Filed under: Player's Corner 2.0
- What, How and Why?
I recently received an Advanced Mobile Marketing Certification from University of San Francisco. It was an eight week online course, with video lessons accompanied with study booklets. I thought it was a great insight into the world of mobile, the process in developing campaigns, applications, messaging, proximately marketing, etc…
I’ll admit going in I had a BlackBerry with Sprint. Leaving the class, I had an iPhone with Verizon. Now this was somewhat coincidental, because I did sell my house and move while enrolled in the class, which lead to coverage issues. However, as I look back on this, it only illuminated the differences in carriers and smart phone devices. Here’s some facts for you to consider, according to the class data, BlackBerry currently has the most consumer smart phones in consumer’s hands, iPhone is selling more smart phones than any other device and the Android market is selling more devices than the other two combined. Wait, how can that be? The reasoning is this: BlackBerry has had a hold on the market for a while but is slipping dramatically in sales; the iPhone is only one device and is a hot, hot seller; the Google Android platform drives several devices across many companies and is therefor available in greater numbers.
The above represents only the smart phone market which only accounts for 25% of cellular phones sold today and a bit over 15% in total market. With these stats, how is it best to communicate, SMS (text) or MMS (text, image and video)? Do you wish to push messaging (sending consumers) or pull messaging (having consumers visit you)? And when developing campaigns, is it best to concentrate on application development, search or display messaging or mobile website development. And once you decide this, what’s the best technology to employ for optimum use?
Another choice seems to be proximity marketing and how to communicate to the consumer. Blue tooth is a great technology, as is QR codes and SMS text. But which is best and which requires a double opt in? And if you offer up coupons, will the user be able to redeem the offer at market. Is there special technology for this and mobile billings in general? Did I mention legal? What statutes and agencies govern mobile marketing?
The mobile marketing space is very young and growing at an alarming rate, set to surpass PC internet usage by 2014. The space is as personal to consumers as you can get, most having the device on them throughout the day. So when considering your mobile plan think about your audience, your goals and what devices will be employed. Once you narrow down who you are talking to and how best to reach them, the rest will fall into place. Like everything else, it comes down to good planning and common sense. All questions must be considered and you may need a mobile partner to get there. If you are interested in this conversation and would like to reach out, please contact me at brett.player@play.vta.com. Thanks and good luck on your mobile adventure!
- Brett Player
Creative Director
Play, a VTA Comapany
brett.player@play.vta.com
Filed under: Player's Corner 2.0
It’s true. By late 2011, Wachovia will be a name of the past, replaced with Wells Fargo. Those of us who have brand loyalty to Wachovia feel the pain. But it doesn’t have to be this way. Let’s look at the mergers of the past and how each resulted in a revised brand. One of promise and hope.
Let’s start with Wachovia merging with First Union in 2001. Interbrand, a NY branding agency, tackled this re-brand. It borrowed equity from each bank’s colors, and when initially shown to First Union executives, one said, “it reminds me of the ocean and mountains.” It feels friendly, approachable and progressive. The type is reflective of Wachovia’s serif, but leans towards First Union’s letter width. It’s a good union of both brands.
First Union & Wachovia Merger
In 1998, when Nations Bank purchased Bank of America, they decided on the smaller bank’s name. Good move. “Nations Bank” sounds at best like a federal bank and at worst like an imperial entity. So it seems natural that when Brand Union surveyed consumers, they concluded the Bank of America name was more approachable.
The current logo kept only the name equity from Bank of America (logo designed by the legendary Walter Landor, of Landor & Associates) and the colors from Nations Bank. Sure, the logotype is a sanserif but is different from the Nations Bank logotype.
Brand Union coined the logo the “flagscape,” saying, “the logo consists of woven elements suggesting movement and evoking an arrow pointing towards the future.” I see this and more, having the logo symbolize fields and crops that helped to build America’s wealth and community. Again, well done.
Nations Bank and Bank of America Merger
In the same year, Citicorp merged with Travelers Group, creating Citi. I was working in NY at Desgrippes Gobé, redesigning the brand of an international bank. So when the new Citibank logo rolled out, I took notice and relayed my approval to our creative director.
While the new company maintained Citicorp’s “Citi” brand in its name, it borrowed from the Travelers’ distinctive “red umbrella” as the arc in the new corporate logo. I noticed the simplicity of connecting individuals (the two “i”s) in commerce and also protecting your assets. Both are done through the metaphoric use of the red arc. Paula Scher of Pentegram created this logo.
Citicorp and Travelers Merger
Here’s Paula’s original napkin sketch.
Paula Scher's Citi Napkin Sketch
On our quick overview, it seems as though there was a process in exploring and maintaining equity from both brands. Wachovia borrowed the green and type width from First Union; Bank of America took the name of one, the colors and sanserif typeface from another; Citibank took the name from one and the umbrella symbol from the other.
It’s fair to say something new was created, and consumers felt that their interest was taken into consideration. Both brands “merged” to create a new brand, a new day. Hope. So how about it Wells Fargo? Where’s Wachovia in this merger?
Please let me know what you think. I know I’ll miss my corner bank.
- Brett Player, Creative Director of Play and VTA
For more on the re-branding efforts, click on the following links Wachovia and First Union, Nations Bank and Bank of America and Citibank and Travelers. For more examples of re-branding efforts of large mergers click here.
Filed under: Audio A, Vidiots | Tags: cc commercial, closed captioning, disabilities act, hd broadcast, hearing impaired, tv ad
Captioning your commercial is still considered an option by most advertisers, but recent observations of captioning practices lead me to believe it is becoming a necessity.
Most of us are familiar with the Americans with Disabilities Act, which requires Closed Captioning on all program-length material, whether TV programs or extended infomercials. Realizing that approximately 140 people out of every 1,000 suffer from some hearing “trouble” (source: http://gri.gallaudet.edu/Demographics/deaf-US.php), many advertisers also choose to caption their commercials.
While captioning your commercials also benefits people with perfect hearing that watch television in places where the sound is purposefully low or inaudible – sports bars, doctor and hospital waiting rooms, and airport gates, I recently discovered another excellent reason for captioning your commercial.
While working out on my treadmill, I switched my television display to the Closed Captioning option rather than crank up the audio level. I’ve been helping out with CC encoding at VTA for awhile now, and one of the first things I was taught was to insert a “CC OFF” bit at the end of the program or commercial. But while trodding along on the treadmill, I was amazed at the number of shows and commercials that obviously didn’t have this command. When it is missing, the final captioning stays on the screen until the next captioned material begins playing.
If that next commercial is yours, and it isn’t captioned, the captioning from the previous piece stays visible over a third of YOUR spot for about 20 seconds, distracting viewers from YOUR message and possibly covering up valuable information on YOUR spot. You or your client have spent good money for air time and your message may be getting lost to 14% of the hearing-impaired and who knows how many in bars and waiting rooms because someone else omitted the “CC OFF” bit.
VTA offers Closed Captioning services for Standard Definition and High Definition programs and commercials at competitive rates. Captioning can be done in real time or offline, roll-up or pop-on. Clients can provide text in a MS Word document or we can transcribe the commercial and insert captions. Even if you choose not to caption your commercial, VTA can insert a “CLEAR CC” command at the beginning of your spot which will ensure that previous captioning vanishes when your spot airs.
If you are interested in our captioning services, please contact Jodi, jodi.arminio@vta.com or Kelly, Kelly.dellinger@vta.com for pricing and scheduling information.
- David M. Turner
Filed under: Player's Corner 2.0, Vidiots | Tags: advertising, online engagement, online video, online video trends, rich media, seo statistics, video seo
I wanted to share some data on current statistics regarding online video and its impact in marketing and entertainment.
The most astonishing news is in SEO.
According to a recent study by Forrester Research Video SEO is 53 times more likely to produce a first-page search result than traditional techniques. Google, for one, is pushing video to the top of all its search results. Results can be achieved in a matter of days, and there are publishers who succeed in getting at least 25% of their videos to produce first page results.
This video must be on a landing page or home page (not YouTube) and be submitted correctly to the search engine companies. Here is an article on the subject.
Then there is video rich advertising.
This was tested in 5 categories: Aided Branded Awareness, Online Ad Awareness, Message Association, Brand Favorability and Purchase Intent. Video was the front runner by far in all categories except Message Association. Video beat Simple Flash by an average of 400% across all metrics except Messaging. Please see below for the breakdown.
A more in-debt analysis can be found at Double Click.
Other notable findings from December 2009 from ComScore include:
- 86.5 percent of the total U.S. Internet audience viewed online video.
- 134.4 million viewers watched more than 13 billion videos on YouTube.com (97.1 videos per viewer).
- 44.9 million viewers watched 423.3 million videos on MySpace Sites (9.4 videos per viewer).
- The average Hulu viewer watched 22.9 videos, totaling 2.2 hours of videos per viewer.
- The duration of the average online video was 4.1 minutes.
Additionally, research of rich media video ads conducted by AccelaCast, consisting of 32,000 viewers concluded the average engagement per viewer was 4.6 minutes.
All this is good news for VTA when looking into the future. With broadband accounting for nearly 75% of online users, video is a natural fit. Please look to us to help you with your online video for 2010. Contact me and I’ll be glad to talk strategy and rates.
- Brett Player, Creative Director
Filed under: Vidiots | Tags: broadcast, creative business, edit, multi-media, partner, vendor, video production, video story-telling
First, a little English lesson…
ven·dor [ven-der; especially contrastively ven-dawr]
–noun
1. a person or agency that sells.
2. a vending machine.
part·ner [pahrt-ner]
–noun
1. a person who shares or is associated with another in some action or endeavor; sharer; associate.
2. a player on the same side or team as another
When it comes to the type of work we do, I’m not too fond of being referred to as a “vendor.” After all, we’re in the creative business, which is so much more than selling, and as convenient as it sounds, we can’t stick money in a slot and have a custom video or multi-media presentation pop out like magic. So when it comes to our clients, we like to think of ourselves as partners, not vendors. Because what we do, and do well, is integrate our selves into a client’s organization in order to better tell the client’s story. We listen. We digest. We recommend. What’s important to them; becomes important to us. The ultimate goal is to help the client succeed, whether that be in the effort to raise funds, promote a service/product, communicate with company associates, train new employees or increase sales. To that end, we become as passionate about the client’s product or service as the clients themselves and go the extra mile to provide a finished product that is effective, dynamic and worthy of showcasing.
What we do is truly a service industry and more often than not, we give a lot more than we take. But then again, that’s what team players do – they set up the shot, so that someone else can make the goal – namely, the client.
-Ada Sheerin, Creative Producer / Director VTA
Filed under: Player's Corner 2.0 | Tags: advertising, assets, campaign, irony, media, outdoor, video, witt
When working with Spanx to create and launch the brand Assets, a Target Senior VP called the work “arresting”. She went on to say it would stop consumers, force them to look and then consider buying the products.
I later heard this same term tossed around by executives at Quicktrip to describe their campaign for sticky buns, while defending the headline “Life’s Too Short for Oatmeal.”
How fast does a consumer’s brain need to work to reverse this logic and conclude Oatmeal will extend your life where sticky buns may not. Perhaps that’s the joke of the message? However, unlike funny ads like Crispin Porter’s “Wake up with the King” campaign, this seems dry and humorless.
During the recent Vancouver Games, in a McDonald’s campaign, the messaging read, “You don’t have to be an Olympic Athlete to eat like one”. Again, reverse this logic and conclude, “Olympic athletes do not eat McDonald’s.”
I believe the campaigns above communicate in an ironic, almost cynical fashion to consumers. Where this may connect to adults who immediately understand the irony of good health in relation bad choices, it becomes dangerous for children who do not.
So are these ads funny? Do they work? What is the purpose of these campaigns? Let me know what you think.
-Brett Player
Filed under: Player's Corner 2.0 | Tags: advertising, interactive, marketing, networking, online, recruiting, social networking, video games, virtual
I was coming to work this morning, listening to NPR and heard a story about Military Gaming. I listened intently, because I thought a virtual military training client of ours, FATS Inc. may be featured. But instead the piece focused on an online game produced by the Pentagon called, “America’s Army” for the general public. It went on to talk about gaming and modern warfare with the inherent social and political issues involved.
But what caught my attention was not the story’s direction, but one outstanding fact within the story. “America’s Army” ranks in the top 10 for all downloadable games and has been more effective as a recruiting tool than all other efforts combined. Wow! Now that’s a testament to a digital experience driving results.
To a small to medium size business this may sound great, but also outside of their resources. This is where social networking becomes nirvana. Only a couple of years ago I was tasked to create social networks within corporate websites. But today, no longer is the brand website the place where brand loyalist interact. Nope. It’s Facebook or Twitter. And what a great feeling it is to break the technology dependency for communication. Now it’s the social networking platform’s responsibility to flush out all the tech issues.
Hence, the Army or Coca-Cola may have digital environments for gaming or virtual interaction. But so does Joe’s donuts, on Facebook. So what I’m saying is that it’s important to interact where you can. And in today’s landscape the opportunity to tell your story and converse with your audience is wide open. Let us know your goals and ideas, we can help.
- Brett Player
Filed under: Vidiots | Tags: axial, broadcast, down conversion, evertz hd logo inserter, high definition broadcast, high definition closed captioning, live edit, multiple record, rendering time, video on demand, weather channel
Viewers of The Weather Channel are used to getting accurate and timely national and local forecasts 24 hours a day. But for the past few years, TWC has produced compelling original programming which shows how the weather affects our daily lives and altered the course of history.
“100 Greatest Weather Moments”, “Epic Conditions”, “Weather Ventures” and “When Weather Changed History” are some of the programs TWC has produced and broadcast on this topic. Seeking to widen their audience, TWC offered these and other series as Video On Demand. For the third year in a row, VTA has been privileged to be TWC’s choice of editorial partner on this project.
The Weather Channel project started with a phone call. They wanted to know if we could reformat their broadcast HD masters to VOD specifications faster than the current workflows and without disturbing the existing HD closed captioning.
As clients and staff of VTA know, I likes a technical challenge. Because VTA uses video equipment from many different manufacturers, I was able to create a new workflow for TWC that maximized technical quality and accuracy while minimizing post-production time.
Live Edit is a tool that VTA has used to great effect in the past and I was certain it could save our client time and money. Rather than taking the time to capture, render and output half-hour or one-hour shows, I decided to work directly off the HDCam masters and add the Weather Channel logo in realtime using our Evertz HD logo inserter.
Because the TWC logo could not interfere with existing graphics and supers already in the program, I used VTA’s Axial 3000 edit controller to precisely time the fades or cuts of the logo to be as unobtrusive as
possible while maintaining field accuracy to the existing edits.
To capture and output back to tape a one hour show takes at least two hours. Rendering time to add an HD logo throughout the program increased total delivery time per episode way beyond that. Live Edit was the solution that kept the project on schedule and budget.
After successful use in 2007 and ’08, TWC added, in late 2009, an additional requirement for the series “Storm Stories”. For this program, standard definition Digital BetaCam masters were generated at the same time as the HDCam VOD masters using real-time downconversion.
Live Edit came through again. By using the Multiple-Record feature of the Axial, I was able roll HD and SD tape machines, cascade the video through different mix/effects banks of the switcher and transcode HD closed captions to SD without needing an additional pass.”
VTA is not locked into a single edit system manufacturer or workflow, butcan provide the flexibility and quality that its clients have come to expect for the past 40 years.
-Bob Castro.
Filed under: Audio A | Tags: audio engineering, broadcast, cereproc, dvd commentaries, roger ebert, vocal database, voice
As a tragic complication after cancer surgery to remove his jaw, legendary film critic Roger Ebert lost the ability to speak. He relies on handwritten notes and a computer that synthesizes what he types. For most people, this would result in a life dependent on a random text-to-speech computerized voice. We’ve all had fun picking the voices for our GPS systems, but imagine if this was all you had to represent yourself?
Interestingly for Ebert, there is a Scottish company, CereProc, with a fascinating option. There are hours and hours of recordings of Ebert’s voice, from years of TV shows and numerous DVD commentaries. CereProc has combed through all those recordings to create a database of his voice for his daily vocabulary. According to CereProc, the average American uses about 2,000 words a day. Many of the words it can’t find already recorded were pieced together from syllables of other words.
CereProc has been able to create libraries for people who knew they were going to lose their voice and could pre-record their vocal database. In Ebert’s case, he’s fortunate that there are already a wealth of recordings of his voice. That is, if you can call anything about Ebert’s tragic situation fortunate. Take a minute and use your voice to say something nice to someone you care about or just go sing a song. You never know if that might be the last time you’ll be able to use your real voice. –Leslie Shapiro
Via Esquire Magazine
Filed under: Audio A | Tags: audio, audio engineering, boombox, disco, discolite, retro
A new display at the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art will be turning eyes, and ears. Rewind Remix Replay: Design, Music & Everyday Experience is an exhibit celebrating the “material culture of music.” The display features everything from the classic Fender Stratocaster guitar to the iconic iPod. There’s even a whole section devoted to the humble boombox.
The boombox had its own subculture, and a style meant to attract attention. Sadly, bling was many times more important than sound quality. How loud more important than how good. Collector and photographer Lyle Owerko, who calls them “gargantuan conglomerations of electronics, lights and chrome-plated gadgetry,” thinks of them as “symbols of rebellion.” According to the museum, boomboxes were “designed deliberately to be as large and flashy as possible. They featured imposing speaker grills, large buttons and flashing lights and they broadcast big sounds. Highly conspicuous aurally and visually, they were effective as mechanisms of public display. The DiscoLite featured in this exhibition, for example, is a monolithic object whose flashing colored lights draw almost as much attention to its visual quality as its sound. The sounds of hip-hop and rap, the energy of break dancing, the writing of graffiti, Adidas shoes, cassette tapes, turntables and more all served as the signifying props of a unique aesthetic expression.”
So, what audio systems do you have that are museum quality? –Leslie Shapiro
