evo design - graphics, photography, web

  • The Ad Man

    15
    Oct

    So much of advertising focusses on perceptions and not reality - but why?

    It turns out we are just as thrilled with perceived value as we are with real value. 

    Whilst it’s important to avoid gaps between perception and reality (cognitive dissonance), there’s nothing wrong with having a little fun with marketing communications.

    This is superbly demonstrated by Rory Sutherland in an amusing and insightful TED lecture called - Life Lessons From An Ad Man.

    Marketing

  • The Reality of Viral

    13
    Oct

    In an attempt to improve the plain old viral, many companies are now turning to reality marketing.  We’ve all seen it but what is it?

    In its simplest terms, reality marketing involves the production of something, typically video, in which the content is seemingly real and not the product of a several million pound media campaign.

    The essence of reality marketing is to remove the ‘corporate’ entity from the equation at the onset, and in so doing, liberate the viewer from preconception.

    Without this burden the viewer is watching for pure interest alone.  When the reveal is made the viewer is intrigued by the curious juxtaposition of the natural content and the novelty of it actually being an advert.  The YouTube example below is from the Sony Twilight Football Campaign.


    Of course the obvious question is - “Is this not just like any other advert, filmed using a camcorder?”.  The short answer is yes, but as it’s not delivered by conventional mass media and instead quietly seeded across the internet in an entirely non-commercial way, it’s not immediately clear - and this is what creates the intrigue.

    The concept keeps the primary features of a viral, in that the novelty, interest and perhaps comedy value are compelling enough to tell your friends about it.  The clever twist of corporate affiliation has people saying things like ‘have you seen the really cool Sony video for their twilight camera’. 

    This is a far more potent force than, ‘have you seen the advert for that camera’, which for the most part invites a ‘no’ and ‘I’m not that interested’. 

    For a more in depth look with examples head over to Campaign website and look at the article From Branded Content to Reality Marketing.

    Marketing

  • Jungle Disk Server Edition

    07
    Oct

    A commercially viable automated backup solution for web design agencies using Amazon S3.  Sweet!

    For any small business there are a multitude of ways to backup data as part of a disaster recovery plan.

    Unfortunately, each tends to have several drawbacks and quite often cost is a biggy.  Server infrastructure, administrator skill, specialist hardware, co-location - all carry with them a big cost burden. 

    There are turnkey, quick fix solutions using file synchronisation services and such, or you can opt for a local system and take media home each day - but come one, are these genuine disaster recovery strategies?

    Things were made a lot simpler when Amazon announced S3 and gave the world cheap as chips data storage in the cloud.  Okay, so it’s a little techie to get to grips with but the folks at JungleDisk took the heavy lifting out and gave us a really neat way to use S3 for automated data backup.

    Well they just went one better…

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    Hosting