From the Minds of Imagination
The Judges Have Spoken – August 21, 2008
posted by Michelle O'Hagan
Recently, PMI’s Leadership was the “Grand” winner in the Publications Management Magnum Opus awards in the Print/Other Publication/External Audience category. Judges’ comments are not provided for all winners, but they were provided for this one, and they’re great.
Click the image above to read the judges’ comments.
What Imagination Looks Like, Part 2 – August 20, 2008
posted by Joel Witmer
Below is a word cloud representing What Imagination Is All About culled from the text speaking to that mission on our website. The size of the words is determined by the frequency with which they appear. (The order, arrangement, and color of the words is random.)
The word cloud is a great way to quickly asses which components of a message are being emphasized. Are we emphasizing what we should in the copy on our website?
(This cloud was made with the nifty online program at Wordle.com)
Copycat – August 11, 2008
posted by Bud Caddell
Being a copycat is an entirely acceptable business model. Whole publishing houses work off of this formula: wait for a hit then rush to market with a slew of clones.
The big advantage of the copycat model is the ability to bet on a sure thing. Well, mostly, its a sure thing. If you’re too late, you’ll miss the crest of the wave. Of course, if you spend too much money obsessing over the details you’ll likely never break even – most of the money follows the ‘hit’ product.
So being a copycat comes down to rushing out a product that’s mediocre but at least retains enough qualities of the hit to stay in the conversation. The copycat doesn’t make a lot of fans, it just hopes to siphon off enough people through to the purchase.
Its a lot cheaper to produce a copycat product, there’s none of that expensive R&D to deal with. Just wait, watch, and rip it off. And its only getting easier to make those copycats… which means if you’re not in the copycat business, you have to do more with your next hit product. Good luck if you’re on your own.
You’ll need your customers with you more than ever. Consider the Zune. The Zune was a damn good copycat by copycat standards. It worked. It replicated 99% of the features and functionality of the hit. But it ultimately didn’t siphon off those Apple customers, so it was the flop. Wouldn’t it be nice to have those Apple customers, by the way?
Technology products are still pretty easy to differentiate, books not so much. How about your products? How much of your time is spent fighting off the copycats?
What Imagination Looks Like on Twitter – August 07, 2008
posted by Joel Witmer
StreamGraph is a new online application that visualizes Twitter. Huh?
The StreamGraph shows the usage over time for the words most highly associated with the search word. One of these series together with a time period are in a selected state and coloured red. The tweets that contain this word in the given time period are shown below the graph. You can click on another word series or time period to see different matches. In the match list you click on any word to create a different graph with tweets containing that word. You can also click on the user or comment icons and any URL to see the appropriate content in another window.
So the image below is what ‘imagination’ looks like this morning.
Tailored Commercials, Pt 2 – August 06, 2008
posted by Joel Witmer
Last week TiVo released its first batch of data measuring second-by-second commercial audience numbers. Interesting stuff.
(Caveats: The data only cover May 2008 and the sample is 200,000 TiVo users who voluntarily participated in the study)
While everyone skips commercials, according to the research viewers skip fewer ads that they see as relevant to their circumstances. In other words, people will actually watch commercials if they find the commercials relevant.
***
A week ago I wrote about the BMW commercial that aired during the season premier of Mad Men. That commercial held my attention because it was tailored to the program on which it was airing. From a purely aesthetic perspective having a non-disruptive commercial is preferable to the typical clatter that interrupts my television watching. I watched the BMW commercial in part because it was as seamlessly integrated into the show as a commercial can be without becoming a product placement. I wasn’t jarred away from the show enough to warrant changing the channel.
What the TiVo research suggests is that people will watch commercials if the commercials are seamlessly integrated into the viewer’s daily existence as a sentient being who has thoughts and concerns that range larger than the immediacy of the current television show. In other words, if you’re a teenager who suffers from acne you’re likely to watch a commercial about acne treatments. The commercial addresses something about your life that you find important. The commercial is non-disruptive because it’s not disrupting your life.
***
Geographical commercial targeting already exists. The next step is targeting on a more precise scale. Right now the show itself is a functional proxy for this more precise targeting — acne medication commercials air during Gossip Girls, not during the evening news.
But perhaps one day the targeting will be even more precise and the TiVo fast forward function will feel just a little teeny bit unnecessary.
How Imagination Connects
Imagination is the leader in content-driven relationship marketing. We’ll engage your clients, members, employees or prospects with the right content delivered the right way: print or digital, audio or video, podcasts, webcasts, blogs or email, magazines or digimags. Here we explore how to do all of these things better.
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The Judges Have Spoken – 21 August 2008
What Imagination Looks Like, Part 2 – 20 August 2008
Copycat – 11 August 2008
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