Here’s an example of advertising at its most invasive. What’s next, Mr. Clean peering up out of the water in the commode? If you’ve ever tired of looking at your own reflection and have a spare 38 seconds, check this out. Warning: Not for the narcissistic.
via: Fresh Creation
Tags: Featured, Electronic Communications, Branding, Marketing, Industrial Design, Advertising
Recent blogosphere death threats leveled at popular blogger Kathy Sierra have stirred much controversy and driven Sierra to stop blogging indefinitely.
Ironically, just as Sierra withdrew from the blogosphere, the term “Kathy Sierra” became the #1 topic on Technorati, boosting her popularity worldwide (see below).
Posts that contain Kathy Sierra per day for the last 30 days:
Get your own chart!
Tags: Higher Ed Marketing, Social Marketing, Featured, Electronic Communications, Culture, Blogging, Foundation Marketing
Twitter.com asks us, simply, “What are you doing?”
What’s a Twitter?
Twitter is an online social community tool that allows people to update friends—and strangers—worldwide about specific moments in their lives.
Users can send updates directly from the Twitter website, text message them from a mobile phone, or instant message them via AIM, Jabber or Gtalk.
Gaining Traction
Hitwise UK Research Vice President Heather Hopkins wrote about Twitter’s surge in popularity in a recent article, but noted a sharp downturn in market share of overall UK internet visits. Her findings indicate Twitter may still be gaining in US popularity against other internet community sites.
(Click charts for larger view.)
Well-known Canadian blogger, Kate Trgovac, has a Twitter widget on her popular MyNameIsKate blog.
Even presidential hopeful John Edwards is Twittering.
Growing Concerns
Power blogger Steve Rubel of Micro Persuasion has written extensively about Twitter lately. He’s even used “addicted” to describe his fascination with the trendy social connection tool. But in a recent article, he suggested Twitter’s lacking revenue stream may prove problematic when US-to-overseas SMS charges roll in.
Twitter has alternately been referred to as micro-blogging, a toy, and a revolution. The question is whether it is a nascent niche player or a bona fide long tail fixture in the social media landscape.
It’s far too early to tell if it has reached its maturation point so early in its life cycle or if the crowd mentality of social networks is just being dismissive and fickle regarding this new concept.
A Twitter Takeaway
Advance preparation and rapid deployment are key in reacting to emergent social networking trends. As you develop integrated marketing strategies, consider augmenting them with a flexible, at-the-ready, component plan designed to capitalize on Twitter-like opportunities as they arise.
Image Source: Inju
Tags: Higher Ed Marketing, Social Marketing, Featured, Electronic Communications, Technology marketing, Healthcare, Culture, Blogging, Foundation Marketing, Web 2.0, Marketing, Financial, WOM
A Sure Thing
Smart money is on this attention-grabbing Marco Polo airport installation promoting the Casinò di Venezia (Casino of Venice). Sure to drive traffic to the nearby casino, the luggage conveyor turned roulette wheel is the brainchild of Italian agency AdmCom.
What are the Odds?
Once the novelty wears off it will just be more visual clutter—although luggage conveyors aren’t all that attractive to begin with. For now, it’s still novel, but odds are luggage still gets lost as often as ever.
Click here for a closer look.
via: ibelieveinadv
Tags: Design, Retail Inspiration, Featured, Inspiration, Branding, Marketing, Advertising
Gone are the days of colorimetric analysis of Munsell tetrads and triads to find that perfect color scheme. Enter, Color Schemer Studio, an application tool developed to help professionals find the perfect palette for every palate. Available for OSX and Windows. Check it out at colorschemer.com
Tags: Design, Productivity, Tools, Recent Thought, Featured, Electronic Communications, Products, Tips
Weblogs we like.
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under Branding. Grouped by topic, Alltop aggregates stories from “all the top” sites across the web (that’s their story and we’re sticking to it). View our .think listing, here: branding.alltop.
Here’s a free Mac app allowing you to call up, via customized abbreviations, any text string you copy and paste frequently. Best of all the text is placed pre-formatted - returns, bullets and all. It’s become a staple here at Brainstorm. You can download your own at app4mac.
If you can get past the vapid brand identity and UI, PimpMyNews, the talking social news site, is an interesting concept. The site will read your RSS feeds to you over your mp3 player, iPhone, etc. or computer.
[via: PR-Squared]
NPI’s personal cosmos transport. Like Ray Bradbury’s Dandelion Wine Happiness Machine, the iPlanet, a holiday product parody, promises a “thoroughly self-absorbed social media experience.”
Robert Scoble explores the notion in this BusinessWeek piece re: the running debate over where we’re headed with aging, albeit ubiquitous, email paradigms versus spam-free Tweets.
[via: Scobleizer]
Aggregate the aggregators at Popurls.com—simultaneously follow the most current posts from all the top sites like Digg, Newsvine, YouTube and Flickr. Or, “find your favorite thing,” over at Buzzfeed.
Peter Bruhn’s Swedish type foundry is preparing a new freshet of fonts to flow forth and flourish among us—according to Typographi and Bruhn himself.
[via: Sheer Brick]
A word from A List Apart about design based on simile.
Looking for a digital color scheme that will last the ages? Colour Lovers explores masters inspired color schemes.
Can’t see how your two soda bottles a day are impacting the environment? Chris Jordan’s images will help you visualize it. View his amazing statistical depictions at Running the Numbers, An American Self-Portrait.
Regardless of your geopolitical views you’ll likely appreciate the satirical humor of this product parody sketch run amok.
Okay this would just be a goofy flash-based Spirograph-esque toy if it didn’t generate downloadable .svg (Scalable Vector Graphic) files—which it does. Pattern enthusiasts, meet Qbesq.
Here’s Google’s take on the phrase, “Across the pond.” Visit Google Maps, enter New York to London in the search field, scroll to step #24.
How to reduce Firefox from a memory hog to a piglet. Caught this Firefox usage tip over on Ade Olonoh’s blog (see comments).
If you’re a developer or just interested in CSS, check out this article entitled, #IEroot — Targeting IE Using Conditional Comments and Just One Stylesheet,” over on the PIE site.
An iconic-rich, one-click site on how hundreds of the planet’s most noteworthy brands came to be. Updated daily.
From the Bonn Physikshow—A lesson on YouTube regarding the denser than air properties of hexafluoride (likely sulphur hexafluoride) gas.
Enter at your own risk. A proof of concept that design does matter. Havenworks.com hailed on Digg recently as perhaps, “…the most poorly designed website in the world!”
Originally published in Communication Arts November Design Annual 2006, here’s their list of 50 essential bookmarks. Conspicuously missing, sites such as Delicious, Technorati and Lifehacker.
Sure to appeal to the megalomaniacal extraterrestrial in all of us. World, meet geoGreetings. When you care enough to send a satellite image.
An interactive glimpse into the the random and spontaneous feedback Jackson Pollock once realized in his medium—sans the clean up.
Pressed toast with panache. From the, “Table Manners Collection,” Delfts Toast Pan by Minale Maeda. As seen on “ohmygooshness.”
U.S. Internet users viewed more than 12 billion online videos during May 2008 - up 45 percent over a year ago.
Source:
comScore
Via:
Jeremiah Owyang
14 July, 2008
Items we find compelling, of late.
Our latest top 20 list of inane musings from the Brainstorm office white board: Top 20 Things to do (we did) on the 4th of July
(at right)
Our latest top 20 list of inane musings from the Brainstorm office white board: Top 20 Thoughts on What No.15 Means
(at right)
Our latest top 20 list of inane musings from the Brainstorm office white board: Top 20 Reasons Hiroki and Jenni Work with Shoes Off
(at right)
Objects of interest, engaging designs, diagrams, downloadable visuals and any other imagery we felt worth sharing.
