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Latest Entries

Why Retail Brands Should Focus on the Mobile Channel

We are at a tipping point where mobile will soon become the optimum channel for retail brands to engage with their customers.

Take a look at our presentation which highlights 22 compelling reasons why retail brands should be taking their mobile strategy seriously…

You can download the PDF from this link.

Marks and Spencer site gets glowing review

Hurrah! Forum Nokia has a given a glowing review to our design for the Marks and Spencer mobile internet site.

Marks and Spencer mobile site gets the thumbs up

In their words, “The web site provides an excellent example of well crafted and optimised mobile form design enabling users to easily accomplish complex tasks and access extensive datasets.”

Click here to see their review at the Design Gallery.

Insight on mobile internet

Mary Meeker, renowned internet trend analyst from Morgan Stanley, has released her eagerly awaited annual report. As digital agencies (including us) across the globe mine this for insight and stats, I’ve embedded it here to view.

Of particular interest are the rising dominance of mobile internet versus desktop internet, mobile becoming an accelerator for digital commerce and the shift in Apple’s core business. Enjoy.

Upwardly Mobile – the time is nigh for mobile ticketing

Check out this months Stadia magazine – New Toy’s Creative Director, Christopher Smith, talking about Mobile ticketing and the future of technology in sports and music venues.

If you click through to the Scribd site – you can also play with their rather splendid new HTML5 document viewer…

Marks and Spencer’s mobile site goes live

Marks and Spencer have just launched their full commerce mobile web site. This is the first large-scale mobile web deployment by a UK retailer.

The team here worked closely with M & S to design the site and user experience across a range of mobile devices. You can see it for yourself at m.marksandspencer.com.

Congratulations to everybody involved in the project. Check out the official press release here.

Rimmel campaign strikes gold!

Great news – at the Valencia Festival of Media Awards - the team have won Best Use of Mobile for their work with Rimmel.

(As MIG) we were up against a strong international field including submissions from Nike, Reebok and Cadbury.

For more information on how the campaign worked you can view the show reel here.

Well done everyone.

MIG = Number One Mobile Agency

This morning MIG has been announced as the “Number One Mobile Agency” in the NMA Marketing Services Guide 2009. Third year in a row.

You can see the list at the NMA site here


NMA - Number One Mobile Agency

Cracking! Well done everybody in the Group.

Oh my word!

Inspired by the BBC’s use of Wordle after the election debate yesterday, it’s interesting to see how tweets, trending and word clouds have become standard tools for the media’s analysis of the leadership debates. Demonstrating how effective they are as real-time content that cuts through the crap (and 5-10% variables) of opinion polls sponsored by organisations with vested interests.

I thought I’d apply Wordle to our own blog – to find out the main focus of our jabbering. Here are the results…

… all quite predictable – with mobile, apps and iPhone taking centre stage.

Continue reading…

iPhone HD – built for NFC?

There’s an awful lot of blog-based kerfuffle about leaked iPhone images today. Those great friends Engadget and Gizmodo managed to trump each other within the week – and Gizmodo emerged with the lost device in hand (after parting with hard cash, allegedly).

Here’s what they’ve got….

Continue reading…

Mobile internet vs Mobile apps – the great debate

Originally published on the DMA Mobile Messaging site, our Strategy Director Tim Dunn debates the merits of mobile apps and mobile internet with Marks and Spencer’s Sienne Veit (Social and Mobile Commerce Development Manager)….

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Dear Tim

My approach to the mobile web is shaped by our approach to our customers – we sell to everybody across Britain, young or old, techie or not. One of our great successes is Shop Your Way – a multichannel initiative that enables shoppers to cross channels, including stores, web, phone and, in the future, mobile. Our customers interact with us across a range of channels through the course of a day, and we want to deliver as continuous a journey across those channels as possible, so that a journey started in one channel can proceed and be completed in any other(s). Our customers are now familiar with the web and shopping on the web. So it makes sense for any mobile web experience we plan to replicate that in as far as possible while ensuring that we optimise the specific channel (mobile) to make that journey about the product and make the technology invisible (you shouldn’t have to download, update or have to go into and out of multiple apps or sessions).

Continue reading…

New Toy goes iPhone

We’ve spent so much time with our clients on their mobile and iPhone applications, we forgot to build our own one!

Now we have – click below to get the app. Nice.

3D on a Mobile device (update)

Carrying on from the previous post – here’s a video of Nintendo’s 3DS – the upcoming handheld console scheduled for release in 2011.

According to Japanese industry news website Nikkei.com, Nintendo plans to include “a 3-D joystick and a force feedback system”

3D on a Mobile device

It’s only a matter of time before 3D video on handheld devices (mobile, iPad) starts generating serious interest and investment. We’ve been looking at the potential for a particular client, and it’s surprising that there aren’t already mobile apps or platforms that offer even faux 3D. There is 3D Camera iPhone app that purports to create 3D stills from regular photos, this kept us occupied for a few minutes.

The obvious downside to 3D on mobile is the requirement of two peripherals (the glasses and the device) – however this is no less clunky than the non-mobile, image-marker-to-webcam Augmented Reality implementations. Avatar 3D won’t be available on DVD until next year – but maybe Mr. Cameron should invest some of his profits into delivering a 3D Avatar experience on mobile. On second thoughts, maybe he should invest it in some decent screenwriters for the sequel…

Good old Nokia Reasearch Lab have done some serious work Mobile 3D – including a decoder software that runs on the N800 – click here to find out more.

We’ll keep you updated with our work on this…

Smartphone Smashdown

Next week at MIG towers we’re having a Smartphone Smashdown – each division and company putting together innovative, meaningful 60-second elevator pitches for an ingenious smartphone application or platform.

Watch this space to find out about New Toy’s grand idea…

John Maeda on Creative Leadership

John Maeda’s output has constantly blurred the boundaries of design and technology, he also designed some rather interesting looking Reebok trainers.

Here’s a slide deck of his outlining the difference between traditional and creative leadership.



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