What if I told you that there was an online web banner that housed 2,800 items for purchase? You must be thinking that this web banner is enormously huge.

WRONG.

The web banner is 300 x 250 pixels. For those who don't know, this size is pretty small and translates to 10.5 cm x 8.8 cm. As you scroll over the tiny squares, the objects are magnified. The banner ad has an intro and seems to be broken into 5 categories of browsing: lights, home decor, fun knick knacks, living room furniture and bedroom furniture. If you click on an object it takes you to the site where you can purchase these items.

You may be asking, Who is the retailer of this online ad? Answer: IKEA.

Since one of IKEA's main selling points is selling furniture that helps organize and de-clutter your life and home, they've decided to take that approach to their advertising.

I myself have never been in an actual brick and mortar store. Although I've browsed online a handful of times, if I were to see this ad, I would definitely click-thru to see what it was about. I believe that this ad creates intrigue and I love that it's interactive. So many ads are boring and run of the mill. I applaud IKEA for creating something that will pique my curiosity.

It's fantastic that social media allows customers the opportunity to interact with brands. One of the most important things we learn in advertising 101 is that the objective is not only for users to see your brand, or hear it, but to also engage and interact with them! If a company has a social presence, it's imperative for them to handle their online customers with as much care as they would in a face-to-face situation. There are countless ways for companies to engage with happy customers and give them a reason to love a brand. And there is also a specific manner in which companies should engage with dissatisfied customers and change the negative perception they have of a brand.

Recently, I had a first hand experience as a customer using a social media platform to express my distaste with a company that I've partnered with. In my case, the company called my cell phone immediately after my post to inquire about my experience.  I was happy to take the call and talk thru my reasoning of posting the comment via twitter, but instead of the customer service representative finding a solution to my issue, they immediately asked me to remove my twitter post.  It took me a little off guard, and I wasn't sure how I felt about this request, but I immediately removed the post to satisfy their request.  After removing the post and also posting about how thrilled I was to hear from their customer service department, the company ceased all communication with me.  This came as a huge surprise to me, considering that before we hung up our call, he had promised that he would call me back soon with a solution.  I'm glad I didn't stay up waiting for this call, because it never occurred.

At CurrentMarketing we have a social media team that handles several of our clients' social media brands.  From time to time, they are faced with posts from unhappy customers that prefer to use Facebook or Twitter to voice their dissatisfaction.  Our social media department has created a media monitoring and engagement process that they use as a guideline to answer questions or comments in a timely manner, by responding with factual information, and being wholly transparent with the customer. The follow thru may be one of the most important steps in the process. Typically, the customer will complain because they want a response from the company. It's up to the company to take action to fix the issue and provide an explanation to the customer.

Knowing this information, I'm incredibly displeased with my experience with the company that will remain nameless. After I removed my negative comment on Twitter, they didn't take any action in resolving my issue. The company was only concerned with removing the post, and had no intention of turning me into a happy customer. By the standards of our social media engagement process, the customer service representative would never ask me to delete the post.  Instead, they would want to broadcast that they are correcting the issue and showcase that they truly care about every single customer.

Social media is an awesome platform for brands, there's no doubt about that! But if you're going to be in the social space, you have to be prepared to take the good with the bad and devise a plan of attack for the negative comments or perceptions that people will have in your brand.

Many workplaces lock down what people can and can’t do from their computer – understandably so in most cases. However, when people aren’t at work they’re free to choose what browser they use. My personal favorite, Chrome, reached a milestone and surpassed IE as the most used browser in the world on Sunday, March 18, 2012. For several hours, Chrome was the most used browser, taking 32.7% share. IE, the leader for the last decade, fell to second at 32.5%.

Overall, IE is still in the lead for the worlds most used browser, averaging around 35% of the market share. Thankfully IE9 has built-in support for a lot of features in CSS3 and HTML5. The release date for IE10 is sometime in 2012, and it’s supposed to have support for even more CSS3 features. Anyone still using IE8 or lower please upgrade!

First Things First

I think the Hipstamatic UI needs some improvement. While quaint, the rear-of-camera view needs to go - at least give me another option. I think this is one area where Hipsta can learn from Insta. I'd like to see an option for a UI with a more traditional camera app live preview. I think one appeal in favor of Instagram is being able to apply filters AFTER taking your photo. Hipstamatic's approach of quirky, unpredictable results by having you select lenses, film, flashes, etc BEFORE snapping your pic, can feel a bit clumsy. With a little thought I feel like they can get closer to the ease of use of Instagram and still keep some of the unpredictable appeal of their current model.

But Wait…

Hipsta needs an actual social network if it hopes to rake in those who are likely do jump ship once Facebook sinks its teeth into Instagram. For an app that already is packed with a well thought out store for buying more camera "accessories" (read: filters), contests and print ordering - one might safely assume that they have a network plan already conceived. I hope this is the case.

What will the coming months bear for Hipstamatic in the wake of FB's takeover of Instagram? Time will tell….

All smartphone users have seen them – the annoying ads that clutter the apps we use. But with most smartphone ads being ignored by users, the ROI for advertisers isn’t great. When apps aren’t as interesting as they once were to the user, they stop using it altogether, then the ads are not being seen at all. ROI goes from not great to none existent.

In an effort to solve this predicament and tap into unclaimed advertising territory, a company called sellAring® has developed a solution to those often ignored smartphone app ads.

How it works:

The user downloads an app the Agency developed – the Agency lists the app as “free”, but only if the user agrees to sellAring terms and conditions. These terms and conditions:  listening to an occasional ad, placed by sellAiring, in the short time between the moment a call is placed and the person on the other end answers. Instead of the traditional ringback tone, a targeted ad is delivered. Users are paying attention to the call -- Is it going through?  Is it going to be busy? ‘Gosh, it’s taking awhile for Jane to answer my call’ -- thus paying attention to the ad.

Those short seconds we wait for a call to be answered don’t seem very important individually, but think about how much time we waste waiting on calls to be answered when you put it all together. According to calculations done by sellAring’s inventor, Zohar Halachmi, it’s about 30 hours a year! Those wasted, unclaimed hours become precious moments for advertisers to reach their target audience.

The best part for advertisers? Even if the smartphone user stops using the free app they downloaded, sellAiring continues to deliver ads when calls are made.  And for the developers, the app is launched as it was originally designed -- no banner ads to clutter the hard work that has been put into it.

Often when I talk about animation in movies or commercials and I mention mocap or traditional animation, people are generally confused as to what I am talking about. It’s understandable. Before I studied animation I had little knowledge to the differences between the two and how to recognize each. Now I pay much closer attention to animated films and video games and it is easy for me to see the Traditional Animation vs Motion Capture Animation differences between the two. Hopefully after reading this, it will make much more sense and help you take notice of the two.

Traditional or “keyed animation” refers to how the first processes for animating were executed based on the twelve principles of animation. Creating pose to pose animations for a scene and then filling the in between poses (tweening). For a traditional 2D animation, each frame would be a separate drawing. For the 3D animator, each frame would be a separate pose for the character being animated. Very tedious work.

Mocap or motion capture works differently. An actor is dressed in a skin tight suit with visual markers placed on specific parts of the body to track movement.  A special camera records and tracks the movements of the markers and then animators apply those movements to 3D models using various software. You may have seen this in the ping pong ball suits people wear in some behind the scenes footage of movies like “Lord of the Rings”. This make for a more realistic, natural and life-like movement for a character, but lacks some of the visually expressive principals of animation like squash and stretch, flowing arch movements, anticipation and exaggeration. With the advances in technology in the animation and video game industry and more realistic characters, motion capture is being used more and more. So is that a good or bad thing?

I seem to play tug of war with that question. I feel that the motion capture technology is appropriate in certain situations and applications, but also feel like it has become over used and is an easy way for calling a movie animated. Take the character Gollum from “The Lord of The Rings” trilogy. This is a perfect example of how motion capture should be used. Actor Andy Serkis performed each scene in “The Two Towers” in a motion capture suite. However, Andy’s performance was only the basis for the animation. In many cases, motion capture does not record hands and feet very well (at the time of the making of the movie) or facial movements. They then relied on a team of 18 animators to create the facial emotions and movement of the feet and hands giving an end result of a digital character that meshes well with real actors. I felt his was very successful because the intention of the film was to look lifelike and realistic and have a seamless blend of CG and live actors.

In movies such as “Polar Express” and “Beowolf”, the character seem to ride the fine line between CG characters and real life actors. This is where some animated films turn me off. The characters just seem to have a creepy look to them. They are doing the exact same thing the actors are doing and even look just like them. It makes you wonder why they make two movies during the process, one with the real actors and one with the CG characters. When I watch these, I don’t get the sense that I’m watching an animated picture, but more that I'm seeing a glorified puppet show. Then you have terrible commercials like “The General Insurance”. They are applying realistic looking movements to a very cartoonistic character and it just looks bad. Stop being lazy and ANIMATE!

I think this is why companies like Pixar and Dreamworks remain at the top of the game. They both rely strongly on the traditional principles of animation and still keep their character concepts and designs very simple and seem to retain that cartoon style. Next time you watch a movie by either company, notice the way the characters move. Notice the arching movements of the arms, or the way the character might stretch as it takes off running, or the strong pose it’s in while making a point or delivering a joke. These are all things that the animators have thought of to make the performance of the character more interesting than if they had just used the movements of an actor in a motion capture suite.

I have a much greater respect for these types of animated movies and just flat out think they are more interesting to watch. I feel like I’m watching real animation. I don’t get that with movies that are primarily motion capture. Motion capture technology is continually progressing and CG characters are to point now where they are completely realistic, and that's where it should be used.  So regardless of the industry continuing to use motion capture for the good, bad and often ugly, traditionally animated films will always rein superior in my book.

Huggies Diapers can’t seem to win.  Last year, it was the “Poop There It Is” campaign that was rated one of the top ten worst commercials of 2011. This year, they’ve managed to offend fathers everywhere with the “Have Dad Put Huggies To The Test” campaign. The commercial depicts fumbling fathers feeding, entertaining, and of course, trying to change their baby’s diaper.  Dads flocked to Facebook to complain, and subsequently the ad was yanked from the air.  In its place, a new ad was released focused less on the fathers and more on the product.  Dads are quietly cradling their napping babies and gently caressing their faces, pleased to still have dry laps as they've been "putting Huggies to the test".

After learning about the Huggies debacle, I came across two other ads that have been pulled lately.  The first was Belvedere Vodka, who had to apologize for a recent Facebook ad.  The image features a guy who appears overly-eager while reaching for a frightened looking girl.  The tagline reads “Belvedere always goes down smoothly”.  The other was a German Reebok ad directed towards men that was pulled from gyms when women complained about its message. The tagline for that one read “cheat on your girlfriend, not your workout”.

Humor is so subjective, it makes me realize how much of a gamble some companies take on their advertising ideas.  Intentionally or not these ads can push the envelope, and I wonder if the gambles pay off?

After a couple of years of working with footage shot on a Canon 5D Mark II, we here at CurrentMarketing have nailed down a workflow using Final Cut Pro (v.7, the REAL FCP, not the iMovie Pro being developed as we speak) and a toolset that has proven to be quite useful.

One of the drawbacks to shooting with the 5D is the inability to control the audio levels, which necessitates recording audio on an external recorder. We use the Zoom H4N recorder, with a Rode NTG-2 boom mic that gives us nice clean sound, but in an interview situation, with multiple cameras going, syncing up the audio with the video can be tricky. So to work around the tedium of matching audio to video frame by frame, we use Pluraleyes. Pluraleyes is a standalone application that examines open FCP sequences and syncs the audio and video for you, which comes in handy when you have multiple cameras across several interviews.

Another drawback to shooting with the 5D is the codec that the camera records to. H.264 is a flavor of the MPEG-4 standard and is not really a useful editing codec, due to its compression. Final Cut chokes on H.264 files (the new version of FCP allegedly edits the files natively, but really it transcodes the footage to another codec behind the scenes). Granted, Premiere Pro will edit the H.264 files natively, but Premiere is still like a brand new shoe - it's useful and a lot like Final Cut 7, but it chafes all the same. So to edit the footage in Final Cut, we use two different programs to transcode the footage. MPEG Streamclip, which is a free, totally handy utility for processing videos, allows us to batch process the footage files. It is extremely fast and an excellent program. If we have the luxury of time, we also use 5DtoRGB, a really amazing transcoder that preserves the pristine quality of the original files. The only downside to 5DtoRGB is that since it doesn't use Quicktime for the transcoding, it allows for a higher quality but takes a lot longer time to do so. So, mostly we transcode with MPEG Streamclip.

Still another drawback to the 5D is an inability to set timecode, which makes using script notes difficult, as each clip starts on 00:00:00;00. Our way around this is to use time of day for timecode. Once we transcode the footage, we then use a program called QTChange, that provides a pretty large toolbox to manipulate the files, such as changing the playback speed, changing the Reelname, resizing the file and deleting tracks. The most useful feature, however, is the ability to take the time of day of the original file and make a timecode track in the transcoded video. So, if your camera and the person taking script notes' clocks are all set to the correct time, it's much easier to find quotes in the script notes.

Normally, I’m not one to complain of grammatical errors. You can sometimes find me writing run-on sentences, forgetting commas and creating sentence fragments. Hey, I’m no copywriter. But as a designer, there is one grammatical error that gets me boiling: double spacing after a period.

Now, I know there are many out there that say the double space after the period is the right thing to do. Just because your middle school English teacher says it was correct, doesn’t mean it’s actually the proper way. It’s grammatically illegal, folks (and in my opinion, should be punished by full force of the grammar law).

So, if it's not correct to double-space, why did we begin to do it? In the 20th century typesetters all over the world came together and decided we should use one space after the period. This is a shared belief among all typesetters. Then, the manual typewriter was invented. Cue doomsday music. The manual typewriter used monospace typing, meaning that every character occupies an equal amount of horizontal space. Skinny characters like "i" and "t" are given the same space as fat letters like "o" and "m" creating uneven, white spaces between letters and words. The two-space rule came into play to make the text easier to read and making it more obvious the sentence had ended.

Today, almost every font on your PC or Mac has proportional typesetting - less horizontal space is given to skinny characters and more space is given to fat ones. This is why we don't need the double-space after the period. I repeat, we DON'T NEED two spaces after a period. Most of us aren't' using typewriters, however, we are still typing like we do. So, unless you are using a typewriter, please refrain from giving the designer next to you a heart attack and use ONE space.

For decades, celebrities have appeared in front of the camera for all kinds of advertisements. However, it wasn’t until recently that I noticed the same is true for celebrities appearing behind the camera, too.

When I first saw this spot during the 2012 Oscars, I thought it was cute, heartfelt, and had a strong tie to a product benefit (which is really all it takes to catch my eye these days.) But there was just something about the way the story unfolded on camera that I was enamored with.

Suddenly, I realized: this commercial had to be directed by Wes Anderson, a filmmaker known for whimsical, soft-spoken comedies like The Fantastic Mr. Fox and The Life Aquatic.

While I was right about Mr. Anderson and Hyundai, I had no idea that directors have been doing this for years. Martin Scorsese, David Lynch and Michael Bay are among those who have loaned their iconic directorial styles to brands of all kinds. I was even ashamed (though not shocked) to learn that the most famous commercial of all time, Apple’s 1984, was directed by Ridley Scott, whose sci-fi and fantasy films I have always adored.

When you’ve written a script where mood and tone play an important role in delivering your brand’s message (like in the Apple and Hyundai spots), I think hiring a director who is known for creating that mood is smart and strategic. It’s the same way for any celebrity—why pay them all that money if there isn’t a natural connection to your brand?

Here’s a recent example of what I feel may have been a movie director misstep. Darren Aronofsky of Black Swan fame just directed this commercial for Kohl’s, starring Jennifer Lopez.

Apparently, Kohl’s wanted to use the same technique Aronofsky introduced in the climactic final scene of Black Swan. You know, the one where a hallucinating Natalie Portman goes full-on psychopath across the ballet stage. In the pop-glitter-teeny-bop world of J.Lo, was this an appropriate fit? What do you think?