(You know we mean it because we have a nice shiny "contact us" button)
So, I was particularly jazzed when I came across a guy named James Altucher and his social experiment JungleSmash. His goal is the “disintermediation” of ad agencies by having users of a product make their own commercials. The idea is that you cut the middle man out from between the consumer and the producer and create a tighter feedback loop. In this scenario, the producer asks for a commercial and perhaps offers a reward. Users take up the challenge. The producer picks an ad, and mass distributes it to more potential users. It’s almost intimate.
This idea has been done before, but JungleSmash is unique because its has no affiliation with the products it promotes. Monster, an intense energy drink, is the current subject and some pretty crazy ads have poured in. At Advent, we have a refrigerator full of Monster and other mind-altering beverages to facilitate our regimen of all-nighters and early mornings, so the whole thing is close to our hearts.
This consumer-produced ad featured above is very disturbing and funny, especially if you enjoy the finer points of low-budget horror movies. It made me want to drink a Monster. I didn’t because my wife has strictly forbidden all energy drinks, but I still wanted to.
When loyal consumers create the ads, you can bet they will be low quality. But in a generation of YouTube, broadcast standards have been radically altered and the general public is more accepting of raw material. Plus, many of the consumer-generated ads are tailor made for the target demographic because they’re coming from the target demographic.
The other brilliant part about user-produced ads is they create a buzz before they’re even released. Consumers are invited to participate and feel a psychological investment with the ad they created or picked to win. After the excitement builds up, then the advertisement is released to a broader audience.
Not all of them are great, however. Sometimes consumers try too hard to be like ad agencies. And sometimes people don’t actually use the product – they just want to win the competition. Still, it seems like you usually can come up with something good for cheap and create a lot of buzz in the process.
You can vote on your favorite Monster ad right now at JungleSmash. Next week will be a new contest. I can’t wait.
Based on the most comprehensive statistics in the U.S., the following is a breakdown of screen resolution, browser usage, and operating system usage in 2008:
Screen Resolution / 2008
48% - 1024×768
38% - Higher than 1024×768
8% - 800×600
6% - Unknown
Browsers
44.2% - Mozilla Firefox
26.6% - Internet Explorer 7
20.0% - Internet Explorer 6
3.1% - Google Chrome
2.7% - Apple Safari
2.3% - Opera
Operating Systems
72% - Windows XP
15% - Windows Vista
5.3% - Mac
3.8% - Linux
1.8% - Windows 2000
According to a recent study, the Flash player is present on 99% of all Internet browsers in the world.
This information is important to us because we are a web development group. We build websites for companies in every industry and across the globe. Every client we serve has a very specific audience in mind, but will inevitably receive visitors to their site who do not fit that demographic. Thus, every site we build must adhere to these basic web design principles to ensure every visitor has a pleasant, error-free experience on the website. If we fail to test our sites on all browsers, we’ll undoubtedly frustrate a percentage of visitors to the site, and as a result, damage the brand perception and market share of our client.
Keep in mind that there are over 50 other browsers online. Fifty! So – is it worth the investment to optimize your site for all of these broswers and versions? Absolutely not. 99% of users will get an accurate view of your site if you stick with the top 5 listed above.
Let us know if you’re having trouble with your website – we may have some pointers to help you decrease your bounce rate.
A screenshot from Burger King's Flame promotion. Hungry?
Burger King has done it again. They’ve completely creeped me out. As a gimmick, they’ve released “Flame,” a new body spray that smells like grilled meat. It’s a clever idea and it got my attention, but lots of other nasty things get my attention as well – roadkill, for instance.
The other problem with the strategy is some people think it’s more than a gimmick.
In one article, Jack Ryan of the Post Chronicle makes fun of Burger King, but doesn’t seem to understand that Burger King is making fun of itself. It’s a strange joke and I don’t think a lot of people are going to get it.
Another joke I don’t get is the King. He is a plastic monarch with a psychotic smile who shows up in your bedroom in the morning and leans over you until you wake up. Do I want to buy food from him? No, I want kick his plastic butt out of my house.
A few weeks ago, one of the creative directors from the agency that does these ads visited Advent Creative. I asked him, what’s up with the King? He’s creepy. He said the whole idea was to create an uncomfortable type of humor, like when Michael Scott on the Office digs himself into a devastatingly embarrassing hole.
Thinking of it that way, I sort of understand. My mind gets it, but my gut says, “Run away!”
So, if you’re into that kind of humor, you can buy the scent at Ricky’s costume shop in New York. At $3.99, it’s appropriately priced for a gag stocking stuffer (emphasis on the gag). Only three people have commented on the spray, and if I had to guess, I’d say they worked for Burger King. For example:
“Best idea ever …” – Fat Jewish Guy from San Diego, CA.
“That night, she had it her way; I gave her the best Whopper she’s ever had, and that’s saying a lot.” – Frank Reynolds from Philadelphia, PA.
“I used to work at BK when I was a lot younger. The smell left on me after an 8 hour shift was so yummy delicious that I wouldn’t shower until the next day or so.” – John Srout New York, NY.
Awesome.
For fun, go to firemeetsdesire.com, the official site of the King’s new scent. With funky music ala-Barry White accompanied by romantic scenes like wine glasses and waterfalls, it’s designed to help you set the mood. Every time you click on the Flame bottle, it sprays and brings up a new sexy setting. Warning: if you click it enough, you will eventually land on an image of the King, lying on a rug in front of a fire with his bathrobe dangerously loose. Thank goodness for the well-placed bottle of Flame.
After witnessing that, do I want to blog about it and indirectly help them create buzz about the campaign? Yes. Do I want to eat a Burger King Whopper after seeing that? No way.
After receiving confirmation that philanthropist Jon M. Huntsman intended to give a $25 million donation to Utah State University’s College of Business, the college immediately began making plans to honor him and his wife for their generosity. Included in those plans was a short video that they hoped would reinforce the upward and accelerated movement the college was experiencing. The USU marketing department called on Advent Creative to capture that momentum and refine it into a 3 to 4 minute piece that could be shown at a special banquet for dignitaries and posted on the college’s website.
The challenge we faced was to capture that sense of movement and momentum in a video comprised largely of talking heads. To accomplish this, we decided that each and every shot needed to be in motion in some way, including any on-camera interviews. We developed a dolly rig that allowed us to do 180-degree dollies around each interview subject while they gave their performance. We complemented this technique with sweeping jib moves, dollying b-roll and a number of time-lapse shots that carried the energy of the message from scene to scene.
The college hoped to portray a number of key messages in this video so we also chose to integrate keywords into select scenes in 3D. This drove those points home in a creative and noticeable fashion.
The video premiered on a large projection screen at the official announcement banquet to an audience of over 300 people, including many university and Utah dignitaries. The video was also on the front page of the college’s website for nearly a year.
So we’re in a recession. Companies are failing all around us. Lay-offs are rampant, and banks are reluctant to lend. So what is a business to do?
There are only two real options:
Play defense. You do this by hoarding cash, and delaying strategic moves. You wait for things to start looking a little better before taking risks.
Or
Go on the offensive. Realize there are a lot of opportunities out there for someone who dares to move forward. One of my favorite mottos was first used by the British SAS (the British Special Forces). It says “He who dares wins.”
Every company is struggling during a recession, and many are pulling back. That leaves a lot of market share to capture for a company that is willing to take it. Companies who are currently weakened are vulnerable to being bought out if you are willing to make an offer.
And more and more people are turning to the online marketplace to try to find deals. Is your company positioned to take advantage of that?
Remember that your website may be the only impression a person gets about your company. Does it meet the branding standards of your company? Is it easy to navigate? Don’t forget that since they don’t get to see the sales team face to face, that it must also instill a level of trustworthiness. Unprofessional looking websites scare potential customers away, so don’t skimp on your website.
My friend’s cousin once went to a party in New York, and after several drinks he passed out. The next morning he found himself in a bathtub of ice water. There was a hand-written note on the wall in front of him that said, “Call 9-11 immediately if you want to live.” A cell phone was sitting on the shelf of the tub. He had been a victim of human organ thieves.
Have you ever heard that story or one similar? I heard it nearly a dozen times when I was in grade school. It was an extremely powerful urban legend that spread like wildfire because of its “stickiness”.
If you’ve never read Chip and Dan Heath’s Made to Stick, you’re in for some eye-opening, exciting information that may dramatically assist you in developing communication plans and messages for your clients. The authors actually discuss this organ thieve urban legend.
To keep it short (and not spoil anything for you), Made to Stick discusses why some marketing ideas fail and others become viral or wildly successful. Their research revealed six principles or attributes that make an idea “sticky”. Follow the links for more info on the authors’ site:
1: SIMPLICITY
2: UNEXPECTEDNESS
3: CONCRETENESS
4: CREDIBILITY
5: EMOTIONS
6: STORIES
The more of these six principles you can pack into a message, the stickier it will become. The story I related above covers several of these principles, which makes it an extremely effective urban legend.
Let me give you one great, final example of a sticky ad mentioned in the book:
“The television commercial for the new Enclave minivan opens with the Enclave sitting in front of a park. A boy holding a football helmet climbs into the minivan, followed by his two younger sisters. “Introducing the all-new Enclave,” begins a woman’s voice-over. Dad is behind the wheel and Mom is in the passenger seat. Cup holders are everywhere. Dad starts the car and pulls away from the curb. “It’s a minivan to the max.”
The minivan cruises slowly through suburban streets. “With features like remote-controlled sliding rear doors, 150 cable channels, a full sky-view roof, temperature-controlled cup holders, and the six-point navigation system . . . It’s the minivan for families on the go.”
The Enclave pulls to a stop at an intersection. The camera zooms in on the boy, gazing out a side window that reflects giant, leafy trees. Dad pulls into the intersection.
That’s when it happens.
A speeding car barrels into the intersection and broadsides the minivan. There is a terrifying collision, with metal buckling and an explosion of broken glass.
The screen fades to black, and a message appears: “Didn’t see that coming?”
The question fades and is replaced by a statement: “No one ever does.”
With the sound of a stuck horn blaring in the background, a few final words flash across the screen: “Buckle up. . . Always.”
There is no Enclave minivan. This ad was created by the Ad Council. The Enclave ad…capitalizes on the second characteristic of sticky ideas: Unexpectedness.”
Get the book, read it–and improve your company’s communication strategies.
Gap has made a brilliant marketing move by setting up a casting call contest for the next “Gap Girl.” The last time I heard anyone talking about the Gap, it was the Parowan Gap, a small canyon in southern Utah featuring American Indian rock art.
So I was surprised to see that the Gap, the clothing outlet that hovers somewhere between Old Navy and Banana Republic, was catching big headlines this morning. What’s their strategy? Psychological investment.
They held a contest where parents could send in the photos of their cute kids and a few of them would be picked as the next face of Gap. Camera-addicted parents responded. Once the finalists where announced today, local parents around the country picked up the story. Since the parents were now psychologically invested in the outcome of the contest, Gap ended up with a rabidly interested marketing base.
Local papers makes for great PR. While I was working on my master’s degree at Ohio University, I studied how much people trusted their local newspapers compared to national news outlets. People resoundingly chose their home town paper as the most reliable, even if the paper was just running the same Associated Press story that was in the national publications..
So, when people see “Gap” in their local newspaper, it’s going to have a bigger impact, especially if it features a cute photo of the local finalist.
Another advantage to this sort of local newspaper campaign is that Internet has increased the reach of even the smallest rag. If I search for “gap casting call,” on the Internet, I will come up with stories from small town papers in Tennessee as well as bigger papers, like the Boston Globe.
It helps that Gap is huge and has been doing this promotion for three years in a row. Still, it’s a good thing to keep in mind the next time you’re brainstorming about ways to promote your company. If you get people psychologically invested, they will promote your company for you.
While visiting the great state of Colorado to attend the the Drums Along the Rockies Show and visit friends that I marched with in the Blue Knights Drum and Bugle Corps, I ran across an outstanding paper stock. One of the friends I visited recently graduated from Metropolitan State College of Denver in graphic design. For the cover of his portfolio he used a special stock from the Gmund paper company, called Savanna, Bubinga. It has a wood-like quality that is very tactile and unusual.
If you’re looking for a paper stock to help you stand out from the crowd, then you really need to take a look at the Gmund swatches. They have some of the most unique paper stocks that I have seen in a really long time.
The thing that has drawn me to Gmund has to be the feel factor. I think that there is more to a great final product than just really amazing design. A stellar piece needs to also have great function and have some type of texture to spark the touch sensory. Whether you do this through raised inks, die-cuts, or embossing, you need to give the viewer some type of texture information for them to register in their brain along with the visual information.
In a world of glossy printed pieces, I feel that if you have the budget and the time to enhance your design with a great stock, then you need to look into using Gmund. They carry a wide selection from Alezan, Treasury, Savanna, and many others to choose from. But make sure that you do your research to ensure the stock that you choose can be used in the treatment you want.
In a nut shell, Gmund offers unique and high quality products in addition to having a snazzy name. So the next time you want to really be above the rest of the print pieces out there, remember to look up Gmund. If you have other stock that you have worked with or have just fallen in love with, please feel free to share.
Several years ago, when I was a sapling in the web design field, I was asked to build a website for an online video rental company. It was a painstaking process figuring out how to position tables (yes, tables) and cascading style sheets to get the page to look like my design. I posted the site and they requested the first round of updates to the site. Every time I started tweaking one area of the page, another area would break, at which point my heart would usually stop and scenes of my client smashing through the door with a shotgun would flash through my mind. I would spend up to a week in utter panic fixing something that, these days I can update in a few minutes.
Have my skills really improved exponentially over the past few years? I’d like to think so. But that’s not what allows me to build and update a website in a fraction of the time it took a few years ago. It’s the use of a solid content management system.
A content management system (or CMS) is an infrastructure that allows users to build a website with far less programming knowledge than ever before. There is only one CMS I know of that allows you to update your site with absolutely zero knowledge of HTML or programming. It’s called Obray. There are countless CMSs available today. Many are open source. The most popular are Drupal, Joomla, Mambo, Wordpress, and others. There are also e-commerce specific CMSs that are built for online sales, such as OSCommerce, ZenCart, Magento, and Opencart.
The tolerance for non-programmers varies greatly among these systems. Wordpress is likely the easiest to install and use for a person who has little to no coding knowledge. If you want a website that is custom designed, you will always be wise to hire an agency or web designer/developer to build the foundation of your site. They will then hand you the steering wheel – the content management system – and let you drive your own site on the information superhighway.
To give a simple analogy, think of a CMS as a pre-fabricated house. The foundation is laid, the framing, sheetrock, plumbing, electrical, and such are all done for you. All you need to do is choose your wallpaper, paint, and decor. New wings (i.e. pages of the site) can be added with the click of a button. Just like updating your home, most content management tools will require learning a few simple skills, such as basic HTML.
As I mentioned earlier, however, if you have no desire or time to learn these skills, the Obray website management system is the winner. Obray is the beyond the cutting edge of CMS. It lets you drag and drop text, image areas and even video from a dock in your browser. Go watch the demo and see why it’s so different from the other systems I’ve mentioned.
If you ever have questions about which is best suited for your company, just shoot me an email.
Wanna be friends?