Interview With Iain Tait, Poke

Digital agency Poke won two Webby awards last week for their work with Orange and Jamie Oliver’s Charity. We asked Poke partner Iain Tait to talk about the philosophy behind the work his agency delivers, the relevance of the Webbys, and the challenge digital agencies face with the rise of user-generated content.

* What is it about Talking Point (Orange) and Feed Me Better (Jamie Olive) that set those sites apart? Why do you think the jury went for them?

I’d not really considered the two sites side-by-side until you asked the question, but actually I think that are a few similarities that make these sites interesting.

Firstly they both have community at the heart of them. Feed Me Better was used as a tool to galvanise support from communities of parents, teachers and school caterers. People who care about what kids are eating in schools. Talking Point was about trying to find a new way for Orange to let people have their say on a number of issues in a quick, easy and manageable way.

Secondly they both deal with real-world issues that people care about. Feed Me Better was a single issue that was heavily supported in other media channels. Talking point covered multiple issues (Children and Mobiles, Technology, The Future of Music) over a period of time and existed in the online space but genuinely influenced Orange’s offline actions.

Aside from those two key similarities I just think they were interesting and appropriate uses of the web.

For us the Webbys are a really interesting set of awards and we’ve been really over the moon to be awarded two years in a row. We like them because they celebrate all kinds of online work, I guess because they’re judged by a much wider group of people from a range of industries. Meaning, our work is being judged as ‘online stuff’ rather than just design or advertising. And I reckon that a lot of the time we should be thinking about our competitive set as other ‘online stuff’ not necessarily other brands or advertisers.

* The Guardian Blog didn’t receive the Webby winner list very warmly - saying that ‘The Usual Suspects Dominate Webbys’ because of US and English language bias. Thoughts?

True. But I didn’t see much Oscar coverage moaning about the lack of foreign language films. I see their point, but to be fair to the Webby guys it’s really tough to judge something in a language that you don’t understand, with cultural references that you don’t get.

* Back to your winners. Does this work reflect a philosophy that runs through the work of Poke?

Try to do good online things. That’s probably about as far as our philosophy has developed but given our industry is still changing so fast, I’d hate to say anything more concrete than that. I guess it’s rooted in the fact that we believe that by using online / digital / interactive (whatever you want to call it) creatively you can do things that genuinely make a difference to businesses.

* We see this trend in the digital space of content created by users - from blogging to user generated ads - how do digital agencies - who previously led the content creation - react and work with this concept?

I think that’s one of the big questions everyone’s looking to answer right now. And in all honesty I think we’re all learning as we go along. I think agencies need to be honest with their clients (and themselves) and realise when, where and how it’s appropriate to try to engage with users in this way. We’re seeing a lot of people trying to ‘do a MySpace’, which really just doesn’t seem like a smart thing to do. In a lot of cases it’s like a washing powder trying to ‘do a WalMart’.

In our view the digital space is pretty much like real space. There’s lots of ways to operate within it. Some appropriate, some not. It’s not just ‘a channel’, it’s a multitude of channels (and environments). And there’s certain things that make sense for brands to do, and things that aren’t. I think the better digital agencies understand the whole of the space and are constantly searching for new and appropriate ways to create meaningful engangement. Not just crudely invading people’s online spaces.

Poke
Iain’s Blog - CrackUnit