2009 June | Face, The Co-Creation Planning Agency

Archive for June, 2009

Face at the Insight Show 2009

Tuesday, June 30th, 2009

The Insight Show 2009

We can’t believe it’s here again, (although it is a lot earlier this year) but the Insight Show has arrived and Face is all prepared and ready to go at stand D223. This year we’ve experienced a few changes for starters we’re at a new venue, Kensington Olympia which feels much lighter and open than before. Also this year the Insight Show is teamed with the Online Marketing, Data Monitoring and In-Store Show so there is a lot more going on and a lot more to see.

This year on the Face stand we are showcasing our fabulous new website, so rather than telling visitors what we do we can show them. Although it’s only been 8 months since the last Insight Show we have so many more stories to tell of successful co-creation projects. We are particularly keen to talk about the growth of Mindbubble, our numerous international projects plus the launch and development of our Face Wired proposition (just in case you’re not sure that’s the social media planning and strategy department)!

For those that came to see us last year don’t worry we are still playing the catchy (but ever so slightly annoying, when you’ve heard it for the 100^th time) show reel tune!

The show is running for two days and we’ve got lots of the Face crowd attending; Lucy, Georgie, Danny and Charlotte on the first day and Job, Matt, Esther and the lovely Lucy again on the second. So feel free to pop down come see our stand and get to know Face in the flesh! If for some reason you’re chained to your desk and can’t make it, never fear Face will be tweeting live from the show over the next two days to keep you up to date with everything that’s going on.

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New Headbox Site Launched!!

Monday, June 29th, 2009

A few months ago the Face Wired team sat down to discuss the direction we wanted to take Headbox in. The first thing we decided was that the site needed a bit of a spruce up, just to make sure the aesthetics matched the forward thinking of co-creation. We began by throwing some ideas around; basically trying to establish exactly what Headboxers really wanted from the site. What would keep them coming back? What would keep them entertained? How can we keep thousands of people excited and engaged in what we do? Several hours of debate and deliberation (a.k.a. arguing) later we were stuck in a deadlock. We knew what we wanted but didn’t really know how to get there; it was at this point we realized where we were going wrong.

The great thing about having a co-creation community at your fingertips is that you can access their enthusiasm, opinions and creativity at any time. We decided instead of trying to dictate what Headboxers wanted to see, we would let them create the site themselves…it was competition time. With a minimal brief (it had to include a blog and use Headbox colours) and a month to create their masterpiece we set the Headboxers to work.

Time passed, a few entries came in. More time passed, loads more entries came in. A month passed andwe were inundated with homepage ideas. As you can imagine, this left us with an extremely difficult decision to make. We managed to wangle the entries down to our four favourites (they can be seen on the Headbox Flickr account here) and then, once again, went out to Headboxers to get their thoughts on the finalists and to see what they had to say about the future of Headbox. After much internal and external Headbox chat (you can see the Facebook group discussion here) it was time for us to make our decision.

We twisted, turned, went back and forth, changed our minds about a billion times and then eventually after more deliberation (arguments) we chose our winner, Michael Mudoch! Michael’s design was clean, bright, exciting and exactly what we were looking. Focussing on the blog Michael managed to emphasize what Headbox is all about through clear text and a dynamic layout. We are delighted with the co-created outcome and really happy that our Headboxers have somewhere cool and vibrant to co-create, share and engage with. We are really proud of the design and the hard work that our Headboxers (especially Michael) have put in.

To check out what I am blabbering on about please head over to www.headbox.com and enjoy our lovely new co-created site!

Thanks for reading!

One very happy community manager,

Matt

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Lets Crowdsource A Wimbledon Winner

Friday, June 26th, 2009

So we are all hoping and praying that Andy Murray ends the long drought ofunderperforming British Tennis by winning Wimbledon this year….. but to be honest any grandslam win would do.

But why are we still in such a dire position why do the hopes of the nation hang heavy on the shoulders of just one player? After all over the past 10 years the LTA have spent in excess of £100 million pounds in trying to find stars of tomorrow and lets not forget that Andy Murray was not part of the LTA programme he was coached by his family. As it stand we have just 3 players across the top 100 male and female.

For me it is simple we need to Crowdsource – 1 million more children in the UK need to be encouraged to play Tennis in order to create a larger talent pool from which to select new players from. This has got to be the No 1 priority for the sport in the UK without this focus we will keep investing huge amounts of money on a relatively small number of players who do not have the combination of talent and the hunger to win.

So here is an idea why not give every school in the country free tennis equipment and free access to local clubs and coaching. Alongside this ensure that a scouting network is in place to identify the emerging talent pool. Only when we have sufficient numbers of talented hungry players should more money be put into the elite part of the.

This Crowdsourcing approach requires a cultural shift away from the elitist LTA to a new body that can reach out to the wider community and inspire children from all backgrounds to give Tennis a go.

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Youth Lab Tech Tribe Research-only 50% actively looking for ways to save money

Thursday, June 25th, 2009

This post is taken from Face Youth Lab, Youth Lab is the place for marketers and researchers to keep up to date with youth movements and trends. To see more please visit www.faceyouthlab.com.

As we established in our last blog entry (It’s a matter of life and debt…) debt amongst youth is at an all time high (or is that low?). If you are inclined to believe the media the reason for the red is the environment we have grown up in, a world where being significantly in debt is accepted as the norm. Yes, this is a good point and was very relevant a couple of years ago, however Tech Tribe tells us that this attitude is beginning to change, 60% of our Tech Tribe respondents disagree that “debt is fine because everyone else is in it too”. (more…)

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Face Youth Lab Has Opened Its Doors!!

Wednesday, June 24th, 2009

At Face we are in constant dialogue with young people in our youth community Headbox where we work

The Face Youth Lab

with some of worlds leading youth brands including Coca Cola, Lynx and Google to help them co-create better products and communications. Today we are launching The Face Youth Lab which is the place for researchers and marketers to keep up to date with current youth movements and trends. By exposing Face case studies, sharing proprietary research and connecting you directly with young people our regular and varied offerings will help you understand and interact with this generation more profitably.

Coming Up on the Face Youth lab
Over the coming months we will be posting fresh research covering young peoples reaction to the recession and the importance of mobile convergence in their lives as well as what brands are in and out and some in depth analysis of the key changes in the youth market between over the past 2 years.

So keep an eye on Face Youth Lab as new research material, blogs, video diaries and casestudies will be posted regularly and we would love to get your reaction and interpretation on what this all means for researchers and marketeers. As a taster for new research over the next coming months we are going to be posting on Face Youth Lab some of the key trends identified from our last major youth study The Techtribe Report published in 2007 based on the views of 3000 16-25yr olds:

Connected
This generation of young people want to be entertained like any  other, however, they are not glued to their  TV sets; they are consuming the content that they want when they  want via the internet and downloading/streaming it for free. They  are in control of the media they consume and the advertising they  see. This means broadcasters and brands need to worry less about  what their advertising does to young people and much more about  understanding what young people do with their advertising.  So the question for all marketers is how, in this digital age, to get  young people to choose to engage with my content?

Creative
The answer starts with understanding what is important to them;  Tech Tribe 07 shows what their passions are and what gives them a  sense of identity/community. A generation where  ”creativity” has huge social currency; friendship groups are defined  by it; social standing is enhanced if you create and share content  amongst your friends. At the heart of this is a generation who has  found new avenues for self expression, making and sharing their own  films, music, websites, games, photos, blogs and art.

Word of Mouth
The influence of friends on purchases made is huge, with  91% saying that friends’ recommendations have influence  on what they buy. The three top factors in terms of having a lot of influence on  what they buy are friends recommendations, friends using  the product/service and seeing people using/wearing the  product/service. 65% recommend products and services to friends often or  very often, rising to 80% amongst working non-graduates –  the group most likely to recommend. 64% have recommended a product or service in the last month; only 32% have put someone off.

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Co-Creation: Far More Than Just a Focus Group!

Friday, June 19th, 2009

Our trusted Intern Nathan

As you know here at Face we are always having interns working in our office and for the past few weeks we have had a great guy called Nathan. Nathan has been getting involved with lots of projects at Face but last week he asked to attend a co creation workshop we were running with some of our Mindbubble women. Nathan very kindly wrote a blog about his experience of co-creation and we thought it’s only fair to share it with you. So carry on reading to find out about Nathan’s first co-creation experience…..

As an intern looking to start a full-time market research career I was excited to experience exactly what co-creation involved. As such I asked if I could sit-in on a live co-creation workshop as part of my work experience at Face. As well as increasing my understanding of research as an industry I wanted to understand what separated co-creation groups from the stiff cliché of focus groups. I also wanted to to get more of a feel for what Face as an agency is really about.

My major revelation as to how different co-creation is to focus groups, was the answer to my question “so who leads the group?” My new colleague answered “the co-creators: they do” pointing towards the group of mothers I had merely assumed to be respondents. My exposure from that point on was an educational experience in how to attain actionable results rapidly. These co-creators had been recruited using Face’s rigorous recruitment process which begins with its online community for women, Mindbubble. This plays a key role in achieving productive and applicable results quickly and effectively. The co-creators are chosen because they are consumers who are passionate about the category and the brand but also happen to be creative and articulate – the 1%ers or “Adfluentials” as Face calls them.

Instead of the usual one dimensional Q&A of focus groups, co-creation workshops have a multi-faceted structure to them. A large group of creative, tuned-in women became smaller groups. They are joined by experts and stakeholders from the brand, insight and R&D teams and are tasked with instructions and idea generation.

These smaller groups act as condensed, more salient focus groups that share and build on each others’ ideas, producing much more direct and actionable results than a standard focus group could hope to provide in the same time. Viable social media and communication strategies, new product and sponsorship ideas had already developed and it was only the end of the first day! This experience enriched my own understanding no end in the direction that productive research should be heading in

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FACE top 5 co-creation posts so far

Thursday, June 18th, 2009

Top 5 tips for community management (May 07)
In a world restricted by budgets and processes, community management sticks out like a sore thumb. On a daily basis a community manager deals with something that frightens the life out of lots of people in business – unpredictability.

A guide to the Co-Creation, Crowd-sourcing Conundrum (May 18)
A common mistake of those new to open innovation & research is to confuse the practice of co-creation with that of crowdsourcing. As a result I thought I would give a quick guide to both, hopefully clearing up any confusion people might have.

Sherlock Holmes and the origins of co-creation (June 11)
Innovative doesn’t necessarily meannew. It means new in a particular context, not ‘absolute new’. So if anyone ever pitched you co-creation as a new groovy ’social’ thingy, they were simply and utterly lying.

Cello Group takes majority stake in face (May 11)
So last Friday the very sensible people at Cello Group upped their stake in Face to 51% following an original 23% acquisition in December 2007.
Being part of the Cello family for the past 18 months has enabled Face to develop a strong international offering and has helped to establish us as the leading on-line qualitative research and co-creation agency.

The Co-creation 6 Step Process: why we need a structured approach to brand-consumer collaboration (June 04)
When talking about co-creation people often get the impression that it’s not an exact science but more of an undefined practice. However here at Face we have aclear structured process for successful co-creation, and we thought it’s probably about time we talked about it!

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Mindbubble On it’s Travels

Wednesday, June 17th, 2009

Here at Face we’re never been afraid to go big, and by that I mean global! Last year we were co creating in the Sates, South America and Asia and this year is no exception. We’ve already worked on projects in France, Germany and Holland, in this month alone we are working on projects with Mindbubble in no less than four countries.

However it will be the first time Face has had the opportunity to co create with women in China. We’re excited about what is going to be an insightful and engaging project talking to women in such a different culture to any other we have worked with before. So China here we come, and we’re sure they’ll be more to come in the future.

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Press on Face at the Cello Conference

Tuesday, June 16th, 2009

Last week Andrew posted about his presentation at the Cello Conference: Creating Consumer Chemistry. Andrew’s presentation: “The Chemistry of Co-creation: transforming innovation with the help of consumers and customers” has already attracted some great press so take a look at the link below to find out more.

http://www.citmagazine.com/news/913135/Live-event-saves-Lynx—AXE-Chocolate-Man-campaign/

If you missed Andrew’s blog, don’t panic here’s a link to read it again!

Creating Consumer Chemistry at the Cello Conference

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5 reasons not to launch your own research community

Monday, June 15th, 2009

I am a huge advocate of community research and have posted previously how it can deliver richer insight and better innovation but before you decide to launch your own community take a look at these 5 reasons not to:

1 You get part time results for part time effort – if you only have the chance to log on once a week and skim read rather than engage, interpret and contribute.

2 You want to stick to the discussion guide – if you like to stick to the script set at the beginning of a project and feel uncomfortable about the possibility of having to rip this up when you start interacting with your community

3 You publish only perfect posts – if you like to craft every word or work in a sign off culture your will miss the vital spontaneity that community research thrives on

4 You just want to see the results – if you are simply not interested or able to participate in the iterative community research process and just want to see the final debrief

5 you have never heard of being always on – consumers expect brands to be available 24/7. If you cannot live up to this expectation with your own community you could do more damage than good.

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Creating Consumer Chemistry at the Cello Conference

Friday, June 12th, 2009

Yesterday at the Cello Conference “Creating Consumer Chemistry” where I was speaking with Unilever’s Ana Medeiros on “The Chemistry of Co-creation: transforming innovation with the help of consumers and customers”. I (Ana unfortunately dropped out at the last minute) had some great feedback and have been asked by Nokia’s Marketing Director (who was in the audience) to present to his team next week in Farnborough which is encouraging.

The Chemistryof Co Creation

View more Microsoft Word documents from Facegroup.

The Conference was held at the Faraday Lecture Hall part of the Royal Institution of Great Britain (www.rigb.org). This was a befitting place to hold the inaugural Cello Conference as Faraday pretty much invented Chemistry. In spite of the tube strike the conference was well attended with over a 100 people turning up from companies such as Nokia, United Biscuits, Nestle, Unilever, AG Barr and many others. Other presentations ranged from “The Laws of Smarter Marketing: chemistry in the age of the commercial and competitive crunch” to “From alchemy to chemistry: Designing customer journeys that work”. The best presentation for me was “Engaging Employees: powerful catalysts of customer delight” by Cello agency TMI and British Airways – a brilliant insight into helping brands deliver customer experiences at the “fingertips” of your organisation.

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Sherlock Holmes and the Origins of Co-Creation

Thursday, June 11th, 2009

Innovative doesn’t necessarily mean new. It means new in a particular context, not ‘absolute new’. So if anyone ever pitched you co-creation as a new groovy ’social’ thingy, they were simply and utterly lying.

Long before user-generated content, the prosumer, crowdsourcing, co-creation, Lego collaborative brand Factory, Philips creative consumer, Axe co-creation adventures and our user-generated Tango, consumers had already been heavily involved in shaping the present and the future of their beloved brands.

And when I say long before, I really mean it. As Scott Brown narrates in his recent Wired feature, when Sir Arthur Conan Doyle decided to kill Sherlock Holmes just ten years after its birth, an army of mourning fans wearing black armbands took to the streets of London to show him how disappointed they were. But their protest didn’t end up in an ante-litteram flash mob. They knew exactly what their brand should have been doing so they started co-creating it. They started writing Sherlock Holmes adventures themselves, giving birth to the first co-created product: fan-fiction.

Fanfiction, as Wikipedia puts it, is a “broadly-defined term used to describe stories about characters or settings written by fans of the original work, rather than by the original creator.”

From unauthorized published sequels to Don Quixote, to parodies and revisions of Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland; from fan-written stories based on Jane Austen’s characters to the explosion of modern fan-fiction popularized via the Star Trek fandom in the 60s, fan-fiction has progressively invaded magazines since the 20s and has been blossoming online for 20 years thanks to newsgroups, mailing lists, forums and blogs which made its distribution easier, faster and massive.

So, in a way, co-creation started with fan-fiction and one of the main reasons for this is that storylines and fictional characters are the most flexible brands you can work on. And all you need is a pretty traditional set of tools to influence and shape/co-create them.

So what’s the difference with today’s brand-consumer co-creation? Well, mostly the types of brand that are involved in the game and the tools we use to make it work. Web 2.0 made 100 years old fandom mechanisms smoother, more commercial, easily replicable and paved the way for making them into commodities. And one of the outputs of this ‘commoditization’ of fandom interactivity is certainly the brand-consumer co-creation we do today.

However, the mechanisms of today’s brand-consumer relationship are pretty much still the same of the good old character-fan engagement and that’s why looking at fan-fiction can provide us with a number of useful indications about how the brand-consumer relationship works and about how can we recreate the spontaneous fan-based co-creation process ‘artificially’.

(more…)

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Face in New Media Age About the Future of Research

Friday, June 5th, 2009

Last week New Media Age published an insightful article which was writen by Andrew Needham. The article explored the change in research practices due to the growth of online interaction. We’ve provided a snap shot for you to read and if you would like to see the full article please click here or on the image. Enjoy!

Internet Opens Up Research Techniques to True Dialogue

The brave new world of empowered consumers and ubiquitous connectivity has presented the research industry with a paradox. Researchers have to learn from the virtual world that things need to change in the face-to-face world where focus groups have been so dominant. And they’ll have to change fast.

This is starting to happen with the rapid rise of online research communities. Whether these are closed – bringing groups of consumers together with clients in a specifically created web environment – or open – taking clients into existing communities that are already live on the internet – they both recognise that consumers should be seen less as passive respondents and more as active equals in the research and innovation process. They also both recognise that consumers should be given more decision-making responsibility with more direct and active involvement in the brand marketing process.

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The Co-creation 6 Step Process: why we need a structured approach to brand-consumer collaboration

Thursday, June 4th, 2009

When talking about co-creation people often get the impression that it’s not an exact science but more of an undefined practice. However here at Face we have a clear structured process for successful co-creation, and we thought it’s probably about time we talked about it!

We have been working on this co-creation model for a few years now and we can easily say that without this structured approach it would be very difficult, if not impossible, to get any results from co-creating with consumers.

Here’s how it works:

1. Identify your 1%’s & stakeholder team
Once the brief for co-creation is agreed you should start by identifying the top 1% of consumers (we call them adfluentials) that have the brand affinity, mindset and skills to co-create with you and your brand. Also look at your stakeholder team and invite a select number of people who represent key functions within the business and most importantly have good collaboration and coaching skills.

2. Experience Design and Brand Engagement
To enable your brand to get the most out of this direct interaction with your consumers, you will need to design an experience that engages consumers, brand experts and stakeholders alike. So firstly it is crucial to find the right facilitator who has the energy, charisma and skills to galvanise and motivate the team. Secondly think about the setting for the project this needs to be an environment that will inspire creativity so make it fun and comfortable.

3. Exercises to Stimulate & Trigger insights
Once you begin to co-create, you need to ensure that consumers are treated as active equals in the project so this starts by giving them ownership over the brief – it is crucial that they explore and understand the brief for themselves avoid long ppt briefs from the client at all costs. Exercises should then be designed that enable consumers to play with the brand and product and show you how they think, feel and experience it in order to discover trends and trigger valuable consumer insights.

4.Team playing and Idea Generation
Once you have started to identify and group key insight consumers, stakeholders and experts then come together in smaller teams to generate ideas. Stakeholders and experts play a crucial role here in mentoring the teams to develop ideas that are both disruptive and robust. Again it is important to enable consumers to express ideas in a variety of ways including improvisational plays, illustrations and presentations.

5.Selection and Refinement
A fundamental element of co-creation is that consumers along with stakeholders are given an opportunity to feedback during the creative process and are asked to make decisions at key stages of the project about which ideas are selected and refined. This feedback is invaluable as it gives a very quick and usually accurate sense of which ideas have legs and which ones don’t.

6.Pitch and Final Cut
Following rounds of idea generation, selection and refinement you will have developed a number of very robust ideas. At this point consumers should be given the opportunity to pitch the fully developed ideas back to the final decision making stakeholder team who will ultimately take the commercial decision on what and how to take forward the ideas.

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Face going the Extra Mile!

Wednesday, June 3rd, 2009

Last weekend a few members of Face put down their iphones, closed the laptops and picked up their trainers all in the name of charity. The girls went off and did a 5K run for cancer research and our research director Philip walked 100K in the Yorkshire Dales. Philip’s not mad enough to do something like that for nothing of course, so it was all in the name of Oxfam. He can’t quite bring himself to talk about it just yet, but has described it as an equal mix of wonderful and horrific. He finally limped round in 30 hours and 3 minutes and will never consume another energy bar or isotonic drink for as long as he lives. Charlotte has kindly written about her experience so take it away….

Charlotte

Last Saturday I visited a sports shop, and actually brought something, now to put this in context the last time I wore trainers was the 1999 Thomas Telford School Sports day. Which might come as even more of a surprise to some of my colleagues who had assumed, me being from ‘Up North’ I was forced to run barefoot around a coal mine with whippets snapping at my heels.

The reason for such a rare occurence is because on Sunday, alongside my brilliant Face colleagues, Georgie and Lucy, I ran, (and not for the no.73 bus) but the Race for life 5k through the City of London. Obviously to any marathon runner out there 5k is a mere warm up but for the less well trained the 5k marks the 1^st hurdle to overcome (and hopefully achieve).

So my preparation for the run was somewhat limited as I appeared to have a condition that rendered me hopeless and breathless after 15minutes of running whilst Lucy and Georgie skipped ahead and also with being so busy at Face and all…(although to be fair Andrew runs 5k most lunch times without breaking into a sweat).

So it’s 10am, we’re in Moorgate and it’s the day of the race, I’m wearing my new t-shirt and shorts and whilst feeling slightly scratchy and starchy I’m liking how professional I outwardly appear. Que emotional speeches, tears, hugs and motivating cheers and we move towards the starting line- for ‘runners’ mind, although having seen quite a few women on route smoking a crafty fag/eating McDonalds breakfast I feel in good company and slightly more hopeful.

15 minutes later and after what seemed like a life time of a warm up in the blistering sun we started and I got a very small taste of what marathon runners must feel like…So I ran and I kept running and with the support of my Face peeps I ran the whole way in 35 minutes! Georgie being the pro she is managed to take photos as well (check them out) and as Lucy puts it which sounds even better, “that’s 7 minutes K’s that we kept up all the way” which apparently means we could have done it faster- I’m not convinced, I was just happy to cross the line with a huge smile on my face.

So I feel ecstatic, I’ve raised some money for charity, made my family proud (it’s always the small things) and have a new found respect and love for running and looking for my next running challenge..coincidentally Race for Life’s next (new) event is a 10k in Autumn…you’ve got to love marketing…

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Opportunities, Threats and Ambitions for Market Research

Tuesday, June 2nd, 2009

I had some good feedback to some of my remarks as a panellist on the MRS Debate “Opportunities, threats and ambitions for market research”. A number of people came up to me afterwards to say they enjoyed my enthusiasm and optimism for the future of the industry. It was in mark contrast they said to the gloom and doom that we have been used to hearing and reading about in the last six months. It is a really exciting time to be involved with research for several important reasons.

Web 2.0 has given us new tools and new methodologies that weren’t there 5 years ago to help us get much closer to our customers and to stay close to them for continuous periods of time. We can achieve this by spending a lot less of our client’s money – critical during this economic down turn.

More consumers want to play and be given more responsibility in the research process. Their increasing desire to be listened to and involved more directly in what a brand does and says means that now more than ever there is a great opportunity to research with consumers rather than at them.

We’ve got the chance to be more ambitious not just in terms of uncovering deeper and better insights but also in turning those insights into great products that make money for our clients.

Co-creation means there is a big opportunity for researchers to become the real champions of consumer involvement, as well as the key drivers for it within an company. This will undoubtedly mean us taking on the responsibility of not just encouraging companies to open up to consumers but also generating new ideas, methodologies and tools to helping make this happen. By becoming the gatekeeper to co-creating and crowdsourcing with consumers – letting consumers really influence what a brand or company does – researchers will transform their role into a more strategic, interesting and valuable one.

As an afterthought I was not aware until recently that the quality of the exchanges we made during our session have prompted some of the nice people at MRS to shortlist us for the Special Contribution to Conference Award for your debate at Research 2009: The Annual Conference. It would be great to keep this thread going with anyone elses thoughts on other opportunities out there. Next month we will cover more on oppotunities, threats and ambitions.

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How to Make Content Cool – In Three Easy Sites!

Monday, June 1st, 2009

So over the last few posts I have been banging on about how engaging content and knowing your audience is the key to a successful community. These are both obvious points; however,they are very difficult to do well. It is for this reason Ithought I should give some examples of what I am going on about.

I have picked out 3 of my favourite websites that are executing audience strategies really well.

None of these sites are necessarily communities (although they do have some elements) but they help give us an understanding of how to make our communities interesting and dynamic.

Even though they are all poles apart in terms of their purpose, all of these sites have a few things in common – they look great, they store a lot of information and I love them! So without any further ado here are some sites that I think arewell worth checking out if you are looking for some engagement inspiration:

It’s Nice That – Simplicity is the key for this very good looking blog. Smack bang in the middle of everything that is creative, it is well known within design circles for providing up to date and relevant information. Built around rich and high quality imagery its use of communication is subtle and very effective.

Platform Magazine – Vice for the next generation, it understands what the Skins generation want to hear about – sex, drugs, music and fashion. Hilarious at points with some great features but definitely not for the faint hearted as some of articles are quite… well… explicit but if you want to know what cool young’uns care about, look no further.

Metacritic - A stalwart in the online critic world Metacritic has compiled ratings for pretty much every book, TV show, film, album and computer game since 1999 A.K.A. a lot of information. Their layout is simple, their content is clear and their users love it. It is all very easy and you never feel swamped by the masses of content they have.

These are the kind of sites I look to when deciding how to display a lot of content and make it interesting for people to interact with. I would love to see some of your examples of dynamic and engaging websites.

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