The building is nearly complete now, with main build finishing and interior fitout starting.

We are hoping to be moving into the new space mid-year.

We appointed 3d8, a Glasgow-based, interior design agency to work with us on the re-fit following a three-way pitch in January. We are now very close to completing the plans for the studio.

We will post further updates and pictures as the build progesses.

1am Thursday morning, 5th Novemeber, whilst the rest of Scotland were recovering from a night of sparkler shaking and the final small bursts of colour were breaking in the sky over Glasgow, the Equator team were heading to the office for a far more momentous occasion - the go-live of the new, improved www.ramadajarvis.co.uk site.

After months of work to create a great new site with some fantastic new features we were all delighted when the first live booking was completed sucessfully at 3.36am.

And its not just the booking process we’re proud of. The site now features improved navigation, detailed photo galleries and hotel profiles as well as up to the minute event and entertainment information.

To celebrate we had a bit of ice cream and a few (indoor) sparklers.

So now that we’ve launched this new ship, we need to keep a weather eye on her performance. All fingers are crossed that all the work will result in a site that performs much better than the old one.

We’ll keep you posted on how it does.

In the meantime, take a look for yourself, we’d love to hear your thoughts - www.ramadajarvis.co.uk

Some of the Equator marketing team headed down to London Docklands on the 14th & 15th October for the highly anticipated affiliate marketing event of the year, the 2nd annual A4U Expo. And what a great time we had!

The 2 day event was full of well renowned affiliate speakers and online experts in SEO, PPC, Wordpress, various vertical channels and social media giving their insight into the future of the online marketing industry. We were also supporting one of our clients Ramada Jarvis, who were excited to be sponsoring the Bloggers & Speakers Café. The café proved to be a hit with bloggers and affiliate alike with free wifi & coffee for those needing the extra energy to recover from late night networking events the nights before.

With so many interesting seminars many of which were relative to us as an agency it was difficult to choose which to attend. One of the highlights of the first day was Keith Budden’s presentation on affiliate management tips. We were happy to discover that we as an agency could tick many of the affiliate management ‘do’s’ and not so many of the ‘don’ts’ and were ecstatic to get some great feedback from a number of affiliates over our time at expo, which substantiated this.  After attending a number of other seminars we had some free time to make our way around the array of stands set up by networks, agencies and merchants in the main hall. This gave an informal setting in which to chat, ask questions and collect information as well as make arrangements to meet people at main networking event that evening. This event involved a memorable cruise down the Thames sponsored by buy.at, one of the leading affiliate networks.  Many movers and shakers in the affiliate community came together to chat and share wine and food united by the relaxed fun atmosphere and the beauty of sailing under the illuminated Tower bridge.

While many sore heads were being nursed on the second day there was a great turnout for another pivotal seminar on voucher code implementation.  Much more interactive than the others, this seminar highlighted the difference of opinion on topics within affiliate marketing with regards the use of voucher codes. A panel of market leaders including Duncan Jennings and Chris Frost - leading voucher code affiliate of Coldsnail and lovingly known as ‘Frostie’ to us at Equator.  A Q&A session ensued which looked at the place of voucher codes now and in the future and at some points got quite heated with all the affiliates in the room being passionate about what they do. A seminar which we cannot go without mentioning was the one led by Zach Edwards of Prezzybox fame and Graham of Buyagift.  It was sheer slapstick as the comedy duo shared some of their secrets as award winning affiliate managers.  They did so in a highly entertaining fashion, the echoes being offered by the speaker only adding to the hilarity.  All in all a lot was learned and there was one last chance to glide around the flurry of stands in the main hall before we had to bid a sad farewell to the expo for another year and head back to Glasgow with our heads full of lots hints, tips and ideas that will be a great help to our clients and affiliates.

Have a look at the pics on Flickr

Roll on A4U Expo 2009!

This project began with the creation of another great new phone from HTC. This phone, the P3470, was considered ideally suited to the younger end of the French market and was to be sold there by Orange.

The objective
Our brief was to create a microsite that customers on the Orange France site could visit to find out more about this new handset. The content on the Orange France site is very factual and our new site had to balance this with a more experiential treatment. The core objective therefore was to attract people to visit this new site and increase their propensity to choose this handset as a result.

The solution

This was a fascinating challenge for us because the brief was really asking us to create an interruption to the shopper’s buying process. Anyone who knows digital will tell you that the more linear and fluid the buying flow, the better. As a result we had to be careful not to create an interruption that ended up in lost sales.  We felt therefore, that the solution lay in creating a linear detour that delivered visitors back to where they started. The result being to maintain a linear, and effective, buying process.

The environment we created is informative (in that it communicates the phone’s features) as well as being enjoyable and, primarily, memorable. The recall aspect was also really important to us as we knew that many customers would continue shopping around after looking at this site.

To meet the brief we came up with a concept that takes the visitor on a trip across Paris. A trip that’s part game and part tour of the phone’s features.

The central part is the section demonstrating the phone’s 2Mp camera where you’re challenged to capture the events happening at the Eiffel Tower. On arrival, you discover that the event is a little more unusual than you expected - a giant woman is chased up the side of the tower by helicopters.

The result

This site was only promoted within Orange France but it received nearly 1,000,000 visits in about a month, with an average session length of just under 5 minutes. This represents an awful lot of time spent engaging with the brand. HTC and Orange France were delighted with this performance and, of course, the resulting uplift in sales.

Take a look at the HTC P3470 site in French
If you don’t understand French, look at it the HTC P3470 site in English

We were really excited to be invited to pitch for this work. We even got to pay a quick visit to these beautiful suites in Mayfair in person.

The suites are in the Radisson Edwardian Hotel in London and are frequented by the glamorous, rich and famous. They each boast a unique interior design style and the best creature comforts you can get.

The idea of the site was to create a lavish experience of these stunning five-star suites that made you feel as if you were really there. Our proposal was to layer the text and image content over a full-screen video walk-through of each of the suites.

The interface was also designed to subtley change colour and style to match the suite you were looking at.

Overall the site was designed to remove jarring page transitions making each section flow elegantly from one to the next.

In our minds it was going to be a stunning, truly luxurious journey that reflected the style and quality of the suites themselves.

Unfortunately it’s now a leftover.

Boston Networks is an exciting young company that brings smart, digital technology to offices and homes throughout the UK. They are spearheading the move from dumb buildings to buildings that can think and adapt to their varying functions and requirements.

Their recent move into smart homes brings this thinking within the grasp of the average homeowner. The technology allows you to have music, data and home controls piped into every room and have wall-mounted or portable, wireless panels to control them from any room in the house, or in some cases remotely. Clever stuff!

The objective

They asked us to create a simple, elegant new site as a platform to promote the products and services they offer. The site should offer easy access to a quick overview of what’s on offer and express a positive brand experience.

The solution

Whilst it was important that the site was simple and elegant, we felt that the brand experience should contain some clever and unexpected details. The design therefore uses lots of white space to create a clean, easy-reading format. On top of this we created a navigational structure that is highly tactile and whose look and feel is inspired by the controls of high-end music systems. We then went on to develop key messages that define the core values of the business in an engaging and memorable way.

The result

The new site has worked well for Boston Networks, being very flexible to allow them to amend content as their business develops. It has also garnered very positive feedback from it’s users too; finding it enjoyable and easy to use. A pleasing result overall.

Take a look at the Boston Networks site

We do enjoy a bit of live music at Equator. A few weeks ago a few of us popped along to the newly renovated Captain’s Rest on Great Western Road to enjoy a few refreshments and some music from 3 local bands.

We were really there to see Isosceles, a Glasgow based 4 piece who have steadily been growing their reputation with air play on Zane Lowe’s Radio 1 show as well as several others. We love this young band and have picked one of their tracks to use in a project we’re working on for Oxy.

We arrived early and thought a quick drink was in order before the performance. Unfortunately one turned to two. Two turned into a few, leading to us slightly stumbling down the stairs to see the band. Isosceles put in a great performance and even mentioned that they will be featured an Oxy campaign at the end of the set. A small group in one corner of the room seemed to be really excited by this - sorry to everyone else who was there!

It was a great evening and we hope that our work will help rocket Isosceles to stardom. After all, we’ll then be able to boast to anyone who listens that “We discovered them”.

So keep an eye out for the new Oxy campaign and other surprises coming to a popular social media site near you soon!

The NMA’s yearly round-up of digital agencies is out today and we’re proud to have been placed at number 88 in the UK.

That sounds OK but if you zoom in a little the figures sound even better. We are at number 36 for design and build agencies (obviously we do a little more than that, but hey, we’ll let that slide). And if you look at Scotland we’re at number 2 overall but we’re still the biggest digital agency north of the border.

It’s all good news. It’s great to be named as one of the top agencies in the UK. And we’re still growing. Recession? What recession? we are still experiencing month-on-month growth and aiming for a record result at the end of the year.

So keep an eye out for next year’s results - we’ll try and beat the two fat ladies next time.

It was about 2 years ago that Apple launched its iPhone claiming it was technologically 5 years ahead of everyone else. But we all know that tech-years are like reverse dog years.

So yesterday Google launched Android, 5 tech-years after the iPhone. We think this heralds a really interesting time for mobile communications. Not because it means a snazzy new handset to get all hot under the collar about (although HTC’s G1 handset is rather nice, not just because they are a client of ours), but because it represents the real spirit of the internet being brought into the mobile space.

The cynics among you will now be thinking something like ‘Yeah, the spirit of the internet alright; Google making loads of money by knowing what I had for dinner last night and trying to sell me the same for tonight!’. Ok, so there is the small matter of Google taking over the world. But on the bright side it is offering a much more agreeable world domination plan than Apple with the iPhone.

The iPhone is a restrictive technology, where new applications are not freely welcomed, and it’s only available on the iPhone. With the Android system Google has taken the same route that Bill Gates (remember him, he’s currently recording how you take your coffee today, so he can sell you a fairtrade version of it tomorrow) took in response to Apple many years ago - creating a generic operating system that openly invites developers to work with it.

The result, whilst not terribly pretty, does offer great opportunities for future development of mobile applications and much better connection between PC-based internet and its mobile counterpart.

What does this mean for us? It means that people using the regular web can now begin to realistically consider expanding into mobile without destroying their brand and seamlessly integrating with the rest of their online channels.

So whilst it may mean a few more pennies in Google’s pockets, the benefits to companies like the ones with whom we work will be immense - starting with the younger mobile generation, and expanding to become pretty much ubiquitous in, well, about 5 years perhaps.

You might want to find out a little more about Android, and what it does, as well as the nifty HTC phone that’s the first to have it installed. So here are a few links for you:

Android and the G1 phone at HTC

Android SDK pages on Google

Android demo and Google’s $10million developer challenge on YouTube

Android review on the BBC

Android review in the Telegraph

Android blog with stuff for developers

Enjoy! And if you don’t agree with what I’ve said, post a comment.

We decided it was time for our annual summer barbecue just before it was officially Autumn. Sunny Loch Ard was the chosen destination for the day and the whole team headed up for a spot of the great outdoors.

We all picked a pursuit for the afternoon from shooting, archery, the spa or abseiling down a 1000 metre cliff (At least that’s how high it looked from the top!)

Winners of each activity were announced and everyone moved on to take in some lunch as well as the breathtaking scenery across the Loch from the terrace. The entire west of Scotland wasp community quickly joined us and avoiding them quickly turned into the second outdoor pursuit of the day.

At the end of the day we were all forced grudgingly back onto the bus. So when James our Creative Director discovered the tour guide microphone it was inevitable that bus-aoke (a bigger version of the car based sing-a-long made popular in Japan) was on the cards. Anyone for a few bars of the online marketing reinvention of the Pussycat Dolls classic - ‘Don’t you wish your girlfriend did PPC – Don’t cha”.

We’re not really geeks, promise!

Take a look at some of the pictures on Flickr