When I started with Native a big part of it was about building a talented team around me so that I could build products.

I’d hacked a few things together myself over the years but I knew that I needed a team of ‘A’ players to build something truly great.

While I really enjoy digital strategy and building products for other companies I am truly passionate about building products for myself. In many ways I think that’s the true test of my talents – if I’m such a good strategist / product manager what can I do when left to my own devices?

9 times out of ten when I announced this to other agency heads I heard back “me too!”. This was incredibly motivating. It made me think I wasn’t alone but also that I had better step up my game if I was going to compete with these more experienced and better resourced agencies.

Having built a few products ourselves in the past and focusing on a new one as we speak this is what we adhere to in order to build products as an agency.

Make product time
And stick to it. We allocate specific times and days to working on products. During that time we don’t do client work. We focus all of our efforts on the product, just as we would if we were working on a client project.

Recruit product-focused people
Find like minded people who also want to build products. Most of the work we do is awesome but sometimes we have boring work at Native. Everyone is happy to work on less-than-glamourous projects so long as they know that the bigger goal is the product work and the learning and growth that comes from that.

When it comes to working on the product side of the business they’ll be able to contribute more and are often more willing to pull out the cunning stunts needed to bring a product to life.

Make progress every week
If you’re not working on your project every week it’s going to die. You need momentum.

Every little bit of progress adds further fuel to the fire and it shows to you, your team and your clients that you actually believe in the project.

Leverage your client base
A big advantage to being an agency over a regular startup is your ready access to a base of people who know and trust you – and are already comfortable paying you money. If your product addresses their need then they may be your best guinea pigs – and hopefully your first sales. They are your validation.

There is a lot of potential in the concept of brand-funded startups. The brands help to fund the startups early stage development in exchange for early access to the innovation being developed. It can be a win win.

Here is my list of Australian agencies and studios who build web products. Who am I missing?

Ned

It feels like every other advertising/marketing/design agency want to be selling fewer services and building more products. They want to be able to “make money while they sleep”, to create something with tangible value that they own, and also to create added flexibility in their working environment.

37Signals have done this so well, converting their design business into several product businesses and a popular web development framework.

Here is the start of my list of Australian agencies who are building their own products. More specifically those building digital products. Rightly or wrongly I’ve also excluded media properties, so companies like First Digital are off the list.

Agency: Cogent
“Cogent creates useful software that gets results.”
Product: Eventer
“A front row seat where viewers flick their attention from speaker, to slides, or both.”

Agency: Icelab
“Interactive designers and developers that can provide you with strategic planning, design and application solutions.”
Products: RentMonkey
Build a lease in minutes and take control of your rental property.
DecafSucks
Coffee review site which includes Dispatch coffee subscription service.

Agency: Inventive Labs
“Web problem solvers”
Products: Bookish
“A joyful ebook platform for booksellers, publishers and readers…”

Agency: Lettuce
“Melbourne based digital agency”
Product: Iceberg
“It’s the swiss army knife for small business”

Agency: Native Digital
Digital marketing and product development
Products:TalkBack
Mobile question and answers application for conferences
FanBomb – Social media flashmobs

I’m sure I’m missing some names from the list. Drop them in the comments, shoot me a line at ned@nativedigital.com.au, or badger me on Twitter.

We’ve been doing more than a couple of Facebook applications lately. In fact we’ve built out our own Facebook application platform that allows to relatively quickly pump out a range of standard application types with customised design and copy.

Here they are in link form. Check them out and let us know what you think.

Welcome tabs
Welcome tabs help explain what your Facebook page stands for, including the type of content you’ll be posting, and encourages the user to like the page which significantly increases conversion rates.

Adioso
Sydney Entertainment Centre

Like gates:
A like gate is a light application that stops a user from consuming content unless they like your Facebook page first. It can be used to reward your existing fans or to encourage new fans to like your page in order to access the content underneath.

Competition entry mechanics:
These pages allow you to run a Facebook-compliant competition on your page. Making sure your competition meets their terms of service is fairly important as it can lead to your page getting shut down if you break the rules.

Sydney Entertainment Centre “Golden Ticket” promotion
EA Games multi-pack application

Facebook microsites
Washington artist Facebook application featuring buy links, album stream, free download and video content

If you have an idea for a Facebook application or are looking to build a community on Facebook around your brand you should drop us a line: anthony@nativedigital.com.au

St. Jeromes Laneway Festival has knack for picking the next wave of super cool artists and prides itself on bring those artists on the ‘cusp’ of breaking to Australia for the first time.

As an example, they were the first to bring the likes of Fiest, Florence & The Machine, Mumford & Sons, and The XX to our shores.

Whilst the festival has grown out of the humble ‘laneway’, it’s still relatively small in comparison to its counterparts, appealing to the more discerning music lover. They still undertake some traditional marketing but always strive to hit those ‘hard to reach’ music fans with their message. The ones that don’t really read traditional media.

The Strategy:

‘The Good Impression’ – A custom ad network using some of Australias best niche content creators. We approached our blogger friends who were producing some of the most interesting content in Australia that also appealed to a Laneway audience. We then built a custom advertising network now known as The Good Impression.

Sites included: Whothehell.net, Polaroid of Androids, Vive Cool City, The Perfect Five, Hyperbole, Hobogestapo, Electrorash, Broadsheet & more.

The result in 2010? A sell out for Melbourne & Sydney on the first day of on sale.

The result in 2011? A similar strategy distributed across a broader range of sites for blanket Australian indie-media coverage. Keep your eyes peeled for our side show announces in the coming weeks.

Australian artist Washington recently released her new EP ‘Insomnia’.

She needed a way to promote the release and allow for fan interaction around it, both in the lead up to the release and after it. Native designed and built a cross-platform site for her website and her Facebook page which was heavily focused around the design of Washington stuck in a dark, seedy cellar.

The site allows users to stream the EP in full and tell their friends about it via social networks, get a free track & $5 off voucher in exchange for an email address. They can also watch a short film and download various Washington pictures & artwork.

One of the tricky parts about this project was that Washington also had a different release for territories outside of Australia. To make the Facebook application and website work overseas we created a separate site and replaced some of the content that was relevant to regions outside of Australia and had both sites geo-targeted to those regions.

Australian fans got the Australian release, international fans got the international release and everyone was happy.

Check out the site here & the Facebook version here

FanBomb is a platform that helps rally social media users around a cause, brand or product release to promote a common message. It helps to coordinate large groups of fans sharing a particular message or piece of content at exactly the same time all around the world. In that way it’s a social media or digital flashmob.

It’s a little like Pay With A Tweet which lets a user get a free mp3 in exchange for sending out a Tweet about the artist. Except that FanBomb has 2 major caveats:

1. There are a set number of users who have to participate before anyone gets the track. So you might make 1000 people agree to send a Tweet and then everyone gets the track. You can pre-define this number depending on the size of your target.
2. Once we reach the 1000 people mark all 1000 tweets (or Facebook messages) are all sent out at exactly the same time. At the minimum this creates interest amongst the followers of tweeting accounts. At the maximum this could generate a trending topic with enough users involved.

The platform itself is agnostic to what the exchange of value is in terms of getting people to allow us to send a Tweet or Facebook post out from their account. For instance you could be signing a petition of support to elect a president or to introduce a new product feature in a web application.

We think it’s an interesting platform with huge potential. With a big enough push we could build a campaign with 20,000 people agreeing to send out a Tweet and send them all out at exactly the same time – and theoretically creating a global trending topic on Twitter. One of the obvious challenges here is to ensure that users know what they are agreeing to and that they have the ability to rescind their participation – the last thing any brand, band or cause needs is to be accused of spamming their users.

FanBomb is currently in private beta with several successful campaigns already launched. We’re continuing to develop the feature set including developing an API. We’re also looking for other potential campaign partners. If you’ve got a campaign that you think would benefit from a tool like FanBomb send an email to ned@nativedigital.com.au

Ned

There is one thing that lies at the centre of Native’s “corporate” culture. It’s our daily standup work-in-progress meeting.

Every morning at 10am the office stops and stands. We look to our whiteboard at our list of current projects and talk about each one in turn.

What did we do for that project yesterday? Where is it at? What do we need to do today to reach that goal? We plan out what we’re going to be doing today and what comes after that.

Often nothing has changed from the previous WIP or from the previous week but it’s good for everyone to be across every project. Everyone in the team is smart, everyone is technical to some extent, anyone can have an insight that will make the project better.

Everyone gets a chance to raise an idea they have for a particular project, for a client or for something new. Everyone has a chance to discuss an issue or a roadblock that they’ve got and together we come up with a way through it. Everyone has their chance to be heard.

At the end of the meeting everyone walks away knowing not only what it is they have to do today, but also what everyone else is working on and the role that they play in the team.

The WIP is central to our culture at Native because it’s about knowing that your opinion and contribution is valued and that you’re a part of a team doing great things.

- Theodore Roosevalt

Today our Creative Director Tait Ischia finishes up at Native.

It’s a bitter sweet feeling. Our mission with Native has always been that anyone who works with Native graduates to something bigger and better – we want everyone to leave as a better version of themselves.

Tait brought a lot to Native. He helped instill a culture of creative integrity throughout the business and worked on across some of our most successful projects to date.

We know people have dreams and passions and if that dream and passion is Native, even for just a little while, that’s who we want working for us.

Sometimes people dream of other things and we want them to succeed, especially if they’re part of the the Native family. This is why I’m blogging about this here – to wish Tait the best in his writing career. We know he’ll succeed.

Good luck Tait, it’s been real.

Ned

Today is my final day as Creative Director at Native Digital.

I’m leaving to pursue life as a writer. Something I’ve been gearing up towards for sometime now. And thankfully, with the help and support of the Native team, I can make the move with a springlike step and a pail full of confidence.

Working with Native Digital over the past year has been a wild and exciting ride. From the humblest beginnings, I’ve seen the company grow from two to five members, move into its own office space, acquire a table tennis table surrounded by plants, and a folio of work praised by many.

The undeniable leadership and focus of one Mr. Ned Dwyer is an unstoppable force. It’ll be a pleasure to watch the company grow, even if from the sidelines.

You’ll never find a better team in Ned, Ben, Pete, James, and Nick. The hardest workers and the best people.

Choo choo.

Tait

Update: Native MD Ned has written a response post here.