Thursday, 13 November 2014
How to advertise on Facebook
Twenty-first century
nightmares are made up of your Facebook News Feed, your dad and the comment he
just left on a particularly incriminating photo of you posted by a friend after
a night of abject debauchery. You know a media platform is all pervasive when
the kids, parents, pet mutts, bosses, exes and distant relatives are all
chattering, sharing and discovering on their personal News Feeds and often on
the go.
This leaves marketing
of all sizes and budgets with the big question: How do you reach the people who
really matter? And with advertising that's unobtrusive and worthy of their
time, attention and engagement.
For a change, Mark
D'Arcy, VP, chief creative officer, Facebook Creative Shop, gave us the
questions that marketers and creatives ought to ask themselves, preferably
every morning, noon and night, and then provided the answers. Pay attention for
these just might help create a Facebook ad that doesn't prompt users to
#facepalm.
What ought to be the
holy grail of ROA (Return On Attention)? There was a huge move when people
talked about 360 degree marketing to integrate multiple media channels. People
would invent things (invented in the world of magical thinking more like it).
For instance, "we're going to do a user generated content (UGC)
competition where people are going to submit films. Then we're going to judge
the films and then we're going to reshoot them, and then we're going to put it
on the website, and put it to vote and then this and that is going to
happen."
Who's doing this? Who
in their right mind is going to have time to go through your marketing process
to be part of this experience? The reward on my attention has to be so great
for me to do that. So ask yourself what's the most efficient use of people's
time?
30-second TV
commercials are a wonderful expression of this. The art form of writing a
commercial, incredibly condensed storytelling, is like poetry when done really
well. So if you are going to do a 70-minute documentary about your mayonnaise
it better be pretty good because it's a lot of time.
Our eagerness to do
things is wonderful but we need to treat people's time with care. We don't want
to do things that twelve people are going to see, and six of them are related
to us. We want to do things that are going to connect and make people say this
is a really good return on my attention.
Are you using
creativity to unlock technology? Everyone who has ever written a TV commercial
really wants people to watch it in a cinema, on a 90 foot screen in HD with
Dolby sound and everyone being quiet. And then they want people to stand up,
applaud and go, "That was better than the film!" We want the canvas
to physically reflect the importance of what we think we've made. The big leap
we have to make is transferring that energy and passion to the canvases where
people are and not where they were.
I love magazines. I
still buy them. Our behaviour around magazines we understand because we've been
doing it for a hundred years. But that energy and passion of discovery is being
done by 100 million people a month on Facebook in India alone through News
Feed. Because that's a newer behaviour, from the tactile movement of the News
Feed to the way in which that comes alive, we don't imbue it with the cultural
reverence that we have for things like print.
Creativity unlocks the
value of technology.People always say "Oh! we can do this. It's very
interesting." But it's not really that interesting until you have an idea
that unlocks it and makes the connect with a human being. People collaborate
around good ideas, not good intentions. And these intentions are always vague
and theoretical. If you have a building mentality around Facebook, you learn
much quicker and do better.
It's an easy test: if
you are still looking at Facebook and saying well "how many Likes did I
get" you are building around social engagement which is a fun metric, but
you are not measuring the impact of what's actually been driving your business
forward.
Who saw Van Damme's
epic split on TV? Facebook's Creative Council, that's made up of chief creative
officers from across global ad agencies, was hugely involved with the launch of
Premium Video. When I think back to the first meetings one of the big debates
was whether people will watch video on mobile. That was 24 months ago. Well, I
know who won. If you think about great commercials, 'Epic Split' with Jean
Claude Van Dammeby Volvo, who saw that on TV?Everyone saw that on your
phone.These epic films we surround ourselves with as an industry and community
and and we celebrate, ask yourself, who saw that on TV?
Four years ago at the
FIFA World Cup, we had 'Write the Future', just before I joined Facebook,, it
was the big creative case study, an amazing film that Nike and Wieden + Kennedy
built. And Facebook had this tiny little postage stamp size ad on the side of a
website. Forty-eight months later at the next World Cup Nike's 'Last Game' film
was running as a mobile film all around the world along with Beats by Dre.
The most beautifully
crafted pieces of film around the World Cup were being discovered, watched and
shared through mobile. That's pretty quick. The question if you are in the
business of making stories, is ' am I leading this conversation, is my client
leading it, do I know enough about how these different platforms distribute
sights, sound and emotion?.'
You should do it
because you want the right people to see your work because you believe your
work is going to be valuable, useful rewarding, powerful and can change
culture. It's not enough to do a random old thing that 12 people saw and it
wins a Lion.That kind of work is irrelevant. You want work that tens of
millions of people in India will see and be passionate about.
What makes a great
Facebook ad? The question comes from a world of fine-eyed linear media channels
that everybody sees as the same. But there is no defined Facebook. Every single
person's Facebook is unique. Is the best ad for you the same as the best ad for
a 65-year-old millionaire in Miami or a German housewife with four children
who's trying to get groceries or a 18 year old in New Zealand?
There's actually a best
ad for each one because it's built around people. It's not about doing
individual ads for people but thinking about them. What's the single best
valuable, useful and relevant thing we can possible connect with 5 or 10
million of those people, irrespective of whether they are on a tablet, a
desktop or phone.
And so I'd say the
first hallmark of a great Facebook ad is utility. Brands that can manifest
their purpose through not talking about doing something good but doing
something good. For instance, Target and its Cartwheel app we built to provide
users discounts on the go.
The second is
remembering that all business is small business; taking large things and making
them feel really personal. KLM and telcos do a lot of service through Facebook,
their pages are super responsive. Coca-Cola's Superbowl commercial 'America The
Beautiful' celebrated the mosaic of American life. By representing that
commercial to different ethnic and cultural groups and celebrating them more
deeply through extra content and footage, you are introducing the brand at
eyelevel.
TV does a wonderful job
of talking to a lot of people simultaneously but if I can introduce something
that manifests service and thoughtfulness? That is no different from what we've
done for decades in copy: splitting advertising for magazines. The ability to
do that on vast scale with almost an infinite number of variables, is not just
a great technological opportunity but a creative opportunity.
And finally great ads
are about people building things that go into the real world. The best example
still, is the Studio Award winning 'Small Business Saturday'. Where you're
building things that aren't just about marketing and seeing a story but
something that creates a real world effect. It happened in a not-for-profit
sense with the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge.
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Labels:
Technology
Wednesday, 12 November 2014
Android Lollipop vs Android KitKat: What's the difference?
There was plenty of debate over what the new version of Android would be called, with "Lemon Meringue" and even the controversial "Licorice" said to have been in the running at various points.
Thankfully the lovable "Lollipop" won out, as Google revealed when it unveiled the new Android update, but the name is hardly all that's been improved since the last version.
Here's exactly how Android 5.0 stacks up to Android KitKat.
1. Material world
Android Lollipop is the biggest
change to Android in some time, finally bumping Google's OS up a full integer
to version 5.0.
It's packed with changes, but the
most obvious improvements are visual.
Google's been working on getting its
new "Material Design" aesthetic out in the world for months, and
Lollipop is its culmination. One of Android's biggest failings up to date —
including with KitKat — has been that its design language never felt unified,
and with Material Design Google hopes to fix that.
Material Design reflects this with
clean, bold lines and colors that transform and alter with fun animations. At
its best it lets you sense the depth behind the interface, even when it's at
rest and appears flat.
This extends from app icons, fonts
and interfaces to simple elements like the new navigation buttons and
notification bar icons, and once you get past the changes you'll likely agree
that most things look better now.
The changes to Android's interface
with Lollipop aren't all visual, either — voice commands with "OK
Google" are more prominent now as well, and can even be used when the
screen is locked and off on some devices, and there are massive improvements to
notifications.
2. Notifications
Notifications have been
significantly overhauled in Android Lollipop.
The OS's lock screen is no longer a
static barrier you have to get through before you can reach the meat of your
phone's functionality, but instead now has many elements of KitKat's
notification panel, plus more interactivity.
In Lollipop you can see what
notifications you've received and what's going on with your apps and contacts
as soon as you pick it up, before you even unlock your device — and you can
even respond to messages from the lockscreen.
The way you see notifications is
changing as well — now rich, descriptive, and interactive notifiers will pop up
on top of what you're doing without interrupting, so you can reject a call or
read a message without quitting that game or whatever. Some of this
functionality was present in KitKat, but it was half-baked and inconsistent.
Android Lollipop is also getting a
"do not disturb" mode a la iOS, which Android KitKat and previous
versions sorely lacked. You can use it to silence your ever-buzzing phone
during specific hours or, more importantly, to only let notifications from
specific sources come through.
Lollipop's quick settings bar also
has new options that KitKat desperately needed, like easy buttons for
flashlight, hotspots, and screencasting. Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and location options
have been expanded here as well.
3. Connectivity and APIs
With Android Lollipop Google is
making connectivity a big focus — not just between different handsets, but
among different classes of device as well. For example Android TV is now built
right into Android Lollipop, helping you easily navigate big screens with
smartwatch voice commands, phone gestures, and more.
That's just scratching the surface,
but it means your Android experience will be consistent across smartphones,
tablets, TVs, smartwatches, and more.
Google also wants Lollipop's apps to
communicate with one another more than KitKat's do. Examples are simple, like
tapping links in Chrome and having them open in specific apps instead of taking
you to mobile websites. The OS already does it sometimes, but Google wants it
to be more consistent.
This depends quite a bit on app
developers taking advantage of Lollipop's 5,000 new APIs. These will make the
new Android OS more versatile over time, though their presence might not be
noticeable for end users at first.
Google says Lollipop is also better
at connecting with Bluetooth and Wi-Fi. For example Lollipop devices won't
connect to a Wi-Fi network unless they can verify there's an actual connection
there — so unlike with KitKat, you won't be stumped wondering why you suddenly
have no data because your gadget decided to connect to a turd of a network.
4. Safe and sound
Safe and sound
Android Lollipop has some new
security features as well, like the ability to set geographical "safe
zones" where your device won't require a PIN to unlock.
You can do the same with specific
Bluetooth devices, like Android Wear smartwatches, which your phone or tablet
will sense automatically and turn off its security barriers.
And despite all the changes to
notifications that let you see and interact with them without unlocking your
phone, Android 5.0 also has new settings that let you hide sensitive
information anywhere it might appear.
Lollipop also has better protection
against vulnerabilities and malware thanks to SELinux enforcing for all
applications, and encryption is turned on by default on all Lollipop devices.
And multiple user profiles on a
single device, including temporary guest profiles, makes it easier to share
your phone with others while still maintaining control over your own stuff.
5. Performance
Google has reportedly also put a lot
of work into making Android Lollipop run better under the hood.
KitKat's optional runtime ART is now
the standard for Android Lollipop, and Google says it will help make Lollipop
run faster, more efficiently and with less hiccups.
That won't harm existing Android
apps' compatibility, but it has let Google future-proof Android further against
the inevitable onslaught of 64-bit smartphones coming in the near future.
These phones will have more RAM than
existing phones with KitKat and other operating systems are capable of packing,
which is a huge benefit that only future generations of Lollipop handsets will
be able to take advantage of.
For now, though, Google says Android
5.0 is way more power-efficient over its predecessors, with the same phones
getting significantly more battery juice out of Lollipop than they did with
KitKat.
Multitasking has also been updated
with the ability to have multiple cards for the same apps open at a time,
letting you have more than one document or website next to one another, for
example. It's also easier to switch keyboards now too, and Android Lollipop
even supports RAW images.
Source: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com
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Labels:
Mobile,
Technology
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