posted by Abby Lasaine Vazquez @ 5:05 PM
http://www.patrickruffini.com/2008/02/13/the-marketing-of-the-president-2008/
Tonight, Sen. Barack Obama will appear on a 30-minute primetime TV “advertisement” to communicate directly to voters, specifically those who are undecided. With less than a week until Election Day, this unprecedented ad will run on four major networks: CBS, NBC, Fox and Univision at 8 p.m. EST / 7 p.m. CST.
The spot will air just before the World Series baseball game on Fox. And the MLB has even agreed to delay the start of the game since it could be the one to clinch the series. The time slot was strategically chosen to reach the young male demographic known as millennials.
The estimated cost for this unprecedented primetime spot? Between three to five MILLION dollars!
The bigger question is what will this ad do for the “Obama Brand?” Suddenly, the 2008 Presidential Campaign has become a branding campaign and Obama has tapped the latest technology: text messaging, YouTube videos and a host of social networking sites. Everything promotes his messages of “Change” and “Hope.” Barack Obama has become a brand name that rivals top consumer brands like Starbucks and Apple.
Here’s an interesting article that dissects the “Obama Brand” down to the nitty gritty. What the Obama campaign has achieved by carefully managing its brand – coherent messaging, identity standards and consistent design – we do for our clients’ brands every day.
In using a primetime TV ad as his forum, Sen. Obama is able to control his message uninterrupted and reach millions. It will be interesting to see if it was money well spent. Will his “brand” gain momentum in the final days until election? While we won’t know the success of Obama’s 30-minute special until the Nielsen ratings come out, one thing is for certain – we’re all talking about it at the proverbial water cooler.
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10.06.2008
posted by Stephen Banks @ 11:20 AM
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7417496.stm
This recent article from the BBC has huge implications for web based design, branding and UI. It literally changes everything about what we think about “top down” design.”
Quick quote from the article & renowned usability expert and author Jakob Nielsen:
“In 2004, about 40% of people visited a homepage and then drilled down to where they wanted to go and 60% use a deep link that took them directly to a page or destination inside a site. In 2008, said Dr Nielsen, only 25% of people travel via a homepage. The rest search and get straight there.”
In brief, it says that 75% of visitors to a site don’t come in through the home page. It says users are getting smarter and smarter all the time and they are learning how to use search engines to bypass what they consider “the fluff” and go straight for the “hot potato” – to borrow Jakob’s phrase. How does this impact professional branding & design methodologies? It means we must really consider what is “most” important to the visitors – be they one type or many types. We must look at the usability of the site from many different angles and run test cases of users who enter through a sub page and never see the home page. It means the branding and subsequent design of the site must encompass the “strike team” type of visitor who searches for the exact product or service within a site (within google) hits that page, digests the content and then leaves and never sees another page. This visitor might also turn out to be one of the most important users of a site, by the way: smart, motivated and wanting to make a decision fast based on the information within a site.
If there is business critical branding & marketing intel that only lives on the home page, its time to strongly consider tying into this messaging from other parts of the site. Think of it as advertising other parts of the site within the site. No longer do visitors leisurely stroll through a site, seeing all there is to see. Now they assault it from an oblique angle and deftly evade anything unrelated to their mission.
I know I have been operating this way for years. Rather than go to a company’s home page and click 3-4 links that might reward my time, I simply tab over to that Google search field we all have omnipresent in our browsers and I enter “company.com > product name > release date” and that usually takes me right to the page I want. Ironically, if the parent site doesn’t have this information but a secondary site does, I have no qualms hitting the alternative link for the intel. See what this means? Sites need to be structured smartly, with a focus on information & content for the intended audience. Gone is the scatter shot approach of trying to create one site for everyone. Companies risk losing control of their information to sites that are better focused and structured.
I think it’s very possible to present a strong branding message to these commando types of visitors, you just have to think as smartly as they do.
