Work..work..work
Here is some fresh work. Ever since I started working at the agency life got busy as hell. I helped out with the Music Hackday here in Scotland and it was a tremendous experience. I’ve met a lot of very interesting people and I had a blast.
Here is what I made for the occasion:
Huge Shout out to Yann Seznec (http://theamazingrolo.net/) for making the music.
..and here some animated posters
Edinburgh International Culture Summit 2012
I had good fun with some stop motion animation here:
A huge thanks to Kit Willmott for making the music.
Sometimes it really is…
…don’t ever forget that!
And don’t say “I’ll never be good”. You can become better! and one day you’ll wake up and you’ll find out how good you actually became.
Truth from astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, he of great wisdom.
I just love it.
This Blog, no seriously, check it out!
Instavideo: Viddy and Social Cam. When social video goes beyond YouTube.
I liked to refer to YouTube as a Social Video platform, I thought it was a fancy term that could fit in. In the end, YouTubers are there to share their videos with the community. One thing I believe Google missed out here is the immediacy of taking a video and sharing it online. Fair enough you could to that with YouTube already but it doesn’t feel right (or it doesn’t to me). I’m aware there are plenty of vloggers that dumps their videos online straight from their phone, however YouTube as a platform is conceived for a desktop experience from my point of view.
Fear not! Two relatively new apps/social networks are here to the rescue, both Viddy and Social Cam (by Justin.tv) in fact follows what is the Instagram concept of snapping and sharing dressed up with fancy filters. Both services have been out for a while but they received a particular buzz recently (Instagram acquisition anyone?!), creating a real debate over which one is the best. Social Cam has a slightly bigger community (20mln) against Viddy (16mln) which is also reflected by the higher position SocialCam has in the App store ladder; as I’m writing they are both in the top 10.
The major difference between the two apps is the video duration, where Viddy has a 15 seconds limit, SocialCam let you go on and on with your insightful view on the world politics. I personally prefer the “less is more” approach, although 15 seconds might sound harsh, I can think of a lot of interesting ideas that will do just fine with that time length. Viddy also offers a higher quality video option and overall more filters (although you’ll have to pay a little extra).
Ok then, the user base of both the communities is not huge, although it might grow as fast as Instagram experienced, until that point I don’t see it as a feasible advertising solution but I’m ready to change my mind. In fact, I’d say that if one of the services will ever hit big in the UK, it might be worth to get on board with an ad hoc campaign, and I can think of a couple of brands that could do with something like this.
I’ll surely keep an eye on both the services to see how they evolve.
Is it worth to point out that Zuckerberg has a viddy account?
Play, achieve, win real stuff. Kiip to the rescue.
The idea is simple, you play a game on your iOS or Android device, and while you unlock achievements you win real world stuff.
It doesn’t sound like a bad deal to me, and although I can see the pitfalls it might have potentials especially If the SDK it’s easy to deal with and developers can earn extra money. The question here is which kind of freebies will I be entitled to? Would it be worth the fuss?
I can see brands such as Starbucks having a go with it, but how many other company could actually benefit from it? I assume that if a game has a large audience (i.e. Angry Birds) a decent freebie is the price to pay to engage (there you go, I said it) with the players, but could you actually target a determined demographic?
EDIT
Kiip’s EMEA Director Eamonn Carey got in contact in the comments section and I’ve asked him few questions:
Do you have any data about the players of a given game (age, sex, location)?
So we get demographic data from the developers, which gives us a good overview of the age/sex breakdown. We track the location ourselves. We then have our own data about what users have redeemed in the past and we spend quite a bit of time on analytics and analysis to try and segment various demographics by specific games, game genres and more.
If the product is not really kid friendly (i.e. a free latte at Starbucks or whatever), is there any chance to offer different prizes based on demographic in the same game (i.e. Angry Birds) or is just a matter of targeting a different game?
In terms of offering different rewards to people within the same game - the way the system works is that it presents you with a reward - so it could be some virtual currency from Pepsi or a box of crisps from Popchips. If you don’t want that, you just ignore it and it goes away. The next reward that you see will be something different. So there are multiple rewards available in games at any time.
How do you deal with hacking, did you encounter any problem so far regarding the matter?
With regard to hacking, it hasn’t been an issue yet. Kiip gives people rewards in a serendipitous way. So you and I could play the same game at the same rate, hitting the same achievements, and you could get a reward and I’d get nothing. It’s set up to surprise and delight people rather than telling them they need to achieve x to get their reward.
There’s a whole layer of behavioural economics that underpins everything we do - and this surprise and delight element is a huge part of that. It also means that people can’t hack the rewards. We also work with brands to make sure that the coupons/codes they give out for physical rewards are unique - so if I get something, I can’t share that code with all my friends to get them a free something as well.
Thanks for your insights, this make the whole service much more appealing to me.
Time to get back…or is it?
Ok, I’ve been away for quite a while. I know..the fact is that once you spend more than a year on a project, right after is finished you need time off. Quite a lot of it.
The good thing is though that now that Uni is finished I can focus on my career and although Motion Graphic was treating me well, my deep desire to get my ass in Advertising is winning over, and after few months of purgatory I’m finally making my first step in the business, thanks to one of the best agencies around here.
I’ve got a month, part time, to do my best before my trial ends, ganbare!
A typography poster of an inspirational quote by George Lois.
Meeting 16 - Fin
Last meeting this past Thursday, the atmosphere was relaxed, we had a chat about the poster and a brief look to what is left to be done:
- Polish the document
- Acknowledgemets
- Appendices
- Finish the poster
Not much, as I’m writing (Saturday 19th) apart from the appendices it is all done. Without getting too emotional, we shook our hands and we said we would have met next wednesday at the poster presentation.
This is it folks, this is my last entry as a student in this blog. I’ll probably post the Acknowledgements so to have a proper closure.
I’m debating if I should keep posting on the blog now that the project is done, and..what the hell, why not?! I might start using Tumblr to post silly GIFs as anyone else, I need to figure it out yet.
For the moment thanks to the few who read my posts, and if you feel brave enough you can always leave a comment.
-8
just a quick update, I’ve been veeeeeeeery busy lately. A final draft of the project is ready!!
Only few elements left to be fixed and I’m now working on the poster. I’ve got another coursework to work on the next 2 nights and than is a ride until next wednesday.
It’s almost over, happy times!
Meeting 15 - the end is near
The meeting was quite long and very productive today, the end of the project is approaching and that strong feeling is in the air.
We had a closer look at the conclusion, the intro and the abstract spending a good deal of time reading it.
Overall everything seems to be in place. I managed to catch up with the schedule and by Monday I should have a first final draft.
In the meantime the channel continues to increase in views and subscribers (slowly).
The Infographic Guy now has 326 subscribers and almost 20,000 views. Good times!
Meeting 14
The end of the project is approaching stupidly fast.
This meeting was about discussing Chapter 3 before to send it off to proof reading.
Not much going on at this point, I just need to keep going.
Stress level: 7. 15 days to go.
I'm finally making my way into Advertising...here is my take on it.
