For those who do not really understand the whole banner vs video content/rich media content debate, this is a perfect breakdown on why rich media banners are often better than standard 30k flash banners.
Also it is worthwhile to think about producing engaging content about your brand rather than focusing on the latest features about product releases. Think of brands like Apple vs. PC, Wii vs PS3... each respective brands holds a different emotional value that will probably something different to you because of their brand position.
A really good idea for producing original content was the partnership between Burger King and Seth MacFarlane (creator of Family guy). The channel has been up for a while now, they have now added an extra Dub function to allow other youtube subscribers to muck around with the bk content, a pretty clever way to inject some more life into the channel.
Sony Japan had recently launched a microsite to promote their handy cam.
The premise of the website, watch your kids grow with the help of a Sony handy cam.
Why is it so good? Considering the target demo of the campaign being young parents/adults, the content is not only interesting but also entertaining/educational.
The other beautiful feature of the website is, the web content can be customised (make your own fav bits of the pre-recorded footage and also you can embedded the entire site functionality on your own blog (how is that for viral potential?)
Sometimes engaging a user might be simpler than you might think.....
Search engine is like a guiding stick on the big wide world on the Internet. We have all come to depend on it at some point, personally I just find it easier to browse pages without having to remember exact URLs. Luckily there are so many apps available to help users to keep bookmarking their favourite websites with ease on tools such as Delicious and Digg.
I came across an interesting article about the future for search and how artificial intelligence could have a major role in how information will be segmented.
It is a cool prospect, especially with the rise of citizen journalism aka Blogs and web 2.0 technologies think Forums but improved with social functions ie. Facebook and Myspace etc. People are essentially finding information about topics from all kinds of different places and in marketing terms, the brands would ideally want to achieve reach and scalability to maximise their market presence.
So what does all these changes mean for the search domain?
Google is still the largest force to be reckoned with, but that could very well be about to change very soon, with a rise of start ups offering a different search experience. Think multimedia, more than links and social apps/Mobile scanning, all making the info search experience richer and more importantly relevant to what the user wants to see in the first place.
The fundamental difference would be Google's current ad model is one based on the largest ownership based on referrals thus setting the power of its influence. However, if the social influence gets so wide and spread out, the power of one will surely diminish over time... so keep an eye out on how you find your info next.
Will Google reign or will the old fashion way of asking a friend prevail?
Only time will tell but it should be exciting nonetheless...Let's not forget the web will always grow around people
It is a bit of a mystery really but it is certainly a dream most creatives/clients try to achieve when producing commercials these days.
The ad above was produced by Saatchi for T-Mobile, the youtube video actually hasn't received that many views yet, presumably because it has just launched and the client probably didn't think too much about seeding it. In all fairness I had only came across the ad from going through my rss marketing feeds, so at least some marketing folks are seeing it, T-Mobile actually has a YouTube channel too.
Nevertheless I think there are some common attributes on how creatives can become viral.
But let's be clear...first of all, viral in effect is something you cannot create, it is something that happens. The most common videos to go viral born out of a marketing purpose are usually ads that don't really have a sales pitch, they are created essentially for branding purposes via entertaining means instead of doing the cold hard pitch to win over customer's wallets.
Some good branding examples that have gone viral and essentially kept the brands interest (I refrain from using the term "cool" since it is hard to pinpoint what that is) and be relevant to keeping a pulse on popular culture.
I think it is also important to note, these contemporary Gen-Y brands (both Levi's and RayBan have modernised their brand values to stay fresh and relevant with their target demographic) are building interesting dialogue via offline media, event sponsorship and unusual but well designed digital forums and media to stay top of mind for their consumers to wanting to affiliate their lifestyles with these brands.
We all need to work together, so let's embrace digital with everything else to make an good idea even stronger. Hating brings bad Karma!
In fact in the US, it is such a big movement, there are companies that specialise in making sense of the social patterns people hold with their networks. Data mining and behaviour targeting might come to mind, but all that basically means how can marketers use these relationships to sell their brands. There are loads of campaigns/gadgets made to fit brands into social networks but most are done very inconsiderate failing to really provide reason or value for people to actually use these branded tools to enhance their socializing experience on their respective networks.
In a nutshell - Social media has effectively challenged marketers to rethink how they need to talk to their fans/customers.
Recently Burger King has created a new app for Facebook users - You can check out the website here. The idea is brilliant, once you have installed the app - you just sacrifice 10 (unwanted) friends from your profile to claim a free whooper! The brilliance of the idea rests with the social nature of Facebook, it is fair to say everyone has a few viritual friends that they don't really need....so Burger King has effective used a real scenario to make their app all the more valuable and easy to reclaim the brand interaction via a tangible prize.
Ironically though, due to such a huge adoption for the App, it was only effective on Facebook for One day. Due to according Facebook, there are privacy reasons to temporarily disable the App.
If you are keen to learn more about social media tools and how it fits in with the Open standard introduced by Facebook called Facebook Connect - Check out the feature Mashable did on top10 tools.
For a brief overview on how the Internet has evolved over the years - check out the video by Mehlil Belgil appropriately titled - History of the Internet!
Lots of people have been asking us about social marketing, and what brands and services enable us to share 'stuff' with each other, good question. Down (across?) here in Sydney we ran a training session on social media last week, which sparked a really interesting debate, and Paul and I will be heading up to Perth in early February to do it there too - so watch out for that.
In the meantime, we thought it might be nice to share with you some very simple 'how to's' on some of this technology because if you are using it, the easier it is for you to talk about it, and the better you understand the digital landscape. These video instructions from the guys at CommonCraft are generally a few minutes long and they explain stuff in spectacularly easy to understand plain English, so even a luddite like Nick Cleaver can get it.... Here's 3 minutes on social bookmarking via Delicious, cool:
Twitter is also causing a lot of chatter at the moment, but what is it? why do people bother? what does it mean? Again, watch this video - just 2 minutes long, and you'll be an expert in no time:
the best thing to do is to sign up for these services. Delicious is a truly brilliant service from a work perspective, and allows us to access our favourite information wherever we are, and find other people's bookmarks on exactly the same stuff. No brainer.
Comments welcome; you can now make comments on this blog without signing in by the way, so let's get a debate going.
How the iPhone will revolutionise the mobile sector
Thursday, 8 January 2009 By James Thomson
Courtesy of smartcompany.com.au
The iPhone will help triple the size of Australia's mobile content sector in the next five years. The challenge for business is to find the growth hotspots and ride the revolution.
When Apple launched its 3G iPhone on 11 July, it wasn’t just tech heads and Apple diehards that were celebrating.
For most players in Australia’s mobile content sector, the iPhone is seen as the device to transform the fledgling industry by encouraging Australia’s 21 million mobile subscribers to use their phones for much more than making calls and sending text messages.
Alex Young, chief executive of mobile website publisher Mostyle, is a member of an emerging group of mobile content companies that have waited five to 10 years for the mobile data services sector to hit critical mass. “It’s a little bit of a waiting game for the market to catch up – that’s now.”
He believes the iPhone hype will help transform the sector by “waking up” consumers to the potential of mobility. “It’s a great mechanism to allow people to easily access mobile sites. It’s about educating consumers.”
Marisa Maio Mackay, director of research at mobile solutions company m.Net, says the sector is on the cusp of an extremely exciting 12 to 18 months. While she doesn’t see the iPhone as the “killer application” for mobile technology, she does believe its sheer popularity it will help increase the use of mobile for web browsing and other mobile data services. “I think we have reached a point where you are going to go beyond a group of high level users to the masses.
The launch of the iPhone has already sparked a rush of companies launching specific mobile sites and applications. These include:
News Limited, which has launched iPhone-optimised versions of its news and information website, News.com.au, its local business directory Truelocal.com.au, and its ticketing website Moshtix.com.au. ANZ, which launched an iPhone version of its internet banking site. Fairfax, which has an iPhone version of its domain.com.au real estate classifieds site. Lonely Planet, which launched 10 phrasebooks for iPhone users. Ninemsn, which launched versions of its news, sport and entertainment portals for the iPhone. Commsec, which launched an iPhone version of its trading platform.
