Xtranormal

Xtranormal is a very nice website where users can create their own videos editing cartoons. I think its a great tool to make creative video ads.

In Xtranormal, when making your video you can choose:

• Actors
• Dialogues
• Backgrounds
• Sounds

You can type a dialogue and then choose a voice to listen the speech by the actor. Or you can record your own voice.

I have created the following video with Xtranormal, so you can see how it works.

Futbol Movie
by: Antonio Garcia

Kony 2012: A Successful Viral Video

Kony 2012 viral video soon will have 100 million views. According to Visible Measures, is the campaign video with the fastest growth in history (it took less than Susan Boyle, to reach 70 million views). Moreover, raised $ 5 million revenue in the first 48 hours.

Kony 2012 is a meme

A meme is "an idea, behavior or style that spreads from person to person within a culture." A meme acts as a unit for carrying cultural ideas, symbols or practices, which can be transmitted from one mind to another through writing, speech, gestures, rituals or other imitable phenomena. Supporters of the concept regard memes as cultural analogues to genes in that they self-replicate, mutate and respond to selective pressures.

How Kony 2012 has transmitted this meme? Using a Viral Video.

Let´s forget for a moment if the goal of Kony 2012 is good or bad. Let´s just analyze how they made it to create a successful viral video.

The Video



The Analysis

Kony video is built to enable all the viral mechanisms. It is a visual algorithm calculated to share it.

These are some of the mechanisms of manipulation that I have identified in the video, but surely there's more:

- There is a struggle between good and evil, which is a classic tale from Greece. To help identify it, the bad appears with high zoom in and subtle references to Hitler for the clueless. Encourages shared altruism.

- The story goes from more specific to more general topics and uses the first person. It's a classic technique of narrative journalism, for example, because it promotes attention and credibility.

- Ends with a call to action and an expiration date (2012). As with television shopping: call in the next 15 minutes and we'll give you another unit.

- There are many children. Besides the little black children appears a handsome blond child we all would like to take home.

- The narrative is very modern, so that young people can feel very identified with it. Use the visual language of reality: there are fragments very close to the protagonist's life.

- The linearity of the story is interrupted with flashbacks and flashforwards to keep the mind alert.

- All logos, posters and shirts that appear are exquisitely designed.

- Optimally handles the audio-visual rhythms, with its highs, lows, breaks ... all backed with music.

- It is self-referential like a virus: includes memes within himself, makes constant references to facebook, calls for self-replication.

- Uses items that our brain likes. For example people chanting slogans, dancing and feeling collective emotions or people showing emotions.

- Copies the electoral language and style of Obama campaign to call to the action.

- Uses the arguments of authorities since it works well in advertising and internet forums (the lord of the international court, documents, etc..).

- Use celebrities: Clooney, Gaga, Angelina ... and we know that as viewers / surfers there is nothing that we like more than a celebrity.

- It's long. That (a priori a drawback) manages to convey the feeling of having seen something important, a documentary and not an ad (even if all could have been summarized in two minutes).

- Everything is explained to children. Literally.

- There are births, deaths, violence, mutilations, rape, all very epic. However begins and closes very optimistic. The hard part is in rapid flashes. If you see the video without knowing its purpose, the effect is multiplied. It is depressing, but calls to action.

- Plays the "life changing", it means that it tells you something that you did not know and you will see things in life differently after that, which is another key of the virus.

- It passes the ball to the watcher constantly: you can change everything.

- It gives a very clear instructions: share, donate.

In short, the video provokes an emotion that incites action and replication. It could, for example, cause anything, or feel sad, but then it would not work.

Ethics

So the question arises whether this new type of manipulation so brutally effective is ethical if it is made for a cause. The question is also "what happens when the bad guys learn how to handle these techniques" (maybe they have already learned).

The users should think instead of reacting with physical and irrational impulse of clicking the share button. The role of journalism vs. propaganda. And not least, the question of whether is encouraging or depressing that young people respond well to these calls to action: most of the visualization have been made by American teenagers.

Facial Recognition for Targeting

Plan UK - Because I am a girl

Clear Channel, in conjunction with 3D Exposure and CURB, has launched a UK interactive advertising, amalgamating facial recognition, touch screen and sound.

The campaign uses state-of-the-art facial recognition software to determine the gender of interested viewers standing in front of the screen. Once the viewer opts in to see the advert by touching the screen, women and girls see a 40 second advert whilst men and boys view alternative content

This new technology, which is fitted inside 6 sheet poster units, is revolutionary to brands as it allows consumers to potentially view, browse, create, share and download HD content, connect to social media, interact via the touchscreen or gesture, and even star in the ads using augmented reality.

Marketing Buzz

Marketing buzz

Or simply buzz — a term used in word-of-mouth marketing — is the interaction of consumers and users of a product or service which serves to amplify the original marketing message, a vague but positive association, excitement, or anticipation about a product or service. Positive "buzz" is often a goal of viral marketing, public relations, and of advertising on Web 2.0 media. The term refers both to the execution of the marketing technique, and the resulting goodwill that is created.

The term "buzz marketing" originally referred to oral communication but in the age of Web 2.0, social media such as Facebook and Twitter are also being used to create marketing buzz.

Buzz marketing works because individuals are easier to trust than organizations that may be perceived to have vested interests in promoting their products and/or services.

Buzz Monitoring

Buzz monitoring is the keeping track of consumer responses to commercial services and products, to establish the marketing buzz surrounding a new or existing offer. Similar to media monitoring it is becoming increasingly popular as a base for strategic insight development alongside other forms of market research.

Buzz monitoring involves the checking and analysis of myriad online sources such as internet forums, blogs, and social networks. Data can be provided in real time, which means that critical issues can be picked up instantly. It is also comparatively inexpensive compared to other market research tools and can actually guide further product and service developments.Influence is a key question in buzz monitoring – does this particular person and/or this particular piece of content matter and is it influencing others? Hence, the influence of a source is an important buzz monitoring metric that should be benchmarked.

Buzz monitoring is implemented by businesses for a variety of reasons, namely to improve efficiency, reaction times and identify future opportunities. Insights gained can help guide marketing and communications, identify positive and negative customer experiences, assess product and service demand, tackle crisis management, round off competitor analysis, establish brand equity and predict market share.

Red Bull - A Reference of Marketing Buzz

Red Bull has avoided usual methods of marketing, relying more on what is called 'buzz marketing' or word-of-mouth. A brand image was created and cultivated which associated the drink with youth culture and extreme and adventure-related sports, such as motor-sports, mountain biking, snowboarding and dance music parties.

Some observers say that Red Bull's branding is revolutionary, calling it an 'anti-brand' strategy.

In the following video, some of the extreme sports activities where Red Bull is present to develop its marketing buzz activity:

The Social Media Revolution

Some videos about how we are experiencing the "Social Media Revolution" in the last years.

Year 2012




Year 2011




Year 2010

Google Analytics UI Changes

Some changes introduced lately in Google Analytics tool user interface.

Change 1: Left Navigation

The left navigation has been updated. All of the categories within this are the same, but the layout is a little cleaner, and they’ve added icons:

Change 2: The Loading Bar

Whenever a report is loading, the bar appears, giving you an idea of how much longer you’ll have to wait.

Change 3: Top Navigation

The top navigation has been significantly cleaned up, and they’ve reordered it so that the ‘date’ & ‘report title’ now sit above the ‘Advanced Segments | Export | Add to Dashboard’ navigation:

Opening up ‘Help’ takes you to a useful wizard type system that’s both organised by topic, and allows you to search:

Change 4: Graphing Options

Previously, the ‘graphing options’ were barely visible, and I’m sure many people missed them. This is useful, as graphing and comparing different metrics is a key analysis tool. You’ll also notice they’ve highlighted the ‘Hourly / Day / Week / Month’ options as buttons, rather than making you click a dropdown before selecting them.

Change 5: ‘Fast Access’ Precision

One of the gripes of Google Analytics is that often you’re given a report in ‘fast access’ mode, meaning the data is limited to only a portion of the visits you actually want to see data for.

When this now happens, you’re given the option of ‘faster processing’ or ‘higher precision’. If you choose ‘high precision’, you get all of the data you’re looking for:

The option appears on the top-right, and appears most when you’ve applied ‘advanced segments’ to reports.

Change 6: Shared Dashboards

There is now a ‘share dashboard’ link in the top navigation when in the dashboards area:

Paste the URL into any browser, and it allows you to choose which account/profile to add the dashboard to:

Change 7: Cached Reports

Previously, if a particular report took 30 seconds to load, and you visited it twice, it would take 30 seconds to appear both times you visited that report.

Now, after a report has been loaded once, it is saved in memory, so that the second time you visit it, it loads instantly.

To give a little control over this (in case you want to refresh the data), every report now tells you when it was loaded, and gives you the option to refresh the data.

Change 8: General Cleaning

There are lots and lots of minor user interface tweaks, including:

Graphs now appear a little cleaner, especially over longer periods:

Topline numbers associated with any report have been tweaked in terms of look:

Tool tips now appear when you move the mouse over certain elements:

Bubble charts have been surfaced in more of an obvious way:

Shopping Cart Abandonment

Nice infographic about what you HAVE TO DO and what you DON´T HAVE TO DO in shopping cart in order to avoid shopping cart abandonment.

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