Books on YouTube
Posted by goodmind on July 8th, 2008
Even thought YouTube is in the midst of a Viacom snafu of sorts, there’s no reason to stop creating new applications for the platform. Brand Appeal points to this Choose Your Path game, which basically borrows the concept from the infamous adventure books of yester-year.
Yes, it is literally, a video game, with literary origins no less. But more importantly, as Brand Appeal points out, it empowers the viewer in ways that actually matter to the viewer. What a twist.
Brand New Brand Study
Posted by goodmind on June 25th, 2008
Dissecting brand meaning, and what precisely makes a meaningful brand, is popular fodder for the academic disciplines, and better business blogs. It’s also a key component of what we do as market researchers, and we spend a lot of mental energy thinking up new ways to induce consumer definitions of xyz brand, and unpack what said brand “means.”
As such, we’ll be giving this pithy brand map technique from Dear Jane Sample some serious consideration;
Why is mapping exercise this significant from a research perspective? Excellent question, and Grant McCracken has an excellent response;
Noah’s brand tag exercise defines brands in terms of our adjectives. Jane’s project gives us a chance to see how we define ourselves in terms of brands.
This is both halves of advertising’s meaning making arc. Meaning goes into brands. Meaning comes out of brands into us. (emphasis ours)
In a sense, both halves are pretty obvious, or else companies wouldn’t come to us to find out what their customers say/think/feel about their brand/product/service. However, like academics and bloggers, consumers are quick to focus on the theoretical, or abstract meaning that defines a brand. This technique of “brand mapping” seems to ground the definition of a brand within daily life, thus revealing how the meaning (not the brand itself) manifests in actual consumer behavior.
Social Media Resistance Survey
Posted by goodmind on June 6th, 2008
Jacob Morgan wrote a handy post for bub.blicio.us yesterday, summarizing the topline findings from the “Social Media Resistance Survey” (conducted by the USC Marshall School of Business, and the Institute for Communication Technology Management).
We found one of his observations on the wording of a question particularly interesting, partly because the question might actually suggest a larger trend in the way people want to use social media;
Most companies believe that online video, rss feeds, and podcasting are the most valuable tools a company can use in order to enhance a company image or increase productivity. If you’re thinking what I’m thinking then you’re right. Aren’t enhancing a company image and increase productivity 2 separate things? I think so. Business network sites came in 4th place followed closely by social media news releases. (emphasis ours)
Maybe the folks at USC and the CTM are onto something here, since productivity is a meaningful component of company image. After all, outward bound social media applications, such as online video, are an efficient (productive) way to enhance image, create buzz, all that good stuff.
Maybe the small, mid, and large size companies surveyed don’t see image and productivity as totally distinct concepts. How else can you explain the disappointing fourth place finish of business network sites (without acknowledging the personal image benefits)?
Social Networking is for Babies
Posted by goodmind on June 5th, 2008
As if parents needed a platform to brag about their brat, along comes TotSpot. The gist;
TotSpot is a place for parents to publish a page about their kids and share with family and friends. It’s part online babybook, parent journal, and social network.
Now your toddler can experience life as a Jolie-Pitt child! Come to think of it, TotSpot is also sort of like a Facebook for baby Einsteins, already enrolled in elite pre-schools for gifted children. Which is why we think this concept could do very, very well. Parental pride knows no bounds.
(via TechCrunch)
Life is Simplex
Posted by goodmind on June 3rd, 2008
Prepare to add the term “simplexity” to your business buzz-word lexicon, along with freakonomics, crowdsourcing, and (we hope) co-rendering.
For $25.95, Jeffrey Kluger will explain why simple things become complex, and how complex things can be made simple. While advance reviews for Simplexity are positive, we’re wondering if a 300 page hardcover book is the correct format for critiquing lengthy and incomprehensible cell phone manuals.
It’s actually kind of an interesting paradox in itself that Simplexity adheres to the standard, New York Times Bestselling book package, yet “challenges our models for modern living” and “will have you rethinking the rules of business, family, art–your world.” Apparently eschewing convention does not apply to design principles when book sales are on the line, though you can’t really fix what isn’t broken. (Heck, we bought it).
Website Navigation Revisited
Posted by goodmind on May 20th, 2008
Modernista! has upped the ante of what it means for a company to embrace social media, and the transparency of the web. It’s so clever, we’re almost at a loss for words to describe it. Almost.
Basically, the Boston based advertising agency took their own medicine, and designed their website around Google search…but not in the way you and I optimize our content for search. The website is literally a Google page; ranked results and all.
Not only does the Wikipedia page clearly explain what the agency is about (far better than jargon laden website copy could), the Google algorithm guarantees that up to the minute puff pieces on Modernista! are front and center. It’s news generating move that measures and monitors said buzz, pretty effectively we might add.
We can see more companies taking a similar approach to web design, if only for the simple fact that most of us Google what we want to find, even when we know the full URL. Heck, we’ve Googled “Goodmind” just to get to our own website. Not only has Modernista! tapped into a new website format using Google search conventions, but also an additional application for the conventional Google search.
Is the search engine of the future a centralized navigational system? It wont work very well if the Microsoft-Yahoo-Facebook rumors are true…
A System of Loyalties and Protections
Posted by goodmind on May 19th, 2008
Social networks are largely feud-al societies, in the sense that they facilitate a good deal of communal fighting. BuzzMachine describes the eco-system which backs all this healthy debate as a feudal society of lords, vassals and fiefs;
“So Glam is a content network. But they don’t create all the content. They curate it. So we should curate more as we create less. That’s another way to say what I’ve said other ways: Do what we do best and link to the rest. Also: We need to gather more and produce less, so we also need to encourage others to produce more so we can gather it. That’s a festival of PowerPoint lines there.”
Indeed, a spirited Renaissance festival of PowerPoint lines and Web 2.0 serfdom surfdom. The point is, Glam clearly understands what it takes to succeed in a social (network) order, mostly by doing very little themselves, while “curating” or “gathering” what others produce for mutual benefit.
More importantly, instead of posturing as the sovereign king of the world wide web, Glam functions as a physical estate, or site to be populated. More than mere aggregator reminiscent of a primitive hunter/gatherer society, Glam is a centralized and highly lucrative platform for lords (advertisers) and serfs (bloggers/content creators) alike.
The New Anti-Smoking Lobby
Posted by goodmind on May 14th, 2008
The mobileYouth Survey, a global study “covering youth lifestyle trends and mobile consumption” revealed some interesting insights into kids these days. While wireless providers will likely focus on findings such as “Youths spend 8 times more on mobile than on music,” it’s also important to note that youth smoking is on the decline as mobile phone ownership rises.
Although it’s probably pretty likely that cell phones and cigs pose the same cancer risk, don’t be surprised to hear this statistic recycled at cocktail parties and corporate events –or for that matter, during a pre-teen lobby for a mobile device. Next we’ll be hearing accusations of the Verizon spokesman targeting tweens. Oh wait…
It’s Easier Said Than Done
Posted by goodmind on May 13th, 2008
Emphasizing the centrality and importance of a well written press release in the field of Public Relations is not nostalgia for the 1990’s, it is, apparently, a fact of life even in the age of SEO and social media. Oddly enough, these all too familiar Web 2.0 realities aren’t a major threat to the newswire/press release method for disseminating information to the right people. In fact, most of these web-based applications create a greater need for a well written press release to get the ball rolling – something we’ve been suggesting for some time now.
PR Newswire (a client) is one of the examples cited in a recent TechCrunch post on the ongoing Evolution of the Press Release. Written by Brian Solis, author of the PR 2.0 blog, the post reinforces the importance of well written text for integration with SEO, as well as providing tips for how even the standard press release format/template can be easily calibrated for re-distrubution on news aggregators, and other social networking tools along the lines of Twitter, or Tumblr.
What is so particularly refreshing about this re-interpretation of PR’s relationship to media is that the “correct” use of social media (as in a killer YouTube video) isn’t treated as the definitive solution;
“…it’s not just about multimedia content, it’s about connecting information across social networks, the people looking for it, as well as the conversations that bind them together.”
The press release format doesn’t have to dramatically transform or evolve into some multi-media medusa of YouTube videos, audio clips, and interactive tools to be effective in reaching the correct audience. Text based releases can of course be supplemented and supported by embedded content, but the “correct” word choice will ultimately play a more decisive role in how a given release is distributed, discovered, and received.
Hopefully, this “news” will find its to the right people in a timely manner, and function as evidence that a well written nugget of information is more than enough momentum to stir the social media pot.
All About E-books
Posted by goodmind on April 14th, 2008
The digital book concept has been tinkered with by various business enterprises, but has yet to yield anything worth writing home about. Unless of course you’re a blogger. In our opinion, the idea is solid, could be spectacular, but is too easily bogged down by mediocre execution (ahem, Kindle).
It seems most people, even the folks at Amazon, are content to sit back and wait for Apple to transform and revolutionize the reading experience via compact digital platform, designed specifically to exceed our half-formed, and poorly articulated expectations about e-books. That’s why we were pleasantly surprised to see Storytelling with Google Maps, and even more surprised to learn Google technology isn’t behind the project, it’s merely the vehicle.
Penguin Books has collaborated with Six to Start, an alternative gaming firm, to create an online reading experience unlike any other;
“readers follow the protagonist’s adventures step by step across the world using Google Maps, with text presented in the technology’s information bubbles at each point along the way.” (via Springwise)
We’ll know the concept has truly taken off when Google Maps responds with a fiction section, which would probably be a relief for those literally exposed by the service’s quest for authentic realism.
