Twitter flies high

"Over the past six years, the world has become familiar with a little blue bird. The bird is everywhere, constantly associated with Twitter the service, and Twitter the company. Starting today you’ll begin to notice a simplified Twitter bird. From now on, this bird will be the universally recognizable symbol of Twitter. (Twitter is the bird, the bird is Twitter.) There’s no longer a need for text, bubbled typefaces, or a lowercase “t” to represent Twitter."

This is what Twitter's Creative Director Doug Bowman had to say, three days ago, about the decision of changing the company's logo.

In the new version, the little bird mantains its colour and shape, but with a few changes: he's looking more towards the sky as if taking flight, and he lost some of his feathers, especially on top of his head. The new logo was designed from three sets of overlapping circles, representing the way our "...networks, interests and ideas connect and intersect with peers and friends".

Bowman doesn't really explain the reason behind the sudden change. It's not like Twitter is losing popularity. If something, it's gaining more and more each day; there weren't any changes within the company, regarding  new acquisitions, new management, new name and the logo concept was kept the same: the bird it's still a bird.

This is, therefore, a change that will have little or no effect on people. Like Bowman said, it was just a way to simplify things and "burden" only the bird (forgetting the "T", etc) with Twitter, the service, and Twitter, the company.

Sources:

• http://blog.twitter.com/
• https://twitter.com/about/logos

Ana Nascimento

KEEP CALM AND MARKETING ON

Everyone knows, just by looking at the title, what I'm talking about. The story of the "KEEP CALM AND CARRY ON" sign starts in 1939, when England joined the allies in the fight against Germany in World War II. To reassure the population, the newly created Ministry of Information created motivational ads that should follow a uniform design pattern, in a sophisticated and elegant font, with the image of George VI's crown on top.

The slogan only got famous, however, in 2000 - 61 years after its creation - when the owner of Barter Books, a bookshop in Northumberland, found one of the original ads and framed it. The discovery ended up inspiring an add campaign that got the attention of the new generation, who fueled it by sharing it in social network sites and putting their own twist to it.

Nowadays, the famous slogan transcends its own original purpose and it's sold in mugs, towels, key rings, paintings and t-shirts. There is even a short film about it, directed by Temujin Doran , that has already been seen by more than a million people on YouTube. Therefore, it's not that hard to understand why Rover picked this approach for their Land Rover Defender campaign for South Africa. 

Refering to casualties that I can imagine occuring quite frequently in the South African savana, this campaign brings back one more time the famous concept but, instead of keeping the "KEEP CALM..." part, as it's usually done, Rover opted to go with the "...CARRY ON" approach - which makes sense giving they're advertising for a car/truck that it's supposed to survive everything: poisonous darts, snake bites and language barriers.

They have, similarly to the original, a very simple and uniform design: all the ads have the new Defender on top, followed by the slogan and the Land Rover logo, all over a slightly rough blue background; they go straight to the point: Defender will, indeed, defend you from all this and you'll manage to "carry on" your journey.

It really is a good, clear campaign - and I'm not just saying that because I used the same concept for the Creative Writing assignment. Because of the assignment I am saying that this is a concept that has been used quite often: on one hand, it can be good, since it's already viral, which means people will like it and adhere to  it and the campaign will have full effectiveness; on the other hand, this is such a well known design and slogan that it may come out as non-creative, as a copy of what as been done a hundred times before, which would have the exact opposite effect: people would just dismiss it as one more "KEEP CALM..." add.

I quite like it, though. I'm not planning on buying a car that would help me go through the African savanas but, if I was basing my decision in advertisement campaigns only, the Defender would win that race.

Sources

• http://adsoftheworld.com
• http://exame.abril.com.br

Ana Nascimento

Social media done right?

While I was wandering on Facebook, I found some interesting way of social media: 

 

As our social media teachers told us constantly to take care of the public, to manage the discussion and to answer as prompt as we can to our costumers on social media platforms, I think "Samsung Canada" did a good job. Even if the costumer above required a present in a ridiculous way, they treated him with seriousness and importance, answering him in a funny and particular way. I was pleasantly surprised by the company because they showed sense of humor and interest, speaking with regular costumers from the same to the same. Their answer can be also a source of "word of mouth" because it is a funny answer and people can speak about it, they can disseminate and share this picture to each other. Therefore, in my opinion this kind of social media is done right and has the power to spice things a little bit, banishing monotony woven around your company.

Maria Bogus

Are you aware?

Maybe for the people in Gent, seeing someone driving a bicycle in the middle of the road is as common as someone driving a car. For London, apparently, the same doesn’t happen: the Transport for London (“the local government body responsible for most aspects of the transport system in Greater London in England. Its role is to implement the transport strategy and to manage transport services across London”, in Wikipedia) has now a new preoccupation about the cyclists who go around London and need to pay attention to the drivers passing by. On March 2008 that TFL launched a different and creative campaign, not only on their website, but also on London’s cinemas, by publishing this video:

Now, did you expected the twist? I sure did not! I originally thought this was just one more video about some kind of test, for amusement. But no: TFL wants to show to people how we may not be aware of everything that goes around us and, while driving, cyclists can be one of them.

The amazing thing about this campaign is that gets people attention: you get excited when you get the number 13 right, but then all fall down when you discover what you missed. It’s impossible not to feel disappointed and claim to self “Maybe I do need to pay more attention…”. That was the purpose of the organization, according with it’s spokesman: "The ad encourages all road users to be more aware of each other while travelling - it aims to make drivers aware just how easy it can be to miss cyclists on the road and for cyclists to understand how difficult they can be to see." (On BBC News)

By November, the video had seen by 10 million people and it became so successful that TFL launched a new one, as surprising as the first one:

All in all, we can say that creativity can always have its good side: you can get your message across through a number of different ways but, the moment you get can pass that message in a way that people will remembered it, even the better! I came across this video through Facebook, a couple of days ago; it’s still on! In the end, the best campaigns are the ones you always get to talk about with your friends, the ones you want to share; more and more we are the means of marketing, more than television or printed ads. If we go to the cinema and see how amazing that video is, we will want to show it to our friends and TFL, more than just getting the message through, knew how to use the means in their favour. 

Inês Maria

Advertising vs Product

“For seven days a piano has been suspended above a car. Every time a prediction about an uncontrollable event was fulfilled, one of the ropes was cut.”

The Russian insurance company Intouch opted for a different kind of campaign while publicizing its External Factors insurance. The premise was simple: “what does safety depend on?”; each rope symbolized all the situations we cannot predict and put our cars in jeopardy and, most of the times, we are the ones who have to pay for the damage. Not if we are InTouch’s clients.

During the seven days the piano was suspended above a car, anyone could send one prediction and wait for it to happen, or not. The events were diversified, from predicting that the temperature in Moscow reached the 21ºC or simply that Barcelona would get to the Champions League’s final. The idea was to show that we cannot predict all the external factors that can damage our vehicles, but we can be insured so we don’t have to be worried about them.

In that sense, we cannot say that InTouch’s idea was particularly out of the blue: it had a point and showed a bit of their message and their product – an insurance against all the external factors which damage our cars and how we are not responsible for them; be insured is the only way of preventing unwanted bills.  By the by, it even got it touch with possible clients and caught the attention of social networks, spreading the word faster than in any other medium (one of the prediction was that the last rope would be cut if 100 people tweeted the sentence “fall, piano, fall! #carvspiano” in a 59 minutes time. There were 100 tweets in 15 minutes). It didn’t tell people directly about their need of having an insurance, but showed them (giving that everything was broadcasted live).

Even so, the campaign got more attention for itself than the product t was being sold; people were excited for having the ability to participate in such activity, maybe even predict one of the events which would result in the smashed car. You can even ask for one piece of the broken piano and car if you like, just sending an email to the company.

All in all, we can never be sure how tour campaigns are going to result. We can have the most creative idea and it fails for it not being so connected to the product that we forget what product we are talking about. Probably, most of the people following the events were not even aware of the fact that it was a campaign for an insurance company, and only noticed it in the end, when everything was already finished.

In a way, Intouch did what needed to catch attention: it created a different campaign which got talked about in the social networks so much that everyone knew what was happening. Only by the end it inserted it in the company’s objectives. Did the message got to all of the people involved the same way, or most of them just cared about the event and not the product?

You can check all the information and get familiar with the campaign in the website Car vs Piano.

Inês Maria

Opera is for the old!

We talked about how cultures are evolving, how nothing is static and that, with evolution, also our values and habits may change. Uniformly, a culture begins to be identified with other features. So far, so good.

Technology couldn’t come in a more perfect time: in a little time space, with the advent of the internet and social media platforms, can we imagine our lives without these mediums? Probably we can but, as a famous Portuguese add says, it wouldn’t be the same.

As Erasmus students as ourselves, we see even more the impact of new technologies in our lives: the distance between ourselves and the family and friends back home is less than the actual one; with one click we can see our parents in the screen our talk for hours with our friends through email or instant messaging. We use Facebook to show the pictures and update our statuses as the day goes by, we tweet our new discoveries and adventures the moment we live them, we put on youtube the videos we filmed in that amazing party! Yes, each and every one of us, in and out of our class room, has an online life which is difficult to distance from.

The English National Opera used that reality as a way of getting people's attention for their new opera using this video:

Technology became cultural, a part of what we do and even are. With this simple add, they not only made as think about that online lives of ours, but also gave us this need to see more, learn more about it, go and see the opera so we can actually see which dangers are those they are talking about. And they just showed what we do on the internet but refuse to do in real life (and even despise the ones who dare to do it).

As simple as that.


Besides, practicaly all young people has in their minds the idea that opera is for elder ones. With just one video, the English National Opera show that an opera can be about anything at all, even Facebook or Twitter! And what theme can be as captivating to youngsters as technology? In the end, they picked up a current theme, wrote an opera about it and now they want young people to go and watch how fun the opera can be.


I certainly became curious!




Inês Maria

New Media as creators of new products

As we are well aware, in the past years we watched platforms like Facebook, Linkedin or Twitter grow at an increasingly rapid pace. Not only because of the possibility to connect with other people and sharing our day-to-day activities, but also given that those platforms became one of the main sources of information: many newspapers, journals and magazines have a Facebook application or a Twitter account where they share the highlights of their publications, as well as the opportunity to take place in competitions and getting special offers, for example, a discount on the subscriptions of those periodicals - which normaly one has to buy if he or she is interested in reading the complete article. A huge part of today's marketing strategy is focused not only on the billboards and printed adds in magazines, but also on the companies' websites - which is imperative they have - and on social media, for a faster and effective way to reach the publics and, most importantly, the target groups.


So when Tim Burgess, lead singer of The Charlatans, sent a fun and far from serious tweet to Kelloggs - a centenial company, founded in 1906 by W.K.Kellogg, which has expanded from less than fifity employees in Battle Creek, Michigan to a company that manufactures in 18 countries and sells its products in more than 180 countries -, teeling them that upon hearing the expression "totes amazeballs" (describing something awesome), he thought about how  that name would be cool for a cereal brand. Within an hour, Kelloggs got in touch with him, and according to the Marketing News, one of the company spokesman assured that they're planning on lauch the new cereal soon, with a personalized packaging.


Ana Nascimento




Sources

• http://www.kelloggcompany.com/company.aspx?id=39
• http://www.marketingnews.es/internacional/noticia/1064024028505/kellogg-unos-cereales-inspirados-tuit.1.html (in Spanish)
• http://www.marketeer.pt/2012/02/24/tweet-inspira-novos-cereais-da-kelloggs/ (in Portuguese)

33 infographics about the Internet and Social Media

Happy (Taiwanese) Youth Day!!

Today I feel like sharing some good food for thought.

The presentation below illustrates with 33 infographics the Internet, its uses, and the social media phenomenon. Thanks to figures and simplified schemes, it gives in my opinion a solid basic material to work on social media as a marketer. Keep it under your hat!

But as the Internet grows at a spanking pace, it will certainly need an update in the near future (if not yet).

To switch to the fullscreen view, click on "Menu" (left corner).

Source

(2) Elise G.