Web Design Company, Creative Digital Agency & Online Marketing Agency - Pod1 London UK, New York USA. : News

Travel Intelligence Scores Top Marks

2008-05-08

The Pod1 designed website for Travel Intelligence (www.travelintelligence.com) scored top marks in Travolution Magazine's ‘Site seeing’ website review section. Travel Intelligence was designed to be the ultimate one-stop shop for finding and booking the ideal hotel, showcasing a global collection of chic, boutique and luxury hotels, with reviews, articles and insider knowledge by an informed network of professional travel writers.

Travel Intelligence was reviewed alongside two other sites Splendia and former Pod1 client Mrs & Mrs Smith based on their first page results on Google for the term ‘boutique hotel’. The test set for the review was to book a night at the Hotel Omm in Barcelona and the sites were then scored out of 25 for design, usability, content and revenue generation. Travel Intelligence and Splendia came joint first with 82/100 while Mr & Mrs Smith came in third with 77%.

Key points of note in the review were the improvement of the design over the previous incarnation of the site with large images, well structured content and easy links to online booking. TI also scored the best marks for usability and was commended for being both fast and easy to navigate. The other area TI came out top was content, thanks to the professional reviews and the seamless integration with the booking engine.

To read the review for yourself go to Travel Intelligence / Hotel Omm

Schroders Diversified Multi Asset Fund Campaign Launched

2008-05-01

Pod1 has just launched the latest banner campaign for Schroders’ Multi Asset Fund. This is a trade investment fund aimed at independent financial advisors.

Working closely with Schroders’ above the line agency, Brand Union, the online campaign was a direct development of the print ads. This was based around a statue of a woman with a bow ‘targeting’ the funds performance figure. Expanding on this theme the Pod1 campaign used an interactive Flash banner which fired an arrow, that could then be moved from side to side with the cursor, through a forest until it hits the target.

Schroders plc is a global asset management company with £130.6 billion (€163.8 billion / $259.6 billion) under management as at 31 March 2008. Clients include corporations, insurance companies, local and public authorities, charities, pension funds, high net worth individuals and retail investors.

Barcelo Micro Site to Launch Luxury New Hotel

2008-04-24

In June 2008, Barceló Hotels and Resorts will be launching an impressive purpose built new Hotel, the Raval, on the famous Las Ramblas, Barcelona. This landmark building will be the tallest Hotel on the street, with panoramic views of the city from its rooftop terrace and pool. It will be an innovative space with modern design and facilities, in keeping with its location.

As part of our ongoing creative digital collaboration with Barcelo, Pod1 will create a bespoke microsite to support the launch of the hotel. Due to the nature of the target audience and the characteristics of the hotel, the launch campaign will be designed to generate significant appeal within the online market and deliver against the key interests of the target customer. English and Spanish versions of the site will be launched internationally with the supporting marketing activity focusing predominantly on Europe.

The site will also be used to gather useful marketing data by incentivising users to recommend their peers to interact with the brand. The target market will be very familiar with searching the internet for hotel reviews and rates and as such these users will be looking for unique offers and added value compared to just looking for the best available rate.

Designed initially to promote the hotel launch the micro site will also form the basis of all ongoing online marketing activity post launch.

UNIQLO’s UT Designer T-Shirt Project is Back

2008-04-16

Pod1’s favourite Japanese clothing retailer, Uniqlo, has just launched their latest UT project, (UT standing for Uniqlo t-shirt). A core part of the original website design when the new ecommerce site was launched last year, the UT Project brings together a collection of over 700 unique t-shirt designs from various leading artists and designers including 1980’s artists Keith Harring and Basquiat.

For this season’s advertising campaign Uniqlo have called on the talents of photographer Daniel Jackson and features New York style icon Chloe Sevigny and Japanese actor Tadanobu Asano. A selection of this new imagery is now featured on the website’s current homepage.

A secondary campaign made up of 200 individual portraits was shot by Matt Irwin, editor of ‘Less Common’ magazine. To compile such a large collection of models required a real multi-media search for talent, including street-casting and canvassing social media mainstay MySpace, resulting in a 10-day trans-Atlantic shoot. The complete collection of photographs will be featured in Uniqlo’s next in-house magazine.

Pod1 has now been working with Uniqlo since 2002, when we were initially approached to maximise their internet presence. They needed a creative digital agency that could establish and implement a long-term online strategy. Five years down the line, Uniqlo made the decision again to trade online and turned to Pod1 to design and build a high-impact fully optimised e-commerce website.