Category: Rich Media & Video

If you can start a work week with a reference to the first MTV video ever aired…well you just should.

Seems that a different kind of video is the new new thing - online video contests. Nate Elliott over at The Forrester Blog Interactive Marketing Professionals wrote a post outlining which marketers are using online video contests (more than 20% of interactive marketers!), why they’re using them, good examples of well-executed contests, and the pros and cons of doing them.

We always loved show and tell when we were a wee one. Showing off our Barbie collection, or our jar of fireflies, or the souvenir snow globe from the family vacation was always so exciting.

And you know what? It still is, that is If you think selling more stuff is exciting. And you wouldn’t be reading our blog if you didn’t…

Well, at least one company has proven that show ‘n tell works. Can’t argue with an increase of 35% in conversions!

Prospects need a hefty dose of risk-relievers before plunking down the cash. And much like the door-to-door vacuum salesmen of yesteryear, a product demo can be the ultimate closer.

A new report released by eMarketer shows that using online video to make sales is picking up pace in ecommerce. And for good reason. The number of consumers who watch retail videos is on the rise—up 40% year over year—and online retailers are responding by making video a priority for their sites.

So drop some mud on the rug and show how your product is the best of the best. Or better yet, put someone else’s product in your blender:

UPDATE: Caught a newsletter yesterday from Doug Mack, CEO of Adobe Scene7, that touched on this very same subject. He pointed readers to two retailers using video effectively on their sites—Cloudveil and Littlewoods. Both are worth a look.

There was a whole lot of hype prior to the release of Flash CS4 that stressed a new suite of tools that would change how people used the program. I got to looking around at some of the more reliable posts, and decided to upgrade my home machine a couple of weekends ago (I upgraded from CS3 for $199). I have been porting some of my AS3 projects to the 10 player and making a few experiments. Here are some of the top reasons why CS4 Flash is worth the upgrade.

User Interface Modes:

At first glance there are many changes to Flash with the release of its new version. They have taken the idea of perspectives from Eclipse and created a toggle-based system of layouts of UI that lets you choose between coder and designer perspectives with ease. Many elements have remained the same, and that to me is key in growing a user interface. Make it better each time but don’t force the user to have to re-learn a whole new software.

The choice a user has are as such:

Design mode: Name says it all, a set of pallets and panels that help you along if you are making vector art, designing views, etc. Very cool all access layout. Solid.

Animation mode: Now this is so freaking cool, it deserves its own post. For the last few versions of Flash animation has moved towards a code heavy approach. I have no problem with that, but working in the IDE vs. creating animations in pure Action-script has separated allot of designers who have no background in coding from making killer animations in the IDE. Rotation, horizontal “stepping”, and a myriad of other complaints have been thrown at Adobe to make better in the IDE. Well, they have listened and I expect that we shall see some of the coolest flash ever coming out with the release of the the new CS4 Flash. Flash now has a motion panel that lets you get down and create Object based animations , rather then keyframe based operations. This gives control to alter the animation on every level. Once a animator has the motion just right, he or she can save that motion as a custom motion preset and apply it to any object in the future. The result saves an XML file that can also be applied to any display object.

Developer: Okay, so after spending the last three or so years in the Eclipse IDE, I had though I would never return to open my code in Flash again. For what ever reason Adobe finally came very close to a UI solution that will make most people very happy. Code collapse: Hide code from view by selection or tag so you can focus more easily on the code you are developing. Code hinting has been improved considerably, as well as really easy access to list of all common classes and all of their public methods can be accessed from a intuitive drop down from the action script editor panel. I have yet to use this through a whole project and am hesitant to give up Eclipse, but I will try it for at least one job and see if its is all that it seems. I will go into the many de-bugging enhancements in future posts.

Classic: This is a throwback to the CS3 version of panel tiling, if this is the space that you are most comfortable in then this is your perspective.

Essential: More like the Classic perspective, just a reordering of the panels,with timeline on the bottom.

Text Format API :

This, to me, is one of the strongest reasons for making the upgrade to CS4. Adobe introduced this at Adobe max this year and it is awesome. For years Flash has come so short when it comes to text formatting. For at least one out of three jobs that come down the pipes clients want something that flash cannot deliver, the same formatting and layout options as is available with HTML/CSS. Creating “newspaper” like text layouts that flow from one column to the next was almost impossible, with out creating some really solid code. Recently I was doing a project for a bank and I ran into the flash nightmare of super and subscript needs, those tools were just not available. Now the Text Format API supports both script types and can toggle anytime using the same font, as long as it is a unicode Open Type or True Type font. If you have ever been in that position you know that this simple thing is a major advance.

Another common nightmare is localization, or as some call, internationalization, a word I think that is just too darn long. Of course, every major company wants a web presence that approaches language from a global perspective, but even if you port you data to Japanese or Hebrew, you still may have formatting issues that can cause confusion and hassle. This text API builds in Left To Right, Right to Left and so on. They considered much when taking on this project and delivered more then any developer would expect from client ware. Big upgrade. From the design perspective, once you have the layout as you like this text component is a display object that can be animated and mangled at will.

Although this API does not ship with CS4 Flash, and is a beta, it still can save designer/developer hours and give that person move abilities then was every possible before for creating liquid text layouts. The download is available from Adobe and is distributed not just for the CS4 Flash IDE, but as well for all AS3 environments such as Flex 4 (Gumbo). On many levels this API parallels In-Design and Illustrators Text engine.

A few features of the new Text Format API

* Bidirectional text, vertical text and over 30 writing systems including Arabic, Hebrew, Chinese, Japanese, Korean,Thai, Lao, the major writing systems of India, and others.

* Selection, editing and flowing text across multiple columns and linked containers, and around inline images

* Vertical text, Tate-Chu-Yoko (horizontal within vertical text) and justifier for East Asian typography

* Rich typographical controls, including kerning, ligatures, typographic case, digit case, digit width and discretionary hyphens

* Cut, copy, paste, undo and standard keyboard and mouse gestures for editing

* Rich developer APIs to manipulate text content, layout, markup and create custom text components.

In the Future I will be getting down to the basics on feature enhancements and workflow integration that could help our company and every other company manage projects better from concept to completion.

Future installments of this post will include:

Inverse Kinematics Chaining Support

Movie Clip Spray Brush (Procedural modeling with Deco )

H.264 Video Codec Support (mobile phones to 1080p)

3D Transform Support

Object-based animation

Metadata (XMP) support

Motion Editor Overview

Get flashy. Employing Flash and other rich media can give your customers a case of the oohs-and-ahhs. The Dutch department store Hema took a seemingly simple page of everyday products and created a fanciful display of Flash genius. By the number of times this reviewer has received this link, its safe to say it’s a worldwide hit.

If you liked this… E-commerce has provided marketers with a wealth of customer data never before imagined. If your Web site creates an intelligent (and responsible) recommendation system, the result can be fantastic. Netflix and the iTunes Store use recommendation systems remarkably well.

Communicate touch and feel. Customers seek meaning beyond the base-level selling proposition. Help your customers visualize how the product will benefit their lives. Try a 360-degree-view photo tour, video of your product in use, a full-screen view or colorization options.

Set up the scene. Are you selling a barbeque grill or a sunny day spent with good friends? Take your visitor to an aspirational setting. This can be achieved online with interactive environments that show valuable content and products. AT&T created the AT&T blue room — a micro site that pulses cool and connected. Visitors can check out exclusives on music, sports, movies and more, all the while seeing AT&T ads for DSL broadband and other related services.

Get your blog on. Regularly update tips, trends and special offers in a conversational manner on a blog. You don’t have to hide the fact that your people write it — as long as they’re entertained and informed, customers will come back. And of course, you can cross-sell your product. Wal-Mart does a wonderful job of maintaining a company blog.

Let them be heard. User-generated content is at the core of Web 2.0. If customers rate and review products on your Web site, tell your visitors about it. They can find out which products have the best reviews and give feedback on prior purchases. Amazon.com is an exemplary model of user-generated content at work.

Use personalized URLs. PURLs — Web pages filled with merchandise based on the individual’s past purchase behavior — are proven to engage customers at a higher rate. eBay has created millions of unique PURLs that give up-to-the-minute deals on relevant products.

Remember e-catalogs. A hybrid vehicle, e-catalogs mix the page-flipping catalog experience with the click-and-buy e-commerce experience. Customers find the end result to be familiar, easy and fun. Additionally, the e-catalog can incorporate multimedia to enhance the customer’s product consideration experience.