Inis is a game of following many paths, all at once. You play leaders of Celtic tribes exploring a previously uncharted land. You discover new territories, build castles and religious buildings, hold feasts and have feuds, and compete to be declared the high chief of the new territory. It comes … Continue reading
Appearance Dick Taylor 72% Belize chocolate comes in a beautiful envelope. It feels classy, like a friend from abroad sent you this by parcel post and steamship. Upscale chocolate is a treat, and it’s lovely to have a chocolate packaged in a way that feels like it was thought through. … Continue reading
Chatbots like Slack’s GrowthBot were a major theme of SXSW 2017. Dharmesh Shah, HubSpot Founder/CTO talked through the transformation of our communications styles and internet interactions to move away from: Generation 1: The “click” interface (desktop computers) Generation 2: The “touch” interface (smartphones) to Generation 3: The “conversation” interface (chatbots) … Continue reading
“How do we transport the audience into the story?” asks Annie Granatstein, head of the Washington Post’s brand studio – the in-house native advertising team that creates thoughtful branded experiences within the Washington Post. It sounds almost exactly the same as what you’d hear from a reporter seeking to compellingly … Continue reading
“Alea iacta est,” said Caesar when he crossed the Rubicon marched on Rome to attempt to seize the mantle of emperor. That is to say, “The die is cast” and there is no way back. On the first day of SXSW Interactive, I heard from several folks working to transform … Continue reading
Raaka chocolate’s unique claim appears to be that it doesn’t roast the cacao before making it into chocolate; instead they balance it out with maple sugar and cacao nibs to create a “deep fudge flavor” and “addictive crunch.” Appearance A pretty wrapper and an informative one, providing good detail about … Continue reading
An interesting new study from Pew Research finds that younger Americans significantly prefer to read the news, generally online, than watch it on television. According to the study, 42% of 18-29 year-olds and 40% of 30-39 year-olds prefer reading the news when possible – dropping to under 30% for people … Continue reading
Algorithms and tools are groping around in the dark, with only the limited tool of tagging to help them figure it out. Let’s say I want to share a blog post on Facebook. I drop in my link, and the page handily populates with information on the post: All this … Continue reading
Quick, describe Raphael’s St. Michael and the Dragon in 12 adjectives or less. Would they include #knight #religion, #greatart and #chiaroscuro? Would we be missing some of the essence of the image in boiling it down to these tags – these simple, searchable snippets? The digital world is a tagged … Continue reading
In the early days of movies, the shift from silent movies to “talkies” was transformational. Sound brought a new dimension of verisimilitude and compelling emotional reality to the silver screen. Today, we see a reverse trend towards silent videos on social media. Even as the volume of video content shared … Continue reading
Watch out for when convenience and search engine optimization (SEO) best practices collide with information control. When releasing a series of product previews, your audience will often be wise to the patterns you use in releasing preview content – and they’ll take advantage of that to get additional glimpses of your … Continue reading
Making it easy to engage on social or other media is often appealing. Make it simple to retweet or to Like, and the engagement metrics will pile up. But what about making engagement harder – so that it requires thought, requires solving a puzzle or a riddle? Could difficult forms … Continue reading
In many competitive industries, your product launch is your golden opportunity to build hype and get people excited. When better? There’s a shiny new product coming out, with new rules, ideas, art and more. But in the games industry, your product launch faces a challenge that moviemakers and Harry Potter readers know … Continue reading
It’s always surprising how little the actual cocoa percentage can mean on a chocolate bar. I’ve had 85% chocolate that was fruity and mellow, and 85% that was (to me) so bitter as to be barely eatable. While they’re both technically the same percentage, that percentage includes both cocoa butter … Continue reading
Last week’s Content Marketing 2.0 event, hosted by MIMA (the Minnesota Interactive Marketing Association) and featuring LeadPages’ Clay Collins, was a fantastic look at the world of lead generation – that is to say, turning your content into business results. In today’s world where ad value equivalency is (mostly) a … Continue reading
