Wordless Wednesday: Toys Get Techie

In the spirit of this Holiday season, our Wordless Wednesday gives tribute to the most popular holiday toys since 1981. From dolls to iPads one thing is for sure, kids are getting increasingly techie. 

 

Pop-Up Video is Back With Creative Advertising

As a fan of behind-the-scenes features on rental DVD's, I have always been drawn to the quirky and entertaining VH1 show, Pop-Up Video. Aired in the mid-1990s, the show quickly became the highest rated on VH1 due to its music video trivia and comedic tone. The show went off the air in 2002 until its revival this past October.

One of the best parts of the shows comeback is its marketing efforts. In addition to the standard music videos getting the Pop-Up treatment, the channel has also begun adding a trivia element to certain commercials, and posting them to the show's online site. “Pop-Up Video has been a fan favorite for years,” says Marc McIntire, Senior Vice President of Integrated Marketing for VH1. “Because of that, we knew we’d have to do something new when we brought it back.”


To promote the show, select commercials are getting a layer of pop-up trivia. The first company to jump on board is Fiat with their 500 Ambarth subcompact "seduction" commercial. The spot not only supports the new Fiat 500, but also the new season of Pop-Up Video. The VH1 creative team and the advertiser's creative agency work together to come up with the final product. 

"We have a whole new season of Pop-Up Video coming up," McIntire says, "so I'm sure we'll be working with other advertisers." 

I am excited to see more commercials like this, partly because I love getting the inside scoop behind production, but also because it's an interesting display of dual-promotion. A commercial for a show within a commercial for a product? It's like inception for the advertising world. Wonderful.

R.I.P. Saab

Quirky, weird, different. That's what Saabs were all about. The very first car I borrowed from an automaker as a journalist was a 1984 Saab 900 Turbo. It was a revelation to me, having been brought up with a series of very mundane domestic cars. The Saab was FAST and FUN with an aromatic leather interior that really fit your body contours, and of course, an unmistakable chunky shape that was unlike any other car. Saab obtained its highest sale volume in 1986, and it has been on a steady decline since then.

There was some hope that after the GM bankruptcy in 2009, that Swedish Automobile CEO Victor Muller could pull off a miracle and get Saab back on track, but it wasn't mean to be. Saab was declared bankrupt by a court on Monday. A new 9-5 was trotted out to the press last year, but it wasn't different enough to create much of a sir. There are just too many good cars out in the marketplace now; it's harder and harder to stand apart.

My wife's car is a Saab 2000 9-3 convertible that my daughter now drives. Even back then, Saab was beginning to slip into conformity thanks to the badly-managed GM ownership that eventually killed it. I'm sorry to see Saab go, even if it was only a ghost of what it once was. There are just too many vanilla cars out there.

Some automakers have taken up the 'different is better' gauntlet, including Subaru, VW and MINI, not to mention Nissan with their weird but somewhat lovable Cube and Juke vehicles, and the brand-new Fisker performance hybrid.  Let's hope there will always be cars that have distinct personalities that are also fun to drive.

Your Guide to the New Twitter

Over the next several weeks, Twitter will be shedding some old feathers and taking on a new look. In a move they hope will coax users away from third party apps and back to the main site, the redesign encompasses Twitter.com and TweetDeck, as well as its mobile apps. Here is a look at what you can expect.

There are three new buttons at the top of the page: Home, @Connect and #Discover.

• Home: Your updated news feed. See information about @replies and retweets, as well as linkable content (videos and pictures) right in the feed.
• @Connect: Shows who has mentioned you and suggests some accounts you might want to follow.
• #Discover: Shows what's trending and points you to notable stories and videos. This feature is a great example of the more personalized Twitter. Discover will identify stories and trends based on your connections, location and language.

The redesign also has Tweets housed on the right side, and your profile box in the upper left hand corner. Not exactly sure why there was a need to do this, but I'm sure there was plenty of market research and design psychology involved.

Other notables:

• Brand Pages: Taking a note from Facebook and Google+, the new Twitter will allow brand pages for companies which will have a bigger header, more customizable options and extended taglines. The coolest feature here is that brands will be able to choose what tweet stays at the top of their timeline, thus highlighting their best content.
• Embedded Tweets: Now website developers and bloggers can embed tweets right into their website. This gives visitors the ability to reply, retweet and favorite without leaving the page.

You can get the new Twitter now by downloading the updated version for iPhone or Android here. Otherwise, it will be taking over the Twittersphere over the next few weeks. Here is a video from Twitter showing off the new features:

When PR stands for "Papal Relations"

The was an article recently on The Verge about the Pope using a Sony Tablet S, Sony's answer to the iPad, to light a Christmas display in a city a hundred miles away from the Vatican.

Obviously, this could very well turn into a post about technology adoption by atypical demographics.

However, the more important part of this equation to me is that the significant emphasis on the Sony Tablet's role suggests this was purely a PR move. If that theory holds true, then it's an interesting strategy on Sony's part.

Despite fairly positive reviews of its performance and unique design, the Sony Tablet S hasn't made waves in the increasingly-crowded tablet market, failing to dethrone the iPad.

Some may question the relevance of using a religious figure to promote a tablet, seeing as how the Pope's influence doesn't necessarily extend to a tech-heavy audience and most of the early adopters the tablet appeals to aren't influenced by the Pope.

But because of that overcrowding of the tablet market, the talking points for Sony can't revolve around the device itself. Tech readers have become inundated with specs and require alternative means of grabbing their attention.

That's where PR comes in.

One of the most basic goals of public relations is to generate conversation and get people talking, and there's no denying this story did the trick. They were able to combine an interesting story with the timeliness of the holiday season, without it coming across as a cheap stunt.

Wordless Wednesday: 7 Companies Who Made Major Pivots in Strategy

Facebook "friends" Gowalla to bolster location features

It's no secret that Facebook, despite its social media prowess, has struggled in the location-based social networking. It's Facebook Places feature has been underwhelming to say the least, and is far from a Foursquare-killer.

In what appears to be an effort to possibly grow that location-based service, Facebook announced today that it bought out Gowalla. Facebook has already said that the Gowalla management team will be integrated into Facebook's staff, and the service will be shut down in January.

Seeing as how Gowalla is was the third biggest player in the location-based game, it's safe to say that it is now a two-horse race between Facebook and Foursquare.

However, Gowalla made it clear that Facebook didn't buy any user data, and that existing users will be able to export their information before the shutdown.

It will be interesting to see what direction both companies go now that they are dominating the market, given that the social media buzz hasn't been surrounding location-based marketing for some time now.

YouTube Gets a Makeover

by Ashley Haugen

Things may look a little different next time you log into YouTube. The video website has gone through a major re-design to highlight subscriptions and channels. When you login, you will be greeted with a new homepage that shows recent activity from all of your subscriptions. What I like most though about the new YouTube is their Facebook and Google+ integration.

The re-design sets up YouTube to become a bigger competitor to cable TV. With millions of Youtube channels, the new homepage allows you to better organize and watch the things that interest you the most. "[YouTube] is a container for all the world's video, and it needs to be the best home for that," says Margaret Stewart, director of User Experience at YouTube's headquarters in San Bruno, Calif.

Besides the appealingly simplistic design, it encourages the user to find new content through the the trending, popular, music and entertainment links on your home page. In the left navigation bar, there are also links to Facebook and Google+. Clicking these displays videos that your friends on either network have shared. Having these all in one easy, clean space is very attractive.

Check it out for yourself, or watch this video showcasing the new design.

The newest Facebook change appeals to the novelist in all of us

If Twitter's approach to communication in the digital age is short and sweet, it's safe to say that Facebook is trying to establish itself on the opposite end of the spectrum.

Facebook just announced they are once again increasing the maximum character limit for status updates to over 60,000 characters.

To put the new 63,206 character limit in perspective, it's the equivalent to just over 451 tweets! In fact, I'd be able to post this Daily Axioms blog (title and all) more than 44 times in a single status update!

As I alluded to earlier, this is hardly the first time Facebook has increased how much users can post per status update. Here's a quick timeline of the changes:

• Facebook's launch through March 2009: A Twitter-esque 160 characters.

• March 2009-July 2011: More than doubles to 420 characters.

• July 2011-September 2011: Facebook adds an extra half-tweet's worth to make it an even 500 characters.

• September 2011-November 2011: A huge 1000% increase, allowing for 5,000 character updates.

• Today: This latest spike brings the total to 63,206 characters per update.

Granted, just because people can post over 60,000 characters doesn't mean they will. More importantly, will there be a user backlash from news feeds clogged with posts that are long enough to be printed and bound in a library?

How do you feel about Facebook's latest update?