Blast Advanced Media

As we balance the need to meet deadlines and keep our clients happy, we often find it difficult to connect with and share ideas with our friends from other agencies and within the industry. In the informal educational, network inducing environment of the Web Builder 2.0 Conference in Las Vegas last week, Kayden ventured out to participate in the forum of web inspired learning and information exchange. After completing his featured presentation on building and maintaining agency dynamics in the Web 2.0 era, Kayden was fortunate enough to meet a few of our colleagues from IXD, an Online Marketing, Interface Design and Usability Experience agency based in Oslo, Norway. IXD works with what are the equivalent to Fortune 500 companies in their country. They were so impressed with his presentation and our agencies striking similarity in process and philosophy, they decided to make a special trip to visit our office here in Roseville to share some more thoughts and ideas about our two companies and the industry in general before heading back home to Norway via SFO. We met with Steinar Nygaard, Managing Director, Karl Lund, Interactive Marketer, and Teodor Bjerrang, Interaction Designer.

We discussed strategies for online marketing, the different tools and their distinct advantages and disadvantages, differences in doing business in our respective regions, and we discussed what turned out to be the focus for each of our respective agencies — Kuttisme. Loosely translated, it means “Cut the Crap” – removing everything that takes focus away from the main goal, removing clutter and thereby increasing conversion rates. It is the name of their blog in fact – kuttisme.no, was a key theme in Kayden’s presentation at Web Builder 2.0 and it is a common goal that we share in the services we provide to our clients, a universal language that always translates to ROI and the bottom-line.

It was great to get a view of the industry and in particular both of our agency’s particular specialties from a completely different view, although in the end, it turned out what we do for our clients really isn’t much different… we just do it in different languages.