Who Says Integrated Agencies Don’t Understand Interactive?
31 Mar
With the launch of their new website, Modernista shows they do (disclaimer: judging by a Google blog search I am pretty slow on this). Rather than displaying their content within a typical agency site format, Modernista took the concept of a social media hub to the extreme, allowing (arguably) the best in breed site for each type of content do the heavy lifting for them with just a simple DHTML overlay allowing the user to navigate between them.
Once I realized the conceit of the site, half the fun became guessing which service they would use for each type of content (spoiler: they made all the obvious choices). Their print work is all displayed through Flickr, categorized through the usage of albums and tags to allow users to navigate the work by client and category. Their television spots are brought to you by YouTube with playlists allowing users to view the videos by client. Similarly, all their interactive work is presented through a link to… you guessed it… del.icio.us, again using tags to categorize their links. Finally, their about and news sections are brought to you by Wikipedia and Google News respectively. One of the best things about this site is that as Modernista is taking you through all these sites, you can hit their escape button and be released into the familiar comforts of whichever social media space you happen to be in. In addition to a great conceit, the site creates a fantastic social media ecology, drastically increasing the reach of Modernista’s content (they could have improved the strength of this effect by cross-linking all their channels to one another rather than just back to their own domain and by using some of the third party Facebook applications to bring their other channels into their Page, but that could be nitpicking on my part).
One critcism I do have of the site is Modernista’s use of “web” spelling in the menu, which may indicate a bit of a shortcoming in understanding of the interactive space on Modernista’s behalf. People only intentionally spell things like that if they are a fledgling start-up and the correctly spelled domain will cost a fortune or if they are a really cool 16 year old on MySpace. Other than that, I really have to applaud Modernista for a fantastic concept with a strong execution.
Update: Wikipedia clearly doesn’t like how Modernista has co-opted their service, but instead of taking the entry down, they have posted a large warning on the top of it. I find this surprising given how protective Wikipedia’s admins are over the neutrality of the site. I would guess they haven’t taken it down because the way Modernista has used the page isn’t occurring within Wikipedia and therefore is not covered in their terms of use.
spelt? That’s sic!
LOL
LOL. That’s embarrassing. No more late night posts. Thanks for the heads up.
“conceit of the site” – concept?
Checked out the site, it’s pretty cool. I got taken to the Hamster Dance page… oh the memories! The navigation is a little annoying to use though.
It seems like an interesting concept but the ‘cuteness’ of it all gets old quickly IMHO. I guess they’re trying to be forward thinking or something but I don’t see how this really fits with their own brand – which is pretty ironic for an ad agency.
I could understand if they were doing a lot of work for their clients in the realm of social media, but their web portfolio (as per del.icio.us) seems like several micro sites without any social media integration (and I’ll also note the whoreish use of Flash in their design work!).
P.S. Wikipedians need to get real and focus more on their self-imploding management/governance than elitist chastisement of particular articles.
Miron