A lean simple website for a talented film production team.
The idea: Keep what Beck & Friends does well as the core and not allow visitors to miss the creative goodies. All content is placed on a single page with a clean presentation of information and embedded videos. The minimum can often do the job.
Design, concept and development by Spoiled Milk, supported with WordPress.
Check it out here: beckandfriends.ch
Finding talent is on the top of our agenda these days. In the last few months, an amazing quartet has joined our international gang and brought us up to a total of 21. Read a few of their thoughts here.
Dusko Ojdanic, Developer – Start small, think big
“Computers were simply a hobby of mine. Bit by bit, they steered me in the direction that I have followed to this day. I got a degree from a technical college and started working for a startup company. I made lots of friends there and gained a great deal of experience. At first I worked in Java, but when there was a chance to develop some tools for internal use in PHP, I took it. Picked up on the language and liked it. So that’s how I began my transition to the web world. And Spoiled Milk lives in the web world. There are so many things to do here and so much to learn … and, importantly, people to learn it from. Very cool.”
Marija Ljujic, Strategic Planner – Found the secret recipe
“Since I was little, I had great opportunities to travel throughout the world with my parents. I’ve seen many different cultures and customs, which made me strong enough to leave home for a year, when 17, and get my highschool diploma in USA. When I got back, I started my years of study and work, turned around and became a mom. Years passed, I finished the Faculty of International Economics, jobs alternated, my baby became a big boy, and all of a sudden I’m here at Spoiled Milk. A fantastic place of virtual reality, with a huge spoon of great people. I guess this spoon is the “secret” ingredient of Spoiled Milk’s recipe.”
Marina Dimitrijevic, Developer – Gone surfing (The Internet)
“Don’t be mislead by my talk about clothes, shoes, shopping malls and other of women’s favorite topics because there are more behind that Marina. Behind lies a real geek, truly in love with Web. I am a real Internet addict! For me, it is all about the Internet and I would like to emigrate there, in case it would be possible. That’s why I decided to become a web developer. To achieve it, I studied Computer Science at the Faculty of Electronic Engineering in my home town Nis, and after that worked for 5 years as a web developer. My weapons of choice are PHP, JavaScript, MySQL, and I have a special sympathy for CakePHP, Symfony 2.0 and jQuery. I’m mostly interested in application architecture design and development processes. Or put differently: “Agile rules!”. After moving to Belgrade, I decided to join the Spoiled Milk team, because of the special spirit that I felt once I entered Spoiled Milk’s office.”
Vladimir Vujosevic, Front-end Developer – Up for the challenge
“As far as I can remember, computers were a hobby of mine. And I should be thankful to my family for the initial bit of investment, setting me up with what I needed to get going. My role as a computer user evolved over the years in different ways. In my younger days, I was more drawn to development of computer graphics and music. During and after college, I started evolving in web and software development, which brought me to where I am today: Appreciating various languages of the web (HTML, CSS, JavaScript, PHP, Ruby) and enjoying the best of both worlds of design and development. In Spoiled Milk, I have found what I was always looking for in a company – an opportunity to work on new and challenging projects in a great environment with awesome people.”
“A photograph is usually looked at, seldom looked into.”
-Ansel Adams
When Swiss Photographer Kevin Hey came to us looking for a website to portfolio his work, we couldn’t help fall into his images and emerge with, arguably, our most creative and beautiful website to date.
CHALLENGE
“Keep it simple but it should be something special” was the basic briefing. This notion of simple but special is the holy grail of design, often touted, but rarely achieved. Kevin Hey, a rising star in the Swiss photography scene, gave us a unique opportunity when he came to us to make his online collection stand out from the crowd.
Displaying images is something we do all the time, but the client required flexibility too. He needed a site that he could work with and upload new images to with no fuss. So with an appreciation for good design buried deep within our bones and being the helpful friendly digital agency that we are, we jumped on this all too rare opportunity to create something both beautiful and functional.
SOLUTION
Our designers were understandably excited to work with material of such quality. They made it the top priority to orient this site with the photographs in full focus. A simple but thoughtful navigation was employed with an open structure that draws the user in and was paired with smooth transitions that make it a joy to explore.
The outcome is a not very typical Spoiled Milk website, which makes it even more special to us. To meet the client’s demands for continuous content updates and ease-of-use, we implemented WordPress on the back-end. This has given us a whole new appreciation for what creatively is possible in our work by using standard tools.
Set your browser to full screen and fall into the images at kevinhey.com
Be gone, middleman!
MUUSE takes talented top designers recently graduated from the world’s best educations and brings their vision right to the masses. Anna Wintour may still wield a bronze sword at underlings in a shiny Manhattan office, but MUUSE works to undercut such out-of-touch domineering.
For those of us who spend the vast majority of our time mired in digi-tech, this is a duh! moment: of course peer-review can be leveraged by not only cotton-tee companies like Threadless, but the upper echelon of the fashion world. I mean, this is not exactly the crowdsourcing model embraced by Threadless, but it’s essentially allowing the people to be in the driver’s seat of what’s hot or not. The public can influence which pieces become produced in small batches and even put forth ideas for collections.
As a self-styled expert in creative business start ups, I know the biggest risk for budding designers comes from the phenomenon that ‘nobody knows’ how the market will, or will not, embrace your good until it’s already on the market. At this point, your costs are sunk and you just pray to whatever god is yours that you survive the response.
The idea is simple: young designers eschew the financial burden of producing an entire line before being able to access the proverbial market temperature. Via MUUSE’s hand crafted pay-per-sale model, designers are granted a digital platform to present their collections and accept orders from clients dotting the globe, and receive feedback and input along the process, not after all is said and done. Members of the site are invited to participate: designers offer an exclusive peak into their creative processes, and the public evaluates which pieces ought to be set in motion.
In 6-10 weeks anyone can step out for a night on the town donning a killer new piece of limited edition haute couture (I’m a particular fan of the Aphrodite Dress from Thidarat Kaha’s Onyx collection, but don’t get paid quite well enough to make it mine). Just like me? One Christmas gift shy of the poorhouse? You can still get involved: MUUSE will commence a public campaign #bemymuuse for the title of MUUSE’s Most Promising Designer by VOGUE Talents next month. For now, designers are submitting their collections to the company, but all will be reckoned via public vote in mid-December.
By the way, they’re launching their 50th designer today. No small feat.
The effort it takes to digest one pig knee and a cup of homemade mustard really is a doozy. Multiply this by four and it’s one group of fat-bellied, contented men.
I often say there are no stupid questions, a catechism heard in kindergartens across the globe. Yet, a questionable question arose when someone asked, “Just how many beers have we had since we got to town?”
“Who the (BLEEP) knows?!” was the booming answer to my colleague’s inquiry. After a mere single round of those heaving chalices of cold, frosty goodness it’s time to stop practicing early mathematics and get on to the more important matters of business: women, fast cars and bottom lines.
This is when things turned ugly.
As the lone woman– a delicate flower in stilettos and polyester pantyhose– I was dismayed as it became increasingly apparent the day’s mission would fast become one embarked upon by gluttonous, slovenly office mates questing after the Czech Republic’s answer to eau de vie. Beer is one thing, but it’s an everyday thing (at least in Europe). So, what lurks beyond the obvious drink of choice in this charming Eastern European city that teems with shameless American tourists? What hidden liquid delicacies remained just off the radar so that even the finest of guidebooks would fail to take note?
And there it was, our mission in full glory: find something else the Czech drink. Get it, taste it, and try to remember it the next day.
Yeah, yeah. Gentle readers, I know you think this task seems underwhelmingly simple: find a convivial Praguian, ask him/her about the chances of there being some secretive elixir of life, head over to Tesco’s and seal the deal.
It turned out that finding a bona fide Czech in Prague is a real issue. It seemed everyone was suddenly dressed up as an obnixious tourist donning white socks with Tevas. At first we had one of my colleagues approach really Czech looking people– (don’t act like you don’t know what I mean here). But, he went for voluptuous blond women and we couldn’t wait around for him to bumble over his words and get to the point.
Armed with a charming grin only David Hasselhoff could outdo our team-leader took charge. Within minutes we had our lead– from a sweet little balding man with just enough English to convey the name of this critical potion and the direction in which to head.
Our informant quickly qualified his insider tip with a caveat that made our loose-lipped mouths water even more: “Only obscure, musty local shops sell this drink.”
Not wanting to see us go bone dry on the streets of Prague, this little man offered us his directions: “Turn right and go up the street. You’ll find a place where they sell this special stuff.”
The men took charge. After going in circles for upwards of an hour, I opened up a can of whoop-ass-woman on them. I had had enough of tiptoeing around like an idiot in heels along precariously placed cobblestone roads, following behind these drunkards like a subservient Asian housemaid.
“Figure this s**t out or else I’ll leave you right here, and for dead,” I said.
Like an angel descending from heaven, a perky young woman entered the scene.
“Hi there. Uh, we’re awfully sorry to bother you, but might you be willing to help us?”
“Yes????”
“Are you from Prague?”
“No… Slovakia.”
(Insert synchronized sighs of disappointment.)
Not wanting to leave this group of silly, grinning men in such despair she added, “Maybe I can still help?”
We explained our mission, but despite her knowledge of this concoction and its similarly clandestine locations, she could not help…
Next to turn the corner was Sergei, a Belarusian hottie with a killer tan and bulging biceps. Not only did he know all about Prague and this mysterious inebriant, but he promised to lead us to the holy grail.
But, just when he held our modest hope in the palm of his hand, the liquor shop we approached had a menacing “uzavřen” plastered across the front window. (So much for the 2 km of uphill hiking in snazzy stilettos.) He tells us not to give up– not far from where we were was another corner shop bound to have just what we need.
Fortunately for us, we were sold on the idea and nowhere near ready to give up. Unfortunately for us, “not far” doesn’t translate well from Czech to English. Blisters and bunions later, we come across another clandestine shop.
“Uzavřen.”
Dear readers, this time it looked like an end to our fairytale…. We were sagging, tired and despite repeated requests, not one of the guys would rub my blisters and bunions for me. We were failures. Would I even have a job come Monday morning?
Bidding adieu to darling Sergei, he informed us that trucking it further up the hill would take us to the nearest metro station. My bunions squealed in pain as I stuffed them back into my Jimmy Choos.
A precious few meters before the top of the hill we came upon a restaurant. We unfurled our tired, broken spirits into some chairs and the waiter spoke to us in a fragrant potpourri of English and Czech. I’m not sure what he said, but I did understand one thing: “You can not find this magical intoxicant after twelve o’clock noon.”
Although our spirits had already been shattered, this was the bitter end of our quest for secret Czech moonshine.
We reached the top of that god-forsaken hill.
Then, out of nowhere an angel appeared. A familiar face– a mirage on the horizon. Our Slovak angel was back! It had to be a sign.
She smiled (most pointedly at my colleague with the mustard smeared down his dress shirt). “Did you have luck finding it?”
“No. Every store was closed, and we are going back home broken and thirsty.”
And then, something miraculous happened. She opened her backpack and pulled up a bottle of some yellowish liquid.
“I bought it half an hour ago. I found one wine shop by accident…”
Right there, on the top of a hill in the middle of glorious Prague, with the sun shining down on us, we couldn’t really believe in the notion of coincidence. We didn’t know what to believe in. Serendipity? God?
We just stood there, mouths agape and she extended to us her bottle of Burcak.
As she turned to leave, Mustard Man shouted out: “Your name?!”
“Lea”, she said
“Not an angel! A princess… Princess Lea,” we thought.
Surreal Swiss filmaker Peter Luisi asked us to play dreamweaver for his film’s web and social media campaign. To which we replied, (to quote the Bard); ‘To sleep perchance to dream aye there’s the rub’.
CHALLENGE
Independent films always have an uphill battle reaching an audience, even in reasonably sized markets right in the filmmakers back yard. Swiss director, Peter Luisi with several films to his name was primed to promote directly to his key audience.
Juggling a hectic round of film festivals and screenings around the world, his film, DER SANDMANN needed some digital love to give it some justice in the cinema and a social media solution to secure a following and spread the word.
SOLUTION
DER SANDMANN has won over 20 prizes in international Film Festivals and was shown in the cinemas in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. Spoiled Milk created a nice and simple website for this movie based on WordPress. Also we created a few Facebook campaigns for a competition and gave the users the possibility to reserve tickets to a pre-premiere of the film.
With cinematic talent meeting digital desire we’re proud to stand behind the Swiss film scene’s newest ‘sleeper’ hit.
Check the website to see if DER SANDMANN is coming to a theater near you.
Spoiled Milk has been growing rapidly, and with offices in 3 different countries, it was getting difficult to simply have a mental overview of the skills and interests of everyone in the team.
So we started a simple Google Spreadsheet where people could fill in what they are great at, what they can help out with, what they are currently learning and what they want to learn. This was paired with some other data such as when they started learning each topic, their approach to learning it and any relevant notes.
Fast-forward a couple of days and 20 people have added their individual skillsets, making up the collective brain tissue of Spoiled Milk. The company’s DNA, in a spreadsheet.
Cool, cool. So what do we see? A truly beautiful mosaic of skills and interests. Here’s a small selection of some of the skills at Spoiled Milk:
PHP, Drupal, WordPress, Facebook API, jQuery, Google Maps API, JSP, SOAP, Java, C, C++, Photoshop, InDesign, Python, Objective-C, Android, iOS, ASP.NET, Lua & Embedding Lua, ActionScript, Delphi/Kylix, Ruby (+ Rails framework), Backbone.js, d3.js, Responsive Design, Zend PHP, MSSQL, ExtJS, Symfony PHP framework, OCP CMS, Joomla, Software modeling (UML), CUDA, QT Quick, and many many more(!).
However, to me something even more interesting was revealed in this spreadsheet: most of these skills have been acquired by self-driven learning.
People have studied these topics on their own out of pure interest. Sure, we have a lot of university degrees in various fields, but the vast majority of the company’s skillset is from self-driven learning.
In many industries this would be a problem – you’d want your employees to have PhD’s and what not in whatever they’re working on. However, in our industry, self-driven education must be the foundation of your company. After all, we’re in an industry where a 5 year-old technology is labeled “veteran” – a university degree in a specific technology will be outdated before it is invented. New technologies spring up every day, and others die out just as fast.
The day you stop learning, you become irrelevant. However, you can’t learn this in an institution. You must learn it on your own. Play around. Experiment. Read about the technology. Write about it. Help shape it. And then move on to something new. This requires an incredible self-motivation. A drive.
So when I saw “Self-driven” noted as the primary type of learning at Spoiled Milk, I couldn’t help but smile. Instead of a dull spreadsheet, I saw a constantly evolving mosaic of skills and interests.
Who wouldn’t want to be part of that?
Our foursome: Dave, Ivan, Marina and William from Zurich, Belgrade and Copenhagen combined to be reborn as Spoiled Milkers in a tempting tale of Bohemian surreality.
Dave Luisi, Ivan Pavlovic, Marina Demitrijevic and William Tylander awoke one morning from uneasy dreams to find themselves transformed in their bed into a giant smartphone. They were lying on their hard as if it were aluminum plated back and when they looked out of their 5 megapixel camera all they could see was the smooth touch screen glass.
What has happened to us we thought?
Our annual team meet-up didn’t take us to any absinthe filled fantasies, but through team building workshops and fleshing out our digital selves to one another, we all transformed from separate individuals, from distributed locals into singular members of a unique collective.
The elusive assignment of a ‘hidden’ Prague was buried right beneath our noses. In the busy town square, the impossibly crowded Charles bridge, in every queue to every majestic cathedral spiral and castle tower, Prague was there under the bustle of the throbbing hoards of tourists. And we were there in the thick of it.
And much like our digital creations on the web or in mobile devices, we found ourselves on the inside looking out. Keyholes, windows and doors were our interface to appreciate Prague.
On our journey we discovered things about ourselves. Some of us liked the climb and bustle of crowds and others not, but still the city and its sights were absorbed and spoiled in our own milky way.
Disclaimer: The workshop had the following guidelines: Keep it at max. 1000 words / Use visuals – photography or video / Document place, street name, area etc. / Note who led you to the place / experience / Add your own twist. Fiction is allowed.
Another award in the bag following our collaboration with the ambitious guys from Memonic. Their app makes note-taking a rare pleasure.
CHALLENGE
Memonic offers an online note-taking app featuring the most sophisticated web clipper on the market. Beyond storing texts, pictures, or videos, Memonic provides editing, bookmarking, “read it later” functionality, group collaboration, and sharing information via e-mail or social media.
For businesses, Memonic brings tailor-made knowledge storing to make internal information processing more efficient and more social. In fact, a number of blue-chip companies already use Memonic for their internal information gathering.
The service was available on Windows and Mac, but of course required a presence on iOS, including iPhone and iPad, and Android.
SOLUTION
With completed design from the Memonic team, Spoiled Milk joined forces with Memonic’s tech team to help build a couple of 1st class applications. The coding incorporated components from the Appcelerator Titanium framework.
Native mobile application frameworks, iOS and Android, were included in the platform umbrella and were synced to the Memonic web application, which at that time was based on SyncML.
We were pleased to discover that Computer Bild awarded Memonic with a “Der Goldene Computer” for “Best App of the Year 2011″ just recently.
Medical device firm Zimmer wanted to accelerate their engagement in social media. With focus and some serious generosity, they rose from 0 to 5’000 likes in just four months. Running at the speed of social media, they’ve set a pace the competition will have trouble matching.
What’s in a “like”? Would a social media gesture by any other name smell so sweet? Honing in on the elusive KPI’s for social media, one can quickly get bogged down in meaningless jargon. Taxonomies aside, social media is about connections. What connections can enable, is an asset that needs to be clearly understood to be properly leveraged. If an organization wants to find value asset propositions in social media, they must follow the rules of engagement.
With 800 million users, Facebook is a channel that can’t be denied. Like other social media sites, it’s an engagement channel, a two-way street where messages can be broadcast and users can give feedback. For marketing purposes Facebook page owners’ ability to monitor impressions, feedback and interactions is priceless. But coming into close contact with users, carry uncalculated risks.
In the regulated enclaves of healthcare, marketing strategies tend towards the conservative and are largely risk averse. Campaign roll-outs are typically planned at least a year in advance and must meet stringent legal requirements set forth by government agencies like the FDA. Legal eagles for these firms must see that every ‘i’ is dotted and ‘t’ is crossed before they can be packaged along with the other 138 characters and sent off into the Twitter-verse.
With few relavant existing communities related to medical devices (hip, knee and shoulder implants) on the social web, Zimmer had to attract a following that was already united around a cause. Teaming up with a foundation that supports sufferers of their key user group would prove to be a great asset with the launch of their Facebook page.
The Arthritis Foundation is an organization that aims to ease the suffering of the more than 90 million Americans afflicted with the condition through education, research and public policy support. Zimmer’s collaboration with the foundation includes their participation in Arthritis Walks, a series of nation-wide fundraising events. Besides from supporting fundraising locally with Team Zimmer, they wanted to use the Facebook page as a philanthropic platform.
Donate-a-like was the outcome, an app we set up on their page to track the number of likes and share users participation over Facebook. On Zimmer’s part, for every user that liked their page, they would donate a dollar to the Arthritis Foundation. Goals were set for 1’000 ‘likes’ in the first month and a promise to double their pledge, if they reached that. Making their first goal with a week to spare, they set the bar higher, 5’000 in three months, and got serious about targeting users.
We deployed Facebook Ads, cueing in on key demographics and saw the numbers rise, fast. Accustomed to 0.01 CTR for banner ads and 0.04 for Ad Words from previous experience, we were floored by returns of up to 0.18 on the targeted Facebook ads. And together we watched Zimmer eclipse their closest competitor within 6 weeks and have nearly tripled the number two months later. The potent mix of social media, philanthropy and targeted ads spelled out over a 90% conversion rate from clicks to likes.
Extending their generosity even further, Zimmer agreed to up their donation to a total of $10,000 if they met their new goal before September 30th. ‘Likes’ weren’t the only metric to rise in this campaign. As we closed in on the 5’000 mark, impressions swelled and interactions spiked with posts on the campaign’s progress. Users apparently loved hearing they were a part of this effort and started chiming in with ‘likes’ and comments of support on their own.
Just a few months after setting up the channel, Zimmer has an engaged online community where none existed before. In terms of ROI, Zimmer has recapitalized on their cost per ‘like’ with speed and marketing aglility seldom seen in the medical device industry. Keeping up with the pace of social media is the next challenge and we’ll be standing by to lend a helping hand.
Spoiled Milk ApS
Nørrebrogade 52C, 4.TV.
DK-2200 Copenhagen
Denmark
Spoiled Milk GmbH
Hammerstrasse 11
CH-8008 Zurich
Switzerland
Company
