An article in the Los Angeles Times (@latimestech) says brands such as Kraft and Adidas are considering making use of facial recognition technology in a bid to provide shoppers with more targeted information in stores.
Technology company Intel is one of a number of firms that has created software capable of scanning the faces of consumers, and then determining the approximate age and gender of the person concerned.
Christopher O'Malley, director, retail marketing, of Intel's embedded and communications unit, says, “You can put this technology into kiosks, vending machines, digital signs. It's going to become a much more common thing in the next few years.”
The above video is a clip from the movie Minority Report, in which the character John Anderton, played by Tom Cruise, walks in a mall in the year 2054 while his eyes are getting scanned by sensors connected to 3D screens that call to him directly by his name to get his attention to display “personal” advertising messages.
The following video demonstrates the reality of what’s already here.
Is this type of advertising personally invasive or strategically helpful to consumers?
In The New York Times (@nytimes) Janet Maslin reviews Just My Type: A Book About Fonts by Simon Garfield (@simongarfield), saying, “This is a smart, funny, accessible book that does for typography what Lynne Truss’ best-selling Eats, Shoots & Leaves did for punctuation: made it noticeable for people who had no idea they were interested in such things.”
Knowledge of fonts is essential to advertising, book publishing, professions (like law) that require thoughtfully chosen stationery and any written work that can be done on a home computer. Personal computers are the main reason that font fandom and do-it-yourself design have snowballed in the last two decades. Had Steven Jobs not taken a shine to calligraphy as a college student and decided to include a choice of fonts in computer software, we might not be having this conversation.
Mr. Garfield’s book overlaps with Gary Hustwit’s (@gary_hustwit) 2007 documentary Helvetica, which concentrated entirely on a single, unstoppably popular typeface. Is global proliferation of the very Swiss, clean, antiseptic Helvetica a welcome phenomenon, or is Helvetica the weedy, unstoppable kudzu of the design world? Mr. Garfield takes a somewhat jaundiced view of Helvetica mania, but he hardly limits himself to one narrow school of fontificating. A full look at font history, aesthetics, science, and philosophy could fill an encyclopedia, but Just My Type is an excellent gloss. Mr. Garfield has put together a lot of good stories and questions about font subtleties and font-lovers’ fanaticism.
Just My Type covers phenomena including how the fonts on road signs are tested for legibility and what the fonts used by various political campaigns subliminally communicate about candidates. It explains relatively arcane matters like kerning (the science of spacing letters)....And if it does nothing else Just My Type will make it impossible for you to look at logos, road signs, airports, magazines, and advertisements indifferently any longer.
Let Somersault help you in the page and cover designs of your books. And stay informed about publishing best practices with the SomersaultNOW dashboard, such as the content in the Editing and Innovation tabs.
How does a medical facility in the middle of nowhere become so well known and respected that world leaders want to be consumers of it? According to Lee Aase (@LeeAase), director, Mayo Clinic Center for Social Media, word-of-mouth (WOM) fueled by social media is the driving force. Watch (1 and 2) his relaxed case-study presentation from a few years ago and adapt his success principles (see the above pyramid) to advance your brand.
Let Somersault help you achieve success.
Landing Page Infographic by KISSmetrics (@KISSmetrics).
Search Engine marketing agency Trada (@Trada) held a webinar today explaining "Landing Page Psychology:"
Visitors are likely to have a certain amount of wariness as they're asked to part with money or personal information. Use the following elements to work toward removing this friction from the buying or decision-making cycles.
- Incite urgency
- Encourage feelings of value
- Display credibility
- Develop trust
Twitter Infographic by Touch (@touchagency).
Jonathan Richman (@jonmrich), Group Director, Strategic Planning for Possible Worldwide (@possible), writes on Warc (@WarcEditors) that if consumers don’t love your Web marketing, it may as well be invisible. And it’s difficult to conduct a SWOT analysis to discover how your competitor stacks up against you because, “when it comes to digital, everything is your competitor.”
Your competitors in digital are everything else that takes time away from your digital program. Everything. Your competitors aren’t just a product in the same category or even brands in the same industry. It’s everything. That means that your competition online isn’t your arch nemesis’ brand site, but it’s also episodes of Family Guy on Hulu. It’s Lolcats1 and Perez Hilton’s blog. Sure, you may not admit to visiting any of these, but someone is accounting for the millions of visitors a month to these sites.
Richman offers a list of digital marketing sins that cause your customers to say “We Hate Your .com”:
· Blunder #1: Trying to Do It All
· Blunder #2: Random Targeting
· Blunder #3: Death by Boredom
· Blunder #4: All for one and… all for one
Let Somersault help you succeed in digitally marketing your brand.
Sell the sizzle along with the steak. That advertising mantra is exemplified in STA Travel’s (@statravelAU) I Want To Know viral video marketing campaign (the above video is 1 of 3).
Karl Krantz of the Start Up Daily (@thestartupdaily) says it’s “an example of advertising done right....it makes me want to travel....for a video commissioned by a travel agency, you can’t get a better emotional response than that.”
It's not important what your marketing says, it’s important how it leaves people feeling. Show your customers what could be, inspire them to live better.
Nick Morris of Internet Marketing Adelaide (@WebMarkAdelaide) interviews Adam Fyfe, the “Move, Eat, Learn” campaign coordinator. Morris asks, “What were your objectives for this project?” Fyfe says,
At a brand level we had a need to increase awareness of our brand. At a more personal level, it was about putting some excitement back into what should be an inspiring industry.
Let Somersault help create a strategic and effective ad campaign for your brand.
Chart Of The Day (@chartoftheday) says people are still subscribing to print newspapers for 2 reasons, according to a survey from AdAge (@adage): they want local news, and they want coupons.
How can that information influence your publishing and marketing decisions?