Dawn of the Ad-Blockers: where next for digital advertising?

Being from an advertising background, for me it’s the creative that always has to work smartest to deliver results for our clients – in whatever medium. Talk to the specific customer you’re aiming at. Engage with them and be memorable. And it helps if you’ve got a compelling reason for them to act. But more and more when we collaborate with media agencies for online campaigns, the creative is improved vastly by smart, targeted media planning. And the real kicker is getting tangible figures for the number of eyeballs that viewed the ad, and went on to buy – hard to argue against proof of ROI when it’s there in black and white. Yet for all its smarts, the power of digital media to target consumers based on countless criteria is at risk, as consumers are increasingly opting out with ad-blocking software. So what now for digital advertising?

Enter the Rift: a new frontier for brand experiences

… And BEAR’s prize for the Most Improbably Named Launch Product of All Time 2016 goes to (you guessed it): the Oculus Rift!

Quite how it took everyone else so long, and Long Beach resident Palmer Luckey, so short a time to get what is essentially a 30-year-old idea fast-tracked into development, then sold for an unfeasibly large amount of money to Facebook for release this year, is anybody’s guess.

Forging ahead of the pack: web in the world of finance

Recently, we’ve created two websites for financial companies – each with different audiences and objectives.

One – Commercial Acceptances (CA) – was all about enhancing and developing the strong brand we had already created for them. The other – Demica – was part of a wider rebranding of the company, with the aim of setting them apart from their competition and giving them a brand that befitted their stature and size of the business.

Discovering the dark art of ‘dark patterns’

The new year usually brings with it new resolutions. Whether it’s getting fit (yep, need to do that), keeping a tidier desk (check), or generally trying to be a better person (yes again), there’s always something to aim for.

Now that last point is interesting, and it got me thinking: should brands – particularly ones with a strong online presence – try to behave better too? Should we hold them to the same moral standards we do people?

A digital snapshot

Creating an online experience that is meaningful, easy-to-use and gets results can be tricky to achieve. Someone, somewhere needs to do the complex stuff to make something simple.

Add in the creative spark, visual identity and brand messaging, and it’s a mix that could get overcomplicated pretty quickly.

Through the roof: our new interactive map of the UK property boom

You may have recently read that house prices in the UK are going through the roof, spearheading the country’s financial recovery.

Well, we've been working with Savills to create an interactive map that illustrates this price growth in prime areas across Britain, featuring historical prices, forecasts, stats on where buyers originate, and the reasons why they buy. Following the success of our London property map, which focused on the capital’s position at the forefront of this growth, our new map takes a broader look at growth across the full UK residential market.

Introducing a new online experience for Savills

Savills know property, and their research goes deeper than any other agent’s. To support the launch of their new London Journal, we were asked to deliver an interactive map to help users discover the state of the sales and lettings market in Prime London areas. The map allows users to explore both historical data and forecasts for market growth, as well as discover information about international interest, and buyer and tenant motivation.

The rise and fall of skeuomorphism

Here at BEAR, one topic of debate has been doing the rounds recently: the issue of skeuomorphism, the use of real-world metaphors in on-screen design.

You've probably noticed the proliferation of this type of design during the last decade or so. First the ‘flat’ design style of the early internet gave way to sheens and glass effects, and now it's hurtling towards all out computer-generated replications of real-world physical objects.