This weeks lecture was a little different than normal as it was a video lecture that was recorded last year by Creative Digital Media students. The guest speaker they had in was Edward Melvin from ICAN.
Edward has been a project manager in ICAN for eight years. But what is ICAN? It is an advertising and communications agency which specializes in helping its clients advertise online effectively. They do this by providing the following:
- Online Strategy
- Web Design / Multimedia Design
- Advertising campaigns
- Search Marketings
- Online PR
- Search Engine Optimisation
- Project & Campaign Management
As you can see its quite and extensive list of things that they provide for their customers. Edward then gave us examples of this by showing us some of there recent work which included sites for the WRC and Fifty Three Degrees North.
The aim of these projects is to “convert” people. What they mean by converting is when they project whatever it may be gets a sale, a download, a visit, an open, a click, a new member, a cross-sell, an enquiry etc.
Edward then explained why people ask his company for help. More and more people are online so it makes sense that more advertising evolves accordingly. The process ICAN uses in its projects is structured as follows,
Meetings > Strategy > Brief > Proposal > Concept.
Planning > Creative > Approval > Production > Testing > Release.
This shows shows the scale of work that is required before a final project is released. Edward showed us his role in the company and what he does as project manager. This included managing time frames and ensuring the customers expectations are met. The work place is described as fast paced and stressful but also rewarding and fun.
We explored the creative side of the industry and learned that no idea is entirely original. An example of this was the iFart application on the iPhone that someone created and made $300,000 in a few months.
Finally he gave us some advice on how you can develop your skills and get your foot in the door at a company (making a free website for someone, being an intern etc)
I really found the lecture interesting and looking back at it it feels like i was actually there rather than just looking at a video of the lecture. . I checked out their website shortly after to find out more about the projects and companies they have been involved with. Its definitely worth a look with some really nice flash based animations.
http://www.ican.ie/flash/
