Tag Archives: New media
Some nice company.
Willingness to experiment is a key to success with digital and social media. Sure, there are emerging fundamentals, which (surprise!) mirror closely those of all media. Chief among these is the principle that people respond when something breaks from the center of the bell curve and delivers the unexpected.
Our own Facebook ads—a nice collection of them reside here—have been thusly treated as an experiment. We’ve been lucky enough to receive a good deal of press for our efforts, and now we’ve been named a finalist in the OMMA Awards for Online Advertising Creativity. Specifically, in the “creative use of facebook” category. Other OMMA finalists include the likes of Google, Disney, Coca-Cola, Starbucks, DreamWorks, Volkswagen, HBO, JetBlue and several other big companies my mother has heard of.
Our agency is humbled and honored to be mentioned in the same show as these brands. Winners will be announced in September in New York. Thanks to everyone for playing along with us.
OK Go: Poster children for a new paradigm.
Recently Damian Kulash, lead singer of OK Go, wrote a piece in the WSJ entitled The New Rock-Star Paradigm. The article is an astute summation of the present state of the music business, specifically how the business has changed in the face of maturing digital communications. The guy isn’t your typical rock group frontman. (more…)
The golden age of engagement.
Our pals and sometimes partners-in-awesomeness, Struck/Axiom, recently helped Gatorade with its new social media command center.
The mission-control-like room features large screens with various social media visualizations, such that Gatorade marketing pros can monitor real time conversations not only related to the brand but its competition, sports nutrition, athletes and other popular culture topics its consumers care about. Here’s a YouTube clip overview.
Carla Hassan, Gatorade’s Sr. Marketing Director, says the goal of this project is to “take the largest sports brand in the world and turn it into the largest participatory brand in the world.”
What Hassan is really talking about is an unprecedented level of brand engagement. Brands by their very nature are participatory. After all, brands are merely the aggregate of consumer perceptions, and these perceptions are shaped by consumers’ interactions or participation with a given brand.
The difference today is that people have social media which acts as an amplifier. Anyone can be a media source and build an audience. Smart brands understand that and embrace engagement.
Congrats to Struck/Axiom and Gatorade.
I didn’t write this on an iPad.
I don’t have an iPad yet. Reason one: Apple develops product in market. So an improved iPad will be out in a few months and will cost less. Reason two: I can’t figure out where it fits into my digital life. I have a MacBook. I have an iPhone. Why do I need an iPad?
That being said, Apple sold about 700,000 units yesterday when the device made its debut. So a few people, who presumably have laptops and smartphones, felt the device serves some purpose.
From the half dozen reviews I’ve read, iPad isn’t any good at making stuff. But it could change the way we consume stuff: books, magazines, newspapers, music, TV, movies, photos, the web and email.
There’s something innately attractive about the tactile nature of the iPhone and now the iPad. That, along with incredible industrial design and user interface. WSJ technology guru, Walt Mossberg, points out:
It could even help, eventually, to propel the finger-driven, multitouch user interface ahead of the mouse-driven interface that has prevailed for decades.
No question, media consumption will continue to evolve. And people who make media content, including advertisers, had better pay attention.
Just a heads up.
UPDATE Monday 4/5: Adweek ponders the iPad this morning. As does AdAge. Both good reads.
Postcards from the leading edge.
A small crew of Red Square kids hit San Francisco this week, and among other business, we had the good fortune to attend and participate in the 4A’s Transformation 2010 Conference. No question communications is experiencing a renaissance, as Arianna Huffington stated on the first day of the conference, “we are living in the golden age of engagement.”
Nick Brien, soon to be head of McCann Worldgroup, gave a great presentation that I feel sums up where we stand as an industry. Bottom line: it’s still about the big marketing idea, but we’re going to have to become more adept at executing concepts across multiple emerging platforms.
I’ll share more thoughts and take-aways from our meetings soon. Oddly, no one from Rice-a-Roni spoke at the conference.
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