Facebook is about to launch Facebook Home. The elevator pitch is essentially this: people don’t talk to apps, they talk to people, so instead of seeing a screen of apps on your phone, you see all the friends you interact with, instead. At first blush, it seems like a cool concept – bringing the phone back to what it was invented to do — connect people. Whether we are seeing a shift in how mobile devices are used or simply another way to waste time, remains to be seen. But I digress, the point of this article isn’t about how cool Facebook Home may or may not be. It’s about the “cool” way Facebook chose to advertise it: with television. Over the weekend, Facebook ran a television commercial, created by Wieden and Kennedy touting the new offering. Just to recap: Facebook used television to sell a social media product. Traditional advertising, used to sell what many are calling the demise of television and/or branding. A “share” or “pull” medium sold by “push” media. I won’t comment; I’ll just lay the irony out there. Another point of interest is the commercial itself. It makes no sense, and really gives no clues as to what Facebook Home is or does. Apparently I’m not alone, as the many “comments” reflect the same sentiment. The spot depicts your typical scruffy-faced, gen-something-gadgeter on a plane playing with his phone, as a bunch of weird stuff starts to happen around him – people in overhead compartments pop out, cats run around the cabin, etc, end on logo. And that’s pretty much it. If I hadn’t come across the online video while searching for the spot, it’s likely I would never have been able to understand what the spot was saying. The real idea is in the video, albeit not as “creative”. What’s even more interesting is once I knew what the spot was trying to say, I couldn’t help but think of the “original” version of the spot, done by Cliff Freeman and Partners for Prodigy, back in 1995. That’s like a century ago in internet years. But the spot (and the rest of the campaign) was brilliant. One spot showed a woman smashing a banjo on the side of a deserted dusty road, screaming that she couldn’t learn to play it. Up rolls Barry White (yes, The Prince of Pillow Talk, himself) in an old green bus, with a route sign that reads: MUSIC. The doors open and Barry rumbles, “Havin’ problems baby…beatin’ up your banjo?” The woman gets on the bus and all manner of musical chaos breaks out; banjo players, gospel singers, disco fever. The spot ends with a replication of Prodigy’s graphical user interface – one of the first to use one – showing all the different user groups available. A voiceover explains, “Music… just one of the many user groups on the new Prodigy”. Now keep in mind, this was when the internet was in its infancy, and you actually had to PHONE for a subscription to Prodigy, who was attempting to group interests together on one platform to make sense of the this new medium. As a consumer you got it: your computer is the bus, pulling up to all the stops that interest you along the information highway (Yes, that’s not just a joke phrase in meetings, unfortunately that is what we used to call the internet). Similar to the Facebook Home spot, except far clearer in its explanation for something not understood, or even known about for that matter.

Social Media may be the new marketing darling, but as we often stress within our walls, it has to be grounded in the basics of advertising. What are you selling, who are you selling it to, and what is the simplest and most compelling way to tell them. As Mr. Freeman said in referencing his spots, “We’re talking in a language that everyone can understand.”

The original by Prodigy:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hTJ6IhY9lzo

The video :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lep_DSmSRwE

Hi, my name is Janet Ha and I’m a Social Media Intern at Grip Limited.

Before you start deliberating on how my role is probably another run-of-the-mill internship that doesn’t go beyond community management (including but not limited to drafting out Tweets for accounts I’m not allowed to touch with a ten-foot-pole and creating Facebook ads of questionable quality), let me be the first to say:

I’m not your regular intern. This is my fourth* social media internship and the second agency position I’ve held since starting at Humber College’s Bachelor of Creative Advertising program. I’m what you may consider an “internship pro” when it comes to the social space.

So what makes Grip different when it comes to social?

Working as a Social Media Intern at Grip has been a re-education in social media. Grip uses social media in such a way that doesn’t exploit followers and yet leverages brand pillars to spark engagement between brands and their online communities. That being said, the Social Content Team at Grip is not your average community management department. First off: they’re not Community Managers, they’re Social Content Strategists. To paraphrase Shakespeare: What’s in a title?

Jobs in social media are often assailed with questions on their validity in the industry and whether or not those holding the positions are full of it. For example, you cannot append “guru” to the end of your title without being scoffed at as some kind of ignorant poseur. So what difference do the words “content strategist” make? Yes, we do perform expected community management duties like answering questions and comments on client social media platforms, including the creation of crisis management strategies for situations that would make any PR rep tremble with fear from the looming media onslaught.

We partner with Accounts and Creative teams to create content and digital strategy decks, monitor industry trends, exchange memes internally and basically have a work hard, play hard mindset that translates into compelling content, outstanding metrics and an optimistic future for social media in advertising as a whole.

Social Media Intern is the official job title on the contract I signed with HR in December, yet I have worn many hats in this role and have accumulated invaluable agency experience. My internship contract with Grip ends this week. It was a fantastic experience and I will use these lessons in advertising for good. How do I know? That’s because by the time this blog is posted, I will be Grip’s latest Social Content Strategist.

Thank you Grip, for the best internship I have ever had.

*I hear you ask: “Why so many internships?” I much prefer working to gain experience in the industry I’m passionate about than folding clothes and slinging coffee (that’s another thing you don’t do in an internship with Grip!).

MySpace is in the process of releasing a sleek, multi-plane update to their music discovery platform. The new features of the site are explored in a promotional video, which incidentally uses Justin Timberlake, (one of the redesign’s major backers) as convenient case study. Is it feasible that MySpace could rise, phoenix-like, from the ashes of obscurity? Will you use it?

For a few years now, YouTube has openly discussed aspirations to position themselves as the leading content provider for the projected Internet TV revolution. Their plan: leverage their 160 million followers into greater advertising opportunities by establishing an online television network. Advertisers will be able to acquire revenue based on ads, product placement and sponsorship. The biggest benefit of custom-generated content for YouTube is that in order to watch, users are required to register, allowing for demographic segmentation and data acquisition.

Brands can also afford to hone in on their audience from a psychographic standpoint, due to the sheer quantity of content to choose from on YouTube. Because there’s so much out there, users can pinpoint exactly what type of content they want to view, forcing brands to orient their channels to a more specific target.

So, what does this mean?

It means there’s an opportunity to carve out a new, active audience base. Imagine sponsored channels dealing with equity content, or allowing on-premise or retail partners to tap into a sponsored radio station. This opportunity to create quality online television with interesting and premium content will influence users to stick around longer, while only targeting those who want to be exposed.

What do you think? A natural evolution of online content, or a flash-in-the-pan revenue gambit?

As Facebook aims to go public on May 17 2012, the company is facing unprecedented scrutiny to prove its earning potential. To appeal to brands and open up ad dollars, marketing terms like reach, awareness and stories are now replacing the old “likes and comments” focus of the past in Facebook’s presentations to agencies.

Word of mouth marketing is one of the most credible forms of advertising but its reach and measurement potential are typically limited. An unpaid recommendation from a trusted friend trumps the power of a one-way message received over any medium. With 830 million Facebook users sharing billions of personal and brand-related stories with friends, the platform provides a remarkably powerful new advertising option: word of mouth “at scale”.

Many agencies miss out on this potential as they continue to farm fans through incentives and simply broadcast their messages to the masses. Brands in turn are questioning the value of their Facebook ad spend–a concern for any pre-IPO company. So what is Facebook telling agencies today?

Don’t Build Connections. Build For Connections

Gokul Rajaram, Facebook’s Director of Program Management, gave this crowd-raising impassioned plea to all partners*: Let stories tell your story. While it’s true that everything begins with a connection and community size does matter, the race for fans using gimmicks and incentives is a misguided one. Use many different, highly targeted ads to get fans and make sure you’re attracting consumers. Then give them something worthwhile.

Grow Business Value Through User Value

“We are moving from ads to stories” said Chris Cox, VP Product at fMC earlier this year. “Lots of ads add up to noise. Lots of stories are how we build our relationships.” In Facebook’s early days we depended on ads because we couldn’t build enough connections to tell stories on the scale that large brands needed. With 830 million fans this has changed. Give fans something they want to share–something they find valuable–and they’ll build your brand for you.

Master Social Discovery

Engaging your connections depends on frequent, high-quality publishing. The Community Manager role has shifted dramatically toward a need for skilled copywriters who understand the brand voice. At Grip Limited our Community Managers now spend less than half their time responding to fan comments on behalf of brands like Stella Artois, KFC and Honda, down from close to 100% a year ago. The greater focus today–and real challenge for agencies–is in creative copywriting and image sourcing.

In summary, stories are the currency. Getting your content seen in newsfeeds, timelines and tickers is the most powerful aspect of Facebook and the most underutilized by marketers. Brands and agencies have a wealth of options at their disposal: Smart paid campaigns using Sponsored Stories and targeted ads; Well placed Like Buttons and Social Plugins; Compelling Page and Timeline Apps. But in the end it all comes down to meaningful, valuable content and it’s up to brands and agencies to let this one key question guide them:

How will people share your stories?

*Facebook gathered Preferred Marketing Developers from 35 countries at their new Palo Alto campus to provide best practices for building brands. The author attended representing Grip Limited.

In addition to his full time role as Group Director at Grip, Andrew is also a Huffington Post columnist providing digital-related advertising insights. This post and others can be found at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/andrew-cherwenka.

The following article was originally drafted for Escape Magazine. A relink was kindly granted because it cites one of Grip’s great designers, Joel Derksen, who is also a friend and writerly compatriot to the Slide. The article’s author, Nadia, is a freelance games writer and About.com’s guide to the Nintendo DS at ds.about.com. Nadia can be found on Twitter at @nadiaoxford.

Reading text off a screen isn’t as glamorous as poring over a magazine page, but it has its advantages. With the touch of a button or the flick of a slider, we can adjust fonts at our whim. Want to fit ten sentences on a pinhead? Sure. Want to read web sites in Comic Sans, each letter the size of a Clydesdale’s hoof? Why not?

But while the people who build and engineer websites, tablets, and iOS devices understand the importance of making sure their audience can read what’s on the screen, modern day videogames typically don’t offer the myriad font options that are found elsewhere in the digital realm. In fact, poor design decisions sometimes render otherwise masterful games unreadable.

What keeps going wrong with in-game fonts, and what can developers do to fix the problem?

High Resolution Gaming for Some, Standard Definition for Others

Once upon a time, in-game text was pixel-based. Developers typically had to make their letters work within a limited pixel grid. There was little room for graphical negotiation, especially in an age where lower resolutions were the norm.

Of course, the 8- and-16-bit eras of gaming were also times of simpler engineering. Games didn’t require reams of text, aside from the occasional role-playing title, and in-game menus weren’t stuffed with skill options and item descriptions.

Moreover, aside from a few encoding differences between some countries and continents, developers could safely assume that their audience was playing on a standard color television set. Sure, some sets were small, others were large, and still others were decked out in fabulous wood paneling, but everybody across North America, Japan, and the UK was getting a consistent picture.

Nowadays, a person might play a Wii game on a standard definition television in his bedroom, while his sister plays an Xbox 360 game on the high definition set in the living room. There is no longer assured consistency between players’ experiences, and this, among other factors, has wreaked havoc on in-game typesetting.

Text, Menus, and Gaming’s Teenage Phase

When developers relied on rasterized text, the results weren’t always pretty, but readability was rarely an issue. Now that most videogame text is vector-based, developers can adjust text size to their liking — and most of them have apparently decided that they like said text to be as small and compact as possible.

Joel Derksen, a graphic designer and typographer based out of Toronto, Ontario, believes it’s likely that modern game designers have been caught up by the allure of the slim, sexy menus that are made possible with today’s high-res displays and vector text. “Thin, light, small type is like a designer’s dream,” he says.

Derksen, whose resume includes design and typography work for Blackberry/RIM and Labatt Breweries of Canada, also notes that videogames are still a relatively new means of expression that’s going through a bit of a “teenager” phase. In other words, designers can get caught up in a game’s looks to the point that functionality falls off to the side of the road.

“In every other digital and printed interface — books, pamphlets, mobile devices, computers, websites — if something is illegible, it gets thrown back in your face, and you’re told to clean up your act,” Derksen adds.

Your Fault, Not Theirs

Videogame technology is evolving at a stunning rate, and nobody expects developers to get everything right the first time. However, it’s been six years since gamers made their first loud cry over readability issues, and there’s still little effort being expended on making in-game text as easy to read as possible. Worse, when developers and publishers are confronted about poor font-related decisions, the response is typically a shrug coupled with, “It’s your problem, not ours.”

When Xbox 360 owners played Capcom’s Dead Rising in 2006, they discovered a gory but humorous take on the zombie-slaying genre. They also discovered that the game’s tiny text made it nearly impossible to read menus or follow the story if they were playing on a standard definition set.

It was a disappointing oversight to begin with, and it was made infuriating when Capcom said the problem was not going to be patched. EGM magazine confronted Dead Rising director Yoshinori Kawano about the matter in its September 2006 issue, and Kawano laughingly said, “People should definitely have an HDTV before buying an Xbox 360.” Few players were in the mood for laughing after paying money to squint at their television screens, however.

Derksen says, “Really, what it comes down to is eight engineers and developers around a 52-inch hi-def television screen with their perfect vision going, ‘Looks great to me, man, I can see it. I have the money for this big set. I am young and my eyesight is good.’”

And that’s why providing readable (and preferably adjustable) fonts in games should never be a joking matter. Not everyone can afford a high definition set. Even if everyone could afford one, there are still hundreds of thousands of game lovers who have poor eyesight, or who are hard of hearing and rely on clear subtitles to follow a story, or who simply don’t want to lean forward and strain every time they open a game menu.

To be fair, there have been instances wherein developers and publishers have acknowledged and fixed in-game font issues. When the demo for Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts hit the Xbox 360 in 2008 and people complained that much of the text was unreadable on standard definition sets, Rare patched the issue.

Commendable, but it shouldn’t have been a problem to begin with. What’s more, poor typesetting is still a major problem in games. Legibility should be a priority; it’s disappointing that developers are not taking simple steps to make their titles as accessible as possible to their increasingly diverse audience. Why spend all the time, money, imagination and effort necessary to make a tremendous world of dragons and sorcery if you’re just going to lock out audience members who don’t have 20/20 vision?

Skyrim’s Shame

Like the rest of planet Earth, Derksen fell in love with Bethesda’s massive RPG, Skyrim during the Holiday 2011 season. Though he thoroughly enjoyed playing the game, his experience was marred by Bethesda’s choice of font (Futura Condensed), which, Derksen recalls, made reading important information in the game difficult at times.

“The thing about Futura is that in its natural incarnation, it’s a very round font,” Derksen says. “It’s basically very stout and wide. So this idea of ‘Futura Condensed’ actually goes against the nature of what Futura was conceived to be.

“Futura Condensed is an OK font overall, but when it’s applied to Skyrim, you see its bad side.”

What’s the “bad side” of Futura Condensed, exactly? Derksen pinpoints how Skyrim highlighted the font’s troubles. “The letters are pretty tight together, which creates a lot of flickering around the letters, and they also tend to blur together. The definitions of the shapes become less clear, so what could be an ‘o’ may actually be an ‘e’ or ‘c’.”

“Also, Futura Condensed’s x-height [the height of the lowercase letters] is small so that the font ‘feels’ smaller. In this particular application, it means less pixels to express letters and their counters ['counters' being the spaces in letters, like a 'o' or 'e'].”

“It’s uncomfortable to read even on high definition settings, but on lower resolution settings, it’s nearly impossible.”

Granted, developers have enough on their minds when assembling a game of Skyrim’s magnitude. It’s hard enough making sure that dragons fly forward, so it’s understandable why Bethesda might have said, “Screw it, the text looks good, and that’s all that matters.”

However, that doesn’t make poor typesetting excusable. Given that game developers don’t have to face legal repercussions for engineering inaccessible text (unlike webpage developers), it’s up to game studios to start taking players’ complaints seriously. This isn’t a handful of fans swearing and squabbling on a message board because their favorite character didn’t make the cut into a fighting game. This is an accessibility issue that leaves players out in the cold for reasons that they have little control over.

It’s not as if decent typesetting requires a great investment of resources, either. Developers can avoid font-related problems if they make some common sense choices early in a game’s development- precisely when it should be done, not weeks after thousands of players have complained about not being able to read in-game text.

Fixes: Quick and Otherwise

What do some of those “common sense choices” entail? As far as Skyrim is concerned, Derksen believes improved performance is as easy as a font swap. One of his recommendations is to switch Futura Condensed with Interstate, which, true to its name, is used in North American highway signs specifically for its high legibility in sub-optimal conditions.

“Interstate’s e’s and a’s are much more open and distinct compared to Futura Condensed,” Derksen points out. “And you actually don’t want a big height difference between capital and lower-case letters.”

“The fix is low cost,” Derksen adds, “and the testing is negligible, compared to bug testing. The impact area, however, is huge.”

Making good font choices is a major and necessary step for resolving the typesetting problems that plague today’s games, but it’s only one step of several that need to be taken. Players need more control over in-game fonts, and developers need to realize that every single person who picks up their game deserves to be able to read menus and text. That includes the man who can’t afford a high definition television, and the woman whose eyesight is less than optimal.

Editor’s note:
Students from Centennial College’s Account Management post grad program were invited to take a stab at writing a blog post for the Big Orange Slide. Submissions had to fall under one of the Slide’s main pillars (strategy, design, digital, and culture), and be somewhere between 300-600 words. The winner would be published on the Slide, and receive a secondary prize that, frankly, we have yet to come up with.

Natalie Skaff’s submission was selected because of its unique and insightful way of psychologizing social media. So feast your eyes upon, and put your hands together for, her winning submission.
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“Pin” this, “Pin” that – people everywhere are #pinning (is that trending? It should be.)

I have been considering my own relationship to Pinterest, and am finding that it’s off to a slow start. The digital scrapbooking platform is undoubtedly becoming extremely popular, so maybe we just  have no natural chemistry. Immediately I noticed a trend in my terminology – “relationship,” “chemistry.” With an interest in psychology and advertising, I began to realize that the relationships we form with social media are a lot like ones we establish with other people. In each case, we each seek unique characteristics and rewards.

We commit time to nurturing our social networks
We tell our social networks about our day through updates to followers/friends/connections about how drunk we got last night, how this Android is better than that iPhone, or our “Roll Up The Rim” standings. To the point where we have established a dependent relationship with our smartphones, panicking when we see “battery drained, now shutting down handheld” or when we are stuck with a stale Twitter feed on the TTC. We respond to our social networks when they call; reaching for our devices when we hear a familiar notification tone (even if it’s not our device.) Social networks are our cherished companions, proving excellent company when your friends planned to meet at 11, but you swear they said 10:30.

Familiarity breeds attraction
The more you interact with a person, your expectation to see them strengthens pleasantly. Similarly, the amount of time we spend with our social networks only serves to bond us to them more closely. For example, consider how many of your friends declared their hatred for Twitter two years ago. Now consider how many of those same friends now seem to average 100 tweets/min. Or witness the chaos that ensues on Facebook the minute a new update or format is introduced, inducing status updates such as “Timeline is the worst, I’m going to get off this thing forever!” Upshot: they don’t. Whether it was curiosity, peer pressure or being forced-at-gunpoint that  made them start, it has become a familiar part of their life. And, like with human beings, certain foibles aren’t enough to shake the resolve of the relationship.

We are drawn to “types”
When looking to spark a relationship, we tend to talk about our “types” – certain characteristics that we find attractive. In a similar way, social media platforms have distinct qualities that are ultimately defined by their audience. Birds of a feather, in this case, flock together. Twitter seems like the Don Draper of social media: populated by those offering powerful ideas in only 140 characters. LinkedIn, while an aesthetically average platform, is nonetheless the type with the cool friends you want to get closer to.

The variety of types also means that social media also prompts a bit of “playing the field.” As with Pinterest, I felt compelled to flirt with Google+. It seemed like the new big man on campus. It had its share of interested parties. But many, like myself, created an account but never established a real relationship. For as much as it “looked good on paper,” Google+ tried too hard; typifying itself as that guy who comes to a house party with a playlist of songs from every genre, self-appoints as the official photographer, and still manages to pass out first. In my opinion, Google+ tried to be everything, and no one knew what to make of it. Not attractive.

We use social media for information, entertainment, and attention. Like any relationship, aesthetics attracts you from the beginning, but it’s the content that makes you stay. And even then, the more you invest, the more you get out. Given the number of people who are now in a committed relationship with Pinterest, it may be that my next date will lead to something long term.

Facebook has always been stalwart about presenting itself as ‘Social by Design.’ For the average Facebook user, each new innovation pointed to a greater degree of interconnectivity and self-expression. For brands, this idea was inherent in the fact that old fan pages were focused around conversations on the wall. Brands had the ability to connect with fans and play host to their genuine content.

However, this month marks a transition to the new Timeline layout for both users and brands. In our industry, this means a big shift from the strategies of the previous layout, leaving some brands and community managers wondering how they’re going to maintain such an open and easy level of communication with their fan base. Here’s why:

The “wall” as such is now a small box below the page fold with a notable real estate shift towards brand-controlled content (i.e. the massive cover photo). At first glance this shift seems to undermine the community element entirely, allowing only five post views at a time, with no comments on display.

Meanwhile, user ‘Stories’ (posts) are much more controlled by the brand page. Some brand managers may rejoice, because this means a heightened ability to feature great fan feedback. But is there something disingenuous about this move? Because as nice as it is to feature positive feedback, it also marks a certain capacity to sweep negative fan feedback under the rug and off the main page. Consumer dialogue is now weighted in the brand’s favour, but is that always a good thing? Negative feedback can often have positive outcomes, after all.

As a developer, I feel that the Timeline shift means that brand-controlled content comes first, while “social by design” now comes second. This begs the question: is putting Facebook at the centre of your digital brand experience the best approach? The reality is that many brands have taken to recreating the sociability of Facebook outside the restrictions of the medium itself. Strategically, this removes a barrier for many users who don’t want the hassle of connecting through Facebook directly and offers a couple of additional benefits. On one hand, it allays some privacy concerns that have grown considerably in the past couple of years by offering content that does not even require Facebook connect. On the other hand, it allows Facebook users to connect via the social networking website of their choice, making it easy to take advantage of growing social networks such as Google+, Pinterest, etc.

The Facebook announcement also included a line item that means that businesses can pay to greatly increase their chances of being displayed in their fans’ newsfeeds. Again, some marketers may delight in this opportunity. But consider it from a fan’s perspective. My hunch is that fans will not welcome this heightened sense of “being advertised to” and may even get annoyed and unsubscribe from fan page content in general. So is this the death rattle of brands on Facebook? Perhaps, perhaps not. But the more intensified the presence of promotions and advertising becomes, the less consumers will see content that is authentically targeted to them – and the less responsive they may become.

If the future is here, but unevenly distributed, as the Canadian science fiction author William Gibson suggests, then I’m pleased to report from the near future here in Austin, Texas at the fourth annual SXSW Accelerator.

The Accelerator Program is dedicated to the discovery and promotion of the newest and most innovative web-based products. The program is a great format to hear from many different start-ups in a short time. With two minutes for their elevator pitch and ten minutes to address questions by an expert panel of entrepreneurs and venture capitalists, each start-up is competing with four others in a 3-day round-robin style competition that concludes on March 14.

Of the 56 competitors so far, the five that interest me the most, and whose success I will monitor in the future are:

Funf.org is an open source framework for mobile sensing and data processing developed at the MIT Media Lab. Already the recipient of two Google Grants, Funf helps collect and interpret the abundant rich data about individuals, their devices and their environment.

Swift.Ushahidi.com develops free and open source software for information collection, visualization and interactive mapping, increasing transparency and lowering barriers for individuals to share their stories. An example was residents in Japan sharing their individual home radiation levels and seeing them mapped in aggregate.

BuzzData.com from Toronto pitched their platform as the best way to share and collaborate on spreadsheets and other datasets publicly or, using their premium paid service, within a private organization.

Foreca.st is a simple way to share where you’re going instead of where you are now. Something that may be useful helping your friends find you when you’re out and about.

Brandyourself.com claims to be the first DIY platform that makes it easy for anyone to take control of their personal Google search results, optimizing positive information to the top results.

Which innovative new products do you have your eye on at this year’s SXSW Accelerator?

From Austin, Texas, see you in the future.