English Posts Archives | Agentur Blog | Content & Online Marketing

10.02.2023 by Ercin

The creative process

Sands Films Olivier Stockman on the non-digital creative research process

“It all starts with the visual…”
Olivier Stockman, Head of Sands Films London

This interview is from the year 2012 and couldn’t be more up-to-date. Why?

Our whole world got even more digital over the past 12 months. With the ease of a click, you find tons of inspiration via Google, Pinterest, and thousands of other services, for example, TikTok. With the arrival of artificial intelligence, these even got more powerful. On top of that, you find endless tools to “optimize” almost everything. You can find endless checklists, growth hacking advice, a.i. driven generators or online courses for every thinkable aspect of your business.

What does this mean for agencies’ creativity and purpose?

I was on an image film production in London, and we had the pleasure of filming interviews on the stage of the Sands Film art theatre.

Sands Film is a studio, a creative environment, a costume manufactory specializing in historical costumes, a theatre, and much more. They created costumes for productions like Harry Potter or Taboo.

Olivier talks about the studio and their work in general. One of the most fascinating insights he shared is the non-digital creative research process.

He explains why non-Googlish creative research and physical inspirational process are essential for finding ideas. And what it does to you and your creative inspiration.

I couldn’t agree more with this. It reminds me of how I find inspiration. And why we have a physical library in our agency loft with tons of new and old fashion, lifestyle, and tech magazines, and books. And some cozy corners to read and find some quietness.

Find the interview with Olivier Stockman from Sands Film in full length here.

06.02.2017 by Ercin

Content Marketing is the Future!

Content Marketing – Make it Work For Your Company’s Success!

Your starting situation:

Many consumers, and not only the Generation Right-Here-Right-Now, are increasingly “immunized” against traditional marketing strategies. They subscribe to paid streaming services such as Netflix or Amazon to avoid TV commercials. They ignore print advertisements and are now surfing so routinely through the net that the banners and buttons plastered all over it do not even provoke a mild reaction except for an opt-out. Thought leaders and marketing experts have long understood that the efficiency and success of traditional push marketing are currently dwindling at a breath-taking pace.

“The era of classic push advertising is coming to an end,” said Ercin Filizli, CDO of the full service digital agency VUCX: “Consumers are completely oversaturated by traditional marketing measures – and at the same time looking for high-quality content that offers identification value, conveys knowledge and provides a concrete, personal value recognizable to the customer.”

The end of the classic marketing era heralds a new age: content marketing is “the (next) big thing”.

Content marketing has been around for quite some time now.It has been going through various transformations. Starting from the area of branded content to the post sponsored posts area with influencer marketing – the current big fuss.

But what exactly is content marketing? Read More

05.10.2015 by Ercin

Working hours in the Digital Agency World

We have flexible working hours at VUCX. The core working hours set out in the employment contract run from 9:30 AM to 4:00 PM. But the starting times that project and account managers – and I – tolerate can vary, and offer a bit more wiggle room. “We have single mothers and family men on our team. It’s simply unavoidable that you end up with some variation, which has never presented a problem before,” says Key Account Manager and Partner Sascha Gritz.

We also place a high level of value on a good work-life balance, and on the compatibility of job and free time.

03.08.2015 by Ercin

Folder structure for film projects and motion graphics projects

Folder structures are very important. We believe that the creative process needs structures and conventions.

Therefore we created various standards for our diverse divisions. So all relevant information is easy traceable and identifiable. This ensures that the (correct) stored files can be easy located, identified and retrieved from our server in a timely manner by all team members. Our digital division has different standards than for example the film division. We are constantly reviewing our standards and discussing ideas and review best practices. We believe that failing to establish such standards will lead to chaos, time and productivity loss. Well – after all we are a Ger(rrr)man agency. I’ll open the VUCX insights door for you and present how we organized folder structures for our film diVISION (how we call our various departments). Read more & check out the graphics…

02.06.2015 by Ercin

Monochrome was yesterday.

In fashion it’s a big trend: all over patterns with geometric shapes and loud colours. Collections for women and men feature this trend. On shirts, jackets, coats, jeans, pants and dresses. The dernier cri is to mix and match the most diverse eye-catching patterns within one outfit. And just think of the crazy and flashy designs the sneaker world offers.
There might be lots of people who think: „patternizing“ my outfit is not my cup of tea. And to put the mind of critics at ease one might answer: „Relax, it’s just a trend. By next year, all-over-prints are out.“

06.03.2015 by Ercin

Making-of: Car Photography Ford Mustang 2015

When I was asked to photograph the brand new Ford Mustang in the European specification for the Geneva Motor Show I was amazed. I saw myself staging the father of all muscle cars somewhere on Route 66 or on a lonely highway in a far far away country. Unfortunately this was not supposed to happen. Due to time and car availability restrictions, we had to move fast and shoot in Cologne. Weather conditions were bad and the racing red Ford Mustang was already prepared for the presentation at one of the most important motor shows this year – Geneva International Motor Show 2015. Even though the car had already been presented earlier to the public, this specific model is the first EU spec car Ford ever had in Europe. Ok – I can deal with pressure. Conditions could have been easier. When it comes to body color, presentation, logos, gap width or (most important) reflections for example, car executives can be really really picky. I experienced that with Volkswagen, Bentley, Audi and BMW before, so I was alarmed. Although this was not a catalogue shooting, I knew details and design lines are important.

There is no ultimate recipe for car photography shootings. It’s a lot about the right location, timing, light setup, camera, format and last but not least post production including 3D usage. At VUCX we have a lot of experience especially with the compositing, 3D creation and retouching post production process. The shooting was scheduled for Tuesday, Feb. 24 – we had the car in front of our lense for five hours only. As location we (client and me) decided to shoot in a giant hangar on the Ford factory premises in Cologne. With the beautiful window arches, patinated columns and an industrial floor an ideal location with nice urban flavour.

24.02.2015 by Ercin

A glimpse of imm Cologne 2015

Custom Nature: The next furniture mentality

Fo-r the design world, imm cologne – the international interiors show, is the kick-off event at the beginning of the year. VUCX visited the great show, that was complemented by the LivingKitchen Show this year. Our team took a look at latest interior trends, new companies and products and met with inspiring designers and business leaders to talk about what`s on for 2015 and what moves them.

24.11.2014 by Ercin

Creating Digital Products – It´s all about understanding

Creating digital products can be a very complex process. Even if many use cases and patterns repeat, each product is unique and will challenge you to walk on unknown paths. To keep the focus it´s important to have a detailed idea of what you are building and for whom. And frankly this idea shouldn´t be only in your head. Collaborate closely with your colleagues and clients which means spreading your idea, receiving feedback and adapting it throughout the entire production phase.

To ease your life while producing you should find the right tools and processes for each job. During the last years working as an UX Designer I learned several techniques which improved my everyday work significantly. Let me introduce you to two of them.

17.09.2014 by Ercin

Why Concepts are not optional

Many times in the life of the designer they feel tempted to work as make-up artists. It sometimes makes me wonder why having the power and know-how to create the entire body and soul, they seem pretty content with merely doing some superficial work on top of it. Even when they know or feel that what is underneath is nothing close to a solid foundation…

11.08.2014 by Ercin

Why ‘Crossmedia’?

Each Era comes along with its own terms and jargon. If we look back on the past decades, in the 80s we’d talk about ‘Advertising’ to refer to the way of communicating a product or service’s assets with the aim to persuade or manipulate a massive audience. Moving on to the 90s, people would start talking about ‘Corporate Image’ and ‘corporate values’, as instruments to encourage consumers to behave in certain ways; from the year 2000, expressions like ‘Experience Design’, ‘User Centered Design’ and ‘Branding’ have appeared in the worldwide market scene and have awoken many controversies on how to engage ad-sceptic consumers in an interconnected technology-driven world… So, what should we be talking about nowadays?