Tag Archives: Advertising & Marketing

Friday Links: Vintage computers, female nerds, and the case for ignoring people

• Rise of Female Nerds.
• Why iAds will revolutionize mobile advertising.
• Movie posters recreated with Legos.
• What ‘Project Runway’ Can Teach Agency Creative Directors. (props to @malbiniak for that one.
• Ad agency or indie band? I did poorly on this quiz. So poorly I won’t reveal my score.
• This is one of those that’s way more interesting than you’d think: Evolution of Animation Film Posters.
• The case for ignoring people at work.
• Photos of vintage computers.

Tech Tuesday: Development for (and getting our Nerdery hands on) the Apple iPad

By now, you’ve read all about the Apple’s new tablet, the iPad. You’ve watched the videos. You’ve maybe giggled about the product name; let’s be honest though, the Nintendo Wii’s name hasn’t hurt its popularity. You’ve either dismissed it as a big iPod Touch that won’t go anywhere, or, you’ve already smashed your piggy bank and have money in hand. Regardless, Apple has a pretty good track record with their latest products (iPod, iTunes, iPhone) and we don’t want our ad and marketing agency partners to be the last ones to the party.

First, the iPad debut doesn’t mean that our agency partners should stop making iPhone applications. All iPhone applications will work on the iPad out of the box.

But how does the iPad affect our agency partners who have already created applications for iPhone and now also want to take advantage of the bigger screen of the iPad? Unfortunately, it’s not as simple as hitting an Easy button (trust me, I have one) and magically all your applications are reformatted for the iPad. The user interface will have to be redesigned to support multiple resolutions. It’s also not just relaying out the design for the larger screen; it’s also understanding what the iPad is, and designing an amazing user interface to take advantage of the new user interface features.

When looking at creating a new iPad application, our agency partners really have two options: target just the iPad or target the iPhone and the iPad.  Targeting the only the iPad should have a similar development cycle and cost as developing an application just for the iPhone. If the choice is to target both devices, there will be some design layout changes, but the core of the application will stay the same. There will also be some additional time for our crack Quality Assurance team to make sure we release a great application.

If you don’t think the iPad is going anywhere, I present Steve Ballmer.

Then again, if you think Apple is infallible, I present the iPod Hi-Fi.

Either way, The Nerdery is ready to help you create great applications, no matter the platform.

Friday Links: Lady Gaga, iPads, and Super Bowl Ads, oh my!

• As Mark said, A Lady Gaga link from the Wall Street Journal? Yes, yes indeed: How Lady Gaga made her name in a digital world.
• 10 of the worst Super Bowl ads ever.
• The iPad and a generational shift in computing.
• From the headlines I will always click division comes: Unbelieveable Lego art from Nathan Sawaya.
• Newsday spends $4 million to redesign their site and put content behind a paywall only to garner 35 subscribers.
• Building developers houses instead of cubes. (via @konrness)
• Just because you can doesn’t mean you should, on using social media with a calm, clear head.
• Superhuman tape measure skills, surely you have 29 seconds to watch this awesomeness.
• Confessions of a Book Pirate.
• Audi my have Super Bowl PR nightmare on its hands. Of course, I had no idea the “Green Police” were affiliated with the Nazis but that might be because I slept through most of my History of WWII class in college.
• Now that the The Denver Egoist is expanding its empire I hope we see a Minneapolis Egoist soon.

Friday Links: How Much Data Americans Consume Daily

• A Small Agency’s Guide to Going Digital, Things I wish I knew 10 years ago.
• Infographic of the week: How Much Data Americans Consume Daily.
• An open letter to James Cameron from Papyrus.
• Twitter for cars: Ford tech reads your incoming tweets aloud. I hope you can choose the voice. Because I want Jeremy Irons to read all my tweets.
• Dream Captcha (props to @gillianr for the link)
• Congrats to Pat Fallon who’ll be inducted into the Advertising Hall of Fame in March.
• When clients take too much design control.
• MyFonts’ Top 10 fonts of 2009.

Vote for the best advertising & marketing of the decade

The editors at AdweekMedia are slated to announce their picks for the best marketing, media, and agency performances of the 2000s in December. They’ll be pointing out stellar brands, commercials, agencies (large and small) and more in over 33 categories.

And because this is America, you too can vote on some of the best advertising, marketing, and branding of the decade. Get your vote on over at Best of the 2000s.

Even if you don’t want to vote go over there and take a look at the nominees in the 33 categories, and click view results at the bottom, right now it looks like Steve Jobs is going to be crowned king of the world.

Macy’s has seen the future

Or at least they thing they have. Check out this ad that ran in Philadelphia papers today. I wonder if they’ll wait to see the actual outcome of the World Series before firing anyone.

(found on Ad Freak)

The eternal battle between art & commerce

Over at Slate today they have an excellent write up of the new Levi’s commercials created by Wieden + Kennedy. The commercials feature the poetry of Walt Whitman, and probably want to send a lot of lit-snobs running into their candle-lit rooms to write about their feelings. But not this one. These commercials are awesome, and Seth Stevenson, author of the Slate piece, succinctly sums up the internal struggle most ad people face:

Among those who work in advertising, there is an eternal battle between the desire to make art and the imperative to serve commerce. This 60-second film is, to me, a small artistic gem. Right up until that Levi’s logo at the end.

While the author is specifically talking about the “America” commercial, I like the “O Pioneers!” one better.

Ad-O-Matic: Taking care of all your creative advertising needs

I spotted this little gem over on AdFreak mere minutes after discovering that October 19 – October 24 was National Design Week. So here you go, consider it my gift to you.

The Ad-O-Matic from James Kiersted on Vimeo.

Feel “free” – try before you buy

Quick, scroll through your iTunes – how many of those songs did you pay for? I’ve burned every Hold Steady CD from friends who beat me to the record store, but I’d like to think I make up for my thrift by buying tickets for their homecoming gigs – and even bought my favorite t-shirt at one of the band’s First Ave shows. Eventually, we vote with our dollars for stuff we like.

Chris Anderson, author of “The Long Tail,” has again landed on the New York Times Bestseller list – this time by putting the premise of his latest book, “Free,” to practice by inviting thousands of freeloaders to download it. “The point was to let people sample the book in full,” said Anderson. “If they liked it, we hoped that some would buy the hardcover to keep or at least spread the word.” 

And yeah, “Free” found its way into my summer reading via the ol’ five-finger discount, but here I am spreading the word.

Reading the New York Times online is free, but to me the better bargain is having the (now six-dollar) dead-tree Sunday edition strewn about my couch for the rest of the week. Well-worth reading is the Ping column of last Sunday’s Times (Business section, page 4) about Evernote, a free web application that lets users make and keep notes from web clips, voice memos, business cards, pictures, videos and more – with the ability to retrieve data from multiple devices.

(Disclosure: The Nerdery helped develop parts of Evernote’s forthcoming revamped website, along with design agency partners Factor Design.)

Even though three-fourths of Evernote users quit it cold turkey, the company is betting that as more people use it to organize their constantly accumulating data, the more members will pay for account enhancements like more storage and being able to scan PDF notes to find a certain word. It stands to reason that the more notes a user puts in for free, the likelier they’ll be to pay to more easily extract the data that drives their personal and professional life.

“Free is not a loss leader,” said Evernote chief executive Phil Libin to NY Times columnist Damon Darlin. “If we can get a small percentage of users to pay we start to make money…We are committed to being free.”

Me too – if it’s free, I’m free to do it. 

Marketing Favre: Minnesota via Madison Avenue

Many football nerds who live and die with the Vikings couldn’t wait to apply a fresh coat of purple face paint when Brett Favre unretired again, and even casual fans seem to have a rooting interest in whatever happens next. Love him or leave him, Brett Favre has always been a marketable commodity. This ESPN spot by Weiden + Kennedy spoofs the network’s own reporting of the long-lingering story.

ESPN had seen to it nationally that every rumored development regarding Favre’s difficult and publicly private decision was reported (and many, later, corrected), but the media volume was louder yet here in Minnesota as we waited for our purple #4 jerseys. From here we could also hear considerable murmuring from our green-and-gold-clad neighbors in Wisconsin (where they’re printing their own shirts saying, “We’ll never forget you, Brent” – always loved that one).

According to AdWeek, the F-word was mentioned 452 times on Minnesota TV between August 18-19, and 650,000 Minnesotans watched Farvre’s rusty preseason debut – up from 240,000 the week before. People will come.

As a fan of self-mockery (prerequisite for Nerdery dwellers), I’m pleased to see Favre’s commercial for Sears (created by Young & Rubicam) because it’s solid evidence that #4 sees a healthy dose of humor in his on-again/off-again waffling route to Minnesota.

While marketers are delighted with Favre’s (in)decision, fans here in the Nerdery state and in nearby Dairyland have either strong feelings one way or the other, or, the foundation of their allegiance is so deeply shaken that they don’t quite know how to feel. I personally feel like finally winning a Super Bowl, but for now I’ll settle for an otherwise meaningless preseason victory this evening at 7 Central time on ESPN. Are you ready 4 some football?