iPad 2 arrives, now 2 cameras instead of zero!

The new iPad 2 has been released recently, with upgraded specs but interestingly with 2 cameras, front and back. It’s funny how the first iPad had no camera whatsoever, why, I do not know. The new iPad 2 leaves the competition in the dust, with great processing power, and if the Samsung tablet which I tried out in my local Westfield is anything to go by, the other table manufacturers have some ground to cover before they can compete head to head with the iPad. At the moment the iPad controls 90% of the tablet market and has sold nearly a million in Australia.

Apple vs. Flash

One more thing, keep in mind that the iPad, like the iPhone does not support Flash. Steve Jobs has some problem with Flash technology, which is probably because Flash is a closed proprietary system owned by Adobe, and while Flash can lead to crashes, completely banning it from your hardware is a bit of an extreme step. This is important because most videos at the moment are delivered through Flash, which means a lot of video content is now not available to iPad and iPhone owners. The good news is that you don’t have to worry about missing this significant market as Head Studios has you covered, we are finalizing HTML5 video content delivery through our software partner in the US, which by the end of the week should be fully compatible with all Apple and PC based devices.

Impressed?

Check out the iPad 2 review below:

I’m just kidding! Check out the real review:

Charity Water

I found a charity the other day that I wanted to share with you. Have you heard of Charity Water? It’s an organization that provides clean drinking water to some of the poorest communities in the world (mostly in Africa) and was started by a nightclub promoter from New York.

How is this for a novel idea. Scott Harris (the founder) before his birthday, asked everyone he knew to donate $23 to clean water instead of getting him a birthday present, the idea spread with his friends telling others to donate $23 to clean drinking water as a present to Scott. What started out as something small moved to $150,000 raised. Scott realized he had something on his hands and this year he is planning to raise the same amount, but with an extra 0.

Check out the videos below and let me know what you think:

Check out the Charity Water website here

Ads are here to stay… but at least you have choice

I was watching a video on the news website The Age yesterday when I noticed an advertising strategy that I hadn’t seen before. We all know that ads are everywhere, and on television the 30 second ad is ubiquitous. Just like on television, online content has developed an advertising model of what’s known as pre-roll ads, which is a 15 second ad that plays before you video is about to start.

However The Age did something different in that it allowed you to choose the ad you were going to watch (see the pic below).  There was a countdown of about 10 seconds, and if you didn’t select the ad you were interested in one would be picked for you, so most people would click on an ad to save a few seconds, and most likely they’ll click on the ad that is of most interest to them. I can imagine this being more effective then serving a blanket advertisement to everyone; for example if someone is thinking of buying a car they’re more likely to click the car ad.

Select which ad you want to see, and you save yourself 10 seconds.

Promotional video campaigns on a budget

When most companies think of an advertising campaign the budget estimations for an effective campaign tend to be in the 5 figures mark at the minimum however there are many companies out there that are substituting a large budget for creativity which can not only reach a big audience but is memorable due to its uniqueness.

There are a couple that I would like to share with you where you can see how a small budget but a big imagination can lead to an effective campaign that will not only showcase your company but leave a positive impression with your future clients.

Check out the cream of the crop below:

Absolut Temptation

If you were at an airport terminal and an opened carton of alcahol move through the luggage belt would you take home a souveniour? Absolut put this moral test to an unsuspecting public witha hidden camera. All though, does the fact that no one took the bait a good or bad thing?

Super Glue 3

A glue company came up with this genius concept. They stuck a coin to the floor with their super glue and secretly filmed people trying to pick it up. It’s pretty funny and it also shows the glue’s strength.

The Volkswagen Slide

If your company can brighten up an otherwise boring or dull day people will appreciate and remember it. Volkswagen did this by building a slide for commuters to slide down instead of having to take the stairs. The catch phrase was ‘are you ready for the fast lane’. The campaign was great all though Volkswagens aren’t known for their speed but I’m sure it was fun for everyone concerned.

Coca Cola Happiness Machine

I thought I would save the best till last. A Coca Cola vending machine gives out all kinds of goodies, given from a secret man inside. At 1:50 a Subway comes out on a long tray, so I assume the machine must have a whole assembly line working behind it, probably through a hole cut in the wall. It would have taken some time to set this up but the video has 3.2 million views all ready just through YouTube. Great work.

Do you have an idea for a promotion campaign that these sets of videos may have inspired in you or do you feel you could benefit from something similar? If so let us know! Call us on 1300 TEN 700.

Television ain’t what it used to be… Park Street

A new reality show was launched on [channel] recently called Park Street. The show was a flop. While a show being a flop is nothing surprising, the extent to which this show failed is something unheard of in television history (at least in Australia anyway).

Background
First some background on what the show was about. Park Street was meant to be a fly on the wall reality series that follows the editors and writers at some of the most famous magazines in Sydney for women, these include Cosmopolitan, Dolly and the like.

Park Street was successful though in earning the title of the biggest flop in Australian television history. So just how bad was it?

Ben Elton
Well take Ben Elton’s new show which was axed from Channel 9 after 3 episodes. All though ratings started reasonably strong at over 600,000 by the time the lame/crude jokes (I have been told) started getting underway people were tuning out leaving Ben with an average viewer ship of around 440,000. This was not enough for Channel 9 and the show was dumped.

Compare that to Park Street, which had a total of 6,289 viewers across Australia. For a television show this is unheard of, however to put insult to injury, not a single person from Adelaide or Melbourne tuned in. The majority of the viewers had come from Brisbane. The idea that not a single person in a state is watching your show sounds like some kind of comedy sketch.

Caveat…
To be fair though, the show was broadcast on Arena which is cable, and not everyone has cable and considering there are 30 or more channels it’s possible that not every channel will get viewer ship. However it is sad that the Sydney local industry has been suffering when it comes to original content lately. Hopefully things will improve.

While I’m sure you probably would not care to watch this, I included the link for the 1 or 2 people that would to an interview with Park Street’s ‘stars’. Check it out below:

http://video.au.msn.com/watch/video/new-reality-show-park-street/xl1a8ir

Arena really dropped the ball on this one.

We have launched our website!

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New Video: Playlist Commercial

This month we have launched a new product for our online customers called the Playlist player. It’s a very exciting addition to our services and will allow companies to take the benefits of online video (increase time spent on site, increase conversions, branding, get message across) and increase it exponentially by having multiple videos embeddable in the same widget.

Check out the video for the Playlist player below:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HMnRaTcGxhU

Let us know what you think in the comments!

Why read the news when you can watch it in 3D?

Recently I’ve discovered a company in Taiwan that produces 3D recreations of popular news stories. Surprisingly a few of them relate to events happening in Sydney, they are all done in a polished but funny style. I thought I would share them with you.

Some sports…

Gold Coast police chases…

Oprah…

And Qantas..

Hope you enjoyed this. Speak soon!

NAB out of control! Break ups on Valentine’s…

NAB has recently launched a campaign across all media (online, television and billboards) on the theme of ‘breaking up’ with the other big three banks. The campaign has generated buzz not just for NAB’s aggressive price cuts and customer poaching from Commonwealth Bank, but also for its marketing efforts, which have been unlike anything seen before or expected from a Big Bank.

At the moment the NAB has the lowest interest rate, further to that it is aggressively poaching Commonwealth and ANZ mortgage customers by offering to cover the $700 penalty exit fees to switch their home loans to NAB. Further to that the NAB has launched a massive marketing blitz through television, social media and billboards. The message is clear: ‘NAB will no longer play monopoly, status quo games with the other big banks.’ As many other business commentators have suggested, let the banking wars begin!

The Break Up Letter

One of NAB’s approaches has been the break up letter, a simple video written from the perspective of NAB to the other big banks. Not only is there a video of the letter being written but NAB has also put the letter up in their headquarters. The content of the letter is basically NAB stating that they no longer want to be associated with the big banks and their lack of customer service focus and over priced fees.

Check out the video below as well as a photo of the letter that was put up at NAB headquarters:

The letter which has been enlarged out and placed on NAB headquarters.

NAB’s social media strategy has been just as radical. Their YouTube page has various videos of actors breaking up in public, with one acting out NAB and the other acting out the other 3 banks (presumably). You can see these and other various videos on NAB’s YouTube page which you can get to by clicking this link.

However, probably the most extreme case of viral marketing is the video below. Not only is this particular video so brazen, it’s all the more so considering it’s created for a major bank, which are known in Australia at least, to have quite tame and uncontroversial advertisements. I won’t wreck the video for you, instead I encourage you to watch it below.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0BZl21_2tuo&feature=player_embedded

There were also the tissue boxes handed out by NAB outside its competitor’s branches and the banner flown over the city:

NAB has definately taken a big risk on their marketing, not to mention their business decisions. These moves have all ready attracted responses from other major banks. Of course the major question as with any other marketing campaign are whether NAB will see results from their efforts.

One part I will fault with the campaign though is the break ups carried out by actors for NAB. A clip can be seen below this paragraph. While the hidden camera footage is a good idea, the problem is that the camera is just too close to capture anyone’s reactions. Head Studios would have taken a shot from a distance and used wireless microphones like The Chaser’s used to do (notice the far camera at 1:20).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sBgg1XmcCJ4&feature=player_embedded

I would like to congratulate NAB at the very least, for taking a creative risk and we’ll have to wait and see how this unfolds for their bottom line.

Introducing a Playlist with YouTube integration!

Playlist in the video sense, are objects you can embed on your website that include not only a video, but also a menu of related/other videos which a user can choose from. Video playlists can be seen almost everywhere these days as companies optimize their websites with video technology and compete with the regular web user’s attention span.

At Head Studios, we’ve recently launched a Playlist product of our own, what this means is that we can now offer you not only a professional video at a great price that is optimized for delivery off and on the web, but that we can now put a video’s benefits on turbo boost; increased average time on site? Triple it! Tailored message? Done. Brand building and higher sales conversion? Well if you’re reading this there is a strong chance you have thought about adding video to your site, and a big reason for many people is increased sales conversions, well if one video can increase your conversion imagine what 4 videos can do? Or 6, or even 20?

It has been shown that a viewer will stay on your website for up to 600% longer with the help of web video, and a playlist can increase that figure up to 1,800%. That’s because when you deliver content that your web users are looking for they will stay and watch the content if you grab their attention and it’s in their interest to do so.

Red Bull has a playlist on their front page, which draws users in with many videos of extreme sports, something that appeals to Red Bull’s target market and is in itself very interesting to watch

Our playlist player is unique in this sense, it integrates with YouTube meaning you can have private video files only viewable on your website as well as videos sourced from YouTube. This means you no longer have to choose between having videos privately hosted on your website and missing out on the large market of YouTube or having your videos on YouTube and forsaking privacy. The playlist works both ways!

So without further ado our playlist is below. One feature that is not shown in this Playlist is the option for multiple playlists within the playlist! So you can oragnize your videos by having a section for Testimonials, Customer Segment #1, Customer Segment #2, Case Study, Staff etc.

Click on the image to see a working example

Let us know what you think of the Playlist and any extra features you would like to see.

Thanks