Tim Maiura || BLOG
Labs & explorations in new media.Archive for New media
Frostbite Sports
The extreme winter sports site that I have been working on for the past five weeks is coming along great. The design has been approved and we’re moving on to the programing phase. Frostbitesports.com will be launched on May 1st, following a media night. I’m quite excited about the project as it’s looking great and it’s a lot of fun to work with great content.
Fun with webcams
I’ve been working with Flash and a webcam to allow users to “paint” a piece of art using a sort of motion capture. It seems tough to get a real accurate motion capture by just analyzing pixels, but it’s the way I’ve gone for this experiment.
Extreme winter sports web site
A few weeks ago my department head asked if any one was interested in designing and developing a web site for a senior photo class next quarter. I was quite intrigued with the thought and decided to meet with the students and their professor to see what they were requiring. The students have spent all winter quarter photographing and gathering video of nine different extreme winter sports such as skiing, snowmobiling, and snowboarding.
After seeing a few videos (they’re using a helmet camera in some of the footage) and some photos, I became just as excited as the photo students. The site will showcase the nine different sections they’ve focused on, with a slide show with audio and video for each section. They’d also like to show the different footage at full screen, which I think will really help the viewers focus on the content of the site and have the web site its self stay in the background.
They’d also like to have the local media involved for the launch of the site in May. I’ve excited for this as well, as I hope to drive a lot of traffic to the web site through promotion in the media as well as possibly submitting it to award sites.
Portfolio site finally up
Finally, after a long week of staying up until 5 a.m. everyday, my portfolio site is finally up. The weird thing about this portfolio site, is that it’s the first time I’m quite happy with the design and programming. I kept it nice and simple on the design side. It was fun looking through all the work I have created over the past 4 years. I’ve grown tremendously. Thinking back to high school, I just wanted to make cool websites with nice graphics and make the internet a better place. I never dreamed I’d know how to use as many technologies as I do now such as Flash, 3D, and motion graphics. I also think about how choosing RIT was the best decision I’ve made so far.
Anyways, check out the new portfolio, feel free to comment on it on here or drop me an e-mail. Send it to everyone you know too!
Kobalt Music Publishing
Kobalt Music Publishing, a record distributor approached Mass Transmit and asked us to create an email template design for them to release their newest artists and allow people to hear sound clips. Working with my creative director Rich, we came up with a great design that incorporated Kobalt Musics’ brand very well and introduced the artists in a fresh way.
The Current State of Interactive Marketing
In the past few years marketing and advertising has changed immensely. With the boom of the internet in the early 90’s, marketing started to branch into different areas besides print, radio, and TV. Advertisers started to see how the internet could reach a larger audience, cost a lot less, and create an experience for the potential customer. With the use of HTML and Flash becoming popular and powerful, marketers began to look into creating interactive advertisements to engage their audience more.
With interactive marketing, there are a few different types. There is viral marketing, mobile marketing, websites, and email marketing. Although these all work in different ways, they all accomplish one goal: branding and establishing loyalty.
Viral marketing works by spreading like a “virus”. For example, a friend comes across a website, video, or game that they enjoyed and believe their friends will enjoy it as well. They email a link to their friends who click the link and then send it to their friends. This is extremely effective, inexpensive, and works fast.
Mobile phone marketing is comparable to viral marketing, but also differs. A person could download a favorite artist’s song, or a game. Branding is still established and anytime the person’s phone rings, other’s will hear the song, think of the artist, and potentially make it their ring tone as well. Other uses of mobile phone marketing is when TV game shows or commercials tell the audience to send a message to a certain number to vote, or receive a free song or game. This not only promotes the end product, but the cell phone company as well.
Email marketing works the same as viral marketing and allows the user to send it to a friend and to visit a website, or print out a coupon. This rewards the person and allows them to help out a friend.
Websites are the staple of interactive marketing. All of the fore-mentioned types of marketing always lead back to the brand’s website to give the user more information and entice them more by creating an experience for them through games, videos, or animations.
The draw backs to interactive marketing is controlling who views it. The campaign might start out being viewed by the target audience, but could eventually reach the wrong one. The content could also be changed or taken out of context completely.
I see interactive marketing continuing and growing more and more everyday. With web 2.0 being about consumer generated information, I believe web 3.0 will continue that trend but also begin to have brands tailoring their marketing plans to specific consumers. I believe the tracking of the types of sites visit will generate advertisements that are in the same genre. I think campaigns will also begin to be targeted more towards specific geographic locations based on IP addresses. Local campaigns might be see only to people in a certain city or state.
I see the use of Flash, Flex, AIR, and AJAX technologies leading the future of interactive marketing by allowing brands to deliver more engaging, dynamic, and targeted campaigns to consumers.
Examples of interactive marketing links:
http://www.youtube.com
http://www.shaveeverywhere.com
http://www.nstorm.com/games/game_detail.asp?game_id=33