[video]
Last week in Egypt, a group of Russian photographers risked facing 1-3 years imprisonment to climb the Great Pyramid of Giza and take the stunning picture above. Sometimes pushing (and crossing) boundaries results in some pretty awe-inspiring stuff.
100 songs from 100 artists worth discovering at this year’s SXSW, courtesy of NPR
Facebook timeline means you can publish your entire history - so why not make sure your product has one? And if you want it to stretch back to Abraham Lincoln, no one is stopping you. So Emergen-C incorporated themselves into American history. A clever and intelligent use of features on the Facebook platform that invites discovery and further interaction with the brand without demanding it. Unfortunately there wasn’t a ton of exposure and the creative effort got lost in the annals of history.
“#We #don’t #understand #hashtags #but #we’ve #heard #they #are #crucial #for #any #successful #social #media #campaign #NoBollocks”
The rise of artisanal brewing has kicked the larger breweries into gear, and begun to influence their branding. In the past two months Heineken and Budweiser have both launched campaigns that cater to a higher status consumer, the 1% lets say. The campaigns are sexy, flashy, and champion an exclusive lifestyle that is not usually associated with the mass-produced beers. They reflect a response to a larger trend in beer (and food) - that of special edition, low availability, exclusive brews.
Budweiser has definitely played into the trend a lot more blatantly by releasing Bud Platinum and Budweiser Black Crown, two premier beers under the Budweiser umbrella. But Heineken has also done a similar thing by changing its bottle shape. The new “Star Bottle” is longer, skinnier, has a distinctively longer neck, and looks very much like every other beer bottle out there. So why conform? Because the new bottle looks sexier than the old “working-class” bottle. The old Heineken bottle looks like the Newcastle bottle, which has gone in the opposite direction that Heineken is going and become the beer of the honest working man (see “No Bollocks”). Bottled Heineken is now sleek and sexy, and easily cheersable with the hottie on the next barstool over.
“The Heineken bottle has gone through a number of progressions but has always maintained its core iconography that has become a symbol of upscale premium beer, and this philosophy will remain the same with the new Star Bottle design” — Colin Westcott-Pitt, VP of Marketing at Heineken
Both brands have created a premier product to appeal to a more elite clientele, a clientele with discernible taste and an appreciation for a certain kind of lifestyle. People care about what beers they drink and, knowing they couldn’t go the hipster route (like PBR, which btw has its own $44 premium beer in China), these breweries went the highbrow route.
Here’s the Budweiser Black Crown spot: “Here’s to our kind of beer”
Here’s the Heineken Star Bottle spot: “Presenting the Star Bottle”
[video]
Mad Men Season 6 poster by Brian Sanders
“…as the show prepared for its new season, which begins April 7, its creator, Matthew Weiner, inspired by a childhood memory of lush, painterly illustrations on T.W.A. flight menus, decided to turn back the promotional clock. He pored over commercial illustration books from the 1960s and ’70s and sent images to the show’s marketing team, which couldn’t quite recreate the look he was after.
“Finally,” he said, “they just looked up the person who had done all these drawings that I really loved, and they said: ‘Hey, we’ve got the guy who did them. And he’s still working. His name is Brian Sanders.’ ”
Sometimes it makes sense to just go back and do it the old way.
(via thesorrowsofgin)
The bottom line? Don’t waste my time. Self-sufficiency and brevity are both prized and expected.
We expect this in text messages, we’re also starting to expect it in real life. (see: rise of Instagram & Twitter, decline of Facebook)
As with all good pasta design, the decorative is also functional - the embossed pattern helps to hold scant oily sauces such as walnut pesto, or the classic marjoram and pine nuts. #corzetti #pasta #design #patternsinlife #eatily #thegeometryofpasta (at Eataly)
“It’s a less forgiving world. Things have to be really great to do well.” — Bob Iger, CEO of Walt Disney
Delivering brand messaging at a precise moment is a powerful capability that is easily integrated into mobile apps with SonicNotify. Clients can easily install Sonic’s SDK software into their app—it’s as simple as a line of code—and the sound-triggered technology allows precise delivery of content to mobile devices carrying the app, whether it is on or off. When a “Sonic sound” that is imperceptible to the human ear is played (e.g. via music, television, or played from a device), the user with the mobile app receives a predetermined notification.
The software’s potential uses are massive. Audio stimuli are everywhere in the environment, giving advertisers lots of potential times and places where they can target mobil devices. The product’s core genius is rooted in consumers’ mobile behavior - mobile devices are primarily used for communication and for location and information based services such as maps, business finders, and social media applications. Mobile devices are used as a source of immediate information, a toolkit people carry around with them. Though they very much hold consumers’ attention, they are always secondary to the environment, which is very unlike TV, computers, magazines, and other advertising platforms. Therefore mobile advertising has to act in the same function - it has to act as a secondary support to whatever environment the consumer finds themselves in. This is why Sonic’s software is potentially groundbreaking - it can deliver ad content to consumers when they are doing a specific activity that the ad can support on a secondary level. Utility of information and right-time-right-place are king in mobile, and Sonic Notify can play into them very comfortably.
More here: http://sonicnotify.com/
Missing unicorn wandering the streets of #nyc. If found send message via leprechaun. #fantastical #missingpets (at Dewitt Clinton Park)
My roommate Mai made this fascinating film that studies the rise of the “Indie Woman” : single women with no kids, living alone and supporting themselves. It’s a very well thought out survey of this new demographic and the impact they are having on businesses, on the economy, and on culture. It also takes new and existing trends and explains how their existence and popularity is driven by the Indie Woman demographic. The film is empowering, insightful, and entertaining, and I highly recommend watching it (shameless plug for Mai!). I wonder if this Indie Woman identity exists in other countries, and if so, if it is an emerging demographic or if it has existed for some time…. An insight worth uncovering.