Author: Andrew Morse

2023: A year in review

Posted on by Andrew Morse

The year just concluding was a year of transitions.

A gradual recovery following the global impact of Covid; the resolution of a screen industry strike over the application of AI; the demise of banknotes; the professional delivery of advanced solutions; a pivot back to focusing on screen production, and the birth of a brand.

In the Covid years, a general market retraction significantly diminished demand for marketing communications as many companies entered ‘voluntary hibernation‘.

Emerging from this hiatus, many companies were forced to rethink business models and consider more efficient methods of production, distribution, and monetisation. Automation of all processes (including customer-facing communications) were scrutinised and implemented to reduce cost and transaction time, or transformed to recurrent income subscription models and premium offerings, in order to not just increase profit margins, but in some cases, simply remain economically viable!

An accelerating dependence on electronic solutions (expressed in the Digital Tsunami brandline ‘Communications Evolution‘), included rapid deployment of Artificial Intelligence, prompting a strike by Hollywood writers and performers, concerned by potential exploitation of their work and likenesses.

Digital currency transactions around the globe attained a new milestone in March, as Sweden fundamentally eliminated cash transactions. In 2012, six major Swedish banks jointly launched the electronic payment app Swish, now utilized extensively throughout the nation. The country which introduced the first banknotes in Europe in 1661, and the first ATM in Europe in 1967, now almost entirely conducts payments electronically, with fewer than 6% of transactions in cash.

National instability within Europe and the Middle East stimulated growth for personal protection and ballistic products, which resulted in Australian defence contractor XTEK adopting the name of the American ballistic manufacturer which it had previously acquired, and rebranding as HighCom.

Digital Tsunami registered new domain names, shot video and photography in Canberra and developed a web presence for HighCom.group.

Early in the year, Andrew W Morse was invited to join the producing team on an Australian crime drama feature film. The invitation (from a colleague on projects of the 80’s and 90’s), re-invigorated a long career which had been subsumed by a quarter century of delivering digital solutions to global and multinational brands.

As a result, Andrew began exploring and initiating his own screen projects, negotiating options for books and screenplays and engaging researchers on stories of extraordinary events.

This culminated in the creation of the Ensō Screen brand as a platform for production of high quality television series and feature films. The ensō is a Japanese Zen symbol of the wholistic nature of our world and the pursuit of perfection.

Key projects in development are listed on the Ensō Screen web presence, and will be promoted at the Screen Forever conference and market in March.

The advances made over 2023 will expand in 2024, as Ensō Screen embarks on international co-productions of high production value screen series.

In 2024 may you experience a safe, healthy, happy, and creatively satisfying year.

_____________________________________________________

Fundraising for Prostate Cancer research

Posted on by Andrew Morse

Every year, thousands of Australian men are diagnosed with prostate cancer. The Prostate Cancer Foundation of Australia (PCFA) generates attention and funds for medical research and specialist prostate cancer nursing personnel.

PCFA is beneficiary of an annual fundraising event. For the 2022 Outback 4WD Adventure, logistics provider, Optim donated principal financial sponsorship for a vehicle. Brand Advocate contributed co-sponsorship for the car in this rally through the Australian Red Centre.

The Optim sponsored entry outside the iconic Birdsville Hotel

Starting in Bourke, the route traversed north-western NSW, into Queensland and South Australia in a Bourke to Barossa ‘bash’ via the Strzelecki Track, Simpson Desert, and down the iconic Birdsville Track. Heavy rain in previous weeks prevented a visit to Poeppels Corner (the junction of Queensland, Northern Territory and South Australian state borders).

However, many memorable places were visited, including Cameron’s Corner (where you can stand on the state borders of Queensland, New South Wales and South Australia); the ‘Dig Tree’ (sign to buried supplies for the 1861 Burke and Wills expedition), Innaminka (on Cooper Creek), ‘Big Red’ (a sand dune of 200 kilometres in length in the Simpson Desert), and Ikara (Wilpena Pound, in the northern Flinders Ranges). En route to the start line, the sponsored vehicle even visited the extraordinary Cobar Sound Chapel, a concrete audio installation designed by Pritzker Prize winning architect Glenn Murcutt, inside a rusty, former water storage tank.

Visiting the Cobar Sound Chapel

The Dodge RAM 2500 Laramie crew cab vehicle, featured the icon of the principal sponsor prominently on its bonnet, the logo on side doors and rear canopy, and the brandline “Moving Heaven and Earth” above the retractable running boards on each side. The Brand Advocate logo appeared on the sides and rear of the canopy.

The 39 vehicles encountered 130 kilometres of deep mud on the first day. With 23 bogged vehicle retrievals, a load of sticky clay was transferred onto undercarriages, shovels and boots! Once we escaped Birdsville across the swollen Diamantina River, the remainder of the trip was dry but remarkably green and lush, rather than the dusty red land anticipated by even those who had visited many times before.

When Optim required a rebrand in 2018, Digital Tsunami had delivered a contemporary brand identity; brandline; colour palette; fonts; new domain name; electronic document templates; business cards and a brand style guide, business cards, office signage, branded notepads, and a web presence and design of a ‘wrap’ for an Optim truck.

Brand Advocate is the provider of ‘in-house Creative Counsel’ to promote brands which do not have a Marketing Director or Creative Director on staff.

The rally raised $200,000 for prostate cancer research.

optim.global
brandadvocate.tv

building brands!

Posted on by Andrew Morse

Since the mid 1990’s, Digital Tsunami has contributed to the birth and growth of brands in the building, construction and engineering sector.

These contributions have encompassed extraordinary visuals, multi-national companies, multi-lingual videos, massive infrastructure projects and identity for start-up enterprises. Literally building brands!

Digital Tsunami has built websites for the 8 billion dollar property portfolio of Investa, the 23 country span of construction giant Leighton Asia (a client for over a decade), and the award-winning architectural practice InArc.

The latest client in this sector is a Sydney start-up simplifying construction delivery software with a SaaS solution. Classifai launched in mid-May 2022 with a website and video promoting key benefits of the software.

Digital Tsunami closely collaborated with the founders of Classifai to refine the identity and implement a branding and marketing strategy* to ensure branding consistency across all client touchpoints, including a ‘teaser’ launch video, LinkedIn company page and a Classifai YouTube channel.

*Strategic marketing and sales enablement Poignand Consulting was introduced to the client and was fundamental in developing the brand and marketing strategy documentation for Classifai.

Photography was produced and sourced; electronic sales deck and video templates were designed; company pages for social platforms were created and standardised; business cards were designed.

Over 25 years, Digital Tsunami has created aerials of a wind farm in Inner Mongolia, a coffee-table book for a luxury apartment complex, photography of a new Canberra suburb, a responsive website for a Caribbean housing estate builder, digital signage for a Sydney multi-storey office building, and an innovative website for an Australian construction sector recruitment firm.

If your enterprise is in the building, construction and engineering sector, within EMEA (Europe / Middle East / Africa), Australia or the Asia/Pacific region, contact Digital Tsunami today to learn how you could benefit from what we term ‘communications evolution‘.

LinkedIn connections: Real or not?

Posted on by Andrew Morse

Hong Kong LinkedIn Consultant Steve Bruce has posted “Fake Profiles & Fake Connection Requests are a Growing Problem on LinkedIn“

Researchers at Stanford Internet Observatory have revealed a network of 1,000+ LinkedIn profiles from 70+ companies that are using Ai computer-generated images with fake pictures and details.

image attribution recfaces.com

This emphasises the necessity for selectivity in accepting connection requests.

LinkedIn launched in 2003. Very soon after, some individuals published their email address and number of first level connections after their name, which enabled anyone to send a connection request to be automatically accepted, as the person was an Linked In Open Networkers (LiON).

LinkedIn is an exceptionally valuable tool with the original concept of a network of professionals making referrals exclusively from current / former colleagues to prospective employers / clients. How this is approached is subject to personal preference, however, LiONs were subverting the personal validation model.

For years, I actively worked to maintain the number of my first level connections to below 499, as I considered that having ‘500+ connections’ somehow categorised me along with promiscuous LiONs with their vast and essentially meaningless networks. Over decades I was not able to practically maintain this conceit, but I have endeavoured to ensure that my first level connections are meaningful and people with whom I have (or can) collaborate on projects.

For anyone in recruitment, having as many first level connections as possible, naturally increases the spread of your network, and increases the potential to find precisely the right candidate for a role. With 260 million people* in over 100 countries at the time, that was a phenomenal reach. *(as of February 2022, there were 810 million profiles).

Humans have a primal desire to collect (as is clearly explained in John Naish’s insightful book “Enough”), and so some people are purely interested in numbers for the perceived cachet of being ‘popular’, or for the financial benefit of monetising these connections.

On more than one occasion, a personal acquaintance asked for a professional reference. As I had not collaborated in any work / project environment with these people, I politely explained that I was happy to attest to their character, but could not extend this to a professional referral. In one case, the request came from a young person who had successively changed jobs no less frequently than every twelve months! How could I put my reputation behind vouching for a person who would likely leave their new employer within a year?

In 2004, a futurist I contacted, said he would only connect after we had met in person. Consequently, I coined the acronym LAM for “Link After Meeting”, and posed the question “Are you a LiON or a LAM(b)?”

We all receive connection requests from people we have not met. Some are legitimately friends of friends who are able to mutually benefit from the connection. Some are people starting out on careers and wishing to interact and learn. Others are casually or cynically looking to benefit with the merest of motivations.

Today, in addition to connection requests from people intent on capitalising on your network without any valid contribution, there are these fake identities spamming us with requests. In both cases, the response should be to deny the connection AND also aid LinkedIn to identify these spammers by clicking “I do not know this person“.

Your legitimate network is devalued if you do otherwise.

Happy Lunar New Year

Posted on by Andrew Morse

恭禧發財.
Gong Xi Fa Cai. Kung Hei Fat Choi. Chúc Mừng Năm Mới.
Whatever your language, Happy New Year.

The lunar new year starts at the second new moon after the (northern hemisphere) Winter Solstice. Celebrated by people of Chinese origin the world over, each lunar year is attributed to a sign of the zodiac.

In the third year of the 12 year Chinese astrological calendar, 2022 is a Year of the Tiger. The Wu Xing (Five Elements) sign of the Water Tiger 水 虎 reflects intelligence and wisdom.

Throughout China and in Chinese and other communities around the globe, celebrations with dragons, sea-lions, lanterns and firecrackers will celebrate the new year. Crisp new banknotes will be given to children and unmarried relatives in lucky red envelopes (called ‘lai see’ or ‘hongbao’). Many businesses close for extended periods, and many employees in the Greater China region take annual leave and visit families at ancestral homes.

In the Chinatowns of major cities across the world, there will be activities in which the whole family can watch or participate: Brisbane, Canberra, Hong Kong, Melbourne, Shanghai, and Sydney.

Digital Tsunami was founded in Hong Kong in 1996. Creative Director, Andrew W Morse, has an understanding of the Greater China market and Chinese business philosophy and practice. He first visited the mainland in 1986, and built up 关系 (guanxi) as he has worked, travelled and filmed for clients across China. Andrew has worked in cities from Yinchuan in the central north to Tianjin in the north east, Taipei and Shanghai in the south east to Zhuhai and Macau in the south. During 2015 and 2016, Andrew resided in Shanghai and built a team and video editing suite to produce print, online and video assets for a multi-billion dollar capital raising project.

For one large project, he lived in the north western province of Ningxia (near Inner Mongolia), producing online, print and video solutions for manufacturing, power production and real estate companies.

The company has also worked for and with people of Chinese heritage in Australia, Canada, Fiji, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Macau, Malaysia, New Zealand, The Philippines, Singapore, the USA and Vietnam.

Digital Tsunami delivers branding, eStrategy, interactive, photography, print, video and web solutions to Chinese clients and businesses in China or promoting their products and solutions to the immense China market.

To promote your brand in this new year of the Tiger, contact Digital Tsunami today (or as soon as you return from festivities)!

A brand advocacy based on agility

Posted on by Andrew Morse

What lessons can be distilled from 25 years of delivering visual assets and digital solutions?

  • The only constant is change
  • Agility drives innovation
  • Innovation delivers growth

Founded by visionaries after a dinner table conversation at the advent of the World Wide Web, a privately owned digital agency grew to deliver solutions to globally recognised brands.

Requiring a brand name to dramatically reflect the anticipated global technological and communications revolution, the founders invented “Digital Tsunami”.

The tidal wave of change since late last century has transformed every aspect of our business, social and personal lives. In the developed world, everything we do and everything we touch is digitally connected. 

The last two years have accentuated this, from WTF! to WFH.

Businesses have faced the option of closing their doors or opening their minds.

  • Nothing is constant
  • Everything changes
  • We must adapt
Source: Content Marketing Institute

Digital Tsunami has recognised that many companies do not have in-house marketing teams, and do not engage external agencies. Their need for effective marketing strategy and visual assets remains unfulfilled, and consequently, so do many opportunities for growth.

Our solution to this clear need, is an ‘in-house Creative Counsel’, with the advantages of an internal resource, but without the overhead of a traditional agency.

We call this new model: ‘Brand Advocate’.

Brand Advocate offers you a dedicated team-member; embedded in your organisation; with a proven track record, decades of expertise, and extraordinary agility and creativity, the flexibility to accommodate scalable business demands, and a pro-active approach to stimulate opportunities.

Every day is a new day.

Expand your tomorrow with Brand Advocate today!

http://brandadvocate.tv

Digital Tsunami has delivered effective solutions to globally recognised clients across six continents, numerous languages and an extensive range of sectors: 

Australian defence supplier website launched

Posted on by Andrew Morse

Defence and Security are (and will always be) critical to the order of communities, the independence of nations and the survival of civilisations.

Queensland defence contractor and ballistic component manufacturer Craig International Ballistics, is a significant brand in the Defence and Security sector.

In the past, Craig International Ballistics has engaged Digital Tsunami to refine the Craig identity, develop an online presence, design print collaterals, and shoot photography and video.

For the second time, Digital Tsunami has been commissioned to develop a new Craig web presence in addition to refreshing the brandline and conceiving a digital and print ad campaign.

The online presence showcases products and offers detailed information on internationally recognised ballistic standards.

A manufacturer of ballistic panels for body armour worn by police officers and military forces, Craig International Ballistics is constantly investing in R&D, new technology and new manufacturing hardware.

With a dynamic approach to meeting client requirements, Craig is able to rapidly respond to constantly evolving market forces. This approach has delivered superlative ballistic products and whole-of-life maintenance systems protecting army, navy and air forces in conflict zones around the globe.

As a result, a brandline was created to reflect these key attributes:

Agile.
Innovative.
Proven.

This brandline became a prominent feature in the new online presence and advertising campaign.

Digital Tsunami always aims to thoroughly research and understand the objectives of a client, so that solutions offered meet these requirements and present the brand in the most positive way.

ballistics.com.au

Q4: hyperlapse and the long tail

Posted on by Andrew Morse

A dramatic hyperlapse video and a website for a China access control manufacturer were among the projects which Digital Tsunami completed in the fourth quarter of calendar year 2019.

The company continued to deliver effective digital communications to a diversity of business sectors across the globe.

After over twenty years of providing technologically advanced solutions, it is unsurprising that many of our projects are the result of referrals and returning clients.

Some clients are so delighted with our work that they become ‘serial clients’, returning to us again and again, as they establish or work for different brands.

It is even more gratifying when a client returns after many years since a previous collaboration. An Austrian company for whom we shot photography in Guilin, China in 2005, recently asked us to quote another photographic shoot in China. For other project we are preparing to shoot in Australia’s remote Northern Territory and at a manufacturing plant in rural Thailand

In 2011, we produced branding and photography for an American-owned manufacturing plant in China. In April, we developed a website and will shoot photography for the same factory in July. Now part of a Swiss owned, global security group with origins in 1862, we are liaising with the APAC head office in Australia.

Many of our referrals reflect this multi-national context. A contact from Hong Kong referred us to an Israeli firm, wanting to shoot video of their product at an Irish pub in Melbourne, on St Patrick’s Day! We are grateful to another client who referred us to multiple prospects this quarter.

In pro bono support of Melbourne artist Rone, we enabled a hyperlapse shoot of Rone’s EMPIRE installation in the streamline-moderne mansion, Burnham Beeches, Melbourne, Australia.

For the brands which we support in the engineering and manufacturing sector, we keep our technological understanding current by attending events such as the AusTech manufacturing and machine tool exhibition and the Industrial Evolution show, both held during National Manufacturing Week.

Latest technologies are in use by some of our clients; like the intensely high-pressure waterjet cutter (which cuts steel) and the non-invasive robotic x-ray equipment, recently purchased by Craig International Ballistics (a defence contractor to which we have delivered aerials, identity, photography, print, video and web solutions.

Throughout the quarter, we researched and prepared videos for: the Thai factory; Fiji underwater diving; Melbourne aerials; Adelaide 3D manufacturing; and continued consultations with a sustainable nutrition brand and a geo-surveying practice.

Digital Tsunami constantly strives to deliver ‘Communications Evolution’ to our clients. Our values of sustainability, diversity and efficiency are driving forces behind our objective of ensuring our clients achieve their aims, by communicating effectively with all their stakeholders, across all touch-points.

If your brand could benefit from more effective visual assets, contact Digital Tsunami today!

Capturing time

Posted on by Andrew Morse

Aesthetically, a highlight of recent projects was our pro bono support of a Melbourne artist rapidly gaining international recognition. Starting as a talented street artist, Rone recently spent a year designing an ephemeral immersive installation in a 1930s streamline-moderne mansion in Melbourne’s outskirts.

Entitled ‘Empire‘, the interior of the derelict Burnham Beeches, was filled with furniture, light fittings, table settings and framed artworks, juxtaposed with the decay of peeling wallpaper, decomposing paint, penetrating trees and pervasive leaf litter. On the walls of thirteen rooms, Rone painted oversize portraits of a young woman’s face. With subdued lighting and evocative music (composed for the installation), and a virtual reality tour (on head-mounted-displays), the effect on visitors ranged from an aesthetic appreciation to a visceral emotion.

As an admirer of Rone’s artwork, Andrew W Morse was delighted to meet the artist during a visit to the exhibition, and offered to contribute to his future projects. That opportunity arose just days later, when Rone called to ask us to arrange a hyperlapse shoot to document the installation as it was disassembled.

All artists are aware of their own mortality and the impermanence of their works. Time, materials, sunlight, nature and human action can all contribute to damage and the eventual destruction of many artworks.

Some ‘street’ artists actively embrace the temporary nature of their work; whether Banksy intentionally starting to shred a framed work immediately after being sold at auction or Rone painting his work on a condemned building.

Hyperlapse is the term given to a time-lapse in which the camera is moving. Digital Tsunami coordinated delivery of dolly track and stabilising weights and an advanced motion-control camera system by which the hyperlapse could be captured.

On the shoot day, a specific path was devised to match a sixty second piece of custom composed music. The camera position (track, pan, tilt, and focus) was replicated precisely in scores of takes to the exact duration of the music. On each ‘pass’, elements within the foreground and background were progressively removed until all remaining was a white painted bare shell.

During the edit, the many takes were frame aligned and then a succession of dissolves created the impression of solid objects transitioning through an ethereal presence to a mere hint of memory.

The films produced by Rone of the Empire project all celebrated its intrinsic impermanence, none more so than the hyperlapse sequence of a 30 metre dining room as it transformed from a fully furnished to an empty room.

Film is an emotive medium. The hyperlapse sequence of Rone’s Empire achieved extraordinary impact by visually capturing the very essence of the temporary.

Speaking of Empire, Rone said “long after the paintings are gone, this photographic memoir and accompanying soundtrack will present an opportunity to .. be transported to this special space that we reclaimed, albeit fleetingly“.

Watch the hyperlapse.

conceptualiser: Rone
production: Rone and Andrew W Morse
venue: Shannon Bennett, Adam Garrisson
interior stylist: Carly Spooner
organic sculptures: Wona Bae, Charlie Lawler
composer: Nick Batterham
muse: Lily Sullivan
lighting cameraman: Chris Matthews
motion control rig operator: Gerald Thompson

https://r-o-n-e.com/empire

Sector showreel 2018

Posted on by Andrew Morse

For constantly repeating display in The Studio, Digital Tsunami has compiled a 90 second showreel.

The sequences include HD time-lapse, and 4k resolution aerials, computer animations & location segments.

Sectors featured include: energy / resources, property / real estate, construction / engineering, manufacturing and supply chain.

Footage was filmed on locations in both northern and southern hemispheres. In recent years, projects have taken us to diverse locations from densely urban Hong Kong and Shanghai to remote southern Nevada and Inner Mongolia.

Digital Tsunami has the experience and resources to shoot photography, aerials, time-lapse and video in studio in Sydney, or on location anywhere in the world.

Whether product shots for FMCG marketing or documenting a long construction project, Digital Tsunami listens to your specific requirements and suggests options to deliver the message to your target audiences with impact.

watch the video showreel