The Power of Social Vids

This AdWeek article is an important one. It discusses how YouTube is poised to overtake FB/Twitter as the most influential social network. More importantly though (IMO) is the idea that the best and most believable content is fan-generated. Read more: http://www.adweek.com/videowatch/fans-crush-brands-when-it-comes-youtube-150262

Big Data

While the concept of using data to better market a product/service isn’t new, you may have noticed marketing pubs are writing more about “Big Data.” (Both AdWeek and AdAge have/are dedicating issues on the topic this year.) And many superstar e-brands (think Amazon and Google) base their entire marketing and sales strategies around Big Data. If a marketer’s challenge has always been “to figure out how to make the right offer to the right consumer via the right touch point, at exactly the right point in time,” then consider Big Data your golden ticket.

I’ve pulled together a few ‘case studies’…hopefully you find these examples as interesting as I did!

1.     A marketing executive at Google noticed that the paid links that showed up in search results were a different shade of blue on Google search than on Google’s e-mail software Gmail. The marketing director decided to test which shade of blue would maximize users’ click-through rate on the ads. His team tested 40 different shades, covering the entire spectrum of blue, on 1% of Google’s web pages and compared them to a control group. It found that users preferred a blue shade that had less green and more purple in it. The change was made across the board and Google netted an additional $200 million in revenues.

2.     Nike set up NikeID.com, which lets customers design their own footwear, clothing, and equipment. The concept lets Nike engage its customers directly and offer personalized, and often higher-margin, products; revenue from NikeID surpassed $120 million in 2011.Nike now uses customer data to sift through the billions of possible permutations and choices to analyze its customer base and provide the basis for its next product designs.

3.     McDonald’s now tracks customer interactions, in-store traffic, flow through its drive-through lanes, and ordering patterns, using point-of-sale data, video, and sensors. Based on this data, researchers model the impact of variations in menus, restaurant design, and training, among other things, on productivity and sales.

4.     When a customer rang the call center of a U.S. insurance company, the agent used to just see the caller’s history (i.e. tenure as a customer, wait time, outstanding claims). With big data, the company had developed a real-time sentiment analysis system to assess the emotional state of the caller based on voice and inflection data. The system then made recommendations for how to respond—for example, keeping to the facts of the case or mellowing the tone—so the agent could manage the conversation better. These insights were critical because part of the call center was in the Philippines, where cultural differences made it difficult to manage emotional conversations with American customers.The system helped improve customer retention rates by 20 percent.

Steve Lohr of the NY Times said: “What is Big Data? A meme and a marketing term, for sure, but also shorthand for advancing trends in technology that open the door to a new approach to understanding the world and making decisions.”

13 Power iPhone Apps for Filmmakers

13 Power iPhone Apps for Filmmakers

New GoPro HD Hero2 Video - Worth a Look!

http://youtu.be/GUEZCxBcM78

Nope. Chuck Testa.

Fan-flippin-tastic. - dp knudten

Avoid Looking Like a Social Media Tool

Take a look at this.

How Did Steve Jobs Learn to Innovate?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/innovations/post/steve-jobs-apple-pixar-and-inspiring-innovation-video/2011/08/25/gIQArkNwdJ_blog.html

Show & Tell & Sell

If you don't know Adam from Adam, it's time you did.



- D.P. Knudten

via John Gruber

Beautiful Corporate Video Can Be Done!

Great Wooden Boats: RED EPIC from Philip Bloom on Vimeo.

The Hobbit Production Diary

Look at that scouting. What I wouldn't give to be apart of that.

Leica Lenses

Leica Lenses (English) from leica camera on Vimeo.

Final Cut Pro

Team CoCo's take on Final Cut Pro X:

simple yet interactive

Source: The San Francisco Egotist

This is the way video advertising should be done

Enjoy

When is a picture worth > 1000 words?

Interesting sorta-still treatment for photography.



Could be very cool, and lightweight, for interactive applications.

- D.P. Knudten

(thx to Tom Cranley @ Roman Candle)

7D Slo-Mo

Behold.

Optimist from Brian Thomson on Vimeo.

-dp knudten

Evolution of the Cell Phone

This is a cool multimedia presentation of the evolution of the cell phone. I would have liked to have seen a more locked down camera or some dolly/tracking shots, but the presentation is awesome.

Slow-Mo Surfing Shot with a Canon 7D

Devin Graham shot this beautiful surfing footage using a Canon 7D and a couple lenses (70-200mm and 100-400mm) with a 2x teleconverter, so much of the footage was shot at 800mm. The slow motion is actually “faked” (here’s another faked 7D video) using software:

To get the “super slow motion”, after I filmed at 60fps, I through it into the program “After Effects”. I used an effect that comes with the program called “Time Warp”. This allowed me to make the 60fps, to 1000fps. The way this works is the computer processes/adds frames in between the frames that are already in existence. It took several days for the computer to process the clips into the super slow motion that appears as well, so it does take a lot out of the computer, as far as processing goes.

Using After Effects or Twixtor to create fake slow mo is becoming a pretty popular technique. Beats shelling out big bucks to rent a high speed camera for many purposes.

Everyday people.

Simple. Visual. Droll. Nice.



- dp knudten

thx gruber