Can the iPad bring back print advertising?
The print world may owe a debt of gratitude if the iPad helps save it
I got my start in this business making print ads. I loved everything about them: the challenge of the blank page; the possibilities of the two-dimensional plane; the art of combining an image and words to yield an idea greater than the sum of the parts; and the chance to create pictures in a reader’s mind with nothing but a perfectly crafted headline.
In the early days, Mullen was known for its print. Campaigns for Timberland, Smartfood, Swiss Army, LL Bean and many others were a perennial presence in local and national award shows. We built arguably one of the best studios in the business, worked with renowned photographers all over the world, and attracted art directors who were obsessed with the craft.
Then, thanks to the web, it all came crashing down. We got all kinds of new creative platforms — video, social, mobile, applications — but the rapid demise of that age-old form so many of us loved was (for those of us over 40) shocking. At least at first.
But now, the medium is about to get a second life. Thank you iPad. It will give us back all of things that made print great:
- A large two-dimensional space on which to create a piece of commercial art that captures one’s attention.
- A palette onto which we can place stunning visuals.
- An environment (digital magazines) where a reader may actually welcome something remarkable rather than simply look for the little “x” to close the ad.
Of course, it will also inspire something entirely different: a totally new digital form of print. Think Bernbach meets iPhone meets Wired meets UGC meets social media. All potentially combined into a single execution that’s conceptual, engaging, user friendly.
Consdider what Pentagram has to say:
“The conventions of online advertising—banner ads, pop ups, and so forth—aren’t popular with readers, with advertisers, and certainly not with designers. But the iPad is a new medium that will create a whole range of opportunities. Once people start exploiting what it can do, we may see the kind of creative renaissance that will deliver the next George Lois or Lee Clow. People will start subscribing to certain i-mags just for the ads alone.”
If you’re not already thinking about the possibilities of the iPad and the creation of a new form of digital print you should be. I imagine all of the following as possibilities. Eventually you’ll be able to create ads that let consumers:
- View a product from every imaginable angle with the flick of the finger.
- Change the colors and patterns of anything from shirt and tie combinations to the interior of a car.
- Upload and incorporate images of themselves into an execution so they can try on different outfits or pieces of jewelry.
- Instantly link or connect to back stories about how a product was made; learn its carbon footprint or its nutritional information.
- Find all their Twitter and Facebook friends who have bought the same brand or product to get their personal opinion (new application for Blippy?)
- Explore a brand via digital games, back stories, or through integration with other media, i.e. TV shows.
- Decide which version of an ad or which ad from a brand he even wants to see.
- Share, vote, rate ads in real time forcing creators to get better and more responsive
So, while we’re still a couple of months away from the first shipments, there are a number of things you could be doing right now. For starters, order your iPad and while you’re at it reserve at least a few for your creative department. Then consider the following:
- Make sure your current iPhone app developers are in touch with Apple regarding what will be possible with the iPad and have them share that with creative teams.
- Learn what Conde Nast and other major publishers have planned for their magazines’ conversion to tablets and how you can create advertising that will work in their new digital formats.
- Assemble a team made up of creative technologists, UX specialists, media planners, social media thinkers and creative people to start thinking about the possibilities.
- Identify the brands and clients who are most willing and excited about re-inventing how to tell their stories.
- Avoid simply migrating old content, images and OLA type executions to this new platform. It’s a chance to create something entirely new: executions that change daily; that include digital games; that incorporate real-time conversation.
I don’t have my iPad yet. (It is on order, though.) I haven’t seen a Conde Nast presentation in person. And I don’t have a team assembled internally as of today. But it’s all on the to do list. What about you?
Links and other articles of interest.
Sports Illustrated: Tablet Demo
Made by Many: Content design with cojones
CNN Tech: Print media hails iPad potential
Daily Illini: iPad could save print media
Pentagram: Five ways the iPad will change magazine design
C-Change Media: Why ads on the iPad and other tablets won’t make a difference
Steve Jobs photo by: curious lee
Is advertising giving crowdsourcing a bad name?
John Winsor hosts Crowdsourcery at Social Media Week
I didn’t get to New York for Social Media Week so I missed catching this crowdsourcery panel live, but did sit through it online. I’m a big fan of John Winsor and Michael Lebowitz as well as Faris Yakob. Three smart guys for sure. Put them at the same table with Denuo’s Seneel Radia and JWT’s Ty Montague and there’s no shortage of wisdom and experience (not to mention opinion) to go around.
In a nutshell (and I paraphrase here), Ty starts with the accurate assessment that crowdsourcing is still so new we don’t really know whether it’s a good or bad thing. Or even how best to apply it. Michael is skeptical that the technique can ever deliver the kind of product that comes out of his agency Big Spaceship since their process is all about collaboration and teamwork. Faris comes right out and questions the “wisdom of the crowd,” preferring instead the line “a person is smart, people are stupid.” And, of course, John, who just launched a company inspired by the possibilities, believes that crowdsourcing can work if the infrastructure is there and a “benevolent dictator” leads.
Michael Lebowitz, John Winsor, Faris Yakob
Frankly I agree with all of them. But for me the problem with the non-stop discussion of crowdsourcing in our industry is that we limit its application to the output of “creative.” We continually think about the technique exclusively as a way to yield a logo, or a TV spot, or a campaign of some sort. And so it remains controversial. We are either “devaluing the expertise of those who’ve spent years mastering a craft. “ Or we’re supposedly “exploiting all the wannabes who are willing to give their time and effort away for a pittance.”
But if we think of ourselves in the business not simply of creating messages (or even platforms) but of helping brands and clients build their businesses, then there are many uses of crowdsourcing. We can actually aid clients in developing new products. Think what Splenda did with its Facebook fans. We can accelerate learning by soliciting reaction to an idea from a willing community of fans. We can stimulate word of mouth marketing just by inviting people to create their own version of the ideas or spots that we conceive (think HP’s You on You). We can even produce finished work that might never be achieved otherwise. Lemonade the Movie, crowdsourced via Twitter, and the 3six5 project come to mind. While these two examples may not be for the benefit of clients or brands, they just as easily could be.
In the last year, Mullen has experimented with crowdsourcing for a number of projects. None were designed to produce the commercial that would run in place of something we could create ourselves. Instead our initiatives have served to inspire participation and co-creation from a community. We crowdfunded for Grain Foods Foundation. We created a blog to help clients and marketers understand Gen Y. We’re in the early stages of inviting Boston Bruin fans to write new “rules.” And we have some interesting ideas for our new client Victorinox Swiss Army.
The same day that John and friends shared their opinions, I met with Randy Corke of Chaordix. We talked about all the things that Chaordix was doing. They’re working with one of the UK’s top universities to reduce infant mortality in developing nations by crowdsourcing the knowledge and experience of all the doctors and nurses working in those countries. They’re showing a major US retailer how to tap into its employees to solve technical problems that will allow for better service, augmenting a small R&D group that’s overworked. They’re even crowdsourding ideas from the general public in Canada to help that country become innovative in the new digital economy. These ideas suggest possibilities far more interesting than securing an inexpensive logo or a user generated TV spot.
If you’re an agency, stop thinking about crowdsourcing for nothing other than creative (even though it can be a great tool for this, too) and consider your clients’ most important business challenges: faster development of new products; improved customers service; alternative distribution channels; new ways to give customers a chance to participate. All of these objectives could be crowdsourced, making an agency more of an asset in the process.
The big brands get it. Dell, Netflix, P & G, Heinz and others use crowdsourcing for all kinds of projects. But there are a lot of smaller or less innovative companies that haven’t yet explored the opportunities. Why not be the one who introduces them to the idea? If it’s not you, chances are it will be someone else.
Share medical procedures via social media
I’m pleased to announce my latest venture, SeeMyOp.com. It’s intended to be the first social network site that lets members share their surgical procedures live with friends and followers, both on SeeMyOp.com as well as on a user’s other networks thanks to an API that will enable users to stream live video from surgical scopes and instruments over Twitter and Facebook.
In addition, a simple interface will also tweet all vital signs during an operation while planned connections to Foursquare and Blippy will inform a patient’s community of his hospital location along with the costs of all procedures.
I think you’ll agree this is the next big thing, not only in social networking and community building, but in health care as well.
SeeMyOp oozes benefits. For starters, it’s the logical next step for social networks. Think about it. As we all collect friends, fans and followers it’s inevitable that they’ll want to know as much about our health as they do about our thoughts, whereabouts and spending habits. And as more and more aging baby boomers embrace the social web, what’s likely to be the most common shared activity? That’s right, medical procedures. Everything from the basic to the life threatening.
Secondly, SeeMyOp.com taps right into the same networks we already use, uniting them in a way that’s useful, informative, and conversational. With Foursquare we let everyone know where we are. With Blippy, we share, if not brag about our recent purchases. With Facebook we update our status and share images of our lives. And with Twitter we tweet about just about anything. SeeMyOp ties them all together in the ultimate personal revelation: the chance to see what’s really going on inside us.
SeeMyOp.com will be the ultimate social sensory experience. In addition to video and vitals, the platform will automatically upload still photographs from any procedure at pre-determined intervals chosen by the patient. Images will be available on Flickr, Facebook and accessible via a new iPhone app also under development.
Even more importantly, SeeMyOp could become an incredibly valuable resource when it comes to health care. It will familiarize patients with procedures, allow them to learn from friends’ experiences, and provide them with comparative cost information.
It could even help with tracking the success rates for different procedures by both hospital and specialist as its installation base grows and more users embrace the new technology.
SeeMyOp is still in the early phases of development, getting ready to raise capital, as we proceed with product development. But I wanted to share it first with my own community of friends and readers.
I look forward to making the platform available to users and the medical community in the not too distant future and in the meantime welcome all of your comments, questions and feedback.
What do you think? Is this the best social networking idea yet or what?
Finally, if you like this post and others you see here, please hit the share button and pass it around. Or click on the RSS button in the upper right and subscribe. I’ll try and make it worth your while.
Where do you want to be touched?
You could answer that question in words. But it might be far more interesting to see your answer in a picture. Even more interesting to see a picture that aggregated thousands of people’s answers. And even more interesting than that to see if where you want to be touched is the same place that someone wants to touch you. (Note, women want to touch and be touched on the back of the neck; men don’t really focus on that particular body part.) All of which you can experience on fleshmap.com, a site that represents just some of the work being done by data visualization master Martin Wattenberg.
I had the privilege of sitting through one of Martin’s captivating presentations on data visualization at last week’s Future Forward gathering of marketers, CEOs and venture capitalists. Martin demonstrated how the visual portrayal of everything — from congressional testimonies to music lyrics – enhances understanding, simplifies communication, and reveals insights that ordinary words just can’t capture.
For example, he loaded the lyrics of 10,000 songs, identified the 83 body parts mentioned – head, eyes, lips, hands, knees, etc. – and then created graphs and charts to show the prominence of each body part in a particular genre of music. But here’s the catch: bar charts and graphs were boring. However, place an image of each body part in one of 83 circles, then let the popularity of that body part in a genre’s lyrics determine the relative size of the circular images, and you have one amazing visualization. I don’t have to tell you what body part grew to dominate the screen for hip hop, but you might be surprised to know that knees were huge when it came to the blues.
So what’s the point of all this in a blog about marketing and social media? Simple. Data visualization shouldn’t simply be a means of communicating facts, trends, or research results, which is how it’s primarily used today, augmenting magazine articles or business reports. It’s greater potential is as an interactive social media tool. Everyone’s a data junkie these days. We want to measure ourselves, whether it’s our calorie intake, our running performance or more recently our sleep patterns.
With Martin's Many Eyes, you can visualization almost anything
With the real time web, data visualization can entice us to participate, enter data, compare ourselves to others, and share those results across our social networks. That’s presuming we get the rush of seeing instant results in a format that is fun and interesting. Thanks to creators like Martin we can. Check him out if you haven’t. You can create a picture of your name, your blog posts, and virtually anything else you can imagine.
And if you’re like me, constantly looking for new ways to engage your community, create genuine utility, and allow for participation, you might discover numerous untapped opportunities in this art form. I’ve got ideas already. What about you?
Like what you find here? Join the conversation. Leave a comment, share this post, or subscribe with the RSS button in the upper right. Thanks for stopping by.
Content, community, crowdsourcing all working together
I usually don’t promote work that we do at Mullen, but I thought it OK to make an exception today since our new effort for Timberland Pro represents a lot of what I’ve been talking about recently.
This week we launched a simple site for the boot. It demos the product in a fun yet informative way. It practices a little bit of crowdsourcing in an effort to coax future content out of our fans and allow them a voice in a brand that they care about. And most importantly it actually helps folks find jobs. We partnered with careerbuilder.com to create an easy online tool that connects blue collar workers in construction, contracting and skilled labor with local jobs. Not a bad idea in a month where the latest government numbers show that unemployment has reached its highest rate in 26 years.
Content, community, crowdsourcing. All working together. What do you think? Anything else we should have done?
