Three Specialisms

At Alien-Eye we aim to change the way real people think or act, or both. To achieve this we rely on skills, often in combination, that are most meaningfully defined under these 3 areas:

1) Technology Technology in itself is not new. It is not limited to apps, nor to digital. One of our best technology solutions is made from steel and Perspex (see Technology case studies). Indeed technology is as old as our species, it invented us. We have since co-evolved with it. But what IS new is the speed at which technology is now evolving, and the extent to which this progress is changing the way you can engage with real people, and how you can monetize that relationship.

Business models are evolving rapidly. Half of our clients operate business models that could not have operated 5 years ago. Even for older business models, communication models are evolving rapidly. The applications and interactions that we design and create at Alien-Eye today could not have been conceived 12 months previously. We work on the cusp of the adjacent possible in technology, and that’s how we like it.

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2) Influence

Did TV ads suddenly lose all influence? Of course not, but hard disc recorders do now skip them and most kids never 'tuned-in' in the first place. Is a tweet from a top influencer worth more than a magazine feature? Maybe. Maybe not. How much is a SEO rank worth to a bottom line? Within the fast-evolving technology landscape, people's potential to be influenced is in flux. "Media" is fragmented. People operate a social filter. Individuals can communicate to mass audience unmediated, but their credibility might well be shot... Identifying the right influence to leverage against a given business or communication goal for a given target group is not a question of technology, nor one of content. It is a question of Influence. We design Influence solutions, often leveraging a set of complementary approaches in parallel.

3) Contents

On top of newly scalable technology platforms, and buzzed around as recommended, favourited, Tweeted, Digg'd, tagged, Liked, content has more potential than ever before. Never has there been such a ravenous market for "content", and yet never has it mattered more to create content that has impact, the power to move, tell an emotive story and inspire referral. While the Technology and Influence landscapes evolve and with them the habits and context-dependent potentiality of real people, the underlying human motivations remain human. Some ads still work, and more and more content is created to speak for a brand in a way that intersects with a human need, not least to be entertained, but not just this need. Done well, with originality and knowledge of the form, content is still King.


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Bringing it all together

Everything out there in the world of brands, products and people is a combination of these 3 contexts. Sometimes a project demands we bring our expertise to bear in just one of these areas, since the other 2 are 'constants', or the skills are already commoditized. This scenario tends to focus our creativity at a granular level, and the invention of a new "point-solution". Other times we are working across 2 or 3 areas, in which case the innovation is in the approach, making things happen in a novel way. Whatever the challenge, we challenge ourselves to innovate, if not invent.