This is a really nice short film from R+I Creative that documents how trends and creativity can become contagious in the real world. From music to fashion and entertainment to advertising.
The film attempts to understand the essence of influence, what makes a person influential and all without taking a statistical or metric approach! Written and Directed by Paul Rojanathara and Davis Johnson, the film is a Polaroid snapshot of New York influential creatives who are shaping today’s pop culture. It’s 13 minutes long, but well worth a watch with your morning coffee!
Today during its iPhone 4.0 developer preview, Steve Jobs announced Apple’s much-anticipated mobile advertising platform, iAd. This has been expected since Apple acquired mobile ad platform Quattro Wireless, after having AdMob snatched away by Google (though the FTC may recommend blocking that deal).
Apple will sell and host the ads, giving 60% of ad revenue back to developers, and Jobs says that developers can add ads to their apps “in an afternoon”. Unlike most mobile ads, which kick users outside of the application they’re currently using, iAd keeps users in the same app. In a jab at Flash, while showing an ad, Jobs said “Oh, by the way, all of this is done in HTML 5.”
The first ad Jobs showcased during his demo was for Toy Story 3. It was rendered in HTML 5, was fully interactive, and looked similar to a native app — it actually had a game integrated in it. Jobs said, “”This is a new kind of mobile ad. Have you ever seen a mobile ad like this? Anything even close?”
Second, Jobs showed off an ad for Nike, which showed a history of Nike ads and allowed the user to actually flip through a history of the brand’s shoes. Ads will have access to many of the same APIs as ‘normal’ native applications — they’ll be able to use location services and the accelerometer. Location, in particular, will be important — this is going to be a boon to hyperlocal advertising (provided Apple offers a good way for local businesses to get their ads in the system).
It sounds like Apple won’t be too restrictive on who can build apps: Ad agencies will be able to develop these interactive ads, as will app developers. Though I imagine they’ll have to go through a review process similar to native apps on the App Store. Update: During a Q&A Apple said it would use a “light touch” and that there were obviously some ads they didn’t want to have shown, the same way a TV network doesn’t want some ads shown.
The obvious consequence of this new platform is that ads from other ad networks may well become second-class citizens, perhaps not just from Apple’s perspective but from a functional standpoint. Details are still scant, but if iAds are the only ads on the iPhone that can access the iPhone’s API, then ads from third party networks may be less interactive, and may not be able to as effectively determine the user’s location. Assuming developers embrace iAds and the iPhone continues its strong growth, this could have a significant impact on Google’s mobile ad efforts in the future.
Here’s what Jobs had to say about the launch (we’re updating from from our live notes, some of this may be paraphrased):
“Developers [of free apps] need to find a way to start making their money. A lot of developers turn to advertising – and we think these current advertisements really suck.”
“If you look at advertisements on a phone, it’s not like on a desktop. On a desktop, its about search. On mobile, search hasnt happened. People aren’t searching on their phones. People are spending their time in apps”
The average user spends 30 minutes a day in apps. If we put an add up every 3 minutes, that’s 10 ads per day.
Throughout the iPhone community, that’s 1 billion ad impressions per day
We’ve all seen interactive ads on the web. We want to deliver interaction – but also emotion.
“If you click on an add now, you’re yanked out of your app. As a result, people don’t click on ads.”
“We have figured out how to do interactive and video content without ever taking you out of the app”
Apple will sell and host the ads, and give 60% of ad revenue to developers
We, at ViralBlog, are into social media. We not only hear, read and talk about what is going on, what works and what doesn’t; we also practise it professionally. And we notice that there is a need for marketers to know what us social media geeks are all about.
So, if you are a marketer (or if you happen to know one and want to help him/her) continue reading on these seven social media trends for brands.
1. The Audience Is In Control
Now don’t let this one scare you, more and more marketers understand that ‘in social’ there always is this ’social’ factor. Together people create content about brands, and in many occasions the brands have no idea. Look for what’s already out there and embrace it, like Jeep does once again. 2. Social Media Is Not Free Publicity
‘If you pay peanuts you get monkeys’. That really applies to social media. Big trend we see for the coming years is brands that hire specialized social media content managers; people that not only create a Facebook page and wait and see where it goes (we can tell you now: nowhere), but also actively create news around the brand, make (and keep) it interesting to follow a brand and answer questions. 3. Social Gaming
Do those FarmVille messages in Facebook annoy you? Over 23 million people are fan of this social Facebook game. Simple games that can be played with friend within your fan’s favourite social network. For now people buy sheep and chickens, but soon they buy your product to step up their game. 4. ROI Measurement
Measuring the effect of your on-line activities on (off-line) sales becomes increasingly important. Obviously you, the marketer, see the possibilities of social media marketing and together with your social media agency you have great ideas. Now all you need is approval and money. And as you know you only get that when you can prove the return is bigger than the investment. So measuring and tracking plays a big part in social media marketing. 5. Integrating, Mixing & Sharing
Many brands ask visitors of their (campaign) websites to become a fan on Facebook and/or follow the brand on Twitter. Surely that is great, and you should definitely not stop doing it, but now start looking at integrating these platforms in your brand dotcom. Have video content on your dotcom? Embed it from YouTube. If you ask visitors to participate on your campaign site let them spread the word to their friends on Facebook! 6. Mobile & Location Based Content
Many companies block social networks because the IT guys think they are evil. At the same more and more people have a smartphone, leading to heavy use of social networks on mobile. The integration of social networks with the functionalities of smartphones make great location based social applications, like Foursquare, and make it easy for brand to connect (with) people and places. 7. Social Commerce
Now that more and more brands understand their target audience has a grouped presence on social networks moving (or adding) a shop in social networks is a logical step to take. Look at EasyJet who are planning to sell flights directly on Facebook, and Dell who are embracing group buys by starting its Swarm service.
Constantly evolving and discovering social media leads to new ways of engaging people in marketing strategies – more and more ‘trends’ will be visible. What trends and opportunities do you see in the near (or far) future?
Today, marketing 2.0 likes a circle in which it have three components (Corporation, Channels, and Customer). First, It's not like a separate marketing campaigns. Marketing 2.0 is the continuous processing where marketer must keep track everything on real-time. The marketers have role as a stock brokers. They spent a lot of time for monitor the marketing and they try to understand and forecast the market. Second, audiences will not passive anymore. Audiences can choose a contents that they need and want. They also is the decision maker that content's good or bad. For example, social bookmarking is the where user evaluation the contents. Hence, marketers can't use push strategy anymore. Third, two-way communication is the serious requirement. Fourth, the relationship between corporation and customer will be more strength. That's the effect of two-way and real-time communication.
We give a lot of presentations as you would imagine. Here’s a recent one that we thought might be relevant. A take on the consumer’s changing habits, her transformation from spectator to participant, and some examples of how brands (some Mullen clients, some not) are engaging.
Following are basic notes from the presentation, along with the corresponding slides. I know, we should have recorded it. Maybe next time.
1. This is a modified version of previous content for presentation to Mullen clients regarding social media trends, consumer behavior, and what brands are and can be doing.
2. Numbers. Every presentation needs some numbers. Proves that what you’re talking about is significant. And yes, social media spending, from paid to organic is growing.
3. The equivalent of 86,000 full length Hollywood feature films are uploaded to YouTube weekly. Facebook is fifth largest country in world. Twitter up. Lots of people blog. Get it. The consumer is participating, generating content, sharing, distributing, being the medium.
4. The seven trends as I see them.
5. From fan pages to blogs to Twitter to communities to rants to comments.
6. Still love this.
7. Branson, Jobs, Hsieh, even Frank from Comcast and the guys and women on Twelpforce.
8. Don’t f*&^ with me or I’ll tweet you up.
9. What, you think one insight and one campaign message work in a world where we can’t even agree on a spaghetti sauce?
10. No one has time for your message. Too busy creating their own.
11. Fast, portable, accessible. That’s the new definition of quality.
12. No one really knows.
13. But this is for sure.
14. Remember this? The great Maxell ad?
15. What side of the camera are you on?
16. A brand makes a spot.
17. A day later the consumer version is on YouTube.
18. Old story but still a good one.
19. You wanna negotiate?
20. No, he’s not a used car salesman. He may be the new best example of how to build a business.
21. Video camera, folding table, honest content = $80 million business.
22. Campfire deserves all the awards.
23. Who needs mainstream media when there are bloggers and videographers to spread the word. Learn how to connect, engage and inspire them.
24. A roach coach and a Twitter account (and a decent bbq sauce) are all it takes to busild a business.
25. HP makes some spots.
26. But who’s really going to tell the story.
27. That’s right, we are. Check out You on You.
28. Yes, the content needs to be good, and people do like entertainment, but think of them as a medium, not just an audience.
29. And don’t forget the value of embed code.
30. Don’t know how successful, but a cool idea.
31. Because it thinks in terms of a customer’s relationship to media and content not just to a category and brand. And it realizes that in social your product isn’t your product, it’s your content.
32. Take the easy way out, get your consumer to do the work. They want to anyway.
33. Looks like an ad, right?
34. Nope. It’s really just the beginning of a conversation. An invitation to talk, share, engage. And for the brand a chance to listen.
35. Love this. http://artofthetrench.com
36. If you need convincing, check out how many times people share and pass stuff around.
37. Even better, let your community BE the story.
38. Even better, let your community BE the story.
39. …a platform that helps workers find jobs.
40. Consumers create, share, pass along and join in the donation of money to Feeding America. The Bread Art Project
41. Dunkin’ helps its customers look good to their friends and sells more coffee in the process.
42.What’s a presentation without something from Nike?
43. Crowdsourcing is everywhere.
44. Our online magazine written by Gen Y. It gives young writers a chance to develop a voice. It offers us an experiment and lesson in crowdsourcing. It gives brands access and insight to their future and current community of Millennials.
45. Big news.
46. Not sure this really lines up with the brand’s persona, but it’s a big idea. And it says that community matters to every brand.
47. Used to say: Good advertising tells you what a product does and why you should buy it. Great advertising expresses what a brand stands for and invites you to share in its beliefs.
48. Not anymore. Now it’s about your beliefs and whether I (the brand) cares about you (thank you Big Spaceship’s Michael Lebowitz for this thought).
49. The best expression of what WOM is all about.
50. So even if you use social to “broadcast,” show that you are helping your customers. What you do matters more than what you say. This is the Albion bakery thing.
51. The video, if it works here.
52. Shows they listened.
53. Trying to be real people and respond in real time. Doesn’t always work as well as the concept, but still good.
54. You and your customer.
55. What we do, how we approach it. Note the first two are what all SM types say. We think brands need to also do the latter three. This is business, right?
56. You still need a strategy, tactics, timetable (forever) and measurement.
57. Among the many things we measure.
In this video I interview Steve Rubel, Senior Vice President at Edelman Digital. Steve advises some of the biggest names in the world, such as Dannon, Hewlett Packard, Pepsi and Microsoft, on social media.
Watch this video to pick up some of the nuggets of social media advice he gives his clients. One valuable tip Steve gives is about “shared mutual gain” and what it means. Steve also explains why he quit blogging.
You will also learn why Steve believes digital is mandatory and not optional. And here are a few other takeaways:
Why you need to have a presence on all social networks where your customers are spending time.
How to use mixed messages to tailor your stories to different venues.
How to measure social media metrics.
Why the different vectors of reach, engagement and reputation lead to trust.
Why it’s important to understand people & understand business.
A number of designers have attempted to design a visual, infographic resume, and while this is certainly not mainstream (yet), it is gaining some momentum. I wanted to highlight some of the great examples available on the web, but the line between an infographic resume and a designer resume is tough not to cross. I’ve tried to stay true to only infographic versions here, and didn’t include many good illustrated resumes that didn’t include any visualizations.
I decided to update my résumé with a different perspective on the typical time-line theme. This is just concept art, as there are almost no real metrics represented except for time. There is no energy expenditure unit of measure, nor tics to delineate percentage or otherwise.
I do agree it’s more of an overview and less of a project-experience-oriented resume, but I’ve been thinking a lot about (and looking at) resumes lately, and I feel like what you really need to do is grasp someone’s attention first. This is whyhttp://www.percious.com is listed at the top, and that’s about all listed (no address, phone number, etc.) The other thing I was thinking about doing was to add an image map with links to provide more information about the things I have worked on.
Also using the subway map metaphor, Kevin Wang plots out his activities during his school years.
Curriculum Vitae, by Uito2 in 2007, shows his experience level in different software packages as progress bars.
Chester, Lau Cheuk Hang, does a great job utilizing a timeline at the top of his resume with spanning arcs to highlight time spent in different activities.
Greg Dizzia also creates a Curriculum Vitae showing vertical bars spanning a timeline for each company, and adds an additional element of icons to represent different experiences during each project.
This lists my history in the design world (some lesser clients have been left out) - Designed using univers exclusively. This is an appendage to a traditional resume, to be included as a forward page in my portfolio.
Jonathan Kaczynski, also tries a subway map style using the different lines as categories instead of attempting a timeline. I actually think this approach works a little bit better, the timeline versions appear difficult to translate into a subway map.
I am currently in the process of remaking my portfolio. It will have the appearance of a mass transit system’s website. This is the resumé that I’m working on to go along with the portfolio. It still needs a bit of clean-up and and logo needs some work.
Justin Evilsizor’s version incorporates a timeline, a level-of-skill chart and I personally love the addition of the Meyer’s-Briggs Type Indicator.
Arnaud Velten, Cartographer of Complexity, created this isometric resume. At its heart is a timeline, but he has added an incredible amount of detail to each of his skills. Seems like too much detail for me, but that may be what he wants to convey.
Maybe not technically a resume, Ritwik Dey’sLife Map is an impressive timeline of his education and activities.
This information design piece maps out my interests between ages 6 and 24 and the context in which they were born and nurtured. It also brings to surface how these interests influenced and were in turn influenced by milestones in my personal journey.
Stephen Gates’ resume is very clean a take on the timeline.
Why did no one try something new? Why wasn’t there one designer who took on their resume as design challenge to do something visual and different? I also realized that I was just as guilty as everyone else so I set out to design something different. So after some work in my spare time I have the design shown above (click on it to see it full sized). It is just a start and it feels like it is heading in an interesting direction but let me know what you think.
Bob van Vliet also created a very clean timeline resume.
I thought I’d try something different from the standard A4 with a dull summary of positions. Four timelines represent the most important parts of my life so far: Work, Education, Activism and Fun. The years get wider towards the present as those say more about who I am now than when I just started university.
Christopher Brown’s colorful infographic timeline inspired by Michael Anderson’s concept.
Jordan Carroll’s resume includes a few different elements. Timeline, map and charts combine into one overall resume.
Another colorful timeline resume, this one by Pruek Wiyaporn, also appears inspired by Michael Anderson’s concept.
Jesse Burton also has a very nice stylized timeline resume.
Which ones do you like? Have I missed any other good ones out there?
EDIT: Here are a few more that I missed when I originally wrote the post:
Mike Wirth is a freelance infographic designer. His colorful timeline has experiences above the X-axis, education is below and his geographic locations are the shaded bars in the background. When he learned specific software packages is also identified in the colored area, which shows how long he has been using the different software packages.
Gabriele Bozzi designed this resume concept that focuses totally on skills and experience. Education is identified in the small bubbles, and the skills are connected to specific examples of her experience. She is working on a separate timeline graphic.
Over the last several years, a great deal of social media testing and experimenting has been completed. Marketers have been working towards identifying how social media can help influence everything from brand loyalty to search engine placement. The growth of the major social media channels (including Facebook, Twitter, etc.) has continued to attract the attention of marketers across all industries.
A study by eMarketer showed that 39% of marketing professionals considered social media marketing to be very effective in influencing brand reputation while 53% considered it somewhat effective. The other top effects include increased brand awareness, improved search engine rankings and increased website traffic.
For the hospitality industry, we have found that aggressive management and involvement in the top social media sites can deliver significant results. With the inclusion of social media in the universal search results, the opportunities to saturate the SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages) are plentiful. We have seen significant improvements in search engine visibility for those hotels that incorporate social media into their marketing plans, and actively manage the channels in which they participate.
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Contributed by: Kimberly Ercius, Director of Business Development
