The Current State of Interactive Marketing

January 30, 2008 at 3:05 am · Filed under New media

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

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.savelives. viral video

January 30, 2008 at 3:01 am · Filed under School

For my final project for Jason Arena’s dynamic persuasion class we had to create something that was viral. I decided to do a motion graphics piece to tie in with the breast cancer website I created last winter that made it to the Adobe 2007 ADAA competition as a semifinalist.

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Experimental new media class

January 30, 2008 at 2:12 am · Filed under School

In my experimental new media class, I’m working with Flash and web cams. I want to create an application that involves the user and turns them into the artist. I’ll be using motion capture in Flash using a web cam and allow the user to paint on the screen with their hands & body. I’d also like to allow them to save out their “masterpiece” and email it to themselves or friends. There is a good amount to do, but the design is coming along quite well.

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PETA poster for Design Systems class

January 30, 2008 at 1:47 am · Filed under School

This winter quarter I decided to take a bit of a breather from Flash and code and decided to take a class in the graphic design field. It’s nice to get a bit of a breather every now and then and work on something that I don’t do much anymore: drawing. For the class, we were each assigned a different non-profit organization to work with. I was given PETA.

One of the projects was to design a poster that represent a message our “client” would want to convey using our own style. We started selecting different imagery to give us a decent amount of varying content to pick from. One of my images was a little mouse with a giant robot arm above him. I thought this image perfectly reflected the message PETA wants to convey: the defenseless animal and the human using them.

After look at different collateral they have, I thought taking the design in a 50′s style design would work great, along with the bright, cheery color scheme I had created. After sketching up the design, illustrating it, and refining, I came up with a poster I was quite happy with.

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Welcome

January 27, 2008 at 2:14 am · Filed under General

Finally, I’ve broke down and purchased a domain and some hosting. Setting up everything has been quite nerve racking, that’s for sure. Godaddy.com’s user interface would make any designer shiver. I’ve made almost 10 phone calls to them in the past 24 hours just trying to get everything set up. And to top it all off, the email server that my email address is on has been down for the past two days. What joy. Let’s just hope this will be the last of my problems.

As for the site, www.timmaiura.com, all I have up currently is just a splash page. I’ll be working on the design and coding of the site within the next few days to get it done asap. I’d like to have everything done by early February.

I’ll definitely be posting on here a good amount with topics such as music, design + inspiration, school work, as well as random stuff.

Feel free to comment on anything, as I’d love for people to share their input.

- Tim

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