#you have to understand just how big i hit the character design jackpot with this guy. came right out of the box crazy

[cyberdragoninfinity]

it’s like i found a carrot and ate it off the ground but the carrot had a brain-eating fungus on it. so.

[dorothydelgadillo]

5 Show-stopping Marketing Videos to Inspire Your Strategy

As we dive headfirst into 2019, one word or theme keeps coming up for marketers -- VIDEO.

It’s as if people have never heard of this confangled thing before. It’s as if some mystical creature was found and everyone wants to get a look!

I find it rather funny because I’ve been utilizing the power of video for so long, I can’t even remember when it began.

Okay, that’s not entirely true. I remember where and when I had that lightbulb moment, but that’s not important right now.

What’s important is the new shiny thing that every marketing team knows they have to get behind. So, how the heck do you choose what to shoot as a marketer or how to go about shooting it?

That’s a really great question.

The answer can be found in three simple truths:

1. Your goal

2. Your audience

3. Your inspiration

Today, I want to focus on the third piece.

Personally, I find inspiration by consuming exceptional content. I meticulously watch videos created by the best professionals at their craft.

Those moments of inspiration and learning are what drive my professional career forward every day and I hope it'll do the same for you. 

With that in mind, below are five marketing videos that really inspired me over the years and I believe can do the same for your video strategy in 2019.

1. Dollar Shave Club

    It’s hard not to include this video when I think of great marketing videos. With close to 26 million views on YouTube alone, it’s safe to say this campaign was a monster success.

I love it because it’s not overly complicated. It’s extremely direct and, most importantly, it’s hilarious.

Why does it work?

From a creative standpoint, the pitch probably sounded something like this: The founder of the company casually sits at his desk and explains why Dollar Shave Club’s razors are the best. We can have shots of him walking around the facility and it will be funny. People will love it.

Seems mundanely unsatisfying in conversation.

So, why did this video work so well?

They didn’t overcomplicate the production; turning into something more than what it needed to be. (Something that happens quite often in most other cases.)

The creative team focused on genuinely capturing the founder of the company in his element, following him casually around the warehouse as if it was any other day.

While, yes, some situations were obviously outrageous, the way the story unfolds leaves the audience feeling a real connection to both the founder and the brand.

There is beauty in its simplicity that amplifies the humorous undertones we’ve come to know and love.

Overall, it is a great introduction to the company’s quirky brand and speaks directly to the laid-back, no-frills consumer they’re trying to reach.

What can we learn?

You don’t have to have a Hollywood budget or an A list celebrity to endorse your products. You need to be genuine in order to connect with your audience. If you can connect with your audience, they will follow. Be authentic.

2. TNT - Push To Add Drama

    Now, this is one of my favorite Experiential Marketing Campaigns ever created.

To launch the TV channel TNT in Belgium, the creative team placed a big red push button on an average Flemish square of an average Flemish town.

A sign with the text "Push to add drama" (a real-life call-to-action button) invited people to use the button.

What happens will surely get a reaction from anyone watching.

Why does it work?

Now, this is a great example of capitalizing on your existing marketing.

This wasn’t a stand-alone marketing video like the Dollar Shave Club commercial, but one highlighting a really fun, exciting campaign that a greater audience would want to watch and share. 

What better way to get people excited about the content you display on your TV Channel than to literally have them in the action?

This ideology aligns so much with the book They Ask You Answer by Marcus Sheridan.

TNT was moving into a new geographic region and needed a fun way to get people to know, like, and trust the channel.

They answered a specific question; “Who is TNT and what claims do they make?”

They accomplished that by demonstrating to a potential audience by serving up the most direct experience they could possibly come up with.

You don’t know us? That’s okay, just push this button and BOOM!!! We’re TNT.

What can we learn?

Start with the basics. If your potential customer’s don’t know who you are… show them! If your customers have questions; answer them openly and honestly. It will yield better results than you could fathom.

Also, do it in a way that is memorable (and worth sharing). Not only will the people of Belgium not forget their experience with TNT (great way to build awareness), but they’ll likely want to talk about it.

Then, by sharing this real-life story online via video, TNT has created an opportunity for the campaign to be shared on a wider spectrum while maintaining the same effect on its viewers.

3. Volkswagen - The Force

  I may be biased because I’m a Star Wars fan, but this just may be one of my favorite commercials of all time. Yes, you heard me!

  Why does it work?

It connects multiple generations of fans on an emotional level and expertly connects that to the brand/product at hand.

It’s super relatable for both parents and kids alike. I feel like anyone who grew up watching Star Wars has done something to this degree as a child. It’s also just genuinely funny, even if you're not a fan of the movies.

This experience is a great way to grab attention and get the audience to connect with the brand on an emotional level. 

Most importantly, I love that you can see the child actor’s reaction even though you can’t see his face. That priceless moment gets me every time. I can feel the shock and awe.

The silly, but sweet concept is so strong and extremely well-executed. You could’ve honestly slapped any other car brand or logo at the end of that commercial and people would still love it.

What can we learn?

The power of a strong, relatable and emotionally invested story will always win over your audience.

This emotional connection builds trust and once you establish that trust, it’s much easier for them to form a relationship with the brand.

Using emotional resonance and nostalgia to connect people specifically to your message is a powerful tactic. It’s the quickest way to establish a common ground and establish trust.

  4. BMW Films - Short Movie Series

  "The Hire" brought together an amalgamation of some of the most talented actors, directors, and crew in the industry for marketing campaign that had never been done before.

Consisting of eight short films produced exclusively for online viewing, each short was directed by a different popular filmmakers from around the globe and starred Clive Owen as "the Driver" while highlighting the performance aspects of various BMW automobiles.

Since video was directed by a different person from Hollywood royalty, each mini movie its own look, feel and overall style. The only consistent piece tying the stories together is our protagonist, Clive Owen's character.

Why does it work?

The campaign videos were designed to be a cinematic experience, and they most certainly were but where exactly does the sales pitch come into play? It doesn’t.

That’s the beauty of these videos.

BMW didn’t go in for the hard sell. They decided to showcase the products and let the emotional connection happen naturally with their stories. The cars are the main characters.

They each have their own look, identity, and personality and the videos let the audience connect or identify with a certain model depending on the film.

What can we learn?

People make decisions based on emotions. If you can convey a truly compelling story that connects people’s emotions with their desires… well, you can get them to buy almost anything.

Also, self-identification can be powerful. Giving people a way to identify or “see themselves” in a product is a great way to break down barriers and connect.

It all comes down to knowing your audience.

It’s crucial to understand the demographics, ethnographies, and other stats for whom you’re trying to appeal to. That’s the only way to make an informed creative decision about crafting content they will find relatable.

5. WestJet’s Christmas Surprise

      The last flight I took, WestJet let me cut the TSA security line and I thought I hit the jackpot. Could you imagine if this was your experience?

In this video, WestJet shows how they delighted unsuspecting travelers with a real-time holiday surprise that delivered personalized gifts to guests arriving in Calgary as part of a true “Christmas Miracle."

With the support of a strategic communications plan, WestJet created an experience for each guest that was not only timely and engaging but captured the hearts, minds, and social media feeds of WestJet’s target consumers across the globe.

The viral campaign garnered international attention and became one of the most-viewed and shared viral ads in the entire world.

Most importantly, it increased WestJet’s sales by 86% compared to the same period the year prior. 86%!!!!!!!!!

Why does it work?

What is more compelling than helping real-life people? How about giving them free stuff?  I mean have you heard of Oprah or Ellen?

 Giving people gifts is an amazing thing.

However, this campaign is so much more than just the warm and fuzzy feeling of gift giving.

It’s about WestJet’s commitment to their customers. It’s about WestJet crafting the best customer experience in the industry.

WestJet does an incredible job of demonstrating their attention to detail, their caring nature towards their customers, and their core values from a company culture standpoint.

What can we learn?

  Again, create a memorable experience for your customers that is worth not only sharing, but repeating. People who were given gifts by WestJet will never forget the delight they experienced and that's a happiness that can be felt even by those watching the video. 

  The Bottomline

As a creator, I know that the best way to make sure your message is delivered and understood is to strike an emotional chord. 

And as a marketer, I know this begins with knowing your audience.

According to this article by Forbes knowing your audience is the most strategic things you have in your bag of tricks as a creator and I couldn’t agree with them more.

I encourage you to immerse yourself with this mentality on your next project. Deep dive into understanding whom you are speaking to and what that specific audience wants to hear.

My process is to reverse engineer everything I create.

I ask myself, what does the end goal look like? What does the audience need to hear or see to get there?

I establish those clear benchmarks first, then I work backwards until I reach the starting point.

Knowing your audience is crucial to ensuring you are creatively directing the right conversations, emotions, visuals and other facets of the campaign to convey your message.

Successful marketing campaigns are strategic at their core. I encourage you to do your homework to fully understand your customers, set clear goals with them in mind, then use some of the videos above as inspiration. 

It’s that simple.

from Web Developers World https://www.impactbnd.com/blog/5-showstopping-marketing-videos-to-inspire-your-strategy

[avenger-equalizer-blog]

The Nature Cure (from Reader's Digest International, December 1, 2017)

Doctors from California to South Korea believe they’ve found a miracle medicine for our mental health and creativity BY FLORENCE WILLIAMS FROM NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC PHOTO: CHRISTOFFER RELANDER WHEN YOU GO TO the desert with Professor David St raye r, d o n ’t be surprised if he sticks electrodes to your head. A cognitive psychologist at the University of Utah who studies the mind’s ability to think clearly, Strayer understands the relentless distractions that pummel our modern brains. But as an avid backpacker, he thinks he knows the antidote. On the third day of a camping trip in the canyons near Bluff, Utah, Strayer, sporting a rumpled T-shirt and a slight sunburn, is mixing an enormous iron pot of chicken while explaining the ‘three-day effect’to 22 psychology students. Our brains, he says, aren’t tireless 1.3-kilogram machines; they’re easily fatigued by our fast-paced, increasingly digital lives. But when we slow down, stop the busywork, and seek out natural surroundings, we not only feel restored but also improve our mental performance. Strayer has demonstrated as much with a group of Outward Bound participants, who scored 50 per cent higher on creative problem-solving tasks after three days of wilderness backpacking. “If you can have the experience of being in the moment for two or three days,”Strayer says as the early evening sun saturates the red canyon walls, “it seems to produce a difference in qualitative thinking.”Strayer’s hypothesis is that being in nature allows the prefrontal cortex, the brain’s command centre, to rest and recover, like an overused muscle. If he’s right, when he hooks his research subjects –in this case, his students and me –to a portable EEG device, our brainwaves will show calmer ‘midline frontal theta waves’, a measure of conceptual thinking and sustained attention, compared with the same waves in volunteers hanging out in a car park in Salt Lake City. Strayer has his students tuck my head into a sort of bathing cap with 12 electrodes embedded in it. They adhere another six electrodes to my face. Wires sprouting from them will send my brain’s electrical signals to a recorder for analysis. Feeling like a beached sea urchin, I walk carefully to a grassy bank along the San Juan River, where I’m supposed to think of nothing in particular, just watch the wide, sparkling water flow by. I haven’t looked at a computer or mobile phone in days, and it’s easy to forget for a few moments that I ever had them. IN 1865, THE GREAT American landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted looked out over Yosemite Valley and was so moved that he urged the California legislature to protect it from development. “It is a scientific fact,”he wrote, “that the occasional contemplation of natural scenes of an impressive character …is favourable to the health and vigour of men.”Olmsted’s claim had a long history, going back at least to Cyrus the Great, who some 2500 years ago built gardens for relaxation in the busy capital of Persia. Paracelsus, the 16th-century German-Swiss physician, wrote, “The art of healing comes from nature, not from the physician.”And 19th-century Americans Ralph Waldo Emerson and John Muir built the case for creating the world’s first national parks by claiming that nature had healing powers for both mind and body. There wasn’t hard evidence back then. Being in nature allows the prefrontal cortex to rest and recover, like an overused muscle There is now. Researchers from the University of Exeter Medical School in England analysed data from 10,000 city dwellers and found that those living near more green space reported less mental distress, even after adjusting for income, marital status and employment (all of which are correlated with health). In 2009, Dutch researchers found a lower incidence of 15 diseases –including depression, anxiety and migraines –in people who lived near parks or green space. Richard Mitchell, an epidemiologist and a geographer at the University of Glasgow in Scotland, found fewer deaths and less disease in people who lived near green spaces, even if they didn’t use them. “Our own studies plus others show these restorative effects whether you’ve gone for walks or not,”Mitchell says. People who have window views of trees and grass have been shown to recover faster in hospitals, perform better in school and display less violent behaviour. Japanese researchers led by Bum Jin Park and Yoshifumi Miyazaki at Chiba University quantified nature’s effects on the brain by sending 280 subjects for a stroll in 24 different forests while the same number of volunteers walked around city centres. The forest walkers hit the anti-anxiety jackpot, showing a 16 per cent decrease in the stress hormone cortisol. From fMRI experiments, South Korean researchers found that the brains of volunteers looking at city scenes showed more blood flow in the amygdala, which processes fear and anxiety. In contrast, natural scenes lit up the anterior cingulate cortex and the anterior insula –areas associated with empathy and altruism. Miyazaki believes our minds and bodies relax in natural surroundings because our senses adapted to interpret information about plants and streams, he says, not traffic and high-rises. People underestimate the happiness effect of being outdoors, says Lisa Nisbet, an assistant professor of psychology at Canada’s Trent University. “We don’t think of it as a way to increase happiness. We think other things will, like shopping or TV,”she adds. “We evolved in nature. It’s strange we’d be so disconnected.”In some countries, nature is woven into the government’s official mental health policy DR NOOSHIN RAZANI is director of the Center for Nature and Health at UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital in California. She is one of several doctors around the world starting to counter this disconnection as a means to heal the anxious and depressed. As part of a pilot project, she’s training paediatricians in the outpatient clinic to write prescriptions for young patients and their families to regularly visit verdant parks nearby. To guide the doctors and patients into a mind-set where this makes sense as treatment, she says, “we have transformed the clinical space so nature is everywhere. There are maps on the wall, so it’s easy to talk about where to go, and pictures of local wilderness.”In some countries, nature is woven into the government’s official mental health policy. At the Natural Resources Institute Finland, the nation’s high rates of depression, alcoholism and suicide led a research team to recommend a minimum nature dose of five hours per month in an effort to improve the nation’s mental health. “A 40- to 50-minute walk seems to be enough for physiological changes and mood changes and probably for attention,”says Kalevi Korpela, a professor of psychology at the University of Tampere. He has helped design half a dozen ‘power trails’that encourage mindfulness and reflection. No-nonsense signs say things like “You may squat down and feel a plant.”AT THE HEALING FOREST in the Saneum Natural Recreation Forest in South Korea, a government employee known as a ‘forest healing instructor’offers me elm-bark tea, then takes me on a hike along a creek, through shimmering red maples, oaks and pine trees. We come upon a cluster of wooden platforms arranged in a clearing. Forty firefighters with post-traumatic stress disorder are paired off on the platforms as part of a government-sponsored three-day healing programme. Among them is Kang Byoung-wook, 46, from Seoul. He recently returned from a big fire in the Philippines, and looks exhausted. “It’s a stressed life,”he says. “I want to live here for a month.”In industrial Daejeon, the South Korean forest minister, Shin Won Sop, a social scientist who has studied the effects of forest therapy on alcoholics, tells me that human wellbeing is now a formal goal of the nation’s forest plan. Thanks to the new policies, visitors to South Korea’s recreation forests increased from 9.4 million in 2010 to 12.8 million in 2013. “Of course, we still use forests for timber,”Shin says. “But I think the health area is the fruit of the forest right now.”His ministry has data suggesting that forest healing reduces medical costs and benefits local economies. What’s still needed, he says, is data on specific diseases and on the specific natural qualities that make a difference. “What types of forests are more effective?”Shin asks. MY OWN CITY BRAIN seems to like the Utah wilderness very much. By day, we hike among flowering prickly pear cacti; by night, we sit around the campfire. Strayer’s students seem more relaxed and sociable than they do in the classroom, he says, and they give much more persuasive presentations. His research, which centres on how nature improves problem solving, builds on the theory that nature’s visual elements –sunsets, streams and butterflies –are what reduce stress and mental fatigue. Fascinating but not demanding, such stimuli promote a soft focus that allows our brains to wander, rest and recover. A few months after our Utah trip, Strayer’s team sends me the results of my EEG test. The colourful graph shows my brainwaves at a range of frequencies and confirms that the gentle fascination of the San Juan River succeeded in quieting my prefrontal cortex. Compared with samples from research subjects who had stayed in the city, my theta signals were lower. So far, the other research subjects’results also confirm Strayer’s hypothesis. But no study can offer a full explanation of the brain-on-nature experience; something mysterious will always remain, Strayer says, and perhaps that’s as it should be. “At the end of the day,”he says, “we come out in nature not because science says it does something to us but because of how it makes us feel.”NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC (JANUARY 2016). © 2016 BY NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC CREATIVE, NATIONALGEOGRAPHIC.COM

[ahvie-voidsinger]

Charity

During the course of one of my many facebook battles (I don’t necessarily see a futility in them if the person hasn’t unfriended me yet), I was berated for defending the rights of transgender citizens to use the bathroom of their chosen gender, not the one they were assigned at birth. Keep in mind I have not yet come out to my friends. One such friend angrily asked me, “The fuck do you care about them? It doesn’t personally affect you, does it?”

And although in fact it did affect me personally, because this is very much a fight on my character and my profession, that question struck me as very odd. Do people really think that we cannot or should not give a damn about something or someone if we ourselves aren’t expecting to get something out of it? Doesn’t that fly in the face of the charity work nonpartisan, religious and nonreligious volunteers do for other people?

Instead of choosing to come out right then and there and make the argument more personal (and therefore a little more subjective), I chose to grill them right back on what charity really is. You’re giving your time, your money, or something of your own to help improve the life of another human being, with ZERO expectation in return. Even if there’s no thanks. Some might say that they are charitable because it makes them feel like a better person, that they might not be as bad as the world tells them they are. Some might say that they are expected to be charitable because of a religious belief or some holiday or some leader told them to be charitable.

I’m quite aware that even writing a blog post about what being charitable is could very well be subjected to a possibility that it was just to get attention, to have praise and thanks lavished upon oneself. My father probably saw it that way, as part of his being a sociopath drove him to seek the shield of others’ adoration and admiration to hide behind. Ironically, he hated it when I donated money at the grocery checkout lines, or outside Walmart with the red kettles, and he certainly didn’t approve of gofundme’s.

Thankfully, he’s out of my life and not breathing down my neck on every decision I make. But back to the topic, which is where I really don’t giving money away to charity. I’m single, probably will be for a very long time as I transition, and have only one family member left, my poor mother. I have a decent job I enjoy that doesn’t pay a lot, but I live with her and we make things work, and we’re amazingly well off considering the political climate. I am ever conscious of how unlucky many of my gaming friends are, or how less well off they are, and I can finally start doing something about it.

I once donated a bit of money to a gofundme effort before there were gofundme’s, sort of a volunteer freelance project. See nearly three decades ago, when pc gaming was in its infancy, LucasArts released several games that revolutionized adventure stories, one of them being Escape from Monkey Island. The other, which my father chose for me instead, was LOOM. It was a musical-focused game that had the player-character cast spells through musical notes recited in a particular pattern. Some patterns were reversable by singing backwards. The game had a lot of depth and alternate means to solve the puzzles. And it was slated to be a trilogy. Only at the culmination of the first game, we got a hell of a cliffhanger... and LucasArts never delivered, only hinting briefly at what the titles of the 2nd and 3rd games would be. In the following years, and decades, the best we got were ports and special editions of the first LOOM game, some even going as far as providing voiced dialogue for ALL of the game’s speech. If that wasn’t commitment, I’m not sure what was; and yet the series just never continued.

Then a driven and story-loving nerd who, like many of us middle-aged gamers who grew up with LOOM, decided to continue the series himself by not only writing the story for the next two games, but also to hire programmers, testers, artists, musicians and coders to create a purely fan-based, fan-funded pair of sequels. Only, as you could imagine, following in the footsteps of a very iconically and archaic game art style required people with very niche skills, and all of those people needed to make a living. Paying for all of it became very difficult and very scarce. I think the project was a few years in development, barely halfway to even the first playable alpha demo, back when I stumbled upon it after searching for a sequel. I was young and idealistic, but no less idealistic than I am now, and shrugged. These guys might never get off the ground, even with a significant donation. But, Hell, I grew up with this too and want to see the story resolved. So I gave them their biggest donation in years (which appears to have inspired others to top it, as months later bigger cash flowed in) and thought nothing of the offers to put my name in the game as an easter egg, or to have a character named after me or whatever. Maybe in the credits, okay, but that’s not why I donated money.

I donated money because I want them to succeed. I want hardworking talented artists and caring people to stay employed so they can continue being hardworking talented artists and caring people. My friends used to tell me I sounded like an asshole when I told them I had money I was willing to throw around for the good of my friends. I was so confused then, and maybe I can understand the danger or the appearance of wanting to be a savior or somesuch. But I have very little in my life to throw money at, and I figure it’s far better than a WoW Token or a new car or a 4K TV or something I don’t need. Better to make the world better one choice at a time, because God knows there’s a shitload of stuff fighting to make the world worse many choices at a time.

I paid $2,000 for the custom-fitted, glow-in-the-dark Mass Effect N7 fury cosplay latex costume back in 2013. The tailor, Andrey (better known as Andromeda Latex now), was not very well known back then for his revolutionary catsuit patterns, latex designs and layering, as well as the reactive coating that made it glow under black light. After helping to fund what I saw as a very worthy artist being underappreciated, he got a few more ideas from progressively happy customers, and hit the jackpot making Evangelion plugsuits and Overwatch costumes. He has more work than he knows what to do with, and his waitlist is more than a year long. When he moved locations, he had a rare opportunity to make only specific costumes for a short time. I paid 2K for another one, just as much to own another rare and high-quality cosplay as to support an awesome human being who I thought deserved to stay in business.

So, um, yeah. I’m not rich. I make barely $35K a year being a newspaper editor and designer, but I rather like it. And living at home with an open-minded but damaged mother means I’m well capable of living within my means. Looking after me isn’t a big deal, isn’t a big upkeep. So when I offer an artist payment with no concern about the price tag, or help pay for someone’s bus ticket out of their shitty hometown, or help fill a few shelves at the pantry... I’m not doing it for God, I’m not doing it for the golden plaque, I’m not even doing it to escape from the shadow of my father’s upbringing. I can very much get by. I’m no high-roller, but... this world, with all the shit that happens to good people... I’m sorry Facebook ‘friends’, but I very much have a stake in this fight. I don’t know why you don’t feel the same way, with all the religious drivel you preach to me every day.

I hope the money goes to good use, and that it helps bring about happiness and goodness in this entropic world we inhabit. Would that money could solve all of our problems =\

It’s like Bill and Ted often said, “Be excellent to each other.”