It’s just because Sociological Images always has me on high alert for stereotypical visuals, but my main takeaway from Brian Solis’ recent post “The future of TV is more than social, it’s a multi-screen experience that needs design” was…boobs.

The image that accompanied the post:

And Brian’s cute response* (I’m so happy he has a sense of humour!):

*He also coined the phrase “entergaged”  in this article (a portmanteau of “entertainment” & “engagement”) that we are not to use to define strategy for social tv. But it made me laugh.

The switch to Timeline has brands putting video and image foremost in their overall attention strategies.

Facebook’s facilitating this in their ads with the inclusion of bigger graphics & the look of inline video (not exactly, you click through, but the appearance thereof—or perhaps it’s clever use of a graphic on TD’s part).

Peppered with social proof—my pixellated friend seems to be suggesting I’ll enjoy this content and perhaps spread it with a little like—the addition of that little “play” graphic ups the ante on attention to the dreaded/coveted (depending on your position in the advertising food chain) Facebook right sidebar.

Watch for the appearance of these premium Sponsored Stories into the mobile stream—despite recent reports that over half of advertisers aren’t dipping into the social proof ad game just yet.

I’m not saying all people of a certain generation are completely hilarious with regards to UI changes, but you have to enjoy how they capitalize It like It’s been handed down from Above.

In the wake of media attention on #FirstWorldProblems like the debate over gourmet food for pets, Old Navy had me rolling my eyes to just the right degree over their April Fool’s email.

Pretty well played, actually.

It’s been a rough couple of months—which is like 5 years in social media time—for McDonald’s in the social space. (Warning, I’m gonna get historical here, so if you just want to know why McDonald’s keeps getting killed on Twitter, skip to the end.)

Buying bloggers to bullshit

It began in the late fall with All Access Moms, a painfully disingenuous microsite, blog, commercial & social campaign that asserted the genuine wholesome goodness of McD’s fare, based on the (apparently dubious) fact that it contains potatoes.

And once you wade past the polydimethylsiloxane (a component of Silly Putty™!) and such, there are no doubt potato ingredients. So not a lie.

But it’s a pretty big stretch to say they’re “great food for your family”, and therein lies the crux of McDonald’s social media problem: people don’t buy bullshit messages anymore.

Further, we’re all capable of spotting mommy blogger pandering. Any campaign with “mom” in the title drives me nuts automatically, but the pretense that we’re going to get an unbiased evaluation of a product from a campaign launched by that product is, you know, transparently untransparent.

A bashtag so bad, it coined the word “bashtag”

In January, McDonald’s moved away from the #MeetTheFarmers hashtag associated with All Access Moms & paid to promote #McDStories, to which fond fans were supposed to attach their misty McDonald’s memories. They didn’t.

Look over there!

The day after the onslaught, McDonald’s promoted #LittleThings, perhaps equally vague & suggestive, but at least differently vague & suggestive.

#LittleThings happened to be already being used by Hilton, but at least wasn’t hated on quite as badly.

McDonald’s then quieted down and spent some time on Pinterest following people, which is just a remarkable piece of social media strategy by comparison.

#Sham

Pushing the Shamrock Shake for St. Patrick’s Day, McDonald’s is once again suffering Twitter mockery over #Shamrocking, a sponsored tag that is 1 part totally awkward and 1 part completely mortifying.

Adhering to the same “go viral” checklist they used in All Access Moms, McDonald’s sought to create a tebow-like planking-esque “do this in a photo” meme.

This #shamrocking thing is an insult to the Internet. Shame on you, McDonald's. Memes aren't marketing campaigns: http://t.co/IfNbIvqt

March 17, 2012 5:38 pm via TweetDeckReplyRetweetFavorite

@laurenonizzle

Lauren O'Nizzle

Ad pundits were poised for a pending porn-tinged fail, but then Mashable seemed to swoop in and clarify things.

#Shamrocking = taking a photo of yourself doing an Irish jig while holding a @McDonald’s Shamrock Shake - http://t.co/7VInjcIF

March 17, 2012 5:05 am via HootSuiteReplyRetweetFavorite

@mashable

Pete Cashmore

@EricaGlasier @mashable any disclosure of payment?

March 17, 2012 1:33 pm via Tweetbot for iOSReplyRetweetFavorite

@pensato

David Pensato ★

Why the hate?

So why does McDonald’s keep stepping in a big steaming pile of social backlash?

It’s the heavy-handed attempt to dictate the message; it’s saying your product is what it isn’t, it’s clumsily not checking who’s using a hashtag or coining a dirty phrase, it’s obviously buying bloggers for their “influence” and creating “memes” for their “virality”.

These are all things the mighty-vocal marketing constituents of the Twitterverse just loathe & can see through easily. It’s a very old kind of marketing being applied to the wrong platform.

Twitter is too snarky, too sharky. McDonalds should play in the safer waters of their Facebook page, where people have already given permission to be marketed to by professing their likefulness.

Facebook ads are kinda famous for being very targetable. You can select 37-year-old married university-graduated women who live in Winnipeg and are mildly interested in “diapers”, for instance.

After (hopefully) going to all that trouble, it seems a shame to blow the sale by addressing such ladies as “dad”.

Livetweeting an event is a hectic haze of typo-paranoia and judgement calls. The size & seriousness of the brand you’re working for only adds to the general terror.

All done livetweeting for tonight. Missed a shot of the mayor & the typo-paranoia is exhausting—overall decent reporting though. #OverAndOut

February 22, 2012 10:51 pm via webReplyRetweetFavorite

@EricaGlasier

Erica Glasier ♥

Lessen the pandamonium by making best friends with the event’s manager, copywriter, or speechwriter. They have access to a magical treasure that will help you not #fail spectacularly: the notes.

These might be an event program, script, stage directions, speech notes, or on a lucky day, all of the above stapled together on glorious 11x17s. Sometimes even the menu on the table tent cards will have a basic outline on it.

Peruse the structure of the event & you will have a host of capabilities you otherwise wouldn’t:

• Know when key moments are going to happen & where, so you don’t miss a critical shot of a dignitary or video of a hilarious  song.
• Get the spelling of everyone’s name, title, workplace and other credentials right.
• Plan how long you’ve got to create media for each key tweet—if this one doesn’t need a photo but the next one does, get in position for the shot now & tweet your text-based stuff from there.
• Prewrite tweets and save them as drafts, to have photos attached or details added when the action actually goes down.
• Quote accurately (& slightly after the fact, as needed) from the speech notes.

Under the Influence

CBC’s Terry O’Reilly—formerly of the formidable Age Of Persuasion advertising podcast—has a new show (sort of) called Under the Influence that demonstrates the continued relevance of his mellifluously-delivered marketing insight & history lessons.

For the last six seasons, we’ve explored the overt art of persuasion. But advertising is no longer a loud one-way conversation. It’s a delicate dialogue now.

So we leave the age of persuasion and enter the era of sway and leverage.

The man knows when it’s time to rebrand! Subscribe through iTunes, if you must (it’s free to download new shows, but becomes $1.99/episode after 2 weeks), or search for it on your favourite podcast app.

The SoLoMo Show

Subtitled, for the acronym-challenged, “Discussing Social, Local and Mobile Marketing”, this new show from Secret Sushi’s Adam Helweh & Heat’s Cory O’Brien get together for, like, over an hour once a week to chat modern marketing.
They analyze, they case study, they’re very current, and they tell you stuff you don’t know with ample supplementary linky links. It’s like SoLoMo school. Secret Sushi also put me in a Social Media Explorer blog post once, so I think he’s nice & I’m happy to see him producing such quality commentary.

@secretsushi @coryobrien Only 1/2 way through, but @solomoshow is a quality podcast. Informed, insightful, actual news, well researched!

February 3, 2012 11:59 pm via webReplyRetweetFavorite

@EricaGlasier

Erica Glasier ♥

Subscribe through iTunes or listen to it right on their blog.

Originally posted at Tactica.

The Superbowl—for non-football folks—used to be about debuting the best creative. Now it’s become a stage for experimentation with the latest advertising technologies.

Ad technologies these days revolve around brands making the jump from intrusion to permission by being invited onto that most personal of computers, your smartphone. The barrier here is your own laziness: how do marketers get you to “pick up their flyer”?

The SoLoMo podcast‘s Cory O’Brien tipped me off to the crazy things Shazam had planned for the big game.

Almost half of the Super Bowl TV advertisers will be Shazam-enabled with several Fortune 100 brands choosing Shazam to add interactivity to their ads or sponsor key game elements. When people use Shazam to tag ads from the following brands, they will unlock exciting offers and content.

How is interactivity being “added” by the Shazam app? The process is called “audio tagging” and it’s extremely similar to QR code functionality, but it uses aural cues—sounds your phone can hear—instead of a physical barcode your phone can read visually.

@secretsushi @coryobrien @solomoshow Shazam-as-audio-mobile-tag is blowing my mind! I had no idea this was happening—huge potential.

February 4, 2012 12:01 am via webReplyRetweetFavorite

@EricaGlasier

Erica Glasier ♥

Mindblowing enough, but to my mind Shazam’s audio tags still present the same challenges QR codes. They need the user to:

• download and activate software
• understand what to do & when to do it (requiring visual cues, explanations, etc)
• overcome platform restrictions (operating system, phone quality, signal clarity & other compatibility issues)

If QR codes had’ve caught on with anyone but marketers, barcoded mobile tagging may have settled down to a commonplace activity, like it was in Japan in the last decade.

Instead, innovation is pushing past the phone’s eyes and taking advantage of its ears.

@CoryOBrien It's not clear on @Shazam's site, but how do advertisers produce "Shazam-enabled" content, allowing offers etc?

February 4, 2012 12:10 am via webReplyRetweetFavorite

@EricaGlasier

Erica Glasier ♥

@EricaGlasier Right now it's by working directly with @Shazam. They help produce the mobile site w/ the offers, and tag the commercial.

February 4, 2012 12:11 am via Twitter for MacReplyRetweetFavorite

@CoryOBrien

Cory O'Brien

@CoryOBrien So not available to small(er) guys?—unlike QR codes. I imagined radio stations or retail audio using it as mobile tags somehow!

February 4, 2012 12:19 am via webReplyRetweetFavorite

@EricaGlasier

Erica Glasier ♥

The burgeoning audio tag space—potentially a huge component in social tv—isn’t owned by Shazam. An app called SonicNotify can generate machine-audible tones to deliver second-screen content at concerts, in stores and anywhere your phone might be.

SonicNotify works both with software—your iPhone can be the sound-generator at an event—or with physical beacons that make noise until their batteries die (think “transmitter taped to a light standard guerilla-style”).

The nifty—or terrifying—or annoying—thing about SonicNotify is that you don’t have to launch an app to receive content. As long as the SonicNotify SDK is built into an app that’s running in the background or loaded from a previous run, content comes through.

“Content”, much like with QR codes, means anything your phone can do—dial a number, visit a web page, receive a text message, activate GPS, play a video. There’s a lot of creative potential there, for marketers and hackers alike.

On the bright side, this technology overcomes the user confusion-apathy-laziness issues of QR codes AND the short range, hardware-dependant issues of RFID. The only smoother delivery I can imagine is if the software were integrated directly into the phone’s OS (long a fantasy for QR code readers embedded in phone camera software).

A few creative ideas for audio tags, technology pending:

• Radio DJs could send listeners to contests or to vote on what song to play next
• Retail stores could deliver coupons for nearby items
• Bands could link to the iTunes store during shows so fans can buy their tracks
• Nonprofits could ask for donations in areas directly affected by the problem they’re solving
• Restaurants could broadcast specials & happy hour discounts
• Filmmakers could push trailers and second-screen content like SideShows
• TV producers could link to episodes to purchase on the iTunes store or webisode content online

There’s a powerful convergence of location and context with audio tag technology that has a ton of potential, if the experience ends up being delivered smoothly. Time will tell if this more frictionless hardlink catches on.

We hold on to stuff we don’t need anymore—in language, design, our closets, and culture at large—because it makes us comfy.

Consider the “remote”.

We still call our—um, control sticks?—”remotes”, because when they were introduced, it was novel to control anything remotely. That was the defining feature. Now it’s a shade anachronistic—where else am I going to change channels from? Go right up there & press the buttons on the side?

This term will probably persist until we use voice & gesture alone to control our devices. Which may not even be ”devices” by then, but ambient technology.

I’ve been known to call my iPhone a “walkman” on occasion. Because you can, you know, walk around with it on.

Skeumorphic language: mental comfort food.

The latest Wired (not online yet, sors!) has a rant against skeumorphs in UI design: those throwback nods to analogue objects like leather address books, rotary phones, and flipping pages.

The ostensible rationale for making new things look like familiar things is that the familiarity will give users a confidence boost that will help them learn the interface. This may have been particularly salient for Apple’s early OSX and now its iOS aesthetics, to welcome users switching platforms.

Not really sure I understand why mags that do digital issues that mimic paper copies with the pages turning, sounds, etc.

January 24, 2012 1:20 pm via Twitter for MacReplyRetweetFavorite

@ianmcc

Ian McCausland

The rally against skeumorphism contends that they patronize us with “horrific, dishonest, childish” sentimentality, and indeed stands in the way of innovation. Clive Thompson posits such in his Wired piece:

When we get to the last week of February, open your Google Calendar and choose the Month view. You’ll see the previous three weeks greyed out. Only the next few days will be “active”. If you’ve want to see what you’ve got lanned for more than the next couple of days, you have to flip forward to March.

Now ask yourself: Why does Google Calendar—and nearly every other digital calendar—work that way? It’s a strange waste of space, forcing you to look at three weeks of the past. Those weeks are mostly irrelevant now. A digital calender could be much more clever: It could reformat on the fly, putting the current week at the top of the screen, so you can always see the next three weeks at a glance.
—Clive Thomspon, “Out With The Old”, Wired Feb 2012 

I see the problem. Modernism—”the rejection of tradition’s reprise, incorporation, rewriting, recapitulation, revision and parody in new forms”—despises this kind of saccarine fake columns-and-woodgrain atavism.

But in an age of incessant, frantic cultural change and the treadmill of a learning curve that goes with it, maybe we long for the past a little bit. Skeumorphs & skeumorphic language are a bite of comfort food for the overteched soul.

I totally still say I’m “taping” a “show”.