sagmeister & walsh refreshes frooti mango juice campaign with indian motifs

mar 26, 2015

sagmeister & walsh refreshes frooti mango juice campaign with indian motifs

sagmeister & walsh refreshes frooti mango juice campaign with indian motifs

all images courtesy of sagmeister & walsh

sagmeister & walsh has conceived the visual identity, graphics, social strategy, advertising and animation graphics for frooti, one of the largest and oldest mango juice brands in india. the new york-based graphic design studio sourced the bright, bold and playful color palette used throughout the campaign from the indian culture, making sure the visuals would stand out in the crowded advertising landscape of the region. with packaging designed bypentagram, sagmeister & walsh were able to create a miniature world revolving around a series of eye-catching juice boxes, cleverly arranging tiny people in participation with the product. scaled models of vehicles, people and plant life interact with the frooti packaging and mangos (kept full-scale) allowing the two objects to identify as the ‘hero’ of the story assembled in each shot.

frooti holli
video courtesy of sagmeister & walsh

‘when stefan & I visited india’, walsh explains about the research and inspiration behind the campaigns, ‘we noticed how most of the billboard campaigns used a similar language: lots of text heavy ads or straightforward images of people / product shots. there are also numerous size formats and billboards often overlap each other. the result is that the advertising landscape in many areas looks extremely busy and nothing stands out as everything speaks in a similar language. noticing this, we designed frooti’s campaigns to be very simple and graphic with bold colors. looking at the heavily commercial and busy ad landscape, we loved the idea of creating images that had sweetness or humor. these graphics will be posted all over the country on billboards, above shops, and painted on the sides of buildings. whether its a mango hula hooping, a couple kissing behind a mango sunset, or a group of friends riding down a mango blimp, we tried to create imagery that could make people smile.‘

‘we also conceptualized games, a social media strategy, a cocktail recipe website, and a digital platform for all things frooti.’ walsh continues. ‘this included creating creating many smaller stop motion animations videos. for these shorter videos we brought the mango to life, giving them a sense of playfulness and character. over time on their instagram account we will continue to release videos to this series. the graphic language is very adaptable to telling all kinds of stories: already we’ve released little stop motion videos celebration the holi festival, the win of the last indian cricket team, and mangos hugging for valentines day.’

frooti cricket

  

frooti spring 2015 – behind the scenes

http://www.designboom.com/design/sagmeister-walsh-frooti-mango-juice-campaign-indian-motifs-03-26-2015/?utm_campaign=monthly&utm_medium=e-mail&utm_source=subscribers

mickael jou's gravity-defying dance series captures ballet mid-move

mar 02, 2015

mickael jou's gravity-defying dance series captures ballet mid-move---This is a great idea for an advertising campaign.....

mickael jou’s gravity-defying dance series captures ballet mid-move

all images courtesy of mickael jou

mickael jou has embarked on a year-long project which unites his two creative careers — photography and dance. the french-american artist has comprised his ‘365 self-portrait project’ using everyday scenes for the composition’s backdrop — a supermarket, park and museum hallways. caught mid-move, jou acts as the focal point of each scenario, sometimes suspended weightlessly in flight, other times dramatically interacting with the surrounding environment. what looks to be the work of wires, tethering him to some invisible support system, is instead the adept manipulation of his own body, with which he has skillfully and carefully controlled. with perfectly-pointed toes and elegantly-outstretched arms, the series takes a rare look at the graceful steps and paces frozen in a frame. 

the photographer / dancer hovers in front of a stunned room of museum-goers

jou’s dance position interacts with a nearby statue

the dancer holds onto the bars of a fence and drifts his legs into the air

jou caught mid-move sees him seemingly floating above the city street

  

Why Engagement Might Be The Most Important Metric For Musicians

Why Engagement Might Be The Most Important Metric For Artists

DEC 19 2014

Whenever the topic of social media is raised in any forum of the music industry, a choice discussion is always the practice of purchasing followers or views, allowing artists to game charts, rendering social activity unreliable and therefore less significant.

But often overlooked in this dismissal of the validity of social activity is the fact that building a significant social following is fairly pointless for an artist unless they successfully leverage that following at critical moments. To reach fans with a new lyric video, to spread the word about a tour, to gauge interest in an upcoming album release – ultimately to interact with fans and get instant feedback on what you are creating.

While a vast social following can be a valuable tool, only legitimate and loyal followers that engage with the content you provide through social channels, and ultimately your work, provide you with the reach and engagement you are seeking as an artist. For this very reason, it is important to look beyond totals, and start to measure the relationship between daily activity and the number of fans you have – a measure of engagement.

Artist manager Robbie Lackritz has been working with Leslie Feist – known only as Feist – for close to a decade, and has a strong sense of how to build valuable engagement with fans. Feist, who is a Canadian singer-songwriter with more than four solo studio albums under her belt as well as countless collaborations with other artists and bands, has maintained a successful career as an artist for many years now.

Her most commercially successful album came in 2007. The Reminder (the making of which is chronicled in her 2010 documentary Look At What The Light Did Now) earned her four nominations for Grammy awards in 2010, including Best New Artist. About her latest album Metals and their release strategy, Lackritz says “it was a lot more about finding a more engaged core of followers.”

With just shy of a million page likes on Facebook, 127,000 followers on Twitter and more than 20 million video views on Vevo, Feist is classified as a Mainstream musician. But for the artist and her management team, building the largest online following, and simply hocking social content for attention, has never been the goal.

While they see the value in cultivating a social following, and Lackritz regularly employs analytics to understand how fans are reacting online, the artist posts fairly infrequently online. Her Instagram account totals only 15 snaps and two videos, she rarely puts out more than one piece of content per week on Facebook, and her last tweet was in November.

For each individual post Feist has in her Facebook feed, there are hundreds, if not thousands of interactions from followers. But given that she is nearing the end of her current album cycle, and the relative infrequency of social activity, her audience engagement is defined as Moderate.

Next Big Sound identifies four levels of engagement: Occasional, Moderate, Strong, and Passionate. Audience engagement is defined by the relationship between daily activity and the overall size of an artist’s following, and then performance is measured against that of every artist in the database. Artists that are defined as Moderate, such as Feist, range from the 16th to the 84th percentile.

Engagement is not contingent on having a massive following. For instance, Taylor Swift’s audience engagement is also defined as Moderate, despite the fact that she has more than 77 million Facebook page likes, close to 50 million Twitter followers, and has just released her latest album to great fanfare. This measure is valuable for artists at any stage, to help them understand how they are reaching fans, and what content is reacting.

But be weary of engagement for the sake of engagement. “If we’re posting photos of cute cats, people are going to engage,” he says, “But when it comes down to the marketing of Feist, and what we put on her pages and why, we really try to center around where her head is at, and what she is working on.” The fans who follow and interact with Feist on social, attend her shows, enjoy the art of her album, and will help her sustain a career for many years to come.

“Her types of social media campaigns are far less active in volume of posts, but try to be much more curatorial about content,” Lackritz explains. “That lends itself to the type of career that she aspires to have – which is not about being the most gigantic artist on the face of the earth, but about having fans that really appreciate the deep cuts on the record, as much as they do the songs that radio might consider playing.”

“As nice as it is to have these social mediums of marketing to be able to engage people,” Lackritz says, “Don’t compromise the end result of why you do what you do, and what’s special about what you do.”

This article originally appeared on Forbes.com. Liv Buli is the resident data journalist for music analytics company Next Big Sound. She takes a data-driven perspective to covering the ins and outs of the music industry. Buli is a graduate of New York University’s Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute and her work has appeared in Newsweek Daily Beast, Forbes, Billboard, Hypebot and more.

http://blog.nextbigsound.com/post/105623023398/why-engagement-might-be-the-most-important-metric

Forrester: Mobile Is The Anti-Channel

• by Sarah Mahoney, January 2, 2015, 8:42 AM
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While most marketers continue to think of mobile as a channel — one that runs somewhat parallel to its Internet presence — a new report from Forrester Research says it’s time to reverse that perspective. “Mobile eliminates the notion of channels by blurring the distinction between the physical and digital worlds,” writes analyst Julie A. Ask. And brands like USAA, using mobile as a way to sell expanded services; Starbucks, which is continually finding new ways to streamline purchasing, or Guinness building passionate beer communities, are finding that “mobile generates new revenue, improves customer relationships and reduces costs throughout all channels.”

But few companies are prepared. Forrester estimates that less than 4% of businesses are ready to take advantage of the opportunity presented by mobile, and even then, fail to take into account its rapidly expanding definition. It’s not just phones, she says, but watches, cuffs, glasses and even lighting systems. 

“We still see most of our clients cramming PC experiences onto phones when they should be thinking in terms of mobile moments instead,” she writes. Among the executives it surveyed, 47% planned to spend $500,000 or less externally to build up their mobile services. “This budget barely pays for the analytics, messaging, testing, and marketing solutions on which most enterprises depend.” And only 45% have at least five developers in-house.

The best strategies, she writes, are those that find ways to interact with consumers at specific stages in the six-step customer journey:

*Discover Getting consumers who are not yet customers to engage isn’t easy, but financial brands, such as Intuit or USAA, “manufacture mobile moments by offering consumers tools to manage their finances, cars, and homes — and opportunities to buy new services in those moments.”

*Explore With 43% of American smartphone owners saying they’ve researched a product via their device in the last few months, savvy marketers are finding ways to make mobile research easier, driving total transactions, not just digital sales.

*Buy In 2014, U.S. consumers bought about $24 billion in goods via mobile and used their devices to pay for $52 billion, “whether they are in-store with a mobile-enabled associate, paying remotely, paying bills, or engaging in peer-to-peer payment methods.”

Giving customers mobile access to both pricing and inventory increases their shopping confidence.

*Use Increasingly, consumers expect support through apps, updates and notifications. Basis, for example — a fitness and wellness wearable that gathers information on steps taken, sleep, and heart rate — comes with an app which walks consumers through behavior changes. 

*Ask Mobile can be a low-cost self-service tool for customer support, and “is at its best when it streamlines customer interactions, saving them time and saving you money.” One example: American Express uses [24]7 to resolve potential fraud through an interactive mobile phone experience, instead of a regular voice call. In addition to saving millions in operation expenses, “nine out of 10 consumers gave the experience at least four out of five stars.”

*Engage Sharing reviews, comments, and tips allow customers to create their own communities, fostering brand loyalty and customer passions, like the Guinness Pub Finder app. Mobile extends those communities by making it easier to post photos and videos. Marketers benefit “from crowd-sourced content and a brand affinity that paid media can’t buy.”

http://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/240998/forrester-mobile-is-the-anti-channel.html

How to choose the best predictive lead scoring vendor for your company

Generating a bounty of leads doesn't mean your work is done. What's much more important is whether those leads will ultimately convert—and predictive lead scoring is one way B2B marketers can determine if a lead is good or if it belongs on the trash heap.

Predictive intelligence platforms can help B2B marketers prioritize existing prospects or identify unknown prospects through lead scoring. Basically, the technique uses data from both CRM and marketing automation solutions and unites it with data from third-party sources to detect a usable pattern. Lead scoring can boost sales productivity, improve marketing effectiveness and encourage sales/marketing alignment.

"Predictive lead scoring offers a more accurate outcome that B2B marketers and sales reps can rely on and gives you a competitive edge," said Jill Stanek, research analyst for the technology practice at B2B research firm SiriusDecisions.

Predictive lead scoring technology is in its infancy—just a handful of companies offers tools that can be used in the B2B market and the standards for crunching that data are not consistent across the field of providers. But there is a hunger for this capability among B2B marketers. According to SiriusDecisions, there are almost 14 times more B2B organizations with predictive lead scoring today than there were in 2011.

"Using predictive analytics to model the propensity of prospects to buy has been something that's been an important part of B2B marketing for many years now, but we simply didn't have enough data in B2B in prospects and in sales results to take advantage of this [lead scoring] technology," said Kerry Cunningham, research director of demand creation strategies at SiriusDecisions. "But now that we have so much data in B2B, and it's growing all the time, I think the adoption cycle is going to be pretty rapid."

FIRST STEPS

With so few companies offering predictive scoring capabilities, how can B2B marketers go about choosing the right one?

One of the first things to do, Cunningham suggested, is to run trials with several vendors. Have those companies provide you with a set of set of scored leads to test. "There are a couple of ways to do a trial," he said. "One is actually to run a small pilot and test those leads in the field. If you don't have the resources to actually send your salespeople out to try to sell those leads, then at least have salespeople look at them to assess whether or not the leads that this model is saying are good make sense and are leads that they would also agree are good."

Kerry Cunningham

Stanek said the next critical thing to consider is the vendor's design and deployment of a scoring system that has been specifically tailored to your needs. "Some of them actually can do it within twenty-four hours and for some it can take up to four weeks." She also said to make sure to ask if a lead scoring vendor actually sources net new contacts; some vendors only score existing contacts. Securing customer references is also a must.

Another important factor for B2B marketers looking to hire a predictive lead scoring vendor is how well that vendor is able to support delivering the leads in a format and in a way that it's going to work well for the ultimate lead recipient. For example, since predictive lead scoring vendors are ultimately going to be providing sales leads that go to either teleprospectors or salespeople, it's important to understand how the scores will be presented to those folks. What's the format? How much info will they get explaining to them why it's a good lead?

"There's not yet a right answer for what's the best way to present it back or what are the best pieces of information to present back to those teleprospectors or salespeople," Cunningham said, "but for each organization there will be some ways of doing it that are better than others. It's going to be pretty individual to the company, but it's extremely important, maybe more important than how good the model is itself."

To help its clients properly evaluate the lead scoring vendor marketplace, SiriusDecisions recently released a guide detailing the pros and cons of several vendors. The report focused on seven vendors—6Sense, Fliptop, Infer, Lattice, Leadspace, Mintigo and Salesfusion.

Jill Stanek

According to the report, 6Sense may be the platform of choice for high-tech, manufacturing and other B2B enterprises focused on identifying new leads in the early stages of the buying cycle; the company tracks content consumption across thousands of B2B publisher sites, blogs, communities, forums and business directories to help it source leads. In contrast, Fliptop aims its platform at SMBs and larger organizations that use Salesforce.com and examines a company's existing database to identify leads. Infer may also be a good fit for rapidly growing SMBs that require a lead scoring platform that can be easily hooked up to a database of existing prospects.

For B2B marketers with strict security requirements that need multiple scoring models across different business units, or that are focused on account-based marketing, Lattice should be considered. For those organizations, large or small, that leverage multiple buyer personas, have multiple products and need new leads outside an existing database, Leadspace should be on the short list.

If data hygiene is not the best, Mintigo provides data remediation during onboarding; the company also offers insights to marketers interested in using lead scoring to drive content delivery. However, Mintigo requires more work than other similar vendors during initial setup. And, finally, Salesfusion is an affordable option for SMBs that do not currently have a marketing automation platform and are looking for standard marketing automation functionality and predictive lead scoring based on their own data.

Both Stanek and Cunningham emphasized that their recommendations may change due to a vendor landscape that is in flux. For example, since this report was released a few weeks ago, a couple of new vendors are now on the research firm's radar. But change is now here, and both analysts predicted that more and more B2B companies will use predictive lead scoring as new vendors pop up and older ones are acquired by large marketing automation vendors and integrated into their solutions.

"SiriusDecisions estimates that fewer than five hundred B2B organizations are actually using [predictive lead scoring] technology today," Stanek said. "And as a developing market that's rapidly growing, the reality is that not that many companies are actually implementing it. But we definitely estimate significant growth because most organizations that buy predictive lead scoring platforms already have a marketing automation platform in place."

http://www.fiercecmo.com/special-reports/how-choose-best-predictive-lead-scoring-vendor-your-company

The 'Social Media Phase Of The Internet' Is Over

Fred Wilson says "the social media phase of the Internet ended" in 2014.

Wilson, perhaps more than any other venture capitalist, spotted the emergence of social media early and profited from it. His firm, Union Square Ventures, invested early in Twitter, Tumblr, Zynga, Foursquare, and a few others.

In a post looking back at what happened in 2014, he says social media is pretty much dead. 

"Entrepreneurs and developers still build social applications," says Wilson. "We still use them. But there isn’t much innovation here anymore. The big platforms are mature. Their place is secure."

Messaging apps have replaced social media apps, says Wilson.

"Messaging is the new social media ... Families use WhatsApp groups instead of Facebook. Kids use Snapchat instead of Instagram. Facebook’s acquisition of WhatsApp in February of this year was the transaction that defined this trend."

Wilson thinks messaging and mobile moved into the enterprise in a big way in 2014. He says Slack, the fast growing group chart, is the "poster boy" for this trend. 

Here is Wilson's complete list of what happened in 2014:

1/ the social media phase of the Internet ended. this may have happened a few years ago actually but i felt it strongly this year. entrepreneurs and developers still build social applications. we still use them. but there isn’t much innovation here anymore. the big platforms are mature. their place is secure.

2/ messaging is the new social media. this may be part of what is going on in 1/. families use whatsapp groups instead of facebook. kids use snapchat instead of instagram. facebook’s acquisition of whatsapp in february of this year was the transaction that defined this trend.

3/ the “sharing economy” was outed as the “rental economy.” nobody is sharing anything. people are making money, plain and simple. technology has made renting things (even in real time) as simple as it made buying things a decade ago. Uber and Airbnb are the big winners in this category but there are and will be others.

4/ the capital markets have moved to the internet. we call it crowdfunding but what is really going on is raising money is a great application of a global platform that connects billions of people in real time. i don’t know the total amount of capital that was raised on the internet across all sectors (equity, debt, creative projects, charity, helping a person in need, real estate, energy, etc, etc) in 2014 but i am sure it is in the tens of billions.

5/ mobile OS has become a stable duopoly around the world. but android is splintering into google android and non google android and that may lead to new large players. 2014 was a big coming out party for xiaomi. if and when they come to the US, things will get interesting. they are the new (and better) samsung.

6/ mobile and messaging has started to impact the enterprise. slack is the poster boy for this trend in 2014.

7/ youtube became a monster. it always has been. but in 2014 youtube emerged as the place for entertainment consumption for anyone under 16. and these youngsters are going to grow up quickly. watching The Interview on YouTube was a fitting end to an amazing year for the king (and queen and joker too) of Internet video.

8/ we finally got rid of files. dropbox, google drive, soundcloud, spotify, netflix, hbogo, youtube, wattpad, kindle, and a host of other cloud based services finally killed off three letter filenames like mp3, mov, doc and xls. spending a week in the caribbean with young adults and bad internet was the tell on this one for me. they don’t even have mp3s on their iphones anymore!

9/ the net neutrality debate emerged as a national political issue with Obama’s endorsement of Title II regulation of the last mile of the internet. it is unclear how this issue will resolve itself but the public has spoken loudly and clearly and politicians understand that the internet needs to remain open for innovation and we can’t let the monopoly carriers and cable companies mess that up.

10/ cyberwarfare, cybercrime, cyberhacking, and cybersecurity was by far the dominant theme of 2014. if anyone had their head in the sand on this one before this year, they don’t anymore. this is our new normal. the US takedown of North Korea’s internet last week, and the state department official’s comment that “i guess accidents can happen” is a moment to remember as we head out of 2014 and into our future.

Read more: http://uk.businessinsider.com/fred-wilson-on-what-happened-in-2014-2014-12#ixzz3Nu1LQL77