How Motion Improves Customer Experience

We have become accustomed to receiving mass amounts of information from various outlets throughout our day. To not get overwhelmed, we have also developed a subconscious system to filter out things that we know don’t interest us. Because of this, businesses have to figure out a way to connect with their customers in a non-intrusive way. One of these ways is the use of motion in your website, app, or social media post. In 2016, over 70% of all of the traffic online was video. That means that the greatest chance to reach a customer is to use a platform that they are primarily using. By using motion graphics in these videos, you will be able to hold their attention even longer.

This is because motion provides elements that a static graphic or photograph just can’t. For instance, take a look at this GIF that we made for one of our clients.

Now look a still from the gif.

 

 

With just stopping the motion, the personality of the graphic was taken away and made less interesting. We just naturally pay more attention to things that are moving especially when vibrant colors are involved.

Another benefit with using motion is that it can be used to focus a viewer’s eyes to a specific spot on their screen. With the majority of people consuming content on their mobile devices, apps and mobile sites benefit greatly from having motion elements. Take a look at this mockup of an iPhone screen.

 

Bright colors can draw your viewer’s attention. But look at how much more engaging the same notification is when it moves:

 

When providing content to your customers, you want them to be focused on what your business has to offer. One way to do that is by attracting them with a little bit of motion. This can be in the form of a video background on a website or a non-intrusive alert that provides helpful information. While this is a somewhat new idea in the world of marketing, it has its origins in the world of video production. Interviews usually have name plates that are on the lower area of the screen to provide the viewer with some important information that could have been easily overlooked. This also serves as place for things that weren’t said in the video to be placed.

The same concept can be used with a call to action button on a website or on an animated social media post. Just remember that it is better to be simple and subtle rather than having something that is visually overbearing.

Social Media Win: We Beefin?

Wendy’s is back at it again. They have taken their viral quality attacks on other burger chains to a new level of production with a mixtape. Yes, a mixtape. Released on Spotify.

You, too, can listen to the 5 tracks from Wendy’s taking shots at their competition. The best one from ‘fast food’s first lady’ is Rest in Grease. They very clearly take a shot at McDonalds, “why is your ice cream machine always broken?” This is a hilarious execution of a strategy that was already working on Twitter. The songs are not good enough to listen to just to listen to, but people checking them out once is worth the investment.

You can listen to them here:

State of the Podcasts: April 2018

I love listening to podcasts. I listen to them when I run, drive, and clean. Some people know this about me and I regularly get asked about suggested podcast listening. So I am going to put out an annual list to talk about what shows I am listening to and give you some suggestions on things to pick up:

(* Indicates a favorite)

SOCIAL MEDIA:

Social Media Marketing Podcast: Social Media Examiner
*Social Media Marketing Talk Show: Social Media Examiner
Perpetual Traffic: Digital Marketer
Smart Pizza Marketing Podcast: Bruce Irving

PRODUCTIVITY:

**Cortex: Relay FM
Free Agents: Relay FM

BUSINESS:

Corner Office Podcast: Market Place
*How I Built This with Guy Raz: NPR
The Businessology Show: Blumer
Open for Business: Gimlet
**StartUp: Gimlet (Start from Season 1 EP 1)
The Venture: Gimlet
The Pitch: Gimlet Media

EDUCATIONAL:
99% Invisible: Roman Mars
*Planet Money: NPR

FUN/OTHER:
Embedded: NPR
Empowered Parent Podcast (Formerly Empowered to Connect): One Big Happy Home
Ungeniused: Relay FM
**50 Things That Made the Modern Economy: BBC World Service (Start from Episode 1)
**Crimetown: Gimlet (Start from Episode 1)
*Hello Internet: CGP Grey Brady Haran
(During Draft Season Only) NFL: Move the Sticks: NFL Network
*Revisionist History: Malcolm Gladwell (Start from Episode 1)
Science VS: Gimlet
The Unmade Podcast: Brady Haran
*What Trump Can Teach Us About Con Law (Start from Episode 1)

FAITH:
*Timothy Keller Sermons Podcast: Gospel in Life

IN MY CUE (haven’t got through enough of the above yet to try these new ones):
Akimbo: Seth Godin
Building a Business that Lasts: Jay Owen
Business Wars: Wondery
GaryVee Audio Experience: Gary Vaynerchuk

Anchor: A quick way to get into podcasting

Most people have not heard of Anchor. Anchor made a go at being the audio only social media a few years ago. It worked but it was a little clunky and I a lover of podcasts wrote it off. I thought Anchor was dead. But then Google bought it. Google does nothing halfway.

Anchor was reborn a few weeks ago as a podcast creator in your pocket. The new anchor was designed to allow you create and edit podcasts quickly from your phone. They have music for you to use as transitions. They also allow you to record differnt parts of your podcast in segements. This can allow you to focus on each section and create someting worth listening too.

But the most powerful part of Anchor is that it distributes podcasts instantly. There was a time when hosting a podcast cost money and submitting to the different feeds took some time. Now Anchor does that automatically and for free. Record a podcast with Anchor, or upload it to their website, and it will be automatically distribute to major podcast outlets.

Renae is even using this to distribute audio for an Alexa Flash Briefing. Check her out by searching for Daily Women’s Devotional on the Flash Library.

Anchor is making it easier than ever to great audio content. How can you make use of this and become an expert in your own field

 

Client Spotlight: BizTech Roadshow

If you haven’t heard by now, Adelsberger Marketing and theCO are in the middle of a 15 county tour of West Tennessee with Kevin getting a chance to speak at all the stops and theCO bus showing off the latest in technology. We have had great turnouts so we wanted to take a look at the components that have gone into making the event successful.

  1. Cool Branding: Katie Howerton of Our Jackson Home and theCO put together a great brand to make the tour folks look cooler than we really are. This brand has been implemented across all of our components to give a unified feel to the marketing. 
  2. A great place to find out more: We created a simple but branded website to help direct people to find out more. BizTechRoadshow.com has a video explaining what the tour is and provides information about each of our tour stops that are open to the public. We chose to leave the details off there to help make the site more streamlined. We put the details on Facebook events that were created for each county that was open to the public.
  3. Facebook Events: We created Facebook events for each of the stops. We really like using Facebook events because it helps create a reminder system that people are native to. If you RSVP for an event on Facebook, it opens you up to additional communication from us. This means we can send you reminders and notes about the event. Facebook will also send reminders the day of the event which will help people to remember.
  4. Facebook Video: We created videos for almost every stop on the tour, depending if they are open to the public or not. We did this in a way that allowed to us to use some parts of the video multiple times to cut down on editing and shooting time. Each of these videos is specific for the county that we are visiting so our local partners are able to share a video that is talking about their specific location. It was worth the extra time to do custom videos because people like to feel like they are being talked to specifically not generally.
  5. Facebook Ads and Retargeting: We have run a good amount of ads for each location on the tour. We have been able to target folks via Facebook based on interests that they have in Entrepreneurship and Social Media. Additionally, we target folks who have shown interest in the event with messages saying: “There is still time to RSVP.” These have been effective.
  6. Local Partnerships: The most important part of the tour is the local partnerships to execute these events. Having these events with a local entity, mostly chambers, gives us added credibility as we go into a town to talk. We are also providing in demand content which in turn helps the chamber seem more valuable to their members.  It is a win-win for sure!

We have a few more stops left and we hope to see you come out to the BizTech Roadshow!

Client Spotlight: First Presbyterian Church

We recently completed a website for First Presbyterian Church of Jackson Tennessee. The staff and lay folks felt it was time for an internet Facelift so we went to work!

They already had a strong brand so we just needed to give the website an updated look. This included writing new copy, doing a photo shoot on a Sunday, and recording a new welcome message from the pastor. It also led them to work on a new system to stream and log their services. This component was done in partnership with Cody Cunningham.

First Pres takes their history seriously so we worked that into the new site. We also worked to streamline the menu navigation and bring a responsive element to the site which had been lacking. We also built the site on WordPress to make content updates easy for the staff as they continue their progress into the future.

Check it out here. 

 

Book Review: End of Advertising

For Christmas, my little brother gave me The End of Advertising by Andrew Essex.

I would recommend this book for someone who has worked in the advertising world for a long time or whose thoughts on advertising stem from years ago.

As a digital native and Gary Vaynerchuck fan, the concepts in the book are preaching to the choir. But I am regularly surprised by people I speak with that are way behind the times when it comes to advertising.

To Andrew’s credit, he is a storied and successful advertising man. But he is wise enough to see the changes coming and is writing this book, I think, to help awaken his colleagues to the modern realities of today.

One of the core concepts that most people to figure out is that appointment TV no longer exists. What is appointment TV? It’s TV that people watch at certain time every night/week and, therefore, are there to watch the commercials, too. But with the exception of live sports, almost no one watches live tv anymore, and almost no one watches TV commercials. (With the huge exception being the SuperBowl, even Gary Vee says that it is one of the best deals in advertising!)

This applies also to banner ads and increasingly all forms of digital marketing. Interruption-based marketing, as Seth Godin would refer to it, is becoming less and less effective. Most large companies are just riding the Titanic down to the bottom.

The second thing I loved about this book was the case study of CitiBike. Here is a link to an article Andrew wrote that gives a shorter version of the account in the book.

The big point is here: the next generation doesn’t want to watch your interruption ads. How your company deals with that will determine a lot about how your company succeeds in the next 40 years.

Behind the Scenes: Jackson Chamber Carpool Karaoke

This was a fun one!

 

The Jackson Chamber is one of my favorite clients. They like to have fun, are pretty laid back, get me the information I need, and let me be creative with our projects. That makes for a great combo of traits. When we got together to talk about ideas for this year’s annual celebration staff video, Alexis and Jill decided they wanted to go after one of the trendy styles – a Carpool Karaoke video.

We started with research. I googled and googled how James Corden films his videos and came across this great video from the Met Film School with some excellent tips.  We then set a date to record and I went over to LensRentals.com (A Great Tennessee based Firm!) and had 3 GoPro Hero 6s and suction cup mounts sent over for the shoot.

Normally with Carpool Karaoke, Corden and a guest(s) sing different parts from a lot of songs. This is great if you have two celebrities who are ready to ham it up on camera. We saw it as a weakness during research. If you do not have Adele and Corden, sometimes it can drag a bit depending on the guests. To counteract this, we decided to have everyone sing the same song, which would allow us to use the most entertaining bits of each group, to help keep the video funny and fast moving.

 

Disclaimer: I did not pick the song. But the choice worked out great. It was somewhat ironically funny and had enough vocal parts that people could get into it to add some hilarity to the shoot.

We shot in one afternoon. Starting at lunchtime, we borrowed the executive director’s SUV and set up our 4 cameras. I had a GoPRO Hero Session which we mounted on the sunroof to get a good view of the folks in the back seat. (This turned out to be important because 4-Runners are built like tanks and you can’t see the back seat from the front.) GoPros provided the right size and camera abilities for this task, and the Hero6’s got pretty good audio. (I did have an H4N recording but something went wrong and it failed me, which has happened on a few occasions.)

Each group went through and we had a fun time.

The editing was tricky. I needed to put four cameras in sync and then edit all 8 different groups into one final video edit. To accomplish this, I synced the four cameras based on the 8 groups. I could usually do this by finding a clap or a door closing as my match point. Then, I found each song start in the car and synced it to the audio track. I then had all 8 groups synced to the audio at the start of their own timeline. This allowed me to see approximately what time I made each cut to bring a group into the main timeline and make the next cut at the same time spot on the timeline on a different set of people. This made editing take just 4-5 hours instead of probably 8-9.

I believe in content marketing. With a shoot this intricate and fun, I decided it would be worth the investment to have someone there to take photo and video of this event for Adelsberger Marketing. The photos throughout this article are from Ricky Santos and the behind the scenes video is from Brooks Neely.

Here’s the video:

 

Behind the Scenes: Carpool Karaoke with the Jackson Chamber from Kevin Adelsberger on Vimeo.

Here is the Carpool Karaoke video:

Social Media Win: Burger King Explains Net Neutrality

I always find it interesting when a company takes a stand on a social issue. Even more so when these social issues don’t seem to directly effect them. Recently, Burger King released a video attacking the repeal of Net Neutrality. It would seem, based on emails I received from my Congress people, that Burger King understands how the internet works and how important net neutrality is to business growth for everyone, not just for a few telecom companies.

The great thing about this is how social the video went. Because it was a hot social topic, news outlets and the vast majority of the internet who supports net neutrality, latched onto this great description of how to explain Net Neutrality to people.

 

It also led to long comment discussions which is great for the Facebook algorithm. So without an insane level of production or without spending a lot of money on advertising, Burger King dominated social media for this and created a huge win!

Client Spotlight: La Petite Boutique

Queen Bees

A few months ago I had the opportunity to do a photo shoot for La Petite Boutique. La Petite is a start-up boutique here in Jackson and we believe they are going to be around for a long time. We love taking photos for places that have customers who like them enough to be in the photos! 

This shoot took place at the at White Oak Farms, which provided a great location to work with these ladies. Tabitha, the owner, came prepared with multiple outfits for each model. The number of models and outfits allowed us to constantly be shooting as others were getting ready as the shots were being taken.

The natural light did us some favors. The White Oak Farms has some great windows and the grass was still green then! Golden hour is the best. Tabitha had these photos to use on social and in her print ads at the end of the year as she was ramping up for holiday sales!Â