DOUG SCHUMACHER

experience designer + writer

creative

Creativing :: Massive Glastonbury photo tag, Google’s uphill run at Facebook, and mobile heads in-store

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What’s going on in new media marketing, pulled from social bookmarking site Creativing.com:

Tweet of the Week

Man. I could listen to Jony Ive talk about “materials” all day long. I mean—unless I had the option of doing literally anything else.

GlastoTag – One huge photo. A whole load of tags. | Glastonbury Music Festival

A very simple but powerful idea. Take a hi-res photo of everyone at a concert, and then enable them to zoom in anywhere, find, and tag themselves via Facebook. I’d also have added an easy way for them to drop and save their photo as their profile pic.

Disney Puts Movie Tickets on a Facebook Site – NYTimes.com

One of those ideas where you look at it and say “Really, nobody’s done that yet?”

Best New Mashups: World Cup, Interview Questions, and Innovative Online Dating

More mashups. An interesting World Cup mashup that attempts to predict the score via Twitter tweets, a site to help people keep up with the latest job interview trends (you know, those trick questions!), and a match making site based on music taste from Last.fm. Interesting functionality/productivity in those last two.

Google Trying to Build Facebook Competitor? Good Luck With That

A good reminder of the importance of cohesion across all your brand touchpoints. Google has an impressive lineup of touchpoints, competitive enough feature-wise, but often lacking the key ingredient. A critical mass audience.

If Banner Ads Are Dead, What’s Next? – MarketingVOX

While the headline is a little alarmist, the point is, a lot of people are finding banners aren’t driving the response rates they used to. Of course, that happens with any medium. For many advertisers, it’s most likely a matter of them not doing anything of remote interest in the banner in the first place. And then they wonder why nobody notices their ad.

Rory Sutherland: Sweat the small stuff | Video on TED.com

Fantastic TED presentation by a British ad exec on how big ideas don’t require big budgets.

Gay Social Network Fabulis Gets Backing from GeoCities Founder

An example of how Facebook may lose social website cache, but still retain a valuable business model. Social sites could easily go niche, especially ones build around currently strong communities. But like Fabulis, they’ll likely use Facebook integration to accelerate growth at their inception. And that keeps Facebook in a powerful position to deliver relevant advertising.

Vuvuzelas for BP by Adam Quirk — Kickstarter

I’ve mentioned kickstarter before. And out of that biz model comes an edgy cause marketing campaign that’s not only blowing away the creator’s estimated budget, but has to be generating enormous amounts of buzz. I really think there’s a lot of potential for a sort of event artists that can pull these things together in a way that people will want to support.

Big Potential for In-Store Mobile Marketing – eMarketer

Mobile isn’t just for when your customer is trying to find you. It can be for when they’re standing in your store. However, while people are growing more accustomed to grabbing their mobile for product research while in store, only about 20% of Multichannel retailers are using any form of m-commerce. Looks like a lot of potential growth.

YouTube – Nissan Leaf iAd announcement

What can you take from this? That there’s likely going to be a lot of business in the area of building the experiences backing these ads. Of course, the comments would indicate that people won’t tolerate iAds. Yet again and again, people choose ad-supported over pay models. (Hulu will be an interesting case study, although news site after new site has failed trying to go paid.)

Creativing :: Conan O’Brien’s tweet, Social media pushes the ‘cuddle’ button, and Web 3.0?

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What’s going on in new media marketing, pulled from social bookmarking site Creativing.com:

Tweet of the Week – Conan O’Brien

11 years between “Toy Story’s” and 7 months between “Twilight’s.” By that measure, the “Jonah Hex” sequel should be out in 3 days.

Virgin Gives Free Tickets to ‘Influencial’ Tweeters – MarketingVOX

If you’re into the numbers side of campaigns, this is a good read. Also a good back and forth on the value of social media as a demand creation tool. Nothing overly conclusive, but the varying points are worth reading. The end line really summarizes it well. No single tactic can do everything. It has to be a group effort.

Kynetx Introduces the Programmable Internet – the Language of the Building Block Web | Stay N’ Alive

Those wondering when “Web 2.0” would run it’s course, this could be the next direction. The trajectory of tech developments continues to be sharable, with rapid development times enabling products to get to market fast. There are several good examples of how this tech can play out.

Social Media Increases “Cuddle” Chemical Production in the Brain [STUDY]

So social media pushes the ‘cuddle’ button. That means it’s either jumped the shark or is so irreversibly embedded in our psyche’s that we’re never going back. Despite all the hype and it’s growth curve, I’d have to vote it’s the latter.

While at first glance this sounds a bit cooky, the three bullet points at the bottom reiterate things we’ve known about communication and writing for a long time. Write with verbs and not adjectives, sex sells, and use simple language for broader appeal. Signs that social media is a not-so-distant relative to traditional media.

Who Will Fall to Facebook Questions? – MarketingVOX

I recently covered Formspring as an example of answer sites that are producing remarkable traffic numbers. Granted, Formspring has a big sensationalistic slant to it. But the underlying growth is real, as this investment by Facebook clearly demonstrates. So bottom line is, despite all the content and site experiences already out there, people still have a lot of questions. Seems like an opportunity for a lot of brands.

Twitter Annotations Are Coming — What Do They Mean For Twitter and the Web?

A discussion on Twitter’s forthcoming Annotations, which get’s pretty technical fast. However, the first couple of paragraphs delve into what the real potential, and potential problems, of annotations is all about. And you can watch the video at the end of the article, if you don’t get shaky camera sickness.

Augmented Reality: Thinking Beyond Branded Hype | MobileBehavior

While this is probably one of the most robust AR mobile apps yet developed, the best part of this article is the expanded thinking on what really makes a great mobile app or AR experience, and what direction that technology is going.

9 Universal Principles of Viral Media Sites

If you’re in the content development space, you’re likely in the meme development space to some degree. This article lists points that, while obvious, are also good reminders. Bottom line is, memes are a fickle business, and need as much surrounding support as possible.

Secrets to Revenue and Innovation in New Product Development | Nielsen Wire

A summary of some remarkable findings relative to product development. Keep upper management out of the early ideation stages. And off-site teams tend to produce better ideas than those on site. Bottom line is, companies need a fresh perspective, and driving innovation from within the status quo is apparently not getting the job done as effectively.

Social Media as Digital Plastic Surgery – Eric Wegerbauer

With social media continuing it’s surge to overtake seemingly every other site category out there, a lot of contrarians are beginning to predict it’s pending doom. Many take the boredom approach, but I don’t buy that. It will reinvent itself, much like gaming. Others speak to the loss of privacy. Like that’s stopped anyone or anything on the Net so far. But Eric’s point is interesting to me. That the use of social media monitoring of customers by brands like healthcare providers and insurance companies will force many people to craft their online persona’s, killing off a lot of the authenticity. A good point, and something that hits directly on social media’s strongest appeal.

Creativing :: Mary Meeker’s online advertising predictions, Flash ads on iPhone, and 600 shopping mashups

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What’s going on in new media marketing, pulled from social bookmarking site
Creativing.com:

Tweet of the Week

I say, “Someone I follow on Twitter said…” way too often in normal conversation.

@CMSummit – Mary Meeker’s Internet Trends Presentation

Probably the single best predictor of the future of the ad business I’ve seen in one place.

Record A Song On The Subway… Or Anywhere : NPR

Yes, there’s no shortage of tech wonders as of late. And yet, sometimes things really stand out amid a wave of innovation that reminds us just how absurdly advanced things are becoming. This did that for me. I’ve been playing with multi-track recording for years, and to think that technology that you can record a studio album on could be something you carry around on your phone is remarkable. As if we need yet another reminder of really how crazy this mobile revolution is going to be.

Bros Icing Bros

Latest in the ‘creative meme’ department. This would seem to have all the earmarks of a brand-driven meme; especially the seemingly way-too polished website. Then again, the whole thing is an insult to the brand. Interesting, but I’m not ready to carry around my “Ice Block” just yet.

BP buys Google, Yahoo search words to keep people away from real news on Gulf oil spill disaster

Just pathetic. This isn’t the era of transparency because someone thought it was a good idea. It’s because the free flow of information is such that it’s more and more difficult for companies like BP to lie.

Live, From Deep in the Gulf – NYTimes.com

While I haven’t found much to credit BP for in this mess, this is one instance. It really plays to a much deeper approach to handling this problem. Instead of trying to spin everything, acknowledge the problem, and give people access to information so they don’t feel like they’re being played. Of course, they haven’t done that across the board, and thus this feels more like an aberration for the brand versus a genuine effort to level with the public.

IfItWasMyHome.com – Visualizing the BP Oil Disaster

This smart data/map mashup places a region equal to the BP oil spill on a map in the area your most familiar with: Your home area. What I find really smart about this is that the title “If it was my home” adds emotional relevance that just the technology mashup alone wouldn’t do.

Adobe to Bring Flash-Based Ads to iPhone

I wouldn’t think Apple would oppose this, because unlike their previous blocking of using Flash to author iPhone apps, the authoring of banner ads isn’t where the money is; it’s in selling the ad units. That’s a very different scenario from apps, where it’s all about the sale of the app, and so Apple would have a much more vested interest in controlling that process. Whatever the case, though, it’s odd to see a company like Adobe — which via Flash played such a large role in bringing a richer experience to online advertising — being relegated to this sort of workaround to keep their technology relevant. Another reminder of how fast things change in this biz.

Best Buy’s Movie Mode Enables Second Screen Interaction | MobileBehavior

As we’ve seen, the future may not be so much about the merger of the proverbial three screens as it is the integration of them. This is a mobile app that gives you a peak into what characters are saying during the end credits of a movie. Seemingly a small sliver of the real potential here.

Seth’s Blog: Paperback Kindle

It’s interesting to see how Seth’s recommendation to the Kindle team for warding off Apple is all about user share. That’s something every mobile manufacturer and carrier should be taking notes on, as well. But the crux of the story is in the last line, when he tells of seeing a kid in diapers operating an iPod Touch. One of these days people will stop underestimating the importance of good user interface design.

600 Shopping Mashups

One of the things I recommend is reading about marketing-oriented technology, even if you don’t understand much of what they’re saying. So while the site is Programmable Web, don’t let that scare you. What’s readily noticeable is that the vast majority of these are shopping comparison tools. And while they may be full-screen tools right now, most are probably a fairly simple conversion away from being a mobile app. The list is definitely worth a quick scan.

7 ways to get more out of your creative

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My latest iMedia article:

What do you do if a campaign’s creative budget gets cut by 20 percent? Do you say the creative will be 20 percent less impactful and call it a day?

Hardly.

Sadly, falling budgets, especially in the area of production, are a challenge a lot of companies in this business are facing.

Complicating that challenge is the push for more integrated campaigns. That means more assets spread across a broader range of media environments — not exactly the route to lower creative costs.

But the best way to maintain quality with a smaller budget may not be by producing assets in less quantity, but rather by doing things differently. As campaign planning becomes more integrated, the increased awareness of how all media are interconnected can open up new opportunities for improved efficiencies.

Here are seven ways that an integrated approach to campaign development can help you accomplish better results with the creative assets you develop.

The rest of the story …

Creativity and data: A marriage, if not a perfect one

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In this post, Seth Godin writes about taking the high road. I want to lead with his summary paragraph, because the high road is too often seen as prima donna boulevard.

“Data is your friend. And the data shows that the top blogs, top lenses, top magazines… they all follow the high road. If you need to be manipulative or non-transparent to make a buck, time to rethink the plan.”

My point is, for anyone in emerging media marketing, pretty much from here forward, the creative and the analytics are inextricably linked.

Campaign analytics have progressed to a place where very few people in a company’s marketing department are going to ignore them. Especially in digital media.

One of the benefits of analytics is that the more you understand them, the quicker you can assess the latest emerging technologies and how to create for them.

I break campaign metrics down into 3 sequential categories:

  1. Response
  2. Engagement
  3. Conversion

That roughly parallels the buying decision funnel.

  1. How does the customer respond to the general proposition you’re offering?
  2. Does that proposition keep their interest and cause them to dig deeper?
  3. At the end of the day, did they want the product? And if not, where did it fall through?

Campaigns today are fluid. Or at least they should be. The creative job no longer ends at campaign launch. That’s when things really heat up.

Of course, analytics aren’t perfect. People flush their cookies. They use different computers. The husband sends the link to his wife, who makes the purchase.

But marketing will probably never be about perfection. It’s about information that improves your intuition. It reminds me of a quote that fits digital marketing tightly:

“It’s better to be vaguely right than precisely wrong.”