Just for the fun of it, Adweek (@Adweek) has compiled a depiction of the television shows we all watched throughout our lives. Back when America’s collective entertainment was fairly limited and unified; and when interruption advertising was the name of the game. How many do you remember seeing? (See an enlarged version.)
Contact Somersault (@smrsault) to help you publish and market your brand’s content.
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On Fast Company (@FastCompany), Scott Stratten (@unmarketing), president of UnMarketing.com, says, “You can't make something go viral. You don't decide, I don't decide, the audience does.”
If you're hoping for your latest content to go viral, it has to do one thing: evoke strong emotion. Key word there is “strong.” If someone lightly laughs at something, or is slightly inspired, that doesn’t make them jump to the “share” button. It has to be to the level of awesome. Awesomely funny, upsetting, uplifting, offensive, whatever the emotion is – it has to hit it hard.
Over on Ad Age (@adage), marketing pundit Bob Garfield (@Bobosphere) writes:
Though evidence is accumulating that brandedness suppresses passalong, that doesn't mean brands shouldn't be both creating and curating content for their various constituencies. In fact, as we edge ever further into the Relationship Era, in which trust is the most valuable asset, providing compelling and relevant content through multiple channels is an ever-more important way to sustain connections. For instance, Betty Crocker's cake videos, pure how-to content sought out by moms wishing to bake birthday cakes shaped like dinosaurs and princesses, have been clicked on 70 million times.
And, as I've mentioned before, there is a huge, untapped opportunity for a brand to pass along found video to its various circles, much in the way any friend would.
Finally, brands can be part of larger movements, when those enterprises reside in the common ground shared by the brand and its customers
Also see our previous blogposts, “The 3 Qualities That Make A YouTube Video Go Viral” and "Forget Product Positioning: This is the Dawn of the Relationship Era."
Contact Somersault (@smrsault) to help you effectively communicate your brand message through strategic and creative video.
And be sure to bookmark and use daily the SomersaultNOW online dashboard.
As the above image shows, mobile marketing can be a bit confusing.
Advertising Age (@adage) columnist Steve Rubel (@steverubel) points to a report about the apparent shift to apps in the mobile environment.
“Flurry (@FlurryMobile), an analytics firm, reported that US consumers spend on average 94 minutes a day in their apps vs. 72 minutes a day in mobile browsers.” There is a less time being spent with PCs and more time being spent with mobile. And when people are on their mobile devices, they are using apps more than mobile browsers.
But a difference of opinion is expressed on iMedia Connection (@iMediaTweet) by Eric Anderson (@unsettler), partner and VP of marketing at White Horse (@whitehorsepdx), who offers “10 Tech Trends You Can Ignore in 2012,” of which #7 is “Having a branded app for that.”
Having long been a loudmouthed proponent of prioritizing mobile sites over branded apps, I thought I might be in for another plate of crow when Flurry Analytics released a study showing that in 2011, smartphone users’ time spent on apps exceeded their time spent on the mobile web for the first time ever.
But does this trend indicate an overall preference for apps over the mobile Web? It does not. A whopping 80% of that app time was spent on gaming and the Facebook app, and the rest of the time was, sorry to say, not spent on your app. A separate study by Deloitte found that 80% of branded apps are downloaded fewer than 1000 times, which is not a piece of ROI analysis I'd enjoy presenting to a CMO. Branded mobile apps belong to a narrow but important set of use cases, based on activities your loyal customers engage in again and again.
Over on Harvard Business Review (@HarvardBiz), David Armano (@armano) writes in his article, “The Future Isn't About Mobile; It's About Mobility”:
In the early days of digital, the core behavior we needed to understand was that people wanted information at their fingertips and the convenience that came with digital transactions. In the social era it was all these things plus social connectivity. Mobility means information, convenience, and social all served up on the go, across a variety of screen sizes and devices.
Mobility is radically different from the stationary “desktop” experience. In some cases, mobility is a “lean back” experience like sitting on a commuter train watching a video. In other cases it can be "lean forward" — like shopping for a gift while you take your lunch break at the park. And in many cases, it’s “lean free” when your body is in motion, or you're standing in line scanning news headlines or photos from friends while you wait for your turn to be called.
Mobility trumps mobile... don't put mobile tactics in front of strategy.
And senior writer with GigaOM (@gigaom), Mathew Ingram (@mathewi), writes in “HuffPo, The Daily, and the flawed iPad content model”:
The dream that many publishers seemed to have was that the iPad would create a market for their individual apps, and that legions of readers would happily download and pay for them, creating a brand new stream of significant revenue. With a few exceptions, however — such as The New York Times and other publications that have strong brands or are targeted at a very specific market — that doesn’t seem to be the case.
Contact Somersault (@smrsault) to help you know when it strategically makes sense to create a mobile app and to help you think with ‘mobility’ about your brand and your content.
Be sure to bookmark and use daily the SomersaultNOW online dashboard. And use our mobile website as your link resource on the go.
A consistent problem with promotional book readings and signings is that they're often barely attended. Now Publishers Weekly (@PublishersWkly) senior news editor Calvin Reid (@calreid) reports, “Science author Andrew Kessler is launching a new online venture called Togather.com (@TogatherInc), a ‘fansourcing’ platform that allows authors or their fans to propose an author event and get commitments from fans planning to attend well before the event is held.”
Much like a crowdfunding site like Kickstarter, Togather.com allows an author to know in advance whether there’s enough interest and support to hold an event at all.
Togather.com is free for authors. Writers establish an account that will allow them to plan events on a custom author event page that can be circulated through social media sites like Twitter and Facebook. “The event page allows authors to set up a tour, schedule events, tweak the details, and solicit support for the event before the author arrives,” Kessler said.
In a phone interview with PW, Kessler outlined how Togather works. Using the Togather account, an author can decide what kind of support he or she will require to actually hold the event — sell, say, 20 books, or get RSVPs from 60 people if it’s a school or free event, or sell tickets. Since one of the criteria for an event can be book sales, Togather is also organized to sell books. Fans can go to the page and propose additional events, and the author can review the proposal, accept it or ask for changes, or tweak the level of commitments.
The site lets authors notify their fans how many people it will take to reach a certain level of book sales (Kessler consulted with booksellers on this)....For book buys or other financial transactions, the site will take credit card numbers but not process the sale until the desired commitment level is achieved — if there’s not enough interest, the event is canceled and no one is charged....Kessler said, “[Togather] turns fans into your publicists.”
Also see coverage by PaidContent, GalleyCat, and TNW.
Contact Somersault (@smrsault) to help you stay current with publishing and marketing opportunities for your brand.
And be sure to bookmark and use daily the SomersaultNOW online dashboard; especially the Book Discovery Sites tab.
Here’s a fun way to display the creative variety of typefaces. This Periodic Table of Typefaces by designer Cam Wilde shows the 100 most popular, influential, and notorious typefaces used throughout time. See it enlarged. A print copy is available.
Below is another version of it, promoting Just My Type, the book about “that pivotal moment when fonts left the world of Letraset and were loaded onto computers, and typefaces became something we realized we all have an opinion about.”
Also see our previous blogposts:
· “Font Pain and Poetry: So Much Depends on a Curve”
· “1912 Typeface Specimen Book Now Online”
· “The Periodic Table of Storytelling”
· “The Periodic Table of the Books of the Bible”
Contact Somersault (@smrsault) to help you publish and market your content with excellence.
And be sure to bookmark and use daily the SomersaultNOW online dashboard to see all things book-related; especially the Editing tab.
The above Infographic is by Blogging.org (@Bloggingdotorg).
Also see our previous blogpost, "5 Reasons Brands Should Keep Blogging."
Let Somersault (@smrsault) help you manage your social media marketing strategy.
And be sure to bookmark and use daily the SomersaultNOW online dashboard; especially the Social Media/Word Of Mouth tab.
The above Infographic is by Psychology Degree.
Let Somersault (@smrsault) help you manage your social media marketing strategy.
And be sure to bookmark and use daily the SomersaultNOW online dashboard; especially the Social Media/Word Of Mouth tab.
Internet Retailer (@IR_Magazine) senior editor Zak Stambor (@ZakStamborIR) writes about the requirement of brands to properly use social media marketing.
With consumers spending so much of their time on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and the like, some retailers are brushing aside questions about the return on social marketing dollars. “Measuring the ROI of social media is like measuring the ROI of air conditioning,” says Lisa Gavales, Express Inc.'s chief marketing officer. “It's necessary.”
Many others agree. 76% of marketers in a recent Forrester Research Inc. survey said social networks are key elements to building their brands. Moreover, 71% said that by leveraging social media they could gain an edge on their competition.
But just routinely posting new arrivals to a Facebook page or “pinning” images to a Pinterest board won't cut it. Consumers spend time on social networks to interact with friends, not brands.
Perhaps no retailer is as all-in on social networks as Wal-Mart (WalmartLabs blog & @WalmartLabs).
If Wal-Mart believes in social media marketing for its brand growth, shouldn’t you?
Contact Somersault (@smrsault) to help create your social media strategy.
And be sure to bookmark and use daily the SomersaultNOW online dashboard.
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The public radio program about language, A Way with Words (@wayword), asks, “Why are some book titles so incredibly long?”
A caller complains about book-title inflation, usually consisting of a shorter title followed by a colon and a longer subtitle that seems to sound important and ends with the words “and What To Do About It.” Cohost Grant Barrett (@grantbarrett) explains that such extra-long book titles have long been a form of search optimization by publishers and marketing departments. The more searchable keywords in the title, the more copies sold.
Listen above. Read this in full.
Contact Somersault (@smrsault) to help you select the most effective title, and other marketing necessities, for your book.
And be sure to bookmark and use daily the SomersaultNOW online dashboard.
Wieden + Kennedy's (@WiedenKennedy) production of the universally heartwarming “Thank you, Mom” campaign for Procter & Gamble (@ProcterGamble) originally launched for the 2010 Winter Olympics. Its messaging continues for the 2012 Summer Olympics in London with “Best Job,” a cinematic and emotional anthem. It has achieved more than 5 million views online and it won 5 Lions at Cannes last month, including golds in Film and Film Craft. Adweek (@Adweek) says:
The new spot is a beautiful testament to parents around the world who have helped their children through the grueling daily grind toward becoming an Olympic athlete.
The tagline of the online-only ad is, “The hardest job in the world is the best job in the world.”
Its new companion video spot, “Kids” (already reaching 1.7 million views), has a similar heart-tugging payout at the end:
What makes these videos so effective and viral? They’re
· beautifully filmed, directed, and edited
· poignant
· emotional
· brief
· relevant
· able to draw the viewer in to self-identify with the message.
In other marketing news relating to the Olympics, Marketing Land (@Marketingland) reports that Twitter and NBC have announced a new partnership centering on Twitter’s new “hashtag page” concept at twitter.com/#Olympics (distinct from the general search hashtag #olympics).
Twitter will have staff monitoring Olympic-related tweets from athletes, coaches, Olympics officials, NBC personalities and others and curating the best content surrounding the #Olympics hashtag on a single page.
NBC will promote the page and the hashtag during its on-air coverage across each of the networks providing coverage, including in primetime coverage on NBC itself.
Also see our previous blogpost, "The 3 Qualities That Make A YouTube Video Go Viral."
Contact Somersault (@smrsault) to help you produce strategic viral videos, and publish and digitally market pbooks and ebooks.
And be sure to bookmark and use daily the SomersaultNOW online dashboard.