Being in Austin for SXSW means getting target with a ton of ads… Usually not great ones.
However, this PizzaDrone.info ad caught my eye. What happened after the click was even better… though disappointing for someone who wants to see a marriage of two of his favorite things.
And after the click…
With Facebook’s move to auto-displaying captions on videos in the Feed, the creative has a new place to flex their muscles – good old fashioned text.
The latest creative use of subtitles comes from Dos Equis as they bid farewell to “The Most Interesting Man in the World” as he presumably is bound to become “The Most Interesting Man in the Galaxy” or something else… That isn’t the point. The point is Dos Equis is using their captions in Facebook’s caption on default land of the Feed to drive people clicking to expand or unmuting:
Now, admittedly, this isn’t the most ingenious use of captioning to drive home a point, but it’s a start.
Hotels.com used their “Captain Obvious” character and their own captions to create a fun experience with sound off a while back, but now that Facebook allows the uploading of .SRT files for on-video captions, that means a similar experience for uses across videos.
Fun story about .SRT files + Facebook – they’re finicky. We just ran a global video campaign with 50+ .SRT language caption files – hard work but the campaign was awesome and a ton of fun.
When will Twitter jump on board the no sound + caption train? Has to be soon, right?
Twitter gets a lot of credit for being the place for “live” social commentary, whether it’s about moments in time (elections, etc.) or sporting events. However, Facebook has been really keen the past few years to tell advertisers they have a much larger volume ofnconversation around events… the only problem is that Facebook’s security features and the nature of the algorithmically-curated News Feed mean that users are rarely seeing conversations about an event from outside their friend circle.
Facebook is taking a step toward creating a space to watch, participate in, and curate conversations around events — starting with the launch of Sports Stadium.
With 650 million sports fans, Facebook is the world’s largest stadium. People already turn to Facebook to celebrate, commiserate, and talk trash with their friends and other fans. – Facebook Sports Stadium Press Release
The What
Users will be able to see stats, clips, expert commentary, and posts from other fans in the experience, which is launching for “American Football” now.
The So What?
While this is relegated to sports right now, it’s easy to see how Facebook could easily port these moments-based conversation extravaganzas to things like the Academy Awards, political debates, and national events/holidays.
Why Should Advertisers Care?
These new experiences provide the future opportunity for sponsorship of events (think Red Bull having Stadium-like events for their Soap Box Derby thing), ad inclusion via sponsored content within the experiences (think stats brought to you by Bing), and through more traditional display-type ads within the experience (think Click Here to Win an iPad).
By the end of today we’ll (hopefully) know who will be leading our country for the next four years – along with a number of other important races/initiatives.
This year is really being considered the first “Social Media” election as both candidate and voter use of social to communicate ideas, intent, and to mark their participation is at an all-time high.
Facebook, with their ability to tap into a large percentage of the American population, has a data-rich, real-time graphic at facebookstories.com that updates whenever a users clicks the “I Voted” button found after logging in.
Foursquare actually has a real-time view that can be embedded in sites. Check that out below. right here. Seems like it’s not working well with embedding right now.
No matter which party, candidate, or measure you vote for or against today, remember that we’re all Americans and the very fact that we have the option to go to a polling place (or our couch here in WA) and cast a vote is pretty incredible.
Ours is a shared destiny and only through working together and for the greater good can we leave a legacy that we can be proud of.
God Bless America!
Infographics are everywhere these days, not just in the pages of USA Today. Visual.ly, recently launched publicly as a place to share, view, and post infographics. They even have a Labs section that lets you make your own:
Just had this “Sponsored Story” pop up when I signed in to Facebook. Yes, that’s Beast… yes, Mark Zuckerberg‘s d
og.
Either Mark (or his girlfriend) is bored or Sponsored Stories aren’t quite selling as well as Facebook had hoped.
Either way, I’ll admit that I keep up with that little pup’s shenanigans. I really hope it’s actually Zuckerberg writing the copy/taking the pics, because I’ll just cry if it’s actually some intern.
The K-9 already gets more engagement on his posts than most brands could hope for. I think it’s a little unfair he also has unlimited access to Facebook’s marketing platform as well.
Image via CrunchBase
One of the largest vacation rental portals around, HomeAway, increased their focus on social-aided vacationing with a purchase of Portland-born Second Porch.
Second Porch, started in 2009, uses your social graph to help you find and rent vacation properties from owners, while also giving owners piece of mind in knowing (at least in a “Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon” sense) to whom they are renting their properties.
I had a chance to work with Second Porch (briefly) as they were getting their social presence and tool figured out and can say it’s a great product when you have a social graph large enough to take advantage of. However, since many users are simply using it as a second HomeAway, many listings are open to the general public.
Check it out and head to TechCrunch for more info.
A recent Reuters piece points to talks between Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg as possible clues to a potential buyout or partnership between the 500+ million user social network and the Luxembourg-born communications platform.
According to the piece, Facebook isn’t the only caller courting Skype – Google is also making a pass (or at least looking for a heavy partnership).
Analysts put a potential Skype + Facebook/Google deal between $3-4 billion based on an expected IPO (maybe still in the second half of 2011?) of about $1 billion.
Read the full Reuter’s article here.
When Polaroid appointed Lady Gaga, the meat-wearing, beat-dropping, gender-bending, pop star their creative director in 2009, I thought it was kind of fun. Sure, take a visible, creative person and give them some magical unicorn title and let the press salivate and type away for a couple weeks. That makes sense. However, at this last CES she actually paraded a number of products in front of the techy masses that weren’t half bad.
Now today, Intel announced that Will.i.am, the auto-tuned, dapper rapper, has become their Director of Creative Innovation. What he’ll actually do in that role is yet to be seen.
What I found really interesting was Intel’s statement about the deal (hire?):
“It’s imperative that Intel and our innovations are kept in front of the global youth culture that embraces new devices and new forms of communication and entertainment.” – Deborah Conrad, Intel
So, if this is about keeping their innovations in front of the global youth culture, why didn’t they sign up Justin Bieber to be their guy?
This really begs the question: is relevance really translating to resonance? Will this global youth culture see Will.i.am and connect the fact that he’s promoting the processor in their computer or mobile device? Will they even know what a processor is/does?
I hope this means every IDF will open with a BEP performance, or at the very least that “I Gotta Feeling” is playing every time Paul Otellini steps on stage.
Disclosure: I worked closely with Intel for 3 years while at Owen Media Inc.
Image via Wikipedia
Facebook rolled out a sly little update to their profile look and feel the other day as users started seeing preview links in their homepages.
The new profiles, which put a lot of emphasis on connections (adding the ability to prominently position friend groups on the left-hand side) and photos (now the most-recent pics of you will be shown in a ribbon on the top of your profile) are slowly rolling out and users are now given the “option” to change to the new layout.
What do you think?
Oh, here’s a video they put out that’s supposed to show you all about the new layout and why it’s awesome… I’m still trying to figure out why it’s supposed to be helpful.
jetcitydigital.com 