GRUPO W, or Group W in English, is a Mexican design agency based in Saltillo, specialising in some very impressive Flash design. Founded in 1999 by Miguel and Ulises the agency has grown from its humble beginnings and now employs around 40 staff. The agency has worked with some of the biggest brands in the world including Coca-Cola, Nike, Hyundai and EA Games. We sit down for a chat to discover the background behind the group, what the future holds and how it’s leading the way in Mexico…

WD: To get started could you tell us a little about Grupo W? How and when did it all get started and what was its original aim?

GRUPO W: It was originally founded on hopes and dreams by Miguel and Ulises. They both grew up in northern Mexico and met briefly at college, later going to Mexico City to work on multimedia eLearning tools. The story goes that they got fed up having arguments with engineers about how beautiful vs functional the apps they were building should be. So, after a couple of years they moved back to Saltillo (a small place an hour from Monterrey and two hours from the Texas US border) and founded “W Interactive Media”, the real name of the agency (W because of the “w” letter of world wide web). Then they realised the name was too tough to be written down or spoken every time the phone rang, like “W Interactive Media, how can I help you?” So they renamed (just for easing the phone calls) the whole thing to Grupo W, leaving the W from the original name and adding Grupo (group, in Spanish) to get the appearance of being many people when they were just the two of them.

WD: What was the original vision for Grupo W and how has the brand matured since its inception?

GW: Building an interactive company in Saltillo (Mexico) in 1999 is the same as if you try to sell silk ties in the Sahara desert. It was not only the fact of not having clients but almost not knowing exactly what to sell but passion and hard work. So when clients started to come the company became a kind of Flash shop, the same as many others at the beginning of this century. Then, as the projects got better, the bigger the clients became and then the company again evolved from a Flash shop to a company in charge of running digital campaigns. And then it evolved again as to develop not only digital but also the whole communication strategies of some of our clients, trying to maintain digital as the core of the whole thing. For us it’s not only about the projects but also the re-foundation of the agency every two or three years, being aware that we’re not the same as we were three years ago, nor is the medium. We are always adapting to changes, changing ourselves a little.

WD: The Grupo W landing page (www.grupow.com) gives the impression of a holding page. However, closer inspection unveils pointers for more of what you do. Tell us a little about this…

GW: And the splash before was just a QR-Code that took people to another site in which you could see how our new offices were about to get finished and ready for us to use. We’re about to release our new site, maybe the first so-called site in the last six years. From then on we have been jumping from a splash to splash onto another splash, always collecting the good things from the year before. But now we DO need (urgently) a site, there’s too much information being left aside without a site, so we made the purpose and we’re almost ready. In the meantime we try to use our homepage as a place to conduct some experiments. To see if people in Mexico use QR Codes, if they write asking for information or if they’re Googling us, as it’s suggested in the current site. There is a lot of information about us in our blog (http://blog.grupow.com), Flickr or Facebook, so while we get the thing done there’s a bit there letting people find out about us because we live in more places in the net than just our main site.

WD: Web design is a global industry but at the same time it is very localised. The Grupo headquarters are based in Mexico. How big is the web design industry and web community within the country?

GW: As Jimi Hendrix would say, “the first rays of the new rising Sun”. The good thing is that we were there at the beginning. Mexico is a place with a lot of opportunities, not only the country but the whole Latin American region. There is a lot of freelance talent out there and small shops doing interactive work. Traditional agencies have interactive departments but it’s seen as something that they have to have. Not because they think the medium itself could add some value to the things they do for their brands, looks that they’re so proud doing their 30” TV ads, so there’s almost no integration at all, and most of the things done are pretty awful, which is a shame. On the other hand, the online investment is growing every year but in formats that are looking for quick results, ie email marketing, search or buying banners. There isn’t much in the way of brand building around digital arena anywhere. Luckily there’s an IAB and agencies like Razorfish or Agency Net are opening offices in the country, so hopefully standards will soon arise for the good of us all.

WD: What are the current trends and styles that have caught the agency’s attention? And what do you think will be popular in the coming months?

GW: We mainly produce microsites to get a buzz to build around brands, and that’s what we were really good at. But, suddenly we realised that not all the clients needed that so we tried to develop some other things, smaller but more functional, in order to provide some kind of unity. So we started to develop some apps and things living outside the website-microsite format. It’s interesting for us the whole social media thing and how it’s the same distance for people trying to reach our content than carrying the content where they are. It’s also really challenging doing things that are useful for people’s lives instead of just bombing them with some stories that die as soon as the browser is closed or refreshed.

WD: Many of Grupo’s sites are in English and Spanish. What issues are involved in creating a multilingual site? What language is used for the original creation of the site, how long does a translation typically take and does this increase the timescale of a project?

GW: I think that 98 per cent of what we do is in Spanish because the projects are aimed at the Mexican or Latin American market. I clearly remember that Stuntman (http://www.thestuntman.la) was launched in English because it was just a teaser for our ActionCity campaign (http://www.grupowprojects.com/rexona). But every time that a product is launched all the information is written in Spanish. However, our Detective Stripes (http://www.detectivestripes.com) release was in English as it was a worldwide campaign. Managing that is not that difficult right now, Flash is pretty capable of handling different languages by just replacing the text. So, in the end it only takes a week for us to translate the site to English when it’s required to be done.

WD: You have worked with some big global brands, ie Nike, Coca-Cola. How does such a project come about and how do you pitch yourself to prospective clients such as these?

GW: Our philosophy is that one project helps get another one. If we’re paid to a value of two, we try to make work which has a value of five. Then the client is happy so they will come with another project or will recommend us to other people and that’s how we’ve worked all these years. It’s pretty uncommon that we pitch, only when working for agencies or clients outside Mexico because with all the economical downturn and so on everything is going through pitches. Not in Mexico, though, because as I said in the question before the industry has no standards yet, so when pitching, quality of the work and money asked by agencies differ so much that even when it’s called a pitch it is not (in my opinion). So we pretty much are contacted by brands, usually to release a specific project or campaign and if it goes well and everyone’s happy then we all sit down to study if the collaboration could go further.

WD: Flash is the technology of choice for many of Grupo W’s projects. How big is the team at Grupo? And more specifically, how many Flash designers/ developers does the agency have on its books and what are their roles?

GW: We’re 40 people now, which is kind of odd because a year ago we were only something like 23. But in these times of downturn we made the best of taking more projects and we needed more people to get them done. So if we had two production teams last year we now have three and we have hired some other specific people to do production management, accounting or digital strategy. Regarding the use of Flash we now have five developers and eight designers/animators who are constantly working on projects. When they are not talking with tech guys about developing prototypes they are working on ideas to be used in other projects. But I think we should have at least ten or 11 developers, although it is really hard convincing people in Mexico to live in Saltillo because the capital is Mexico City and nobody wants to work so far from there.

WD: Grupo has been involved in projects such as Detective Stripes, which involve much more than just building a website. What are the logistics and timescale of such a project?

GW: Rexona (it’s called Sure in UK) asked us to deliver the global website for its new product, Invisible, that is not supposed to leave white stains on clothes when used. So as we were making the website, Rexona Mexico, it asked us to do the Mexican campaign, which is awesome because we mainly think of ourselves as “interactive” but then we had the chance of doing the whole communication for the campaign. And then we figured out that deodorants are such boring products but that Stripes was a really cool character, then came out with the idea of not promoting the product itself but a fictitious movie called “Detective Stripes”, and making the final destination of the whole thing online instead of being the trigger of something that then is released in TV or anything like that. We invented the product at POP, made a trailer to be shown before the Fast And Furious 4 movie and stuff like that (you can check some of this stuff at http://www.grupowprojects.com/ rexonainvisible/detectivestripes/) so in the end we reached an audience that we had never reached before and the three month campaign made the product the best sold for the brand ever in Mexico. I still don’t know how the brand accepted to do this, in the end successful campaigns are based in clients’ guts as much as in their agencies’ skills.

WD: What SEO techniques do you apply to your Flash sites? Plus, what other promotional techniques and tools do you use to get your sites seen by as many people as possible?

GW: We do some search engine optimisation for a number of clients of ours but regarding Flash sites this is not something we care about that much. We produce a lot of mini-sites that have their own lifecycles, which after reaching the peak of attention it slowly fades out of sight. I don’t think that being optimised for searching would increase the visits nor serve the brand any more. When we do work for Rexona I don’t think that anybody will decide to buy a deodorant by simply Googling “deodorants” and then comparing and going to the supermarket to buy the one that they thought was the best. After serving brand purposes I think that this type of site is still visited if it’s worth the time. For instance, it’s amazing how many visitors Stuntman is still getting because it’s fun, and not deliberately because it was the teaser for an old campaign. So, techniques. We try to do some quality work and if something is done well I think it is viable, maybe sticky, there is no technique as such, simply just an attempt to make people happy or hopefully add something useful to their lives.

WD: Who are the current big players in the Mexican web design scene and who should we watch out for in the future?

GW: There is definitely a lot of talent in Mexico but it’s dispersed or not even in the country itself. Interactive talent I mean, or digital, or whatever you want to call it. But it’s increasingly hard to find, and even when found is hard to reach its expectations about living in our city or about the monthly income that they want to make, and many times they choose to get lost in the big hierarchy of traditional agencies with interactive departments here in Mexico: lots of cool clients, lots of poor interactive stuff. So we chose the way of breeding talent instead of keep on looking for it. So next September we’re opening our own school, called “Digital Invaders”, free for students and in which they will be spending three months, the first two learning and the last one working in Grupo W’s projects. And after the initial three months, the best ones, if we like them and they like us, could be hired and would be employees at Grupo W. So I hope that by next spring I will be able to tell you some specific names.

WD: Finally, as an agency with some very talented people on board, what qualities or personality traits do you look for in a prospective employee. Plus, what advice would you give to designers/developers who are looking to get into the industry?

GW: Always respect the people you work with and always work with passion. Always wonder. Always question if you’re happy with what you’re doing, and if not, change. We’re always doing more hours than expected when related to projects because we like what we do so much that we try to make the best final product as possible. It would be kind of hard making it possible if we only did our scheduled hours. And in the end the thing is about making your work a passion, not just a “job”.