digital Media | EmJRocket

The POV Revolution

Posted on March 23, 2017 by emjrocket

If you don’t know what the POV revolution is, it’s ok. I just made it up. This is the name I’m giving to the Point of View craze that is happening right now in media, small and large. From Snapchat Spectacles and VR, to Hollywood, POV storytelling is here and it seems to be sticking around.

Point of View means exactly what it says. It’s seeing and experiencing something from someone else’s eyes.It’s kind of like a first person video game, you see what the character sees.

From the Hollywood and movie side, POV shots have been around forever. Famous examples being Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo (1958) and horror classic, Halloween (1978). These movies use POV shots to build suspense and to put the viewer in the shoes of the characters.

In 2016, a whole movie was was shot and released in POV, Hardcore Henry. This R-rated action thriller was shot entirely in first person and grossed about $14 million worldwide. As the picture below shows, the film was shot from a camera attached to the actors head. You can watch the trailer here.

Another more recent game changer in the POV Revolution is the commercialization of Virtual Reality. VR sets can range from the $600 Oculus Rift to a free app and a cardboard set that your phone can slide into. VR is all about transporting yourself somewhere else without really going anywhere and seeing a whole new point of view. See what I did there?

Like I mentioned in a past post, Snapchat Spectacles recently went on sale on-line world wide. Spectacles are giving regular people the power of POV. I had the chance the use a pair and to create a Snapchat Story with them (shameless plug, follow me on Snapchat @emjrocket). Not only are they fun to use, but they add a whole other level to story telling on the app. I also help run the Flagler College Snapchat channel and I can’t wait to see what kind of stories and videos we can make with them for the school (another shameless plug, @flagler_college)

Beauty and the 360 Advertisements

Posted on March 23, 2017 by emjrocket

Like I said in past posts, I love Disney. I think they do everything exceptionally well. And with the premiere of Beauty and the Beast this past week, all of the marketing and events that Disney has put together for this movie definitely falls into the category of exceptionally well.

My favorite so far has been a mobile Facebook advertisement that utilized the 360 video feature. In this video you have the POV from Belle’s seat at the end of the giant dining table during the musical number of “Be Our Guest.” You sit and look around while Lumiere and the rest of the dining room sing and dance around you. It’s Disney Magic at its finest.

I really wish I had a VR set to experience this in. I would also really love to see a little girl experience this in VR. I mean, the little girl in me was scream crying the entire time I just was watching it on my phone.

This is the way to use 360 video and Virtual Reality for advertising. Creating something that the consumer wants to be totally immersed in and making it awesome. Disney has die hard fans and customers and by making it possible to be in one of the most famous Disney musical numbers? Genius.

Really the only other VR/360 advertisement I’ve seen was for Fifty Shades Darker. When you watched the video you were in a masquerade ball scene with the main characters. It was strange and I had no idea what was going on. You couldn’t hear what the actors were saying and it kept switching scenes. Maybe if I saw the movie it would make more sense?

Seeing this Beauty and the Beast ad has made me very excited about the future of 360/VR advertisements and marketing though. The increasing amount of POV media is intriguing to me as well. Can’t wait to see more!

Snapchat SPECStacular

Posted on February 28, 2017 by emjrocket

Okay. Am I the only person who is super excited for Snapchat Spectacles being released for online purchase? Snapchat by far is my favorite social media platform and if I had $130 dollars laying around, I would order a pair so hard. I’m not much into wearable tech, but these are just heckin’ cool.

Snap Inc. CEO, Evan Spiegel said, “Snap Inc. is a camera company. We believe that reinventing the camera represents our greatest opportunity to improve the way people live and communicate. Our products empower people to express themselves, live in the moment, learn about the world, and have fun together.”

For those of you who don’t know, Snapchat Spectacles are sunglasses made by Snap Inc. (Snapchat’s parent company) with 2 cameras built into them and will record up to 30 seconds at a time. The glasses work similarly to human eye, where the two cameras work together to form an image. If you watch the video on a phone, you can flip the video any way you want to, making it appear to be 360 video. Watch the video on a computer and it appears in a circle.It’s all about point of view, seeing and experiencing through the wearers eyes. Here is an adorable example of someone playing with a cat.

This is the pretty much the first time a social media company has a made a product specifically for their platform (We are not even going to mention Google Glass). These Spectacles are doing quite well for themselves and seem to be in high demand. Before being put online, Snap Inc. sold the glasses for limited times in pop-up vending machines in major cities all around the world. London, L.A., New York and Paris just to name a few.

Companies and brands are using Spectacles to their advantage and totally upping their Snapchat game. Some of my favorite uses of companies using Spectacles are as follows:

GE (@generalelectric) You can view the inter-workings of GE across the glob through the eyes of an engineer.
Taco Bell (@tacobell) Taco bell has awesome stories anyway, but they are creative in using the Specs to play-up their storytelling.
Sour Patch Kids (@sourpatchsnaps) Again, great use of Specs for storytelling in the mischievous Sour Patch Kid fashion

Seriously someone help a girl out. I want to take my OWN stories to the next level! #GETEMILYSPECS

Click here to see some dope videos taken on Snapchat Spectacles. Click here to buy me a pair. Just kidding. Not really. Please buy them for me. (I want the RED ones)

Coming in for a Landing Page

Posted on February 23, 2017 by emjrocket

I have never been on a plane, but I suspect that one of the scariest (and most important) parts of flying, is landing. I would imagine that hurdling toward the ground is never fun, but it could be slightly more enjoyable if its a smooth hurdling, with a nice even landing.

I think that’s why landing pages are called what they called, to make a consumer’s transition from social media, email, or an advertisement smooth, even and more efficient.

In case you didn’t know, a landing page is a web page that a visitor can arrive at or “land” on. However, when discussing landing pages within the realm of marketing and advertising, it’s more common to refer to a landing page as being a standalone web page distinct from a main website. The landing page usually has one specific job and can be a gateway drug to the rest of a website.

Why is a landing page so important? Think of it like this. You come across an advertisement on ye old Facebook for a very specific event that you are interested in. You click on the ad and it takes you to a homepage of a website. You then have to navigate manually through the entire website to find your event. I don’t know about you but I would immediately be turned off and would head back to Facebook to scroll through pictures of cats and girls-I-went-to-high-school-with’s babies.

Let’s look at a more specific example, shall we? Below we have a landing page from Netflix that looks like its from a little back in the day.

This page was probably a shortened URL on a TV commercial or what came up when you clicked on a banner ad or email blast for a Netflix free trial. It’s main purpose was to feature the free trial and to get you to sign up.

Remember, landing pages are important. Help your consumers have a smooth landing when coming to your website, don’t let them crash and burn.

Sources

Bannan., K. J. (2013, March 28). Landing pages matter. Retrieved February 23, 2017, from http://adage.com/article/btob/landing-pages-matter/288690/

My Love/Hate Relationship with Social Media Advertisements

Posted on February 10, 2017 by emjrocket

So, I was on Pinterest the other day (everyday) and for some reason I started to pay attention to the bottom of each pin. You know, where it says what website it’s from and who pinned it. That’s when I realized that a good portion of the pins in my feed were “promoted pins.” ADVERTISEMENTS. I had even added a few of them to my boards! Pinterest ads don’t look like ads. They are designed to look just like any pin on a feed. It’s just so sneaky. And totally genius. I have a love/hate relationship with Pinterest ads.

Here is an example of a promoted pin Pinterest ad I found in my feed. Its from a company called Casetify who sells phone cases. I love a cute phone case and have for sure searched for them on Pinterest and Amazon.If it weren’t for the “promoted by” part at the bottom, I probably never would have noticed it was an ad.

Paid advertising on social media is a fairly new. Pinterest just launched it’s promoted pins feature on January 1st of 2015. Instagram (who is owned by Facebook) announced in 2016 that it was adding boosted posts to its repertoire. Instagram ads, like Pinterest ads, are very well camouflaged. I actually ended up buying two sweatshirts from Instagram boosted posts in the past month.

From a marketers standpoint, these “disguised” ads are wonderful. Consumers can view your content without writing it off as an ad. They treat it as if it were just another item in their feed. They ad a great tool to a social media/digital marketing tool box.

From a consumers standpoint, I find these ads kind of scary. For some reason my mind goes right for subliminal messages. Some of the ads look nothing like ads and it freaks me out. It makes me wonder that if in the future if it will be legal to put ads on the internet and social media and not disclose that they are paid media.

What do you think? Clever or creepy? Me thinks a little of both.

References

Cohen, D. (2016, May 31). Instagram Introduces Business Profiles, Analytics, Promoted Posts. Retrieved February 8, 2017, from http://www.adweek.com/digital/instagram-business-profiles-analytics-promoted-posts/

Bradford, J. (December 28). A big year ahead for Promoted Pins. Retrieved February 08, 2017, from https://business.pinterest.com/en/blog/big-year-ahead-promoted-pins

EmJRocket Guide to Writing for the Web

Posted on January 26, 2017 by emjrocket

There is a huge difference in the way you write a text message versus the way you write a research paper, or least there should be (if you write these two things the same way, something is very, very wrong).

“ya so then b4 carbon dioxide moves 2 the next cycle or watevs, it breaks down 2 the molecular level lol”

Same goes with any writing that you do. You write for a newspaper one way and an advertisement another. Writing for novels, social media, emails, its all different. Writing for web/online content is no exception. A lot of businesses and organizations today don’t really understand this. They try to use the same techniques across all platforms and its just not working. In today’s world of mobile media, it’s important to understand and be able to write in a way thats web friendly.

Here is short 3 step EmJRocket guide to writing for web.

STEP #1: Info-nuggets Chop up your text into yummy bite size pieces that readers can skim and get information quickly. Make sure they can find what they want fast, maybe dip them in a little honey mustard and go.

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STEP #2: You aren’t playing Words With Friends Avoid playing that 32 point word while writing for online content. Keep it simple and say what you mean in the easiest way possible.

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STEP #3: Pretty Pictures Use pictures and videos to help get your point across. Visuals are always a good thing. What’s that famous saying? A pictures worth a thousand…? I’ll think of it later.

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These tips are just the tip of the iceberg for writing for online platforms. For more fun and useful tips, you can click here or here. Happy Web Writing!

Sources

Web Content Writing Tips. (n.d.). Retrieved January 23, 2017, from http://www.contentfac.com/even-more-web-content-writing-tips/

Affairs, A. S. (n.d.). Writing for the Web. Retrieved January 23, 2017, from https://www.usability.gov/how-to-and-tools/methods/writing-for-the-web.html