Animated GIFs the most engaging form of content on the web

Animated GIFs are small animation based on successively displayed images.

In my opinion the most engaging form of content on the web because

- they are short fast snippets means they get straight to the point

- they're looped which means that you are hit with the joke over and over again.

- they are also eye catching as they are animated without the user even having to do anything on the page.

In the meme dungeons of the Internet (4Chan and other forum boards), GIFS are prevalent. However they never really get critical cross over into the mainstream Internet as they lack the important ingredients;

- hard to replicate or create,

- Facebook currently doesn’t allow this type of file for good reason to, if you remember all those heinous designed Myspace Pages, most of them were GIF.

However it is good to see BrownCardigan and The Vine Best of the Interweb are pushing these out there.

2 years of grafting (time capsule)

It is coming up to two years of full time work for me. I have learnt a lot in this short amount of time. I think I am going to answer the following four questions every 2 years (or for as long as this blog lasts).

What are the biggest learnings from the last 2 years?
People
It is all about the people around you, if you have a good team you are going to be able to do amazing things.

Social Media Disconnect
There is a massive disconnect between why people initially get sucked into Social Media and what it actually is. The Social Media Disciples (I used to be one of them) who blindly believe that Social Media is the answer and the new form of marketing are living in La La Land.

Some hard bitter truth pills;
Blogger Outreach is a lot of hard work for not a big return
There are no solid Social Media Monitoring tools for Australia
Twitter is a waste of resource for 95% of companies


Best campaign you have seen?
I think the Toohey’s Extra Dry Birds vs Humans was amazing in terms of the launch, I think it definitely lifted the bar in terms of Digital Outreach. I was amazed it didn’t pick up more Awards.


What agencies are capturing your attention?

I have always had massive respect for Naked and Droga. I love the way that One Green Bean and Host work into each other, they always seems to come up with great ideas. I am interested to see what MediaCom do with their full house of superstars. If I were to start my career the other agencies that would be high on the list would be Holler, Three Drunk Monkeys, SOAP, and BMF. Overseas – CP+B, Undercurrent, R/GA, Barbarian, Goodby, W+K

What do I want to be doing in 2 years?
The latest campaign that I have done for Boost Mobile, I have been the creative lead on the project. I have loved every minute of this it. The ability to come up with the ideas and then lay out the whole plan and channels is definitely something that really interests me. I guess I could see myself as a Creative Director for Engagement Campaigns.

I think online content (especially video) is going to have a revival in this market. I definitely feel that there is a real opportunity for a company/individual to step up and own the online video content space in Australia, I am really going to concentrate on making TCO the go to company in this space.

The Twitter Backchannel and Limbic Resonance

I saw this great presentation from Cannes by Kevin Slavin on the Limbic Residence and its impact on consuming media.

Slavin created the MTV backchannel (a social game - read more here)

Limbic resonance suggest that the meaning of an object is not just made up of our own interpretation of that object but in part what other people think of it. We look at other people’s reactions to that object to help form our meaning.

In his presentation Kevin states that the limbic resonance has a major impact on how we consume media. He suggests it dates back to the inclusion of the laughing track in television shows, they helped to fake the ‘people around you’ environment. However he goes onto suggest that this could be the power of social media in particular the back channel of Twitter, which can help amplify peoples interests in show and make it feel like they are watching it with a bigger audience.

Personally I know this was the case with Survivor for me this year (miss u). I think more shows should be embracing the back channel one of the better ones at the moment would be QandA which promote the #qanda hastag in program and they also have a great engaging site.

4 social media tactics that club promoters use on Facebook

I think nightclub promoters were one of the first groups of people to really get Facebook and how to make it work to benefit them. It is always good to watch how they are communicating with their fans. The following are four things that I would ensure I did if I was setting up a club night.

1. Set up as groups
It always surprised me that you could never set up events from Pages and invite all the members. For this reason it is better for promoters and club nights to set up a group so they can send out a mass invitation to all of their followers/fans.

2. Give away a sample
Halfway Crooks puts on a hip hop night in Sydney, in the lead up to their night they give away a free online mix of hip hop, a great way of getting back in contact with your attendees.

3. Latch onto a bigger brand
Some cunning promoters in Melbourne have set up Party Club for all of the universities in Melbourne. They are then running events which look like official parties off the back end of them.

4. Photos afterwards
Quite simple, but adding photos afterwards and tagging people in those photos works well for gaining attention for club nights.

Good content is not always good content

There is a big difference between watching a piece of content on television and online (Youtube for this case in point). Therefore you must make content for the medium, content producers must understand the difference.

The two differences are the mindframe of the audience and the context of the content.

Mindframe of the audience
Your audience is active when they are online, when they are watching television they are quite happy to sit on a couch for 60 minutes and not do anything except light a bewg and watch CSI.

However online they have many more distractions and they're not used to watching content for longer than 3 minutes. One of the leading online content creators in this country 'Community Channel' has worked to decrease the time of her videos realsing the audience has less time to watch.

Context of the content
Content is also placed in two different environments, online it has a title and description of what is happening in the video, there is also related content sitting there waiting to distract you. It would be the equivalent of watching television on a screen that lets you see what is on all the other channels at once. I do not know many people who watch television like this.

Some examples of Good Content which is not always good content

The Wire – would you watch this online for an hour NO, would you sit back on the couch and watch the whole of season 3 on a Sunday afternoon, YES
Would you watch this online? YES would you watch it in show for 30 minutes of similar footage? According to Australia probably not, until Funniest Home Videos it would be safe to assume that this Australians do not always want to see this type of content on television.

Thanks three billion for making me pen my thoughts

The Algorithm of a Meme

The last post I talked about the different components of a meme (Stimulus, Conductor and Pushers).

Pick Up of a Meme = (Amount of influence of conductor and pushers) + (the relevance of the idea to the individual)

The chance to be influenced by the meme is ditacted by two components – how influential the conductor and pushers are to you and your network and the strength of the stimulus.

For instance, I automatically latched onto the idea of The Awkward Lean and was a massive fan, my friends has also become pushers of the idea.


JTL – the idea was not as strong but the people pushing the idea had been on a lot of past memes that were good so I gave it an opportunity.

For more good meme related reading check out Kripy's post on A meme with a difference

The Internet is ripe for the memes

So there have been a few micro-memes popping up over the past week that I have noticed.

1. Yeah_lad – A Twitter account that is set up to imitate the lads of the western suburbs of Sydney.
2. The Awkward Lean – A tumblr picking up on the insight of girls who awkwardly lean their body or head in photos
3. Ask JTL – One guy who will answer any question, with straight down the line answers

A meme needs three important components to be created and nurtured.

Stimulus – An idea that is remixed with a common theme tying all the pieces of content together.

Conductor – The conductor is the person who controls the idea who can help dictate the direction of the meme.

Pushers – Are the support networks to the conductor who help to promote the idea through their network to help get the idea/meme out there.

I think subconsciously, people understand their roles in helping to push memes and making sure that they get the best opportunity to flourish.

In my opinion, Twitter is better at pushing memes because updating your network with a tweet about memes can be done more than once whereas on Facebook people would be less inclined to update their community more than once about a meme.