Showing posts with label Marketing 3.0. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Marketing 3.0. Show all posts

25.8.09

TRANSFORMERS: LIVE.

Weirdvertising…3.0 bizarre adspaces





ChicagoNow.com launched by Zig, using stacked cars, chalk blogs and more

Here are the radio ads that go with this campaign.

Then there was the “chalk blog” in Chicago’s busy Pioneer Court using 40 eight-foot boards spread throughout the courtyard."We posed some of the provocative questions that spark debate on ChicagoNow blogs every day, such as “What would you do to improve the CTA?” and “What will the Olympics do for this city?” Crowds gathered, adding their points of view - because as everyone knows, it's not just the blogs that draws the readers, its the comments and ability to make one as well.

last but not least, the Chicago newspapers carried traditional print ads as well.

Credits for the ChicagNow.com campaign are as follows:

Agency:Zig Chicago
Creative Director: Stephen Leps
Art Director: Janay Blazejewski
Copywriters: Geoff Berg, Natalie Taylor
Strategic Planner: Ryan Wilson
Team Leader: Carlie Naftolin
Retoucher: Jeremy Thompson
Studio: Mazen Mansour, William Leung
Print Production: Jen Dark
Music Company: RMW
Music Director: Ted Rosnick
Sound Designer: Tyson Kuteyi

20.8.09

TalkTalk | Put Pocketing

TalkTalk launches PutPocketing - the art of putting money INTO people's pockets without them realising, using real ex-pickpockets.
Happening now on London streets until the end of August 2009 - then to be rolled out across the UK. Designed to give Britons something back, no strings attached...

First-ever VIP (video-in-print) promotion

CBS and Pepsi Max are embedding a video player in a print ad for the fall-TV-preview issue of Entertainment Weekly in September. That's right, it's a TV commercial inside a magazine. And it's a 40-minute commercial, consisting of clips from shows on CBS's fall schedule. They're calling it "the first-ever VIP (video-in-print) promotion." Opening the page pulls a little mechanism that causes the commercial to start after a five-second loading delay. Which gives you exactly enough time to think, "What the heck is with that tiny screen?" The video device is a quarter-inch thick and seen through a die cut that conceals a larger circuit board. The whole effect is considerably more impressive than the e-ink cover of Esquirelast year. Of course, due to the high cost, only a small number of issues in New York and Los Angeles will carry the ad. As a stunt, it's extremely effective. As a new form of media, it's dead out of the water without some more interactivity. It's too bad it can't respond to its environment and work together with an out-of-home campaign. But the future is coming. This is just one small step for media technology, but one giant leap toward my dream of auto-updating periodicals that can respond to nearby ads.


Salvation Army:::Cost Nothing Campaign

The world is changing in so many ways. The recent financial collapse has forced the consolidation of business in every segment of the market. This has led to far fewer businesses that are directly tied to local communities. It is also a tremendously difficult time for nonprofits to raise money. Just when communities need their services the most, many nonprofits have been forced to cut back because they face record budget shortfalls. Such was the case for The Salvation Army when they came to us for help.

Obviously they didn't have money for a big print or broadcast buy, so instead we turned to the community and harnessed the power of 50 local businesses. We wrote, painted, stamped and even burned our campaign messages onto everything from rocks, tarps and dirty car windshields to storefront windows, pizza boxes and coffee sleeves. We were everywhere. But this wasn't just powerful guerrilla marketing. The most important thing about this campaign was the community that came together to launch it.
Let's not forget that these are small businesses--very few with substantial marketing budgets--but they came together to create the first community campaign I've seen outside the realm of politics. And by harnessing the community's collective spirit the small became large. Huge actually.

I hope to see a lot more of this in the future. The good news is that, as long as the members of any community are willing to put aside their differences--which there will always be, and there were here--anyone can do this. And they can do it for the cause of their choice.

This Campaign Cost Nothing created by The VIA Group for The Salvation Army
This Campaign Cost Nothing created by The VIA Group for The Salvation Army
This Campaign Cost Nothing created by The VIA Group for The Salvation Army
This Campaign Cost Nothing created by The VIA Group for The Salvation Army
This Campaign Cost Nothing created by The VIA Group for The Salvation Army
Credits:

Chief Creative Officer: Greg Smith

Senior Art Director/Multimedia: Patrick Sperry (TV)

Art Director: Chris Avantaggio (Guerrilla, TV, print, online)

Copywriter: Mike Irvine (Guerrilla, TV, print, online)

Associate Producer: Meghan Gildart (TV)

Director: Tim Johnston (TV)

Editor: Patrick Sperry (TV)

Music: Andrew Frederick, Cerf-Volantes (TV)

Exercise bike escapes gym

16.8.09

The 65 Most Annoying things about the Web Today


Using the Web can still be a very annoying experience!

Using the Web can still be a very annoying experience!

Poor Design

  1. Illegible text. I can’t read that, it’s too small. And what on earth is that font called?
  2. Busy backgrounds. Oh MySpace, why do you allow users to create profiles like that? My eyes hurt.
  3. Obscure links. I’m confused, can I click on that or not? Oh I get it, you don’t want me to view other pages.
  4. Flyouts that are too large. Holy crap Yahoo! This is a page within a flyout!
  5. Drop-down menu navigation too many levels deep. OK, if I slowly move my mouse this way first… dammit Jim, I’m a doctor not a magician!
  6. Complicated navigation. I just want to get to that page, the one over there! Oh I see, you want me to complete the maze first.
  7. Abused centerpieces. Aren’t centerpieces supposed to serve as mechanisms for promotion, rather than areas to cram an entire page’s worth of content into itself? Call me an idealist, I guess.
  8. Poor navigation labels. Give me a clue and use labels that make sense!
  9. Clutter & chaos. With no emphasis or information hierarchy, it’s difficult for me to know what to look at, and what to do next.
  10. Ugly WAPs. Many companies treat their WAP sites like a deformed step-child they keep in the basement.
  11. Splash screens. Nice, a road block between your user and your home page.

Unfindable Information

  1. Dysfunctional site search. (Sigh) Why didn’t this site just use Google?
  2. Too many blog categories. Isn’t this what tags were meant for?
  3. Contact info. I just want to speak to them on the phone! And when I say “them” i mean a human.
  4. Invisible sign in. OK, so I registered, but how do I sign in?
  5. Hidden account closure. I guess I’m a member for life now?
  6. Unscannable info. I want to quickly know if this article is relevant. But alas, huge paragraphs, long headlines and no subheadings make for an unscannable chunk of data, and an indigestible piece of gristle.

No Content Strategy

  1. No focus. Yada, yada, yada. Get to the point, what’s your message and what do you offer?
  2. Spelling & grammar. Spelling mistakes are hard to forgive and really hurt credibility.
  3. Ineffective product pages: What am I buying? Why should I buy this? Help me understand, and I’ll move down the purchase funnel!
  4. Outdated. There’s nothing more thrilling than seeing a blog frozen in time. At some point, a landfill for websites is going to be needed.
  5. Small photos. Why would I buy something I cannot see?

Auto-Behavior

  1. Auto-playing home page video. Take note ESPN.com: the first thing I do when coming to your site is scramble to find the video pause button. And that’s when I’m surfing from home.
  2. Auto browser resizing. And you did that because?
  3. Customer service nags. Ironic really. Chat pop-ups appear like genies out of a lamp when I don’t need them.
  4. Theme tunes. Got to love that auto-play music, especially when it cycles over and over and over, and over.
  5. Auto opt-ins. It seems like an automatic opt-in is a contradiction in terms to me. No I don’t want your newsletter, and if I did, I’d opt-in.

Evil Forms

  1. Unreadable captchas. Pure Evil. If I had a brick, why I would…
  2. Too many fields. This is utterly exhausting. Oh forget it, I’m going to abandon this form.
  3. Cryptic error messaging. OK, so I made a mistake. If you used English, I might be able to fix it.
  4. No confirmation. Was I successful or not? I’m looking for anything here, a “thank-you”, a “job well done”, a “good boy”… anything that confirms the form was indeed a submitted form.
  5. Too many constraints. I want to add my Canadian zip code, but you’re validating against the US format only!
  6. Too small fields. How I’m supposed to enter my street address in that state-sized field?
  7. The reset button. Do we really need this? I especially love it when I accidentally press “reset” instead of “submit”. It’s especially satisfying when it’s a long form.

Intrusive Advertising

  1. Pop-ups. And that includes those fancy, flashy, moving, hard-to-close ones. Are you serious? This is 2009.
  2. Interstitials. Thanks for adding another click and creating a barrier between me and your content! Give me a reason to leave, I dare you.
  3. Flyouts via links in content. Oh darn, I didn’t know that was an ad! Thanks for punishing me.
  4. Too may Google ads. I know there’s some content around here….
  5. Long video pre-rolls. Is this ad ever going to end? Hang on; I forgot what video I clicked on.
  6. The bus stop. Home pages that resemble bus stops — flyers, posters, graffiti all shouting at me. Sometimes, I swear I can even smell urine.

Accounts

  1. Remembering user names and passwords. Seriously, how many do I need to keep track of? Just give me Facebook connect already!
  2. Being forced to register for purchases. I just want to buy it, OK? Forget it, I’m going elsewhere.
  3. Forced password reset. I just want to know my password! The one I chose but have forgotten. I know you know.
  4. Getting locked out. I get the three-attempts-and-you’re-out idea, but it would be nice to know the rules before hand!
  5. Password sent by “snail mail”. I’m not sure whether to laugh or cry. Should I expect a scroll to be delivered and read by a messenger?

Abuse

  1. Spam. We still cannot cure this disease?
  2. Viruses. If I was a conspiracy theorist, I’d say the anti-virus companies were creating these. You know, supply and demand and all.
  3. Phishing. Particularly sneaky; and definitely a step beyond annoying.
  4. Trolls on messageboards/blogs. Oh well, that’s life I guess – art imitating life and all.
  5. Fake profiles. Am I following the real Steven Hawking on Twitter? It says here he went bowling last night.
  6. Facebook app invitations. For the thousandth time, no I do not want to play Mob Wars, and no I don’t want a “pet in an egg” either.

Technology

  1. Explorer 6. I speak for all developers here, if there’s a plug attached, please pull it. RIP Explorer 6.
  2. Plug-ins. Not only do I have to download another plug-in, I have to keep these things current!
  3. Entire sites built in flash. I don’t get it, why?
  4. PDF overuse. Why couldn’t this PDF just be a web page?
  5. Dell’s Netbook trackpad. Designed to be web browsing device, Dell’s Mini 10 trackpad has a trillion bells and whistles, but cannot fulfill basic tasks like moving the cursor from point A to point B without going to C first.
  6. Small netbook screens. While mobile devices have optimized views for their screens, Netbooks and their 9 and 10 inch screens are caught in a weird place.
  7. Inconsistent colors. Optimizing colors and contrast across both Macs and PCs is a designers nightmare.
  8. Charging for Wi-Fi. Provide it free of charge, and the patrons will come!

Waiting

  1. Slow page load. OK that’s it, I’ve been patient and their 3 seconds are up.
  2. Comment approval. I thought, I articulated, I commented, I waited. Nothing. That will teach me to contribute.
  3. Black-hole between ordering and shipping. I took me 5 minutes to order this laptop, why isn’t it getting shipped? Should I place my order again? Should I cancel this order? What’s the order status?
  4. Twitter is down again. I’m starting to think this is a feature. One akin to a long line outside a trendy night club.
  5. Customer service. Since I cannot get a human on the phone, a 24 hour response time to my e-mail is not acceptable. Well look at that, I guess you just quantified the value of my business.
  6. Submission timers. I saw this really great article! I know, I’ll post it on Reddit. And there’s another one, I’ll post that on Reddit too. What, I have to wait 10 minutes to post another article? That will teach me to contribute.

7 Skills for a Post-Pandemic Marketer

The impact of Covid-19 has had a significant impact across the board with the marketing and advertising industry in 2020, but there is hope...