Category Archives: Advertising

Shifting trends

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I actually prefer to watch random episodes on the Web than have choice now!

It’s pretty common knowledge, that trends tend to repeat themselves in patterns over and over. It’s probably the most visible with fashion shifts back to the 80’s or 70’s, but can still be applied to a far more interesting topic – internet attention. When we’re online we jump from place to place, almost never focusing fully on the page at hand. Multitasking has taken a lot of “peace” from obtaining information, so we multitask like crazy and we don’t slow down.

In the web where you get everything you want right when you want it (preferably NOW), I found out that instead of watching an episode of South Park that I choose, I prefer to go to a site, that shows random episodes in a completely random order. Is it going back from pay-per-view to television “watch what we serve you” concept?

That is of course temporary and will probably shift back to active choices sometime soon, but does it apply anywhere else? It’s a little bit like the App Store selling models, with Freemium occupying most of the gaming charts nowadays, and people spending up to 91% of total game revenue inside the game. But at some point, they must realize that buying virtual coins for real dollards, that we can buy virtual hat with is not really worth it. Then the shift might go towards paid games and peace of mind. The one thing we can be sure of is that we won’t see many fans of ad supported gaming – mainly because nobody likes ads.

What does this pretty common knowledge teach us? Nothing new, but wether you’re making an indie App Store game, or a TV show watching website, it’s best to know what people want right now. Being creative AND riding the trend waves (creating trends is a completely different story) is the way to go no matter what business you’re into.

Fun fact: A British band – Brett Domino, recorded some nice (and funny) covers of well known artists. They are selling their album on iTunes BUT you can order a digipack from them to have it in a more touch-friendly / shelf friendly format. What’s so original about it? Well the boys supply you with the cover and a blank CD-R on which you can record their album from iTunes yourself. Why? To avoid paying double royalty to the authors of the songs, which is a brilliant idea really. They do get their fair share from iTunes anyway. So here’s a backwards trend of buying physical albums (a few years ago people actually preferred MP3’s, and now it’s slowly coming back) with an original twist to it. How cool is that?

Is web 3.0 a mix of 2.0 and 1.0 ?

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Web 1.0 was all about creating content – articles, news topics, how to’s – you name it. Websites were hubs of information rather than a site with videos od a dog on a skateboard. Then the revolution came and the main focus on the web shifted from articles to people. Web 2.0 was all about being social online. And people loved it! Sure it’s counter-productive most of the time, but how convenient, right? You can now see updates and pictures of your “internet friends” from all over the world, and you don’t even need to meet with them for coffee to know what they’re up to.

Web 2.0 has generated an impressive amount of content and lured non-power-users into the internet. The amount of valuable content declined rapidly, and dogs on skateboards started to be the main focus online. Sure if you need information there’s wikipedia and wolfram alpha, which in fact is an answer to all the lazy people who can’t look up the answer themselves. So there’s more and more “social” content, more and more ads, but less quality content to browse through.

The answer? Well all those websites with funny pictures and subtitles encouraged people to at least write something under the pic. That’s creative sometimes, right? And then they share it with their average of 450 friends (who really has that many?) and it becomes another dog on a skateboard. Question sites are actually a true sign of change – people can ask about anything, and complete strangers may answer their question, which is then rated as the most valuable answer. That’s building a knowledge base right there. But when blogging shifted from serious articles towards “what I did last night with my facebook friends” I guess the last parts of web 1.0 died that evening. Facebook is trying to swallow some of that 1.0 juice by adding wikipedia answers to it’s searches, but seriously – who uses that?

Is internet eventually going to be about porn, shallow relationships with people and funny pictures only? What do you think?

Blog spam techniques keep evolving

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Surely everyone who has ever written a blog knows, that even with akismet and all those other fancy gizmos, spam is constantly there. It can be characterized as landfills and trash dumps of modern technology, that just keeps piling up and there’s always more. But stating the existence of spam nowadays is like saying we need air to breathe. Pointless. What I want to focus on is how spam comments are evolving to trick us into clicking approve.

Here’s some statistics:

Email spam is done by about 5 million botnets, that send 88% of all spam messages. 90% of spam is in English (that’s understandable) and 91% contains links. 66% is about pharmaceutical things like viagra,cialis etc. In 2010 alone 107 billion mails were sent, out of which 89,1% was spam. Good news is that the amount of spam is decreasing by about 1% each year. The biggest fall is in email spam, because of better filters, and people simply ignoring those messages after learning how they work. A lot of spam moved to blog comments though, either to move traffic to other websites, or increase google popularity. So what kinds of spam are there?

Praise spam

Praise spam is the most common one – everyone wants to hear compliments, and if we get a comment that says “great blog! I’ve bookmarked it!” or “Great writing style, keep it up!” or thins like:

  1. This would be the best weblog for anybody who wishes to discover this subject.
  2. Wonderful article. I’m dealing with a few these issues.
  3. This is actually a very good posted post, and I have bookmarked this web site for future reference.
  4. Hi, this has been an excellent read and in addition I have bookmarked this webpage
  5. A truly amazing article. Thanks for sharing you?re wealth of knowledge with us once again
  6. It is a excellent suggestions particularly to people new to blogosphere, quick and correct information
  7. Greetings! I would just like to thank you for the first class info you have here on this post.
  8. Fantastic goods from you, man. I have understand your stuff previous to and you?re just extremely magnificent.

Help offerings (mostly SEO)

That comes from the fact that most blogs are not popular. That’s how life works and we should learn to deal with it. So when we see a help offer: to boost our stats, to earn more money, whatever – we unintentionally take notice of that comment before realizing it is spam. Some people apparently don’t realize that, because the spam bots are still doing this.

  1. Hello, I found your website by searching Google, but I noticed it was not on the first page.
  2. I found you on Google so I thought I?d share this tip with you. There is a WordPress SEO addon that does automated SEO for your blog
  3. make your blog a source of income that can count on
  4. My team provides professional article writing, and we are able to do it for $0.01 per word ? that?s $4 for a 400 word article.
  5. There are a lot of approaches in which you can preserve cash.
  6. Hi, check how to make more money with your blog

Pointing out mistakes (that’s a new one)

If praise isn’t really your thing, maybe criticism is. Or maybe if a bot is smart enough (yeah, right!) to criticize you, then it’s not a bot, but a real comment you can approve? Silly them ;)

  1. of course like your web site but you have to check the spelling on quite a few of your posts
  2. I?m not sure I completely agree with the point and view

Total gibberish and idiomatic idiocy

Sometimes what we get is a string of words or phrases taken from books, randomized and weird. It looks like it’s some twisted, drug induced poetry and sometimes it is. I actually like this type of spam sometimes – especially when I can compile a couple of those into a song, that’s as deep lyrically as Radioheads gibberish ;) (I still like their music though)

  1. you command get got an edginess over that you wish be delivering the following. unwell unquestionably come more formerly again since exactly the same nearly a lot often inside case you shield this increase.
  2. A fall into a pit, a gain in your wit
  3. Great mens sons seldom do well

We can learn to fight it or we can learn to ignore it. But we must be aware that bots are a considerable part of our reader base. So this post is a tribute to them. Thank you for visiting my site bots! ;)

 

 

The more heads the longer the development

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Sure people can fool you with washed-up phrases like “there’s no I in TEAM” and such, but the truth in the design community is a little different. Actually the more people involved in a project, the more fragmented it will be. Think of it as an android headset, with all the resolutions, different processors and performance, and a design needs to now fit it all.

With iPhone’s it’s a bit easier – there’s the iPhone (sure, two resolutions, but that’s easy – just double) and you can create something for it actually being sure it will look and work the same. Well let’s not jump into that analogy too far, I hope you got it. The more people involved, the less stable the design is. Thus the best teams are usually the smallest.

Thinking about the successes of recent years in mobile apps and games, (well aside from Rovio) most of the biggest, most creative ideas came from small, 2-3 people teams. Sometimes it can even be a one person, and then the vision is completely as it was imagined from the beginning.

Is it even possible to create something good with a team larger than two people anymore? Well we just need to wait and see.

How did Apple’s Website change over the years

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Apple has always been known for superior product design. But does it also apply to it’s website? We looked back into the web archive and came up with images from nearly every year, starting in 1998. The last picture is from 2011, and there’s very little change between 2008 and today. Take a look:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Continue reading →

Minimalist redesigns of the known brands

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Antrepo Design has decided to redesign the product packaging for a couple of known brands towards a simpler, minimalistic and elegant approach. The thing is, their designs in nearly every case are spot on and should be considered by those brands if they want to stand out.
See more after the break.

Continue reading →

Another iPad only magazine

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Will it redefine the interfaces for tablet publishing? Will that in turn redefine the web as we know it a little bit? We’ll have to wait and see. Right now they have a pretty neat and at the same time grungy/electronic Tron cover with animations and flashes known from some thriller movies. That might be fun. We’re witnessing some sort of future here, and another one when “The Daily” comes out. Exciting times to be a web designer. A lot of new trends will emerge REALLY soon. See the vid :

Project magazine cover video from Project on Vimeo.

Creative Windows ad – mac vs pc all over again

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The Mac vs PC war has been fought ruthlessly all over the interwebs for at least a decade now, both on the advertising and on social front. And as with any controversial subject there are fans of both sides. But Microsoft didn’t really make creative ads before, and now it’s trying to show that PC’s are not “square” and “office and games” only and can be used to make really nice, creative things. Good! Because in the end the machine is just the means to achieving a goal that comes up in the mind of it’s creator. And the mind is not yet branded with any logo. See the cool video below :

Interfaces of the present

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Since the Washington Post made an iPad app too, I think it’s both the time to elaborate on interfaces and the time to admit, that the change is surely coming. The dying press industry can actually revive with this new medium, which is good because we need well written content. There’s nothing wrong with amateur bloggers, but the most valuable content is and will always be made by professional writers and journalists. So now we have the chance to try those out because the new york times, washington post and newsweek all made really nice applications that bring the press to the new medium. And of course they will also be available on other tablets when they finally come out. And that leads to a conclusion that there’s another change in interfaces coming.

Apparently a click to view interface doesn’t really work with press on a tablet. No, every one of the magazines has swiping motion to change pages / browse through articles. People don’t like to point and click, they like to browse. And what’s more natural than a swiping motion? Right!

And since the tablets are slowly taking over, we might want to consider websites that are also navigated that way (or can be navigated with both regular and modern touch controls). That might lead to a regression of thought, because we’re actually coming back to the system that was dominant before the PC revolution. And this system is already catching on. So it might either be a case of nostalgia, or simply a way to do it right. And if it’s the latter we should consider that with all of our feature layouts.

Below you can see the AD for washington post, pretty funny, especially the last sentence ;)

Failed facebook campaigns

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Sometimes if something spreads like wildfire it’s considered a success. But it’s not always so, as the recent facebook campaing for breast cancer awareness proved. Many of us noticed that our friends, girlfriends and co-workers had posted a facebook status like “I like it on the couch” or “I like it on the kitchen table” thinking there’s something sexual about it – and maybe a “hint hint” kinda thing.

Sure there might be a corelation between handbags and breast cancer (if there actually is) but how drunk would we have to be to understand it? The guys instead of encouraging their women to do a checkup will only scratch their heads in disbelief, and the women themselves are spreading the viral meme without really thinking about what it means (if anything). So it’s an idea that got out of hand and became something that it wasn’t supposed to be. Sadly.

Creative youtube campaign for Tipp-Ex

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This must’ve been a lot of dollars pumped into google’s account by Tipp-Ex but the production quality and the viral potential are one of the biggest youtube can give you. Mainly because it uses one big flash made by the advertiser to just play some videos inside it. This is I think the first time youtube went in that direction and even though there’s a bottom line here that it’s still just a clever commercial, it’s worth checking out.

And you can do that here

There were campaigns similar to that one before of course, but not on that level of complication. For example the show “Dexter” had a campaign in which every youtube clip had hot spots on it to click, and there was a crowd moving within which you had to spot the main character and click on him. If you did you were redirected to another movie and so on. But that was done using just the typical youtube API so it probably wasn’t as popular as this new thing will be.

The main reason for success here is being surprised – when the hunter reaches outside of the movie you know you’ve been tricked but still you want to go forward. (that’s not much of a spoiler so don’t get upset about it ;p) There’s still plenty of room for innovation in online advertising and thankfully every once in a while we see that someone has come up with a fresh idea. Sure this one can’t be done with just a few bucks in your pocket like the “Jumping into jeans” or “Coke and Mentos” memes but it has more of that “I’m gonna send it to all my friends” action attached to it. And that’s precisely how a good viral works.

Know any other good examples of creative (meaning different than just a video) youtube campaigns ?

Business campaigns online on low budget

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I have stumbled recently across some ideas on how to enhance a traditionally (tv / radio) marketed campaign (of an event this time, not a product) by adding some internet presence but at low cost. So where should a marketer start with such a daunting task?

Well first and foremost it’s important to know your target group and which online places do they prefer. For example some countries don’t use twitter as much as others, while some have their own facebook/myspace alternative and the big two (well big one to be honest) are not as present there. But once we sort of get the idea of where to start the next question arises.

What’s next?

Is the next step adding marketing babble advertising media everywhere and waiting for our fish to catch bait?
(remembering that we’re on a budget – preferably no money, and the smaller amount we have to spend the better). So where do we start? First let’s focus on the event we’d like to promote. And since nothing nowadays is truly original we can find similar events in the past. And even if not and this is truly an unique thing we can find categories in which our event fits – like cooking / vegetarian / concerts. By narrowing it down to a couple of tags we need to start at the bottom first, because the top will be much easier. So let’s say we have those three tags and want to promote a big concert in our town of 2 mil. citizens, which is of course already promoted on the radio, press and tv.

Starting at the bottom

By starting at the bottom I mean preparing a short, friendly notice (not a marketing ad), with a couple of pictures and generally a visually pleasant form. This is important because in most cases like that plain text will be skipped.
Then we go blog hunting. We find at least 10 (50 is better) blogs that relate to at least one of our subjects and have a viewer base that’s large enough to cover our city too (even if the blogger is from some other place in the same country). Then we write to them, trying to sound as “real” as possible. Saying “Hello” at the beginning won’t hurt (yeah it’s obvious but skipped so often it makes my blood freeze). Then let’s tell them how we found them, and that we think we have some interesting info to share with them. And then the info part comes in, but it seriously should be presented like you’re describing it to a friend you stumbled upon on a street. No fancy big words, no marketing bullshit. Plain and simple. And good looking visually (photos speak!)

Moving to the top

A facebook group or page is the typical next answer and it’s also the right one. Try and fill it out with as much detail as possible but DON’T FORGET THE PHOTOS. Any promotional visual material is crucial. A nice poster. Or even internet posters with a nice photo and some basic even info on it. Post it, share it. Write there from time to time. The best way to actually get somewhere is by running a facebook ad, which in fact are pretty cheap. You can end up paying less than $1 per 1000 views of your ad and this is A LOT! Try and experiment with those.

Twitter is also a fun way to be more socially “open” to your followers (but you need to have some already) because you can communicate even more like a real person with them. Short, direct messages and remember to post something that’s only touching your subject indirectly like a funny video of someone else’s vegetarian activist concert with guys dressed as giant culiflowers or whatever. Be real and human.

Same goes with a youtube channel – get as many videos of your performers or even recipes online, tag them correctly and have each point to either your website or your facebook / twitter. It won’t hurt to make a splash screen with the most important info and put it INSIDE the videos at their beginning and end so they won’t be missed.

And remember. Be a human. Because being a robot, or worse – a marketing guy – won’t buy you trust. And won’t buy you followers.

Google vs Microsoft myth – the bigger they get the less creative they become? Not!

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I was always wondering that for most big brands there comes a moment when they become less creative and more profit driven. Sure both microsoft and google are both big, both still generate large profits. So is it time for them to stop being creative? Apparently not quite. Google despite being “evil-is-not-evil” does a lot of useful things for people that just work. And mostly for free. Microsoft sells products in shiny packages, but there’s not much backing all of that up. Or is there?

Apparently money is just a factor, not a turning point. And we’re talking BIG money here. So google still hires good creative directors that can come up with ads and ideas that are original. Like this google chrome ad below. This is just awesome in its simplicity and the coolness-factor.

How much is a facebook fan worth? 30 cents!

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facebookandmoney

Social media marketing platform company Vitrue has determined that the average value of a Facebook ?fan? is about $3.60 in equivalent media each year. This calculation is based on having one million Fan Page fans, and is not weighted for brand recognition.

Ok but what does that actually mean? First let’s try and see how did they get that number.

Let’s add it up

A company posting twice a day and having a million fans will get 60 million impressions every month. Vitrue used $5 CPM (which is a cost for a thousand impressions) and 60M impressions ended up being $300,000 per month of media value. That means that for the same amount of views the company would’ve paid that much in other media. That 300,000 is a monthly value, so per year it’d be somewhere close to 3,6 Million dollars. Dividing that by a million “Fans” we get $3,6. Is that right? Does it really work that way?

Let’s break it down

Posting twice a day for a month? 60 posts in a month? Can you imagine still being a fan of a company after you’ve been bombarded by information about them twice a day for a month? A year? Would anyone “stay as a fan” in that case? And what would they inform us about? In most cases we’d be done with all of the company’s products in a few days or weeks. So what’s next? “Buy buy buy” statuses? Sure we can say that if you put all of the oceans water in a small tube, the length of the tube would be REALLY F***ING BIG. Right?

The real number anyone?

So how many posts a month are we talking about to maintain a brand awareness and not loose the fans? I’m thinking 5 posts per month would be the right number. That would be almost 1 post per week so our “fans” won’t have their status feeds flooded, and yet they will notice us. So what do the numbers tell us in such a case? Let’s assume that we do have a million fans. So we get 5 million impressions. That is $25,000 per month. So in a year it’ll be $300,000 and thus the value of one facebook fan per year is $0,3. Which is 30 cents. And that seems a lot more natural than $3,6. Right?