Baby Carrots?.hats off to the creators of this awesome example of disruption. Giving baby carrots the positioning of junk food with a Speed Racer-ish, carrot-powered video game to boot. Check it out: http://www.babycarrots.com/
Archive for the ‘News’ Category
Tuesday, Apr 12th, 2011 Baby Carrots? Wow!
Tuesday, Apr 12th, 2011 Facebook Latin America growth
Lately we’ve been working with a number of clients in the LATAM region who are seeing tremendous gains from digital marketing efforts, especially social. Facebook seems to be on a tear and is gaining on the regionally-established rivals, especially in Brazil. From the NY Times: Facebook has been growing at a healthy rate in Brazil. As of December, it had 12.4 million users, according to comScore. But it trailed Orkut, which had 32.7 million users, by a nearly 3-to-1 ratio. A year earlier, Orkut’s Brazilian audience was seven times larger than Facebook’s. Locally, here in Costa Rica, we have seen a strong migration away from Hi-5 towards Facebook.
Thursday, Sep 9th, 2010 Looks like Flash can be integrated into iphone apps now
“We are relaxing all restrictions on the development tools used to create iOS apps, as long as the resulting apps do not download any code,” the company said. “This should give developers the flexibility they want, while preserving the security we need.”
Apple said it made “important changes” in three sections of its iOS SDK (software developer kit) license to “relax some restrictions we put in place earlier this year.”
In April, Apple said it would not allow iOS developers to use third-party cross-platform compilers, tools that transform code for other systems — as well as Java- and Flash-built software — into native iPhone apps.
At the time, Apple’s SDK spelled out what developers could and could not use. “Applications must be originally written in Objective-C, C, C++, or JavaScript as executed by the iPhone OS WebKit engine, and only code written in C, C++, and Objective-C may compile and directly link against the Documented APIs,” the iOS SDK license read.
Apple’s move was seen at the time by analysts and developers as a direct attack against Adobe, which had created a cross-platform compiler that took Flash applications and recompiled them to run natively on iOS. Adobe responded by tossing in the towel, dropping further work on “Packager,” the cross-platform compiler included with Flash Professional CS5.
Adobe welcomed Apple’s turn-about. “We are encouraged to see Apple lifting its restrictions on its licensing terms, giving developers the freedom to choose what tools they use to develop applications for Apple devices,” an Adobe spokesman said.
Earlier this year, Apple and Adobe traded blows over Flash, with Apple CEO Steve Jobs saying iOS didn’t need Adobe’s software, an Adobe evangelist telling Apple to “Go screw yourself,” and the co-chairs of Adobe’s board of directors accusing Apple of undermining “the next chapter of the Web.”
Today, Apple said it modified the SDK license after listening to developer feedback. “[We've] taken much of their feedback to heart,” said Apple.
Some didn’t buy that explanation.
“Clearly this is a response to competitive pressure,” said Ray Valdes, an analyst with Gartner. “It’s not in Apple’s corporate DNA to be open or flexible. Usually, their behavior leans toward price control and opaqueness.”
Google’s Android mobile operating system, which has had no restrictions on what tools developers use, is challenging iOS’ position, said Valdes. “And they’re not the only one,” he said. “Going forward, there may be other platforms, like Windows Phone 7, on smartphones and Chrome OS on tablets, that can compete with iOS.”
Tuesday, Sep 7th, 2010 The Importance of Having a Search Strategy Before You Build
Today, SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is more important than ever and many marketers are embracing the need to create original, relevant, viral site content to distinguish their web sites. But as content continues to proliferate, search engine algorithms are sharper than ever in distinguishing what’s valuable and what’s not. Consequently, search strategies are changing with an optimal strategy of targeting one key word (and its derivatives) per page. Many times this content strategy is at odds with the initial vision of a new web site or redesign, with the result that SEO takes a back-seat to the design process. Best results will come from developing – or –redeveloping a site with an SEO-driven content strategy squarely in mind. The trade-off of more pages to build and update will be balanced by a stronger ability to attract searches from the “long tail”, resulting in more targeted searches and better conversion.
Friday, Apr 9th, 2010 Google Now Using Site Speed As A Search Ranking Factor
Long promised, and now delivered, Google is now using site speed as one of many factors in how website results are ranked on the Google.com search engine. Google first discussed this last year, pointing out that consumers react very negatively to slow websites. Speed is an obsession at Google, and they seem to be on a crusade to make it an internet-wide movement. Think about Chrome, Google DNS, and the Google fiber project, what do they all share? Speed. Google, following its own views, will now count negatively against your website if it is significantly slower than other sites with similar content and ranking. In other words, you need to look into speeding up your website. Google has provided information to a number of tools that site owners can use to check their sites’ speed, such as Page Speed, and YSlow. At least Google is smoothing the transition to this new search factor. And of course, other tools are stored at Google.com/Speed. The changes are live in the United States. Summarizing Google fairly, Matt McGee of SearchEngineLand said “Google also cautions web site owners not to sacrifice relevance in the name of faster web pages, and even says this new ranking factor will impact very few queries.” That is a good synthesis: work on speed, but your content and links are still king in rankings. This will annoy some webmasters, but the internet using masses who will never hear of the change will thank Google and not even know it. Your move, Bing.
Friday, Apr 9th, 2010 Are You Fun to Follow on Twitter?
Frankly, most people’s tweets are neither interesting nor fun to read — certainly not on a daily or hourly basis. Many, not at all. I say this with no condemnation, since I admit mine are pretty lousy, too. And I have a theory about why.
Recently I received one of those random chain emails; it’s probably circulated through your in-box, as well. This one described an experiment organized by the Washington Post in 2007. A man played six Bach pieces on a violin for 45 minutes in the Washington DC Metro Station on a cold January morning. During the time he played, approximately two thousand people passed through the station. Of those, only six people stopped and listened, and then only for a very short while. The greatest levels of enthusiasm were displayed by young children, several of whom tugged on their parents, asking to stop and listen, but without success.
This concert, enjoyed by virtually none of the two thousand in the station that day, was given by the renowned violinist Joshua Bell, playing some of the most intricate pieces ever written. Two days before his concert in a theater in Boston had sold out with ticket prices averaging $100.
The circulating email challenges us to ponder what we each are missing. In a common place environment, at an inappropriate hour, do we perceive beauty? Do we stop to appreciate it? Do we recognize talent in an unexpected context?
This leads to her theory about what makes someone good at Twittering:
These questions, I believe, are at the heart of the successful use of Twitter. Individuals who are most skilled at using this peculiar 140-character medium are those who do notice the small details of life, who capture the moments that others of us miss, who slow down to watch and listen while most race on, and who personalize the events they see.
Observing the beautiful in the mundane. Surely it’s one way to be happy.
via Are You Fun to Follow on Twitter? – Tammy Erickson – Harvard Business Review.
Thursday, Apr 8th, 2010 Social Media Insider: The Ten Plagues Of Social Media
In honor of the season, where some celebrate the ancient story of slaves’ exodus from Egypt, it’s time for a new telling of the ten plagues: the Ten Plagues of Social Media. All are paired with a counterpart from the ancient rendition.
Note that some debates remain as to the ancient plagues’ literal meanings. When in doubt, I deferred to biblical scholar Robert Alter’s translation of “The Five Books of Moses.”
1) Blood: Lack of transparency
Whenever marketers aren’t fully transparent as to who they are and what they’re promoting when reaching out to consumers and online influencers, they cloud consumers’ trust just like blood clouded the Nile. The demands of transparency also fall on the content producers whenever their contributions can be considered influenced by other parties.
2) Frogs: Oversharing
Imagine trying to get a good night’s sleep with millions of frogs croaking up a storm. Now try staying on top of what’s happening with your social graph when so many of their updates are dedicated to what errands they’re running or how much they had to drink last night. Oversharing can wind up hurting relationships, and rightfully makes some question how much value social media adds to their lives.
3) Lice: Campaign-based thinking
It’s hard to get lice out of your head, and there’s no easy cure for shaking off campaign-based thinking, either. Campaign-to-campaign and quarter-to-quarter thinking prevents marketers from reaping the long-term benefits of social marketing.
4) Flies: Autoposting
Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Foursquare, and other sites are not all the same, but the way some marketers unleash hoards of content, you might think the sites were interchangeable. Posting the same content in the same way across every social site is efficient for the producer, but diminishes the experience for the recipients. Marketers need to think twice about nearly any kind of automated messaging. There’s a place for it; headline and deal feeds are some that can work as syndicated feeds while managing consumer expectations. The first instinct should be to avoid this, though.
5) Pestilence / livestock disease: Lack of internal communication
I don’t want to refer to your colleagues (or mine) as livestock, but you depend on your colleagues for your livelihood and putting food on the table, just as our ancient forbears relied on livestock. When marketers and their agency partners aren’t in close communication, and when there isn’t communication internally with any of those parties, it amounts to a plague on their livelihood.
6) Boils: Lack of Integration
In this case, the plague fits the crime. Social marketing campaigns should be planned just as tightly in conjunction with other marketing programs as boils are connected to victims’ skin. Perhaps it’s not the most pleasant analogy, but these are the ten plagues, not the ten happiest things to ever happen.
7) Hail: Talking at consumers
Sometimes, reading marketers’ updates in social channels feels like walking through a hailstorm. You get pelted by a self-aggrandizing update here and a limited-time offer there, and you can’t wait to run for cover. Conversing and asking questions can soften the blows and make it more like a day at the beach.
8 ) Locusts: Bright shiny object syndrome
If you’ve ever seen a swarm of locusts on National Geographic Channel or Discovery, you’ll appreciate why this was the first plague association to come to mind. Look at all the locusts move from field to field — blogs to MySpace to Second Life to widgets to Twitter to Facebook to augmented reality to Foursquare — sucking the life out of them and then looking for their next meal. Marketers can shed their locust exoskeletons by figuring out what works and sticking with it, even while exploring new opportunities.
9) Darkness: Lack of vision
When you see marketers fumble royally in social media, you’re usually witnessing a marketer that didn’t plan ahead. These fumbles can often arise when a marketer is dealing with a crisis, but they can also come up when marketers are more successful than they anticipated, such as when too many consumers take them up on a deal. Plan for the best and the worst, and be prepared to act when either arises to prevent darkness from descending on your social programs.
10) Death of the firstborn: Death of marketing as we know it
The death of the firstborn plague is the most permanent. There has been a similar plague on marketing and media: rising consumer expectations of some form of two-way communication. For consumers like myself who grew up writing letters to brands that pleasantly or unpleasantly surprised me, this is deliciously empowering. This plague will kill off some marketers who can’t adapt.
Egypt wasn’t undone by the exodus, or any version of it that has been passed down to us. It remained a capital of the ancient world for over a thousand years more and has been a pivotal part of many great civilizations and cultures since. Plagues may afflict us and they may kill off the weak, but the springtime exodus saga tells the greater story of rebirth and renaissance. If there’s not a promised land for marketers per se, may we at least heal from these plagues to uphold brands’ promises to consumers.
This article was originally published in MediaPost’s Social Media Insider.
http://www.home-electronics.net/ge/pc/viewPrd.asp?idproduct=18
Monday, Feb 1st, 2010 Ipad by Apple
Last week’s unveiling of the iPad by Apple again brings the subject of Flash development into focus. Over the weekend, Apple removed introductory videos from its advertising that suggested that the device supported Flash content, after critics claimed that the ads were misleading. It’s a fact – neither the iPhone nor the iPad support Flash. For iPhone users, it’s an inconvenience that is often overlooked because of the thousands of apps that are Flash-free and because many sites publish HTML mobile versions. But for iPad users, we suspect the lack of Flash will be a huge detriment; the iPad has a 9.7” screen and consumers wanting to use it to serf the web will be annoyed at the inability to access key content on many sites.
From a development standpoint, we often counsel our clients to avoid using Flash because of the incompatibility with many mobile devices and because it can be search un-friendly. Mobile content consumption is booming, and while Flash is purportedly coming to Google’s Android mobile browser in 2010, iPhones still account for approximately 50% of all web data traffic. Until these industry titans work out their technical and control issues with Adobe, web content publishers must be careful to provide mobile consumers with rich user experiences that don’t rest on Flash content.
Wednesday, Jan 6th, 2010 Welcome.
We’ve just launched our new site and hope you like it. We’ll be
blogging frequently about topics related to digital production and
marketing and look forward to your input and dialog. Please feel free
to follow us on twitter so we can let you know when we make new posts.
As always, we’re here to help you with your digital marketing efforts,
so give us a call.
Thanks,
The Catalysta team.
