Doggelganger

Here's an awesome website promotion the adoption of dogs without a home. What's the best way to win someone over when adopting, finding a dog that looks just like them. :] This is what pedigee worked to do in their Doggelganger website. Here people have the option to either upload a picture of themselves or to take one live and have their facial features matched with a cute little pup who happens to look a lot like themselves. From there you're matched with a dog who's available for adoption and you even have the option to opt for adoption for the little guy. Not gonna lie, this website made my heart melt.

On a side note, please ignore my terrible appearance, it is due to it being finals week of my last week of college :D

But yeah, I tried different lighting and everything to see if I got a better match and it did help. So mess around with it, it's a lot of fun! Maybe you'll even find a little pup you'll fall in love with! :D hahah. If you'd like post your doggelganger for me to see! I'd love to take a look. :]

Stop-Motion

Not to be overly posting, but my goodness, this is wonderfully done! God knows if I get to go back to school I would totally go back for motion media or animation...or photography. Maybe I'll just do them all to get it over with. Here's an amazing example of stop motion photography.

Gulp. The world's largest stop-motion animation shot on a Nokia N8. from Nokia HD on Vimeo.

Heatonomy

Really interesting idea to literally show money being thrown out the windows. I wonder to myself though, were they really making the proper reach to the audience they intended, or were they too excited for free money? At least the point was put across through the PR and media coverage they were able to get.

Here's an explanation from ads of the world.

"Utility rates for heating and energy keep growing. Loosing warmth because of windows that are unadjusted to cold Russian winters, people waste money. REHAU windows save warmth and considerably save expenses for heating. Heating + enonomy = heatonomy. In our advertisement we decided to demonstrate how people waste money, literally throwing it out of their low-quality windows. In several big Russian cities every day during a week we were throwing real money out of the window of a billboard. There were stickers on the bank notes with stated amount of losses over a season. The promotion generated public excitement. More than 200 media (including the most popular TV channels, broadcasting stations, newspapers and web-sites) highlighted the event for free. On throwing 240 000 rubles (7000 $) we got free media for the amount that hundreds times exceeded expenditures for the audience over 40 million of Russians. The idea of heatonomy has spread all over the country."

For Those Who Like to Travel

The first example is one that has actually seemed to turn into a phenomena of it'd own, couch surfing. I only learned of it last quarter when one of my partners for a project explained to me how he was hosting a couch surfer that was coming to visit Savannah. The idea itself is interesting, members have the option of supplying information and pictures of themselves and of the sleeping accommodation they may offer, if any. More information provided by a member, and other members, improves the chances that someone will find the member trustworthy enough to be his host or "surfer." Members looking for accommodation can search for hosts using a few different qualities such as age, location, gender and activity level. The surfer is able to stay at the host's house without having to paying any money, except maybe for replacing the food they eat.

CouchSurfing provides travel guides and forums where the members are able to seek travel partners or advice. CouchSurfing's main focus is in "social networking" and members organizing activities like camping trips, meetings, and sporting events.

The website is already very successful and already has 3,072,679 members participating on the website. On the other hand I can't get past the fact of people lying about who they are and the possibilities of you not really knowing the person who's house you are going over. My partner had said he had had some sketchy people who he hosted for and there has even been raped when going into a strangers home. Not to mention that your home is supposed to be a safe place for yourself and your possessions, I may be paranoid but I would never want to leave someone I didn't know inside of my house where they're able to do as they wish.

I also found another website called TravBuddy that specializes in connecting travelers. The site allows users to find travel buddies planning to travel to the same places at the same times, to create travel based blogs, upload photos of their travels, and review bars, restaurants, hotels and various attractions on their traveled areas. The site has nearly 1,350,000 registered contributors and provided free access to over 65,000 blogs, 17,000 travel reviews, and 750,000 travel photos. I feel like this site is successful because it appeals to a very specific group of people who are passionate about traveling and will want to get opinions or reviews of places they will be going to. I don't see anything that can be a downfall of this website, except for the immediate well known dangers of any social networking site, and I feel like this site will only get more popular with time with it's usefulness and the word of mouth of the users.

In learning more about social media I found this article called "50 ways marketers can use social media to improve their marketing." Reading the list, there were some interesting suggestions that were made in how to optimize social media and how and when are the right times to use it.

Blog on Anything

Promotional Minisites

A promotional minisite should be something that should be interesting to the viewer and interactive while promoting whatever it may be to the viewer. I'm going to be posting two examples since I'm not sure that my favorite falls into a typical promotional website.

My first example is on from Arcade Fire

This is actually my favorite example of ones that I was able to find. The viewer is greeted to an aesthetically beautiful website where birds fly around the page and even interact with the page by landing on the branch-like text on the page. The only thing that prompts the viewer is a text input box that asks the viewer to type in their address from when they were a kid. With a little bit of loading time your interactive video is ready to be played. Music in the background plays from the band and you see a man running in a strategically placed pop-up window, another window is introduced and layered behind that one. The windows continue moving throughout the screen seemingly dancing with each other and creating a feeling just with how they're moving together. Then for the best part...well I want people to do this, so I'm not going to say, but let's just say there is actual interaction with your adress you gave to the site involving the video.

Also during this time seamlessly integrated part where you're asked to write a note to yourself when you were young. The best part is you're able to submit this to the band. This is how they explain this, "The Services are an interactive art project in the manner of a music video." With reading on, it seems that they are going to take a compilation of the notes written to the viewers younger selves in a final music video. Very interesting huh? I love this whole concept because it gives users interaction with the band itself. Also, you are given a link to your letter and other users can respond, you can also make responses to other users as well. Very nice touch since this will be something that will promote users to come back to the site, especially since the note they wrote to themselves is most likely something personal and important to them. Here's a view of the note I wrote my younger self. Sorry it sounds kinda emo, but oh well; again it's personal! Click the image and you can see more detail in the way the program makes your own writing look like the branches on the homepage.

Okay, so obviously that was my favorite example of a promotional minisite. Now I'll post one that's a more obvious example of one.

Malibu Rum

I love this example mostly for the homepage. I thought it was really daring to go against one of the norms when it comes to design and making the homepage predominantly in black and white. Then the only accents of color are the things that are most important, the logo and the beautiful product shot. (I sometimes think about the pitches to clients and what they were like, in this case I wonder what Malibu thought at first not being typical and doing things in black and white). This site is actually really interactive and well designed. I love how later in the site you're able to see that they introduce the color fully through the website. There ideas everywhere that show how you can use the product, and promoting the lifestyle they want to associate with Malibu Rum. Overall I feel this is a great example of a traditional minisite for a product.

New Design

So with the redesigning of all of my personal promotional materials I decided to stream line everything that I have online for an idea of what my things will look like. The theme? A girl with a love of cars. :] Here's a preview of the new business cards. We'll see how everything goes, really just working on the formatting right now, and TRYING to figure out the paper that I'll be printing on. Excited though. Roughs will be due monday, printed on that mysterious paper I have yet to decide on. Also, want to add that I'll be using my own handwriting where you see my name in a computer script font.

Enjoy!