Quark’s magic touch reaches a global audience

Forget Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, QuarkXPress is encouraging designers to enrol in its ‘School of Flash magic’ as part of its latest global campaign.

‘Flash magic’ launched towards the end of April in an effort to encourage current customers to upgrade and new ones to invest in QuarkXPress 8. The campaign – based around a microsite made using the new software – shows designers the new Flash functionality within Quark. It specifically targets designers ‘horizontally’, including freelancers and agencies in a range of industries from corporate to not-for-profit and the education sector.

Paul Anderson, executive creative director at Gravity London – the agency responsible for the campaign – says, “This was really for designers or artworkers who haven’t embraced digital.”

Despite this, he explains that reaching them online was not difficult, “they are present on social media sites and check emails, however, many are not embracing digital techniques in their work.”

Gavin Drake, marketing director at Quark reiterates this when he reveals that feedback from a designer says the updated software ‘saved his career’ as he was now able to branch out into web design – something that had been made easier with the Flash templates available in the latest Quark software. Anderson adds that designers don’t have to familiarise themselves with a new complex software, they can now get everything from Quark.

Online interactions

Quark is using banner advertising on various design and technology websites, such as Mac World and Design World to drive people to the microsite. It has also set up a Twitter account, Facebook page and sent an email to its contacts on its database as it is predominantly targeting existing customers. Drake explains it used a few print adverts but wanted to focus mainly online as it is easier to track click-throughs.

He continues to explain about a password system they have adopted in which they give users of various social media sites a different password to enter into the microsite. This will then give the user the ability to unlock additional free Flash resources, as well as informing Quark which channels bought through the most people. Although there are no results yet, Drake predicts Facebook will be the source of most click-throughs.

Encouraging user interaction was a key part of the campaign, in addition to techniques mentioned previously, the campaign used video wherever possible. Users can access video tutorials and ‘the making of’ – a behind the scenes look at how Gravity made the Microsite. These are available on the site and on the QuarkXPress 8 YouTube channel.

Language barrier

The global campaign will only be available in four languages to begin with, as Quark did not want to over complicate the campaign. Drake says Quark learned this lesson after its social media campaign in 2008 when it launched its own online community I Love Design. He said, “We launched it in eight languages and it was too much initially.”

The four languages chosen for the launch of the ‘Flash magic’; US English, International English, German and French enable it to reach its largest markets. It hopes to make the microsite available in Spanish and Italian soon. Also learning from the launch of I Love Design, Quark made sure it had someone who really ‘owned’ the social media element of the campaign by building a schedule for all activities this time.

Taking the magic metaphor to the extreme, as part of the ‘School of Flash magic’ users will have their questions answered by Quark Wizards and they will have the opportunity to become ‘QuarkXPress Magicians’. Users will get this accolade by submitting work they have done on QuarkXPress 8. Quark is capturing data from those users who want to become magicians but Drake says, “Our primary data capture is more about getting users engaged in our social media channels. It’s therefore a less structured data capture approach and more about engagement of customers we already know.”

The campaign will run until December but the microsite will remain live and seasonal-specific content based around the Flash functionality will be created to fill it.