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Posts Tagged ‘story’

21 Jan 2010

Apple’s iconic smartphone has been known to win hearts and minds, but can it also save lives? Apparently it can, according to this story from NBC Miami.

American Dan Woolley of Colorado Springs was caught in the collapse of the Hotel Montana in Port-au-Prince after the Haiti earthquake struck last week. He used a medical application he had downloaded and the light from his iPhone to diagnose and treat injuries to his foot and head, and to help prevent going into shock.

He also used the phone’s camera to map his surroundings and identify a safer location to await rescue, which followed 65 hours after the earthquake. Woolley is now recovering at Jackson Memorial Hospital in Miami.

It’s an amazing story that underscores both Woolley’s resourcefulness and the transformative power of those handheld computers in our pockets — which can perhaps even have the power to save a life.

[via TUAW]

Reviews: iPhone

Tags: haiti, iphone, iphone apps, medical, trending

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Tags: Apple, Colorado Springs, Dan Woolley, Earthquake, Haiti, hearts and minds, hotel montana, iPhone, iphone apps, medical application, Miami, Montana, Port-au-Prince, power, story

Anticipating the Apple Tablet: When journalism becomes fanfiction

In: web resources

20 Jan 2010

For the record, I’m writing these words on a MacBook Pro; the third Mac I’ve owned in the past twelve months. As I do so, I’m listening to music on iTunes through my standard issue iPod headphones, so as not to disturb my neighbours. Less than a foot from where I’m sitting, my iPhone sits charging. I am – as marketers might have it put – “a Mac”.

And yet – my God – I’m bored of reading about Apple and their ‘long awaited’ tablet.

Like most people who are broadly interested in technology, I set aside part of each day to catch up with the latest tech stories. Usually, out of loyalty and contractual obligation, I begin with TechCrunch, before moving on to Techmeme for a round-up of everything that my esteemed colleagues here might have missed. Between those two hubs, and the links I find on the latter, I can usually get a broad overview of what’s developing, what’s launching and – generally speaking – what’s important.

But not tonight.

Tonight no fewer than seven of the ten most recent stories on Techmeme concern Apple. “Apple calling tablet the iTablet?” asks the first headline, from Boy Genius Report. “‘Minor issues’ could delay $999 Apple tablet availability ’til June – report” says the second, from AppleInsider. Then there’s more speculation on the name of the tablet from MacRumors, a Business Week story about Bing – maybe – becoming the default search service on the iPhone; a guest post from TechCrunch about ‘Apple’s secret cloud strategy‘ – and so on and so on, ad infinitum, ad nauseum.

Of course, the front page of Techmeme isn’t the whole Internet – it’s just an algorithm backed up by a team of human editors. Perhaps they’re just having an Apple day. So I head for my go-to source of non-Valley-centric technology news: Rory Cellan-Jones’ blog at the BBC. Rory is based on London and so can usually be relied on to give a glimpse outside of the bubble. But not tonight. “Is publishing about to have an iPod moment?” he asks, before going on to speculate whether Apple’s new tablet will do for books what the iPod did for recorded music (Spoiler alert: he thinks not). And my erstwhile colleagues at the Guardian? Top technology story: “Apple looks for UK mobile partner for new tablet” Related story: “Apple confirms date for its ‘event’”. Its event being, of course, the launch of the tablet.

On every tech news site the story is the same. Apple, Apple, Apple: most of it reams of gushing speculation over the alleged tablet that the company is allegedly launching a week from today. And when they run out of things to speculate about, these professional journalists simply turn to writing about having received their invitation to the launch event, with its paint-splattered jpeg and its mysterious – by which I mean not mysterious at all – caption “Come see our latest creation.” Damon Darlin at the New York Times even wrote a post rounding up everyone else’s post about the invitation.

Enough.

Seriously, enough.

I get that an Apple tablet is big news. I agree with those who say that Apple’s product launches deserve more attention than those from other companies as their products tend to be ‘game-changers’. I, along with most other avowed Mac fans, will be tuning in to the webcast of the launch announcement, and – despite my cynicism over its threat to the Kindle – there’s at least a slim possibility that I’ll buy whatever it is that Apple wants to sell me.

But until the official launch announcement comes, I would rather not hear another word about Apple and their tablet. Not because it isn’t news – but because so many of the journalists anticipating the launch have dropped any sense of responsibility to their readers and replaced it with cloying fanboyism.

They claim of course that they’re digging for facts – the name of the new product, its price point, its specs – because that’s what reporters do. Bullshit. What reporters do is find out things that people don’t want us to know. In seven days’ time Apple is going to announce the name of their product, its price, its specs and much more besides. Revealing those things seven days early isn’t news.

At best it’s attention seeking: every blogger and his dog wants to be able to say “I knew it was going to be called the iWhateverthehell before you did”. It’s the same look-at-me motive that caused them to post their launch invitations online, like they’re received one of Willy Wonka’s golden tickets or a day pass to fucking Narnia. At worst it’s a bizarre form of fan fiction: gaggles of tech hacks who never fully left the schoolyard, scribbling out their own personal Steve Job fantasies for the approbation of their peers. “What will he announce? What will it look like? What would it be like if he had sex with Woz?”

What it most certainly isn’t is a service to readers. The vast majority of people who follow technology news – even those of us who are die-hard Mac fans – are perfectly able to wait seven days until the formal announcement, not least because we know that once the new Apple tablet hits the streets we’re going to be absolutely swamped with comment and analysis at the cost of any other kind of tech reporting for at least two weeks. Knowing the tsunami of hype that’s coming, any journalist who truly wanted to serve his readers would have the good grace to shut the hell up about Apple for a week and concentrate on breaking some real news while there’s still time.

So what do you say, tech hacks? A seven day quiet period? A whole week spent reporting actual news that will almost certainly be drowned out the moment Steve Jobs takes to the stage? Seven days where you stop acting like kids at school who can’t focus on their algebra because they know the Christmas holidays are only a week away? Seven days of shhhhhh before the inevitable orgy of journalistic seed-spilling over the wipe-clean screen of Apple’s latest miracle?

Six days?

Three?

An hour?

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Tags: Apple, Apple Tablet, appleinsider, Bing, boy genius report, Damon Darlin, God, Jones, launch, London, Mac, macbook pro, news, Rory, rory cellan jones, Rory Cellan-, story, tablet, UK, Willy Wonka

Killer Campaigns Volume 3 – Tell A Memorable Story

In: web resources

20 Jan 2010

advertising A rabbi, a priest, and a minister walk into a bar. The bartender looks up from polishing a glass and says, “What is this… a joke?” Ba-Dum-Tsssh!

A good story has a lot in common with a good marketing presentation, and one of the best ways to deliver your marketing message is in the form of a story. It’s how you turn advertising into content, and content into a memorable experience. Web marketing presentations must engage, enlighten, entertain, and above all be memorable. If you leave out any of these elements your presentation will suffer.

The Dog Ate My Homework

We’re all familiar with the kid who goes to school without his homework and blames poor Fido for his trouble. It’s familiar to the point of being hackneyed, but let’s give Fido a break and blame something else, like maybe the young man’s computer. Who hasn’t lost some important work because they pressed the wrong function key, or maybe their laptop was infiltrated by HAL from “2001 A Space Odyssey,” or perhaps they just bought the wrong computer. That’s the story Apple tells in this very clever Switch Campaign commercial.

Apple Switch Campaign

Mac switch Ad – Apple Ellen Feis ‘the original’

Why The Technique Works

1. The Story

Using a story-style presentation provides a framework and structure for delivering a marketing message. All stories must have a beginning, middle, and end; in other words, they must take the viewer from one mental position to another. Marketing stories need to move your audience from curious to motivated. It’s a simple concept to grasp, but not so simple to execute.

One method of peaking an audience’s curiosity is to build your story around a relatable scenario or incident like the computer/dog ate my homework. It provides common ground between the seller and the buyer, and generating common ground is essential to all negotiations. And for online marketers, Web video presentations can be that first step in completing a successful sale’s negotiation.

2. The Storyteller

A story is only as good as the storyteller. It’s the storyteller’s character and style that engages an audience and connects to them on an emotional level, a level that brings believability and personality to the presentation.

There is a common misconception regarding the relationship between reality, acceptance, and motivation in advertising. It’s currently trendy to use client-generated content in advertising, and real employees as corporate spokespersons. Occasionally it does work but for the most part it is a mistake. Great advertising isn’t real, it’s hyper-real: hyperrealism is a communication approach that generates desire and motivates action by presenting a stylized version of reality through a more focused perspective that cannot be achieved by true reality. Reality is messy and confused; hyper-reality is concentrated and clear, and when it comes to marketing messages, concentrated and clear is the goal.

3. The Performance

A great concept, a well-written script, and superior production will still fail if the performance is lacking. The ability to communicate using verbal and non verbal performance skills in front of a camera is not something that should be left to amateurs – after all, it’s your identity and brand image that’s at stake.

The capacity to sell on a one-on-one basis, or even the ability to effectively deliver a speech in front of a live audience is not the same as performing for a camera. A video camera magnifies your appearance, your behavior, and any physical, verbal, or performance flaws you may have. But it’s not just a case of looking good, having a good voice, and getting through a script without stumbling over the words, it’s about leaving a memorable impression and that requires the unique ability to deliver a message with suitable personality and panache. On the Web, boring is as detrimental as incompetent.

4. Solve The Puzzle. Find The Gestalt.

Everyone has heard the expression “the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.” In the same way a pixel by itself is meaningless but viewed with a lot of other pixels it forms a picture. It’s a simplified version of the Gestalt philosophy that is the basis of a lot of creative thinking. The Gestalt approach stresses the human mind’s search for meaning in patterns. It’s a hardwired survival technique our ancestors needed to learn.

The human mind automatically wants to solve a puzzle, fill-in the blanks, or resolve a discrepancy. Those who couldn’t figure-out the sound in the bushes was something dangerous didn’t survive to procreate, and evolution did the rest. It’s something we needed to learn, and something that is ingrained in our psyche.

The Switch Ad never comes right out and says buy a MAC, the young lady just tells us a story and let’s us come to our own conclusion. By making the audience work at coming to their own conclusion rather than hitting them over the head with an obvious sales pitch, the message becomes much more powerful, and makes a much more memorable impression.

5. A Story With A Twist – Not In This Weather

The following Mercedes Benz commercial is structured very similarly to the joke in the opening paragraph of this article: it tells us a story with a clever twist.

It never verbally mentions the product and it allows the audience to put the puzzle pieces together without coming right out with a sales pitch. It’s clever, it’s smart, it’s sexy, and it has impact. In short, it too, is a Killer Campaign commercial.

Not in this weather! (Mercedes Benz Banned Commercial):

6. Where You End Is Where You Start

The next video illustrates how to combine a story scenario with a memorable tagline. The tagline is your brand destination: it’s the short form mnemonic that people use to remember your company. Finding the right tagline to end your video is the best place to start when developing a campaign.

In this case the campaign uses taboo language to punctuate the stories’ tagline. It’s funny, bold, and provides an unexpected shock. Like it or not, you’ll remember it.

Cause If It Ain’t Memorable, It Ain’t Content

The WaySpa.com campaign of a few years ago was a hysterically funny series of videos all based on presenting bold, relatable stories, superior storytellers, topnotch performances, and a “can’t believe he actually said that!” tagline.

In addition, this campaign squarely comes to grips with the idea that you have to give something up in order to gain something in return. Some people will absolutely hate this series of videos, but those that get it, will forever have the brand image embedded in their minds. All too often marketing fails because companies try to appeal to everyone, and that is an unachievable objective. It is a blueprint bound to lead to boring, uninspired, and instantly forgettable advertising.

Television has rules and broadcasters are licensed, so advertisers inherently lean towards the bland and innocuous so as not to offend anyone. Instead they rely on repetition and sound compression (make it loud) techniques to the point of psychological torture. The Web is different, your audience is not a captive of primetime programming and can choose what to watch and when, and most importantly, they expect you to provide a memorable experience, or they’ll never come back.

WaySpa Video Campaign THIS VIDEO CONTAINS R-RATED LANGUAGE, DO NOT WATCH IF OFFENDED.

WaySpa Forgot Video:

People are always willing to listen to an interesting, funny, or entertaining story, so if you have trouble getting potential customers to listen and remember what you have to say, then you should consider using the story technique as a way to get your message across. Wrapping your marketing message in a metaphorical story scenario is just one way a company can turn advertising in content and content into a memorable experience.

Jerry Bader is Senior Partner at MRPwebmedia, a website design and marketing firm that specializes in Web-video Marketing Campaigns and Video Websites. Visit http://www.mrpwebmedia.com/ads, http://www.136words.com, and http://www.sonicpersonality.com. Contact at info@mrpwebmedia.com or telephone (905) 764-1246.

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Killer Campaigns Volume 3 – Tell A Memorable Story

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