and now for something just completely hilarious. 

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This UX experience is incredible - what an awesome way to display a photographers work! It also is a really neat look at the way a user interacts on a tablet versus the PC - I wonder if eventually tablet mannerisms will dictate our desktop interactions…

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I love this guy’s use of human caricatures to make a typeface. It’s creative, fun and whimsical. I wish I could see more huge letterforms like this on websites today. 

Hold The Phone: THIS is the year of mobile?

I mean, c’mon - seriously?!

Media experts, texting fiends and mobile fanatics alike have been sitting around at every SXSW and Digital Content Newfront conference saying that this year is the year of mobile. It’s like some giant tech circle jerk. From QR codes to smartphone apps that promise miniscule prizes and act like its building “brand equity” or helping to drive “cross platform viability” or some other buzz word you can think of, I’m having a really hard time believing all of the hype. 

Recently I’ve seen a lot of marketers placing QR - quick response - codes in their DM and print ads and tons of mobile apps encouraging social engagement and interaction, but I’m really wondering if its a smart allocation of their media dollars or if its just screaming into an abyss without a direct purpose. I get it - why not place a fancy looking code or cheap marketing device that can, at the end of the day, help you track the value and effectiveness of your advertising dollars? Well, at the end of the day, what’s it really doing for the consumers?

Take for instance Lupe Fiasco’s recent PR stunt in NYC. Fiasco tweeted “union square, nyc. just look up in the sky. 7pm.” Fans flooded into the huge pedestrian intersection to only see a soundless laser show that looked something like a music video that - at the end - displayed a QR code that directed fans to order the album at the exclusive presale. While it did result in a high number of presale orders, creating such a huge hype for just a stupid mobile interaction disappointed a lot of fans and even made some enemies. 

 

More recently Pepsi teamed up with IntoNow, a Shazam-like mobile app that listens to ads, and launched a campaign that encourages viewers to use IntoNow to record a Pepsi ad and potentially win a free Pepsi. While this would allow Pepsi to track its TV advertising spends - which are huge in comparison to most other brands - ultimately letting them see who’s actually seeing/responding to their ads, I don’t see many consumers beyond the diehard Pepsi fanatics and iPhone-yielding kids in need of the next sugar rush taking advantage of this. The cost-benefit ratio just doesn’t match up! 

Now I seem like I’m just being a jerk towards all of these efforts with no grounds. Mobile technology-based advertising is an easy way to track your advertising dollars and see who is looking at your ad and what times have the highest concentrations. It banks on that gen-Y obsession with social sharing, but I wonder if its resting on its laurels of just being “cool.” Lest we be remiss in remembering that this is the generation that is desensitized and highly critical of all the advertising out there. Like Lupe’s NYC Flop or what I seeing being a wasted effort from Pepsi to track its TV ad views, there’s just not a whole lot of valuable consumer incentives to draw the consumer to action. At the end of the day, mobile-based advertising has to create true value for the consumer and not just direct them to some dumb website or reward them with something as insignificant as a soda. As for whether or not 2011 will be the year mobile truly takes form and comes to fruition - I really don’t think that’s even a question anymore. Mobile has been around and had a significant voice since 2005, its how mobile is use that will dictate its future and viability in the marketplace.  

Dude, Does This Make My Butt Look Big?

I wanted to use this post as an homage to the media’s obsession with bromantic advertising. Albeit, advertising to the average American male has never been an easy task - he’s strong, uncaring, poised yet could give a shit, able to get an erection at age 67, and somehow manages to have that “out of bed” look with a perfect five o’clock shadow when he walks in the office first thing in the morning. Beneath that casual exterior lies a very conscious and concerned-about-his appearance little boy who, unlike his female counterpart, is horrified at the thought of discussing male personal-care products. When looking at the ads out there today, the solution to getting the message out there has been unbelievably simple: use a dude. 

First, look at the last wildly popular Old Spice campaign from Weiden + Kennedy. It shows the peak of male physical perfection doing the most outrageously absurd male things that any man could imagine ultimately as a result of his bathing soap. It sounds absurd, but it worked. The campaign sparked numerous mock campaigns from Dairy Queen and Edge, and created a huge social movement. Next, look at Head and Shoulders spokesperson Troy Polamalu, whose finesse is able to convince men nationwide to fight back against those flakes just like they would on the football field. Finally, the timeless classics Viagra and Cialis. They show all these salt-and-pepper uber-successful guys casually talking about their limp love limbs and how that little pill brought it all back to life.

I think its interesting to look at all of these brand personifications from a media standpoint and what they mean to the consumer. Popularization of “beauty products for men” are making it okay for guys to objectify themselves, and realize that dandruff, bad odors, and an uncooperative member are all things that products out there can help with. It perplexes me because of how archaic it is. Brands have recently found their mascots to become lackluster or unappealing - just look at Ronald McDonald, the clown that recently got axed by the fast food giant. How is that brand spokespersons are still wildly popular for us guys when we’re so “desensitized” to advertising. I think its because, for me as well as many other guys, we really need that “idol” to tell us that its okay to think about those things. We’re followers - we need guidance and social cues to help us maneuver through our lives, and who better than sports stars and ripped models.

The way media has helped to create the new 21st century image-conscious male is something that I think is going to be interesting, especially as the younger demographics begin to age. Where will gender walls be broken and built? What new constructs will be developed that dictate the male vibrato in American society? All I can say for now is that I’d love to smell like a tropical island while riding horse backwards.

Put Magic Back in Advertising

It’s such a simple idea, but its something that’s recently gone by the wayside in much of today’s highly calculated, results and ROI driven advertising. I mean, think back to the era of Mad Men. Clients used to believe that what agencies were capable of was magic - companies couldn’t do it themselves and they never understood how the agencies could create such enormous success stories from a brand. Fast forward to today where many clients would argue that agencies have no spark and that they’d be better suited to run their ads than anyone else. I would argue its not just a “change in the marketplace” but a lack of advertising magic. We advertisers used to create lovemarks from a brand - something so inescapably profound that it stayed with us for our lives. What has happened today that there’s such a disconnect with the culture?

There are still agencies doing it right. Take for instance these French bus stop ads that featured a touchable display to raise citizens awareness about public health and how they can learn to save lives

Its something so simple, yet it’s engagingly powerful. As the video’s headline speaks so clearly: it brought life back to the billboard. 

Next, consider foursquare and the industry’s recent - albeit somewhat ungrounded - obsession with location-based advertising. Most of it is just a wasted effort, but recently GrantaPet released something that was, dare I say, both innovative and worthwhile! They put location based street billboards in high traffic pet neighborhoods. Passersby could check in to the billboard and their dog would receive a treat for the check-in. A clever way to introduce the new product that actually creates some sticky time with your brand rather than just passing out free swag to every lame person with a smartphone.

Finally, one of my more recent advertising/media obsessions has been over the Weiden+Kennedy Levi’s campaign for “Go Forth” and “There’s Work To Be Done and Undone.” The campaigns paradigm move in its second phase is what really took me by surprise. In their cinematic commercials, they picked real people from a real American town as the voice of their brand. What greater spokespersons for an “all-American” jean than those hard working Americans who, through hard times, are still pulling through. 

The media concept behind this creative idea is something so moving, and yes - magical.

At the end of the day, what I like about these ads is how they used media to make magic, and brought life back into advertising. Ads have to create value for their consumers, but they also have to make the consumers want to care about the brands. Media has the potential to create that lovemark by drawing the window that ultimately creates the image that consumers will see and love. I hope that more advertising and media realizes that its more than showing something cool. I hope that we don’t lose sight of the power that advertising has. I hope the magic doesn’t die.

This is just freaking cool. Yes, it uses Adobe’s Air interface - which is sorta flawed - but the way this UX designer was able to “streamline” the facebook experience and focus JUST on the content is something that is a pretty big undertaking. I kinda wish someone at the Facebook offices would see this and get an idea of where they should be going with their design…

The Daily’s Looming Failure

After watching financial reports, a project defending its case, and an embittered Murdoch backlash, I’m beginning to wonder if The Daily - the new iPad-exclusive national newspaper app is really worth all the hype it got during its public debut and first months. 

The Daily has thrown nearly $10M into trying to garner subscribers, and it really did promise something so groundbreakingly cool. It was going to be the it of 2011 that would revitalize the “print” industry and show that it still had a spring in its step. Social share features, constantly-updated interactive content, and witty/relevant headlines. However, there are a couple of things that the Daily just didn’t take into consideration and didn’t have the foresight to know before it unveiled its creation on February 3rd. 

Why would anyone pay to share news?

No but seriously - why would you? We live in a world where the fastest way to get something is to update your twitter feed, follow the trending topics or read mashable or gawker. While The Daily was banking on their readership wanting to share the story - they missed the whole “story” aspect. A lot of The Daily’s content is littered with large photos and miniscule depth. They air on the side of “less is more” which, when you’re trying to get into the meat of something, doesn’t really do you any good. If they wanted to know the tweetable version of the story, they’d have just gone to twitter - and that’s what they’re doing. 

Don’t pussyfoot around the hard story

This sounds so simple, but its a big thing that The Daily missed. A lot can be said about a person from what news source they read. Wall Street Journal skews extremely right while Economist leans slightly left, but The Daily doesn’t really seem to know what the hell it is. Inherent with any Murdochian piece, its headlines are constantly slamming liberal political agenda, but it seems to side with the the liberal majority in its body copy and photos. In order for The Daily to gain any significant clout and create a brand identity for itself, its going to have to start giving its stories a singular personality - right now its just schizophrenic. 

At the end of the day, The Daily’s lack of success has proven a very important thing in the media world: the answer isn’t always to go digital. The Daily did “everything right” - huge earned media hype, great writers, fabulous design. It was the newspaper for the Gen-Y’er. I think that this case proves that, from a media standpoint, we must look at the tangible ways consumers engage not only with the medium itself, but the content of that media vehicle. In The Daily’s case, its a news source. If Murdoch wants his labor of love to survive, he has to find a way to distinguish it from the hyper-speed of twitter and the in-depth specialization of publications like the WSJ or The Economist. It’s going to be a long road ahead for this still-young digital newspaper, I’m eager to see how the story unfolds.

A Humanistic Look at Facebook

Our entire lives we’re told to stand out from the crowd, “think different” as Steve Jobs might say, or just make our mark on society. It is true that comparing ourselves to the rest of society has been history’s way of separating classes, creating biases, prejudices and being the cause of that infamous debate: who gets to sit in the front seat - the older one or the younger one. Aside from these ancient battles, our desire to distinguish ourselves is what truly defines us as a race. It dictates our interests, what books we read, movies we see, music we listen to, and is even a precursor of our life pursuits.

The advent of the internet and Mark Zuckerberg’s redefining of what was “social” created Facebook. Consider if you will the sheet volume of information we cast out into the internet. On Facebook one can share their likes, interests, daily/weekly/monthly exploits, their tastes in everything from music to movies to social causes, all in our eternal hope that the vast abyss of the internet will shed light to some obscure artist or author that we otherwise would have never known. However, for all these personal gains, society as a whole is beginning to lose control of its personal information and - in a way - pigeon-holing itself by trading privacy for convenience. 

Take for instance the social transparency levels that we have in our everyday lives: home, private; work, completely transparent; bars, transparent; etc. But where does Facebook lie on the spectrum. Facebook is more of a blurred space. We want desperately to get all of the social benefits of the internet, but we want no consequences and believe that its our sole information - free and untaxed. This isn’t really the case, and every Facebook privacy setting change fiasco can attest to this public sentiment.

This blurred social transparency is what has now begun to lump society into hyper-targeted, hyper segmented advertising niches. Advertisers can interact with pinpointed consumers based on their past interests, dating history, future travel plans, and now even where they’re checking in with their friends. Data mining is getting better and better, and with it so will the consumer benefits. The dilemma with the entire system lies in what will be intrusive and what will not be, and only time - and the public action - will tell. 

At the end of the day, I feel that advertising has to look at things like social media for what they are - a human experience. You can’t really gauge engagement like we did in 1999 with CTR’s or look at gross impressions or public opinion lab polls. Yes, math is getting better and better on the internet, and we’re able to better understand how things work on this scope more than ever before, but can’t lose sight of the very personal aspect of Facebook. Social media is exactly what it says, social. Instead of looking to the people using facebook as locks to break, they should be seen as mysteries to discover, converse and grow with together.  

Osama is Dead & Twitter is in 3D

The New York Times has released probably one of the coolest things I’ve ever seen that makes me view the media side of twitter in a whole new, and more legitimate, way.

Looking at the huge news of Osama bin Laden’s death that struck America - the nation was, within seconds, in a media storm. As Obama reared for his announcement to not only the nation but the world (as he did so facing the rest of the world from the East Wing of the White House), he set the tweeters and bloggers aflame who began sharing mashable links, hashtags, and micro-urls. I couldn’t help but think what this would look like, how quickly it all spread and where it all came from. I mean, the beauty of Twitter is to play connect the dots with a story and ultimately see how, when and where a story was first launched. For this, it was from the White House press secretary with a 9:45pm EST tweet that would ultimately lead to this game-changing news. 

The NYT’s 3D histogram is able to show the trajectory of a news story from its inception or original tweeter, and how far that story is carried, during what peak times, and when it finally dilutes into other original tweets. This is huge for advertisers and the way media works. We can track how our message is being both spread and diluted (after all, its about creating an authentic conversation so you wouldn’t want to just get retweeted). Advertisers can better gauge the effectiveness of a message, what key words carry further in the twitterverse, how effective the message actually is, and ultimately what’s the lifespan of that micro-marketing effort.

In the game of media, the question is always “how do we know its actually working?” While this isn’t the answer to the social media expert’s prayers, this technology’s ability to quantify the viability of a news story or a promotional effort on Twitter is pretty cool. Looking forward to future tweets and ground-breaking news, the catalyst of a media frenzy will always need to be measured, and this is a definite step in the right direction.