3 Best Practices for Creating Engaging VR Content

#1: Make the viewer the protagonist, not just a spectator, in the VR experience

If you offer your viewer an active experience with decision-making rights, he or she will venture willingly into your virtual world.

Available on Daydream, the app for the recent Warner Brothers film "Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them" invites Harry Potter fans to summon and communicate with magical creatures by solving puzzles and performing spells using the Daydream controller as a wand.

#2: Make the impossible possible

Your VR content can open a door previously locked to your viewer—whether due to cost, fear factor, or location—you can hold and maintain your viewer's attention.

Red Bull TV made the impossible possible by transporting viewers from the safety of their own homes to the precarious skyline perches on top of some of the world's tallest buildings with the urban exploration series URBEX.

#3: Expand the viewer's worldview

The third rule of thumb to ensure sticky VR content is all about angle. Think about an innovation in point-of-view.

In an exclusive "flashback" 360-degree VR episode on YouTube, fans of the USA Network's hit psychological thriller "Mr. Robot" get to step into the world of the show like never before, experiencing a pivotal moment from lead character Elliot's past from a unique and powerful perspective that only 360-degree video can provide.

If you're going to make a VR video, make sure you exploit the unique capabilities of the technology to improve the user experience. 

- Give your viewer an active role
- Open a closed door
- Offer a new perspective 

How Malware Can Track Your Smartphone Without Using Location Data | MIT Technology Review

How Malware Can Track Your Smartphone Without Using Location Data | MIT Technology Review

FUTURE OF VISUAL STORY TELLING

FUTURE OF VISUAL STORY TELLING

Evolution is a gradual process and every second that passes by adds to it.  The same rule applies to the visual story telling on social media, and the every second that would be the part of the year 2015 would be a step closer to the future of visual storytelling. I would hence want to cover some trends we would observe in the year 2015 on visual storytelling and what possibly would be the future.

• Various mediums and formats used for visual storytelling would evolve as Gifs, Time-lapse, memes and Interactive videos.  Also we would see the expansion in various platforms, for example the Google News. 

•  Audience would see the magic of Art + Technology + Gamification + User behavior and in future should expect Biometric data to be added giving users personalized storytelling.

• Wearable gadget primarily Oculus Rift to be used for an immersive experience in visual story telling 

• Look forward to Real time storytelling which gets more participative than just being passive viewing. Also users would be now positioned at the center of the action by making them the protagonist. 

• Used widely in journalism and also picked by news networks and portals. Google glasses to give an advantage.

• We may see various data driven websites and campaigns that ride on BIG DATA and data visualization

• We might see more and more interesting parallax scrolling based websites

•    We would see story around things and places never imagined before like the extraterrestrial, dreams, human mind and inner earth. Also the same would be highly used in movie promotions

While the future just not holds just the above listed and its the tip of the iceberg of human imagination and possibilities of the ever evolving digital age we live in.

Principles to Drive Payment

Designing an effective and Payment Method 

There are number of principles to follow when designing the payment method selection in your checkout process:

• Proximity matters: Place payment options in close proximity so the user can see all methods or options in a single view and at ease make an informed decision about which one to choose

• Clean and clear: Make it absolutely clear which option is currently selected – avoid all doubts about which payment method is selected.

• Unveil it : Have a progressive disclosure to gradually reveal form fields so the user only sees form fields relevant to the current selection(s).

• Transparency is key: Specify the different payment methods and highlight their most important implications against each (.g. “1% fee when paying with American Express” or “product only shipped once bank transfer clears”) so as user opts in for the best suited option.

• Short cuts : Consider having a default selection to speed up form entry and reduce choice paralysis by nudging users towards a particular payment method (typically the most popular one).  This could be the most commonly used and preferred methods.  

Social Media 'extracts' Contagious Magazine

Check out this SlideShare Presentation:

Social Media 'extracts' Contagious Magazine

View more presentations from Matthew Pantoja.

INTERESTING...!!!

AN EXTRACT FROM

An Open Letter to the CEO of WPP
July 7, 2008
-By Scott Brinker

Dear Mr. Sorrell,

I read your comments from Cannes in The New York Times article "Ad Leaders See Web's Threat and Promise" [June 23]. While I appreciate the competition you perceive from online ad networks and technology providers such as Google and Microsoft -- and why you'd like to acquire a position in that space -- I'd like to suggest an alternative strategy.Up until now, agencies such as yours have provided value to clients in two main ways: the strategy, design, and production of creative and the distribution of that creative through media channels.You didn't own the radio, TV or print channels through which ads were distributed, but their fractured structure gave you an opportunity to coordinate media buying -- and earn nice fees doing so, which largely subsidized the creative.The problem now is that companies such as Google and Microsoft offer Web services to let any marketer manage the distribution of ads -- and not just for online vehicles. These ad platforms are siphoning money from your media coordination cash cow, as well as double-dipping from the channel.But will ad networks be the center of power in marketing's future?Ad networks are intermediaries, matching publishers, advertisers and audiences. If there's one thing the Internet has been, it's the ultimate disintermediation machine. Especially when it comes to data. And the heart of any ad network is really just data.Google may always have a gold mine in its search engine (which is more of a "publisher" itself), but will it be able to monopolize how other publishers and advertisers connect with each other? Not as likely -- at least not for envious fees. As marketers and publishers get savvier, and as more competitors flood that space, more downward pressure will be exerted on intermediary prices. There are simply too few barriers to entry.To be sure, networks connecting advertisers and publishers will always be important. But similarly, just because the underlying fiber optics of the Internet are important, that doesn't mean the telecoms have been able to extract great economic value from them. In fact, I believe that the dominant ad network will eventually be an "open source" model, with no single corporation controlling it.This can be very good for you.You want ad networks -- along with technologies for targeting and tracking audiences -- to be standardized and commoditized. You're not alone either: Publishers and in-house marketers want the same things, to bring order to the confusion of overlapping marketing technology vendors and to have full transparency in the costs and distribution of ads.Instead, you want value to accrue where it arguably should have in the first place: with compelling strategy and creative -- and its seamless execution.This is where the Internet can shift the balance in your favor.For most online marketing initiatives, you can now prove the quantitative value of great strategy and creative. Anyone can buy a keyword. But put a mediocre ad and an amateur landing page up against truly masterful creative, and the outcome will be 100 percent to 1000 percent higher conversions for the professional version.This is clear, measurable and a source of major competitive advantage. And unlike the mechanics of placement and distribution, it can't be boiled down into an algorithm.You face three big challenges though:First, you need to expand the scope of Internet marketing. Three lines of text in search engine ads is not a large enough canvas to deliver value. Although you can -- and should -- push the envelope with more innovative ad formats in banners and video, the real battleground is what happens after the click.You need to open up new space between ads and corporate Web sites. That space is post-click marketing. It consists of landing pages, microsites, widgets, etc. These devices have the capacity for real substance -- to lever not the cost of a click but the value of a click -- and the people who are leveraging them creatively are achieving phenomenal results. But only a tiny fraction of marketers are doing so today.You must take post-click marketing mainstream.Second, you must absorb marketing technology savvy into your DNA. Although creative cannot be bottled into a computer program, the nature of creative is changing. More than ever the message and the medium are fused together. You need to wield targeting and tracking software as part of the creative mission. To do this, your companies need to be populated with marketer-technologists -- a new career track tightly integrated into your core business.This is the key to competing with technology companies: You must show that the real value is not in the tools themselves but in the way in which they are employed as part of marketing strategy, creative and execution.Third, you need to rally your industry -- both agencies and in-house marketers -- to push ad networks and technology vendors to greater standardization and transparency. Metrics and methods for advertising and audiences in the digital landscape need to become open standards so that strategy and creative can transcend the grasp of any one proprietary vendor. This is how the Web itself was able to thrive -- shifting value to people creating awesome sites, far more than to the companies building routers or HTML editors.These won't be easy standards to forge. The dynamics of Internet marketing are complex and subtle, and they're evolving rapidly. You will need to cooperate with your peers and allies to a degree you haven't had to before. The technology players will resist, mostly in passive aggressive ways. And there will be standards wars.But if you pool the collective influence of your industry -- hundreds of billions of dollars of marketing -- and encourage competition among ad networks and technology vendors wherever possible, you can tip the balance of power.Marketers everywhere will thank you for it.I know these are big challenges. But who else can do this? Google isn't going to be the next-generation creative services empire. Instead of losing your time and money fighting it directly, play the game that draws upon your strengths and the spectacular kaleidoscope of talent in your portfolio.In the future, where everything is networked, automated and optimized ad infinitum, intellectual capital and creativity -- and the organization to exercise it effectively -- will be the dominating source of value.Remember that transformation IBM made from proprietary hardware to open services? There's inspiration.

Good day and good luck.

Sincerely,

Scott Brinker

Chief technology officer

Ion Interactive

5 Step face pack 4 FACEBOOK

This is about how to leverage facebook to position your brand into this social medium and make people talk about it.
Mantras for launching a brand in


Phase1: Know what’s on Facebook regarding your eco-system
Before doing hard work recruiting and leading any Facebook community, stop a moment and get used to Facebook implicit rules, organization, Facebook chaos management (it’s a real chaos inside, but an arranged one).
Then have a look at what’s being written on your eco-system: your brand reputation and awareness, your competitor presence and activity on Facebook, the groups related to your brand or your business,your traditional targets, and have a check on people who included your brand or related info into their profile (interest, music, TV shows, books, or activities) to know who’s already in your business scope (and double check your target is the right target on that platform)

Phase2: Choose your Facebook strategy and select relevant communication and marketing Facebook tools to implement it
3 different ways to market your brand are at your disposal: Facebook guerilla marketing, branding and communication around your brand equity, or application development. For explanation on each way, read this post from InsideFacebook.
My advice would be not to use the application development method to market your brand since after having done your application you need to spread it while people don’t use them anymore (or at least find the fact to “install” the application too much intrusive). Prefer guerilla marketing or brand equity leveraging approaches; they’re way more engaging and creating conversation. Which is why you’re on that platform (thought you could generate direct sells using Facebook?)
To implement your strategy (I now only speak about brand equity and guerilla ways to market your brand) you’ll have to choose how to. Social ads seems to be interesting and somehow competitive, but don’t do that alone, it’s “old school” and above all won’t work by itself. You have to generate an echo within the community that tells people they can click on your banner/ social ad because it worths it. You should have a look at fan pages like Victoria Secret, MSN, NBA, Oreo, or (RED) ones to see what’s in it and why there are so many people visiting and returning and collaborating to this page (whether there’s activity or not from the fan page owner).

Phase3: recruiting and leading your community
That’s the big part of leveraging and growing a Facebook community but also a great opportunity to engage more people with your brand and turn them into fans and brand ambassadors. Here some advice on how to recruit and leverage your soon to be vibrant community:

• Invite your already existing community to join the Facebook community (don’t tell me you don’t have any community around you because you definitly have one, think about your friends, your partners, your employees, your CRM program members)
• Look at online influential people and connect with them online & OFFLINE (if possible, or reach them through phone to create a “physical” connection) to explain your goals and start a conversation that you can continue online
• Use social ads to create point of interest among Facebook users
• Create ready to share marketing material like Youtube video, Slideshare presentation, HTML badges, T-shirts, and any other goodies that can expand your community awareness (here you can think about developing a Facebook application), but think twice about recruitment vs. cost vs. time consuming before starting anything
• Sustain conversation (i.e activity) around your community and within it by creating and continiously feeding a dedicated blog about the main communty’s subject (bear in mind a community is always related to a specific topic), suggesting and managing online/ offline events (whether you are 5 in your community or 200, starting is a good point, waiting for more people before moving forward a bad idea - people did take time to join you so be respectful, that’s the first milestone to glory)

Phase4: maintaining and leveraging the community
After developing your community using tips and tricks you eventually find on the Internet, you’ll see the community would stop growing. Don’t be afraid it’s ok with it; it means you’ve done quite a job and now can start the 2nd part: maintaining pressure and interest to keep members visiting and returning.
At that time, loyalty is the keyword: continiously creating content won’t be enough, you need to create a federative event, whether online or offline, to generate a strong belonging feeling to the community and pride. Pride to speak about it, pride to collaborate and attend events, pride to spread the word. And that ability to create pride would definitly be the key to a successful community; when members are proud to belong to a community, they just become your best ambassadors (by ambassadors, I mean best sellers/ awareness vector/ influencers/ representatives) and would now recruit for you.

Phase5: don’t limit your community to Facebook
Go beyond the bound of Facebook and create a dedicated community platform using social software platforms, invite your community members engage more and more with your brand by developing business related activities like Dell is doing with its whole new websites (managing different kind of targeted communities), Amazon offering to pay fees for sells generated through users, launching a co-creation operation like Google with its favicon contest, and anything else that involves users and keep them proud to be your “friend” (traditional advertising is a good idea).
What about you? Are you willing to embrace your community to move forward smarter and faster or will you stay out of the conversation and hope your consumers would stay by your side because of you (which they will until they find better than you and go without saying anything)?