Each year, the Global Language Monitor announces the most popular word of the year. The monitor uses an algorithm to track social media searches, internet searches, etc. to determine a word’s popularity.
This year marks the first year that a technology word has taken first place; usually the most popular search terms are related to events happening in the world. “Twitter” has surpassed “Obama”, “H1N1″, and even “Michael Jackson”.
For more information, read the entire article here.
Although Guerrilla Marketing can indeed prompt it’s target audiences to buy a product or influence their purchasing decisions, it can also bring about change in a way that is not monetary at all. The following campaigns were compiled by D-Lists and struck a chord with me.
The campaign below was designed to bring awareness to landmines and the continued use of them in certain countries. The ketchup packets turn into a powerful graphic message when the corner is torn off giving the impression that the boy’s leg has been lost and is bleeding as ketchup seeps out.
The second ad is for Project Cuddle; see description below.
Finally, the Dublin City Council simply got sick of people leaving gum on the sidewalk so they came up with an effective, yet inexpensive campaign to get their point across.
Here’s a game for all ya’ll just in time for the big turkey day. Feel free to download the .fla file and see how this game is built. Don’t forget to post your scores in the comments!
Here is the FLA file.
As a designer and a bit of a crafter, I love getting my house ready for the fall. With Thanksgiving just a day away, I was on the hunt for fun, easy and creative fall themed projects that could get me fully into the holiday spirit. After wading through hand-turkeys and floral arrangements, I discovered a few great finds worth sharing. To try these projects for yourself, check out the links below and get crazy with the craftiness!
Clay Conifers
Table Lanterns
Walnut Charms
Paper Flowers
Fall Garland
Paper Poofs
When I first read the New York Times article about the new AOL logo on Monday, I thought to myself, “That company is still around? Who uses it?” Then I thought “That new logo looks like a dog poo.”
I tried to give it the benefit of the doubt as it is a very different kind of brand identity. It is described as “uniquely dynamic” and “a simple, confident logotype, revealed by ever-changing images. It’s one consistent logo with countless ways to reveal” on the AOL Corporate Site. It appears that the logotype will remain constant but the backgrounds behind the logo will always be changing in an effort to suggest the depth and extent of AOL’s content. Cool idea. Even kind of MTV like. But to me it falls short.
The logotype is boring, uninspired and does not make sense. Is it an acronym? Is it a sentence? It has a capital letter and a period. Is it a really a logo or is it just some keyed letters on top of a bunch of stock photos? Is it design or art? Is it’s purpose to generate a lot of attention and press because it is so bad?
At least there isn’t a drop shadow.
1. Pages are public.
Most of Facebook is behind a login, preventing search engines from indexing. However, some Fan pages are not behind a login and thus search engines can index the page. Hopefully, people will stumble on the result in SERPs, visit the Facebook page, and then get to your site via the link (see reason #2).
2. Pages include links.
Because the pages are public, you can get some nice facebook.com link credit. You can’t use an anchor text, but hey, it’s free.
3. Send “updates to fans”.
One of the greatest features is that you can send “updates” to fans whenever you want. It’s a nice way of building a database of interested users. Send messages about new products, updated website, etc.
4. You control the page.
Making the page before a Fan or a competitor is critical. You want to be able to send the messages, edit or remove sections, and control the information to an extent.
5. News feed.
When a someone joins a Fan page, it’s published in their News feed for all their to read (unless they have turned this off). It makes someone joining your Fan page somewhat viral.
6. It’s free and easy.
Making a Fan page takes just a few minutes – add some information, URL, and upload the logo and you’re done. You can make your page here.
Finally…
PR is currently one of the few forms of marketing thriving during the recession so 2009 will inevitably see Facebook fan page activity increase as companies compete in the current climate. We will check back in 6 months time to see how the top 25 Facebook fan pages have changed, if Obama is still leading the way or Homer can steal the crown…keep you posted!
The more I look at new ad campaigns, the more I love interactive advertising where unsuspecting people become an integral part of the advertisement itself.
As seen on Cool Hunter comes this ingenious advert for Frontline.
Today I’d like to showcase another website that was recently launched.
OregonDairyPix.com is a photo blog that we set up for the Dairy Farmers of Oregon. You can upload pictures of dairy if you live in Oregon, and if your picture is chosen as the winner, then you get a prize.
We wrote some custom code for this site, where you can upload images (jpg only) and crop your image with jQuery. This makes for an easy way for us to recieve pictures that are already in the correct aspect ratio to be shown on the photo blog. So, the admins at oregondairypix.com have one less thing thing to do, cropping images and re-uploading them to the servers.
Typedia, an online encyclopedia of typefaces, launched in August. It is an community site for classifying, tagging and educating people about type (think wikipedia for fonts). Anyone can add typefaces or edit the pages about them. It is a great source for learning more about a typeface, when it was designed, who designed it and why they designed it the way they did. Typefaces are categorized by classification, designer and foundry, but our favorite part is the tagging. You can search for typefaces by tags—such as modern, signage, retro, news or informal, just to name a few. We absolutely love the idea of this site, however, it still has some growing to do before it truly realizes its potential as the ultimate type resource.
How did I find the photo of the Labrador puppy to the left? I tried out the new Google Lab project called Google Swirl.
What are Google Labs? Believe it or not, they are are not pet dogs of Google employees. Google Labs is a website demonstrating new Google projects “that aren’t quite ready for prime time”. It serves as a testing ground for new services being developed. Gmail and Google Calendar were once Google Lab projects.
Google Swirl is another Google Lab project for searching images. It builds on new computer vision research to cluster similar images into representative groups in a fun, exploratory interface. For example, if you search on Image Swirl for labrador, you’ll see 12 image thumbnails including labs on white backgrounds, yellow labs, lab puppies, etc.
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