Three Minds On Digital Marketing @ Organic

A little while ago, an ad for the new Wario game for Nintendo Wii caught our eye. It was given a ton of praise for it's originality and the way it really caught the viewer's eye, getting them very interested in the product which it was advertising.

I ran across a similar ad today on the IGN site - at least, it's trying to be similar.

Once it loads, you'll see the Tomb Raider Underworld ad on the top and right banners, with a "Pull down The Ring" callout in the top right-hand corner. This is Problem #1 with the ad - you can't actually pull the ring at all. You have to CLICK on the ring, without dragging at all, in order to get the desired effect. It's a very, very cool concept. The problem here is that the concept has been pretty badly executed.

Problem #1 - user confusion. You don't tell the user to "pull" on something with your mouse when the functionality isn't there for that to happen.

Problem #2 - load time. The ad loaded in between 23 and 25 seconds consistently, whereas the Youtube Nintendo ad started playing in less than 6.5 seconds. Granted, IGN is a notoriously slow site.

Problem #3 - problematic presentation. The ad loads in two pieces, at completely separate load times. You're left with this "Pull Down The Ring" message with nothing else to support it at all until the final piece loads.

Problem #4 - mediocre video. The video itself is very well done, but the amount of time it takes you to get to it, plus the overall choppy quality of it, takes away significantly from the video's impact.

The bottom line is there are some lessons to be learned here about how the impact of a really cool ad concept can be drastically reduced because of less-than-stellar execution - something we should all keep in mind.

Daryl Brewer

Sprint has a really interesting new site to promote it's mobile broadband offering.  It's called "Sprint NOW" and it is a futuristic personal information / news dashboard made of a screen full of cool visual widgets giving you a snapshot of our World now.

There's a broad range of widgets showing, for example, the current National Debt, email sent , forests cut down, energy usage across the globe, new cases of malaria, today's top Google searches and Youtube videos.

When I first saw it, I imagined this being projected up on a huge digital display in my home similar to a scene from "The Island", "Minority Report" or "Ironman".  I imagine myself going up to the display and customizing the data simply using my hands.

There's no hard sell from Sprint - just that soothing synthetic female voice telling you the current time, a stunning glimpse of how diverse and interesting our world is and how this diverse information can be presented in real-time NOW.  

Kudos to our friends at Goodby, Silverstein!

David Feldt

One of the most common definitions of Information Architecture is that it's the "structural design of shared information environments." It defines information structures to answer the question "how does a user find the information they want?"

Today, the Web is certainly not just a hypertext system of pages and pages of information linked to each other, but a complex software interface for online social interactions, interactive animations, processes, applications and much more. While most Web IAs still call themselves Information Architects, and while IA is still an important part of what they do, it's really only a part of it. Some IA professionals now specialize in social media, some in interaction/experience design.

Creating exceptional experiences online, and developing efficient interactive marketing, is much about storytelling. We develop stories that excite and motivate people, and platforms where people can come create and edit their own stories. Interactive storytelling is in many ways more complex than traditional movies or theatre, but IAs can still learn a lot from scriptwriting techniques.

Chicago-based theatre producer Greg Allen's "25 Rules for Creating Good Theatre" make a good, basic guide to designing customer experience, services, and presentation technique as well. Some are basic rules that we all know and recognize, like these for example:

Rule #4: Know why you are creating this show.
Rule #5: Make form fit function.
Rule #15: Include a surprise.

Some others are more thought-provoking ideas. Try applying these to social media:
Rule #22: Get non-verbal.
Rule #23: Establish ritual through repetition.

Check out Greg's full list here: http://tinyurl.com/28mbqq

Karri Ojanen

Part concert, part game, part karaoke, part goodies. Just brilliant. Luke Buda's Special Surprise web experience won the Favorite Web Award's site of the day back in September. The site just begs to be explored with Pterodactyls, dinner plates, plenty of Easter eggs, and one giant Luke Buda head observing it all.

Casey Riggleman

Can we just come to terms with our overpopulation problem? Admit it... this online world is becoming awfully crowded. And it's not just the people you are connecting to, it is the content they are contributing.

13 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute. There are over 184 million bloggers world-wide. 55% of active online users have uploaded and shared photos and 16% upload everyday. There is a lot of value in that content.. but there is also a lot of noise.

ReadWriteWeb recently begged the question, "Is Online Noise Really Bad For You?" Noise can lead to unexpected opportunities, personal growth, and training your brain for maximum recall. As much as I agree with them on the need for discovery, it seems like we are destined to become buried in the firehouse.

But what if there was a way to do both? What if the next generation of technology could enable both natural filters and a smarter way to discover new content?

Over the next week, I am going to be looking at how the next generation web will change the way you connect, discover, and share with the social online world. I'm also going to be looking at how this movement is going to make marketing more relevant and measurable.

I swear that's what these characters are thinking as they twitch for my attention. They know they're cute. The entertainment stops me dead in my tracks. When I finally break the spell and move my mouse, the rollover animations beckon me to look behind door #1, no! 2, no! 3! I give up deciding which to play with first, and just click, waiting with Christmas-like anticipation as to what I will see next.

The Coca-Cola Company blew campaign standards out of the water since launching the original fantasy world called the "Happiness Factory" in 2006.

Drawing viewers near through film is one master of skills; recreating the same level of experience online - and letting viewers touch it and affect it - is a separate challenge. The campaign demanded equality from its online extension in 2007.

These characters were too fun to be shelved and locked away in a non-interactive film. So, the Happiness Factory became the website. Users can explore the characters, play games, and apply for a job.

Let us tip our hats and take note on the technical dances that must have taken place with creative. This high quality, rich animation working within today's bandwidth limitations doesn't happen easily. The load times are at a manageable level, and I should mention that I've seen the loader tens of times, yet I still study the host's reflection and wait for his Roger Rabbit.

The moral of this story: continue pushing for solutions that make the fantasy a reality. Let's practice saying this to each other: "You want that? *OK. Let's work together and we'll find a way to do it."

* This Experience Architect does not endorse meaningless, purposeless nothingness.

Nikki Duncan

...because catching up to Firefox and Opera functionality better describes what is happening here. In either case, Microsoft has definitely stepped up their game with this release which allows a ton of new functionality and features.

All of the new functions are neatly packaged and easy to understand, which is a much different experience from browsing through pages of Firefox addons. The Easy Homepage function (see image above) has been incredibly useful and really changes your browsing experience because you tend to use this tab as a navigation page. The page load times seem faster than any other browser I have used to date, probably thanks to the FasterIE prefetching which uses idle bandwidth time to download and cache links so they are ready for you when you click on them. The mouse gestures are fun but this along with many of the services take time to learn and setup, I guess that is why it is called "Pro".

I have tried Chrome, Avant, Flock and other browsers but have always comeback to Firefox. Had it not been acting up this week I probably would not have even tried IE7 Pro. But now that I have spent some time getting acquainted, Firefox maybe knocked out of contention.

http://www.ie7pro.com/

Russ Hopkinson

UPDATE: Contrary to the implication in my post above, IE7 Pro is not developed by Microsoft, it is an independent group of developers based in India. Although there was mysteriously little information on who they were or how much support Microsoft has provided.

Yesterday, I stumbled upon a fantastic advertisement for the new Wii game "Wario Land: Shake it!":
http://www.youtube.com/experiencewii

My first thoughts were probably the same as most other people's: "What the hell is happening?" What really makes it exceptional in my mind is how it takes something that we're all very used to, and (quite literally) shakes it up. After my initial shock of seeing pieces starting to fall off, I just did a very quick bit of investigation...

So, except for the header, the whole piece is one big Flash movie made into one fantastic optical illusion. They just worked the movie up to look exactly like YouTube, then as the game footage (which is part of the same movie) plays, they use Flash effects to make it look like the page is coming to pieces - a very simple and very smart idea .

I didn't know YouTube would allow somebody to take over an entire page like that. I can only imagine what it cost them! This could give us all kinds of opportunities - I want to see a Jeep Wrangler drive its way up the side and to the top of the video player now, as if it were climbing a mountain. My mind is buzzing with ideas.

Daryl Brewer

The classic example of future interfaces that technology buffs like to bring up is Minority Report. While the touch-screen wall of glass seemed a bit extreme at the time, there is no denying that touch-screen going to be a big part of our future. Other famous moments of that movie included Tom Cruises run around the city with video ads playing on the city walls and sidewalk. There were videos ads on the back of cereal boxes, personalized video messages at department stores, and electronic newspapers.

In final part of this series, I am going to be looking at is this notion that future interfaces will be everywhere.

This has been one of the most fun areas for people to theorize. With the mainstream adoption of wifi services, the idea that anything, including an umbrella or a refrigerator, to become internet-enabled is a possibility. So what is the true way we sift the mainstream from the somewhat ridiculous? The big question is, does it fill a need that is wide enough for everyone to understand why they need it in their lives?