Posts Tagged ‘design’
The Blogging Battle Royale: A Closer Look
Wednesday, October 26th, 2011Here at Spring Creek Group, we’re big fans of Tumblr and we’ve been driving out clients to evaluate the platform in their social media programs. We love the platform not just for its crazy/wonderful memes (like Selleck Waterfall Sandwich, Garfield Minus Garfield and Teenage Mutant Ninja Noses) but for how straightforward it is to use, and for how quickly you realize the point of Tumblr is as much about exploring others’ content as it is about sharing your own.
With over 30 million blogs to date, it’s only in the past year that we’ve seen big brands make a foray onto the platform. Publishing and broadcast media brands like The Economist, LIFE, Sesame Street and the Travel Channel were quick to embrace the platform’s multimedia-friendly design and to share behind the scenes or bonus content with followers. Recent Tumblr blogs from companies like IBM, Bungie and Huggies have showcased the platform’s flexibility in creating a blog right for each brand.
It was big news this week for Tumblr when President Obama’s 2012 reelection campaign launched its own Tumblr blog, but the article that piqued our interest was this quick blog post from Compete.com’s Damian Roskill: “Tumblr vs. WordPress vs. Blogger: Fight!” To kick it off, Damian illustrates that when it comes to unique visitor rates, WordPress is head and shoulders above the rest while Tumblr is ascending and Blogger is seeing steady drop-off.
According to Compete.com’s data, 2011 has seen huge gains for Tumblr, with the platform tying WordPress for overall blog visits. The most compelling (and frankly, astounding) chart Damian shared outlined page view trends:
While Tumblr trails WordPress in unique visitors, Tumblr’s visitors are viewing a dramatically larger number of pages. This illustrates Tumblr’s true potential: it encourages visitors not just stop by, but to stay and explore.
We agree wholeheartedly with Damian’s assertions that Tumblr’s success is likely tied to the platform’s emphasis on reducing barriers to publish content and making it easy to tag content across blogs, while also encouraging users to build a network of bloggers with whom you mutually share content. Make sure to check out the rest of Damian’s post for some other interesting tidbits about the three platforms.
We’re excited to see how Tumblr’s future plays out and what brands create using the platform. In the meantime, make sure to sneak a peek at two of our Tumblr guilty pleasures: Barack and Gary, BFFs and Scanwiches.
Fashion in a Flash: Amazon ventures into Event Sale E-commerce
Thursday, May 5th, 2011
Riding the wave of successful flash deal sites such as Groupon and LivingSocial, Fashion e-commerce websites dedicated to daily deals that flaunt their invite-only “exclusivity” are becoming increasingly popular. RueLaLa, GiltGroupe, and Hautelook are among the most popular of these sites. Yesterday, online retailer Amazon launched a “private fashion sale site” of its own: MYHABIT. Similar to other fashion flash-sale sites, potential members must request an invitation to partake in the get-it-before-it’s-gone shopping experience. However, unlike many of the fashion sale sites that begin in the morning on East Coast time, leaving West Coasters frantically scrambling for the fashion scraps, one of the most appealing aspects of MYHABIT is that deals don’t start until 9 a.m. PT/ 12 p.m. ET, giving East and West Coasters an equal opportunity to scavenge for their designer merchandise. Another big sell: MYHABIT also offers free shipping and free returns in the United States.
Amazon’s foray into the fashion world seems to be a natural expansion for the brand, yet it’s still a venture out of its comfortable world of practical consumer products such as DVDs and books. While Amazon.com does offer clothing, the e-commerce giant is tapping into a whole new niche market with the launch of MYHABIT and Amazon will need to prove its fashion savvy in order to compete with other sites that have already established their fashion authority. While Amazon is likely hoping to ride its reputation as a reliable online retailer, it will probably take a bit more than reputation alone to get the luxury consumers on board. The success of the site will depend on whether Amazon can reign in the coveted deals that will intrigue and entice the fashion community and also on how Amazon positions and markets MYHABIT, especially in respect to differentiating it from the competitors. Already set up on Facebook and Twitter, MYHABIT will likely be using these social networks to grow its community and drive people to the site. Through leveraging its e-commerce power, tapping into the niche needs of the fashion community, and using innovative campaigns to make a splash in a somewhat already saturated market, MYHABIT has the potential to send consumers scrambling for designer deals on the daily.
SCG ‘ombudsman’s note: we have worked with leading ecommerce companies on their social media strategies and programs, as have others in our city and sector. So while we have a front row seat to these new developments, as with all of our agency’s point of view publishing on our blog neither this post nor others are ever sponsored or promotional in nature.’ We take special care to make sure our content is fair and balanced and strive at all times to uphold the standards set forth in the WOMMA Code of Ethics.“Gamocracy” Crowdsources Video Game Design
Wednesday, March 2nd, 2011
One thing I’ve learned managing a client account in the gaming space is that gamers love telling game developers how to do their jobs.
Turning the tables constructively on this vocal majority, Swedish indie developer The Bearded Ladies have launched Gamocracy – an experimental game design project that puts creative responsibility in the hands of average gamers across the globe. In collaboration with Sony’s Official PlayStation Community, Gamocracy invites players to submit original ideas for a 2-D action platformer (think Super Mario Bros.) to be developed for PlayStation 3 and PSP by The Bearded Ladies. Check out this quote from their Facebook page:
Anyone can submit ideas [for Gamocracy] via the PlayStation Forum and each week the best ones will be posted to this Facebook page where a public vote will decide which idea is used. If your idea makes it through to the final game, your name will be added to the end credits, ensuring bragging rights and a possible first step on the game development career ladder.
“The People Need a Hero!”
Week 1 of the eight-week initiative, which began February 18, presented participants with their first challenge. Tasked with creating a protagonist for the as-yet-untitled platformer, amateur game designers submitted more than 400 ideas in 10 different languages to the Official PlayStation Forums (EU). After selecting 5 finalists and posting their ideas in a Facebook photo album, The Bearded Ladies called for their community to cast votes in the form of Likes on Facebook. Once all the votes had been counted, PlayStation Community member The_Sparta_Ghost emerged victorious with his protagonist “H7” – the alien-built android with body parts held together by force-fields and who detaches his head to vault into hard-to-reach places (why didn’t I think of that?) Here’s a peek at the community-driven character design:
Room for improvement
While the cooperation between Gamocracy’s creators and Official PlayStation Forums moderation staff is commendable, the logistics of this initiative are not without flaws. Notably absent are clear, consistent CTAs in the PlayStation Forums forwarding successful participants to The Bearded Ladies’ Facebook page. I’ll bet many international contributors didn’t fully understand that if their Week 1 design was selected as a finalist, it would be subject to a community vote on Facebook in the form of ‘Likes’. That would explain the extremely low voter turnout (109) compared with the number of submissions (400+). The solution? Show participants the path from the instructional post, through the submission process, all the way to the voting booth. Once your amateur designers realize they need the ‘Likes’ of everyone they know, visitors will flock to your page in support of their friends. (Note: Regardless of whether a change is made, I suspect the voting spread will be greater in Week 2 than in Week 1, where the closeness of Finalists’ vote counts [28, 11, 15, 24, and 31] demonstrated little awareness of Gamocracy’s unregulated voting system.)
The Bearded Ladies clearly have a submission collection process worked out, so I hope to eventually see published data showing weekly entries, to-date entries, and entries per region/language (my estimate of 400+ Week 1 submissions is based on overall forum post counts.) Measuring these data internally could prove useful in the short term for week-over-week changes in community outreach, and in the long term for post-initiative press highlights.
To hear from the developers themselves on how the Gamocracy experiment is going, check out their first dev diary:
Moving forward
This week’s design challenge, “War of the Worlds,” asks designers to dream up 3 unique settings for H7 to traverse with his unique self-dismemberment abilities. If Gamocracy keeps its momentum, the next 6 weeks will see a massive influx of crowdsourced game concepts from across the globe. My hat goes off to Sony in particular for for giving Gamocracy a chance and for seeing the value in empowering gamers to share their ideas with the world.
Do you have a caged creative beast inside waiting to be unleashed? Are you an XBLA junkie, a PlayStation Mover & shaker, or just a kid at heart with a Wiimote in hand? Try your hand at game design with Gamocracy - it looks like a hell of a lot of fun.
[This article was originally published at WASD in Translation and appears here with the author's permission.]
Going Mobile 101
Wednesday, May 19th, 2010
It’s not enough to have great print or TV ads these days, hence the reason I have a job and am able to write this blog. It’s not even enough to have great print, TV, and social these days. In a time when everyone is walking around with a device in their pockets more powerful than the $4k Packard Bell (yes, you read that right) my dad brought home those many years ago, brands are scrambling to create an all-encompassing experience with users – a seamless brand agnostic of medium, screen size and location – and mobile is the last bit of that puzzle.
But, how do we go about creating a mobile strategy? What do we need to think about? Here are 10 steps to creating a mobile strategy that not only works for your brand, but that works for your customers/clients/and users.
01Know your targets
Paramount in any sort of marketing, but especially so in the world of mobile. Users are potential brand advocates and expect to be treated as such. Know the mobile habits of your targets and start there. Whether it’s online research, ethnographic research or good old fashioned observation, take the time to know your targets.
GigaOm recently posted a piece showing that Symbian users in the U.S. are 2.7 times more likely to click advertising on their mobile devices than Apple iPhone/iPod users. This simple fact not only is a bit of a blow to the recently-announced iAd platform, but it’s an important thing to think about when you’re looking at where to push your mobile ad buys.
Image courtesy of 02 Go local
While it will more-than-likely go the way of the buffalo, location based services (LBS) are an easy way for small and medium businesses to connect with regulars and create brand ambassadors through rewarding loyalty. Brands on the small-ish side have seen a great opportunity with LBS integration and promotion. Now, it’s easy to say “OMG, we should be on Foursquare because I saw all these articles and I know that’s what we need,” but truth is, it might not be. You need to first find out where your targets are and go there, not pick an LBS and hope they show up. Below are a few of my favorites:
Foursquare
Obviously this is the most widely-used location based service out there and brands are flocking to it trying to figure out exactly how they’ll use Foursquare for their brands. You couldn’t go anywhere at SXSW without hearing people talking about checking in, and this was in the town that birthed Gowalla. Brands like Tasti D-Lite, Lucky, and others are harnessing the herd power of Foursquare and quickly finding out best practices for the tool.
Download: iPhone – Android – BlackBerry
Whrrl
Seattle’s own LBS takes on the Foursquares and Gowallas of the world and does a pretty good job. Their focus on bringing connecting the virtual/mobile with the actual/physical is fairly interesting and their tips of nearby places make for a good night out. The experience is pretty fun and I feel like the tips and interactions within the actual UI are more useful than some other apps/services. Their only hurdle at this point is user base – it’s small (but growing).
Download: iPhone – Mobile Site
Gowalla
Austin’s own LBS tool found its way onto my phone when I was in town for SXSW, but I’m not going to lie, I stopped using it shortly after coming back to the PNW. It’s a fairly simple tool to use and worked well when I used it, I just don’t have that many friends using it.
Download: iPhone – Android – BlackBerry – Palm
Yelp
Probably one of the most “old school” of the LBS joints out there, Yelp is a great community filled with passionate users. If you’re able to harness the power of your loyal patrons/clients on this network, chances are you’ll do fairly well.
Download: iPhone – Android – BlackBerry – Palm
– Mobile Site
03Hedge your bets
The mobile world is still evolving (at the speed of light sometimes), so offering brand interaction points for users on multiple carriers, hardware lines, etc. means you’ll have an opportunity to grow user bases with a few options, not just one. If your user base is active in different areas of the mobile web, use testing and analytics to find the most-efficient ways of interacting with those fans and fully realize the ways they like to interact with your brand in those areas.
04Usability over message delivery
While the end game is always creating brand awareness, the mobile world isn’t one where constant bombardment with messaging is very welcome. While yes, some users expect to see a number of marketing messages a day from their mobile devices, they will respond better to great brand experiences with engaging content and excellent usability. It’s been said that content is king, and that’s definitely true in the mobile environment where you’re working with a pretty tiny space (when compared to other mediums). Bring your ‘A game’ in design and usability of your mobile properties and your users will reward you by taking that community to the next level.
05Sometimes there isn’t an app for that
Of course app developers and interactive agencies want to create a custom-built app for you – that’s their job. What most won’t tell you is that many times those applications aren’t necessarily the best way to reach your audiences, let alone keep them engaged. Bring your brand experience to their palms in all you do in the mobile space, don’t rely solely on a application.
06Actually have a strategy
I know this should’ve gone first, but I’m a big fan of keeping you on your toes. Creating a well-thought strategy for understanding and working for your communities in the mobile space means a better chance at success. Don’t build an app because it’s the hot thing to do or go around changing all your content for the mobile web until you’ve got a plan. Then, once you do…
07Let it run
The average time for a new mobile trend to catch on is between 3-6 months… and that’s talking about actual trends that have become “something.” Remember that putting your new mobile content out there doesn’t guarantee instant traction, regardless of the size of your existing social communities. Plan for success and manage for shortcomings in a time period that’s doable for your program, then take time to evaluate and move forwarded as needed.
08Extending, not creating
Ask yourself this with every piece of your mobile campaign “are we extending the brand?” If you’re not extending the brand, but trying to create something else through your mobile efforts, you’ll more-than-likely be sitting in a conference room some time down the road talking about why your mobile efforts fell flat. Using applications, mobile-driven campaigns and ongoing programs to extend existing brand image and community should be the goal.
09Keep innovating
The mobile world is like the wild wild West right now – wide open. What is hot today will be luke warm tomorrow, so keep a finger on the pulse of the mobile world. This makes sense, right? Sure, everyone wants to keep up with the mobile world so they can keep up with competitors – WRONG. Keep up with trends in use among your publics to see what’s next and move in that direction (even try to get out in front if you’ve got the resources).
10Don’t be afraid to fail
There’s nothing wrong with failing once in a while. Some of the best ideas have come after colossal failures and you can always remember that even the highest-paid major league baseball playings are getting paid millions of dollars to succeed only about 4 out of 10 times (a lot less if you’re talking about the Mariners). This rule doesn’t just pertain to mobile, but I’m willing to bet that there were a hell of a lot of failtures before there were monumental successes in the mobile world. Also, so I’m on a cool visuals kick today, check out this ode to failure at Portland-based Wieden + Kennedy.
In the end…
Mobile strategy is constantly changing and anyone tasked with running this area of ongoing marketing efforts has a heck of a job ahead of them, not to mention a lot of sleepless nights. As with any new/reimagined area of marketing and advertising, the mobile space offers near-endless opportunity heavily guarded by near-fruitless endeavors. The ability to track, know, and see what’s next is probably the best set of abilities any one person or group can have – and even these are changing.
Engagement
Monday, March 30th, 2009Our Services
Social Engagement
and Campaigns
- Experienced “Social Media Marketing Engagement Leads” team.
- Social media outreach, content syndication, and marketing campaign social graph promotion.
- Personal, direct, conversational marketing to complement your existing media buying.
- Identification and outreach to key strategic communities.
Direct customer engagement programs, branded social media communities built and managed, and custom brand marketing campaigns driven through earned media, all designed and delivered by a team of Social media channel experts – We gather your creative marketing assets to syndicate and promote them around the web transparently as representatives of your brand. We design, build, manage, and maintain branded off-site communities in strategic social media locations of high value to your business and customers – typically in sites like Facebook, YouTube, MySpace, Ning, Twitter, Hi5, and Live Spaces. We identify relevant blog posts, forum threads, and community conversations in which your brand or products feature prominently and engage consumers in ways that are always transparent and ethical, add value, solve problems, and that simply help connect people to useful information and content via personalized posts. Our Interactive Creative Content Team can plan and/or develop everything from branded backgrounds to sites and apps integrated with Facebook and other social media marketing platforms.
It’s a Love/Hate Relationship
Thursday, March 26th, 2009For as much heat and complaining that Facebook has been receiving lately from its users, they are still as dedicated and committed to their precious social networking site as ever. With the number of users nearing 200 million, Facebook is taking all necessary steps to keep its people happy – though they tend to be what caused the upset in the first place.
A few weeks ago it was the Terms of Service Policy scandal upsetting the Facebook public, this week the new homepage updates have caused some uproar. And in both cases, Facebook has not only given in to the pressure, but opened the doors (or online forum) for users to express their opinions and give feedback.
Apparently users were especially unhappy regarding the lack of filtering tools the new homepage offers. Recently, Facebook announced that they plan to change the current design to give users greater control over what updates appear in the main stream as well as make improvements to the Highlights section and overall design.
So what do you think about the new homepage? Better yet, what do you think about Facebook’s reaction to its users’ disapproval?
Is this a thoughtful, democratic approach to managing a social networking site? Or do Facebook’s users have its designers and decision-makers a bit whipped?
Philosophy
Monday, March 16th, 2009About Us
Our Team | Press | Philosophy | Ethics | Partners | Associations | Jobs
Caveat Emptor: A bit of a treatise…
Social Media Marketing is now old enough for methodologies to have been developed, but new enough for rules to still be written. We have been involved in this process of trial/error/success/ data/analysis/learning/improvement/repeat from the start, and we are presently among the largest and most experienced marketing agencies on the west coast focused on this exciting and evolving online marketing field. We now boast a team of 25 Social Media brand analysts, marketing campaign leads, and outreach and engagement leads. While we’re small enough to be laser-focused on every client, scale does matter, and we’re large enough to cover the entire Social Media Web with ease. Each team member is skilled across the Social Media spectrum, as well as a subject matter expert in a few particular channels. So no matter what your brand engagement or marketing campaign requirements, we can build a customized Project Team matched to your analytics, strategy, or brand marketing campaign requirements.
While we work with a number of clients on a direct level, we also know that you have had long relationships with talented creative and advertising agencies. That’s why we’ve carved out our space as Social Media strategists and practitioners in a way that we can work and play well with your current agencies of record. We typically don’t develop our own creative, shoot videos, design print ads, buy media, or write code, which allows plenty of opportunities for your talented creative agencies to focus on these core competencies. We should add, however, that we can offer any and all of these capabilities through close sub-contract relationships we enjoy with a number of leading social media creative development agency partners. Feel free to learn more about them here. We are well accustomed to partnering with your existing creative agencies, PR firms, and design shops so that their work is being seen by more people – and more relevant people – in as many of the right nooks and crannies of the conversational, social, user-generated, crowd-sourced, networked, 2.0+ World Wide Web. Connect us, and we will all work together for a positive outcome. And in the event you don’t already have an agency partner who can bring a particular concept or creative content idea to life, we have some friends who can make it happen too.
We’re not here to simply build you a blog or a Facebook page and walk away. Nor do we want to – We don’t believe that makes sense for any business and brand looking to make a real commitment to connecting with their customers in social media. Just like everything in life, benefits require commitment – and commitment takes time and effort. Our scale allows us to license the strongest measurement and analytics tools available, so we can learn quickly where your brand is being discussed, where it’s strong, where it’s weak, and where we have some work to do in order to catch up to your key competitors in the key locations online. You may tell us, “I think I want a MySpace page”. But if what you mean is, “I think my customers and competitors are in this channel, I don’t think we’re where we need to be and doing what we could be doing best there, and I think I need some help,” well then, we want to help. We use powerful brand analytics tools and a data-driven methodology to determine which of the social media options are best suited for an efficient and effective campaign – specific to your brand. We’ll help design a Social Media Strategic Marketing Plan and Editorial Calendar for your business that makes sense – in the short run and the long run. We can provide a ready-to-go team of Engagement Leads deployed on your behalf to drive your marketing campaign content and brand outreach to relevant audiences across the social media Web. And then we’ll measure how well we (and you) are doing, and where we need to shift course or re-allocate our resources.
While we’re on a bit of a roll, a note on the “viral video” phenomenon… One thing we don’t do is “viral.” A virus is something that you catch by accident. No one tries to catch a cold – it just happens sometimes. Instead, we plan, analyze, and execute brand engagement campaigns that are purposeful, logical, and measurable – and designed for the long term. If you want to make a single video, push it up to YouTube, cross your fingers, throw salt over your shoulders, and hope it gets 22 million views, we’re probably not your guys. If you want to analyze the current state of your brand presence across the web and benchmark it relative to your key competitors, to design a thoughtful brand awareness and engagement campaign, and to invest in the social media channel in an efficient manner that’s focused on better understanding and addressing your customers needs, well then, that’s music to our ears.
On top of all this, we recognize that Social Media agencies are sprouting up all over the place. This is a dynamic, energetic field with new ideas and campaigns launching hourly. Sometimes, we may not be the right agency for you, and we’re happy to refer you to a better fit. But we’d love the chance to at least talk to you about how your organization can start to implement a Social Media philosophy into your culture. We’ve been doing this a while, and can help guide you down the right path from the beginning.
Finally, we have proven ourselves capable of scaling up to service an all encompassing, multi-channel campaign. We’re flexible, service-oriented, and our services pricing model was designed from inception to work to the advantage of our clients. So whether you want a deeper understanding of your brand presence and equity online, support in building and maintaining a trust-worthy 24/7 Social Media presence, or just a solid marketing plan for the channel which you can execute yourself… we want to help make any or all of these things a reality for your business.
Skittles Tastes the Social Media Rainbow
Wednesday, March 4th, 2009
Ok, Skittles. So you’ve successfully gotten online users to spend an inordinate amount of time in the past few days talking about Skittles. The interest of fruit-flavored candy lovers, as well as that of various social media mavens has officially been piqued, and all eyes are now focused intently on the conversation surrounding your brand. Some have even started calling your new campaign the “end of the homepage (as we know it).”
The best laid plans of candy makers and social media marketers couldn’t possibly go awry, right?
Google Me, Baby
Thursday, February 26th, 2009
Everyone Googles. They were doing it before Merriam-Webster made it an official verb in 2006, with its addition to the dictionary. You can bet you’ll be Googled when applying for a job, bidding for a contract or even meeting someone for a date. That’s just the way the world works in the age of advanced search.
Designer Ji Lee, in his wacky world of design, (he’s the artist/designer who started the Bubble Project) took the inevitable and turned it into an idea for a minimalist business card. Where Patrick Bateman and his Pierce & Pierce cohorts compare shades of white and raised lettering, Lee’s card screams simply: Google me.
But, what if the recipient of the card does just that? What do they find?
Online reputation management (individual and company) is reaching new heights of importance with mouse cursors hovering over the search button. Are you ready? Is your company ready?
What if we Googled you right now? What would we find?
We know what our friends, clients and competitors find when they Google Spring Creek Group. Try it and find out for yourself.
(Original article at Geeksugar, syndicated on Gizmodo. Image from Please Enjoy)
Services
Thursday, February 19th, 2009Our Services
Social Intelligence
and Analytics
- Social media channel brand listening and monitoring tools. Deployment and analysis across the entire social media web.
- Brand frequency, sentiment, and ‘Share of Voice’ analysis and reporting.
- Key influencer/top domain indentification.
- Benchmarking reports and custom dashboards
Channel Guidance
and Strategy
- Your brand’s opportunity identification: Where you could – and should – invest in a managed brand presence across the social media web.
- Collaborative strategic marketing plan development.
- Resource, budget, channel strategy, marketing plan deliverables.
- Content. Technology and editorial plan development.
Social Engagement
and Campaigns
- Experienced “Social Media Marketing Engagement Leads” team.
- Social media outreach, content syndication, and marketing campaign social graph promotion.
- Personal, direct, conversational marketing to complement your existing media buying.
- Identification and outreach to key strategic communities.
