The room was dark and a movie screen-sized monitor bore the simple "Red Sky Interactive" logo. Like the Wizard of Oz himself, a pony-tailed man sitting behind a table with a singular desk lamp illuminating various buttons and knobs began to speak. "In this business there are no instructions, no professionals, no precedents and no clear ad models and that creates a very vexing problem," said Tim Smith, founder/CEO of San Francisco-based Red Sky Interactive.
Smith’s comments came during a Clio Festival session last month in which he was the featured speaker. Since founding Red Sky in ’93, Smith has been dedicated to building memorable brands online. More than a design firm, Red Sky is a shop that creates online advertising, strategic consulting and "branding" for high-profile Net clients such as Lands’ End, Nike, Absolut and Procter & Gamble. Red Sky’s office in San Francisco has expanded to include 50 people, and the company has recently opened an office in Hong Kong and is about to open another in London.
Smith came to this year’s Clio proceedings to talk, from a critical perspective, about issues regarding the Internet as a means for today’s advertiser. His mantra, "We’ve been here before," stems from a belief that there is a lot to learn from the past and that there is always a place for art and storytelling in even the most mundane business application.
As a springboard for his presentation, Smith referenced the book The Experience Economy by B. Joseph Pine and James Gilmore. "The Internet is the greatest force of commoditization known to man," Smith quoted from the book. He went on to explain a philosophy towards building a brand on the Internet that fell directly in line with what Pine & Gilmore contend: it’s is all about building an experience.
Smith believes that 80% of advertising on the Web is what he calls "gratuitous digitization." The ad banner, which was introduced in ’94 and still supports most Websites, is systematically ignored and considered "a waste" in Smith’s eyes. Smith pointed to the fact that the Internet is not a passive medium the way broadcast is, and that people need to rethink their advertising to incorporate that notion.
To do that, Smith offered to his audience the ways in which Red Sky has approached certain interactive branding projects. Perhaps Smith’s boldest online branding experiment came last October with "Absolut DJ," a do-it-yourself music application residing on Absolut’s Website. Users can play DJ, mixing and matching sounds and beats created by well-known DJs such as Coldcut, DJ Spooky and United Future Organization. For the beginner, there are instructions to navigate the site more easily and one can eventually e-mail his or her original mix to a friend.
Another branding breakthrough came with Red Sky’s work for Lands’ End Oxford Express shirt guide, launched in November ’98. The site tackles the laborious task of finding the right shirt size in a desired color that is actually available. Lands’ End offers numerous combinations which users can sift through, matching sizes, patterns and colors. The result is a no-hassle experience that is extremely intuitive and even kind of fun. "It’s all about making something memorable," asserted Smith.
Smith pointed to something he referred to as "The Mnemonic Place" defined as a tool aiding in the creation of memory in the marketing of goods and services. Like many of his clients, Smith knows that Red Sky is a brand as well, and he markets it as such. His Mnemonic Place is Red Sky’s demo CD-ROM dubbed, "Red Sky on the Frontier."
To introduce a client to Red Sky, Smith and his gang created a virtual frontier based on the old Western-style movie. Red Sky’s work exists within the bounds of the digital setting with its host, "Gus Gilroy." Gus, a guitar-wielding cowboy with a penchant for breaking into song, guides the user through the Red Sky "experience." A list of work rolls like credits at the end of a movie that a client can click on with the pointer, which is in the form of a bullet (each click sounds like a gunshot) to view the work. There are lots of other little treats on the CD, like the potential to get in a gun fight with "Dirty Dan" and, if you click too many times, the frame freezes and starts to burn, at which point the user is warned to not to be so click-happy.
As its signature, Red Sky has used the element of surprise to push the envelope within the bandwidth of functionality. But as bandwidth expands and certain functions become more commonplace, Red Sky has already armed itself with the ad model for the future-Flying Objects.
Flying Objects (a registered Red Sky trademark) are branded, free Java network utilities that co-exist on the desktop with other applications. As an example of a Flying Object, Smith introduced the audience to Red Sky’s "Millennium Clock" as a "proof-of-concept" piece. It’s a small, Java-based utility that queries an atomic clock to provide time precise to 50 milliseconds and is a countdown to the Year 2000. In addition, the clock gives an accurate 3-D representation of the earth’s rotation based on the user’s local time-zone and it can launch a browser to connect to a specified "jump-page" on the Web.
According to Red Sky literature, Flying Objects provide a customizable platform for advertisers to present a brand. The utility is able to track information such as the location of its users, their behavior, and the number of Flying Objects downloaded, allowing advertisers to refine their target market. And, it resides as an icon on consumers’ desktops-perhaps the most valuable real estate of all.
