So, then. We should probably tell you about our Lab. It seems like everyone has a lab these days, doesn’t it? But how many interactive marketing companies have a lab that makes robotic butterflies? Or exhibits in art galleries? Or dabbles in robotics, architecture, or bio-memetics? It’s something we call marketing R&D. The potentials of interactive marketing extend so far beyond what we’re thinking of today. Websites, Banners, Mobile – we see so much more potential for technology and interaction to impact marketing decisions. How else can technology aid our cause? Potential is long, ideas are short. So in 2005 we unburdened Barbarian partner Robert Hodgin – famed online as Flight 404 – from the chores of daily paying client work and let him go crazy and follow whatever wacky idea he chose to follow. Now, this might seem like financial suicide, but the interesting thing is that from day 1, our lab has lead to profitable ventures. Right out of the gate, the lab brought us the technology that won us a clio with Goodby, Silverstein & Partners for the Wired Next Fest installation for Saturn. Rapid success followed with Magnetosphere – an in-house-developed iTunes music visualizer that has been downloaded hundreds of thousands of times and earned us mentions in countless blogs.

We’ve pushed the labs to the limit recently, offering three different digital and interactive art pieces that we exhibited recently at a gallery in Seattle called the McLeod Residence. First we developed an interactive mirror – an artistic riff on a project we did for Nokia in Hong Kong. Next we created a series of bio-memetic butterfly sculptures that respond to your movements in the room by flapping their wings.
What’s the point of all this, you ask? To keep the ideas coming. To find new ways to move people, to inspire them, to motivate them. To use the new tools that we are discovering and developing to make our marketing work more effective.

The lab now typically holds 3-4 Barbarians, most part time, taking a break from the paying work to try something new. Projects are selected by all Barbarians via an in-house, online idea generation tool. It lets people cleanse their palette and not get too burned out, and aids us in retaining and attracting the top talent to our company, and to your project. It brings in new ideas, and, more than anything, it pushes the boundaries of what is capable in digital and interactive marketing.