The Sparkbeat | Sparksheet

9 Mar 2012

Sparksheet @ SXSW 2012

2012/03/09 · Sophie Woodrooffe · Responses (3)

SXSW Interactive kicks off today, and in case you opted to pack instead of plan (or you’re planning to follow the conversation over Twitter), we’ve got you covered.

For the uninitiated, SXSW Interactive is one of the biggest digital media and marketing conferences in the world, drawing thousands of participants and hosting over a thousand sessions.

If you’re staying home, these guides will give you a glimpse into the social media, tech, and marketing trends we should expect to encounter in the near future. Twitter and Foursquare exploded after SXSW in years past, so it’s safe to say that it’s worth paying attention to what’s happening.

This guide from .net magazine provides a broad list of 10 must-see sessions, including Designing for Context (Friday) and a panel discussion called The Curators and the curated (Saturday).

Matthew Knell, the social media director for AOL put together a list of sessions he will be attending for Huffington Post. It’s full of sessions that appeal to those interested in the intersection of business and social.

And in case you’d like to build your own guide from scratch, check out Lanyrd’s unofficial guide and schedule builder. They’ll even email you content from sessions you missed… perhaps while hitting up one of SXSW’s countless parties (here’s a list of startups to be featured in the now annual Startup Crawl).

Sparksheet’s editor, Dan Levy, will be on site for the five-day conference, tweeting and blogging about his adventures. If you’re looking for information about content, tech, and social media, make sure to follow Sparksheet on Twitter.

8 Mar 2012

Women for the Win: International Women’s Day Roundup

2012/03/08 · Sophie Woodrooffe · Responses (10)

As you might have gleaned from today’s Google Doodle, March 8 marks International Women’s Day. Since 1908, IWD has been used as a platform to build awareness around women’s issues like pay equity, fair labour practices and reproductive rights.

In celebration of IWD, here’s a roundup of links, news, and videos that are sparking conversations about women’s issues.

Perhaps the biggest (read: most controversial) social media story relating to IWD is the “Rock The Lips” campaign, backed by advertising agency AKQA.

With a presence on Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, and more, the campaign invites women to upload photos of themselves wearing bright red lipstick and share them on whatever social network they use. The goal is to raise awareness by getting over 1,000,000 women to upload photos.

The Washington Post warns that because the campaign doesn’t link to the IWD site, followers of the campaign “may never learn the substance of the women’s issues being raised.”

In the run-up to IWD, AdWeek published The Women’s Issue, composed of a series of articles that provide a consumer-centric breakdown of women in three age groups, “The Indie Woman,” “The Mom Achiever,” and the “Alpha Goddess.”

The issue is chock full of stats and trends (who knew that women aged 55-65 spend more on consumer electronics than their Gen Y counterparts?). Forbes, however, had a thing or two to say about the depiction, suggesting that despite AdWeek’s optimism, the “Millenial Ms.” has “a lot more on her plate than sex, social media and shopping.”

image via Forbes, via Wikipedia

Forbes’ article paints a more even-toned portrait in response to AdWeek’s issue, including stats that tell a less rosy story (“83 percent of college-aged women diet, regardless of their weight”).

A recent post by Fast Company let women do the talking, featuring advice for women looking to climb the corporate ladder by peers who’ve already made it to the top. The advice (“go where the opportunities are”) probably works just as well for men.

You may or may not have seen this hugely popular TED Interactive presentation by Sheryl Sandberg, chief operating officer of Facebook, but in case you haven’t, her message is as relevant as ever: When it comes to leaders in the workplace, we need more women.

Speaking of careers, the hugely successful Little Pink Book, a free digital content provider designed for businesswomen, is getting a boost from top-notch brands. PR Newswire reports that in celebration of International Women’s Day, Coca-Cola and FedEx will be running marketing campaigns on the site.

Little Pink Book screenshot

Finally, for information about women in politics, check out the guardian’s coverage. The Third Annual Women in the World Summit will be kicking off in New York today, with speakers Hillary Rodham Clinton and Nobel Laureate Leymah Gbowee in attendance.

7 Mar 2012

Jeff Jarvis Presents His Public Parts

2012/03/07 · Sophie Woodrooffe · Responses (5)

Jeff Jarvis speaking about his latest book, "Public Parts." Image by the American Library Association, via Flickr

Professor, media consultant, prolific blogger, social media advocate and public speaker. It’s safe to say that Jeff Jarvis wears many hats.

This February, the acclaimed internet intellectual came to McGill University in Montreal to speak about internet privacy, an area he has been thinking a lot about lately.

The talk, Protecting our Tools of Publicness, summarized the major points from his recently published book, Private Parts: How Sharing in the Digital Age Improves the Way We Work and Live.

An ardent defender of an open internet, Jarvis spoke about his worry that government regulation could stifle the web’s potential to improve our lives. As he explained: “We need to protect our great tool of publicness because we don’t know what it is yet.”

Even the terms “public” and “private” mean different things in the internet age, said Jarvis. This, in part, is because the web is changing the way we share information. But as Jarvis suggested, government regulations don’t reflect this shift.

He explained that we’re moving in the direction of complete transparency, so fighting to limit the ways information is shared is akin to sticking tires on a horse-drawn carriage. Society has moved on.

Here comes the revolution

Offering Gutenberg’s invention of the printing press as an analogy to enforce his argument, Jarvis explained that thanks to Gutenberg a lot more people became literate and a lot of political fallout happened as a result.

Sure there was bloodshed, but as the story goes, the printing press also gave rise to the middle class, public education, and unprecedented cultural self-awareness.

But no one really appreciated the impact of the invention until much later – at least one hundred years later.

Fast forward five centuries and here we are, at the cusp of another information revolution, said Jarvis.

As he explained, where once there were clusters of experts who wrote books on highly specialized topics, now there’s a network that enables instantaneous information flow. Everything is linked. Knowledge isn’t hierarchical anymore, but is instead remixed, curated and most of all, open to the public.

Throughout the talk, Jarvis emphasized that for better or worse, the internet has transformed the way we think about information, meaning our norms are changing, too.

These changes are pushing us towards a new kind of public, of which Jarvis is a fierce evangelist. “We should be open by default, secret by necessity,” and that’s true for government, corporations and our personal lives.

So instead of trying to limit the technological potential of the web through regulation, Jarvis argued that we should focus on how people and institutions choose to use that information.

For Jarvis, we’re only beginning to appreciate the implications of our changing norms. From governmental transparency (check Sweden’s national Twitter feed for proof) to social corporations, the curtain is being lifted.

Like it or not, he concluded, publicness is the new social norm, and limiting technology through regulation is akin to stopping the presses.

28 Feb 2012

Brand Carnival: Marketing Mardi Gras from New Orleans to Rio

2012/02/28 · Sophie Woodrooffe · Responses (8)

A samba school dancer at Rio Carnival 2012. Image by Leandro Neumann Ciuffo, via Flickr

Booze, bunda and bright shiny objects. That’s modern-day Mardi Gras in a nutshell.

Theologically, the celebration heralds the season of lent, when Christians practice repentance, prayer and almsgiving for the 40 days leading up to Easter. Across the world, Mardi Gras marks the last moments of unrestrained revelry before the season of austerity kicks in.

In some parts of the world (read: Rio de Janiero and New Orleans) the event is a full-blown tourist attraction worth hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue.

But here’s the interesting part. Since it’s a Christian holiday, unlike say, the World Cup, many cities prohibit sponsorship, meaning brands have to find special ways of inviting themselves to the party.

New Orleans Mardi Gras

Mardi Gras is an enormous moneymaker for the struggling city of New Orleans. Because the event is free, it’s hard to know exactly how much money it brings into The Big Easy, with estimates ranging from $144 to $500 million.

As far as official sponsors go, since it’s a Christian holiday, there’s no such thing. The one exception was in 2006 after Hurricane Katrina when Glad was brought on as a sponsor to help with cleanup.

But that hasn’t stopped Zatarain’s, a local brand selling Cajun-inspired food, from going guerilla. Zatarain invited a bevy of lifestyle bloggers to act as brand ambassadors during the celebration, and encouraged them to use the hashtag #JazzItUpNOLA every time they tweeted. The company also created a Facebook app and playlist on Pandora.

LGBT love in Sydney

Sydney’s Mardi Gras festival is one of the biggest LGBT celebrations in the world, with over 300,000 spectators alone attending the parade. And gay-friendly brands are paying attention.

Durex, for instance, released a print ad campaign in the lead up to the festival, with posters popping up in gay bars across town.

Not exactly subtle, they feature a giant… rooster with the tagline, “Dress yours up for Mardi Gras.”

Caaarnaaaavaaaaal!

For five straight days, millions of people flood the streets of Rio de Janeiro (and other Brazilian cities) to cut loose at the world’s biggest street party.

Given the proportion and reputation of the event, Carnival is one of the few Mardi Gras celebrations that does have sponsors.

YouTube made a splash at Carnival this year, devoting a channel to the festivities and sponsoring live performances at the event.

Celebrities also flocked to the city, some of them as brand ambassadors. Jennifer Lopez, for example, was invited to watch the Samba contest as local beer company Brahma’s brand ambassador.

In the run-up to Carnival, Lopez was featured in a Brahma ad campaign. The commercials included the neologism “Sapucar,” which, according to AdAge, means “have lots of fun at Carnival.” Apparently the term has since become a regular in the lexicon of Carnival revelers.

Here’s one of the spots (it’s in Portuguese, but the images say it all)

7 Feb 2012

Behind the Cover: Beckoning Cat

2012/02/07 · Dan Levy · Responses (4)

Sharp-eyed Sparksheet readers may recognize the cloned feline in our latest Feature Article “cover image” as Maneki Neko, the “beckoning cat” whose ceramic likeness is seen in restaurants and shops around the world. They may also be wondering why we used a Japanese icon to illustrate a story about China’s copycat brands.

It turns out that the so-called “lucky cat” is frequently mistaken as being Chinese in origin due to its popularity in Chinese communities. But, of course, we’re worldly enough at Sparksheet to know a Japanese cat when we see it. In fact, our adoption of Maneki Neko for this story was no accident at all. Here’s the story behind the cover image, from the mouth of Sparksheet Creative Director Charles Lim, who created it:

So when we first take a look at illustrating a Feature Article, it’s important to have some idea or concept before attempting a visual execution. Pushing pixels around without any solid idea often results in the ultimate shame: banality.

For this piece, we looked at the word “copycat,” and eventually honed in on the Lucky Cat (Maneki Neko). Yes, we were aware that the cat’s origin is Japanese, but it made sense within the context of counterfeit brands, and how Chinese communities adopted the sculpture to the point where it’s frequently mistaken as the original. We turned the cat into a repeating background, and gradually degraded the quality and alignment until it looked like a bad photocopy.

Choosing a suitable type is always informed by the article’s content, so in this case we used a trendy condensed Franklin and used its industrial-ness to contrast with the humanity of the Pigeon font underneath. To reinforce the copycat theme even more, we offset the type using a slighly greenish neon yellow and a warm magenta, which vaguely recall China’s national colours – but not quite.

Check out the article: Shenzhai: China’s Brand Copycats.

3 Feb 2012

Super Bowl Ad Roundup

2012/02/03 · Sophie Woodrooffe · Responses (11)

Super Bowl commercials have always been hyped, but these days brands are looking beyond TV to reach American football fans before, during, and after the biggest sports event of the year. From pre-game contests to post-game hangouts, social media has changed the game for Super Bowl advertisers.

The social Super Bowl

Goodbye Super Bowl on TV, hello Super Bowl online: NBC and Verizon Wireless are teaming up to provide live streaming of the game for the first time. But given that the 2010 Olympics and World Cup were both available on the net, the real question is: why the wait?

Another first is the social media command centre headquartered in downtown Indianapolis, the city hosting the event. For 15 hours each day a team of 20 will assist local fans and tourists with everything from finding parking spaces to restaurants – using channels like Facebook and Twitter to do it.

And then there’s mobile discovery company Shazam. Similar to how QR codes act as portals to digital content, the Shazam mobile app ‘listens’ to sound cues in the physical environment and directs users to content online.

The NY Times reports that nearly half of this year’s Super Bowl ads will be “Shazam enabled,” meaning more consumers will be directed to more content during commercial breaks (think coupons, free videos and gift cards).

Polar bear’s first word

Coca-Cola is doing its best to distract audiences from the game on whatever device they’re using to watch it.

On Sunday people can attend the Coke Polar Bowl event on Facebook or follow the bears’ real-time reactions on Twitter. It’s a bold move for the company – the bears have never had a chance to ‘speak’ before.

More buzz is coming from another precedent-setting move: Coke execs will be on-site at NBC studios to select which version their commercial to air. Will it be the bear with the Giants or Patriots insignia who “catches” the Coke bottle?

Ferris Bueller’s Pay Off

Everyone’s a sucker for nostalgia. That’s what brands Proctor & Gamble and Honda are betting on with their spots. If they pull it off, the recession-weary audience will enjoy revisiting some iconic moments in Super Bowl commercial history.

P&G are doing a re-make of Coke’s classic Super Bowl ad “Mean Joe Greene,” replacing the can of Coke with Downy.

Honda and actor Matthew Broderick team up for a long-awaited sequel of sorts to Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.

And Jerry Seinfeld dusts off some of his old Seinfeld catchphrases (and characters) in a spot for Nissan.

The Super Bowl is the biggest advertising event in the U.S., which means there is just too much content for one Sparkbeat post to cover. We haven’t mentioned VW’s “The Dog Strikes Back,” why Pepsi Max chose to go gimmicky, or whether GE’s decision to ditch celebrity glitz will pay off, for instance.

But given that most of these commercials already have millions of views on YouTube, and NBC’s post-game Google+ Hangout is already scheduled to discuss and decide which ad was best, it looks like we needn’t worry. Thanks social media – see you at the game.

23 Jan 2012

Sparksheet at Dx3 Canada

2012/01/23 · Dan Levy · Responses (3)

Update: Check out our Sparksheet review of Dx3, Digital De-Siloed: Five Lessons from Dx3 Canada 2012, plus photo roundups from Day 1 and Day 2 on the Dx3 Digest.

The Sparksheet team is heading to Toronto this week for Dx3 Canada, the first-annual trade show and conference about Canadian digital marketing, advertising and retail. The event takes place on Wednesday and Thursday at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre.

As Dx3’s official content partner, we launched a special micro-magazine – the Dx3 Digest – filled with original think pieces and Q&As with top execs at Canadian brands like Roots, The Bay, Freshbooks and Casale Media.

Sparksheet will also have its very own booth on the trade show floor where you’ll find us shooting video interviews and promoting our Sparksheet Events content services. We’ll also be covering the full slate of awesome Dx3 conference sessions, which were expertly curated by our good friend Ron Tite.

The trade show floor is open to all so if you’re in the neighbourhood make sure to stop by and say hello (you can register for free online).

Sparksheet readers are also entitled to a discount on Dx3 sessions: Use promo code “dx3sparksheet” when you sign up.

For topic-by-topic breakdowns of can’t miss sessions, check out our Dx3 Session Guides.

And to get to know Dx3’s big name exhibitors, speakers and stakeholders before the show, visit dx3.sparksheet.com

17 Jan 2012

What is SOPA?

2012/01/17 · Ilan Mester · Responses (0)

On Wednesday, Jan. 18, you will have to live without Wikipedia. That’s right, the English version of the popular online encyclopedia is going dark for a day. But more importantly, today marks the day in which a number of technology companies from the United States will fight over a pair of internet-regulation bills.

Wikipedia, Reddit and other prominent websites and online ventures are up in arms about two bills that are relatively similar: Stop Online Piracy Act and Protect IP (intellectual property) Act. Both bills are meant to tackle the issue of websites from abroad that offer pirated content.

Other major players, including Microsoft, oppose SOPA but won’t shut down services.

Forbes’ Paul Tassi commends websites like Reddit for blacking out, but he argues major corporations should follow suit.

“Rather, even though Reddit is a massive site, the industry needs a nuclear option to truly decimate SOPA once and for all,” he writes. “Titans like Google and Facebook need to have a similar blackout, which would reach an audience far, far wider than Reddit’s.”

Mashable’s Chris Heald says SOPA is dangerous. “If ever a bill was spaghetti, this is it,” he wrote. “If a programmer on my team wrote code as convoluted as this bill, I would fire him on the spot.”

GoDaddy originally backed SOPA, but the company later issued an apology.

“GoDaddy opposes SOPA because the legislation has not fulfilled its basic requirement to build a consensus among stake-holders in the technology and Internet communities,” Warren Adelman, GoDaddy’s CEO, said in a statement.

Organizations like the Entertainment Software Association (ESA) have also announced their support for SOPA. Below is an excerpt of the statement the company released:

“As an industry of innovators and creators, we understand the importance of both technological innovation and content protection, and do not believe the two are mutually exclusive. Rogue websites — those singularly devoted to profiting from their blatant illegal piracy — restrict demand for legitimate video game products and services, thereby costing jobs.”

What remains to be seen is if we can all survive a day without Wikipedia’s world of information at our fingertips.

17 Jan 2012

Apple’s January Surprise

2012/01/17 · Ilan Mester · Responses (1)

Everyone knows that Apple sat out last week’s International CES, the largest tech-related trade show in the world.

The big secret is what the famous tech company will reveal during a media event in New York City later this week.

Multiple media outlets reported last week that Apple started to send out invitations for an “education event” on Jan. 19 and that the company would be making some sort of announcement at the gathering.

But other than that, not much else is known about what Apple will reveal. So naturally, many prominent news sources and blogs have been speculating about the event and what the announcement will entail.

Wired points out that there have been rumours swirling about Apple wanting to make some changes to its iBooks platform, which will involve education in some way.

According to eWeek, it’s basically a no-brainer that Apple will likely be showcasing digital textbooks at the event. The magazine also suggests that the iPad will probably be brought up in the context of education.

All Things D reported earlier this month that the event would not involve the upcoming iPad 3 or a widely reported interactive television project, according to its sources.

An unnamed insider told The New York Times that Apple is keen on entering the digital textbook business and that no new products will be unveiled at the event.

We’ll just have to wait until Thursday to find out for sure, but what do you think Apple will announce at the event?

12 Jan 2012

CES 2012 Field Notes

2012/01/12 · Dimitry Zolotaryov · Responses (13)

Our colleague Dimitry Zolotaryov is in Las Vegas this week attending the annual (and much hyped) International Consumer Electronics Show. We asked him to send us a quick summary of CES highlights so far.

The year of Samsung?

The South Korean tech giant is flexing its muscles at this year’s CES.

Samsung’s Note phone-tablet hybrid combines the functionality of a phone with a stylus and a larger, 5-inch screen. The main strength of this gadget, reflected in its name, is the ability to take notes or drawings via the stylus.

But the Note doesn’t feel ready for primetime just yet as hand interference and a slight delay when writing take away from the experience.

Next is Samsung’s updated line of Series 9 laptops. The company listened to feedback from users of the original model, resulting in the most portable and practical Windows laptop yet.

The 13-inch model is especially attractive with a very slender body and high-quality display. This is definitely something to watch out for in March.

Last but not least is the Samsung Super OLED, 55-inch TV. Its slender width and thin bezel nicely complement the incredible quality of the image.

Expect Samsung to focus their product lines on fewer models this year with an emphasis on quality, rather than breadth

Android takes a bite

Samsung Demo, image courtesy of CES International, via Flickr

Apple is notorious for sitting out CES but 2012 will see many new Android tablets nipping at the iPad’s heels. Last year signaled the beginning of what is now a flood of mid- to high-range tablets running both the Android 3.2 Honeycomb or the more advanced 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich operating systems.

Their distinguishing features remain few, often just one or two unique elements in size or software. Below is a quick rundown of what some brands are offering:

Sony introduced two tablets last year. The two-screen, clamshell Tablet P and the Sony Tablet S. The latter connects with a variety of television sets and plays older Playstation 1 games from the Sony game store.
Toshiba is showing off a range of tablet prototypes from a slender 21:9 ratio, 5-inch tablet to a monster 13.3 version with variations in between. All of their new models come with Super AMOLED display, giving them a sharp and bright image quality. No information yet on what operating system they will run
Samsung is releasing their own 7.7” tablet with a Super AMOLED display (like Toshiba)
Fujitsu introduced the 10” Arrow tablet capable of full submersion in water, up to 1.5 m. A company called Pantech is doing something similar with their Element Android tablet
The Motorola Xyboard tablet comes in two flavours: the 8-inch and the 10-inch
Many (and I mean many) other brands will be releasing their own Android tablets in the coming months.

Despite the variety, these tablets share many common qualities. Most are shipping now with the older Android 3.2 (Honeycomb) operating system and many will be upgradable to the Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich) version.

They all feature dual-core processors in the 1.5 GHz range and feature the same storage options. All have a slender build and a responsive quality. It’s really their screens and brand names that set them apart.

RIM ready to Play

It’s easy to pick on Research In Motion. They had a terrible year of outages, missed deadlines, poor sales and privacy concerns. But on a positive note, we’re told that the PlayBook tablet will receive a much-needed upgrade in February.

The version 2.0 software will include the much-needed email client, calendar and address book applications. Considering the device is price tagged at $300, the new PlayBook should be a darling for people looking for a small, rugged and high-performing device.

Made in China

Chinese manufacturers are out in number on the floors of CES. Their wares are generic by North American standards but we are starting to see innovation from the larger companies.

TCL, for instance, showcased some interesting experiments in cloud services and 3D glasses-free television. It isn’t production-worthy yet, but it rivals the research outcomes of traditional frontrunner brands like Toshiba.

[/caption] Media everywhere Beyond tablets and mobile phones, several CES presenters are showing off new ways we might interact with technology throughout our daily lives. Car companies are experimenting with voice controls in their navigation and multimedia dashboards. Third-party manufacturers such as DriveNTalk are doing the same by integrating phones into the driving experience via voice commands. Another interface innovation incorporates the Microsoft Kinect into the home entertainment experience, allowing TV viewers to control their sites through hand gestures. Most of these technologies are in prototype or early release stages. Do not expect them to make a mainstream appearance in 2012. Stay tuned for our Sparksheet CES 2012 roundup in the coming days.