*A One Degree Exclusive!*
Upstart digital marketing agency “Indusblue”:http://www.indusblue.com just won the work for the official “CBC”:http://www.cbc.ca site covering the “2006 Winter Olympics in Torino”:http://www.torino2006.org/index.php?lang=en. In this exclusive interview, we asked co-founder Darren Pereira about winning the CBC business, the future of Indusblue, and much more.
_Darren Pereira is Director, New Business Development and one of the founders of “Indusblue”:http://www.indusblue.com. Along with brother Dayton, he is positioning Indusblue as a team of creative directors, producers and production talent who deliver online experiences that employ technology along with strategic thinking and stunning creative. His five year goal is to make Indusblue synonymous with the best creative shop in Toronto._
*One Degree: Congratulations on the big CBC Olympic win! What’s the story behind this story?*
Thanks! It’s huge for us as we spent a lot of time and hard work thinking through every detail in our proposed solution.
After we received the RFP, it was a matter of detailed research, thorough proposal writing and providing concrete examples of our skill set. The CBC team was so impressed with the intelligence and creativity of our proposed solutions, that they short listed us and invited us to present our proposal. We also provided references to our existing clients, who love our work. After additional rounds to clarify details, we won the contract.
*One Degree: You went up against some big shops to win this work. Do you think your size worked for or against you?*
Our size definitely worked for us because we addressed it as a strength. We emphasized that a smaller-sized shop makes a positive difference because we work more efficiently, providing more bang for our clients’ buck. While we value the processes of a larger organization, we are able to apply the same processes to fit our need with individuals that are able to produce great results and communicate well.
*One Degree: Do you think the York Region site was a deciding factor for CBC?*
Yes and no. It definitely helped that we built a successful website for a large government funded transit service and that it was nominated for a Canadian New Media award. In addition, our client had only good things to say about us and that further endorsed our skill set with the CBC. It did however raise some concerns about our use of flash for some recent website launches. We quickly allayed these concerns by providing detailed descriptions of our project histories indicating that we’ve been building websites while the web was still in its infancy and that HTML and CSS were our tools of choice, meaning that we understand that realm extremely well. Our technology decisions are primarily based on the demographic we’re catering too.
*One Degree: The viva site is amazing in design, complexity, and visual experience. Kudos on a tour-de-force of Flash mastery. But as with my recent “Five Questions for MGT”:http://www.onedegree.ca/2005/08/14/5-questions-for-alexander-younger-president-mgt I have to challenge you on this approach. The site doesn’t seem very user-friendly in that I can’t link to anything other than the home page, it has high-requirements (in my mind) for a public transit site that should be designed for all, and a host of other concerns about long-term usefulness for a broad audience. And while I didn’t do any tests I can’t imagine search engines will have an easy time with this site. Isn’t this a case of form over function?*
Glad you like the “vivayork.com”:http://www.vivayork.com website. The primary goal with this site was to build brand awareness. A large part of the demographic that the Viva service itself is directed towards, is Internet savvy college kids and young professionals, which the website speaks to directly. It is for that reason that we use flash liberally to present information in a creative way. You know you’re on a transit system website because the site looks like you’re looking out of a transit vehicle window. Moving forward this site will address all usability issues and be converted to a more accessible hybrid HTML/CSS website. All our components on this site can be completely deconstructed to fit a hybrid site. This was always the plan!
You can actually link to several sections by typing in specific URLs and you can bookmark them too. We’ve built a special toolbar to do these things. For example “this link”:http://www.vivayork.com/?go=feature_FareMachineTour will take you directly to the Feature Tour section of the site, much like a dynamic HTML page.
In terms of search engines, we create jump pages and flash detect pages with meta tags, so that search engines find our sites easily. Of course the flash page container itself has meta tags as well. If you googled “Vivayork” or “york transit”, it shows up within the first four links. Also, interviews such as these help search engines index associated words that bring traffic to the site. Vivayork.com, vivayork.com – LOL!
*One Degree: When you think out three or four years from now, where do you see Indusblue?*
Indusblue will become the number one digital marketing agency here in Toronto by 2008. That’s right – you heard it here first on One Degree.
We focus on building extraordinary brand experiences through websites, e-mail and banner ads. We come up with strategies and creative ideas that speak directly to our clients’ audience. We hire the most talented people we can afford. With a creative director who can code extremely well and is impressed by very little, we’re always looking to push our own limits to continuously do better.
We understand the importance of traditional advertising and marketing mediums, but we choose to remain in the digital realm because we’ve grown to rely on the web more as individuals. We can foresee that the Internet is growing as a marketing vehicle, because we are receptive to it. The coming generations are only going to be that much more reliant on the web for information and entertainment. We have a strong technical background in this realm and we enjoy every single facet of advertising and marketing, constantly pushing the envelope of creativity to develop extraordinary experiences.