
sometimes photography, it gets shared on the free stock photography sites, give back what you get, I use them so i put back.RT @edjonesy
In the world of new media, ten years is a long time. From the early days of the Internet, which spawned thousands of agencies offering online marketing and design services, through the boom and bust of the dot.com years to today’s more sophisticated brand marketing approach, it’s rare to find a company that’s survived the pace. Founded in 1994 by chairman Richard Davies, Good Technology is one such agency.
Having spent ten years previously working in the music industry as a marketing manager at EMI, PolyGram and MCA record labels, Davies founded Good Technology in early 1994 as a consultancy to educate and advise, mainly recording artists, on how to exploit the fast evolving global medium of the Internet.
Today, with a team of over 50 people and offices in London and Barcelona, the company’s focus is on bringing consumer brands to life through all digital channels says Davies. “Our aim is to maximize the benefits of this medium, challenge accepted thinking, and combine excellence in strategy, creativity and technology to achieve our goals,” he says.
According to Davies, Good Technology has grown and evolved a great deal since its inception ten years ago, and has been better placed to deal with the adversities the industry has faced over the last few years.
“We’ve always made a profit, enabling us to develop without the need for external investment or influence. This has meant a much more stable environment where our growth has been sustainable,” he explains. “Over recent times we’ve had to work harder to achieve our goals, but as the business has remained real and we’ve continued to question ourselves as to not only what we do but how we do it, the burden placed on us has been less than perhaps it has for others.”
Good Technology has recently joined forces with two other digital agencies – Incline and XM London – to form a specialist digital group entitled the GT Network, which is wholly owned by WPP.
Movie mania
Kick starting the company’s rise to prominence was a highly successful site for its first client Buena Vista for the movie Pulp Fiction.
“In August of 1994 there was still a lot of trepidation in using the Web for commercial gain,” says Davies. “Pulp Fiction provided us with ideal and credible content from which to build our first campaign, particularly with the target audience so closely matching that of the online audience of the time.
“My initial fears of setting up Good Technology were overcome in the first month as the revenues generated from this one project paid back what was invested to launch the business, and gave us enough left over to attend the first In the City multimedia conference from which we generated a whole host of follow-up work.”
Included in this follow-up work was a project for Whitbread, the company’s first blue chip client. The team were asked initially to create a site for the off-licence chain Bottoms Up (“one we thought would be highly successful in the search engines,” laughs Davies), which in turn led to other projects for the client including Travel Inn, Marriott, Beefeater, Costa Coffee, and Whitbread.com.
Other projects that have served to put Good Technology firmly on the map include sites for Levi’s Europe, Selfridges, The Royal Albert Hall, U2, Virgin Atlantic, Sony Ecrisson, and, in particular, multi-award-winning sites for Smint and Audi UK.
Good Technology began its relationship as sole online digital agency with Audi UK back in 1998, and, according to Davies, the company’s work for the car manufacturer defines it as an agency more than any other client. “The reason for this is that the brand itself places such importance on innovation and through our thinking and the combined use of design and technology we believe the site fully reflects this,” he says.
Good Technology’s design director Justin Copplestone agrees, and points to the team’s work on the New Audi A3: New Attitude launch site as an example of innovation.
“This project is a good example of not just translating a major integrated media campaign to the Web, but rather re-interpreting it in a way that’s appropriate to, and takes advantage of, the unique properties of the Web and how it’s used by consumers,” he says.
Working closely with Audi UK’s advertising agency BBH from the early stages of the campaign gave Good Technology time to concurrently develop a Web-based creative concept and launch simultaneously with the rest of the overall media campaign, explains Copplestone.
The challenge was how to interpret ‘attitude’ in a Web site that was both functional and easy to use, he adds. “The creative concept we developed to form the online partner to the offline New Attitude campaign involved using faux psychological profiling and attitude tests. At various points throughout the site users are presented with moral questions or scenarios and prompted to choose the one they feel best presents them. This is visually scored and responses that demonstrate a higher degree of ‘attitude’ score better and unlock more of the site’s features.”
Good Technology’s work for Audi UK has won it nearly every major new media award going, says Davies.
Yet, says Copplestone, the team never consciously sets out to win awards. Instead, he says, a sense of personal pride in the work they do is the prime motivator in attempts to excel. Nonetheless, he acknowledges the importance of this form of recognition in rewarding staff and raising the company’s profile to attract new business. “There’s a feel-good factor from being formally recognized that’s felt across the company,” he says.
“Awards are always the icing on the cake for any work that we do, but they can never be overestimated in my view,” adds Davies. “Some of the most important work that we’ve ever picked up has been on the back of awards.”
Samantha Bertram, Good Technology’s client partner, believes creating award-winning work is all a question of team work. “We have some of the most talented people working in digital today,” she says. “Being part of that team is tremendously inspiring and pushes you to take real pride in every aspect of the job that you do.”
Team building
When recruiting, the agency look for people who are driven primarily by their enthusiasm for what they do and for new media as a whole, says Davies. “It’s always been my belief to employ people who are better at what they do than you are,” he says.
“My second rule in starting up the company was to create a working environment which people felt wasn’t just a place to earn their living but a chance to meet friends. As such we’re very careful about the character of any individual we take on... that’s not to suggest this is some form of cult, but at the same time we have a good idea of personality traits that would not fit in here.”
For Daniel Strawson, technical director, one of the best things about working for Good Technology is the calibre of clients it works for. “We’ve a great client list and continually get opportunities to build some interesting things, learn new skills and push the boundaries of what’s possible.”
Strawson is excited about the work the company is doing in the mobile arena. “Mobile technology is only just starting to demonstrate some of the great capabilities that people have been talking about for years,” he says. As costs for the customer fall and charging models mature, Strawson is looking forward to being able to implement the technology in a way that’s commercially attractive to clients.
Copplestone too has high hopes for wireless platforms, but suggests the mass penetration of broadband will have a more immediate effect on the work they do. “Broadband enables a more compelling user experience, while the likes of realistic 3D graphics, the holy grail of Web capability, and full video make its use as a communication medium not only truly global, as has been its main advantage, but soon truly valuable,” he says.
One consequence of producing rich media for broadband will be increased development time, and a requirement for budgets to be increased, he predicts.
“A parallel can be found in video-games market where games developers have seen the lead times for producing a game jump from months to years as console hardware has become more powerful,” he says.
“Consequently, development costs have grown to exceed the budgets of Hollywood films. But then so have the profits. In the end, it may well be client budgets that shape the nature of future content, rather than technological possibilities.”
Looking ahead, Good Technology has plans to further develop its full-service agency model. This will see the group made up of specialist digital businesses, incorporated by merger and acquisition, which can each operate separately yet collaborate when necessary.
The company also expresses interest in further expansion in key areas overseas, with Asia and the US currently in the spotlight.
Lynn Wright
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Question of the day!
Neil Bennett
Editor
Do you share your creations online?