http://www.psfk.com Your Go-To Source For New Ideas And Inspiration Wed, 15 Feb 2012 14:30:50 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.2.1 http://www.psfk.com/2009/06/media-arts-mondaysbeyond-the-banner.html Mon, 15 Jun 2009 15:56:25 +0000 Online media can be a real paradox—an environment that represents such a wealth of creative opportunity, yet has for so long been a slave to the banner ad. Buttons, leaderboards, skyscrapers—the challenge to advertisers has been to cram as much creativity as they can into awkward shapes and sizes. Online ads have been more about geometry than creativity. But more brands are rewriting the rules of online ads by growing the dimensions of their ideas beyond the traditional banner or video. Of course bigger is not always better—a bad idea is a bad idea in any size.  But with aRead more...]]> http://www.psfk.com/2009/06/media-arts-mondayscause-marketing-with-a-social-twist.html Mon, 08 Jun 2009 18:37:44 +0000 With the Internet’s ability to empower individuals, social media platforms have become powerful forces for change and community action. Social media interconnects millions of people at any given point providing everyone with a megaphone that can be heard far and fast. While companies conventionally buy media and hire PR agencies to tell people about their charitable efforts, recently Adweek reported on a different kind of media tactic to help people discover and disseminate the good deeds of brands. More brands are tapping into people’s do-gooder impulses to spread their charitable messages through P2P endorsement. Giving the supported charity a donationRead more...]]> http://www.psfk.com/2009/06/goodbye-360-degrees-hello-365-days.html Mon, 01 Jun 2009 19:13:04 +0000 There’s no such thing as a captive audience. Gone are the days of neat and discrete moments in time where advertisers talked to target audiences. Today’s is a culture in constant motion. And the dizzying array of platforms, constant connectivity and ever-increasing speed of information has left the ad industry out of sync with its audience. People don’t live in quarterly campaigns, nor do they distinguish communication channels. They expect faster and constant communication with their brands across more media platforms and conversations. Every month, week, day, on the hour. It’s now about how fast brands can move, how relevantRead more...]]> http://www.psfk.com/2009/05/media-arts-mondaysperiodicals-worth-paying-for.html Mon, 18 May 2009 18:32:48 +0000 “Information wants to be free.” It’s the unofficial motto of the free-content movement and the populist opinion of a society that lives through and makes a living out of the free information that’s a mouse click away. We’re all used to traveling quite a distance on the information highway without any tollbooths. So for marketers today (especially in an economic downturn where every expenditure is scrutinized), expensive subscriptions to trade pubs have become easy targets for the company chopping block. Here are some periodicals beyond the standard list of industry pubs that we think are still well worth the investment.Read more...]]> http://www.psfk.com/2009/05/media-arts-mondays-data-visualization-tools.html Mon, 11 May 2009 18:19:03 +0000 Everything is information and information is everything. It’s the mantra of marketing in an age where people are constantly creating collectible data—all the things we do, say, use, buy, click and share are data points in the graphs of our lives. But in an increasingly visual society, pie charts and bar charts can’t begin to do justice to this wealth of information there is to digest now. Data visualization tools are helping to change the ways we look at information and audiences. While a lot of these are just plain fun to look at, there is far more potential thanRead more...]]> http://www.psfk.com/2009/05/media-arts-mondays-authentic-advocacy.html Mon, 04 May 2009 14:26:46 +0000 People expect companies to do more than just sell stuff. They want to know what you stand for, what choices you make as a result and what difference that could make in the world. So when it comes to people making their brand choices, Cause Marketing can be a tiebreaker.  Almost 80% of Americans are more likely to switch to the brand supporting a good cause over a competitor with the same price and quality. But Cause Marketing is not just about photo opportunities, oversized checks and warm fuzzies. It can be an opportunity to turn commercial interest into realRead more...]]> http://www.psfk.com/2009/04/media-arts-mondays-rethinking-reduce-reuse-recycle.html Mon, 27 Apr 2009 17:10:38 +0000 Reduce, reuse, recycle — we’ve all heard it a million times. It was the simple mantra that marked the mainstream arrival of the environmental movement. But from this clever catchphrase has grown such a cacophony of “green noise” and green-washed marketing that people have gotten overwhelmed by the right things to do. However, since 83% of people say they would change their consumption habits to make tomorrow’s world a better place, brands still have an incredible influence on environmental change. Maybe a return of the three Rs is just the point of reference people need to get some new perspectiveRead more...]]> http://www.psfk.com/2009/04/media-arts-mondays-game-changing-sponsors.html Mon, 20 Apr 2009 14:40:49 +0000 For most of us, sports touch our lives on a daily basis. We play sports, watch sports on TV, read about sports in the newspapers, talk to friends about them, buy merchandise and attend sporting events. Sports take us away from our daily routines and entertain us. But while people realize that sports need sponsors (in fact, 74% actually think sponsorship is good), their corporatization can move them away from their fans. With ticket prices sky-rocketing, hospitality areas taking up all the good seats and every square inch of the arena emblazoned with logos, sponsorships are making sports less aboutRead more...]]> http://www.psfk.com/2009/04/media-arts-mondays-words-beyond-paper-and-pixels.html Mon, 13 Apr 2009 15:35:47 +0000 Art has always been a source of inspiration for the ad industry and continues to lead to new avenues for brand expression. If art imitates life, ads imitate art for good reason. Our talent is still about storytelling and words are still some of our most important tools, but technology continues to provide new canvases for bringing brand messages to life. While paper and pixels are the default solutions for marketers to get their words into the world, there is an exciting new frontier to explore at the intersection of art and technology. The examples shown illustrate that, in theRead more...]]> http://www.psfk.com/2009/04/media-arts-mondays-branded-iphone-apps.html Mon, 06 Apr 2009 18:37:06 +0000 As revolutionary as the iPhone was when it was introduced, the ultimate potential of this all-display device was realized when apps came along. Those amazing downloadable programs that sit on your screen are transforming the iPhone from a really great mobile phone into a device that can become virtually anything you need it to be. In the words of NY Times technology writer David Pogue: “they make the iPhone (or the iPod Touch) do absolutely amazing things…stunts a cellphone has no right to perform.”  And apps not only make the device more functional and fun, they make the iPhone aRead more...]]> http://www.psfk.com/2009/03/media-arts-mondays-multisensory-media.html Mon, 30 Mar 2009 15:04:22 +0000 Advertising, for the most part, works by appealing to people’s eyes and ears — 80% of all brand communication is audio or visual. And while mainstream ad media will probably always exist in people’s lives as mostly sight and sound, the way audiences make sense of their world is obviously a more holistic sensory experience. Taste is an important part of how people develop, well, their individual tastes and palates. Touch is how people connect with and attach to the physical world and affects people’s perceptions of value. And smell is an incredibly important part of memory and feelings, affectingRead more...]]> http://www.psfk.com/2009/03/media-arts-mondays-nonline-marketing.html Mon, 23 Mar 2009 14:46:45 +0000 Audiences don’t live above or below-the-line, and it has taken our industry too long to truly embrace a through-the-line approach. But with the explosive growth of the Internet and the need for a specialized craft, we were quick to draw another line to differentiate on- and off-line advertising. But today’s audiences don’t live in an on- or off-line world either – they live in a “nonline” world. The more people and technology advance, the less separated these two places become in our daily lives. People can hardly tell the difference anymore between when they are “on” and when they areRead more...]]> http://www.psfk.com/2009/03/media-arts-mondays-recession-fighting-incentives.html Fri, 20 Mar 2009 20:20:15 +0000 To spend or not to spend, that is the question that a lot of people find themselves asking more and more these days. And while people’s purchase decisions often change when they’re on a budget, the decisions are not always as simple as just comparing price tags. There are two sides to the customer value equation: what you pay and what you get. And though slashing prices can be a quick way to close the sale, most people are still willing to pay for the brands that add value by adding the extras that make it worth it—the assurance thatRead more...]]> http://www.psfk.com/2009/03/media-arts-mondays-eco-metering.html Fri, 20 Mar 2009 16:19:26 +0000 Let’s face it — people are starting to burn out on all the “going green” talk, especially from the brands that aren’t putting their money where their mouth is. Confused by a whole new green vocabulary and fed up with being told what to do (or more often, what not to do) consumers are quickly becoming eco-fatigued. But in this economic climate where consumers are making a lot more decisions by the numbers, there is a unique opportunity for the brands that allow people to calculate their impact on the environment and their pocketbook at the same time. Trendwatching coinedRead more...]]> http://www.psfk.com/2009/03/media-arts-mondays-design-thinking-human-centric-innovation.html Thu, 19 Mar 2009 21:33:58 +0000 People have always gravitated to things that are well designed. Design creates desire, but what good design means today is becoming far more than just face value. People expect more of the things they buy and use to serve a purpose; to actually solve a problem or to improve their situation, not just look nice. Good design is human-centric. It satisfies both the audience’s needs and desires, and good designers know how to put the audience experience first to get to ideas that are both solution and style. It’s called Design Thinking and it’s a way of thinking all brandsRead more...]]> http://www.psfk.com/2009/03/media-arts-mondays-measure-what-matters.html Thu, 19 Mar 2009 16:35:17 +0000 Since we treat people like an audience, not just a consumer, it changes the way we think about how to create ideas for our brands. But at the same time it must also change the way we think about measuring these ideas — particularly with the growing significance of social media. Audiences are not just exposed to marketing messages. They react, reject, discuss, share, contribute, create — a ripple effect of responses that conventional models for measuring advertising effectiveness tend to ignore. To truly measure the impact of our ideas, we need to shift from campaign metrics to customer motivations,Read more...]]> http://www.psfk.com/2009/03/media-arts-mondays-plain-speak.html Wed, 18 Mar 2009 21:14:58 +0000 Life today can be complicated. The accelerating pace of innovation, ideas and technology, and the pressure to keep up with it all in real time can make just getting by quite an effort. So, people don’t have the time or attention to go out of their way to understand things that are confusing. In fact, the more complicated something is, the greater the need for simpler ways of understanding it. Most people don’t want to have to master a new vocabulary or be able to speak like an expert—they just want to be talked to like they talk: in simple,Read more...]]> http://www.psfk.com/2009/03/media-arts-mondays-belief-driven-behavior.html Wed, 18 Mar 2009 16:06:03 +0000 In this age of ever-increasing product parity and marketing sameness, people form their opinions of a brand based on all the things it stands for—its values, its point of view, its “beliefs.” In the past, companies too often assumed that conveying these beliefs to their audience was limited to what they could put in an ad or a clever tagline—everything else was just business. But as people’s media habits become more diverse, more sophisticated and more “real time,” they expect a brand to be a lot more than just an occasional commercial break. And they are forming their opinions ofRead more...]]> http://www.psfk.com/2009/03/media-arts-mondays-the-spontaneity-strategy.html Tue, 17 Mar 2009 22:39:46 +0000 In today’s dynamic media landscape, people are living their lives at the speed of real time. News is expected to be up to the second, friends keep up with each others’ lives online, step by step and hour by hour, and the latest and greatest can change every time you “refresh the page.” It has created a culture where there is a lot of cache in knowing and being part of what’s current, and anything slightly out-of-date can feel awkwardly out of synch. And it’s not just newsrooms and networking sites that need to keep up; it’s an expectation thatRead more...]]> http://www.psfk.com/2009/03/media-arts-mondays-the-right-medium.html Tue, 17 Mar 2009 14:44:56 +0000 Every medium that people use to communicate has a specific language, a unique vernacular, a tone, a set of rules, and an end-user experience that people take into account when they choose to use them. For example, there are things someone might say to a friend online that they would never say on the phone; there are things they would put in an e-mail that they would never put in a text message. It’s become second nature in our media-savvy society to always know where and how to “say it best.” Without really thinking about it, people use different mediaRead more...]]> http://www.psfk.com/2009/03/media-arts-mondays-just-noticeable-difference.html Mon, 16 Mar 2009 20:54:20 +0000 Just Noticeable Difference (jnd) is a scientific term that describes the minimal amount of change in a  stimulus it takes to be perceived.  For example, how much louder does a sound have to get or how much  heavier does an object have to be for you to notice the difference? But it may also be a good way to think about the dynamic between audiences and brands. Psychologists have suggested that as much as 95 percent of human behavior is controlled by the unconscious mind; we are creatures of habit that learn quickly to tune out what we don’t need.Read more...]]> http://www.psfk.com/2009/03/media-arts-mondays-brand-surface-area.html Mon, 16 Mar 2009 19:28:07 +0000 For audiences, brands are simply personal collections of events that make up a total overall experience. It’s a real-time running tally of the things people feel, whether good, bad or indifferent, at every point of contact with a brand, every exposed surface. But most of the time and money spent on marketing is focused on just a handful of media and at specific moments in time. What people hear gets quickly forgotten unless they can see it for themselves in all the ways a brand actually behaves in its daily life—the obvious but often forgotten little places that make aRead more...]]>