Posts tagged interactive marketing
Metal City: interactive universe promoting a metal band’s new CD
Apr 12th
Population: Declining is the new album of a Canadian metal band. For its launch the band’s decided to go bigger than just Myspace. On their behalf, interactive company Grand created HailtheVillain.com, which lets you sneak a peek into the band’s imaginary universe.
Here is a demo vid outlining most of website’s features.
Hail The Villain from Grand Creative on Vimeo.
Hail the Villain is an interactive exploration of a fictional city named Metal City. Horrific human vices play out graphic novel-style as you are investigating an accident that happened in the city.
Of course it is nicest to play with your headphones on. While you struggle to figure out the point-and-click action, Hail the Villain’s ambient music plays in the background, adding a sense of film-noir to the drama. You also have the option to explore with webcam on/off, though it is not clear to me why you need this.
During the gameplay you can dig in everywhere to find out more clues; don’t miss accessing the radio if you want to check out samples of the band’s new tunes.
There surely is a lot to do in Metal City. However, if this experience is too immersive for you and you just want tour dates, merchandise, all this is available on the home page, where you can choose whether to enter Metal City or not.
Don’t miss to check out the website, even if you are not a metal fan, i am not, too, but this is not the point. I certainly give major creativity points to Grand for the interactive experience they created.
Let’s say NO! to “bribing” marketing!
Aug 3rd
Now we live the era of new media marketing – “360 communication”, “social media marketing”, “cross media marketing”, in terms of Internet advertising, have become the keywords to successful marketing today.
Brands are communicating with consumers directly and are beginning to pay attention to consumers’ thoughts and experience. Nowadays brands market with their consumers, rather than TO their consumers.
We, the humble people to whom their Internet connection is an essential part of our lives, now have a voice and are heard! We are the Influencers!
…And I really hate marketers to bribe me! I really hate being said to something like – “Buy a pack of three toothpastes, and get a toothbrush and a pack of toilet paper, for free”.
I also hate “Take this survey and win a free iPhone”!
I hate Call-to-Action marketing, and marketers who still use it are losers!
Check out why:
Have you ever bought a “make-money” digital product?
Apr 29th
Since i spend most of my efforts with this blog on exposing digital products for you, i can not help but ask you if you have ever bought a digital product.
What was the product’s vendor? Was it sold by Clickbank for example? What was the product’s name and were you happy with it? What’s the product you paid the most for?
To tell you the truth, i have dared paying for just one product – Bookmarking Demon, because i was really sure that it is a great product, and it really is. I have come across many other products, especially in the “make money on the internet” niche, but there are just 2 that i find useful. If i had the budget, i would also buy Xrumer.
Have you ever bought a product and then decided that you want to take advantage of the “money-back-guarantee”, but did not, because you could not get to the product’s support?
Share your experience with digital products, positive or negative. Thus people would know the real value of digital products, before being lured to buy by affiliates’ “reviews”.
It is easier and even wiser, according to some people, for someone (affiliate) to make you buy a certain product rather than not make you buy it. However most of us here realise that most of digital products, especially in the “make money” niche, are no good. I really want to share to people, especially to those who just start up, the real value of the “make-money” digital products.
Will 2009 be the Ultimate Social Year?
Mar 23rd
The Social Media phenomenon is a topic that i really like studying. I am not really sure if the audience of this blog is interested in it more than getting products exposed, but you should know that Social Media is in the base of the internet marketing business – no matter the methods, no matter the techniques, no matter the people you target, no matter your niche. If you make any money from the Internet it is because of Social Media, if you do not make any money – it is because of Social Media again. As i have said it earlier – Social Media is what you should go into in order to be successful online.
I found an article posted on Techcrunch France in January 2009, about how social networks were used globally in 2008.
The development and growth of different networks is really interesting, especially noticing the dominance of Blogger (222 million unique visitors from around the world). These figures are followed closely by Facebook with 200 million unique visitors, Myspace (around 130 million visitors) and WordPress (144 million visitors). A bit further away in terms of figures (22% lower that its closest competitor, WordPress) is Windows Live Spaces (87 million visitors)
Bellow is a more complete list of figures:
Top Social Media Sites (unique visitors as of November 2008; comScore):
Blogger (222 million)
Facebook (200 million)
MySpace (126 million)
WordPress (114 million)
Windows Live Spaces (87 million)
Yahoo Geocities (69 million)
Flickr (64 million)
hi5 (58 million)
Orkut (46 million)
Six Apart (46 million)
Baidu Space (40 million)
Friendster (31 million)
56.com (29 million)
Webs.com (24 million)
Bebo (24 million)
Scribd (23 million)
Lycos Tripod (23 million)
Tagged (22 million)
imeem (22 million)
Netlog (21 million)
We Are Social has written a very interesting article regarding social media figures in the UK, describing how swiftly we are starting to adapt to social networks. Even cell phone companies are expanding their users’ Internet options, which strengthens even more the ever more permanent connection that cell phone users have with the social web. This is surely going to make us more dependent upon such websites and to give them an even bigger place in our everyday lives.
Here is a Forrester presentation, created after the Future of the Social Web Roundtable:
Roundtable Event: The Future of the Social Web
Further reading on Social Media from previous posts:
16 March 2009 – How has the Internet influences us to be Influencers
How has the Internet influenced us to be Influencers : )
Mar 16th
Till the occurance of Web 2.0 and all its information and interactivity, people relied on experts or acquaintances when looking for opinions about a new service or product. This is no longer the case. It is not that new, but yet a very interesting trend which many people are unaware of, that Internet users seek the advice of other Internet users they have never met before.
This is just one of the many findings of the When did we start trusting strangers? study carried out by the Universal McCann. The study included around 17,000 people from 29 countries. The study showed that rather than being passive, consumers have taken not only active, but also creative roles in consumersim.
The study describes a “new influencer landscape” which is defined by three significant trends: the rise of social media, the importance of digital friends, and the proliferation of influencer channels. The study also points out the impact of this phenomenon: an influence economy, the democratization of influence, and the new “super-influencer”.
- 44% of people surveyed have a blog (compared to 28% in 2006)
- 57.5% have a page on a social network (compared to 27% in 2006)
- 42% download video clips (compared to 10% in 2006)
- 34% of users share their opinions about music
- 55% share their photos online
Internet users no longer rely on just the brands to inform themselves. While 69% visit brands’ official websites, 82% prefer to search for information on a search engine or to read people’s comments on personal profiles on social networks like Facebook, Myspace, for example (55%). Internet user’s preferred method for exchanging information about a product is MSN Messenger (44.5%). E-mail comes in at a close second (42.4%), followed by blogs (30.4%), and social networks (27.6%).
The occurance of social media has allowed millions of people to create and publish content. Social communications have become virtual and interaction now takes place online, mostly with writing. Thanks to social networks, we are able to “meet” people whom we’d probably never have otherwise met in real life.
Interactive digital media facilitates interaction and influences sharing (sending Youtube links, for example). Thanks to these new tools, it no longer requires huge efforts to become an Influencer. The study’s most interesting finding is: We trust the recommendations of strangers as much as we trust those of our trends. We also trust information found in social media more than the information given to us by brands.
According to McCann, we are finding ourselves in an influence economy. Brands are forced to respond to numerous opinions published on the web so that they become more transperant and to open up to social media.
Considering the Cluetrain Manifesto:
“Companies need to come down from their Ivory Towers and talk to the people with whom they hope to create relationships.”
Internet users have a penchant for music, movies and technology, but the same phenomenon can be found in a variety of other spheres like finance, housing and insurance. Contrary to popular belief, Asian countries with emerging markets are the key to this development.
The democratizaion of influence: many individuals can become influencers, or even “super influencers”, the so called evangelists. Super influencers are very active in social media; they create and share rich content.
The most interesting part is how this implicates business:
According to McCann, brands should act according to these 4 principles:
- Transparence and honesty with customers, without becoming “hyper-transparent”
- Participate in conversations that generate discussion: create blogs, be present in social networks, etc.
- Consider every person as a potential influencer and encourage the target audience to share its opinions
- Approach new creators: bloggers, video creators, podcasters, etc.
(N.B. – Check the Cluetrain Manifesto)
According to McCann, it’s these new creators who will have a powerful infulence on wide audiences in the years to come. Brands should try to work with them, and above all, not understimate them.
If you are interested in the topic you can check an older article i have published: Social Media and Success Online
When did we start trusting strangers – Universal Mac Cann
Social Media and success online
Dec 21st
Hello :) Today i decided to write a little bit about the facts that most of the people who teach you how to succeed online, avoid saying (not hide, but avoid, there’s difference).
Big interactive marketing agencies, the so called marketing gurus, the average facebook user whose intention is anything but related to marketing and making money online and YOU, are an unseparable part of one and the same picture called SOCIAL MEDIA. “And social media is not just wordpress, facebook, myspace, podcasts, youtube, etc… Social Media is rather a conversation supported by the latter”. You just need to join the conversation. If you want to find new friends online and/or communicate to your old friends – you join the conversation (Social media). If you want to buy – you join the conversation; for example – if i give you 1000$ and tell you to go buy a product you never heard of, you go check Google, you go on facebook, myspace and ask your friends about it and only then you’d eventually go and buy the product. Which means that if you want to sell – do the same – go join the conversation.
Success online is not some secret which you need to pay for in order to implement to your action plan for online success. There is no Google code, cracking the code of Google, there is no system, and there is no button which if you press you’ll get rich… unfortunately. Why? Because the Social media is NOT organised! It is spontaneous! And it is spontaneous, because there are real people behind it, not a system. If the internet were simply a system, yes, it would have been cracked already, but it is not.
There are some paid systems, know-hows, etc online and they teach you how to create good sales copy, how you can get more traffic, how to build squeeze pages, SEO basics and so forth, but then again these are not the most important things you should learn. The most important thing you need to learn is this – what you are actually reading now.
If there is something you need to learn for better success online, it is Social Media and thank God you can find this info for free. You dont even need to learn SEO, SEO is for people who do not provide valuable content/service. Because, believe me, if you provide really valuable content or service, people will surely find you. A good example is Markus Frind and his widely known free service for online dating Plentyoffish . You can check an interview with him HERE . So stop paying for services till you really get to know what is really going on online. First you need to start studying the processes and only after that implement the systems.
In order for you to begin your Social Media study i recommend you this presentation:
Arbitrage Conspiracy Conference Call Recording
Dec 10th
If you wanted to join the Arbitrage Conspiracy conference call, but could not, here is a link with the recorded conference – Check it
The topics they talk about are the following:
How they started with a mere $50!
How to get completely set up and open
for business in 24 hours!
How To Make Massive profits with
No Website, No Product and No List!
Why every major guru flocked to Las
Vegas to LEARN from Aymen, and why
they were all left speechless
How to get around major roadblocks
that prevent most marketers from
making BIG DOLLAR income
If you missed what the Arbitrage Conspiracy is all about, you can check it HERE
