Interview With Iain Tait, Poke

* 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