Virals are no longer just commercials for companies. Nowadays anyone can create a viral (short movie) to make a statement or just to open up a discussion about something. With the coming of uploading and watching online video-content comes the possibility to visualise your ideas to other people.
Marketingfacts has a weekly poll where they search for the top ten virals of the week. This week a funny voice-over made it to third place. The viral tells us something about branding and the importance of ads. The movie which has been modified is: A few good men. I am not very likely to be intrigued by a voice-over with a serious undertone, but this one deserves to be highlighted. (Pay attention to the accuracy in the voice of Jack Nicholson)
Wednesday
Thursday
Wie O What?
There is a new search engine called wieowie.nl. It is a website which searches through websites such as google, youtube and Hyves for the name you enter. If you want to know where a specific person has an account, you can fill in the name of that person and you will find results from major community websites.
I thought: Well this is interesting, let's do some usability testing.
I wanted to try it out with Rita Verdonk. I set out to eventually find the explanation for the name of her new political organisation. For some particular reason she called her new organisation “Trots” (proud), so I wanted to see if I could find other information next to personal information about this subject.
I typed in her name and got lots of results. On the image you can see that she has got Hyves and that there are lots of tags which are attached to her name.
In the end I could not find a good link to a website, so for searching other information then personal information I would always use Google. Unless you are looking for a specific person, wieowie is not very functional for finding information on the web. When trying to locate an old friend wieowie is the perfect outcome.
I thought: Well this is interesting, let's do some usability testing.
I wanted to try it out with Rita Verdonk. I set out to eventually find the explanation for the name of her new political organisation. For some particular reason she called her new organisation “Trots” (proud), so I wanted to see if I could find other information next to personal information about this subject.
I typed in her name and got lots of results. On the image you can see that she has got Hyves and that there are lots of tags which are attached to her name.
In the end I could not find a good link to a website, so for searching other information then personal information I would always use Google. Unless you are looking for a specific person, wieowie is not very functional for finding information on the web. When trying to locate an old friend wieowie is the perfect outcome.
Tuesday
The Level of HBO Education
Two weeks ago field research was done on HBO students and teachers, to establish the level of education. The enquirers wanted to know if the level of education being taught was at a high enough standard to proceed on with being a HBO education.
As a senior year student this cannot affect the level of my diploma, but nevertheless I started to think about how this can affect my chances on the market. It is no icebreaker to solicit at a company, saying you graduated at a school which is dropped from an HBO to a MBO level.
I started to do some research on the Web, to see if there are more schools with similar problems. On Molblog.nl I saw a post on how many HBO educations cannot cope with the speed of developments in the Multimedia world.
According to some teachers it is difficult to teach students about the new developments. When a development submerges, there is no telling if this development is going to last, or if it will fail. It is very hard to give an exam about a development, which has not yet proven to be successful. The only thing teachers can do is discuss these new developments in an objective way, so you can judge for yourself whether the development will be successful or not.
The post on Molblog.nl led to quite a discussion about the way that a HBO student should work. Some say that the education gives you a basis from which you are accepted to watch out for new developments and learn about them yourself. Others believe that there are flaws in the education, preventing the students from developing to an HBO level.
I for one believe that the education does give you a good basis. They teach you to do a lot of research and watch the market for any new developments. Although it happens, that a student has to explain something to a teacher, we must not forget that an HBO education is all about self-reliance and learning to deal with the problems you encounter.
As a senior year student this cannot affect the level of my diploma, but nevertheless I started to think about how this can affect my chances on the market. It is no icebreaker to solicit at a company, saying you graduated at a school which is dropped from an HBO to a MBO level.
I started to do some research on the Web, to see if there are more schools with similar problems. On Molblog.nl I saw a post on how many HBO educations cannot cope with the speed of developments in the Multimedia world.
According to some teachers it is difficult to teach students about the new developments. When a development submerges, there is no telling if this development is going to last, or if it will fail. It is very hard to give an exam about a development, which has not yet proven to be successful. The only thing teachers can do is discuss these new developments in an objective way, so you can judge for yourself whether the development will be successful or not.
The post on Molblog.nl led to quite a discussion about the way that a HBO student should work. Some say that the education gives you a basis from which you are accepted to watch out for new developments and learn about them yourself. Others believe that there are flaws in the education, preventing the students from developing to an HBO level.
I for one believe that the education does give you a good basis. They teach you to do a lot of research and watch the market for any new developments. Although it happens, that a student has to explain something to a teacher, we must not forget that an HBO education is all about self-reliance and learning to deal with the problems you encounter.
Dove Against Fake Beaty.
Making a product or brand successful is not following the competition, but being unique and choosing your own path. A brand that does this very well is Dove. In 2004 Dove started a campaign called: Campaign for real beauty. In this campaign they try to reset the image of what the industry believes us to be beautiful and focus on the bigger group of people who do not fit in to that category.
Dove makes a clear statement towards these people. Do not try to change, because you are already beautiful in your own way. This is a daring thing to do, living in a world of plastic surgery and a longing to be as beautiful as the people in the ads. Dove try’s to tell people that the image set by the beauty industry is a fake one.
The commercial where they show how an average model turns in to a supermodel by make up and Photoshop has done well and has opened a discussion about true beauty. Media is a very strong and convincing way to get people to listen to you. It is a shame that these ads still assure great sales numbers, when there are many girls getting low self esteem often followed by anorexia or even plastic surgery by watching these commercials
The question of course still is; Do we want to see beautiful women in commercials. Men will often say yes, but men are not the target group of these commercials. Women are and where some women idolise them, many women get low self esteem and will buy the products just to make them feel better.
The latest commercial Dove has made features a young girl and the changes the industry can make to her when she grows up. The slogan is: Talk to your daughter before the beauty industry does.
Dove makes a clear statement towards these people. Do not try to change, because you are already beautiful in your own way. This is a daring thing to do, living in a world of plastic surgery and a longing to be as beautiful as the people in the ads. Dove try’s to tell people that the image set by the beauty industry is a fake one.
The commercial where they show how an average model turns in to a supermodel by make up and Photoshop has done well and has opened a discussion about true beauty. Media is a very strong and convincing way to get people to listen to you. It is a shame that these ads still assure great sales numbers, when there are many girls getting low self esteem often followed by anorexia or even plastic surgery by watching these commercials
The question of course still is; Do we want to see beautiful women in commercials. Men will often say yes, but men are not the target group of these commercials. Women are and where some women idolise them, many women get low self esteem and will buy the products just to make them feel better.
The latest commercial Dove has made features a young girl and the changes the industry can make to her when she grows up. The slogan is: Talk to your daughter before the beauty industry does.
Wednesday
A Wave of Pink
I was working in a Primafoon store last Saturday when a new navigation system popped up on the computer screen. The new Garman Nüvi 250. It was a pink version designed (as the company says; especially for the lady’s). But is making your product pink really enough, for a woman to buy your product?
The answer is no. Many women think it is absurd and feel offended by the way certain male designers make pink products for them. Making your products pink will maybe help you to sell products to girls up to 18 years old, but they cannot drive a car and will not buy a navigation system. Many women argue that the designers do not take their needs in account.
According to Saatchi & Saatchi a diversity of company’s is loosing an estimated 900 million dollars on profits. More then a third of the interviewed women say they are willing to spend more money on products if the designers would focus more on the needs of the average woman. No pink glitters but well designed and functional gadgets.
Because I am writing an Essay on man and how they cannot design for women, I thought this would be an interesting product to write a post about. Because men often do not understand women they design their products to work for a “stereotype” woman. In most cases, the stereotypes he thinks is a typical woman may be very rare.
Tuesday
ITV from KPN
To continue on my latest post about personalisation, I wanted to write a post on ITV.
I work at Hamilton Bright. Our latest assignment is promoting ITV in Primafoon stores. I give demonstrations showing the customers the product and letting them experience the unique features ITV has to offer.
For those who do not know what ITV is I will give a short explanation. Because many people (especially youth) watch TV programs on the Internet, TV has become less wanted in households. The ability to watch whatever you like on the time you feel like it is exactly what people want and because there are no commercials there are large groups of people that prefer watching shows on the Internet.
ITV gives the user the same opportunity. With ITV you can pause your TV, fast forward commercials and watch programs at different times as they would normally be on. A question I ask customers frequently is: How late did you watch the eight ‘O’ clock news yesterday?
ITV fits the description of TV 2.0, giving the user back its freedom to watch whatever he likes. In my opinion, this is nothing revolutionary. It is just a logical product which follows the trend of personalisation, making sure that TV will be here for generations more to come.
Personalised Searching
Over the last years, the choice of the user has increased to the point where u have a choice for just about anything. Do you want your sandwich with cheese or without it? Do you want the Nokia N95 or do you want to see one of the other twenty competating mobile phones. As you can see, the choice of products has almost gotten to large. It has reached the point where really strong products still need very keen and expensive campaigns to have any chance of success.
The future of selling products is personalisation. The key of being successful is no longer giving the user choices, but remembering the choice and adapting your future products, services and advertisements to it. This way you will take the difficult choices the user has to make in the little free time he has and make the right choice for him.
Searching online is not easy for everyone. You have to enter the specific keywords in order to find what you are looking for. These are some of the improvements which will be integrated in the future of searching online, according to SearchEngineLand.com:
• Personalized search: Personalising search results, by using search history, surf history, social networking, etc.;
• Local search: Adapting search results to location preferences of the search engine user.
• Universal search: Integrating multiple media types and sources as search results. Examples are video content, blog posts, podcasts, etc.
These changes will make sure you find what you need in the future. Integrating these features makes for a more complete search every time. SearchEngineLand.com, thinks that these changes will be made by 2010, but some of these features, like video content, are already beginning to show on sites as Google.
The future of selling products is personalisation. The key of being successful is no longer giving the user choices, but remembering the choice and adapting your future products, services and advertisements to it. This way you will take the difficult choices the user has to make in the little free time he has and make the right choice for him.
Searching online is not easy for everyone. You have to enter the specific keywords in order to find what you are looking for. These are some of the improvements which will be integrated in the future of searching online, according to SearchEngineLand.com:
• Personalized search: Personalising search results, by using search history, surf history, social networking, etc.;
• Local search: Adapting search results to location preferences of the search engine user.
• Universal search: Integrating multiple media types and sources as search results. Examples are video content, blog posts, podcasts, etc.
These changes will make sure you find what you need in the future. Integrating these features makes for a more complete search every time. SearchEngineLand.com, thinks that these changes will be made by 2010, but some of these features, like video content, are already beginning to show on sites as Google.
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