USA Today’s new logo (right) is a modern take on its classic counterpart. Image via underconstruction.com

The massive USA Today media brand had a lot at stake when it launched a radically new design in print and on the web last month. People read USA Today because it’s familiar. The paper has been around for 30 years and this is its first major rebrand.

Back in 1982, when USA Today first introduced colour in newspapers, there were naysayers who thought it looked cluttered. Then, it became the norm. So no surprise that the brand is once again leading the way in newspaper design – particularly on the web.

Not a newspaper

The new USA Today website was designed by Fantasy Interactive. In an interview with Poynter, global creative director Anton Repponen says the paper’s previous web layout limited itself by trying to replicate the printed version. The new site looks like it was designed with tablet readers in mind, with large arrows to flip through pages and full-screen interactive ads that appear between stories. Repponen calls the website “a web-based app,” insisting “it is news, but it’s not a newspaper.”

The visuals dominate each section of the USA Today website. Arrows on each side of the screen allow users to easily flip through content on whatever device they’re using.

Major changes

USA Today discussed some of the changes in this video, but a few of the most notable changes include:

• A renewed focus on visuals. If you head over to the website, you will see that there are large images that dictate the design as well as ads that rotate on the landing page of certain sections. Publisher Larry Kramer explained in an interview that “the new design was driven largely by a desire to give advertisers a new type of digital canvas with which to work.”

The “cover view” feature lets users scroll through the cover images of each section.

• A “horizontal Web experience.” Users browse through various sections (travel, sports, etc.) horizontally, using arrows on either side of the screen, while using the scroll bar to browse vertically within each section. As Poynter put it, the “seamless flow creates a more continuous reading experience, unlike the abrupt stop and start of headline-driven reading.”

Click on one of the sections’ headlines and the story is opened in a pop out “layer,” rather than opening in a distinct page. The toolbar at the bottom of the page stays in place, and gives users options to share, print or comment on the story.

• No more breadcrumbs or “back” button. This was a risky move, and at first it’s a bit disorienting. When you click on a story it pops up as a new layer on top of the section it belongs to. There is also a toolbar at the bottom of the article, which remains in place even as you scroll through the story. Unlike most newspaper websites, the article pages layers prominently feature the author’s headshot and bio, adding a uniquely personal and social layer to the reading experience.

What do you think of USA Today’s web redesign? Is this a glimpse into the future of online content or just a trendy attempt at reviving an old media brand? Let us know in the comments below.

This surpasses both The Twilight Saga: New Moon as well as Spider-Man 3, making this the third-highest grossing premier weekend of all time. This shattered any predictions made by experts, and it left many wondering: How did they do it?

The answer, of course, lies in the marketing strategy.

The Hunger Games was made to be marketed

The mockingjay pin logo

The Hunger Games’ success can teach marketers about the importance of having a solid product. This is the reason that the book had such a large following in the first place. First, the story had an amazing logo. The mockingjay pin was used on the cover of the novel and become key to the branding of the film. In the novel, the pin stood for courage and spirit. Lionsgate knew what the logo meant to fans of the novel, and put it in every trailer, poster and ad.

Second, the novel puts a heavy emphasis on partnerships. Spoiler Alert: Although only one person was supposed to win the games, two came out victorious. The novel is full of instances where one person could not have survived without the other, and this is something that can transfer over into the marketing world.

Having partnerships with other companies can strengthen your brand. Although you may not want to sync up with your competition, working with a complementary brand could help bring you a new audience.

Actors Jennifer Lawrence and Liam Hemsworth

Marketing the movie

Aside from what the novel brought to the table, the film’s producers were able to create a few little marketing tricks of their own. Word-of-mouth became very important for those charged with marketing the film.
The film had different social media accounts for the different “districts,” or groups of people, that were described in the novel. If you wanted to see what one district thought about something in the news, all you had to do was head over to that district’s Twitter account.

Tributes: We welcome you. We salute your courage – and your sacrifice…

— The Capitol (@TheCapitolPN) March 28, 2012

PANEM ALERT: The Hunger Games Adventures are now open for all of Panem. Visit bit.ly/PlayTHGAdventu… & start exploring Panem today.

— The Capitol (@TheCapitolPN) March 30, 2012

Marketers also created social media quizzes that let fans find out which district he or she would live in if they were in The Hunger Games’ story world. Once again, bringing the story to life really worked. There was an element of interaction to this marketing tactic, and teens everywhere couldn’t seem to get enough (In case you were wondering, I would have lived in District 8).

Most importantly, the social accounts never gave away any scenes from the film. The integrity (and suspense) of the story was preserved.

If you were to read the novel, you would likely find many more marketing lessons that relate directly to your business. Unfortunately, you will likely be too wrapped up in the story to really
pay attention.

Perhaps the biggest surprise at the Academy Awards this year was French film The Artist taking home Best Picture, the most prestigious award at this most prestigious awards show. Even if you weren’t surprised The Artist won, you were surprised that you weren’t surprised The Artist won. And that’s because the film’s success spoke to some universal truths about what makes great content great.

About The Artist

In case you’re out of the loop, The Artist is directed by French filmmaker Michel Hazanavicius and stars actors Bérénice Bejo and Jean Dujardin, who also won the best actor title for his part in the film.

The film takes place in 1927 Hollywood and is both witty and fun. And the most surprising thing about the film: It’s almost completely silent.

The Academy wasn’t alone in praising the film. The Los Angeles Times called The Artist a “wonder of the age, as much a miracle as Avatar, though it comes at things from the totally opposite direction.” Twitter users weighed in with 140-character praises like “a silent film that left me speechless!” In other words, everybody seems to have fallen for The Artist.

What does this have to do with marketing?

Flashy, tech-powered films such as Transformers and Harry Potter were nominated in a few different Oscar categories, yet it was the silent film that took home five awards this year. There are a couple of important lessons here for marketers, businesses and content creators.

First, it’s possible to create something great without fancy toys or inflated budgets. Whether you’re working with digital or social or print, it all comes down to the content, not the platform.

Second, people still appreciate simple. The most up-to-date technologies are great, but sometimes they simply aren’t necessary to get a story across. Just because audiences are used to fancy tricks doesn’t mean that they don’t know great content when they see it.

What this all comes down to is that people still respond to quality. A great story is a great story. We tend to think that our world is full of people who can’t sit still to watch one commercial (thanks, TiVo) or read a newspaper ad. But maybe the problem is the content and not the audience.

The Artist’s producers took a risk and got it right. You can too.

As someone who used to work at a sports bar, I understand the chaos that occurs during the Super Bowl. I had the pleasure of working at Buffalo Wild Wings as a waitress in Chicago in 2007 when the Bears made it all the way to that last game. This was the first time in 21 years that our team made it, and boy did I underestimate the amount of excitement that was in store for me when I walked through those doors.

I was being high-fived and hugged by complete strangers as I tried to deliver mozzarella sticks, our usually-quiet phone systems were ringing off the hook, the wings were taken out of my hands before I even set down the plate, and I was hit several times with blowup footballs that my managers so kindly gave away to one of my tables. Needless to say, the sport has a following in North America.

Literally. The sport has a huge following on Twitter. Not only do the majority of the players and announcers have their own personal Twitter accounts, but the National Football League (NFL) has its own account with roughly 2,799,121 followers. In other words, social media has a big impact when it comes to the reputation of the game. Twitter works like a domino effect: The NFL could tweet something, and then one of their followers tweets it to their followers, and so on and so forth.

Fan and player interaction

Defensive Justin Tuck of the New York Giants. Image via nfl.com

As with any other big TV event these days, social media gives fans an opportunity to interact with others watching the game. This makes it more fun. When I think about my uncle who lives in a house with four football-hating women (even the dog is a girl), I think about how much he enjoys being able to trash-talk on Twitter. It’s a way for fans to connect (and compete) with others who are watching the game in a different place.

The interaction between fan and player has also changed, as players now have the ability to talk directly with fans via their personal accounts. For example, New England Patriots’ superstar quarterback Tom Brady can explain to fans (after the game) that the reason he fell at a pivotal moment is that an opponent grabbed his facemask. So social media is also an opportunity for athletes to maintain their own personal brands.

Watching it for the ads

Finally, we have those advertisements to discuss. Brands have been leveraging the Super Bowl, America’s biggest TV event, for years with blockbuster commercials and special Super Bowl deals. But brands have also begun to increase their social media efforts before, during, and after the game.

A scene from one of the five competing Doritos Super Bowl ads

Budweiser ran a campaign on Facebook that asks fans to guess Super Bowl scores and answer Super Bowl trivia in order to win special deals.

Pizza Hut bought a “promoted tweet” for #ReadySetHut so that Twitter followers would consider buying their product for the big game. Meanwhile, both Doritos and Pepsi let fans vote via Facebook on which commercial would air during the game.

In other words, whether or not you’re a fan, there are plenty of good reasons to watch the Super Bowl.

Check out our roundup of this year’s best Super Bowl ad campaigns.

Image courtesy of Daily Pic, via Flickr

Broadly speaking, there are three kinds of brands marketers should be aware of: personal brands, corporate brands and professional brands. And ­– to make things even more confusing – these three things are beginning to converge.

Brands brands brands

First, a summary of those three types of brands. A personal brand is simply a culmination of factors that make up an individual’s public image. This can include content on social networks (pictures, posts, interests, etc.), as well as anything in the media about that person.

Personal brands are not created; they just are. That is, most people don’t write something on a Facebook wall because they want others to think of them in a certain way; they do it because they want to, because it’s a reflection of who they really are.

A corporate brand is a culmination of factors that make up an organization’s public image, whether it’s an airline, a media company or a not-for-profit. While personal brands aren’t usually created on purpose, corporations spend lots of time and money cultivating their brands through ads, logos, mascots (ever seen the GEICO gecko?) and, of course, content.

A professional brand is a brand that’s created intentionally by an individual. For example, if a person wants the public to see them as an expert in their field, they can foster this perception through social media, blogging, guest posting or speaking gigs.

When the professional gets personal

Consider the following example, which was pretty common a few years ago. You’re launching a new product and decide to hire a PR firm to promote it. If you see that Joe Shmo will be in charge of the account, you’ll probably google Joe Shmo.

Once you find his Facebook profile you might see that he clearly stays out all night and spends all day complaining about work. This will give you a negative opinion of the company, and you’ll probably go in another direction.

Once people realized that their personal brands were affecting their corporate brands, they began to create a professional brand. They changed their names on Facebook and maintained two Twitter accounts. But it has become apparent that it’s pretty hard to keep these two brands separate. After all, it doesn’t take much for a prospective client or employer to connect the dots.

So where do we go from here?

From the organizational perspective, corporate brands need to be aware of the personal and professional brands of their employees because clients can (and do) look them up online. You should be including social network and Google searches in your employee background checks to see what kind of footprint your employees have online.

Although most people aren’t comfortable with a prospective employer snooping through their personal lives, any content they have put out for the world to see is fair game. That said, companies should be reasonable and not expect someone to be devoid of a personal life. If the candidate’s professional footprint is more prevalent than their personal one, then that person has done a good job maintaining his or her brand and will likely represent your company well.

From the individual perspective, it’s crucial that you create and cultivate a professional brand online. If you have some things out there you’d rather were hidden, there are a few things you can do to help cover them up: guest post on websites so that those articles come up first on search engine pages, change your name on your old social accounts, or set your social accounts to private.

Or better yet, don’t put anything out there that you wouldn’t want your clients or employer to see. Because they will.

Image courtesy of Matti Mattila, via Flickr

Whether you’re a rookie or a veteran in the digital content space, you’re probably aware that linking is important. But knowing that linking is important and learning how to use links correctly are two different things.

Although linking has been around since the dawn of the Internet age, the world of media and marketing is changing, and the nature and importance of the link is changing with it. Here’s what digital marketers and content creators need to know about linking in 2012.

Panda updates and social media

Google recently launched Google Panda, an overhaul of its secret sauce search-ranking algorithm. And because Google Panda constantly changes what it considers a “high quality site,” brands can now no longer spend time factoring in black hat linking tactics like plugging in unrelated keywords or creating a website specifically for a keyword to improve their rankings.

Social media has also changed the game for brands because consumers are now getting their information from many different sources. Although linking is still extremely important, companies have to worry about getting their brand noticed in more places than just a search engine.

Internal vs. external linking

Digital content, whether in the form of a corporate website or blog post, should have a balance of internal links (links to other pages in the same site) and external links (links to other websites).

Once content goes live on the web it’s “crawled” by search engine bots or “spiders.” If you can use internal linking effectively then these bots will be able to easily move from one webpage to the next, boosting your SEO in the process.

Internal linking will also improve “time on site”, a measure of how compelling or “sticky” your content is. Easy navigation won’t just help bots get around; it will keep human beings on your site too.

External linking includes links on your site to other locations on the web as well as links back to your site. The best way to generate incoming links is to create quality content that others want to reference – simple as that. Another way is to write guest posts for relevant sites, demonstrating your thought leadership in a given industry (and getting a link-back in the process).

Your content will look good in the eyes of Google if other reputable websites reference your page through linking. This will then increase your PageRank and help your website slowly make its way to the top of the Google search engine.

Incoming links also have an important promotional value. If another website links to your content, you’ve engaged that site’s community – introducing your content and brand to a whole new audience.

Linking responsibly

If used correctly, the combination of internal and external linking will provide your brand’s website or blog with increased SEO success as well as increased traffic and overall interest in your site.

Don’t forget that the words you choose to link to are important. Many brands spend lots of time on keyword research. Although all linking is worthwhile, linking to specific keywords like HR software (see what we did there?) can up the benefits of linking even more.

In the end, linking is the key to getting your website ranked in organic search – in other words, that number one Google spot you’ve had your eye on. And in turn, linking will help connect your brand to communities and customers you never expected to reach.