Everything we've written in August, 2008
Social Media • Trends
The Jesus Shot
posted by Greg Batiansila @ August 27th, 2008
If you want to see the future - at least a huge part of the future - of advertising, check this - and then this - out.
EA Sports created a golf video game. A user found a glitch and made a Youtube video showing the glitch.
Instead of ignoring him or adding a fix or apologizing, EA Sports created a YouTube video response to the user. If you think about it, that’s an already-incredible exhibition of social media. The gaming conglomerate is adept enough to note that someone has commented on their game, and created a video response to have an actual conversation with a customer.
Oh, and EA didn’t even try to broadcast this video. It went straight to Levinator and their own EA Youtube channel. Oh, and EA decided to have Tiger Woods in their video response. Yeah, the golfer who makes 130.00 a minute.
What’s the R.O.I. on what EA Sports did? Is it measurable? Didn’t they just change how gamers think of them? Change the rules on how to reach out to your customers? Pique every gamer’s interest in playing the game, maybe finding a glitch of their own?
Bookmark this article!
Usability • Web Design
5 Keys to a Bad User Interface
posted by Dan Baker @ August 25th, 2008
Remember when the Web was young? Everyone just jumping on there, throwing dancing babies and blinking text and mystery-meat navigation all over the place? In the bad old days, user interfaces were often designed as a postscript by whatever programmer was building the web site. These days however, beautiful User Interface (UI) and User Experience (UX) design is too important to be an afterthought. Your website is much more than an online brochure, but it should also be much less than a NASA control panel. Here are five things to avoid for your next redesign: more »
Bookmark this article!
Recent News and Updates
Six words – is that enough? Yep.
posted by McKenna @ August 18th, 2008
Sum up your life in six words. That’s what hundreds of SMITH storytelling magazine readers did in 2006, and some of those insightful phrases were recently turned into a book.
Think it’s easy to boil down the essence of a one’s experiences into a few pithy words? It’s not. Just ask any company trying to develop a killer tagline. And if you think six words is short, consider some of the most successful taglines:
Just do it.
Got milk?
Drivers wanted.
Makes six words look like War & Peace.
A perfect tagline’s beauty lies in its simplicity and brevity. But developing something short and sweet can turn sour pretty fast. For something so simple, the process can require a significant amount of time and effort.
Here at Avicom, we’ve written a few taglines in our day. One thing we’ve learned is that it takes the perfect union of research, strategy and creativity to develop a phrase worthy of becoming a tagline. When short and sweet meets strategically sound, we know we’ve found a winner.
In honor of the six-word biography, here are six things to remember when developing a tagline:
1. Determine the key message you want potential customers to remember.
2. Use a common language your audience will understand.
3. Be honest – say something about your company that’s undeniably true.
4. Use words that evoke a positive feeling about your brand.
5. Keep it simple.
6. Be original.
Bookmark this article!
AgencyThink
Tightening the Belt
posted by T-Schanz @ August 15th, 2008
With the economy still in a slump, companies continue to find ways to trim the fat off projects. If a client brings us a project on a shoestring budget, reducing the amount of travel time is one way help keep costs in line. Most of our travel time at Avicom is due to client meetings. So, for the past few weeks I’ve been looking into alternatives to face-to-face meetings. Hardware-based video conferencing was the first thing that came to mind.
Some of you probably have your gears turning, thinking of Cisco, HP, Polycom, Lifesize, etc. (for anyone who hasn’t seen Cisco’s TelePresence system in action, definitely take a look). Providing a higher level of immersion compared to simple teleconferencing, hardware-based video conferencing is great when you have a dedicated room with dedicated equipment. But, should I expect our clients to have these resources available? No – we always want to be accommodating to our clients.
Furthermore, hardware-based video conferencing only works when the client is in the office, and only provides an audio/visual bridge. During the course of a normal meeting, we may use a laptop, projector, whiteboard and leave behind files the client finds interesting. How could we do these things in an effective manner with video conferencing? This brought to light two additional requirements:
• Accessibility: Anyone, anywhere can join the meeting.
• Unification: Instant message, speak, draw, share files and view other participants using a unified solution.
With the proliferation of broadband internet service and the fact that many of our clients carry laptops, turning to Web conferencing can address the accessibility requirement. Web conferencing provides the audio/video, but we still need unification.
Enter online meeting applications. Often grouped in the generalized Web conferencing category, online meeting applications take the audio/visual concept of Web conferencing and layer it with the unification requirement I mentioned above. There’s a wide array of competing products on the market, some even at no cost. We’ve been testing a few different applications in-house and the results have been promising thus far.
Bookmark this article!
Social Media
A Direct Relationship?
posted by Greg Batiansila @ August 11th, 2008
As a social media guy at Avicom, I think it’s fair to say that there is a direct relationship between this and this. Video is the media of record for this era. It moves people. And really good video makes things happen.
The battle isn’t over - not by a long shot. But video -whose is better, which resonates, which said it best - is going to decide both local and national elections in the future.
Bookmark this article!
Trends
[spoiler alert] The Jester Wins
posted by Just A Nick @ August 11th, 2008
Recently, Adverblog linked to this animation from Adobe. Be warned, it feels like the longest download of your life, but it’s worth it.
The animation, titled “Adobe Cards,” was created by Goodby Silverstein & Partners to promote Adobe’s CS3. At first, I assumed it was done completely with CS3 products. However, after some digging, I discovered it was created with Cinema 4D, which is not a part of CS3. It’s not even an Adobe product. Weird. I think they think they make up for it by linking to a portfolio site of projects done with CS3. Whew. This makes me feel a little better for including some Jackson Pollack prints in my personal portfolio.
I showed “Adobe Cards” to fellow Avicom digital art guy James and asked him about using Maya to create something like this. While he’s convinced we could achieve similar effects using Flash and Photoshop, we both think Maya is just as powerful as Cinema 4D. It would certainly be an interesting experiment.
It’s always fun to come across examples of work that are good enough to make me “wish we had done that.” It’s even more fun knowing that we could.
Bookmark this article!
Recent News and Updates • Trends
If It’s Green, Is It Still A Tchotchke?
posted by Mad Mags @ August 1st, 2008
It seems like we’re all trying to think green these days. At least many of us at Avicom are since the morning one of our earthy account execs circulated a link to a slide show of animals choking on plastic bags.
(Thanks, Lisa. The image of the turtle still haunts us.)
The plastic bag images reminded me of a recent pitch we made to a client to offer reusable shopping bags as a promotional giveaway. While the client wasn’t quite ready for the idea months ago, the reusable bag concept seemed incredibly appropriate now. It spurred me to contact our promotional director Tom Scheel, to learn of trends in the “giveaway” industry. more »
Bookmark this article!
Bookmarks